# We are not going to Mars **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 9, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438 "2009-09-09T16:54:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/61 "2009-09-11T03:01:12Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > What would be your rough estimate of the time and cost to build just one (on Mars)? Apparently more than 100 billion a year if the report in the OP is accurate. Which is why it would be better to start closer to home and work up to Mars and farther. Then again, I expect that there are a lot of artificial assumptions like “no nuclear propulsion” and “near zero risk”. If we insist on using inferior technology and insist that pioneering be extremely safe naturally that’ll push the price up. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/62 "2009-09-11T03:12:26Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Apparently more than 100 billion a year if the report in the OP is accurate. Which is why it would be better to start closer to home and work up to Mars and farther. It’s amazing how we get sticker shock over some things, but not others. Total cost of the Iraq war is approaching somewhere in the vicinity of $1 trillion. We could have TEN such outposts, or 1-3 larger ones for that money. We spent over $800 billion bailing out the banks. Same deal. We could have solved the whole Social Security crisis for all time. Or provided Universal Health Coverage for years to come. And/or put a good dent in both of those things AND put people on Mars for the combined cost of both those things, which very few people would have voted to spend the money on over these options if they’d had the choice. I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but at a certain point, moaning and wailing that we can’t go to Mars because it will cost $100 billion when we’re spending 8-10 times that on other (unpopular) things in a much shorter period of time gets to be seriously myopic and even disingenuous. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/63 "2009-09-11T03:26:36Z")
Consider for a moment the vast number of us in North America, New Zealand or Australia whose ancestors came over on a one way trip. At least from the O’Neill Space Colonies, the Moon or Mars, the ones who emigrate will be able to communicate back. How many Canadian, Australian or New Zealand emigrants were ever heard from again in the Old Country? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/64 "2009-09-11T03:35:56Z")
Maybe I should clarify… my point isn’t really about money. My point is that people are lamenting the delay of a dream. Folk, we got plenty to dream about. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/65 "2009-09-11T03:43:50Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Maybe I should clarify… my point isn’t really about money. My point is that people are lamenting the delay of a dream. Folk, we got plenty to dream about. Not really anymore; not in America. America more and more has become all about making more money, right now; and nothing but making money. No big dreams, not even many little dreams; just making money and no concern for anything but the immediate future. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/66 "2009-09-11T03:59:09Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Apparently more than 100 billion a year if the report in the OP is accurate. And for how many years? How many Mars missions would you believe necessary to establish a fully self-sustaining colony? Or if you prefer, what would be these numbers for a self-sustaining Moon colony? I’m genuinely interested in thoughtful estimates. My general sense is that “self-sustaining” is enormously challenging. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/67 "2009-09-11T04:12:13Z")
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/68 "2009-09-11T04:20:56Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > It’s amazing how we get sticker shock over some things, but not others. > Total cost of the Iraq war is approaching somewhere in the vicinity of $1 trillion. I believe there are more than a few people who find that shocking. > [@](#): > > We could have TEN such outposts, or 1-3 larger ones for that money. I don’t think any realistic estimate of a single trip to Mars comes in for much less than $100 billion in today’s dollars. Anything worthy of being called an outpost would be a _lot_ more. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/69 "2009-09-11T04:33:14Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > And for how many years? How many Mars missions would you believe necessary to establish a fully self-sustaining colony? > > Or if you prefer, what would be these numbers for a self-sustaining Moon colony? No way to estimate accurately I think. It’s not something we’d do right off; the people who mention the primitivism of our present technology have a point. Which means research, which means we can’t predict when or what technology we’ll have to do the job with. Basically, we’d only know the numbers after we were finished; that’s pretty much the nature of doing things that have never been done. I regard off world colonization as a long term goal; not something that can realistically be accomplished tomorrow, or in ten years or probably twenty. I just regard it as something we should strive for; something we should aim for as a long term goal instead of just thinking of sending out one more probe. I regard it as something we should start laying out groundwork for; researching the necessary technology and such; instead of, say, letting the space program waste away into something only capable of unmanned flights. And while I brought up Mars since it’s the thread subject and because people were saying there’s no point in going offworld at all, starting with something closer and easier for a permanent settlement would be better. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/70 "2009-09-11T05:11:03Z")
Where are you guys getting this $100 billion per year number? The panel said that the moon/mars program would work if the budget were allowed to increase gradually to about $3 billion more per year than it is now. That would take NASA’s entire budget to just over $21 billion per year. For some perspective, the amount we’re talking about is less than the annual _interest_ on the auto bailout. The stimulus package would have paid NASA’s entire budget for a century. _Interest_ on the stimulus package is a new perpetual government cost equal to about two entire NASA budgets. The Department of Education gets a 12.8% increase next year - about $5 billion. The Department of Housing and Urban Development gets an 18% increase - about 7.5 billion dollars. The Department of Commerce is getting a whopping 48% increase in FY2010. Again, about double the money needed to go to Mars. The EPA is getting a 35% increase - more than the $3 billion needed to go to Mars. A new Obama program, the National Infrastructure Bank, is getting an initial budget of $5 billion per year. This isn’t about money. Considering the kinds of money Obama is throwing around to every pet liberal project under the sun, the money to go to Mars could have been found under the seat cushions. This is simply about support for space. This administration has other priorities, and doesn’t give a damn. Obama will probably give a sad speech where he says it’s regrettable, but there must be a new accountability in government and fiscal responsibility matters. Then he’ll turn around and slide an equivalent amount of money to some goofball ‘jobs’ program. Here’s a last happy number for you: Interest on the national debt will cost $164 billion dollars next year. Under Obama’s budgets, the national debt is going to double by 2020. That will result in over $300 billion dollars per year in interest costs. That’s enough money to fund three entire moon/mars programs _every year_. That kind of money could put human colonies on the Moon and Mars, send astronauts to explore the asteroids for minerals, flood the solar system with unmanned probes including probes to the oceans of Enceladus and Europa, and build a fleet of interferometry telescopes that would let us image features on planets around other star systems. It’s so much money that the only limit to what we could do in space would be the availabllity of enough scientists and engineers. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/71 "2009-09-11T05:15:52Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Not really anymore; not in America. America more and more has become all about making more money, right now; and nothing but making money. No big dreams, not even many little dreams; just making money and no concern for anything but the immediate future. You know what is an awesome dream? Thanks pretty wholly to Jimmy Carter and his hard work, we are on schedule to eradicate [Guinea Worm](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/international/africa/26worm.html) in 2010. This will be the second disease ever eradicated from the planet, after smallpox. It actually wasn’t that hard. Didn’t take a ton of exotic technology. Just took a man with a vision, the ability to coordinate people and nations, and some stick-to-it-ness. You know what a good dream would be? [We can eliminate malaria from the world](http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/conditions/04/25/fauci.malaria/index.html) just like we eliminated it from the United States. Malaria kills over one million people a year. In sub-Saharan Africa, we are talking about death tolls that rival AIDS. There are 350-500 _million_ clinical cases of malaria yearly. I know by experience- even one bout of malaria can put you out of work for weeks, destroy your finances and do permanent damage to your body. This disease is sapping the health and finances of nearly half a billion people every year. By sheer scale of damage done, this is almost certainly the world’s biggest health problem. It is curable. It is preventable. It is most likely irradicatable. And we still let it a million people die every year. Getting rid of this scourge would be a good, do-able, mid-future dream that we could work for right now if we had the will for it. If we could do it, we’d make the world a measurably better place for the rest of history. We’d save 800,000 mothers and fathers every year from having to watch their kids die. And we could almost certainly make this a reality. We got plenty of dreams. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/72 "2009-09-11T08:04:06Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Getting rid of this scourge would be a good, do-able, mid-future dream that we could work for right now if we had the will for it. But we don’t have the will, or the desire. Doing that might cost people a penny or two of extra tax money and has the terrible, awful risk of helping someone who isn’t a right wing white Christian. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/73 "2009-09-11T09:48:14Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > There would be lots of volunteers. Older military and aviation people would be qualified to do the job. You wouldn’t want anybody who is truly suicidal and unstable but someone with a decent sense of their own mortality and the willingness to go out on a high note would be good. Id go on a one way trip. Look, I _know_ that I am mortal and going to die, and I have no idea when I am going to die. I would rather die doing something beneficial in 1 year than some random date having a stroke and vegging out in a bed for 10 years. Not sure what I can provide, being a gimp and now sterile, and not a scientist but I can organize an office like nobodys business =) ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/74 "2009-09-11T10:17:37Z")
I’ve always thought manned missions to Mars or elsewhere a little silly. One way missions will get the whole ‘putting a fragile bag of cells somewhere inconvenient’ milestone out of the way and let the robots get on with the real work. Incidentally, if Bill Gates wanted to die on Mars, could he afford it? What would be the cheapest way to achieve escape velocity, with enough oxygen to last the trip, and some kind of module + parachute to allow you to tell the world you’re on Mars before snuffing it heroically? ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/75 "2009-09-11T12:37:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Doing that might cost people a penny or two of extra tax money and has the terrible, awful risk of helping someone who isn’t a right wing white Christian. Good point! The elimination of smallpox certainly didn’t help anyone but right wing white Christians. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/76 "2009-09-11T12:47:01Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Good point! The elimination of smallpox certainly didn’t help anyone but right wing white Christians. That was done in the past; you’d never accomplish something like that today. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/77 "2009-09-11T13:07:35Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Total cost of the Iraq war is approaching somewhere in the vicinity of $1 trillion. > > We could have TEN such outposts, or 1-3 larger ones for that money. Not if that’s $1 trillion _total_. It would give you ten outpost-years, but spread out over 8 years that’s only enough for one outpost. And I think it’s worth repeating that previous stupidity should not be used to justify future stupidity. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/78 "2009-09-11T14:00:23Z")
Grumman, where are you getting your numbers from? I keep hearing numbers for this project that are WAY bigger than what they really are. Again, the report says that moon/mars could be done if the government were willing to commit an additional $3 billion per year over the current commitment. The plan all along was to divert the Shuttle money to the program once Shuttle retires, then to divert ISS money to it as well when the U.S.'s ISS commitments are done. The total budget of the program was never going to exceed more than maybe 15 billion per year. And that wasn’t just for a trip to mars - that’s the cost of the entire program, which includes building new spaceships for space station servicing, satellite launch, etc. It’s the cost of the replacement for the Shuttle - one that has enough capability to take people out of low earth orbit. Even if moon/mars is killed, NASA still needs a replacement for the shuttle, or it will have no human spaceflight capability whatsoever. So really, we’re talking about an incremental cost of $3 billion per year to add missions to the Moon and Mars. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/79 "2009-09-11T14:21:10Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Just imagine how much easier this would all be if we had a working [Space Elevator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator). Amen. Forget the dang shuttles, orbital stations, Mars rovers and whatnot and get that thing built FFS ! It would save so much effort in the long run… ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2009, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438/80 "2009-09-11T14:23:47Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > The US blew 80 Billion on the automakers. A 15% increase in funding of a small federal department which will primarily go to domestic engineers, universities and industry hardly seems like a wallet busting move. This. Since when has this administration worried about the costs of something? I think that space travel is an important thing for humanity and we should continue it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-are-not-going-to-mars/509438.md?page=5)