I don’t want this to get too political; there are other threads for debating the merits of the National Missile Defense proposal. It seems to me that one of the underlying reasons that the US is moving toward missile defense is that there is a desire for a “national challenge” for our scientist and engineers. We have relative prosperity (i.e., a budget surplus) and security (i.e., no Soviet threat). Thus the time seems right for a new project.
People often work more efficiently when working toward a goal that they enthusiastically support. This is all fine and dandy; I have no problem with getting behind a big national project, but the problem is there are many endeavors that I consider much more worth while than NMD. I’m not sure about these numbers but I believe people are talking about something like 60 billion dollars for the first phase of NMD over the next 10-20 years. (My numbers came from what might be an unreliable source. If someone wants to correct these figures they are welcome to, but debating the exact cost of NDM should not be the focus of this thread.) So part one of my question is with this kind of funding, what big scientific project would you rather have the US take on? Perhaps development of a clean power source?
Second part: How about a modest Mars colony? I’ve seen plans for deploying a retrievable 4-man Martian outpost at around 30 billion dollars that could be expected to be ready in about the same time frame as NMD. (I’ll try to hunt down the cite after getting this post up.) Who’s with me? Would you rather see a Mars mission or NMD?