Posted on 02/04/2016 2:57:22 PM PST by BenLurkin
NASA can't afford to put humans on Mars while also pursuing missions to put astronauts back on the moon, according to a panel of experts who testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space yesterday (Feb. 3).
"Today the future of NASA's human spaceflight program is far from clear," said Tom Young, former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "There has been continual debate about should we go to the moon or Mars or both ... It is clear, again, that we cannot do both. And there is a need to focus our attention, capability and resources on one option."
NASA has been advertising its "Journey to Mars" campaign, with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden saying that humans could go to the Red Planet as early as the 2030s. But in addition to the technological and fiscal hurdles, the three panelists agreed that without a solid plan in place, none of the proposed human-spaceflight goals would come to fruition.
"In the current fiscal environment, there are no good pathways to Mars," said John Sommerer, retired director of the Space Department at Johns Hopkins University.
Sommerer contributed to a report that Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to assemble, which looked at the feasibility of human spaceflight endeavors. The results of its investigation were released in a report called "Pathways to Exploration," in 2014.
The report concluded that "the first crewed Mars landing might be possible 20 to 40 years from now, after a cumulative expenditure on the order of half a trillion dollars," Sommerer said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
We know we can get to the Moon, with a little digging in archives.
Build a research station there and actually do it safely for a number of years and then we talk about going to Mars.
Mecca or Medina is the only voyage NASA will take under this administration.
The moon ....a great place to launch from. Not to mention He3 to fuel a fusion drive.
Exactly. First things first. We need to learn to survive on hostile terrain before we really could go off orbit.
Or was that after we finish reaching out to Muslims?
Yeah, a much shallower gravity well make for a better launch site. If you can actually get fabrication situated on the Moon, you’re really ahead of the game since the big stuff won’t have to be ported out of our gravity well.
“The moon ....a great place to launch from. Not to mention He3 to fuel a fusion drive.”
My thoughts exactly. Build up a lunar base. Ideally, the spacecraft that goes to Mars will be assembled on the moon. Basically use the moon as our stepping stone into the solar system. Of course, this means that I doubt I’ll see man on Mars in my lifetime, but space exploration could be a whole lot easier if you are launching from a body that has 1/6th Earth’s gravity.
Moreover, we could make contact with the aliens on the far side of the moon as well as those that dwell inside the moon! :-P
How about some way to get into orbit without hitching a ride with the Russians or Chinese?
Launch thousands of probes, robots, robocars, etc. at the sun, the planets, the Oort cloud, and various interesting comets and asteroids.
We'll learn a lot more about our solar system and the cosmos in general for less money.
We won't be doing any significant travel into space until we've merged with robots anyway. So why try and put feeble human flesh up there?
Robotic probes are about as emotionally and intellectually satisfying as watching a GCI movie or a Corona beer commercial made at a beach vs actually being there.
I thought it was to increase Muslim’s self-esteem.
“NASA can’t afford ...” there it is the money argument - what they are really saying is forget both, get on with climate change and muslim outreach.
The logical thing is to do both - the Moon and then on to Mars - far more economical and far safer.
But that will be up to the Chinese as the US will continue to blankly stare into its collective navel hoping that some one drops off a load of free stuff.
And we are going no where else until the educational system gets fixed and we return to the academic standards of at least 1936. If not, pack it in, move to China or do something else.
NASA is better off focusing their energies and monies on deep space probes.
And when the big rock comes or some crazy starts a full scale nuclear war then what? The human race will be trapped and likely extinct because short sighted people were so worried about money that race survival was ignored.
Money is not the issue. Survival and hope are. Humans are explorers not TV watchers. You’ve been watching/reading too much low end scifi.
If we send up thousands of probes we might find that there are livable conditions for humans under the ice of some of the icy moons or in the clouds above Venus. Then we can start sending people to those places where they have a chance of survival.
“No more humans in space.”
That’ll never happen.
Those ships are also large enough that the walls can be very thick, preferably packed with soil for growing plants, in order to minimize exposure to cosmic rays.
Such a ship would most likely have to be self-sustaining, i.e. all solids and liquids (and I mean ALL) being recycled and reused indefinitely for very long journeys.
Once you have such a ship, you don't need it to go anywhere in particular. It can just hang about in space for eons.
It would be best, however, if it had a place to go so that some generations hence the remaining humans would be able to live on another planet rather than trapped in the cylinder.
If we spend most of our money now on probes, then we are more likely to find such a place for the cylinder to head towards.
I also wonder if there is anything that could completely destroy a group of people in a sufficiently hardened and outfitted underground bunker. With the advent of VR technology, we could have about 100k people dispersed into various bunkers around the world with sufficient food, water, energy, and entertainment to keep them physically and psychically happy for decades to come.
And if we’re talking Sci-Fi, then it might already be the case that you are in a bunker having survived a massive surface-life-destroying meteor shower and just don’t realize it.
Setup a base on a low-G body like Demos or Ceres.
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