Liar, I never said "staying ignorant". Science will solve all out social problems, was the post war cry to the masses. How'd that work out for ya? :rolleyes:

No fo0hzy, I'm not talking to you.

Submariners do extended missions.

How many tons of materials and systems surround each sailor to protect him from a not so harsh environment? Mars makes that underwater environment equivalent to a tropical paradise.

What is the price of each pound to Mars? Something like $hundreds of thoudands or $millions per pound. How many submariners survive in a mild environment with a few hundred pounds of equipment to protect him? And no equipment to do the science.

A manned trip to Mars is about 1 year. Without protection as provided by earth for ISS, those astronauts would die prematurely. No protection solution exists yet even in theory.

Best science means humans back on earth sending machines to do most work. Even ocean science is now done by machines - not by humans. It takes too many tons to keep one man alive even in very shallow water.

That's all great if people were strictly rational. They're not. There is something in the human spirit that loves a wilderness. The same kind of people who climb mount Everest because it's there will go to Mars - someday.

Right.

A two man/woman mission to Mars is simply not going to succeed, I don't care how many pairs are launched behind them. And fiscally it is not possible anyway, so Mars will remain a dreamed-about destination for many decades.

We need to get back to the Moon. That's where science should focus.

Actually we need to get back to doing the only thing that made America great - science and innovation. If that is missions to Mars, the moon, or ... does anyone know about the massive mission to Jupiter called Juno? Or the James Webb telescope? Or the so many mission to follow up on Solar Max. Or what the Japanese recently attempted? Or the AMS that is about science - not about making politicians look good.

Same applies to quantum physics where we destroyed the Super Collider - fundamental and essential science - for a political 'feel good' mission called ISS. Its not about where we should go. It is about what science is best done.

If going to the moon is important, then science that makes that necessary is also defined. It is about science. Not about glory.

Probably the greatest space science experiment has been Hubble. But Hubble is too close to earth. Which is why a most promising space research project will be the Webb telescope. The best science is done for science. And no longer deploys man in space.

Agreed

ARE YOU INSANE?

Man MUST explore... even beyond known limits.

But yes, A Mars mission is doomed to fail.

To the Moon? We've been there, done that. Just pull the map out of the glovebox and go back.

I agree on the urge to explore - that's one of our biggest challenges right now, needing some way to fulfill this urge - but where? You reject Mars, and seem to be rejecting the moon.

Mind you, getting to the moon isn't that easy. NASA threw out the Apollo plans, and RFN we have no spaceship that could take us there.

I have not rejected the moon as a destination. Mars? Yeah. For now.

NASA isn't what it once was, but the brains are there. I say we visit our landing site.

A mission to the moon was called Constellation. It was planned by extremists who believe the status quo is innovative. So Orion is called Apollo on steriods.

Where as the Russians now launch a man into space for $tens of millions, the Constellation must charge $1 billion for the same seat. A classic example of why America's government manned space program has come to a crashing roadblock.

Rare events require a man in space. But the greatest advancements and what makes possible future manned flight means that Nasa's budget should be at least 50% for non-manned flight. To do science rather than glory. Innovations necessary to make manned flight productive must come from the only place that does science. Unmanned science.

That same lesson is now found in all other advanced science where glory is replaced by hard logic and practical thinking.

BTW, you do know a Space Shuttle has been flying for months - maybe a year now. It is a military Space Shuttle that has no humans aboard. Obviously done for productive tasks - not for glory. But due to the nature of bird, its purpose is only speculation.

Largest impediment to America's manned space program occurred in 2004 when fools subverted that program by simply redoing Saturn V and the Apollo program all over again rather then thinking innovatively. As a result, rockets such as Proton and Ariane now own the heavy launching business and will probably be the only viable transport to ISS. America's Constellation is a technological nightmare due to how and where it was conceieved.

Time to see this disaster coming was when the same White House lawyers, who were rewriting science papers, were also making the plans for NASA's future. Ignored the scientists to think only in terms of 1970 technology. We now have to live with their legacy until private operations such as SpaceX or SpaceShipOne finally get commercial operations started.

I had mentioned bits and pieces of what we now know as the destruction of America's manned space program. Was anybody listening?

Among some of the symptoms was a George Jr program to quash many science experiments and even the rescue of Hubble. To White House lawyers, these were only unnecessary expenses without sufficient glory.

Utter nonsense. America was made great by many things, one of which was the existence of a frontier safety valve for people who are temperamentally unsuited for sitting in a cubicle watching robots getting stuck in sand.

One of which were the Great Prairies of the Midwest...
A surplus of food makes time to do other things.

Same for the Pacific and Mountains of the Northwest...
A surplus of timber and minerals

Even tho I grew up there, I'm not so sure about California, or of Florida :rolleyes:

And so you have proved that most of Africa are world dominate nations.

Actually we are all Africans and the dominant world economies were developed by those Africans who sought out new lands.

We have been reaching out to and exploring the unknown since the beginning of mankind. That isn't going to change anytime soon.