Please have your friend explain how the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Wake Shield Facility, the Magellan Venus Radar Mapper, the Galileo Jupiter Orbiter, and the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (to name just a few scientific payloads) are “military” missions.
Stranger
We’re in agreement – it would take lots of very risky research and development to get anywhere near a human mission to Mars. There are all sorts of interesting design studies on how to do such a mission, but no one has any practical experience sending humans through deep space for that length of time. And that practical experience has to be earned, with lots of R&D and test missions, all with a high chance of failure.
If I may attempt to infer what Duckster is passing on from his friend, it’s not that every shuttle mission is primarily military. I do know that the Shuttle (used to) carry all sorts of odds and ends of instruments and components besides its primary payload. These might be for research experiments, or prototypes for a satellite in development. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some bit of military hardware on each shuttle mission.
Bull’s-eye! I’m sure glad America has voters like you. Privatization is always best; among myriad of proofs I’ll just offer one of the benefits of privatizing prisons.
The reason to go to Mars and beyond is not trying to find a trade route, it’s to escape Apophis (the asteroid, not the guy from Stargate, through he apparently inspired the name for the asteroid).
By distributing humans on more than one tiny place (cosmically speaking), we heighten our chances of survival.
The first step in that direction many propose though is not the rocket, but the space elevator (which is cheaper long-term, once we solve the material problem) and probably Low Earth Orbit habitats, like the space station. Because building and starting a rocket in Orbit is much cheaper than starting from the gravity well of Earth, and living in a space station already is a good preparation for the +2 years it will take to reach Mars.
Stranger already explained well that most of NASA is already private and in competition; I just wanted to add the anecdote that in the early days of the Moon mission, a reporter asked one of the astronauts how he felt like before lift off. The astronaut answered (paraphrased) “I know that I sit in a rocket made from 5 000 parts, and each was chosen from the lowest bidder.” 
I vaguely remember something about the moon suppossedly has some shit on it called H3. A substance that could be a highly effiecient fuel source. I wonder if Big Corp could make a profit off of that if they tried?
NASA has been listed on Craig’s List for months now. So far no offers for cash. One offer to trade for the USPS.
I thought the whole purpose of space exploration was blind jingoism. Unless you’re developing space weapons or running a really high end space tourism industry, I fail to see the private appeal.
We don’t know what we’d find, which is what research is all about. However, research projects get evaluated also, based on potential return, cost, and risk. Using these, a Mars trip makes no sense at all right now - but that is different from saying it would be useful if it were free. There is water there, who knows what else there is?
I’m dead set against it. It’s been well established for at least several decades that a private corporation performing its own space exploration is going to be evil and inevitably unleash unspeakable horrors upon us all. Didn’t you see Alien?
It’s not like anyone’s stopping them.
So what does that tell you?
Hear, hear!
And it’s not only conservatives and libertarians, some “liberals” are almost as bad. (As an aside, here in Europe, privatization is also often called “liberalization”; a “liberal” in Luxembourg or Germany is a free-market enthusiast!)
What a nutty, anarcho-capitalist idea. The space program is one of the necessary functions of government along with the military, police, and administration of justice. Only the full resources of an entire country can fund the tremendous research and work needed to land men on Mars for example and the last thing we need is humilatiion by the Chinese in returning to the Moon or landing on Mars.
Thank for the clarification. Keep in mind that NASA, like other federal agencies, would have a public agenda, as well as a hidden agenda. Just because a particular mission is announced covering such and such public and scientific activities does not mean that’s all that particular mission is doing.
When I was part of the Columbia Shuttle Recovery we all received extensive training before going out in the field. Most of it was basic searching techniques and how to identify potential shuttle pieces. Not everyone received additional training in looking for specific things. At least one person with the extra training was attached to every search group. So while all the searchers where out looking for shuttle parts, there was always someone in a group to verify, “Yup a shuttle part,” vs. “Hmm, looks like a shuttle part. You can leave now, while I tag and bag this anyway.”
Well, this is evidence indeed of the great conspiracy to cover up the fact that Columbia was[LIST=A]
[li]taken down by an alien death ray, [/li][li]carrying a top secret Zionist space weapon payload, or [/li][li]actually a 1:17 scale papier-mâché model.[/li][/LIST] Not, perhaps, that NASA didn’t want forensic evidence contaminated or coveted by private collectors.
Stranger
You ignore that fans of privatization aren’t really interesting in saving taxpayer dollars, but in redirecting the dollars. You can bet the taxpayers will be asked to fund a new program (perhaps not called “blind jingoism”) to ensure the space privateers are richly rewarded.