My god, I laughed so hard I think I peed a little.
-Joe, needs a towel
Ah…see, I don’t follow posters around, keeping tallies of everything they do, so that I can be a prick to them.
But yes, you’re right. Someone who, as you say, “take[s] ubrage at namecalling…refer[s] to ‘president shrub’ and ‘troglodyte’” is hypocrisy.*
[sub]a word which I’ve known since I was 5 years old, thank you very much…or is your debating technique such where if someone disagrees with you, then they must be uneducated, and with a vocabulary of 100 words? I’ve got a larger vocabulary than the majority of English-speakers. But I only need a vocabulary of 15 words to say that just because you were right on this point, it doesn’t mean you’re not a putz.[/sub]
Since I like wolves, you are off my list! 
For now. Having just written a total of $76,000 and change in checks over the past few days, I am rather grumpy and persnickity…
Don’t forget, the Americans have also lost a Mars orbiter, mainly because some folks at Lockheed Martin forgot to use the metric system.
Sorry, guys, but you Pubbies have to blame physics, not the Bush-haters, for the extreme difficulty (if not impossibility) of a manned Mars mission. (And I have no doubt that Brutus believes science to be a Democrat conspiracy anyway).
I wouldn’t use Bill Bryson as an authority because that book is chockful of errors, so let’s consult some other sources, shall we?
First we have to consider propulsion–can we send men to Mars in the first place?
According to NASA, conventional chemical rockets used for the space shuttle will carry the payload into low earth orbit.Once in orbit, the payload will engage in what is euphemistically called Nuclear Thermal Propulsion, which space enthusiasts know as Project Orion. Developed in the 1960s, Orion calls for a series of nuclear bombs to be detonated behind a metal plate. This is workable on the drawing board, but it is fraught with difficulty in practice, not to mention that anti-nuclear Luddites will do their best to enlist Congress against the use of nukes in space.
So then we come across the problem of radiation shielding. Unfotunately, the NASA Web site pretty much ignores the question except to say that it is risky. This **New York Times article explains exactly how risky. Astronauts on a Mars mission would get hammered from all direction by particles moving at nearly the speed of light. The shielding need to protect the astronauts from radiation and emergency shelter from solar flares would be cost-prohibitive. And that’s not even getting into food, water, the decalcification of bones in zero-g environments, and a myriad of other difficulties that need to be sorted out before a mission could be sent.
Consider the dangers of the space shuttle and the overrun expendu=itures of the International Space Station, which is a stroll to the corner shops compared with sending people out to Mars, far beyond the hope of aid or rescue if anything could go wrong. Multiply the dangers and the costs several-hundred fold, and ask if taxpayers will be willing to foot the bill.
That is my point, sort of. There was no valid reason to bring up GW for the lack of manned missions to Mars.
TartPops - looking back at the Apollo program, do you believe it was wise to take on, and ultimately accomplsih, the goal of sending humans to Luna?
Well sure there is. Bush decided to spend the nation’s disposable income conquering Iraq. It’ll be rough conquering Mars without that big pile of green.
It’s not a great argument, but it’s not totally irrelevant either.
The original Mars proposal presented to President Bush Sr. relied on massive space building facilities, ships and refueling stations. The newer proposals come in around 20-50 Billion, and rely on living of the Martian environment to reduce costs. Not a small amount but any stretch but hardly the back breaking financial burden that the OP presents.
The Ares , based on the Shuttle C concept, could be built to throw 40 tons to Mars. The flight time to Mars could be considerably reduced through the use of NTRs though a slower flight time using chemical rockets could likely be done. The NTR does not depend on detonations as the Orion Project does. Instead it relies on the propellant being passed over/through the reactor core, heating it and so surpassing the temperatures (hence energies) achievable through chemical reactions. The questions of radiation is a good one though once on Mars there is an atmosphere, lander and the full mass of a planet to provide shielding to the more energetic particles.
Off world exploration/exploitation forces us to learn how to deal with harsh environments; it forces us to adapt and to change. Contained environments, closed loop cycles, fusion power and new political systems are all potential benefits from a Mars program.
Oh and since I’m a shameless shill for Mars… 
We could achieve much the same benefits by trying to figure out how to live in our own oceans. We haven’t even mastered that, yet! It’s a much less hostile environment than Mars - there’s water (has to be desalinated), oxygen (has to be extracted from the water), and food (got a speargun?). And, if things started going horribly wrong, rescue isn’t too far away. Yet, there are no colonies there.
Having said all that (and what I’ve said in other posts on the subject), I’ve got to admit that I think it would be really neat to go to Mars. If they offered to take me, I’d go in a heartbeat. In fact, even though I think the shuttle missions have little or no purpose, and are expensive and dangerous, to boot, I’d accept a ride on one of those, too!
There is something irresistible about space travel, ain’t there?
The good thing is that it’s not an either/or proposition.
I think that RST may have solved the problem of radiation shielding and the weight thereof.
As far as the cost of a manned journey to Mars being prohibitive- so what? How much did it cost for Columbus to reach the Americas? How much did it cost for Magellan to take his little trip? The fact is that there is a higher cost for the trailblazers but over time the costs drop as the technology improves. It happened to ocean going shipping and it happened to air travel. Why should spaceflight be any different?
They could save a few $ following the example of the Spirit Rover. Instead of an Eagle-type moon landing vehicle, they could try something like:
Dropping him down
or
Sending Him
They could even call it the Carl Rove-r.
This will probably brand me a total geek, and draw flames, but it’s what I feel is the truth behind the need for manned spacefight- the “eggs in one basket” approach.
Astronomy shows us that history (in a cosmic sense) is full of cataclysms. Supernovae, black holes, galactic collisions and more have been sighted and the effects analyzed. Any one of these could destroy the Earth, and our whole race with it. On a local level, there are asteroids, comets, and variance in solar radiation- all which could wipe out life. We could even do it to ourselves, with nukes, or our planet could burp out enough volcanism to wipe us out. In any event, it’s possible that all life on Earth could be wiped out- and by cosmic time scales, it’s almost a certainty that one of these disasters will happen.
The only solution is to begin seeding other planets with Terrestrial life. It will take generations at our current level of technology, so there is no short-term benefit. But we need to begin working in that direction, if only to ensure the continuing existence of Man.
Mars just happens to be the best first target. Europa and the other icy moons in the outer system will be next- then generation ships (see Heinlein) can move out to the new solar systems we are discovering even now.
First I’ve heard of this. It’s been on a number of Best of 2003 lists. You have some evidence to back that claim up, right?
JRDelirious, If it does happen, it isn’t going to be in my lifetime, and probably not in my kids lifetime either. Grey says that current estimates put costs at $20 - 50 billion.
I have a seriously hard time believeing that in the space of a mere 12+ years, we have made such great strides scientifically as to cut costs from $450 billion all the way down to $50 billion. There is just no way that is possible. Uh-uh. hell, the US can’t even get it’s vaunted Star Wars Missle defense system to successfully pass a test unless they doctor the tests itself while raising costs astronomically, so I have very little hope for them pulling off a manned mission to Mars on a shoestring.
And it would be really stupid to even think of doing so.
After the Challenger and Columbia incidents, I’m fairly sure NASA would want to do whatever it took to make sure the mission had the highest possible chance of success and that would mean giving them a virtually unlimited budget.
Bricker, well for all of the talk about how the whole Moon program was going to give us so many marvelous new tools/toys/gadgets etc, from that point it was a failure. Things like Velcro which have been touted as being invented for the Apollo program, actually came about in a completely unrelated way. The scientific experiments didn’t really give us all that much new information.
They gave a tremendous sense of pride to the country, which is great.
I’m not really sure that I can answer that one right now. I’ll have to think about it for a bit, if that’s okay.
The 90 day study launched by NASA for Bush Sr’s Space Exploration Initiative included a large orbital and lunar base infrastructure to provide a base for launching to Mars. Battlestar Galactica type stuff.
The Mars Direct approach goes for a live off the land/straight to Mars to some serious on planet time approach. Fire off a seed ship to manufacture water, oxygen and fuel to return to earth straight from the Martian atmosphere. Its basically 19th century chemistry with a 20th century nuclear reactor to provide the energy.
It may well be on many Best of 2003 lists, but I read it and found several factual errors, so I wouldn’t cite him as if he were an established authority on space flight. He’s a travel writer, not an aerospace engineer. "A Short History. . . " is an entertaining book and I’m sure it’s informative to people who have never read a book on science before, but it’s meant to be a light survey written by a non-scientist for a general audience, so it’s hardly authoritative.
Grey, thank you for the correction.
The Beagle has landed!
Or not as the case may be…
WTF? Why do the Americans get all the cool names and we choose all the shit ones? ‘The Beagle’, it really could not be less awe inspiring. Back to the OP, I agree that it is not feasable at the moment but i’m hoping that maybe we will see that the future of space exploration lies with world wide co-operation. I was promised lunar bases and off world civilisations as a kid and I damn well want them!
IMHO, the reprise of the name of Darwin’s ship is actually much more appealing than a probe styled after a seventy’s drug-rock band.