And yet any sort of program that gets fleshed out right now will get trashed in about three months time when he leaves office and congress turns over. Yay, political infighting and sabotage!
Well, if you think about it, a lot of man-hours went into putting together the dining facilities on the space shuttles, testing food packets against the G-forces of launch, making sure that no normally harmless bacteria go crazy and decay everything in zero-G, etc.
This is why cash prizes for advances that decrease the cost of space travel is the only thing a politician can do that has any chance of gaining my respect. It's action, not speech, and within a fixed time frame either tangible progress will be made or not.
Twenty billion dollars to develop and demonstrate a reusable mass-driver system for deployment unmanned cargo to orbit? In the big scheme of things it's a drop in the bucket. But it would make a ton of other things much, much cheaper.
The only problem is that it doesn't sound as sexy as a "vision" of space exploration decades from now.
We need to be a peaceful species if we ever hope to commune with ETIs and unlock the inner mysteries of the universe. According to Edgar Mitchell, the ETIs will not tolerate violence. Zero point energy is too powerful to entrust to warmongering space pirates (like us).
Exactly. Obama has been trying to smatter himself across history throughout his presidency with a lot of "first president, first president in X years" activities, and this screams of ME TOO-ism.
Previous to this comment he's shown zero interest in space or space exploration - can't stand the guy.
The USA is the world's largest oil producer [0]. This is an antiquated opinion that ignores the complexity of the reasons we went into the Middle East, and is needlessly dismissive.
A large amount of the crisis in the ME today is actually because fracking has driven down the price of oil so much.
That would be an absolutely fantastic reason to go to mars, because it almost certainly indicate the existence of large quantities of life on mars at some point in the past.
I get the impression from the wiki article that, so far, these are well-studied but rejected theories re: sources of petro and gas on earth. It's unclear to me, though, whether that's because of essential reasons that would apply to other systems, or just a historical happenstance specific to earth.
Probably not a coincidence that this announcement arrives barely a week after SpaceX's absurdly ambitious Mars architecture announcement.
It's a good bet that any politician meaning business about this will award numerous private contracts as part of the initiative. SpaceX intends to make manned exploration of Mars a lot cheaper than NASA has ever suggested possible, and cost is the main factor.
Yeah I was surprised to see that he didn't mention SpaceX anywhere in the article. It seems that Elon usually pays tribute to NASA -- he did in his Mars announcement.
It seems like if there are only two entities trying to go to Mars, and they work together through a contracting relationship, then it makes sense to mention the relation to the other one.
Otherwise I'm just left confused about the two efforts.
The problem is NASA has stated they do not want private sector going to deep space. They think only the government should be doing deep space exploration and colonization. This is also why Elon specifically mentioned building parts of the ship for going to Mars in the Gulf states where there are already manufacturing plants for building components for NASA. Elon hopes to influence the public/politicians to help fund SpaceX instead of focusing on NASA doing it all.
It was Indigenous People Day yesterday in the US (aka Columbus Day), and it made me think what an interesting time it must have been to be alive at a time where there were widely mostly unexplored areas in the world, and how incredulous and shocked people must have felt when they found out of these unexplored lands (putting aside the fact that it had been explored and lived by other cultures they did not know of).
Then I realized I do live in a time like that, with space exploration being that next frontier. What a time to be alive. I can't wait to be in absolute disbelieve of all the worldful discoveries that will be made when we expand space exploration further.
1- Probably but not certainly, and a little caution (say, 100 more years of remote sensing exploration as technology improves) will go a long way.
2- I'm not so anthropocentric as to think that the only value in the universe is human value. It's not our universe; we're an infinitesimal fraction of it. Other life has inhabited earth for billions of years, and maybe other places too. The terrestrial or extraterrestrial environments have value for existing and future life, regardless of whether that is human life. And most of life isn't human, and won't be in the future either.
There is no sentient life in Mars. If there is microbial life on Mars, it is not making efficient use of its resources. I will not trade the billions of future people that might call a terraformed Mars home for some scum on the bottom of a rock.
No doubt. We'd best be ready. Thankfully astronomical data makes this unlikely at least in our stellar neighborhood, so we have some time to grow in both power and maturity.
We have a small chance of exploiting 1% of Mars in less than 100 years. The sooner we get our first factory there, the sooner we'll know if there is any reason not to build the millionth factory.
It doesn't need to be alive to be beautiful. There is great peace and beauty in empty places. Mars has grand and majestic vistas: canyons and plains, dunes and mountains. Reducing it in your mind to a lifeless rock obscures the awe and wonder. It is the opposite of appreciation, it makes the idea small in you, worthless and not deserving of respect.
That is your perspective that it is beautiful. What if my perspective is that it is more beautiful inhabited, alive, and sustaining an ecosystem it probably hasn't for millions of years?
"Ruining a mountain side" is one thing when it sustains an ecosystem of life. It's harder to argue we are ruining something like a planet with no life.
A single smallpox laden explorer would have started a plague in the Americas and a single native American would likely have died of one of the many plagues in Europe that Europeans had grown up with (and still often died from).
The problem of safety is not always placed on the explorer, sometimes the explorer is the danger to his environment.
The point is that entire classes of extremely common diseases in Europe basically didn't exist in all or most of the Americas, and many of those diseases spread very easily once even a handful of people had carried them across the ocean.
I think that's his point. If they're not there, they're not able to be collaterally damaged.
If there is intelligent life (or, any life as we define it generally), there's a pretty high likelihood our arrival could damage it, especially if we don't discover it until after arrival. (And "really especially" if we go the terraforming route)
>I can't wait to be in absolute disbelieve of all the worldful discoveries that will be made when we expand space exploration further.
You've got to be kidding. What "wonderful discoveries" do you think there's going to be out there?
There might really be alien civilizations and worlds with lush vegetation out there somewhere, but for the foreseeable future, we're going to be limited to our own Solar System. The worlds here are not unknowns: we've been observing and probing them for many years now, and we know pretty well what's on them.
There's all kinds of interesting things on these worlds, from a scientific perspective: gas/ice giants, oceans of methane on Titan, a weird hexagonal pattern in Saturn's atmosphere, ice mountains on Pluto/Charon, etc. But we're finding all this out just fine using robotic probes. I'm sure we'll find out more, and refine our knowledge further, with continued robotic missions.
But if you're thinking that there's any good reason for humans to fly around the solar system and live on other worlds here, there just isn't any good case for it: none of the other habitats are remotely livable (the closest is the upper atmosphere of Venus of all places, if you really like the idea of living in a dirigible), and so the only real economic case to be made is mining. Most likely, we'd get a lot more mineral resources out of asteroids rather than planets or moons.
But this isn't like Star Trek with all kinds of fantastical worlds out there to discover, plus alien cultures to make contact with. They might be out there, way out there, but we're still struggling with the idea of how to travel to our very nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri), which is about 4 light-years away. Maybe this will all change if Zephram Cochrane invents the warp drive, but for now, there just isn't much reason for humans to do anything more than basic science missions in space, and hopefully asteroid-mining missions in the near future. We're not going to make any huge new discoveries any time soon, just more thing like "ooh, look at these weird ice mountains on this dwarf planet!". That's really interesting, don't get me wrong, and a great reason to send a robotic probe, but it's not like we're going to discover anything truly groundbreaking here in our own system. According to all our data, all the other worlds here are lifeless rocks or frozen wastelands or gas giants. This isn't such a great "time to be alive"; that time was back in the 60s-70s when they were first discovering stuff in space with the Apollo missions and various probes like Voyager, Mariner, etc. (and maybe in the 2000s when all the pictures from the Mars rovers started coming in; but how many pictures of red rocks on a red sky do you need to see before you realize there's nothing more to Mars than that?).
It just isn't like the days when "the New World" was discovered, and Europeans were able to learn of and bring back fantastic new foods like cocoa/chocolate, maize/corn, learn about new cultures and brutalize them and steal their gold, etc. It's much more like exploring Antartica: it's a very interesting place for scientists, and absolutely worthwhile to do science missions on, but for everyone else the only possible reason you'd go there is as a tourist for a very short time because it's uninhabitable (though far more easily inhabited than Mars; at least there's breathable air there, and plenty of water just lying on the ground, there's even penguins and fish if you get hungry).
I hate this analogy. Not only does it enforce the bullshit teleology of the White European as "discoverer" (you know people inhabited these continents, right?) but it also fails to take into account the massive technological shifts that have taken place. We can send probes to Mars, we are able to run mass spectrometry on it, we can analyze and monitor it from affair.
Second this wholeheartedly. The "explorers" did not have the ability to observe to any real degree the rest of the world before setting out. Not only that, but it wasn't just exploration it was expansion.
Robots are great for running pre-planned experiments, but they're limiting. There are many experiments that the research community would love to perform but would necessarily require a human presence.
Hmm. I'd like to understand this, but I have questions. I've imagined that we could do a lot more science with a human and some basic instruments than we could with a billion dollar Rover sent every ten years. I mean, just to sample a rock probably takes a week. A geologist on site could do that in an hour.
Historically, when we can do something much faster we tend to do things with that we didn't do when it was very slow. For example when it took months to cross the country, it was a once in a lifetime thing for some and most never did it. Now we do it all the time, and generations of West Coast students have seen the Smithsonian.
I think that there will be more value in sending humans to Mars than just hubris. I think we will learn a lot more about our cosmic origins, about the value of life and our healthy planet, and about ourselves as a species and culture. In fact, I think sending man to Mars is a key factor in getting us to appreciate this planet and the destruction we're causing here. I don't think Musk's end goal is to leave Earth, but to save it by making us value it again. Perhaps, on this scale, for the first time.
To me, that's a lot more than just hubris. What do you think of all that?
Did we learn significantly more "about our cosmic origins, about the value of life and our healthy planet, and about ourselves as a species and culture" from our manned exploration of the Moon, than we could have from probes?
AFAIK the primary things we learned were encapsulated by the 10 items NASA listed [1]. Which is great for the moon, but doesn't really give us much to work with here.
Well, that is an interesting list of geological things we learned, but we also learned a lot about ourselves.
For example, we learned that it is possible for humans to design a system that can carry people to the moon and return them safely to the Earth. Before we did that, no one knew if that was true.
We learned about the Overview Effect, which astronauts say changed their view on humanity.
Some people say that the environmental protection movement was started on Earth after people saw what it looked like from a distance. And while those images could be captured by robotic cameras, I can easily imagine that it helped having actual live humans get to experience that and share what they felt. We can relate to people much more than we can relate to a robot.
I don't expect you to agree with me. But I think it is significant for actual humans to go out and do these things. It is more inspiring to people here on Earth. And I think that inspiration is valuable and produced tangible benefits on Earth.
And I think that inspiration is valuable and produced tangible benefits on Earth.
Agree, that inspiration is important. However I seriously doubt that manned space exploration has the ability to impact humanity in the same way, and in as quick of a timeline that AGI and Transhumanism do - which is where I'd rather see people find inspiration.
I think manned space exploration will provide different and sooner benefits than AGI.
As far as transhumanism - that's a philosophy. Where will tomorrow's practitioners come from? The people inspired by man's achievements. And in that regard, I think the more great things we can do the better.
I think there will be many future transhumanists inspired by images of the colony on Mars.
Also, going there is relatively cheap, so why not go? It looks like it will be mostly private funds. I wouldn't blame you if you were opposed to the use of public funds for this (as the original post suggests may happen), but are you opposed to humans going in general?
For a transhumanist, I find opposition to space exploration a bit surprising.
Also, what are your thoughts on manned expeditions to the Jupiter system, the clouds of Venus, or other stars? I understand other stars requires technology far beyond what we can imagine today, but so did manned flight 150 years ago.
True, but there are tangible aspects to it that don't require you to be onboard with the philosophy. Brain computer interfaces, mechanical assistance etc... have plenty of uses that don't require the philosophical aspect, like helping paraplegics and the elderly.
Also, going there is relatively cheap, so why not go?
It's not relatively cheap. What do we do after we get to Mars? Go to Jupiter, venus etc? Ok great, now you need to build systems with life support capabilities that allow you to not age out on the way - so add that to the cost? What's the long term goal here? If the goal is to just drive around the universe then the human animal is one of the worst systems to do that as the life support needed is excessive.
If you look at the current state of funding for AGI or Genetics, Robotics and Nanotechnology (GNR) then it's basically nothing in comparison to what we have or are planning on spending on space. Despite what people say it is a fixed pie (on the timeline for any human use of outcomes) both on the private and public side in any practical timeline. So funding for space practically does crowd-out funding for AGI and GNR.
I'm all for space exploration, but not right now with squishy humans.
The "problems" that the space exploration people claim to be solving around humanity will not actually yield results if all we're doing is taking our problems elsewhere - because our problems are baked into our biology. Climate change, resource allocation etc... are all human problems. Man made existential risks are just moved, not eliminated by being a "multi-planetary" species. I also argue that natural existential risks are not solved, just again moved - at crazy high costs. An ELE on Mars is just as likely as it is here on earth, only we have fallback systems and can at least breathe here without energy inputs. The earth is still more habitable after an ELE asteroid than it is on Mars today.
Humans were made on earth for the earth environment. We need to actually change "form" if we are going to explore the universe in any meaningful way - if nothing else because of the time involved in transport.
just to sample a rock probably takes a week No, rovers are actually better than people at this stuff. A human can pick up a rock, a robot can do mass spectroscopy without picking it up.
Further, you can send a 50+ ton's worth of rovers instead of 1 person who needs to spend most of their time inside and wast all this time sleeping and eating etc.
PS: At best a human can take pictures while holding a camera 'just like a robot'. Notice how you need to send a camera in both cases.
I bet the time between noticing a new rock and taking a sample is more than a day for NASA. They have extremely limited time for what a rover can do. Have you seen the documentaries where they describe all the work that goes in to planning each move? I still think a human scientist could collect more rocks and take more samples in one day than NASA does in practice with a rover like curiosity.
It's a false dichotomy to assume it's one human or one rover. It's one human or ~100 rovers. More importrantly it's one human with 1 mass spectrometer or 100 rovers with 100 mass spectrometers.
>Not only does it enforce the bullshit teleology of the White European as "discoverer" (you know people inhabited these continents, right?)
Calm yourself. It's a statement that is clearly from the perspective of Europeans. And it was an accomplishment worthy of remembrance since it required a combination of a certain level of technological advancement and courage. It is also a huge milestone in the history of mankind.
>And it was an accomplishment worthy of remembrance since it required a combination of a certain level of technological advancement and courage.
There is evidence that Polynesians made it to the "new world" long before Europeans (http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/storie...). And even in the case of Europenas, they were able to do it with the technology invented in 10th/11th centuries e.g. Leif Erickson's voyage. It was just that the political and economic climes were not optimal for them to sail West until centuries later.
The notion of the progress and advancement inherent to Europeans as "discovers" is propaganda. We celebrate it because they killed most of the people who were there first and got claim it all for themselves.
The truth I think is not good or bad or neither, it is both good and bad at the same time. While the USA has had a mixed legacy of death, destruction, and violence we also have a legacy of freedom, love, and peace. The hope is that we acknowledge both today and choose to follow a path of peace, not of evil.
Well that's sort of the point, isn't it? For whatever moral judgment you wish to levy on those dead and gone, European culture of the time led into what became the dominant culture on the planet. The colonization of the "new world" was indeed a milestone on that journey.
>It was just that the political and economic climes were not optimal for them to sail West until centuries later.
You can dismiss every major historical event with this kind of reasoning. Everything is, at some level, based on luck and timing.
Bottom line, unlike the voyages of Polynesians and Vikings, the discovery of the Americas was an incredibly important historical event and is a foundation of the current global order.
>The notion of the progress and advancement inherent to Europeans as "discovers" is propaganda.
No, it isn't. Europeans were, objectively, far more technologically advanced than natives of the Americas.
You keep getting hung up on the word 'discover'. Why? From the perspective of Europeans, it was a discovery. They found a landmass that they didn't know existed. We just recently 'discovered' gravitational waves, even though those specific ones were/are emitted for eons.
>We celebrate it because they killed most of the people
Don't be dense. That's not why we celebrate it - and you know it.
The Europeans didn't kill most of the inhabitants. The vast vast majority of natives died due to Old-World diseases, not through war or murder. Second, Europeans were not a monolithic group and colonization was not a singular event. It spanned centuries, involved many groups of people and took place on an immense landmass (the Americas). It also occurred during a transition from late medieval era to modern era. So your simplistic view of "(Europeans) killed most of the people who were there first and got claim it all for themselves" is simplistic and stupid.
You could say the discovery and subsequent colonization was deterministic. Considering Man is driven largely by self-interest we won't be seeing a Mars colonization like that of the Americas unless there is something on Mars which can be exploited.
> I hate this analogy. Not only does it enforce the bullshit teleology of the White European as "discoverer" (you know people inhabited these continents, right?)
Thanks, agreed. On the last part though, it doesn't hurt to explore, a lot can be learned in the process alone, outside of actually finding anything.
I agree it doesn't hurt to explore, but we have vast technological means to do so now remotely from our lovely planet Earth. We have a rover that climbs over terrain, never has to sleep or eat, and can do mass spectrometry. The need to insert humans on Mars is arrogance.
I don't see us living there for extended missions either. I do see the importance of what we learned and the inventions that came out of the Moon missions that have positively impacted our lives on this rock. The journey thing. What I don't get, at all, to this day, is why...we still don't have a Moon base.
What on Mars is worth $500 a pound (in bulk) on Earth (this is something like the silly low price proposed by Elon Musk for transport)?
People will probably pay a lot more than that for the first few thousand pounds of dust, but they certainly won't keep paying that just to have the same dust millions of others have. The vast resources of the Americas paid for the continuous trips back and forth and attracted settlers. What pays for going to Mars? What attracts (large numbers of) settlers to Mars?
I get that there are people attracted to the "freedom" they would have outside of the established political realms of Earth, but what a terrible airless bargain that is.
It'd be really interesting to see the economic comparisons of both against each other.
I.e the cost per kg of payload shipping from America to Europe in 17th Century vs the cost per kg of payload shipping from Mars to the Earth in 21st Century.
I suspect the Mars in current day is much greater, but ships and crew back then were not cheap.
It's an interesting idea to try to compare, but I wonder if the world in the 1600s or even the 1700s is just too different from ours to find anything truly analogous.
To look at the human transportation side: This account (http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/passage.htm) by a German who traveled to the new world in the 1750s is harrowing enough, but the way the cost of passage is paid is horrifying, even heartbreaking: He writes of indentured servitude in the same language one would describe slavery (servants are "sold") and often parents would sell their children in the new world to pay for the voyage, not seeing them again for years, if ever.
We could try to bring this into modern terms by multiplying the US federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr * 40 hrs * 52 weeks) by the median indentured servitude (four years) and get $60,320 to take a human across the Atlantic in 1750, but might be painting an apple orange. Still, it gives us at least a very, very rough idea of what a trip to the new world cost then, and a good sense of just how vastly more expensive passage to Mars would cost in the foreseeable future.
We already go to great extents to get vibration free silicon fabs. These buildings cost billions of dollars, and need amongst other things a very very good acoustic environment (which you get almost free on mars), and good environmental controls (which you need anyways on mars). You aren't going to find a better place than mars. Further, on mars, you don't have to worry about natural disasters destroying your billions of dollars building.
The most convincing thing I've heard is "IP". Mars' competitive advantage will be an education and legal regime that is very good at producing engineer/inventors, a quasi religious social narrative to bind the colonies in a common mission, and an ever present existential threat to drive innovation. Basically, Israel in space.
The original exploration leading to the discovery of the Americas wasn't looking for any kind of resources, it was looking for a better route to transport spices from the East. Finding a continent in the way ruined that goal, but accidentally yielded all kinds of resources that we didn't even know we wanted.
Stuff like coconuts, tobacco, sweet corn, potatoes were unknown in the "old world", so the original explorers couldn't have known to look for them. Later on, it was also found that the new world contained significant silver, gold, oil, etc., even though that wasn't known at the time.
So working from historical precedent, there's good reason to expect that something unexpected would come out of it.
Of course there are active theories that coconuts may have migrated or been transported by swallows to Western Europe.
Also gold was known to be in the New World according to Columbus on his initial voyage.
>The convenience of the harbors in this island, and the excellence of the rivers, in volume and salubrity, surpass human belief, unless on should see them. In it the trees, pasture-lands and fruits different much from those of Juana. Besides, this Hispana abounds in various kinds of species, gold and metals.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/exploration/res...
Re: coconuts, I'll beg off on having copied that list from a web source without cross-checking.
Re: gold, sure, but they didn't have any inkling about Sutter's Mill, etc. It clearly existed in some amounts, but they had no idea they'd find vast untapped veins.
Let me interject .. lets not forget most significantly that it was the cotton trade which fueled the early industrial revolution in the United Kingdom and at that time many years of boom in the United States and elsewhere.
I don't think it took 100's of years for people to figure out that a continent teaming cod, timber, and beavers might be a good place to set up trade. Grated, early on, they thought it was a continent full of gold and spices.
I don't know what the analogous economic engine could possible be on Mars. If Mars is going to grow, we need to be able to imagine someone saying "I'm moving my family to Mars in search of a better life. I just don't see that happening. Series or L2 station? Sure, someone has to refine the iridium before we send it down the gravity well. But why would an entrepreneur want to set up shop on Mars?
> I don't think it took 100's of years for people to figure out that a continent teaming cod, timber, and beavers might be a good place to set up trade. Grated, early on, they thought it was a continent full of gold and spices.
But it did! There were very basic, underfunded French colonies in North America for example for at least a hundred years before they really sent a lot more people and realized the wealth that could be had. At the same time the colonizing countries also had great internal issues, but had they known how much profit could've been made from investment, undoubtedly they would've been colonizing in full force much earlier.
We know what's on Mars and there isn't much there that isn't better sourced here, unless you want to use what you source on Mars itself. And there won't be a significant consumption base there for literally centuries, if ever.
I'm in favor of human off-world activities, but I think it's a joke to make some kind of free-market argument. We should do it because we should do it, not because of invisible hands.
Consider the free-market thing a small plus in the grand scheme of things. I don't think anyone dreams of going to Mars solely for the business opportunity... Not yet.
You can't set up shop in Antarctica because its forbidden by the antarctic treaty, which is backed by 32 Nations. If you think people wouldn't be conducting business there if given the option, you've somehow managed to overlook every other corner of the world where its not prohibited. Mining businesses. Tourism/adventure companies. Setting up stores, bars, and other entertainment venues to supply tourists and miners with things to do and stuff to buy. These are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head that would be happening in Antarctica if it weren't patently illegal.
I don't think you need to make martian mining illegal to discourage the industry. At $500 a lb, no raw materials will be coming to earth from Mars and time soon.
Where do you get that? Tourism is back near pre-bust 40,000, mostly American, a year. The expensive hotel is fully booked 2 of its 4 weeks. With near 40 treaty countries almost no binding changes are agreed, and regular plans to limit numbers remain just that.
Two countries close to Antarctica, Chile and Argentina, are not signatories to the Antarctic Treaty and have territorial claims. Both of these countries already have a decent amount of natural resource extraction (especially Chile), so one would reason that if it is worth mining, they would be.
One could also look at the interior of Greenland, which is Danish territory. No serious development of any kind occurs there - it's all along the coasts.
I think setting up a self sustaining colony in Sahara would be more impressive due to a lack of water. (Which is still more water than is present in Martian soil).
Only when Mars becomes self-sufficient. As long as Mars is dependent on Earth, enforcing regulations would be ridiculously easy: do as we say or starve (or run out of some other essential resource).
The inherent difficulty of the Martian environment is far more restrictive and expensive than even the most draconian regulations.
The only way this would make sense is if one's objection to regulations was purely ideological and not grounded in any sort of reality-based cost-benefit analyses. Setting up shop in a failed state is far easier than setting up shop on Mars, and that will remain true for the foreseeable future (and probably forever, or until no failed states exist).
> why would an entrepreneur want to set up shop on Mars?
Brand new market, which means no competitors and high demand for everything. Kind of like how everything was way overpriced in Clondyke during the gold rush.
What would a "new market" on Mars really look like? Living on Mars would be extremely harsh for the foreseeable future, inhabitants would be struggling just to meet their basic needs for many, many, generations and the life of a successful Martian entrepreneur (in terms of material wealth) would be comparable to an American pauper.
In a way, it would be a very luxurious lifestyle; all basic necessities would be taken care of by automated systems. It's not like you'll be slaving naked in the fields to cultivate the crops. Probably it would be more like sitting at a workstation all day, monitoring life support systems and sending orders to the robots.
The hard part would be missing the fresh air, green fields and blue skies of home. But, if there's an eco-catastrophe on Earth, there may be nothing to go home to.
That doesn't answer the question of why there would be thousand of people on Mars willing to pay exorbitant prices for stuff. What is the "gold" in this analogy?
The gold is scientific discovery & progress. If you don't think there is a crush of scientists, geologists & the like chomping at the bit to do in-person science on another planet you're a bit nuts. Add to that the glut of people who want to go for sheer adventure. All of those people are going to need "stuff" when they get there.
Its a planet with similar composition to ours. I am pretty sure that there is plenty of gold.
I guess if you could produce materials on mars it would be much easier to build and deploy gigant structures into space (lower gravity and escape velocity)
Mining is something that is always mentioned in scifi, but I am not sure how profitable it would be, I guess if propellant can be mined on mars it would be pretty doable.
Performing activities that would be environmental risks on earth would be relatively low risk on mars, due to the fact that it is already a wasteland.
Tourism would be a thing as well which would require many trades of comfort
Even short term there would be money to be made and with the option of return journeys it would be attractive to people. Young, single and childless will be their target at first. This means you generally have a healthier population so less stress on the medical resources and they have more disposable money to spend on expensive imported earth goods.
> Young, single and childless will be their target at first.
Given the cost per ticket (how many young people have a few spare $100k lying around?), the considerable risk of unscheduled rapid decommissioning and the guaranteed high level of radiation exposure (worse for longer expected remaining lifetime) I would look for older (50+) people without dependents.
America became a melting pot of entrepreneurial DNA. Nikola Tesla came to America to commercialize his AC power ideas. Silicon Valley came about because someone found this continent. Europe was stagnating in technological advances.
Albert Einstein used thought experiments about trains and elevators to came up with general relativity and how we view gravity. We wouldn't have accurate GPS if it wasn't for him.
It isn't possible for us to imagine what people will discover after being inspired by that journey to Mars.
Remember the Venn diagram that Elon showed? Spacex is going to lower the cost of going to Mars so that billionaires can afford to go. Then lower the cost so millionaires can afford to go. Continue lower the cost until more people can afford to go. Eventually, more people can afford to go to Mars and return safely to Earth.
Why would you go to Mars? Because its there. And because I can.
Space research industry.
With all these people going to Mars there will be demand for new and advanced technology.
And there's probably more industry that will sprout that we cannot foresee now. Its a whole new frontier out there.
But can you explain why this is a valid equivalence? On the surface, sure, but exploration-for-it's-own-sake isn't a good enough reason. Also, some would argue that the disadvantages (e.g. disruption of local cultures, ambiguity of meaning in modern life) have outweighed the advantages.
We'll start to know some of the benefit of getting there almost immediately. We'll know the benefit of Mars itself only decades or centuries later.
> but exploration-for-it's-own-sake isn't a good enough reason
Yes, it IS. Really.
In choosing to do something difficult we focus on something that will need answers to questions we don't even know to ask yet. Some will produce answers that seem so specialised to have no reuse.
Give it 5 years and some will be commercial successes. Others will lead to new ideas, branches of science, tech or products, and a steady stream of improvements to earthly things. Some will only be utilised years later, or ignored.
Just as exploring the ocean's surface made it clear we needed marine chronometers (a life's work) and an understanding of scurvy. Those would take years to answer. Scurvy led to the first clinical trial, that the Navy ignored for 40 years. Or from the golden age of aircraft: SR-71[1], Concorde, XB-70 Valkyrie[1]. Just 3 examples, of dozens, each of which led to enough advances to fill a book. Two military, one prestige. Doesn't matter that the B-52 is still flying and the XB-70 was a dead end, we learnt lots of stuff, and it almost gave the US their own SST (Concorde). Aviation is mostly drilled out now.
I'm a big believer in prestige projects - whether they work or not. Governments don't like that sort of thing any more. So unless other rich cashed out founders want to take the place of government and give us magic thing of the future...
We're left with exploration and major wars (cold or hot) to hurl technology forward. With current mil tech I'd rather not have major wars, so, exploration it must be. Oh, why haven't we properly explored under the seas yet?
Mars, Tesla, Solar, Hyperloop. That's a lot on Mr Musk. I hope he crosses roads carefully. We need a few more crazy engineering imaginations.
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[1] If anyone is interested in aircraft, and can get to Dayton, Ohio, go to the USAF museum - they have the only Valkyrie, many of the X planes, a Blackbird and a huge inventory. Decent space and missile area too.
> Trying to go to Mars is equivalent to the explorers in the 1500-1700s discovering other continents.
Except that explorers in the 1500-1700s didn't have unmanned ships or remote sensing capabilities, and manned travel was their one and only option for exploration. We've come a long way since then.
>Trying to go to Mars is equivalent to the explorers in the 1500-1700s discovering other continents. History has shown it was a good idea.
Not for the people already living on those continents it wasn't. For them, it was a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.
>We won't know the benefit of going to Mars until 100s of years after we do it.
This is speculation, and if you're implying that explorers to the Americas didn't foresee the benefits, you're completely and factually wrong. They might not have predicted, for instance, the discovery of cocoa/chocolate, but they did think there was gold there (and there was; the Spanish brought back huge quantities of it), plus many other resources like furs, plus the ability to grow many crops there like tobacco.
With Mars, we've already sent a bunch of probes there and learned a lot about it. It's not some big unknown land any more. And there simply isn't any good reason for people to go there except for basic science. You sure as hell can't grow stuff there (and even if you could, getting it back to Earth would cost a fortune; we're not really short on arable land here on Earth, and we're constantly developing ways of more efficiently using what we have, with the next big thing being vertical farming): there's little atmosphere, little water, and it's cold and too far from the Sun. The lack of a magnetosphere and too much radiation probably isn't going to be all that great for your crops either (not to mention any inhabitants). The only foreseeable thing that could be done there is mining. But we don't need to go to Mars to get minerals; we have asteroids passing close to the Earth all the time which could be mined, and have very valuable ores in them. It's also possible to mine on the Moon, which probably has mineral resources thanks to all the asteroid impacts and lack of geological activity. Both of these are far closer and more feasible than Mars.
I'm sorry, but "build it and they will come" isn't a law of the universe, it's a line from a silly movie.
It would be in even worse shape if that were the case. Obama and liberals in general assume unicorns will come protect them and that the military is bad. Meanwhile, the ISS is falling apart, we have no shuttle anymore (had to kill off any vestige of actual Republican leadership) and our fly boys have to hitch a ride to space in hollowed out Soviet cement mixers attached to the top of chemical rockets.
If the same is true in 20 years it will be a tragedy. But I expect cutting the shuttle program created space for private competition on that now-relatively-well-understood-as-far-as-space-things-go engineering problem and freed up NASA to focus on new challenges.
The shuttle was for the most part a terrible program. It cost an enormous amount of money compared to its benefits. It would have been cheaper to continue sending rockets than trying to maintain and fly the shuttle fleet.
That's not entirely true. The shuttle could do things no other ship could, including what's on the drawing board.
The shuttle could down mass a lot of stuff. Look at the long duration exposure facility, a bus-sized satellite filled with materials experiments. We have rockets to take that to orbit now, we don't have something that could bring it down. It's arguably the ISS, in its current configuration, would have been possible, and Hubble would have probably been abandoned 20 years ago without the shuttle.
The shuttle had problems, but its greatest strength was a gigantic space bus, built to take big satellites up and down. In fact, one of the biggest missed opportunities coming from the SpaceX camp I'm seeing is a lack of science and payload applications for the BFR/ITS. Example: the James Webb space telescope will be launching soon. It's a 6.5 meter telescope with weird folding mirrors because of the limitations of the launch vehicle. The ITS has a seventeen meter payload. Put a big fairing and a transfer stage on the ITS, and you can deliver gigantic payloads to orbit like we've never seen. Want a radio telescope at Earth-Moon L2? ITS can do that, but no one has even suggested it so far.
Right. You can google up the references, but a lot of the shuttle's design problems came from morphing it into a platform that could service military needs.
Its liftoff mass was 2/3 of the moon-bound Saturn V stack!
Make no mistake, I will hold deep, deep nostalgia for the Space Shuttle, but its failings were largely driven by 'irrelevant' military size and lift requirements. At the same time, I also understand that much of the money for the whole space-race, including the shuttle, effectively existed because of various military/'defense' priorities.
Sometime around the time the shuttle went live, the military discovered CCD or similar cameras and encryption.
The "Keyhole" satellites used to parachute down film canisters, which would be scooped up by a plane while descending on the chute - caught in-flight to avoid capture by other nations.
Hmm. Soviet cement mixers? Atop chemical rockets? Well certainly the latter is true. Every rocket we've ever sent to space is a chemical rocket. But cement mixers? I guess you don't have much appreciation for foreign engineers, but the Soyuz spacecraft is widely regarded as one of the safest, lowest cost space craft ever constructed. It's also been in continuous service since the 1960's, unlike any American program. You should read up on them. [1]
As far as military spending: im all for national defense. But obviously if you use your imagination, there must be some upper bound at which increases in military spending have a diminishing return. I think we are above that imagined line, and you think we are below it. But we both agree that a functional military is a valuable asset.
Also, I actually think military spending is a kind of socialism gone very wrong, where wealthy military contractors donate to politicians who then give them big contracts with public funds. Do you want your tax dollars going to corruption? I don't.
And do we NEED 11 aircraft carriers? No other nation on earth has more than 2. We have 11. Maybe we're overspending?
Even those graphs show that the military budget is higher now than it was when Obama took office. None of this is really helping to support your point about unicorns at all.
I don't entirely disagree, but overall I think multiple independent endeavors may be the most resilient approach.
In other words, collaboration may indeed the fastest path if all goes well, but multiple independent efforts may be safer, with a higher probability of success.
Independent approaches also allow for slightly different techniques and technological approaches to the problem, which may have additional unknown benefits later on.
One does not preclude another. As long as all parties involved share knowledge, they can pursue different paths while at the same time speeding up each others' efforts.
I'm not degreed so this is just my off the wall thinking but asteroid mining yes, definitely. I still think we need a Moon base, need to show we can run it successfully for around 2 decades then start seriously planning a Mars mission. As a kid, I'd have imagined we'd already have a successful Moon base.
Asteroids, since I assume they move and possibly in odd orbits might be difficult to reach in emergency situations, I'd rather not see any nation's Astronauts stranded on a remote asteroid.
Most asteroids' orbits have the same characteristics as those of planets.
The problem I would see is finding a big enough NEO asteroid, that you actually can stand on instead of floating by its side, or having to worry about reaching escape velocity if you jump strongly enough.
If one's willing to go to any asteroid, not just NEO, then Ceres could be a possibility. A quick search says the delta-v required to reach it from LEO is about half that to reach Mars' surface.
I was thinking that having a few feet of gravel between you and radiation would be useful for a base, as well as the ease of coming and going from a smaller body.
I suppose it would be helpful to build some kind of centrifuge in any base to simulate gravity, as well.
Sure, but this conversation was Mars vs. the moon. The only argument the moon has going for it is that it's a short trip.
Mars does have a reasonable atmosphere (albeit not breathable, it's mostly CO2), and therefore does have some hope to be terraformed to earth-like levels. We will probably have to use closed systems (greenhouses with water recycling) until we heat the planet up a bit and get it back to the state it was when it had running water and precipitation.
I believe this bill cancels our no-commerce-in-space obligations under the Outer Space Treaty - American companies may now lay claim to and develop celestial objects.
Never mind, it may have been effectively nullified by the Space Act of 2015 [1]. It's a bit schizophrenic, however.
One section states "a United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States."
Section 403, meanwhile, confirms that "it is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sov- ereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body."
>> sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as our astronauts returned to Hawaii.
>> More than 1,000 companies across nearly all 50 states are working on private space initiatives.
These are my takeaways - the reason we do the hard things is because of a child like sense of wonder.
And the reason we will succeed is because 1,000 companies is a lot. And I bet I am not the only HN'er wanting to be one of the next ones, to buy into the dream.
Would have been nice to hear this earlier than the final minutes of his presidency. I have no faith that either of his possible successors give a damn about Mars.
I'd have given his words more credence if he hadn't canceled the Constellation project in 2010 [1].
It was in fact part of his original campaign platform in 2008 to cut funding to Nasa to pay for a national day care program. The day care never really got off the ground, but he did succeed in cutting Nasa's budget, forcing a lot of projects to shut down.
I'm glad to hear he's had a change of heart about space, though it sounds as though he's counting on the private sector to do a lot of the work. And, of course, it means diddlysquat given that he's retiring in three months.
Funding is arguably even more critical for space exploration, and without substantial action on this front I am skeptical this is going to have meaningful impact.
Just a quick flashback to President George Bush circa January 2004 [1]:
Our second goal is to develop and test a new spacecraft, the crew exploration vehicle, by 2008, and to conduct the first manned mission no later than 2014.
It was a typical flags and footprints mission without much thought given to cost, so it ended up having a sticker price of about a trillion dollars, give or take. Congress hated it so much that they curtailed even the hint of talk about a Mars mission by NASA for well over a decade.
Come on brah, you can 'lose' a couple of trillion down the backseat of the sofa at the Pentagon but you lose your shit when NASA asks for a mere 1 trillion dollars spread over a number of years?
I feel pretty tall from this horse. Even the horse is feeling pretty aristocratic about the whole affair.
For a hidden camera prank I want to go into the Pentagon's reception area, find a couch, and then struggle to pull out one of those enormous cheques with a lubricious number of zeros on it. Maybe I could even get some people in uniforms to help me yank it out.
I would then finish by galloping (bearing the cheque) into the sunset on an empty road, and at the top of a mighty hill I would yank the reins and the horse would paw the air with its front hooves as I wave the cheque in triumph.
The basic issue seems to be that NASA moves very slowly these days, as NASA is very decentralized, and each center has different constituencies and interests. As a result of this, the "Vision for Space Exploration" went over-budget and fell behind schedule, then President Obama cancelled it, because he had little incentive to keep spending money on his predecessor's legacy.
This is a narrative I've heard, but is there anything to back it up? NASA has operations on multiple planets and now outside the Solar System. They seem to develop multiple major, pioneering projects, from space telescopes to probes of other planets to earth observatories to Martian rovers, all at the same time. I'm impressed.
Sure, they don't move with the agility of a startup, but any SV company would be ecstatic to have that portfolio of operations and development. These aren't self-driving cars.
> President Obama cancelled it, because he had little incentive to keep spending money on his predecessor's legacy
Any evidence of that? Due to the Great Recession, the GOP's refusal to increase revenue (and their work to shrink government), and the current radical budget caps, many programs in many departments - even essential military programs - have had to be cut.
>"This is a narrative I've heard, but is there anything to back it up? NASA has operations on multiple planets and now outside the Solar System. They seem to develop multiple major, pioneering projects, from space telescopes to probes to other planets to earth observatories to Martian rovers, all at the same time. I'm impressed."
SLS will end up taking more than 3 times as long and be many times as expensive as even the Saturn V program was, and that is after decades of technological advancement. The current math is that SpaceX does everything three times as fast at a tenth the cost of NASA; this is not a contentious view. Both ULA and Blue Origin are faster and cheaper than NASA too.
>"Any evidence of that? Due to the Great Recession, the GOP's refusal to increase revenue (and aim to shrink government), and the current radical budget caps, many programs in many departments - even essential military programs - have had to be cut."
NASA's budget was not cut significantly, and the current program (SLS) is incredibly expensive. There is an argument for a single launch vehicle being less expensive to develop and maintain than two, but this is somewhat counter-veiled by only having to man-rate a medium-lift vehicle, and not having to start again (almost from scratch).
All large institutions suffer criticism from people who say it could be done better, but I'd like to read something absent hyperbole. SpaceX and the other new players can't reliably reach low orbit yet, so while I hope they work out, they aren't good example of alternatives for flying to the Moon and Mars.
That's useful to know. I still think there's a lot of uncertainty which can't be cleared up easily; it's difficult to know what's really going on inside such negotiations:
All parties to the budget negotiations have an idea what the limits are. If party A believes that party B's bottom line is $X, party A will adjust their proposals accordingly. Also, what we see is just a glimpse into the process; party C might want to cancel a project and strike a deal with party D, and then the proposal announced by D includes that deal. Also, we don't know if NASA's budget would have been without the budget cuts; maybe this project would have been included.
I worked with NASA for a few years. It made me a cynic about a lot of things. You have some people there who are brilliant and very excited about space. You also have people there who are completely incompetent but will be able to retire in their position in 30 years as long as they don't commit a HR violation.
NIH is a serious problem in all of the NASA centers.
> You have some people there who are brilliant and very excited about space. You also have people there who are completely incompetent but will be able to retire in their position in 30 years as long as they don't commit a HR violation.
That's true of all large institutions; how is NASA different? Is it worse that other large institutions? Nobody can hire and motivate brilliant, excited people on that scale.
> That's true of all large institutions; how is NASA different? Is it worse that other large institutions? Nobody can hire and motivate brilliant, excited people on that scale.
I agree, it is difficult. But I'd say it is different than at big companies because there it seems more likely for them to eventually cut loose chronic under-performers.
Another issue they run is if there is a budget cut, NASA won't buy as many spacecraft, but they also don't let people go. So some missions will have way more personnel than needed. This can easily lead to a cost/schedule overruns by the contractors, because now the contractor is getting swarmed by requests from the extra NASA people. I've been in meetings where it is a 10:1 ratio of NASA versus contractor. A meeting that should take an hour takes a day because so many people want to get a word in.
Let's fix education, healthcare, banking, infrastructure, inefficient military, "warrior" policing, and prisons first. Then, if money is left over, we can go to Mars or just subsidize American's vacation trips to interesting places on this planet. :)
Granted, NASA is slowly turning into a regulatory agency compared to being purely technical, so we can't use the rate of technical advancements in the past to predict the future. However, I think NASA is one of the handful of federal agencies where I stand to see tangible benefits from my tax dollars.
I know about them. I just prefer the next initiative dealing with major problems with long-term ROI for the country. They can never seem to put money and effort into those things but they can go to Mars. (Rolls eyes)
Did I say so? Or did I say they should spend more money on things that should have higher priority? Obviously, good people and planning should go with it...
Even if Mars worked, it would be terrible for the Earth because it would give the first real nuclear asylum. Should leaders be able to live somewhere completely free of the threat of destruction, who knows what they'd do.
Should it work, it can greatly hurt the human race; should it fail, it was a waste of money. I don't understand why people would be happy about this?
I thought it was a joke, suggesting that everyone is so caught up with the presidential election, they may have forgotten who the current one is. I thought it was pretty funny. :P
218 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadThe GAOs latest report suggested it would miss its 2018 first test launch due to technical challenges (software-related):
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-620
http://www.nasa.gov/nextstep
SLS delenda est.
Twenty billion dollars to develop and demonstrate a reusable mass-driver system for deployment unmanned cargo to orbit? In the big scheme of things it's a drop in the bucket. But it would make a ton of other things much, much cheaper.
The only problem is that it doesn't sound as sexy as a "vision" of space exploration decades from now.
Previous to this comment he's shown zero interest in space or space exploration - can't stand the guy.
And with little sticking, IMO. At least in the positive sense.
Of the words that history may eventually use to describe the guy, "leadership" will likely not be one of them.
A large amount of the crisis in the ME today is actually because fracking has driven down the price of oil so much.
[0] http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26352
I get the impression from the wiki article that, so far, these are well-studied but rejected theories re: sources of petro and gas on earth. It's unclear to me, though, whether that's because of essential reasons that would apply to other systems, or just a historical happenstance specific to earth.
It's a good bet that any politician meaning business about this will award numerous private contracts as part of the initiative. SpaceX intends to make manned exploration of Mars a lot cheaper than NASA has ever suggested possible, and cost is the main factor.
It seems like if there are only two entities trying to go to Mars, and they work together through a contracting relationship, then it makes sense to mention the relation to the other one.
Otherwise I'm just left confused about the two efforts.
We won't know the benefit of going to Mars until 100s of years after we do it.
It was Indigenous People Day yesterday in the US (aka Columbus Day), and it made me think what an interesting time it must have been to be alive at a time where there were widely mostly unexplored areas in the world, and how incredulous and shocked people must have felt when they found out of these unexplored lands (putting aside the fact that it had been explored and lived by other cultures they did not know of).
Then I realized I do live in a time like that, with space exploration being that next frontier. What a time to be alive. I can't wait to be in absolute disbelieve of all the worldful discoveries that will be made when we expand space exploration further.
2- I'm not so anthropocentric as to think that the only value in the universe is human value. It's not our universe; we're an infinitesimal fraction of it. Other life has inhabited earth for billions of years, and maybe other places too. The terrestrial or extraterrestrial environments have value for existing and future life, regardless of whether that is human life. And most of life isn't human, and won't be in the future either.
Also, I think there are only finitely many eventually observable planets in the universe?
Beauty is really subjective.
Even then it would have extremely struggled to handle 30+ million new cases of Small Pox, TB, Bubonic Plague, etc.
Luckily as far as modern technology can show we're extremely certain Mars has no life we'll accidentally genocide while exploring/terraforming.
Indians had no trouble crisscrossing America.
Well yeah there weren't any human infectious illness where... there aren't any humans.
This video explains the history of man kind's infectious illness very well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
A single smallpox laden explorer would have started a plague in the Americas and a single native American would likely have died of one of the many plagues in Europe that Europeans had grown up with (and still often died from).
The problem of safety is not always placed on the explorer, sometimes the explorer is the danger to his environment.
If there is intelligent life (or, any life as we define it generally), there's a pretty high likelihood our arrival could damage it, especially if we don't discover it until after arrival. (And "really especially" if we go the terraforming route)
You've got to be kidding. What "wonderful discoveries" do you think there's going to be out there?
There might really be alien civilizations and worlds with lush vegetation out there somewhere, but for the foreseeable future, we're going to be limited to our own Solar System. The worlds here are not unknowns: we've been observing and probing them for many years now, and we know pretty well what's on them.
There's all kinds of interesting things on these worlds, from a scientific perspective: gas/ice giants, oceans of methane on Titan, a weird hexagonal pattern in Saturn's atmosphere, ice mountains on Pluto/Charon, etc. But we're finding all this out just fine using robotic probes. I'm sure we'll find out more, and refine our knowledge further, with continued robotic missions.
But if you're thinking that there's any good reason for humans to fly around the solar system and live on other worlds here, there just isn't any good case for it: none of the other habitats are remotely livable (the closest is the upper atmosphere of Venus of all places, if you really like the idea of living in a dirigible), and so the only real economic case to be made is mining. Most likely, we'd get a lot more mineral resources out of asteroids rather than planets or moons.
But this isn't like Star Trek with all kinds of fantastical worlds out there to discover, plus alien cultures to make contact with. They might be out there, way out there, but we're still struggling with the idea of how to travel to our very nearest neighboring star system (Alpha Centauri), which is about 4 light-years away. Maybe this will all change if Zephram Cochrane invents the warp drive, but for now, there just isn't much reason for humans to do anything more than basic science missions in space, and hopefully asteroid-mining missions in the near future. We're not going to make any huge new discoveries any time soon, just more thing like "ooh, look at these weird ice mountains on this dwarf planet!". That's really interesting, don't get me wrong, and a great reason to send a robotic probe, but it's not like we're going to discover anything truly groundbreaking here in our own system. According to all our data, all the other worlds here are lifeless rocks or frozen wastelands or gas giants. This isn't such a great "time to be alive"; that time was back in the 60s-70s when they were first discovering stuff in space with the Apollo missions and various probes like Voyager, Mariner, etc. (and maybe in the 2000s when all the pictures from the Mars rovers started coming in; but how many pictures of red rocks on a red sky do you need to see before you realize there's nothing more to Mars than that?).
It just isn't like the days when "the New World" was discovered, and Europeans were able to learn of and bring back fantastic new foods like cocoa/chocolate, maize/corn, learn about new cultures and brutalize them and steal their gold, etc. It's much more like exploring Antartica: it's a very interesting place for scientists, and absolutely worthwhile to do science missions on, but for everyone else the only possible reason you'd go there is as a tourist for a very short time because it's uninhabitable (though far more easily inhabited than Mars; at least there's breathable air there, and plenty of water just lying on the ground, there's even penguins and fish if you get hungry).
The only reason to go there is hubris.
But otherwise, I agree, we already know tons about Mars.
Historically, when we can do something much faster we tend to do things with that we didn't do when it was very slow. For example when it took months to cross the country, it was a once in a lifetime thing for some and most never did it. Now we do it all the time, and generations of West Coast students have seen the Smithsonian.
I think that there will be more value in sending humans to Mars than just hubris. I think we will learn a lot more about our cosmic origins, about the value of life and our healthy planet, and about ourselves as a species and culture. In fact, I think sending man to Mars is a key factor in getting us to appreciate this planet and the destruction we're causing here. I don't think Musk's end goal is to leave Earth, but to save it by making us value it again. Perhaps, on this scale, for the first time.
To me, that's a lot more than just hubris. What do you think of all that?
Did we learn significantly more "about our cosmic origins, about the value of life and our healthy planet, and about ourselves as a species and culture" from our manned exploration of the Moon, than we could have from probes?
AFAIK the primary things we learned were encapsulated by the 10 items NASA listed [1]. Which is great for the moon, but doesn't really give us much to work with here.
[1]https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/lunar10.cfm
For example, we learned that it is possible for humans to design a system that can carry people to the moon and return them safely to the Earth. Before we did that, no one knew if that was true.
We learned about the Overview Effect, which astronauts say changed their view on humanity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
Some people say that the environmental protection movement was started on Earth after people saw what it looked like from a distance. And while those images could be captured by robotic cameras, I can easily imagine that it helped having actual live humans get to experience that and share what they felt. We can relate to people much more than we can relate to a robot.
I don't expect you to agree with me. But I think it is significant for actual humans to go out and do these things. It is more inspiring to people here on Earth. And I think that inspiration is valuable and produced tangible benefits on Earth.
Agree, that inspiration is important. However I seriously doubt that manned space exploration has the ability to impact humanity in the same way, and in as quick of a timeline that AGI and Transhumanism do - which is where I'd rather see people find inspiration.
As far as transhumanism - that's a philosophy. Where will tomorrow's practitioners come from? The people inspired by man's achievements. And in that regard, I think the more great things we can do the better.
I think there will be many future transhumanists inspired by images of the colony on Mars.
Also, going there is relatively cheap, so why not go? It looks like it will be mostly private funds. I wouldn't blame you if you were opposed to the use of public funds for this (as the original post suggests may happen), but are you opposed to humans going in general?
For a transhumanist, I find opposition to space exploration a bit surprising.
Also, what are your thoughts on manned expeditions to the Jupiter system, the clouds of Venus, or other stars? I understand other stars requires technology far beyond what we can imagine today, but so did manned flight 150 years ago.
True, but there are tangible aspects to it that don't require you to be onboard with the philosophy. Brain computer interfaces, mechanical assistance etc... have plenty of uses that don't require the philosophical aspect, like helping paraplegics and the elderly.
Also, going there is relatively cheap, so why not go?
It's not relatively cheap. What do we do after we get to Mars? Go to Jupiter, venus etc? Ok great, now you need to build systems with life support capabilities that allow you to not age out on the way - so add that to the cost? What's the long term goal here? If the goal is to just drive around the universe then the human animal is one of the worst systems to do that as the life support needed is excessive.
If you look at the current state of funding for AGI or Genetics, Robotics and Nanotechnology (GNR) then it's basically nothing in comparison to what we have or are planning on spending on space. Despite what people say it is a fixed pie (on the timeline for any human use of outcomes) both on the private and public side in any practical timeline. So funding for space practically does crowd-out funding for AGI and GNR.
I'm all for space exploration, but not right now with squishy humans.
The "problems" that the space exploration people claim to be solving around humanity will not actually yield results if all we're doing is taking our problems elsewhere - because our problems are baked into our biology. Climate change, resource allocation etc... are all human problems. Man made existential risks are just moved, not eliminated by being a "multi-planetary" species. I also argue that natural existential risks are not solved, just again moved - at crazy high costs. An ELE on Mars is just as likely as it is here on earth, only we have fallback systems and can at least breathe here without energy inputs. The earth is still more habitable after an ELE asteroid than it is on Mars today.
Humans were made on earth for the earth environment. We need to actually change "form" if we are going to explore the universe in any meaningful way - if nothing else because of the time involved in transport.
Further, you can send a 50+ ton's worth of rovers instead of 1 person who needs to spend most of their time inside and wast all this time sleeping and eating etc.
PS: At best a human can take pictures while holding a camera 'just like a robot'. Notice how you need to send a camera in both cases.
Calm yourself. It's a statement that is clearly from the perspective of Europeans. And it was an accomplishment worthy of remembrance since it required a combination of a certain level of technological advancement and courage. It is also a huge milestone in the history of mankind.
There is evidence that Polynesians made it to the "new world" long before Europeans (http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/storie...). And even in the case of Europenas, they were able to do it with the technology invented in 10th/11th centuries e.g. Leif Erickson's voyage. It was just that the political and economic climes were not optimal for them to sail West until centuries later.
The notion of the progress and advancement inherent to Europeans as "discovers" is propaganda. We celebrate it because they killed most of the people who were there first and got claim it all for themselves.
You can dismiss every major historical event with this kind of reasoning. Everything is, at some level, based on luck and timing.
Bottom line, unlike the voyages of Polynesians and Vikings, the discovery of the Americas was an incredibly important historical event and is a foundation of the current global order.
>The notion of the progress and advancement inherent to Europeans as "discovers" is propaganda.
No, it isn't. Europeans were, objectively, far more technologically advanced than natives of the Americas.
You keep getting hung up on the word 'discover'. Why? From the perspective of Europeans, it was a discovery. They found a landmass that they didn't know existed. We just recently 'discovered' gravitational waves, even though those specific ones were/are emitted for eons.
>We celebrate it because they killed most of the people
Don't be dense. That's not why we celebrate it - and you know it.
The Europeans didn't kill most of the inhabitants. The vast vast majority of natives died due to Old-World diseases, not through war or murder. Second, Europeans were not a monolithic group and colonization was not a singular event. It spanned centuries, involved many groups of people and took place on an immense landmass (the Americas). It also occurred during a transition from late medieval era to modern era. So your simplistic view of "(Europeans) killed most of the people who were there first and got claim it all for themselves" is simplistic and stupid.
Thanks, agreed. On the last part though, it doesn't hurt to explore, a lot can be learned in the process alone, outside of actually finding anything.
People will probably pay a lot more than that for the first few thousand pounds of dust, but they certainly won't keep paying that just to have the same dust millions of others have. The vast resources of the Americas paid for the continuous trips back and forth and attracted settlers. What pays for going to Mars? What attracts (large numbers of) settlers to Mars?
I get that there are people attracted to the "freedom" they would have outside of the established political realms of Earth, but what a terrible airless bargain that is.
I.e the cost per kg of payload shipping from America to Europe in 17th Century vs the cost per kg of payload shipping from Mars to the Earth in 21st Century.
I suspect the Mars in current day is much greater, but ships and crew back then were not cheap.
To look at the human transportation side: This account (http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/passage.htm) by a German who traveled to the new world in the 1750s is harrowing enough, but the way the cost of passage is paid is horrifying, even heartbreaking: He writes of indentured servitude in the same language one would describe slavery (servants are "sold") and often parents would sell their children in the new world to pay for the voyage, not seeing them again for years, if ever.
We could try to bring this into modern terms by multiplying the US federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr * 40 hrs * 52 weeks) by the median indentured servitude (four years) and get $60,320 to take a human across the Atlantic in 1750, but might be painting an apple orange. Still, it gives us at least a very, very rough idea of what a trip to the new world cost then, and a good sense of just how vastly more expensive passage to Mars would cost in the foreseeable future.
We already go to great extents to get vibration free silicon fabs. These buildings cost billions of dollars, and need amongst other things a very very good acoustic environment (which you get almost free on mars), and good environmental controls (which you need anyways on mars). You aren't going to find a better place than mars. Further, on mars, you don't have to worry about natural disasters destroying your billions of dollars building.
Nobody moves their stuff underground or to the Arctics (or both), which are orders of magnitude cheaper than moving stuff to Mars.
Stuff like coconuts, tobacco, sweet corn, potatoes were unknown in the "old world", so the original explorers couldn't have known to look for them. Later on, it was also found that the new world contained significant silver, gold, oil, etc., even though that wasn't known at the time.
So working from historical precedent, there's good reason to expect that something unexpected would come out of it.
Of course there are active theories that coconuts may have migrated or been transported by swallows to Western Europe.
Also gold was known to be in the New World according to Columbus on his initial voyage.
>The convenience of the harbors in this island, and the excellence of the rivers, in volume and salubrity, surpass human belief, unless on should see them. In it the trees, pasture-lands and fruits different much from those of Juana. Besides, this Hispana abounds in various kinds of species, gold and metals. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/exploration/res...
Re: gold, sure, but they didn't have any inkling about Sutter's Mill, etc. It clearly existed in some amounts, but they had no idea they'd find vast untapped veins.
I don't know what the analogous economic engine could possible be on Mars. If Mars is going to grow, we need to be able to imagine someone saying "I'm moving my family to Mars in search of a better life. I just don't see that happening. Series or L2 station? Sure, someone has to refine the iridium before we send it down the gravity well. But why would an entrepreneur want to set up shop on Mars?
But it did! There were very basic, underfunded French colonies in North America for example for at least a hundred years before they really sent a lot more people and realized the wealth that could be had. At the same time the colonizing countries also had great internal issues, but had they known how much profit could've been made from investment, undoubtedly they would've been colonizing in full force much earlier.
? New environment, new markets, new needs = lots of new and potentially huge opportunities. I'm asking myself the complete opposite question.
I'm in favor of human off-world activities, but I think it's a joke to make some kind of free-market argument. We should do it because we should do it, not because of invisible hands.
Go for the knowledge, but as far as ordinary human things are concerned there is no reason to go.
Until you can make an economic case for settling the poles you won't be able to make one for Mars - and the poles are LOT easier to live on BTW.
We have a base on the poles for the same reason we'll have one on Mars.
That is legal in Antartica. It's just really expensive and there aren't a lot of people who want to do it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-17/white-dese...
I don't think you need to make martian mining illegal to discourage the industry. At $500 a lb, no raw materials will be coming to earth from Mars and time soon.
Where do you get that? Tourism is back near pre-bust 40,000, mostly American, a year. The expensive hotel is fully booked 2 of its 4 weeks. With near 40 treaty countries almost no binding changes are agreed, and regular plans to limit numbers remain just that.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30709924 https://www.yahoo.com/news/antarctica-concerns-grow-tourism-... (2013)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_Antarctica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Antarctic_Territory
One could also look at the interior of Greenland, which is Danish territory. No serious development of any kind occurs there - it's all along the coasts.
The treaty sets aside territorial claims whilst it's in force. All the claims for all countries are still there, just neutered.
What can be 3d printed on the moon (from plans made on earth) and lifted to a useful place above LEO?
Lack of regulation?
The only way this would make sense is if one's objection to regulations was purely ideological and not grounded in any sort of reality-based cost-benefit analyses. Setting up shop in a failed state is far easier than setting up shop on Mars, and that will remain true for the foreseeable future (and probably forever, or until no failed states exist).
Brand new market, which means no competitors and high demand for everything. Kind of like how everything was way overpriced in Clondyke during the gold rush.
The hard part would be missing the fresh air, green fields and blue skies of home. But, if there's an eco-catastrophe on Earth, there may be nothing to go home to.
I guess if you could produce materials on mars it would be much easier to build and deploy gigant structures into space (lower gravity and escape velocity)
Mining is something that is always mentioned in scifi, but I am not sure how profitable it would be, I guess if propellant can be mined on mars it would be pretty doable.
Performing activities that would be environmental risks on earth would be relatively low risk on mars, due to the fact that it is already a wasteland.
Tourism would be a thing as well which would require many trades of comfort
Given the cost per ticket (how many young people have a few spare $100k lying around?), the considerable risk of unscheduled rapid decommissioning and the guaranteed high level of radiation exposure (worse for longer expected remaining lifetime) I would look for older (50+) people without dependents.
If you have enough money you could buy your own space island and stay there.
Albert Einstein used thought experiments about trains and elevators to came up with general relativity and how we view gravity. We wouldn't have accurate GPS if it wasn't for him.
It isn't possible for us to imagine what people will discover after being inspired by that journey to Mars.
Remember the Venn diagram that Elon showed? Spacex is going to lower the cost of going to Mars so that billionaires can afford to go. Then lower the cost so millionaires can afford to go. Continue lower the cost until more people can afford to go. Eventually, more people can afford to go to Mars and return safely to Earth.
Why would you go to Mars? Because its there. And because I can.
Space research industry.
With all these people going to Mars there will be demand for new and advanced technology.
And there's probably more industry that will sprout that we cannot foresee now. Its a whole new frontier out there.
How so? For who?
But can you explain why this is a valid equivalence? On the surface, sure, but exploration-for-it's-own-sake isn't a good enough reason. Also, some would argue that the disadvantages (e.g. disruption of local cultures, ambiguity of meaning in modern life) have outweighed the advantages.
We'll start to know some of the benefit of getting there almost immediately. We'll know the benefit of Mars itself only decades or centuries later.
> but exploration-for-it's-own-sake isn't a good enough reason
Yes, it IS. Really.
In choosing to do something difficult we focus on something that will need answers to questions we don't even know to ask yet. Some will produce answers that seem so specialised to have no reuse.
Give it 5 years and some will be commercial successes. Others will lead to new ideas, branches of science, tech or products, and a steady stream of improvements to earthly things. Some will only be utilised years later, or ignored.
Just as exploring the ocean's surface made it clear we needed marine chronometers (a life's work) and an understanding of scurvy. Those would take years to answer. Scurvy led to the first clinical trial, that the Navy ignored for 40 years. Or from the golden age of aircraft: SR-71[1], Concorde, XB-70 Valkyrie[1]. Just 3 examples, of dozens, each of which led to enough advances to fill a book. Two military, one prestige. Doesn't matter that the B-52 is still flying and the XB-70 was a dead end, we learnt lots of stuff, and it almost gave the US their own SST (Concorde). Aviation is mostly drilled out now.
I'm a big believer in prestige projects - whether they work or not. Governments don't like that sort of thing any more. So unless other rich cashed out founders want to take the place of government and give us magic thing of the future...
We're left with exploration and major wars (cold or hot) to hurl technology forward. With current mil tech I'd rather not have major wars, so, exploration it must be. Oh, why haven't we properly explored under the seas yet?
Or, for a longer and far more eloquent version of this, see http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html written in 1970 by NASA Director of Science.
Mars, Tesla, Solar, Hyperloop. That's a lot on Mr Musk. I hope he crosses roads carefully. We need a few more crazy engineering imaginations.
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[1] If anyone is interested in aircraft, and can get to Dayton, Ohio, go to the USAF museum - they have the only Valkyrie, many of the X planes, a Blackbird and a huge inventory. Decent space and missile area too.
Except that explorers in the 1500-1700s didn't have unmanned ships or remote sensing capabilities, and manned travel was their one and only option for exploration. We've come a long way since then.
Not for the people already living on those continents it wasn't. For them, it was a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.
>We won't know the benefit of going to Mars until 100s of years after we do it.
This is speculation, and if you're implying that explorers to the Americas didn't foresee the benefits, you're completely and factually wrong. They might not have predicted, for instance, the discovery of cocoa/chocolate, but they did think there was gold there (and there was; the Spanish brought back huge quantities of it), plus many other resources like furs, plus the ability to grow many crops there like tobacco.
With Mars, we've already sent a bunch of probes there and learned a lot about it. It's not some big unknown land any more. And there simply isn't any good reason for people to go there except for basic science. You sure as hell can't grow stuff there (and even if you could, getting it back to Earth would cost a fortune; we're not really short on arable land here on Earth, and we're constantly developing ways of more efficiently using what we have, with the next big thing being vertical farming): there's little atmosphere, little water, and it's cold and too far from the Sun. The lack of a magnetosphere and too much radiation probably isn't going to be all that great for your crops either (not to mention any inhabitants). The only foreseeable thing that could be done there is mining. But we don't need to go to Mars to get minerals; we have asteroids passing close to the Earth all the time which could be mined, and have very valuable ores in them. It's also possible to mine on the Moon, which probably has mineral resources thanks to all the asteroid impacts and lack of geological activity. Both of these are far closer and more feasible than Mars.
I'm sorry, but "build it and they will come" isn't a law of the universe, it's a line from a silly movie.
The shuttle could down mass a lot of stuff. Look at the long duration exposure facility, a bus-sized satellite filled with materials experiments. We have rockets to take that to orbit now, we don't have something that could bring it down. It's arguably the ISS, in its current configuration, would have been possible, and Hubble would have probably been abandoned 20 years ago without the shuttle.
The shuttle had problems, but its greatest strength was a gigantic space bus, built to take big satellites up and down. In fact, one of the biggest missed opportunities coming from the SpaceX camp I'm seeing is a lack of science and payload applications for the BFR/ITS. Example: the James Webb space telescope will be launching soon. It's a 6.5 meter telescope with weird folding mirrors because of the limitations of the launch vehicle. The ITS has a seventeen meter payload. Put a big fairing and a transfer stage on the ITS, and you can deliver gigantic payloads to orbit like we've never seen. Want a radio telescope at Earth-Moon L2? ITS can do that, but no one has even suggested it so far.
Its liftoff mass was 2/3 of the moon-bound Saturn V stack!
Make no mistake, I will hold deep, deep nostalgia for the Space Shuttle, but its failings were largely driven by 'irrelevant' military size and lift requirements. At the same time, I also understand that much of the money for the whole space-race, including the shuttle, effectively existed because of various military/'defense' priorities.
Sometime around the time the shuttle went live, the military discovered CCD or similar cameras and encryption.
The "Keyhole" satellites used to parachute down film canisters, which would be scooped up by a plane while descending on the chute - caught in-flight to avoid capture by other nations.
As far as military spending: im all for national defense. But obviously if you use your imagination, there must be some upper bound at which increases in military spending have a diminishing return. I think we are above that imagined line, and you think we are below it. But we both agree that a functional military is a valuable asset.
Also, I actually think military spending is a kind of socialism gone very wrong, where wealthy military contractors donate to politicians who then give them big contracts with public funds. Do you want your tax dollars going to corruption? I don't.
And do we NEED 11 aircraft carriers? No other nation on earth has more than 2. We have 11. Maybe we're overspending?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)
Obama increased the military budget during his administration by over $800 Billion compared to his predecessor. [1]
If you're going to make a partisan "thanks, Obama" comment, at least pick something that is supported by facts.
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...
http://www.cfr.org/defense-budget/trends-us-military-spendin...
In other words, collaboration may indeed the fastest path if all goes well, but multiple independent efforts may be safer, with a higher probability of success.
Independent approaches also allow for slightly different techniques and technological approaches to the problem, which may have additional unknown benefits later on.
Asteroids, since I assume they move and possibly in odd orbits might be difficult to reach in emergency situations, I'd rather not see any nation's Astronauts stranded on a remote asteroid.
The problem I would see is finding a big enough NEO asteroid, that you actually can stand on instead of floating by its side, or having to worry about reaching escape velocity if you jump strongly enough.
If one's willing to go to any asteroid, not just NEO, then Ceres could be a possibility. A quick search says the delta-v required to reach it from LEO is about half that to reach Mars' surface.
I suppose it would be helpful to build some kind of centrifuge in any base to simulate gravity, as well.
Mars does have a reasonable atmosphere (albeit not breathable, it's mostly CO2), and therefore does have some hope to be terraformed to earth-like levels. We will probably have to use closed systems (greenhouses with water recycling) until we heat the planet up a bit and get it back to the state it was when it had running water and precipitation.
One section states "a United States citizen engaged in commercial recovery of an asteroid resource or a space resource under this chapter shall be entitled to any asteroid resource or space resource obtained, including to possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resource obtained in accordance with applicable law, including the international obligations of the United States."
Section 403, meanwhile, confirms that "it is the sense of Congress that by the enactment of this Act, the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty or sov- ereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body."
[1] https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ90/PLAW-114publ90.pdf See Title IV Space Resource Exploration and Utilization
>> More than 1,000 companies across nearly all 50 states are working on private space initiatives.
These are my takeaways - the reason we do the hard things is because of a child like sense of wonder.
And the reason we will succeed is because 1,000 companies is a lot. And I bet I am not the only HN'er wanting to be one of the next ones, to buy into the dream.
Just take lots of tomato ketchup in case.
"[God is] change we can believe in."
It was in fact part of his original campaign platform in 2008 to cut funding to Nasa to pay for a national day care program. The day care never really got off the ground, but he did succeed in cutting Nasa's budget, forcing a lot of projects to shut down.
I'm glad to hear he's had a change of heart about space, though it sounds as though he's counting on the private sector to do a lot of the work. And, of course, it means diddlysquat given that he's retiring in three months.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program
As a contrast, in my field (computational science) Obama signed an executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/29/execu...) to enable the rapid development of exascale (next generation) supercomputers.
Funding is arguably even more critical for space exploration, and without substantial action on this front I am skeptical this is going to have meaningful impact.
Our second goal is to develop and test a new spacecraft, the crew exploration vehicle, by 2008, and to conduct the first manned mission no later than 2014.
[1]http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/54868main_bush_trans.pdf
Where are you getting the trillion dollars figure?[1] Even the 90-day report came out at less than that.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_for_Space_Exploration#/...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative
I feel pretty tall from this horse. Even the horse is feeling pretty aristocratic about the whole affair.
Who else would have a couch with an entire other couch bolted to the back of it? At only 15x the cost of one normal couch, too.
I would then finish by galloping (bearing the cheque) into the sunset on an empty road, and at the top of a mighty hill I would yank the reins and the horse would paw the air with its front hooves as I wave the cheque in triumph.
This is a narrative I've heard, but is there anything to back it up? NASA has operations on multiple planets and now outside the Solar System. They seem to develop multiple major, pioneering projects, from space telescopes to probes of other planets to earth observatories to Martian rovers, all at the same time. I'm impressed.
Sure, they don't move with the agility of a startup, but any SV company would be ecstatic to have that portfolio of operations and development. These aren't self-driving cars.
> President Obama cancelled it, because he had little incentive to keep spending money on his predecessor's legacy
Any evidence of that? Due to the Great Recession, the GOP's refusal to increase revenue (and their work to shrink government), and the current radical budget caps, many programs in many departments - even essential military programs - have had to be cut.
SLS will end up taking more than 3 times as long and be many times as expensive as even the Saturn V program was, and that is after decades of technological advancement. The current math is that SpaceX does everything three times as fast at a tenth the cost of NASA; this is not a contentious view. Both ULA and Blue Origin are faster and cheaper than NASA too.
>"Any evidence of that? Due to the Great Recession, the GOP's refusal to increase revenue (and aim to shrink government), and the current radical budget caps, many programs in many departments - even essential military programs - have had to be cut."
NASA's budget was not cut significantly, and the current program (SLS) is incredibly expensive. There is an argument for a single launch vehicle being less expensive to develop and maintain than two, but this is somewhat counter-veiled by only having to man-rate a medium-lift vehicle, and not having to start again (almost from scratch).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa-budget-const...
The plan to cancel it actually included an increase in NASA's budget, so it was not about general budget cuts.
All parties to the budget negotiations have an idea what the limits are. If party A believes that party B's bottom line is $X, party A will adjust their proposals accordingly. Also, what we see is just a glimpse into the process; party C might want to cancel a project and strike a deal with party D, and then the proposal announced by D includes that deal. Also, we don't know if NASA's budget would have been without the budget cuts; maybe this project would have been included.
NIH is a serious problem in all of the NASA centers.
> You have some people there who are brilliant and very excited about space. You also have people there who are completely incompetent but will be able to retire in their position in 30 years as long as they don't commit a HR violation.
That's true of all large institutions; how is NASA different? Is it worse that other large institutions? Nobody can hire and motivate brilliant, excited people on that scale.
I agree, it is difficult. But I'd say it is different than at big companies because there it seems more likely for them to eventually cut loose chronic under-performers.
Another issue they run is if there is a budget cut, NASA won't buy as many spacecraft, but they also don't let people go. So some missions will have way more personnel than needed. This can easily lead to a cost/schedule overruns by the contractors, because now the contractor is getting swarmed by requests from the extra NASA people. I've been in meetings where it is a 10:1 ratio of NASA versus contractor. A meeting that should take an hour takes a day because so many people want to get a word in.
Granted, NASA is slowly turning into a regulatory agency compared to being purely technical, so we can't use the rate of technical advancements in the past to predict the future. However, I think NASA is one of the handful of federal agencies where I stand to see tangible benefits from my tax dollars.
And it would be good for earth at the same time for the same reasons. I would consider it a good thing because of redundancy of life and humanity.
> Who knows what they'd do
Probably not something that they haven't already planned. Just look at Iraq, Libya and Syria and see what the US have done to those places.
> Should it work, it can greatly hurt the human race
But it could also open up a whole new world of adventure, exploration, innovation and conquest - something many humans still strive for.
Do you think the only thing stopping leaders from killing billions is the fact they might also die or be otherwise affected?
Thanks
Like how Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers and rocket scientists, his book is inspiring another generation to go even further.