What I find quite funny about that is that for America, it will take 25 years to get to the Mars. In the meanwhile, my home town has been building a new subway line for the last 25 years and it's still far from being operational.
I think the asteroid landing plan is a smart one over the Mars goal. I think we're more obsessed with Mars than is due -- asteroids offer a wealth of potential resources without the immense cost of dropping into and climbing out of a planetary gravity well. Even a landing on one of Mars' fake-moons would be a better choice than Mars itself. Assuming we don't inadvertently open up the gates to hell or something like that...
Fake moons? Phobos and Deimos? Not sure how they are fake.
Yeah, gravity sucks, but I find a trip to Mars far more interesting than one to an asteroid, E.g. the geology, water resources, valles marineris, the potential for life, colonization. Why not be obsessed?
NASA has shown itself incapable of meeting deadlines or staying within budget on many projects, and Obama is right to turn access to Low Earth Orbit over to commercial companies (on fixed price contracts, not the normal cost plus contracts). We've been building the same boring "get us to orbit" rocket since the 1960s. Wouldn't NASA's leadership (doing science and developing technologies that private companies cannot afford) be better spent on LEO and out? The moon, asteroids, Mars, Phobos, etc.
This is a great plan. It's a Good Thing for the aerospace economy in the long run even if there's going to be some displacement in the meantime.
It also opens the door for entrepreneurial companies - building rockets, engines, payload integrators, whatever - to make money in a way previously not possible. It's impossible to make money when the government is competing with you. This is a great thing for entrepreneurs, scientists, researchers, and people everywhere. There's a better chance your kid will be struck by lightning than be a NASA astronaut, but now the door has opened and we'll see private astronaut corps pop up from a few different sources.
Get behind this plan, folks. It's a Good Thing and great for other entrepreneurs, even if we're not building web software. :)
I live in the Central Florida/Space Coast area, and there is a palpable fear that soon all these aerospace jobs will be gone with nothing to fall back on in a crappy economy. This speech was meant to be encouraging to a broad constituency of a state Obama and the Democrats need for future elections.
As far as science goes, the better-faster-cheaper ethos NASA had with the Mars Rovers should be revived. Robots are a terrific way to get actual science done. That said, the lessons learned from building and working on the ISS would be a good starting point for creating a vehicle to take people to Mars - a place we can eventually make habitable (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm).
> I live in the Central Florida/Space Coast area, and there is a palpable fear that soon all these aerospace jobs will be gone
Those aren't jobs - they're welfare checks, taken from working Americans in return for very very very little of value.
I hope that the folks on the Space Coast are right. They can all go get real jobs (even if it's at Target), and the free market space industry can deliver for several orders of magnitude less.
Perhaps saving planet earth and kick starting clean alternative energy will be what excites the current or near future generation. After that, outer space exploration will still beckon. I can only hope I'm around to watch.
It sure would be nice to have something to get our younger people excited about science. When my parents were kids it was the Apollo mission and astronauts, when I was a kid it was computers and the Internet. My younger sister doesn't get excited about either of those things anymore: why would she? She's been able to sit in front of a computer and video-chat with people across the country and world since she was able to walk.
Obama's plan seems to say "Your newborns might have the space program to be excited about ... when they're 18 years old."
There's a new space race going on right now. It's being done by private enterprise on budgets from $1M to $100M. Check out:
Armadillo Aerospace
XCOR Aerospace
Masten Space Systems
Unreasonable Rocket
Scaled Composites
SpaceX
Blue Origin
If you want to talk to rocketeers who are actually building hardware, today, check out the arocket mailing list.
We don't need another space race to a destination. We need to build space infrastructure.
It's the difference between trying to get from the east coast of the US to the west with one wagon train, versus building railways and towns. That first wagon might just make it, but it doesn't help the next wagon.
I've never understood why it's so important for humans to go to mars. We live on a planet where many people still endure tremendous suffering due to starvation, disease and war. In the next 50 years we will very likely have to begin large scale geo-engineering in order to mitigate climate change and ocean acidification. Prestige "science" like sending people to the moon and mars is a luxury.
I can't believe how insensitive you are. Do you know how many kids that computer you're using could feed? Sell that computer and buy orphan food. Right now. Otherwise you're Hitler.
Where do you stop? I spent 5 bucks on lunch today. Should I have not eaten because people are hungry? What about the computer and internet you typed this on? Should we have not invested in those and spent all the money on curing disease?
cmon fellas, this is economics. maybe if you can mount a convincing hoax that Al Qaeda is trying to infiltrate Mars, we'll dump a few billion into it. Or maybe, more plausibly, if China decided to do increasingly elaborate manned-space flights, it might push us to follow suit.
[+] [-] DrJokepu|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] senki|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lispm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markbnine|16 years ago|reply
Yeah, gravity sucks, but I find a trip to Mars far more interesting than one to an asteroid, E.g. the geology, water resources, valles marineris, the potential for life, colonization. Why not be obsessed?
[+] [-] colinake|16 years ago|reply
This is a great plan. It's a Good Thing for the aerospace economy in the long run even if there's going to be some displacement in the meantime.
It also opens the door for entrepreneurial companies - building rockets, engines, payload integrators, whatever - to make money in a way previously not possible. It's impossible to make money when the government is competing with you. This is a great thing for entrepreneurs, scientists, researchers, and people everywhere. There's a better chance your kid will be struck by lightning than be a NASA astronaut, but now the door has opened and we'll see private astronaut corps pop up from a few different sources.
Get behind this plan, folks. It's a Good Thing and great for other entrepreneurs, even if we're not building web software. :)
[+] [-] tgerhard|16 years ago|reply
As far as science goes, the better-faster-cheaper ethos NASA had with the Mars Rovers should be revived. Robots are a terrific way to get actual science done. That said, the lessons learned from building and working on the ISS would be a good starting point for creating a vehicle to take people to Mars - a place we can eventually make habitable (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm).
[+] [-] tjic|16 years ago|reply
Those aren't jobs - they're welfare checks, taken from working Americans in return for very very very little of value.
I hope that the folks on the Space Coast are right. They can all go get real jobs (even if it's at Target), and the free market space industry can deliver for several orders of magnitude less.
[+] [-] lkijuhyghjm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kebaman|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowbkpk|16 years ago|reply
Obama's plan seems to say "Your newborns might have the space program to be excited about ... when they're 18 years old."
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|16 years ago|reply
Armadillo Aerospace
XCOR Aerospace
Masten Space Systems
Unreasonable Rocket
Scaled Composites
SpaceX
Blue Origin
If you want to talk to rocketeers who are actually building hardware, today, check out the arocket mailing list.
We don't need another space race to a destination. We need to build space infrastructure.
It's the difference between trying to get from the east coast of the US to the west with one wagon train, versus building railways and towns. That first wagon might just make it, but it doesn't help the next wagon.
[+] [-] whyenot|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PostOnce|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeebusroxors|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkawn|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfager|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinplamondon|16 years ago|reply