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Human Exploration of Mars



 
 
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  #11  
Old December 2nd 03, 10:18 PM
Eric Chomko
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

Christopher ) wrote:
: On 1 Dec 2003 08:07:53 -0800, (Abdul Ahad)
: wrote:

:
: That should comfort American's who are worried their jobs may go to
: China that their tax dollars are paying to go to Mars.
:
:
:
: Christopher
: +++++++++++++++++++++++++
: "Kites rise highest against
: the wind - not with it."
: Winston Churchill
:
: There are very few voices out there advocating manned Mars missions,
: so I reckon the Planetary Society deserves some credit for the
: important effort that it makes on behalf of its 100,000+ members who
: represent the world's largest private spaceflight interest
: enthusiasts.

: Free enterprise has powered human endevour through the ages, it's
: about time the 'Planetary Society' displayed some American
: capitalistic drive to reach it's goal.

Getting donations isn't capitalistic?

: Let's face it, without societies like the Mars Society and Planetary
: Society keeping pressure on congress for decent future goals like
: Mars, I think the US space program will continue drifting aimlessly
: for a great many more years to come.

: The US space program needs to reinvent itself and not just provide
: employment to 20,000 pen pushers, and rely a $14 billion umbilical
: cord full of public money.

What do you propose? Do you question the $400+ billion that goes to the
DOD? Quite a small is the $15 billion that NASA gets as compared to what
the DOD gets. Does the war machine to actually be THAT big?

: My generation was too young to see men on the Moon and it will be nice
: to see people on Mars, soon. Dreams!

: So build you're own spacecraft and go to Mars as a private mission
: then.

Who would regulate that he built it in such a manner as to be safe for
all?

You free enterprise of space folks need a new schtick. If NASA got just 3%
of the DOD budget (talk about a waste of US taxpayer funds), they could do
a heck of a lot more.

Eric

: Christopher
: +++++++++++++++++++++++++
: "Kites rise highest against
: the wind - not with it."
: Winston Churchill
  #12  
Old December 2nd 03, 10:21 PM
Eric Chomko
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

John Ordover ) wrote:
: Free enterprise has powered human endevour through the ages, it's
: about time the 'Planetary Society' displayed some American
: capitalistic drive to reach it's goal.

: Capitalism has looked at space and can't find the money stream -
: because there isn't one.

Columbus didn't find any spices in the Caribean either. Should he have not
made the voyage?

Eric
  #13  
Old December 2nd 03, 10:22 PM
Eric Chomko
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

Doug Ellison ) wrote:

: That should comfort American's who are worried their jobs may go to
: China that their tax dollars are paying to go to Mars.

: Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by
: paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs

Not to mention the byproducts like velcro, teflon, solar batteries,
calculators, computers, etc.

Eric

: Doug


  #14  
Old December 3rd 03, 12:56 AM
Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)
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Default Human Exploration of Mars


"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
...
Doug Ellison ) wrote:

: That should comfort American's who are worried their jobs may go to
: China that their tax dollars are paying to go to Mars.

: Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the

country by
: paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum)

jobs

Not to mention the byproducts like velcro, teflon, solar batteries,
calculators, computers, etc.


Again, you show your ignorance. All of those predate the space program in
one way or another.



Eric

: Doug




  #15  
Old December 3rd 03, 02:03 AM
Terrell Miller
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Terrell Miller wrote:
okay, my head is spinning here. Twenty years ago when I was a member, the

PS
(or more specifically, Carl Sagan) was hell-bent and determined to keep
humanity's dirty little bootprints off of the universe.
What's happened in the meantime...?


Chairman Carl had a new revelation, and decided that a joint US-Soviet
Mars mission was the way to reduce world tensions and save mankind from
itself (or at least, it was a step in the right direction). So now the
Planetary Society was officially in favor of manned Mars exploration,
except that it *had* to be a US-Soviet joint effort -- no other approaches
need apply.


Ah. That figures g

A few of the keep-space-for-robots folks left in disgust, but most of the
faithful stayed.

And that official goal in turn has mutated gradually, as mankind turned
out not to need saving (this time, anyway), and as the "joint effort" part
has stopped looking like such a great idea.


One of the starkest days in my entire life was the day I finally realized
that Carl Sagan had absolutely no clue what the hell he was talking about on
most topics. Which was the day I saw the footage from teh Jupiter flyby and
here's Sagan on camera telling all these techies what they need to be doing.
Especially ironic since the lady he was standing next to at the time
happened to be the one who actually discovered the volcano, and whose name I
have totally forgotten.

I always thought the Drumlin part in the film version of Contact was
intended for Carl instead of Tom Skerritt

--
Terrell Miller


"Very often, a 'free' feedstock will still lead to a very expensive system.
One that is quite likely noncompetitive"
- Don Lancaster


  #16  
Old December 3rd 03, 02:31 AM
Paul F. Dietz
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

Doug Ellison wrote:

Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by
paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs


Hiring people to dig holes and fill them in again does the same thing.

What you are missing is that money is just a placeholder; the real wealth
is resources, products, and services. Employing these people to do
something of no value wastes their labor.

Paul

  #17  
Old December 3rd 03, 02:32 AM
Paul F. Dietz
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

Eric Chomko wrote:

: Any tax $ spent on the space program in essence comes back to the country by
: paying for thousands of engineering and aerospace (and management scum) jobs

Not to mention the byproducts like velcro, teflon, solar batteries,
calculators, computers, etc.


None of which were invented for the space program (PV cells probably come
closest). This doesn't prevent space fans from claiming everything from
sliced bread to fire is a NASA spinoff.

Paul

  #18  
Old December 3rd 03, 02:35 AM
Paul F. Dietz
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

Eric Chomko wrote:

Columbus didn't find any spices in the Caribean either. Should he have not
made the voyage?


Van Allen had the following to say (in 1986) about the Columbus analogy:

Fervent advocates of the view that it is mankind's manifest destiny to populate
space inflict a plethora of false analogies on anyone who contests this belief.
At the mere mention of the name of Christopher Columbus they expect the opposition
to wither and slink away. I find it possible to resist such an expectation. If
reference to Columbus is made in an offhand, thoughtless way, it is merely
incompetant; but if made with full knowledge of the facts, it is deceitful and
fraudulent.... [T]he surface of Mars has been studied comprehensively by
a succession of U.S. and Soviet spacecraft.... If a similar survey of America
had been available in the late 15th century, the mission of Columbus' fleet
to the West Indies would have been unequivocally desirable. But the application
of the Columbus analogy to support advocacy of a manned mission to Mars is
massively deceitful. Mars is not terra incognita. We have already explored it
and found it to be far more desolate and sterile than the heart of the Sahara
desert. There, of course, remain many matters of deep scientific interest on Mars
but these matters can be addressed ... by automated ... missions."


Paul

  #19  
Old December 3rd 03, 02:56 AM
Henry Spencer
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

In article ,
Terrell Miller wrote:
...Which was the day I saw the footage from teh Jupiter flyby and
here's Sagan on camera telling all these techies what they need to be doing.
Especially ironic since the lady he was standing next to at the time
happened to be the one who actually discovered the volcano, and whose name I
have totally forgotten.


Linda Morabito, if I recall correctly. Of course, she wasn't a scientist --
she was one of the navigators, measuring star images in relation to the
edges of the moons to improve navigation fixes -- and I'm sure there were
some red faces in the science team when she noticed what none of them had
bothered to look for...
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |
  #20  
Old December 3rd 03, 05:28 AM
Henry Spencer
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Default Human Exploration of Mars

In article ,
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Van Allen had the following to say (in 1986) about the Columbus analogy:
...
...There, of course, remain many matters of deep scientific interest on Mars
but these matters can be addressed ... by automated ... missions."


Translation: the scientific matters that James Van Allen cares about can
be addressed by automated missions.

Note that Van Allen is a "sky scientist", studying fields and particles in
space, with little interest in planetary surfaces. It shows.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |
 




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