We should go to Mars, but we should bring any Muslims.
Because we can and it would be wrong to live forever in the cradle.
One day the sun will die. Our descendants had better be seeded throughout the galaxy by then.
We should go there to make money. Its the New World without the pesky natives.
If Obozo has his way, NASA’s next ship will be a used Cessna 172 fitted with external bottle rockets.
As much as going to the Moon and Mars, we need to do so in a way that builds on what we do, so we do not end up reinventing the wheel.
A long term solution is found by hard rock mining horizontal tunnels to make into habitats. A nuclear powered, unmanned robotic tunneling vehicle could slowly and methodically mine into hard rock over the course of years. Even tunneling at the rate of 1 inch a day, in just a year it will have made a substantial tunnel.
A tunnel provides a shelter out of the cosmic and enhanced radiation on the surface, vacuum, extremes of heat and cold, and the abrasive lunar dust. It can also give a lot more space and lasts far longer than a small surface habitat.
As the robot tunnels, it can at intervals drill reinforcing rod into the rock ceiling. When pulling out it can spray the walls with sealant against micro fissures.
Since the robot would be on a 1-way mission, its lander could be cannibalized for parts. This would include insulation, walls, flooring, ceiling, support members and pressure doors. Before the astronauts arrived, it could even do a pressure check on the sealed tunnel.
Even when the astronauts arrived, its nuclear power plant would provide them with all the energy they needed, both for life support and to extract He3 from the Lunar dust.
In between missions it could go back to digging secondary tunnels, mining water ice, or continue to harvest and purify Lunar dust.
The US should have a permanent human presence on the Moon, and do it first.
The US should only send a human mission to Mars if it plans to plant the US flag.
The US should not engage in any more “international” efforts in space.
That said, the only two reasons to go back to the Moon are to A) establish and maintain a permanent base (or more than one) on the Moon, and B) to develop and practice the skills and technology to make very long duration spaceflights (to Mars, obviously) achieveable.
The reasons for a lunar base are probably numerous, but in particular should be done to A) enable human missions to Mars, B) “far side” radiotelescopy, mostly for the identification of solar system debris potentially threatening to Earth, C) assay the lunar surface for useful materials which are rare on Earth, and D) build a giant [quote fingers] laser [unquote fingers] to blackmail the OPEC nations.
You know, it’s a funny thing. The GOP spends money on defending our borders and securing our liberties, and the left goes crazy. The dems spend money on redecorating the local homeless shelter in fall colors, and the right goes crazy. But where do both sides of the aisle get the warm and fuzzies? Dumping money into outer space.
The simple facts of the matter are that space exploration has not paid for itself, and that all the arguments made about how awesome space is (by NASA, but also by free-market space wonks) are specious if you take away the HUGE COOLNESS FACTOR of outer space.
Free example: NASA likes to gloat about the spin-off technologies from space exploration, like miniaturized rocket systems, improved materials tech, improved electronics. A lot of this is simply advertising hyperbole (News Flash: the Apollo program did not invent the integrated circuit). But even still, if you take away the HUGE COOLNESS FACTOR, it works out like this: well, we spent $150 billion in today’s money. And we did bring back a couple of rocks, valued at several million dollars. So the remaining $149.9 billion, that was what we spent on R&D for miniaturizing rocket systems.
Sorry?
The same goes for today’s starry-eyed plans. We are going to invent and build a spaceship and fly it to the moons of Jupiter in order to pick up cheap hydrocarbon fuels. Is anyone actually drawing up a business plan for this? No, because of the HUGE COOLNESS FACTOR. Jupiter, man.
There is almost no money to be made in space, and the money that is out there is not in the cool stuff, but in the boring, unmanned, earth-orbiting sattelite end of the spectrum. If entrepreneurs want to go broke trying to put a golf course on Uranus, that’s their god-given right. But the US government should be out of that business.