I read recently about NASA proposing Mars and asteroid belt manned missions within the next twenty years. This got me to wondering about whether we can or should undertake such ventures.
I am well aware of the offshoot technology effect, and that it has been the primary payoff for mankind other than the simple increase in human knowledge the space programs have provided, which is certainly non-trivial. Yet, the question remains in my mind: how many human beings have or will benefit from our having learned the rudiments of space travel? Also, if we want to practice terraforming, isn’t the Moon right there next door? If we want to build a self-sufficient space community, what about space stations in Earth orbit (most asteroids wouldn’t offer all that many resources)?
I don’t want to sound like a hippie activist, but it occurs to me that the quadrillions of dollars/euros/whatever we would spend to, say, colonize Mars might be better spent on something prosaic like, say, providing safe drinking water supplies for the what, 3 billion people who don’t have them. There’s also the consideration of energy use: one writer (sorry, can’t find the source, but I think it was Ben Bova) once estimated that it would take 25% of the total energy output of the world, for fifty years, to place a viable colony on Mars.
This may be an old debate, but I think it’s newly germane in light of the recent NASA announcements and Obama’s recently stated goal. Should we expend the time and effort? There will be benefits, including those we can’t even foresee, but will they be worth the costs?
I think that’s just political posturing. At the current rate of funding, and the priority placed on space travel, I don’t think even a manned moon mission is feasible in 20 years.
A manned asteroid belt mission seems unlikely. It’s not really a belt like people imagine. It’s just a collection of small asteroids that are very very very far apart. Also a handful of very large ones. Seems easier to remotely bring an asteroid into lunar orbit and then study it there. I don’t think there’s much point in that either, but it makes more sense than sending a man past the orbit of Mars.
I would like to see a manned Mars mission for the cool factor, but that’s just me being selfish. Realistically probes are a far better and cheaper way to go.
I think every recent president and administration has promised, vaguely, to do some great manned mission…and usually it’s on a 20 year time frame. They do this because they know they won’t be around long enough to see it done, and they pretty much know the next guy in will cancel whatever they had planned and set some new goal that we won’t accomplish.
My guess is it will be the Chinese to go to Mars or possibly an asteroid. They have real, long term goals, and the political will to do them, and we don’t, unfortunately. We COULD go to Mars, and/or visit an asteroid with a manned mission, but we won’t. Nor will we go back to the moon or even send an ambitious unmanned mission to Europa. In the next 20 years we will probably send a few more unmanned probes to Mars to look at another few kilometers of the planet and hope to get lucky in answering some of the myriad questions about whether there is or was life there. C’est la vie.
NASA has the wrong culture to do manned exploration: in every exploration area ever done people die. NASA’s philosophy is that whenever someone dies you have to stop for a couple years to review and go through everything to make sure it is perfect.
My speculation is that the likeliest development of space will be for resources. We’ll see space getting developed via the equivalent of mining camps. When there’s enough people out there gathering resources, we’ll need other people to provide support to the people in the mining industry. And if this gets big enough it’ll bootstrap up to real self-perpetuating communities.
As a child, this was a dream that seemed possible, and even inevitable. As I grow older and see the possibilities of robotic missions, I realize that a manned mission is fruitless. There would be nothing to be gained except perhaps bragging rights.
Now, that in itself may be enough to engage the Chinese, however, landing on Mars is one thing; leaving Mars is another.
Mars’ gravity is only 38% of Earth’s. but that still means some powerful blast off would be required to send any human explorers safely home. I can’t see any nation taking the risk of stranding humans on Mars. And that doesn’t even include the logistics behind providing sufficient food and water supplies to any Mars astronauts. That’s a huge payload to be sending into space for very little payback.
No. We won’t be going to Mars anytime soon, and possibly not ever. There’s no payback.
Where has it been written that the Chinese have any intention to go to Mars?
My bet is on a Chinese moon mission for political and economic reasons.
I see them as the ultimate pragmatists who prefer that we take the gambles
so that they don’t have to risk failure.
As the technology gets better, yes, depending on how you define “worth the cost”. Much of the problem is that America’s become so one dimensional, so focused on profit and nothing else that profit is the only kind of “worth the cost” that Americans can see, and that isn’t going to be the reward of space colonization for a long time. Some other nation is likely to do it first, out of motives like national/cultural pride, worries over species survival in case something happens to Earth, or simply the conviction that space is the future. America is all about making a profit, now, and space colonization is a long term project that for a long time will be a cost, not a profit. Other concerns and interests barely register on us as a nation.
It could become a prestige issue. The Soviets took the lead in the space race with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. America took the lead with the lunar landing. If China sent a man to the moon, it would only be repeating something that’s already been done. But a Chinese manned mission to Mars would be a new accomplishment.
The problem with these prestige missions is they usually don’t lead to anything beyond setting a new record.
Colonising anywhere off-world? It’s *cool *- let’s do it simply because we can.
It will be inspirational, albeit in a slightly intangible way, to billions of people. Achieving something of this scale and magnitude would be like humanity and human progress giving itself a collective global pat-on-the-back.
Who knows what hidden scientific knowledge and developments might come about in the process of said colonisation? Not just jet propulsion and Thermos flasks, but all sorts of other physics/chemistry bits and bobs (I reside in the realm of the social sciences, ahem…)
We should establish an off-world colony ASAP, however small, so that in the event of a catastrophic extinction event here on Earth way we can give our species a ‘second chance’.
The elephant in the room, though, is cost. As others have already pointed out, this seems like something that, right now quite frankly, we cannot afford - or, at least, should not be throwing public funds at. At the risk of sounding libertarian, I like the idea of leaving this up to the private sector. When it is financially viable - purely from a commercial profit perspective - to colonise the moon/Mars/Pluto or wherever then lets do it. Whether or not that will ever be the case, and how it might be the case, are different questions. What might the private sector be interested in?
Mining? I guess - although that would have to be some pretty valuable space-stuff out there to justify going out there, getting it, and bringing it back to earth.
Tourism? I could imagine space getting pretty dull after the second or third day. Seriously, what would you do on the moon after walking around and looking at rocks for 20 mins?
Agriculture? Industry? Uh… Maybe zero-G might make some industrial processes more efficient, but um…
Nothing, since any profits will be very long term. Meanwhile, some other nation without a “private sector good, government bad, profit NOW!” fetish will do the actual infrastructure-building & colonizing and if there’s any eventual profit to be made they’ll be making most of it.
I’m hopeful that if some other entity, whether private or government, makes a serious attempt at a manned Mars mission, that national pride will kick-in and the US will fast track our own mission.
Not because I particularly care how we get to Mars, I just want us to do it, and if things like national pride help, then I’m ok with it.
I’d like to say I enjoy tweaking your nose… but I don’t, as you seem to tweak it yourself just fine. But the bleeding edge in aerospace has nothing to do with the simple, brute-force rocketry used by NASA and China. Private companies are now the leading source of space investment, and aggressively interested in expanding access.
Part of NASA’s mission statement is to protect humans from being destroyed by space dangers such as asteroid impacts (and aliens, btw).
Having a backup planet is the best way to go about this, so for that reason alone NASA gets involved, even without other motivations.
Whether we could afford it, I don’t know. An extraplanetary colony would pay for itself in spinoff technologies, I believe, but that payback could take a very long time.
How much do we spend on wasteful domestic spying programs? How much do we spend in killing goat farmers half a world way?
I say we stop doing that, and we use that money to improve lives round the world. And then we use the other untold billions of dollars left over to fund a more robust space program.
No, the OP was talking about manned missions, which aren’t necessary or justifiable for scientific exploration. For the cost of sending one manned spacecraft to Mars, we can probably send a dozen rovers there, each equipped with the same scientific instruments a human crew would use. And perhaps a few unmanned sample-return spacecraft.
Also true of on-world colonies initially, yes?
The colonies that became the US were an expensive luxury at first. IIRC.
No telling what we profit might be found on other worlds, maybe there’s spice.
Lunar mining could give us Helium-3, although I don’t count the Moon as a planet.