To stop the derailing of the other thread, let's continue this here:
Anyways, the first thing I'd like to point out is that you're not really against a Mars mission at all. Recently they released their plan for going to Mars, including cost estimates, and whether you take the low or high figure it can be done without increasing NASA's budget. So since your main beef with the idea is that you think it would take some large amount of extra money, well, it's really a moot point.
To give you an idea of the actual costs (because I see numbers like "trillions" thrown around which rather irks me), the estimate for a manned mission to Mars is between about 50 billion and 450 billion. And to further clear this up (because I saw someone on SA say, no joke, "since it's government spending it'll end up being 900 billion"), these estimates are for different types of missions. 50 billion is for the standard "Mars Direct" approach, which is really the most practical way to do it. 450 billion is the estimate for the crazy plan, the one with on-orbit construction of battleship-sized spacecraft, high-thrust nuclear thermal or electric propulsion, and teams of 30 people being sent to Mars per mission. I suppose it sounds cool but it would never happen because, well, it's too expensive. So let's take 50 billion as a reasonable estimate, and let's say "lol government funding" and even call it 100 billion. It sounds like a lot, but this cost will be spread out over at least 20 years. Not only is this easily do-able with NASA's current budget, it's really a drop in the bucket compared to total federal spending.
There's also the fact that the money is not wasted; the vast majority of it will go towards paying the salaries of the thousands of people who would be working on such a mission. So it goes right back into the economy.
Also I can't believe you tried to Godwin the thread. "The Third Reich made similar contributions to society."
Please tell me you weren't serious with comparing the space program to Nazi Germany.
Originally posted by Obi_Kwiet:
I didn't say our current space program was a bad idea, I said spend the astronomical amounts required to send people back to the moon or to mars was.
Also, the examples you gave were poor, because those inventions were incidental to, rather than directly resultant of the space program. Any of those things could have been much more cheaply developed on earth. Those are just inventions that also happened to be useful for things other than their intended purpose as part of the space program. The Third Reich made similar contributions to society. The real benefit of the space program, of course, are communication satellites, which are incredibly useful.
Why would you say that? The best use of funding (if we had any) would be toward science that had some sort of benefit from man kind. Science that is useful >>>>> science that cool. On some level any research will be helpful, but it's idiotic to say that we should do the least useful stuff first. We want to do the opposite.
Again, we don't have any money to spend in the first place, so the point is moot. We need to stop sweeping things under the rug until it all blows up, or the little problems we whine about now will be insignificant compared to the major problems we will have.
Also, the examples you gave were poor, because those inventions were incidental to, rather than directly resultant of the space program. Any of those things could have been much more cheaply developed on earth. Those are just inventions that also happened to be useful for things other than their intended purpose as part of the space program. The Third Reich made similar contributions to society. The real benefit of the space program, of course, are communication satellites, which are incredibly useful.
Why would you say that? The best use of funding (if we had any) would be toward science that had some sort of benefit from man kind. Science that is useful >>>>> science that cool. On some level any research will be helpful, but it's idiotic to say that we should do the least useful stuff first. We want to do the opposite.
Again, we don't have any money to spend in the first place, so the point is moot. We need to stop sweeping things under the rug until it all blows up, or the little problems we whine about now will be insignificant compared to the major problems we will have.
Anyways, the first thing I'd like to point out is that you're not really against a Mars mission at all. Recently they released their plan for going to Mars, including cost estimates, and whether you take the low or high figure it can be done without increasing NASA's budget. So since your main beef with the idea is that you think it would take some large amount of extra money, well, it's really a moot point.
To give you an idea of the actual costs (because I see numbers like "trillions" thrown around which rather irks me), the estimate for a manned mission to Mars is between about 50 billion and 450 billion. And to further clear this up (because I saw someone on SA say, no joke, "since it's government spending it'll end up being 900 billion"), these estimates are for different types of missions. 50 billion is for the standard "Mars Direct" approach, which is really the most practical way to do it. 450 billion is the estimate for the crazy plan, the one with on-orbit construction of battleship-sized spacecraft, high-thrust nuclear thermal or electric propulsion, and teams of 30 people being sent to Mars per mission. I suppose it sounds cool but it would never happen because, well, it's too expensive. So let's take 50 billion as a reasonable estimate, and let's say "lol government funding" and even call it 100 billion. It sounds like a lot, but this cost will be spread out over at least 20 years. Not only is this easily do-able with NASA's current budget, it's really a drop in the bucket compared to total federal spending.
There's also the fact that the money is not wasted; the vast majority of it will go towards paying the salaries of the thousands of people who would be working on such a mission. So it goes right back into the economy.
Also I can't believe you tried to Godwin the thread. "The Third Reich made similar contributions to society."
Please tell me you weren't serious with comparing the space program to Nazi Germany.
![[http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v308/Echoness101/carl-1.png]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v308/Echoness101/carl-1.png "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v308/Echoness101/carl-1.png")
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