[Cog]

We either get of the planet or we are a doomed species.

That is already a done deal.

[evilgenius]

I dunno, if I were god of the universe, (lol), and I wanted there to be multiple intelligent civilizations, but I didn't want them to mess with each other, I'd do two things.

Put no more than one in each galaxy.
Put a speed limit on the universe.

They'd never even so much as find out about each other, much less visit.

As a religious person, that leads me to expect:

There is no faster than light travel. Black holes are not tunnels, they are splat-machines. Warp drive only occurs in sci-fi novels.

We are free to wander about our solar system and the milkyway... slowly, IF we can manage to NOT fill our bassinet with poop and drown in it before we can walk.

That *IF* is proving to be difficult.
Maybe that is the divine test!

That logic only holds for beings that die. Immortal beings only need worry about how much boredom they have to endure getting here. Are we worth it?

I agree with the bassinet analogy. It is looking iffy indeed. Just add the next truly global war to the equation and it looks even worse.

[Outcast_Searcher]

We are unwilling to even fund TELESCOPE missions. Telescopes bring us tremendous amounts of information for many years for relatively little money -- especially compared to what a single manned mission to Mars would cost.

http://www.dailytech.com/Cancellation+o ... e22156.htm

How about we wait and watch and learn and actually GO, if and only if:

a). We discover something worth going FOR, via telescopes (and if detailed investigation is warranted, unmanned probes -- look what the Voyager series did for our knowledge of the solar system beyond Mars).

b). We can AFFORD IT. i.e. will pay for it by making rational choices and/or raising the taxes for it -- or letting the new private space ventures fund it as they mature (if they survive long enough).

Of course, this pipe dream is more realistic than say, eliminating poverty via Karl Marx theories and Unicorn horns... So dream on.

[rangerone314]

Civilization will collapse into barbarism (well low-tech barbarism since we're pretty barbaric with even the high tech) before man sets foot on Mars.

1 / sqrt(1-v2/c2) says even if by some miracle the above doesn't happen, that Homo sapiens will not burst out of the abcess known as Earth to contaminate the rest of the universe.

[spot5050]

Yes or No?

[SeaGypsy]

No and never.

[Keith_McClary]

Watch out, un-Amerikan nay-sayers. President Gingrich will blast you off to slave away your remaining lifetime in the Martian Unobtanium mines.

[The Practician]

No. But if I'm wrong, and they do, they definitely will not be Americans.

[Sixstrings]

Sadly, no.

Apparently we can no longer afford bold space exploration. More to the point the Cold War has been over for a long time -- competing with the Soviets was the impetus in the first place.

Secondly.. robots are so much cheaper, they can do just about everything a human astronaut can, beam the pics and video back to us -- there's not much reason to send people anymore.

[The Practician]

Sadly, no.

Apparently we can no longer afford bold space exploration. More to the point the Cold War has been over for a long time -- competing with the Soviets was the impetus in the first place.

Secondly.. robots are so much cheaper, they can do just about everything a human astronaut can, beam the pics and video back to us -- there's not much reason to send people anymore.

Damn. Its true though isn't it? We don't really care about the act of actually putting a man on mars so much anymore. It's not like any of us are ever going to go there, all we are ever gonna get is pictures anyway

[dorlomin]

Id say zero chance if we are acting logically.


but then again....

[Ferretlover]

*My* lifetime? Doubtful ... Almost as old as the hills of Earth >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[Sixstrings]

Damn. Its true though isn't it? We don't really care about the act of actually putting a man on mars so much anymore. It's not like any of us are ever going to go there, all we are ever gonna get is pictures anyway

Well it's not so bad. I loved those Mars rovers, didn't you? In comparison, a manned mission would cost a gigantic FORTUNE. For the cost of that we could do a lot of rover missions, including the most exciting of all an underwater probe to check out Europa's ocean -- maybe it has life.

Sadly though even the rover missions are all cut now, Romney wants to cut NASA even more so there goes a Europa mission.

Romney is particularly anti-science. He laughed at Gingrich, made fun of him, for talking about returning to the moon. He wants to cut back on other areas of science too, squeeze every last penny out for his bankster tax cuts.

I really dislike it, the pejorative attitude to space exploration -- Rachel Maddow was laughing about Gingrich too on this. At least Gingrich has BIG IDEAS gee the nation is sinking into a pit of malaise and joblessness and everyone's on antidepressants -- *maybe we need some big ideas*.

It's not impossible. We landed on the moon in the late 60s. It's 2012. No reason why we can't get off our ass and get back there, take the next step now in our species' development and put a base up there.

[radon]

It's not impossible. We landed on the moon in the late 60s. It's 2012. No reason why we can't get off our ass and get back there, take the next step now in our species' development and put a base up there.

This would be an incredibly wasteful activity. Priorities need to be sorted out. Space exploration is not a priority, energy research is. Better spend on never-coming-to-fruition fusion, than on a Moon base. Fusion, however elusive, is nevertheless a clearly defined goal with a clear rationale behind it. Base on the moon would have to be the end in itself, as it achieves nothing other than short-termed emotional euphoria with a subsequent sense of total emptiness and futility of the effort - "what for did we do all that?".

Space flights are so very resource consuming and expensive. Delivery of some 5 tons of "useful load" to a near-Earth orbit is a cheerful event costing lots of billions. Recently, the Russian Phobos satellite was lost en route to Mars and with it some 10 billion USD were all gone at once, no recovery in sight (they plan to revive the mission, what a dumbers). How much does an offshore platform cost to be built? Perhaps, less than 10 billion. An offshore platform's weight is orders and orders of magnitude greater than Phobos' couple or so tons. Yet the platform is cheaper to be built. If the platform collapses, lots of stuff can be recovered from the wrecks, like storage materials, parts and equipment and so on. When a space satellite is gone - it is gone, nothing can be recovered.

Space explorations is a ruthlessly functional business. One example: the rocket liquid fuels are among the most condensed sources of energy on earth. Among the toys being at humans' disposal nowadays, perhaps only a (thermo-)nuclear explosion could produce greater density of energy emission than a burn out of a rocket fuel tank. The price for this fuel efficiency is its extreme toxicity, volatility and flammability. These sorts of things make space exploration a profligate consumer of money and resources that it is.

Better sort out the priorities and direct the effort towards resolving the energy challenges. The space research may now wait for a while.

And regarding the question - no, we are not going to Mars within our lifetime, but we still may go there in some, perhaps rather remote, future.

[Lore]

And regarding the question - no, we are not going to Mars just now, but we still may go there in some, perhaps rather remote, future.

If you even faintly believe in peak oil, climate change, food and water scarcity and the population time bomb then you quickly realize any chance for mankind to enjoy planetary space exploration within the next several thousand years is less then slim.

[radon]

And regarding the question - no, we are not going to Mars just now, but we still may go there in some, perhaps rather remote, future.

If you even faintly believe in peak oil, climate change, food and water scarcity and the population time bomb then you quickly realize any chance for mankind to enjoy planetary space exploration within the next several thousand years is less then slim.

This may well prove to be true, yet, there is lots of exceptionalist hype around all these phenomena (peak oil etc.). People seem to fail to even attempt to comprehend the idea that there can be a viable world after them based on foundations other than theirs. Oil is not the planet's most condensed entropy negator, - human brain is. The sun invested some tens of millions of years in the development of the fossil fuels, yet it invested over 5 billion years in the development of human brains - this is pure logic. Brains can be put to work without oil, oil cannot be put to work without brains. Before oil delivered its benefits, the science had to accumulate lots of knowledge in order to be able to process crude and utilise it. Romans walked over the oil fields and didn't care.

[Lore]

This may well prove to be true, yet, there is lots of exceptionalist hype around all these phenomena (peak oil etc.). People seem to fail to even attempt to comprehend the idea that there can be a viable world after them based on foundations other than theirs. Oil is not the planet's most condensed entropy negator, - human brain is. The sun invested some tens of millions of years in the development of the fossil fuels, yet it invested over 5 billion years in the development of human brains - this is pure logic. Brains can be put to work without oil, oil cannot be put to work without brains. Before oil delivered its benefits, the science had to accumulate lots of knowledge in order to be able to process crude and utilise it. Romans walked over the oil fields and didn't care.

I believe you nailed it. The human brain is the problem. Unfortunately we seem to be incapable of overcoming our baser instincts even when our own survival is in jeopardy. As Eddie Murphy once said, "the mind is a terrible thing". The fact is the actual abilities of the human brain at present are no better then those of Cro-Magnon Man.

Much of what we know and do is based off the shoulders of our fragile technology that requires a cheap energy supply and a stable climate to thrive in and tentatively keep 7 billion of us from throttling each other. As history has shown us during the Dark Ages, what was known by the Romans can just as easily be lost again.

[Sixstrings]

This would be an incredibly wasteful activity. Priorities need to be sorted out. Space exploration is not a priority, energy research is.

I disagree. The list of innovations and private sector spin-offs from NASA is endless. The private sector has made gazillions off NASA. The GPS in your phone, and all the 100 billion dollar and trillion dollar companies making use of that GPS, that never would have happened without the US space program to develop those satellites, develop the tech, and put the satellites in orbit. Now the entire world benefits immensely from the American government's work on GPS.

There's a website about all the private sector spinoff techs that came from NASA:

http://spinoff.nasa.gov/

Ideally the stuff should have a small tax, NASA would be flush with cash and that would be fair, its funding directly connected to how private industry profits off it.

Recently, the Russian Phobos satellite was lost en route to Mars and with it some 10 billion USD were all gone at once, no recovery in sight (they plan to revive the mission, what a dumbers).

It's never a "waste." Just building these things, it's all breaking new ground in engineering, it's worth it. Not familiar with Phobos, but if it's Russians I'm not surprised. NASA is only hooked up with them due to budget cuts. On its own, NASA has a superb success rate overall.

These sorts of things make space exploration a profligate consumer of money and resources that it is.

Exploration has always been expensive, dangerous, and seemingly wasteful at the time. It took a couple hundred years to really get colonies going in the western hemisphere. Colonization of space won't be any quicker, but if we never start we'll never get there.

You mentioned energy. I'd imagine an ambitious space program would have a lot of energy spin-offs -- it's all about fuel efficiency after all. New composite materials. Space tech is so great, because it's *all new* it's all breaking new ground and very much worth it. It's practical science, not esoteric research, with NASA you get these goals that we don't have the tech to accomplish so the engineers and scientists have to go out and invent ways to make it happen.

[SeaGypsy]

Comparing the competition for agrible land to bare rocks in space makes less sense than ideas like floating cities.