Mars: Is the price tag really worth it?

Hey,
I've got the greatest deal in the Solar System. As long as the Tirbidium flows, I can do pretty much whatever I want. The only thing I worry about is that someday it might come to an end. AND YOU'RE FUCKING MAKING IT HAPPEN!"

--cough--

-ahem-

Nevermind.

Ever tit-fucked a three-breasted woman? Huh? Huh? oke:

I thought not.

Isn't the 3 tittied chick the goofy engineer chick that spills coffee all over Picard in that TNG episode Q Who?

Yes. The middle tit got in her way.

Yes it's worth it. In fact rovers sent to Mars, Venus, Mercury, Ceres, Titan, Europa, and Pluto would all be worth the cost.

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In particular take note of the little graph that appears at 3:35 in the video.

If you could point to the precise legislation that Clinton enacted that forced banks to lend to sub-prime borrowers, I'd appreciate it. Seriously.

From what I understand, there was a severe LACK OF REGULATION in the derivatives market that allowed banks to play hot potato with overvalued assets that brought about the current financial situation.


With regards to Mars, I'd imagine if there was a substantial enough profit for a private entity to explore space and specifically, Mars, there would be substantial privatization and competition to develop organically. To date, there's Virgin Galactic and Space X that I know of and they are currently only doing low Earth orbit type shit because that's all they can market. The second one of them charters a flight to the Moon and back, I'd mortgage my entire protfolio for a chance to just invest in such a venture to eventually make a trip myself, but no one has yet.

With that said, it really sucks that we've been reduced to a society that lives and dies by the balance sheet and quarterly earnings. God forbid that it takes more than a year to get a substantial return on your investment. Fuck CNN for that POS article. I have a good mind to register a bogus account just to tell them how I feel in "colorful metaphors." Not only is the exploration of anonther planet worth it, but personally, I'd say it's worth running a deficit over. If we spent just 1% of what we spend on Defense, Medicare and Social Security over the years, we'd have colonies on Mars right now and our eyes on Europa or Titan. Who knows what we'll be able to monetize once we're there?

This is why Total Recall > nuTotal Recall

Gotta have them one-liners.

I bet you can't say this in your heard WITHOUT the Arnold accent.

5 pages in I have three words....

"To Boldy Go...."

Did you fall asleep in history class? The biggest motivation for the space program was to beat the Russians to the moon, 'cuz they'd managed to get a satellite into space before we did and we thought they were gonna colonize the Moon. It wasn't some happy dopey "Gee golly, that Moon is always, like, there--we should go there sometime" thing. As soon as the Red Scare was over, so too was the government's interest in NASA.

Whoever colonizes the moon first has the military advantage....

I wholeheartedly agree. As a global society, I like to call this age 'Neo-Biedermeier'. Now that Wiki article concentrates on the arts and stuff, but the main feature of that time (which ended with revolutions all over Europe in 1848) was one where people lacked vision and concentrated on the home, sweetish art and generally just being there. In Austria, a repressive government under chancellor Metternich only reinforced the trend to the extreme.

When I look at the world today I can't help but draw parallels. There is a distinct lack of vision. We pump trillions into doomed banks but people complain when we invest a thousandth of that to fly to another fricking planet. We want everything and we want it right now, but 'everything' these days only means a bigger TV. We won't go and explore the borders of what we know because we are so arrogant as to say there are none.

So yes. These times are quite shitty for people like me who are very interested in exploration but too dumb to do it themselves. I'm afraid only some big war can change all that, however. Historically that's always how it ends and begins anew.

Maybe many decades down the line in one of many possible futures.

There are good reasons to go to the moon, military tactics are not one of them.

Exactly. If there'd been a more enduring motivation, we'd have automated mining facilities on the Moon and Mars by now, along with terraforming efforts on Mars.

And the industrial advantage. It has a wealth of metals that we need, not to mention Helium 3.

What's the point of keeping bases in case Cuba goes nuts? We can launch planes and decimate them within a few hours.

This.

For that to be so, the metals recovered need to be worth more than the cost of going there, mining them and taking them back. We're very far from the break-even point for that, and there is no indication that we will move significantly closer to it.

I don't think that has much to do with the reasons that we held onto these bases.

Look at Cuba. We have Guantanamo, which is actually in Cuba. We picked it up on perpetual lease from Cuba in 1903. It was originally a coaling station.

There are probably several reasons that we hold onto bases:

1. We have a lot invested in them, and it is hard to get new land for bases outside of major wars. Land for this purpose is thus rare and valuable.
2. Having a lot of bases makes it difficult to wipe out operational capabilities in an area with "one fell swoop."
3. Treaty obligations.
4. It is expensive to properly close a military base. A lot of hazmat goes through them. Heck, we're using Superfund money to clean up military bases in Vietnam now!

Landing on Mars, full quality:

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