Rolling Stone Article On Future Mars Mission

I don't know if you have seen this but Rolling Stone has a certain way of putting things... basically in a really really dumbed-down way. Here is the article... warning though, it is long and sort of pointless but entertaining... just like they make the mission out to be, making it seem like a pipe-dream:

www.rollingstone.com...

From what is said by the NASA people, the mission does not seem feasible, AT ALL. Mining and refining fuel on Mars to get back? You have to be kidding... some of the other things are pretty laughable... a self constructing base for example. Biggest problem is them just shooting off whacky ideas and being unprofessional... by that I mean the NASA guys. What a great job to have... I can see it now:

"Oh you work for NASA, what are you guys doing these days?"

"Since we're really not doing ANYTHING now we just sit around and joke about how we could get to Mars."

As an American tax payer I guess I don't appreciate their "tone" and I know it's just a rolling stone interview but I would rather see money go to better projects... How about we send more robots in pairs, with spare parts, working as a team so that they could repair each other if something went wrong. With NASA's luck they'd probably both break. I'm thinking that most of us probably won't see humans on Mars in our lifetimes (moon by 2020 o rly?) it's kinda sad. But I've always thought that NASA should stop beating around the bush and begin developing faster travel methods for space... they do still help theorize things right? Maybe not.

Anyway I just wanted to make a minor post on the subject.

B. Sage

Rolling Stone interviews NAYSAY? Yeah, I bet that looks pathetic.

Personally, I think some private companies (Boeing, Virgin, Microsoft, any others that could get something out of this) should tell NAYSAY to shove off and go with their own scientific mission. NAYSAY's stuff will never get done. Ever. It really is just a big pipe dream when it comes to manned missions outside of LEO nowadays.

I think they should go with something like Mars Direct, which uses In Situ Propellant Production.

I like how NASA keeps throwing this stuff in my face... I'm in my mid-twenties... I love the thought of space exploration and I wasn't yet born when America went to the moon. I specifically remember being in high school in 1997 and NASA saying we're going to Mars in 2013... No doubt about it. Why do they do this... now it's going to take 50 years? As a younger person I'm looking back in time and saying "But guys... you went to the Moon a decade before I was born! Come on! It's been nearly 40 years and you can't put this together?"

I'm even disappointed that I'm going to have to wait until 2020 to see someone go to the moon... sure I'm looking forward to it but who is to say what will happen. Some failures aside... we already have a space shuttle... rockets... astronauts ready and willing even after the accidents. Why is it going to take another 14 years when we did this so many years ago?

The whole unprofessional thing I see is from them talking instead of doing... basically saying: "We know how we can do it but we haven't invented the technology to do it." Sounds like they talk the talk but haven't a clue how to walk... All of it TALK, no action. I'm like, huh? Anybody else feeling this?

B. Sage

I know it the problem with being a big unaccoutable governement agency (dod, fcc). I personally am still undecided as to if we ever made it to the moon in the first place or if we did if we got more than we bargained for. I mean why else would it take so long to go back and the dates keep getting pushed back like some software release.

I hate it, waiting for exxonmobil to go into a joint venture with northropgrumman to mine some space materials, i think thats our best bet.

Before this thread derails into a "We did too go to the Moon!" thread I'd like to direct that sort of discussion to An End to the Moon Conspiracy! Thanks.

In the article someone says that America doesn't have the same engineering power that we did when we first went to the moon and I know they keep saying that the Mars mission would be a great engineering feat, and of course it would, but shouldn't we be at the point with OTHER sciences that would make our engineering easier? Progress in the fields of physics and even steps in the direction towards FTL (faster than light) travel.

Of course FTL an ultimate goal but we haven't even begun to think about how to go faster than we already can. Maybe we should start with some "closer to the speed of light travel." Without something faster than we already have, space travel beyond the moon, for human beings, SHOULD NOT EVEN BE BEING DISCUSSED. Seems like a massive waste of time and money.

Desolate Cancer, I used to feel the same way but I convinced myself that travel to the moon was ALL TOO POSSIBLE. It's that simple and conspiracy sites blow the stuff out of proportion to try and make money and sell books. Once Americans had put a man on the moon, the Russians sort of realized how pointless it was. Since NASA and the US has no competition anymore they're not concerned with losing the hold they have on space, so they're doing nothing new. Or maybe they realized how pointless they are and because of people's jobs being at stake they try to remain important enough to garner funding.

cmdrkeenkid, I do know about private space travel but aside from tourism for the richest people in the world, I don't think private space travel will happen in the way we can imagine (mining, colonizing) for a thousand years or more, or at least until we stop wasting money and time on NASA's worthless ideas (said article). Any of us who have dreamt of space travel could have easily imagined what NASA has come up with so far AND we'd be doing the same thing they are since THE TECHNOLOGY THEY'RE RELYING ON HASN'T EVEN BEEN INVENTED. Hahah, it's ridiculous. The links you posted do seem like the logical path to "get it out of our system" so we can move on to bigger and better things.

B. Sage

Man this stuff ticks me off. There's no more Cold War to fuel this kind of thing so the bureaucracy just puts NASA in the basement until we need it later.

And 2020! What a load of crap! It took like 9 years to go there the first time, starting from scratch, and now with all the infrastructure its going to take 15 using the SAME TECHNOLOGY. I read a bit on the articles and they're making no technological innovations except for something like "enlarging the capsule to seat 4 instead of 2." Amazing.

Meanwhile there's pioneering of jets that can get into space. Why not use one of those to carry it out of the atmosphere instead of using a lumbering enormous rocket. What about the nuclear-powered submarines, why not try that. If they just sat half a dozen innovative scientists in a room they might come up with something that wasn't already done 50 years ago.

Amen, sage, amen