26th June 2010, 8:48 AM
Your condescending diatribe does not phase me. I cannot respectfully argue with you when you gloss through my comment, and pick out a few choice points you wish to rebuke.
So I'll do it without respect.
"We just don't have a pressing need to do it RIGHT NOW."
I cannot see this logic. If anything, we should have done it decades ago. The technology has been feasible for a long time... the idea was brought up during the Nixon administration, but he like you saw more down-to-earth (pun intended) priorities as being more important.
"Especially considering anything beyond a jaunt to the moon is still a decade-long journey only going one way."
I'm glad you said that, because you discredited the entirerty of your position with that ludicrous assertion. Your figures are woefully innaccurate... they're not driving a Studebaker to Mars, this is a (relatively) high-speed rate of travel. By even throwing out such a ridiculous figure as a decade, you've proven how little you know about this... "Again, the details depend on the rocket velocity and the closeness of the planets, but 260 days is the number I hear most often give or take 10 days. Some high-speed transfer orbits could make the trip in as little as 130 days. "
4-8 months one way. 8-16 months round trip.
No, Eden. Not twenty years. Try 1.5 years, at most... optimistically, 8 months round trip.
Earth to Mars in 260 Days
"Once science progresses to the point of faster, more efficient, and most importantly stable engine technology ..."
I can agree that technology can always be better, but it won't develop unless we actually work at it. It's such a low priority now, and it ought to be higher. Faster would be greater--but even at current statistics, 130 days one-way (260 round trip) is only about 8-9 months. Efficiency would be troublesome, but not insurmountable.
Have you seen the national debt, Darunia? Perhaps the disaster currently still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.
The debt I can admit as a valid point... but... what does the oil spill have to do with not going to Mars? We can't go to Mars as long as there is oil in the ocean? I don't get it.
The millions of children who will die of starvation and diseases that we have cures for.
The United States is not responsible for feeding the world's poor. Their respective governments are. Their failure to take care of their own is not a reason for us not to be able to land men on Mars.
"there simply isn't enough (money) to invest in such an enterprise."
That is, of course, an opinion. I could just as easily say "there isn't enough money to pass an economic stimulus bill." But there always is enough money in a country that doesn't care to balance its budget. Furthermore, it wouldn't cost so much as you seem to think. It'd be on a scale of billions, yes, but that's a drop in the bucket... we waste hundreds of billions of dollars yearly on ephemeral crap that has no lasting effect. Furthermore, why not make this great endeavor a join venture with all major foreign space services, like the ISS? Share the price tag, and have foreign astronauts all comprise the crew?
If Obama came on television today, in the midst of the economy as it is now, and said he was going to put a few hundred billion dollars into space exploration, he'd be tarred and feathered on the White House lawn."
First of all, it wouldn't be hundreds of billions. But you're probably right... if he said that. It wouldn't be a popular idea amongst nay-sayers like you. But he wouldn't need to say that. NASA already has some funding going into the development of similar projects. He would have to raise additional funding, on the scale of tens of billions. This pricetag could be, if an international venture, split across the globe. Yet---it'd take a brave president with long-sightedness, resilience, tenacity... a president we don't have.
As for risks, well, yes, everything you do in your life involves a certain level of risk. For most, including most of your examples, the risk is so minuscule as to be insignificant. Space flight involves very real risks.
So does going to Afghanistan and risking your life everyday... June '10 is setting records for casualties. It certainly entails a higher risk of mortality than space exploration. If we MUST go there, and brave risks, then space too is an acceptable risk. The benefits outweight the risks.
"I'm sure every astronaut who has died would also be proud to have given his life for such a noble cause, but that doesn't make it right."
Make it right? Are you conjecturing that risking your life for space exploration is morally wrong? Wtf? Firstly, everyone has a unique moral compass...and if risking one's life to voyage to Mars is morally "wrong" to you... yours is askew.
So I'll do it without respect.
"We just don't have a pressing need to do it RIGHT NOW."
I cannot see this logic. If anything, we should have done it decades ago. The technology has been feasible for a long time... the idea was brought up during the Nixon administration, but he like you saw more down-to-earth (pun intended) priorities as being more important.
"Especially considering anything beyond a jaunt to the moon is still a decade-long journey only going one way."
I'm glad you said that, because you discredited the entirerty of your position with that ludicrous assertion. Your figures are woefully innaccurate... they're not driving a Studebaker to Mars, this is a (relatively) high-speed rate of travel. By even throwing out such a ridiculous figure as a decade, you've proven how little you know about this... "Again, the details depend on the rocket velocity and the closeness of the planets, but 260 days is the number I hear most often give or take 10 days. Some high-speed transfer orbits could make the trip in as little as 130 days. "
4-8 months one way. 8-16 months round trip.
No, Eden. Not twenty years. Try 1.5 years, at most... optimistically, 8 months round trip.
Earth to Mars in 260 Days
"Once science progresses to the point of faster, more efficient, and most importantly stable engine technology ..."
I can agree that technology can always be better, but it won't develop unless we actually work at it. It's such a low priority now, and it ought to be higher. Faster would be greater--but even at current statistics, 130 days one-way (260 round trip) is only about 8-9 months. Efficiency would be troublesome, but not insurmountable.
Have you seen the national debt, Darunia? Perhaps the disaster currently still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.
The debt I can admit as a valid point... but... what does the oil spill have to do with not going to Mars? We can't go to Mars as long as there is oil in the ocean? I don't get it.
The millions of children who will die of starvation and diseases that we have cures for.
The United States is not responsible for feeding the world's poor. Their respective governments are. Their failure to take care of their own is not a reason for us not to be able to land men on Mars.
"there simply isn't enough (money) to invest in such an enterprise."
That is, of course, an opinion. I could just as easily say "there isn't enough money to pass an economic stimulus bill." But there always is enough money in a country that doesn't care to balance its budget. Furthermore, it wouldn't cost so much as you seem to think. It'd be on a scale of billions, yes, but that's a drop in the bucket... we waste hundreds of billions of dollars yearly on ephemeral crap that has no lasting effect. Furthermore, why not make this great endeavor a join venture with all major foreign space services, like the ISS? Share the price tag, and have foreign astronauts all comprise the crew?
If Obama came on television today, in the midst of the economy as it is now, and said he was going to put a few hundred billion dollars into space exploration, he'd be tarred and feathered on the White House lawn."
First of all, it wouldn't be hundreds of billions. But you're probably right... if he said that. It wouldn't be a popular idea amongst nay-sayers like you. But he wouldn't need to say that. NASA already has some funding going into the development of similar projects. He would have to raise additional funding, on the scale of tens of billions. This pricetag could be, if an international venture, split across the globe. Yet---it'd take a brave president with long-sightedness, resilience, tenacity... a president we don't have.
As for risks, well, yes, everything you do in your life involves a certain level of risk. For most, including most of your examples, the risk is so minuscule as to be insignificant. Space flight involves very real risks.
So does going to Afghanistan and risking your life everyday... June '10 is setting records for casualties. It certainly entails a higher risk of mortality than space exploration. If we MUST go there, and brave risks, then space too is an acceptable risk. The benefits outweight the risks.
"I'm sure every astronaut who has died would also be proud to have given his life for such a noble cause, but that doesn't make it right."
Make it right? Are you conjecturing that risking your life for space exploration is morally wrong? Wtf? Firstly, everyone has a unique moral compass...and if risking one's life to voyage to Mars is morally "wrong" to you... yours is askew.
H.R.M. DARVNIVS MAXIMVS EX TENEBRIS EXIT REX DEVSQVE GORONORVMQVE TENDORVM ROMANORVM ET GRÆCORVM OMNIS SEMPER EST