Were going to Mars!

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

$450 billion seems like a lot - until you get into details...

For fiscal year 2000,NASA calculated an average cost per launch of $759 million based on four shuttlelaunches.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d011000r.pdf
-SW

[Chairboy]

It IS a lot, especially considering that the entire NASA budget is $15 billion.

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

Yeah, but how many people have we sent beyond the moon and brought back?

Electronics are one thing, they need basic shielding and great programming - and they only go one way.

People, well now you introduce so many more extra costs its simply impossible to calculate unless you are in the field. The cost of a space craft alone to get 2 humans to Mars and back would no doubt exceed NASA's current budget restraints.

Anyhow, I have to sleep. As a closing note, I really want space exploration to succeed. However, I simply do not see it succeeding without global cooperation.
-SW

[Chairboy]

Exactly.  There's no realistic way NASA could send humans to Mars on their current budget, even if they slashed every other project to the bone.

My skepticism about this announcement is because I know that this cannot happen without more money, and Bush can't just write a check.  NASA has to provide estimates that are realistic AND palatable to Congress.

Last time they were given that opportunity, they failed.

I hope history doesn't repeat itself.

[Chairboy]

One addition, I think space exploration can succeed just fine without global cooperation.  

The US went to the moon.  It was a flag & footprints mission, but we did everything we planned because there was only one country squabbling internally over every detail.

The ISS is an example of what happens when you make it international.  It is non-functional, is nowhere near meeting any of its construction, budgetary, or technical targets, and makes every avid space fan groan with embarrassment because it makes everyone else think space is impossible to pull off.

Don't get me wrong, I love Russian space technology.  Their Soyuz is a perfect model of a succesful, mature, and well designed technology.  Their Proton boosters have amazing lift and cost.  The Buran could have been great!  My beef is not with the Russians, it is because the level of project management that needs to exist to pull of an international mars mission does not exist.  There are people out there with the skill to wrangle a bunch of countries and make them work together to get stuff done, but those people will never be given the authority they need to do their jobs.  There is a precedent that has been set that says the every time the money hits a certain point, project management suffers and politics takes charge.

I'm fine with international cooperation, but I challenge the assertion that it is absolutely necessary to pushing out the frontiers.

[_Schadenfreude_]

Originally posted by Saurdaukar
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107807,00.html

er...is that all of you or just a few?

[Holden McGroin]

Only a few of us, along with a coalition of the willing.

[Hortlund]

Heh...whining tards. Nothing new with that.

http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm

Kennedy:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Whining tards:

Its just a pipe dream.

We cant do it alone,we need help from others nations...like France.

We cant afford it.

[-tronski-]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
Only a few of us, along with a coalition of the willing.

wow...that many! This mean's NASA sending a 1980 honda civic to mars then?

I should ask them to get me a t-shirt...NASA spent all these billions on a mars mission, and all they brought me back was this lousy T-shirt

 Tronsky

[Dowding]

Going to the moon is one thing. Going to Mars is quite another. The radiation issues alone make sending humans through that amount of space a highly risky venture. We probably don't have the technology to even attempt it right now.

I don't believe any one nation can do it alone. It will be the huge multi-nationals that make the leap, in some kind of partnership with the US, Russia, China, the EU and maybe even the sub-continent.

[Angus]

A moon base would be a good start.
Getting people and material there and back.
Constructing things under those circumstances.
And learning about how to block cosmic radiation from a static base on another "planet".
Wasn't that also in the plan for mars?

[Naso]

Yep, and one of the objectivces of the ISS was to be part of this effort toward the final goal of a permanent base on the moon and then man on Mars.

The experiment is'nt yet failed, but it's not in good shape

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Dowding
..... We probably don't have the technology to even attempt it right now.  .....
 

Your sentiment could have been said (and probably was by some) when JFK challenged us about the moon.

Interplanetary radiation sheilding is possible as water is an excellent sheild and many designs have proposed using a 'storm cellar' within a space ship to weather the solar storms.  

I have yet to read of a solution to the lack of radiation sheilding on the Martian surface however.

[CyranoAH]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
I have yet to read of a solution to the lack of radiation sheilding on the Martian surface however.

One word: Caves

Seriously, the best option that the experts are considering is the construction of underground facilities for astronauts to live while in solar maximums.

Daniel

[Holden McGroin]

So the first humans on Mars will be (were) cavemen?

I wondered who built the face and the pyramid...