Two facts about the Mars mission that people don't know

Someone who works at NASA | 28 April 2022 | Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

The Mars program is being held up (and costing way too much) for two reasons:

1. Enviro-wackos in NASA who have enough influence to demand redundant sterile systems on the spacecraft to MAKE SURE we do not send a harmful microbe to Mars on the trip. Never mind that the atmosphere there would kill said microorganisms, negating any gratitude from anything on Mars for the effort to prevent exposing it/them.

2. Many of the parts and assemblies, by demand from the racially pure leftists involved in the project, must be ordered from women/minority/approved (not white male) companies and that is causing delays/cost overruns.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Corruption everywhere.

[SunkenCiv]

Reason 3 — Old-line aerospace contractors.

Reason 4 — Richard Shelby.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

Another thing I would add to my list if I were Emperor of the USA; defund NASA. We no longer need them as the Left has destroyed that organization.

[ctdonath2]

Gonna be a moot point when a rich madman sends significant numbers of humans to live there as a private hobby.

[Red Badger]

Leftists ruin everything they touch.....................

[Red Badger]

With commercial vendors now on line, NASA’s days are numbered.................

[chopperk]

Defund NASA permanently!

[Chainmail]

Ah, Mars - but before you start thinking about your retirement home there - please note that everything going there has to be radiation-hardened too, since you'll pick up way more than the maximum allowable dose of ionizing radiation on the trip there and during your stay: something like 2KRads/20 Sieverts per year.

1 Rad is considered dangerous to human life, and 20 Rad/400 Sieverts is considered lethal, when absorbed over the same length of time.

Enjoy!

[Carl Vehse]

Don’t trust NASA until it is sanitized free of leftists.

[Honorary Serb]

.....2. Many of the parts and assemblies, by demand from the racially pure leftists involved in the project, must be ordered from women/minority/approved (not white male) companies and that is causing delays/cost overruns.......

We would NEVER have made it to the Moon in 1969 with those stipulations!!!!

[sanjuanbob]

If they can’t use electric rockets, they should scrap the mission. Calling Elon….

[Pollard]

https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/

[Alvin Diogenes]

I don’t have a link, but I think I saw Musk say a while ago that he would love to have electric-powered space flight, but he doesn’t know how to do it.

[dljordan]

“We no longer need them as the Left has destroyed that organization.”

It’s a jobs program.

[cgbg]

Reason 5—the spacesuits still don’t work:

https://qz.com/2046840/a-1-billion-space-suit-is-holding-up-nasas-2024-moon-landing/

[jaydubya2]

I thought the ion thrusters used on the StarLink satellites were electric, but they can only operate in a vacuum.

[woodbutcher1963]

I met a former NASA employee a few years ago on an airline flight. He was the manager for NASA grant money to various colleges and universities. He was a retired USAF Lt Cl that had served in Vietnam and an alternative Space Shuttle Astronaut.

He was coming back from Dartmouth where he was reviewing the progress on research how zero gravity effects all humans eyeballs that have gone on the international space station.
Every astronaut that went up to the space station becomes near sited. The radiation is also why no human stays there for more than one year.

He stated the biggest problem in sending humans to Mars is the radiation they would absorb and other effects on the human body in the trip getting there. They could build the rocket. Send it to Mars, but the humans might be crippled by the time they got there.

[plain talk]

The intention behind no. 1 is valid. We should ensure if we later find life on Mars it wasn’t because we brought it along with us. One can argue about how to best do that etc.

At this point Mars missions should continue to be unmanned. Less expensive and faster.

[Alvin Diogenes]

You may be right. It’s the launch from Earth that’s so energy-intensive that it’s not known how to do it without chemical or nuclear power.

[Wuli]

There is no need for manned flights to Mars at this point in our exploration of the solar system. We are still at the baby step stage and usually you begin to walk before you run. The learning to walk stage at this juncture would be a manned base on the moon. That would be the training ground for best techologeis, methods and operations for “off-world” manned bases, and it would be cheaper than Mars for rotation of personal and resupply operations.

The next phase would be using the moon and orbit around the moon as the departure point from which long range manned spacraft leave for - and return from - other points in the solar system - avoiding the fuel demands for the heavy lifting just to get off the earth. Do it once, up to the mooon or moon orbit, and return it there where it would await its next trip.

After that we MIGHT be ready for a manned base on Mars, but no one should think that will mean a Mars “colony”. At most it will be a scientific base, and it will be duration limited, as we know already from the experience of long term stays on the International Space Station.