Well, That About Wraps It Up For Mars

Looks like if anybody's going to be sending people to Mars, it'll be the Russians or a private firm.

Not even a mention of unmanned missions to Mars.

Well...everything I want to say about this is political, but it's Techforge so....

Yea, more guns are a priority. More guns are progress!

Also, the Russians? Nah. If NASA doesn't do it I'd bet on an European/Chinese project. Or Elon Musk...

Yeah, I meant Chinese, don't know why I wrote Russians.

Why are people so enthralled by the Chinese and what they have supposedly "achieved"?

Because the Chinese are willing to spend lots and lots of money on prestige projects. Also, they have the technology

IIRC they've never

1) Launched a heavy lift launch vehicle.
2) Never launched an unmanned probe beyond the moon.
3) Never launched a long duration manned mission.

Get the picture?

But they will, one day.

You'll see... One day.

And then they'll be stuck like everyone else.

And until a few years ago, they'd never launched a human into space. The world is not static and is ever changing. We are not in a position to launch a manned mission beyond LEO any time in the next few years, who knows where the Chinese are now? We know that they are working on such things, but what their progress is on them is unclear.

Oh yeah

because concealing a manned space program is so easy..........

Oh, I've no doubt our intelligence agencies know a great deal about it, but they don't know everything. I doubt, for example, if they have detailed information on precisely what training Chinese astronauts are doing right now. We'll know when they start rolling out rockets for testing, how close they are to going to the Moon, but need I point out that while the Chinese can send astronauts into space on their own rockets, we cannot, and won't be until next year at the earliest?

That is misleading. It has nothing to do with actual technology or institutional knowledge. It is all political.

And a political decision can be changed tomorrow.

"Political decision"? In case you haven't noticed, NASA's SLS is still under development, they don't have a completed rocket to fly, and they're certainly going to want to do unmanned tests before they send humans up in one of the things. Not even Musk is ready to send humans into space yet. We simply do not have the hardware available to send people into space at this point in time. Nobody can wave their magic wand and make it happen any time soon, I'm sad to say.

You do know that the Space shuttle stack (orbiter Columbia) flew into space with Young and Crippen aboard WITHOUT any unmanned test of it ever being conducted don't you?

And? We have not rockets we can use to launch this year with humans on them, while the Chinese do. Meanwhile, it looks like the earliest we'll be able to even test launch the SLS is 2019.

So? Even if we wanted to put humans on the first launch, we still won't be able to do it until 2019, at the earliest (assuming that there are no further delays with the program). Face it, we're on the ground, while the Chinese and Russians aren't. And as with any new system, there's going to be kinks to work out, so it is unlikely that we'll be able to pursue the same kind of launch schedule that the Russians are currently on for some time. SpaceX might get a manned launch off by 2018, but we'll have to see.

That's why it will be a cooperation (as it should be, and it should include the US). ESA covers the first two, Roskosmos the third point.

This is not an 'all glory to mimimimiMIIIII!' thing.

They jumped from a sustenance farming society to an advanced economy in a little under 50 years.

Now there are plenty of negative prospects for China, but by and large they've the will and capacity to do these things.

Fuck, the US can't even build a great wall...

That will never work. To get to Mars its strict nationalism or nothing at all.

Uh, no.

A co-operative attempt would allow wider funding. Look at the LHC, the US equivalent, SCSC, didn't really get anywhere due to cost - the LHC, being an altogether more co-operative effort, allowed for resource-pooling.

Eventually co-operative missions will become needed in order to handle the initial scale of costs, with costs eventually dropping allowing single-state and corporate missions.

According to the wikipedia entries, the Large Hadron Collider uses cheaper technology than the Super Conducting Super Collider.

Should I mention that you once claimed that Wikipedia references were considered laughable? Nah. I'll skip that. According to some sources, the reason the Super Conducting Super Collider got shitcanned had little to do with the cost, and more to do with the fact that Rep. Jim Wright (who's district was going to be the home of it) got caught in a corruption scandal and killing the SCSC was payback for him being a corrupt bastard. Additionally, had the SCSC gone forward, it would have been far more capable than the LHC.

A better comparison, perhaps, would be in the field of fusion research, where multiple nations are working together on the ITER, in hopes of finally cracking the secret of fusion power.

And what exactly does that have to do with the US deciding the SCSC wasn't worth the cost?

Or are you saying the US couldn't even afford a cheaper version whereas CERN could? Doesn't that just underline my point even further?

@Tuckerfan may be right in stating that ITER would be a better example though.

The wikipedia is crap on SOME ISSUES. Current political figures and events. Controversial issues.

But on historical things that are well established, on entertainment things like background and content of movies and television shows. Quite good.

Given the SCSC would now qualify as a "historical thing" being a quarter a century in the past to cancellation and big advocates like Rep. Jim Wright also no longer factors, I consider it an adequate source.

You might also remember that the SCSC was considered in a sense to be in competition for funding with the International Space Station and a general consensus was that the "U.S. could not afford both". Remember at one time funding for the ISS survived in the U.S. Senate by a single vote.

Which of course is ridiculous. The U.S. could easily have afforded both.

Right, but your refutation of a wikipedia cite was over a historical matter. Something about how if you brought it up in a discussion with a group of history teachers, you'd be laughed at, as I recall. The fact that it proved your claims on the topic wrong, might have had something to do with that comment.

And right now, nobody's certain of the future of the ISS. The Russians have said that if the US pulls out of the ISS in 2024 (as has been discussed), they'll continue to use it, along with other nations. An international effort to put humans on Mars might continue, even after one party pulls out of the project. One would hope so, since we do need to get an established human presence off this planet, and the sooner we do it, the better.

Well, yes, the US could afford both the SCSC and the ISS, as well as things like single payer healthcare, rebuilding our infrastructure, and greater funding for education, but we choose not to spend the money on such things.

I really want a manned mission like the moon landing in my lifetime just so there's something I can be proud that the US has done. Not that I'm not proud of my country, let's not bring up Michelle Obama, but I'd really like to witness something extraordinary like a manned mission to Mars.

Not so fast. It seems a colony on mars is already in place. It's critical we get there to save the children.

FF to 2:15 if it doesn't start there...

I'm confident that during my lifetime (ending in the late 2050s or early 2060s) the United States will send manned missions to explore every major planet in the solar system.

I have a timeline worked out including relevant technologies.

This should be interesting, what is the timeline?

For starters I'm assuming the Artemis missions (long duration lunar missions) after around 2025 with one per year.

With the first manned mission to Mars (Ares) around 2033 and every 26 months thereafter.

I figured on a single Aphrodite mission (landing on Mercury polar region & very low orbital mission around Venus) in the 2035-2040 time frame.

Beginning in the mid 2030s I figured Human Outer Planets Exploration program (HOPE) would begin moving forward initially emphasizing nuclear thermal rocket propulsion then moving on to VASIMIR and finally ending up with flight capable fusion engines for the Neptune in the 2050 decade.

What makes you think we're going to do any of that?