Men on Mars

[hot_pastrami]

Originally posted by ladysycamore
Here's another eye roll to people that want to spend big money on big ideas that not everyone is even going to be able to take advantage of.

I believe that the often-eloquent James Lileks said it very aptly:

The Strib’s editorial page had some anti-space program cartoons on Sunday. You could predict the lame japery – looking for WMDs on Mars, Gitmos on the Moon, etc. This one by Toles summed up the whole stay-on-earth-until-the-sun-novas idea. It shows a little girl in a wheelchair reading the news, saying “They’re prepared to spend how much so a man can walk on Mars?” The scribbled dingbat in the corner – you know, Toles’ own commentary on his own commentary – says “some things just inspire us.”

Yes, we could make that little fictional girl walk if only we spent the money. But curing spinal cord injuries wouldn’t inspire us. Maybe it’s a stem-cell funding research reference – a valid jibe, I suppose, if this was an either-or thing, and people had deeply-held moral objections to a Mars mission. It just strikes me as the same old provincial jibe I dimly recall from the Apollo era: why are we going to the Moon when there are so many problems here?

Because there’s an entirely different set of problems up there.

And the answers might come in handy.

Some are steamed because the Hubble’s been tanked ahead of schedule, and I’m not pleased about that either. But you could say that every dollar spent on the Hubble thus far could have gone towards Toles’ crudely drawn paralyzed girl. Would the artist insist we had never sent the observatory in the first place, then? For that matter: there were paralyzed children in the 60s. Would Toles have preferred that the government shut down the Apollo program and throw all the millions into spinal-cord regeneration research? Will I never stop asking loaded rhetorical questions?

No. Some more:

France isn’t going to the moon. What stops them from curing spinal-cord injuries? Germany isn’t going to the moon. What stops them from curing spinal-cord injuries? Britain isn’t going to the moon. What stops them from curing spinal-cord injuries? And so forth. It’s not a zero-sum game; America is not the world. But America is best suited to leave this world for another. If that idea leaves you cold, fine.

But I can’t shake the suspicion that we were put here to leave.

As I have noted from time to time, I’m a Lutheran Deist. By some peculiar coincidence my concept of God flatters my own conceptions of the universe; imagine that. If I were king of the forest, and I set this blue-green ball up to follow my dictates, I would have made the night sky inky black - if you want the bald apes below to follow your lead, don't give them stars; they;ll only make up stupid stories. But the night is alive; there are a billion blazing stars above. A challenge? A warning? A promise? We don’t know, but they are so very tempting. And we are notoriously bad at turning temptation away. Haven't you ever looked up at the great dark beyond and felt you were being drawn from where you stood, carried into something greater? Every night the sky is an invitation. Who can look up and see nothing but a roof?

To put it all in Rumsfeld lingo: it’s the known unknown. Space is to humans what Beethoven is to dogs. I don’t think we have the slightest idea what we don’t yet understand.

Just thought of something: What holds the paraplegic in their chairs? What keeps them from shooting around the room, stopping their progress with a finger, floating from desk to desk?

Gravity.

And gravity isn’t a big issue . . . where?

If we try to solve all of Earth's problems before we go exploring, then we're all stuck here forever.

Edit: Oops, clicked "Submit" rather than "preview" before I was done.

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by juju
He is focusing on needs. He NEEDS to get re-elected.

LMAO, that's a good one and you're right!

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by hot_pastrami

If we try to solve all of Earth's problems before we go exploring, then we're all stuck here forever.

Why look at it as "stuck"? There's only a certain percentage of people who are really interested in space exploration and going to places that perhaps "we" have no business really going to (just to say we've gone there).

I suppose I'm saying that my personal priorities doesn't include worrying about if and when we'll go back to the Moon or populate Mars and such. It'll probably all happen after I'm gone anyway and I'd rather leave something behind that will benefit people who are like me culturally, medically, etc.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally posted by Beestie
dar512 wrote:

I don't get the sense that the purpose of a Mars mission is anything other than the "because its there" reason. Additionally, what can an astronaut do on Mars that a robot can't?

He can fix the damn robot without a light-hour's signal lag, for one thing. Manned missions are expensive, yes, but you buy flexibility with that, and with it, survivability. In a hostile environment, that's beyond price.

[dar512]

Be careful of your attributions UG. Those aren't my words. I'm in favor of manned missions to Mars.

[tw]

Originally posted by Urbane Guerrilla
He can fix the damn robot without a light-hour's signal lag, for one thing. Manned missions are expensive, yes, but you buy flexibility with that, and with it, survivability. In a hostile environment, that's beyond price.

That man on Mars would be standing around waiting for someone on earth to deduce the problem, and then wait more while a man on earth erased the defective EEPROM. Men on Mars could not fix any of it. Show me the last time you reprogrammed an EEPROM in your disk drive? And you have access to more equipment than a man on Mars?

What is the most flexible solution? Wait for new code from Asia for your drive - or wait for the next spacecraft with new hardware? Where is the flexibility?

Things worked just fine because some dumb human (or Martian) mechanic did not stick his hand under the hood to fix it. The best place to fix it was from earth. All that Martian 'flexibility' would only have made things worse - and more expensive.

[tw]

A point repeatedly addressed to the most common reason for failure. George Jr does things without even basic knowledge of what exists, what can be accomplished, or what is reality. Last year's State of the Union was "No child left behind" providing w/o funding to create "More children left behind"; increases in both local school and state taxes.

Due to a 2004 State of the Union:

from Expert warns NASA can't afford Mars plan
(AP) -- An aerospace executive warned a presidential commission Wednesday that NASA does not have enough money -- or bright young stars -- to achieve President Bush's goal of returning astronauts to the moon and flying from there to Mars.

"It would be a grave mistake to undertake a major new space objective on the cheap. To do so, in my opinion, would be an invitation to disaster," said Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp. and head of a panel that examined the future of the space program for the first President Bush.
...
Augustine pointed out that during the next decade, NASA will still have the enormous cost of running all its centers, the space shuttle fleet and the international space station, not to mention conducting research. He said the nation traditionally has underestimated the cost of big programs.

Kennedy consulted these people before proposing a Manned Moon landing. What any responsible leader would first do. But an extremist president speculates decisions, and then goes looking only for facts to support that fiction. Even his own blue ribbon commission has serious doubts. IOW other budgets, such as DoD would need be raided. Just another reason to borrow from Social Security. Oh, sorry. That money was already spent.

When does George Jr propose something based upon reality? Roadmap for Peace? Anti-ballistic missile system? Saddam's WMB? Federal Debt will be cut by one-half in the next four years? Now big bucks to put a man on Mars - reality or purpose irrelevant. Why is it that only 'tax and spend' Democrats can run a government on budget and with realistic objectives?