I’m a huge Mars fan. Heinlein, Bradbury, Burroughs, they pointed us towards Mars and we should make it a priority. Love the Rovers (one is pretty sick, sad).
I suspect “The One” will cave in to the fix earth first crowd.
Considering what the economy is headed for I think NASA will be grounded for a long time to come. They won’t even be able to send people to the ISS after the shuttle is retired and I’m certain there won’t be any new funding, just drastic budget cuts in store for them.
GREAT IDEA!
I move that we first send the entire Congress of the US along with the newly elected executive branch (what the hell? send all the RINOs too.)
I hereby nominate all Democrats to go first.
Mars is a bit of a white elephant. The moon has Helium-3 deposits, which can be the source of fuel for fusion powerplants. China realizes this, and we’d be fools to ignore it and let the Chinese gain control over Helium-3 just to be the first to Mars.
Better clean my contact lenses! The first time I read it, I thought it said:
Focus on Putting Hamas on Mars.
Hmm! Now, that's an idea.
This needs to be done privately, if to be done by Americans at all. It will not happen as a public venture in the US.
The first humans on Mars will be Indians or Chinese - and they won’t get there before about 2040.
Some already there.
Going to Mars won't excite them either. The Moon/Mars boondoggle is another major screwup by W.
“Returning to the moon has not sufficiently excited the public...”
Why set any mission priorities based on a less than desired factor of public excitement when there are so many out there who either can’t appreciate the mission because of their not having lived until the after the Challenger disaster or for the fact that they’ve taken on a certain jadedness towards space exploration as if they’ve “been there” and “done that”. I have a feeling that some of that jadedness stems from their being so immersed as “gamers” that they have a hard time appreciating the realities of the physical aspects of actual space exploration.
Talk to a fighter pilot (a real one) or an aeronautical engineer and I’ll bet the prospect of the NASA missions excites them. If you talk to your average stay-at-home mom or a HOOTERS-type girl, they’ll probably tell you that it’s a huge waste of time and money or even have not one iota of understanding of what NASA’s mission has EVER been.
So, why even bother with whether or not there is an ‘appropriate’ level of public excitement when by the time the technology is ready to come out of the labs and servers, into the machine tools and onto the launch pad, the population that the public would then consist of may have had an awakening to those modern marvels.
I don’t think it would wise for any administration to give up on the NASA missions, nor would it be wise to give up on public excitement for them, however jaded or unappreciative they may seem today.