In article ,
lid (John Savard) wrote:

In fact, the idea of going to Mars right now probably seems crazy to
many people right now

It does to me.

and so many feel that George W. Bush's plan for
space exploration will lead only to the cuts in other elements of the
space program, and not to any positive results.

That is a non sequitur. Bush's plan does not involve Mars. I watched
the speech live, then watched it again, read the transcripts, and read
O'Keefe's follow-up talk, and Mars is mentioned only in passing. It's
clearly just a bone thrown to the Mars fanatics. The plan is for
returning to the Moon (and even that, in a 10-15 year timeframe), and
establishing a more permanent presence there. "Mars and Beyond" is just
mentioned as something we might do after that.

It amazes me how common the misconception is that this is a plan for a
return to Mars. It is not. It's a plan for a return to the Moon.

Under what conditions would a manned mission to Mars not seem plain
silly?

Under the condition that we have a permanently staffed base on the Moon,
commercial interests are largely assuming infrastructure-building in
cislunar space, and NASA is looking for something further out (beyond
the reach of the space industry) to do next.

Thus, the *key* to creating the possibility of restoring the economic
boom times of the 1960s, on the basis of which a manned program of
space exploration would be a reasonable thing to do to celebrate
America's success, is *energy independence*.
...

I tend to agree that energy independence is vital to the long-term
health of our economy -- and perhaps the world enconomy too -- though I
don't see that this is closely tied to whether a Mars program makes
sense.

Aggressively pursue fusion power. And there's also the thorium breeder
as a reasonably long-term energy source likely much closer to being
made practical.

There's also SSP, which for a fraction of what we have already put into
fusion research, would be generating clean energy by now.

That would be a scientific research program that would
make sense to people in terms of their daily interests, their real
needs.

No, people in general have no understanding of the importance of energy
beyond the rolling blackouts (which mostly affect areas with a low voter
turnout, or so I've been told).

No, it wouldn't have made sense to wait to go to the Moon until all
Earth's social problems were solved, nor does it make sense to treat
Mars that way.

No, but it does make sense to finish what was started on the Moon before
running off for another flags-and-footprints mission to another planet.
The Moon is the key to the solar system; we should be developing that
aggressively and milking its mineral, energy, and volatile chemicals for
all it's worth in order to bootstrap ourselves into a spacefaring
nation. Visiting Mars doesn't do any of that, but it will be easy to do
anyway once cislunar space has been developed.

Fortunately, the makers of the Bush plan seemed to understand that, and
put their priorities in the correct order.

I despise Bush as a president, and will be voting for anyone but him,
but in the content of this particular plan happens to be right on.
(Something like an infinite monkey at a keyboard happening to type out
Hamlet, perhaps, but still...)

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