Posted on 05/24/2013 4:10:01 PM PDT by BenLurkin
We had four witnesses with maybe 150 to 200 years of combined space experience appearing before the subcommittee on space on Tuesday (May 21), each with a plan.
- Louis Friedman, executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society (who co-led the co-leader of the Keck Institute for Space Studies Asteroid Retrieval Mission Study): Do the asteroid mission proposed by NASA. It will launch four to five years from now. If done properly, it would be a great opportunity for humans to explore as well as for commercial opportunities in mining.
- Paul Spudis, senior staff scientist at the NASA-funded Lunar and Planetary Institute: Return to the moon. It’s close, so close to Earth that we can operate rovers by remote control. It’s a good spot to learn more about the solar system, and it provides practice for us in living off the resources of the land as it has water — a tool for life support and energy.
- Steve Squyres, Cornell University planetary scientist renowned for his Mars rover research: Go to cislunar space, the area close to the moon. It’s an easily accessible spot in a restricted budget environment. Thinking beyond that is not realistic in the current budget environment.
- Douglas Cooke, NASA’s former associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate: Re-establish lunar exploration. The asteroid mission would not connect well with the long-term strategy, but the lunar surface would as (like Mars) it is a hostile environment suitable for testing planetary exploration technologies.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
I say all 3 with NASA taking the smallest role and private industry doing the heavy lifting.
The path between major contractors, global finance and trillions in government spending, leading back ultimately to the taxpaying “little people”.
Tyrannical government will drive freedom minded people to the stars the same way it drove people across an ocean...
It would take less fuel and has a potential huge pay off with helium 3.... or so I have heard.
At the rate things are going the first people to land on Mars will be the Liechtensteinians!
This is why NASA is desperate to keep humanity earth-bound. Remember them fuming over the Dennis Tito flight?
And its just a 3-day drive.
If you’re going to have trouble, it would be nice to have it only 3 days away.
Cultivating an exceptionally strong friendship with the Chinese. Maybe they will let some of us tag along.
Advertise it as a massive "red state". The liberals will move there in droves to foul the nest.
“Cultivating an exceptionally strong friendship with the Chinese. Maybe they will let some of us tag along.”
Or the Russians. We can’t afford those kinds of adventures anymore.
Let’s see, generational welfare, Islamic democracy, global warming, and countless other ill conceived government programs have cost our country trillions for absolutely no gain. We could have colonized the solar system or at least Mars and the moon.
Never mind Mars, that Chelyabinsk meteor was the wakeup call of the millennium. We need to push our representatives to take that puppy seriously. Hysterical blindness absolutely will not do.
May 31 a big rock will miss Earth — perhaps it has some little friends which won’t?
Desperation. To do the next right thing.
Thanks BenLurkin. An extra to APoD members.
Viewpoint: Mars - what we’ve learnt in five years
BBC News | May 24, 2013 | Tom Pike
Posted on 05/24/2013 6:38:40 PM PDT by OddLane
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3023593/posts
when we leave we will take the technology with us
those left behind will quickly end up in the stone age
when we fly away we should not look back
perhaps someday we can return to see if things have improved
perhaps that is already happening
Who cares about the dorks on Mars? Why don’t anybody show us how to get to Venus where the chicks are?
How about a Mission to transport all of the followers of a certain 7th Century Lunar Deity to their beloved home planet, ie: the Moon.
This would satisfy the current NASA objective as well as pay homage to the Greatest Achievement in Human History...ie: Putting A Man on the Moon./s
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