NASA seeks help for human exploration of Mars

New Scientist Space ^ | 07/19/06 | Paul Marks

[KevinDavis]

NASA chief Michael Griffin appealed on Wednesday to the leaders of the world's leading space agencies to join NASA in its bid to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars.

Unless they do, he said, there will be little point in completing the International Space Station. The ISS will make a perfect staging post for such missions, he believes.

Griffin told the heads of the Russian, European, Japanese and British space agencies that now is the time to start planning a division of labour for the new manned missions. He was speaking at a British National Space Centre seminar at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire, UK.

[KevinDavis]

[Jack2006]

The British Space Agency? Is that the two old men with a box of fireworks?

[BenLurkin]

We need to overcome at least two technical hurdles.

1-A self contained personal environment which recycles all the air, food and water a person consumes.

2-Radiation

[saganite]

Great. Inviting the other nations in means a repeat of the ISS fiasco. Bloated budgets, limited success and nothing to show for taxpayer dollars. In 20 years space will be dominated by private interests and NASA will be just another hasbeen worthless government agency that refuses to die long after it's usefulness has passed.

[monkapotamus]

I'm trying to picture what it will be like decades from now when thousands of humans are in space, and the federal governments orders them to submit their taxes.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

NASA should rather try to make an alliance with American industry and keep American space exploration American.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Doesn't the EU have a EU-wide space agency, Esa?

[nuke rocketeer]

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

There will probably be government representatives in space if there are normal people. Hawaiians still give taxes to the federal government though Washington, D.C. is a continent away. However, a closer analogy could be the tarred and feathered British tax collectors in Colonial British America.

[Mr. Jeeves]

NASA chief Michael Griffin appealed on Wednesday to the leaders of the world's leading space agencies...

He should be appealing to the leaders of Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett-Packard, and 3M: offering a 100 billion dollar prize plus 80% of the mineral rights for any consortium who can build a working permanent station on Mars and occupy it for a year.

[SunkenCiv]

Winkle-tinky all over this idea. The US paid for almost all the cost of building and orbiting the International Space Station -- including paying for some of the Russian stuff -- and gets almost no use of it, all of the blame, and none of the credit. If other countries want to go to Mars, let them bring back our flag.

[Hawk1976]

My bet is on the thirteen colonies of Mars disagreeing with paying those taxes. There's a huge part of me that wants to be there for that.

[demlosers]

NASA may be "great", but Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, insisted that future cooperation should be on an equal basis. "We can't have Mr Griffin developing a strategy and have every one of us just sign it," he said. He added that putting collaborations on a "reliable legal basis" is one of the biggest challenges.

When you take the lead in these areas: development, cost, implementation, operations, and infrastructure, then you can be the one who gets to ask other agencies to sign on. You guys always want to be in when it's on the cheap.