Should NASA go to Mars or back to the Moon?

By the way, it's a straw man fallacy, too. That's also typical of you. I didn't say we shouldn't go to Mars because of the risks. What i am saying is that it will be very difficult and expensive precisely because we know the risks involved, and the means to obviate the risks--and obviating those risks will be difficult and expensive. Get a clue someday.

Risk assessment nde management is a mature health engineering discipline today. To compare it to wjat we knew in 1492 when the re wasnt even a word for it is kinda funny.

We shouldnt have stepped out of our caves until they invented the bicycle.

We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is difficult" Someone said that besides me."

You're as bad as Bill. I said nothing remotely like that. I haven't said we shouldn't go to Mars. I'm just pointing out for all the happy horseshit science fiction fans that it will be difficult and expensive.

Not only that, there's no real point in doing so. If we're going to be doing anything, it should be establishing a permanent space facility in a Lagrange point, or going to the asteroid belt and grabbing as much mass as possible.

Cycloptichorn

back in your cage doogie I was agreeing with you ANd if you EVER confuse me with trhat typo ridden, inexact English user to my face...... oh wait, never mind

That would be a sensible thing to do. So, you can't really believe it will be done, can you? Going to Mars would be sexy.

At least I get my verb tenses and numbers right.

Now you're comparing yourself to Bill.

Yah - but at the end of the day, videos of a dude in a spacesuit on the surface of mars look pretty much like videos of the moon, but with a red tint.

A guy standing on an asteroid, which is rotating, and the sun comes up behind his helmet in a blaze of celestial glory; as he's fitting ion engines to the thing, to bring it back to orbit and make more spaceships out of it? Now that's sexy.

Cycloptichorn

I agree--but you'd have to educate the mopes in government first, so they could understand what the hell you're talking about. In the end, it will happen when it's commercially feasible. When multinationals can make a buck off it, it will get done so fast it'll make your head spin.

I love you to farmerman LOL................

Well life or at least traced of past life is still far more likely to be found on Mars then asteroids.

Small robots can not match on scene humans in search for such life or records of such life having existed in the past.

It is sexy and also a fantasy with any likely future technology.

Now does anyone other then myself would like to break out the calculator and a book on Celestial Mechanics and figure out the energy budget needed to change the orbit of a few millions tons asteroid from a beyond Mars orbit to a near earth orbit?

Would anyone without doing the numbers care to bet that any likely size ion engines would be working for a few thousands years at the task?

With decades of warning changing the path of a small earth impact asteroid by a fraction of a degree to miss the small target of the earth would be one hell of a task less alone moving asteroids as if they was pool balls around the solar system.

I advocate building a base on the Moon before going to Mars, because it's a small fraction of the distance, and would give us a chance to practice many of the skills involved. I don't think a baby should run a marathon race before he learns to walk around the house.

Maybe they should concentrate on the VASIMR engine or something like it, because it would greatly reduce the transit time to Mars. Chemical propellant rockets are very limited for deep space exploration due the their poor specific impulse.

Both!

America should get its act together, beef up education, make science attractive to students, and voice a challenge (like JFK).

Moon first, because it's closer. Establish a permanent base! What we learn there would help in the next step: several missions to Mars to establish a permanent base there, too.

Compare the costs of war and space, you'll see that war far outstrips space expense. The recent wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq have a total cost of $3.7 trillion. That's for 10 years of war. Fifty years of NASA cost roughly $807 billion (2007 dollars), according to Wikipedia. The 10 years of war cost 4.5 times that of nearly all of NASA's history! Looking at only the 10-year period, the war out-spent NASA by a factor of 22x. Does anyone smell "oil" behind this? Certainly not in Afghanistan, but with even greater certainty, we won't find oil on Mars.