News NASA cannot to Mars

[C3PO]

No it won't take a visionary, only a change in political landscape. It has been tried more than once, but the fact that it isn't pressing to most of us in walking life other than our immediate needs.

There was no immediate need to go to the Moon (except for a pissing-match called " The Cold War™").
If you told someone that the US valentines day trade is larger than the total NASA budget including the air safety bit, a vast majority would go "So what?" I don't see any government spending that amount of $ on a project that most of the voters are totally indifferent to.

 

[Urwumpe]

I think it is a bit more complicated there with the public support. People support winning teams. As long as nobody really can imagine landing on Mars in reality, nobody will really feel like he should support such visions.

But if the next step to Mars is just a small one, not many will really object, because it is a sure bet of success. And that is how you should develop your program. Not the single big leap to the goal. But many small steps, starting with the first in the direction.

We can go to Mars. We can even get there without developing a special launcher or new test stands and other nonsense. All this stuff should just create expensive short cuts. But we can also do this without, with many smaller steps along the route.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

INB4 Elon Musk does it accidentally... XD

Nah, Jeff Bezos and Elon are going to be racing to Mars in 20 years or less.

 

[Pipcard]

I would imagine that some things would have to be launched with a full expendable 50-60 tonne launcher, though.

Using chemical propulsion, reducing the mission IMLEO value would have relied on the crew aerocapturing into Mars orbit.

Although, there is the possibility of a fully reusable (SpaceX-style) heavy-lift vehicle able to launch one Earth-Mars-Earth vehicle dry, with several refueling missions using the same vehicle type as a tanker - this is what some people on the NASASpaceflight forum are speculating that the MCT (Mars Colonial Transport) + BFR (Big "Falcon" Rocket) are going to be like. The main idea is that it is thought to have less development costs with only one common vehicle design, and that the full reusability will significantly reduce launch costs (when there is high utilization of the launcher) to the point that trying to minimize the mass of the mission (through things such as nuclear thermal or solar electric propulsion, or splitting the mission into separate types of spacecraft, such as Mars Ascent Vehicles and Mars Transfer Vehicles) won't matter anymore.

 

[richfororbit]

There was no immediate need to go to the Moon (except for a pissing-match called " The Cold War™").
If you told someone that the US valentines day trade is larger than the total NASA budget including the air safety bit, a vast majority would go "So what?" I don't see any government spending that amount of $ on a project that most of the voters are totally indifferent to.

Yes, obviously, but that was the only it was done.

As for Mars it would require something like that.

Otherwise it is a many decades away, due to financial problems, and other Earth bound problems that could delay a mission within thirty years, government or private company.

There is no reason to send anyone anywhere, due to the obvious reasons, but if the decision is to let Humankind wither away when ever that happens, then that may be one reason for migrating people across to somewhere else.

But that is all science fiction, and a waste of time.

 

[Urwumpe]

There are always problems. Do you only go and have some fun, if you have solved all problems in your life?

 

[richfororbit]

Your addressing me as an Individual, remember most people are collective in thought, so they live they're lives based on emotion and not logic. That would include us here too, but no with existing problems we try and make the best of it, and progress where perhaps possible.

So nobody wants to go anywhere, except for bright people who think beyond themselves.

So there problems here on Earth as I read years ago when I was in my teens that space flight is a waste of time and that problems here on Earth are more important and should be solved before going anywhere.

I would like to think Mars One will make it, it seems like quite a bit of luck must go there way, in reality a huge support from expertise and money.

I think it is decades away till the end of the century by government and private companies, perhaps a private company will prove all those wrong who don't think it will happen for what ever reason.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

If we wait until all the worlds problems are solved before going anywhere, we won't be going anywhere.

 

[Andy44]

If we wait until all the worlds problems are solved before going anywhere, we won't be going anywhere.

I have never understood this nonsensical thinking.

Assuming we are talking about government-funded space travel, of course, I can find lots of things governments spend money on that actually make life worse and create more problems here on Earth than any space program does or would.

That said, saying, "Well, we did Apollo in the 60s" is missing the point that it's not the 60s anymore. The international landscape, politics, public opinion, all the conditions are different now.

I think NASA might eventually get to Mars, it's not impossible. But any lasting presence or persistent space exploration will eventually be by private or semi-private means, the Bransons, Musks, and others driving it, that's my hunch.

And the good news is that what NASA has done so far is paying off in terms of technology and experience giving a boost to private ventures building their own space vehicles and programs. SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc., all can draw on Apollo and STS for data.

That was ostensibly NACA/NASA's reason for being created in the first place. Space is hard, but we'll get there someday.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

I agree: there is a new space race, and it's not between countries. It's SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, etc, all guning to put humans into space. I strongly suspect that it'll boil down to SpaceX versus Blue Origin really quickly, as both of their founders have large sums of money to draw on.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

NdGT had a fantastic diatribe on how little the NASA budget is compared to everything else. Even with that, there are far too many people that see space, spaceflight and NASA in general as a waste of money.

They fail to realize that because of human spaceflight, Doctors without boarders (just one example) now have medical kits and equipment that take up far less space and weigh far less than the room sized equipment from just a decade ago.

 

[Urwumpe]

NdGT had a fantastic diatribe on how little the NASA budget is compared to everything else.

http://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-9756&y=-2934&z=5

 

[Soheil_Esy]

Are we living in different dimensions? Are we talking about the same Chinese with the same economic catastrophe and the same Chinese space program?

China to Overtake US in 2026, India, Indonesia to Rise Sharply in "New World Order"

http://www.scdigest.com/images/Top_Economies_2050-2.gif


:lol:

http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/15-06-24-1.php?cid=9441&ctype=content

 

[Urwumpe]

China to Overtake US in 2026, India, Indonesia to Rise Sharply in "New World Order"

http://www.scdigest.com/images/Top_Economies_2050-2.gif


:lol:

http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/15-06-24-1.php?cid=9441&ctype=content

LOL, actually the source for the claim is an older prognosis by The Economist. And it still assumes the high growth rates in China to be eternal and ignored all warning signs of a shadow economy and overheating.

Yes, a 6.9% growth for China does sound great at first. But it is only half what would be needed to counter the negative effects of its economy, now China will gradually collapse because of the systematic problems in its economy, that required China to compensate with a huge GDP growth. Quite many here are even expecting China to get on the brick of a civil war because even just feeding the workers in China depends on high growth rates.

A problem that many of the "winners" in the The Economist study share. None of them really invests into the needed social infrastructure to make economy stable, they just ride on the wave of an unstable economy until the wave crashes and the bubble bursts.

 

[sorindafabico]

None of them really invests into the needed social infrastructure to make economy stable, they just ride on the wave of an unstable economy until the wave crashes and the bubble bursts.

I would call this "The Brazilian Model".