NRC Report: NASA Can't Afford Mars Mission

[xcorps]

There's several posters in this thread that under the mistaken impression that JFK was the driver of the space race in the 1960's. He was not. He (speaking strictly in terms of the space race) was LBJs personal sock puppet. JFK's only personal interest in the Moon was how in looked in Marilyn's eyes and how it would affect him politically. His initial enthusiasm was generated by LBJ when LBJ proved it would help him get out of the shadow of the Bay of Pigs. LBJ was the catalyst, not JFK. LBJ handed JFK some paperwork and Kennedy signed it. LBJ said take a picture, and Kennedy took it. LBJ said make James Webb the head of NASA, and that's what happened. LBJ said tour Canaveral, and it was toured.

LBJ was the driver of America's trip to the Moon, not Kennedy.

[ThinkOutsideTheHangar]

Well duh, NASA can barely afford anything. AND THEY SCRAPPED NUCLEAR ENGINES! EVERYONE WHO PLAYS KSP KNOW YOU NEED NUCLEAR ENGINES!

[ScallopPotato]

Well duh, NASA can barely afford anything. AND THEY SCRAPPED NUCLEAR ENGINES! EVERYONE WHO PLAYS KSP KNOW YOU NEED NUCLEAR ENGINES!

They didn't scrap the designs, they choose instead to use solar electric engines. Why develop a whole new high ISP engine (We had a thread about this earlier. Even with the results from NERVA, a modern NTR would be a new design that ultizes new technologies) when ion engines have already proven themselves in flight?

[SargeRho]

Because Ion Engines are pretty meh for human missions.

[cantab]

Depends on the mission. I believe they won't be much good for the moon, but as I said earlier, I can see them being useful for a Mars (or Venus) mission, where the travel times are longer anyway so the low thrust isn't really going to slow the trip down.

[Dodgey]

They might even decrease the travel time seeing as the delta v would be much larger.

[SUJETO]

Badly the NASA is mediatic/politic dependent without serious funding... And that is a politic topic prohibited here

[Klingon Admiral]

To be completely honest, the United States of America can't afford anything right now. Doesn't stop them from spending billions of dollars, though.

[ExplodingRocketShips]

Gah! We can't do moar space and boostars! NOO

[FishInferno]

IMO te best way to get to Mars is to have international cooperation. Another space race with China will not get us anywhere. We need to let china into the ISS group and work with Russia, Europe, and china (as well as SpaceX and other private companies) to get to mars together. Different groups have differen strengths and weaknesses. Russia has more experience with long-duration space flight. SpaceX has cheap rockets. Etc. As the Plaque at Tranquility base says:

Here, men from the PLANET EARTH(not the USA) first set foot on the Moon, July 1969 AD. We came in PEACE for ALL MANKIND(not Americans)

IMHO, space affairs should be seperate from politics.

[SpaceXray]

For some reason many people I talked with aren't as passionate about space as I am. I talked with kids, teenagers of about my age, youth and some older people and here is what I concluded:

Kids have a very dillusioned view if space due to dumbed down cartoons and teachers who think the moon doesn't rotate(like my mother)

Teenagers don't see any profit and only get informed about space through popular media like YT, movies and the news.

90% of females have no knowledge of space whatsoever, independent of age

Older males have interest in space history, but are a little less informed about current space activity.

I think what advanced space exploration was competition. The main reason we ever sent a man to the Moon was because the USA wanted to at least conquer the Moon. But now, when most space agencies collaborate, the USA congress and other countries' governments see no need to give their agencies a bigger budget to send people to Mars or other planets because there is nothing to fight for anymore. No one is competing, there are no winners and no losers, but in the end humanity would be e winner anyway.

even though the ISS is a good example of international collaboration, at this state we will never get to mars, unless competition rises again(thanks Crimea), or private companies such as SpaceX independently raise funds, OR Deep Space Industries manages to create an asteroid retrievela program and sell resources from them.

Edited June 23, 2014 by SpaceXray

[the_bT]

To be completely honest, the United States of America can't afford anything right now. Doesn't stop them from spending billions of dollars, though.

This is nonsense. There is truth to the idea but the statement is way to simplistic. The fact that the USA (or any country) is spending lent money doesn't imply that they can't afford to spend that money. Almost any modern business operates on money lend to it by investors, does that mean they cannot afford to operate?

The problem is not that governments everywhere spend billions of dollars. The problem is they do not have to spend it wisely (and subsequently often don't).

Space programs are probably among the wiser investments. In my opinion, paying someone to find out stuff about space and thus causing need for rockets and modern materials/robotics/computers is one of the better ways to create work.

I would expect Research funding to increase in the future. After all, war has been proven to be inefficient to stimulate the economy in this age, and what else can you do? Repair crumbling bridges? Never going to happen.

[rhoark]

The report is very short-sighted in naming asteroid redirect technologies as dead-end. There's real potential for an ISRU economy among Luna, Ceres, Phobos, Deimos, and assorted asteroids. Mars itself is just a prestige objective.

[cantab]

IMO te best way to get to Mars is to have international cooperation. Another space race with China will not get us anywhere.

I'm not so sure. Competition is a great driver of innovation: look at the first space race, look at developments during wartime, look at tech-oriented industries today. International cooperation conversely is liable to create bureaucracy and slow things down, and increase costs when decisions are taken to give companies work rather than to make a cost-effective mission.

And ultimately I feel a manned Mars landing is too prestigious for any superpower or aspiring superpower to be willing to share.

[The Jedi Master]

There ya go, that's what I've been saying in every "AWESOME NEW NASA MISSION GUYZ" thread since forever. It's just how the world works, people.