Just curious but what have you got against the private sector? You’re not the first on this thread to accuse me of being against manned space exploration. I’m not. NASA has carried the ball this far and now manned space goals should be in the hands of people who can do it much cheaper, more quickly, and actually do some good with it when they get there.

Space X just put the first satellite into orbit using a commercial liquid fueled rocket. They did it for $4 million. NASA would have charged $20 million. In the next few years, commercial spaceflight is going to explode with orbiters, space tourism, and probably space ferrying astronauts up to the space station. This is real. The companies are in business already, heavily capitalized, and already testing the rockets and other hardware that will accomplish these things.

My point stands. It’s not that we shouldn’t go to Mars. My question is asked in the title; what’s the rush?

ed.

Nice to finally agree with you for once. Talk about believing your own propaganda. Manned space exploration has jumped the shark. Why spend tons of money on a pipe dream that is nearly physically impossible when robots can do the trick much cheaper?

When dreams cost $400 billion - $1 trillion that we don’t have, you might ask your grand kids how great they’ll feel paying for it.

And I guess when I support the idea of commercial space companies going there, that’s just not the same. No dream there, huh? To prove how dreamy you are, you want to spend taxpayer dollars to do something that in a couple of decades, private firms will be able to do.

Again, it’s just not the same, right? Private firms will be able to do it for one tenth the cost, and get there before NASA would anyway. But then, we wouldn’t have that dreamy joy of paying for the gross inefficiency, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and cost overruns that NASA is famous for.

ed.

Either way, it isn’t about doing anything in particular. But it does have several side benefits that I think make it entirely worth it.

1. All the cool stuff we’ll invent by accident that we then get to sell. Tons of inventions were created by/for NASA and are now used and sold commercially such as Teflon and GoreTex.

2. Inspiring the children of this country to actually go into fields like Engineering. We haven’t really done anything inspiring in years, and our engineering programs are flooded with foreigners. I don’t think the fact that we are educating foreigners is a problem, but simply that we aren’t educating any of our own kids. They all want to go to film and music school to become rock stars and actors.

3. We’re a nation of explorers. Going somewhere we’ve never been is exciting, and it would probably be a lot better for our national attention span to have coverage of a fantastic achievement rather than the death of a celebrity like michael jackson, another political scandal, or some terrorist attack/natural disaster.

No it will never pay for itself, and it will certainly be expensive, but this is one of the few things our government actually does well. Something extraordinary but completely pointless.

“It’s not like Mars is going anywhere, right?”

Not if someone else gets there first.

A better plan would be to intentionally speed that process up and crash Phobos into Mars now. That has a couple of benefits. First it slightly increases the mass of Mars and makes it able to hold a tiny amount more atmosphere but most importantly it might restart some volcanism and possible add some heat to the inside of the planet from the collision. This might make for the generation of more atmospheric gasses and make it easier to colonize.

It would also give us experience in manipulating large object that might come in handy if something large was ever headed toward us from space.

Yes, but in 10 million years we will probably have some kind of super-duper destructo ray that would pulverize Phobos. And Mars will probably be a paradise since we will have changed its atmosphere and climate by then.

As far as manipulating large bodies from space, it would indeed be a triumph if we could do something about Michael Moore…’

ed.

We could turn to the private sector to try and close the huge gap the Russians and the Chinese have over us with regards to planning and executing a Mars mission. As I understand it, this is being done to try and find a replacement for the Shuttle before 2015. Maybe we could extend the life of the Shuttle some how. I shutter at the thought of what the Russians will demand in compensation to transport our people into space. hopefully it won’t come to that.

Private sector solutions to the Shuttle issue or Mars issues will work best IF the government will stay out of the way. At this time, I’m not optimistic that this government can resist the urge to meddle.

It is clear humans will go to the moon by no later than 2030. a permanent human presence will likely be established by 2035, at the latest. While I certainly would like for us to get there first, it probably won’t be us. We don’t have the technological capabilities or the financial ability to do it right now. Both the Russians and the Chinese do. If I were going to bet on which country will get there first, the smart money would be on the Russians.

It’s about frontiers, Rick. There’s not a single damned frontier in nationalized socialistic health care.

Never fear, though — we’ll hammer down every stinking dreamer left. Even your private, commercial space flight…I suspect that’s not long left to draw breath. Why bother, if it’s gonna be a NASA subsidiary next week?

Frontiers are nice for dreaming - if you happen to have $400 billion or more lying around not doing anything. Let the commercialization of space begin and get NASA out of the way. A private venture to Mars will cost far less than what NASA would spend and actually accomplish something. It may take a few decades longer, but the return will be fabulous.

ed.