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Who will go to Mars first?


FishInferno

Who will go to Mars first?  

71 members have voted

  1. 1. Who will go to Mars first?



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SpaceX and NASA aren't countries, you know... Could just have said "USA".

It's either USA or China, this has been discussed to death a million times. I just hope China keeps making steady progress so the fellows at the US congress feel like they should be keeping up and give NASA enough funding to effectively cause another "space race". There doesn't seem to be any significant cooperation between the two in the near future, unfortunately.

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I don't know.

To talk to spacecraft that are that far out, requires a lot more infrastructure, like, aren't the NASA missions reliant on a network of those big radiotelescopes at Madrid and Canberra ?

I don't know that there's the politics or funding in place for any other entities to make a similar network of radio telescopes that would be necessary to talk to a manned Mars mission. I don't know that NASA would be able to share that network, or if they'd be willing, because they need it for their own missions.

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I say other, under the belief (hope) that it will be a coalition. Maybe Russia, USA, and Europe, maybe something else.

I would also note (feeling nitpicky) that NASA already has made it there, as has India, and Europe, and, for the USSR/Russia (if you count failures soon before mission successes as successes, USSR made it several times). What we are talking about is manned flights, I understand.

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I think only a coalition of the world's major space agencies could pull it off. ESA, NASA, RSA, and China's Space Agency.

Maybe:

ESA could provide probes and other remote hardware

NASA could provide the habitat ( TransHAB?) and final spacecraft engines (RL-10s?)

RSA could provide crews to service the craft while it's still in orbit

and China could provide heavy lift capabilities.

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If SpaceX builds a cheap heavy-lift rocket, I'd think that NASA would want to use it instead of SLS.

There's of course a lot more that's needed, like habitats, rovers, service modules and stuff, so ESA will hopefully be in it as well.

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I would want SpaceX to be the first. The most logical thing to do, when they have a super heavy lifter, is to have a joint mission with (for example) NASA.

That's why I picked other.

SpaceX isn't going anywhere without NASA's money.

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When did everyone lose faith in NASA? It's probable that they'll be the first to mars, what do you think the Orion/SLS is for? SpaceX is making great progress in efficiency but they're still pretty far behind NASA, have they ever launched a human yet?

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When did everyone lose faith in NASA? It's probable that they'll be the first to mars, what do you think the Orion/SLS is for? SpaceX is making great progress in efficiency but they're still pretty far behind NASA, have they ever launched a human yet?

Elon Musk mancrushes?

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When did everyone lose faith in NASA? It's probable that they'll be the first to mars, what do you think the Orion/SLS is for? SpaceX is making great progress in efficiency but they're still pretty far behind NASA, have they ever launched a human yet?

SpaceX is NASA. Falcon was subsidized by NASA. The Merlin engine is based on a NASA reference design. Dragon is being paid for by NASA's CCDev program. Most of what SpaceX does is for NASA and there would be no SpaceX without NASA.

I really wish the fanboys would stop the SpaceX-rah-rah cheering and opposing SpaceX and NASA as if they were competitors or opponents. SpaceX is mostly a NASA contractor, just like Boeing, ULA, and the rest of the aerospace industry. There is no such thing as "commercial space" without NASA, DoD, and other governments paying for infrastructure and development costs.

Edited by Nibb31
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Lets not forget that the space shuttle was also built by private corporations: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Rockwell, Morton Thiokol.

These are all private corporations that survive mostly on government spending (boeing at least has a significant civilian market, the others pretty much only have the military and other government agencies as customers).

Space X is just the "cool new kid"

We've had private corporations inthe space game for a long time.

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Sorry to our american friends, but I'd call China. More likely to take a chance on something with an 80% chance of success in order to have the prestige of being first. The US and Europe will be too mired in creating an absolute 100% perfectly safe everything to actually launch.

Which seems silly, cos I reckon you could take any group of peeps from the astronaut programme, tell them they can go to Mars next year, but will probably die of cancer within a decade, and I bet they'd all volunteer anyway :)

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I hope for a joint effort between the ESA and NASA, possibly with some stuff being done by SpaceX. I think it's more likely it'll be NASA *officially* but with some launches subcontracted out to private organizations, assuming they need multiple launches. I also have no clue what I'm talking about, but that's just what I think without any hard evidence :P

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Sorry to our american friends, but I'd call China. More likely to take a chance on something with an 80% chance of success in order to have the prestige of being first. The US and Europe will be too mired in creating an absolute 100% perfectly safe everything to actually launch.

Which seems silly, cos I reckon you could take any group of peeps from the astronaut programme, tell them they can go to Mars next year, but will probably die of cancer within a decade, and I bet they'd all volunteer anyway :)

LOL China You do know China Failed to hit Mar with a satellite.

EDIT- And India has a far better chance then China for at less India can hit Mar with a satellite.

Edited by Mecripp2
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