Is it worth the money to step foot on Mars?

Mountain Reporter ^ | 1-21-04 | Steven Stiefel

[hopespringseternal]

"National presitge" at a trillion bucks a pop? Not worth it.

Remember that there was a genuine national security concern behind going to the moon. There is no such concern for going to Mars. We've had the technology to do it for a long time, it is just that every year we wait it gets cheaper and less risky.

But as far as colonists pushing civilization behind NASA, that hasn't happened because unlike North America, no one has ever found a use for living in space. (Neither has mankind found a reason to colonize the ocean floor or surface, but visits both all the time nevertheless.)

One reason why we can't find a use for space is that the cost of getting there puts it out of the realm of nearly all human activity. I can drill the ocean floor for oil, but if an asteroid of pure gold entered low earth orbit, we couldn't bring it down and make a profit. And with the way NASA does things, the cost of getting to space is actually rising quite dramatically.

NASA is funded by lawyers who assume a static, zero-sum universe. They can't see or appreciate how or why growth happens, and so they can only understand meeting apparent needs, not providing opportunity.

[RightWhale]

Dream on

Do you know enough about the universe so we can stop now?

[Mark was here]

But then, your reasoning has the people at Mayo, JPL, etc. in the same line with the crack hookers.

Bingo!

They are all lined up to suck money out of my wallet.

Did you know the University of Michigan has to have someone on staff to clean bubble gum out of library books?

So called higher education, the space program, or crack whores are all at the till.

[Mark was here]

If their opinion wasn't heaping scorn on invention, exploration, progress, while rehashing disingenuous Luddite philosophies, there might be less ridicule.

First off the tax and spend folks, protecting their sacred cow, NASA, resort to name calling in referring to their opponents as Luddites.

No one opposing this scheme is "heaping scorn on invention" , that is quite silly. I think NASA deserves scorn more than it deserves another dip in the public trough.

The latest crash of the shuttle proves they are not interested in getting the job done. They failed to use the best insulating material to insulate some tanks, so the material fell on the wing breaking it. They choose to use sub-par materials inorder to be politically correct.

Get it? They choose political correctness over getting the job done, because they really don't care about getting the job done.

[Mark was here]

Do you consider yourself a conservative?

Yep. I just thought it was funny to use socialist type rhetoric, to talk about a socialist type make work project!

[BobS]

If the Mars Rover has been stripped for parts by illegal aliens already, NO!

[Mark was here]

War on Terror? New border security to stem illegals? Sorry - read the sign - NO new programs of any kind. What? New planes and guns for the military? But we have perfectly good WWII surplus still....

Lookie here, I still have some net pay ... well the government can have it as long as they spend it on something new!

There are legitimate things for the government to do, and some not so legitimate things, should not get sacred cows confused with legitimate.

[Ophiucus]

They choose to use sub-par materials inorder to be politically correct. Get it? They choose political correctness over getting the job done, because they really don't care about getting the job done.

Try again. NASA was forced to change by the Clinton administration at Algore's direct insistance that they change to the enviro-safe foam.

Get your fact right's when you heap scorn and refrain from degrading people who suffered in that tragedy. NASA works astonishingly hard to maintain safety in the face of budget cuts from narrow minded opinions who don't see the value in the future.

To accuse those men and women of allowing that accident to occur because they didn't want to get the job done is OBSCENE

You are disgusting. Shame on you.

[Mark was here]

To accuse those men and women of allowing that accident to occur because they didn't want to get the job done is OBSCENE

You are disgusting. Shame on you.

Call me names all you want, I hope it makes you feel better.

Now answer weather this is a true or false statement:

They failed to use the best insulating material to insulate some tanks.

Being the disgusting one as you put it I would venture to say the statement is true.

Why, because the best material does not fall off and crack the shuttle.

Who installed the sub-par material?

Being the disgusting one as you put it I would venture to say the men and women of NASA did.

Why, because they were in charge.

Why did the people in charge, continue to use a material that breaks off and falls on the shuttle?

Because they did not want to make Al Gore unhappy according to Ophiucus.

It really is not a stretch to say that the men and women of NASA were more interested in keeping Al Gore happy than using the best material available to get the job done.

Why, because this is exactly what they did.

And you call me disgusting! That's ok, because I know that people resort to insults when logic fails.

Have a nice day!

[Mark was here]

And finally to kill this thread off.. I think a mission to Mars is unfeasible and unaffordable and therefore the money that would be spent is best spent by the people who actually earned it and not sent to Washington in the first place.

The culture of NASA is not up to the task. Allowing Al Gore to make engineering decisions says it all. NASA is not going to change, and as the budget gets tighter, NASA will be under more pressure to appease the Al Gores of the world, making the goals even more unattainable.

Best to nip this beastly idea in the bud, not because one is against innovation, but because one is for some budgetary sanity.