Exploring Mars A Waste Of Money?

[rainbow]

Well, part of developing the project is advancing the materials. Folks working on the idea are pretty sure that strong enough materials are in our near future.

Making super strong material for the elevator might translate into safer cars, or bridges that fall down less often or elevators that don't go into free fall. That's the great thing about research, you get surprised a lot.

I get surprised a lot even when I'm not doing research.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The US military budget for one year would fund 58 trips to Mars.

[Coito ergo sum]

Well, part of developing the project is advancing the materials. Folks working on the idea are pretty sure that strong enough materials are in our near future.

The people I know in the space elevator business think adequate materials are 20-40 years off. I think some groups are still working on the stuff, and good luck to them.

20-40 years is nothing.

As with everything, we'll never get anything done if we don't start working towards it. In 1950, a manned mission to the moon was almost 20 years away, and back in 1950, 20 years was an overly ambitious time-frame.

These are things that humans must do.

And, 'zilla's point is well-taken. If we could have diverted the world's military budgets for the last 50 years to space missions, we could have all our energy production and manufacturing off-world by now. It's a crying shame.

[Coito ergo sum]

Well, part of developing the project is advancing the materials. Folks working on the idea are pretty sure that strong enough materials are in our near future.

The people I know in the space elevator business think adequate materials are 20-40 years off. I think some groups are still working on the stuff, and good luck to them.

20-40 years is nothing.

As with everything, we'll never get anything done if we don't start working towards it. In 1950, a manned mission to the moon was almost 20 years away, and back in 1950, 20 years was an overly ambitious time-frame.

These are things that humans must do.

And, 'zilla's point is well-taken. If we could have diverted the world's military budgets for the last 50 years to space missions, we could have all our energy production and manufacturing off-world by now. It's a crying shame.

[Warren Dew]

Well, part of developing the project is advancing the materials. Folks working on the idea are pretty sure that strong enough materials are in our near future.

The people I know in the space elevator business think adequate materials are 20-40 years off. I think some groups are still working on the stuff, and good luck to them.

20-40 years is nothing.

As with everything, we'll never get anything done if we don't start working towards it. In 1950, a manned mission to the moon was almost 20 years away, and back in 1950, 20 years was an overly ambitious time-frame.

These are things that humans must do.

"Must" do? We could stop space exploration, have a huge nuclear war, then go extinct. There is no "must".

It took a century between the first serious plans for an English Channel tunnel and the actual building of such a tunnel. I think 40 years is much more likely for a space elevator than 20 years, if it happens at all.

And, 'zilla's point is well-taken. If we could have diverted the world's military budgets for the last 50 years to space missions, we could have all our energy production and manufacturing off-world by now. It's a crying shame.

If we had diverted the world's military budgets for the last 50 years to space missions, eastern Europe would still be under the Soviet yoke. They're better off now, even with the energy production and manufacturing on world.

And, frankly, building cars in orbit and shipping them down doesn't seem like the best idea, anyway.

[MrFungus420]

The US military budget for one year would fund 58 trips to Mars.

The bank bailout would have paid for all of NASA throughout its history.

[Coito ergo sum]

Well, part of developing the project is advancing the materials. Folks working on the idea are pretty sure that strong enough materials are in our near future.

The people I know in the space elevator business think adequate materials are 20-40 years off. I think some groups are still working on the stuff, and good luck to them.

20-40 years is nothing.

As with everything, we'll never get anything done if we don't start working towards it. In 1950, a manned mission to the moon was almost 20 years away, and back in 1950, 20 years was an overly ambitious time-frame.

These are things that humans must do.

"Must" do? We could stop space exploration, have a huge nuclear war, then go extinct. There is no "must".

It took a century between the first serious plans for an English Channel tunnel and the actual building of such a tunnel. I think 40 years is much more likely for a space elevator than 20 years, if it happens at all.

If humanity is to avoid going extinct in the relative near term, on the scale of thousands of years or less, then it is something we must do. And, 40 years is, as I said, nothing. But, the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a first step. The mantra of the naysayer is "oh, even if we start today it'll take 10, 20, 30, 40, 50," or whatever number of years makes it seem irrelevant to today. That is myopic. Fifty years will be here and gone. 1962 doesn't seem that long ago to those of us who are in our forties and up. It's the blink of an eye.

And, 'zilla's point is well-taken. If we could have diverted the world's military budgets for the last 50 years to space missions, we could have all our energy production and manufacturing off-world by now. It's a crying shame.

If we had diverted the world's military budgets for the last 50 years to space missions, eastern Europe would still be under the Soviet yoke. They're better off now, even with the energy production and manufacturing on world.

Not if the Soviet military budget was also diverted....hence my use of the term "world's" without limitation to the US or western Europe.

And, frankly, building cars in orbit and shipping them down doesn't seem like the best idea, anyway.

Now. However, once you're harvesting the raw materials to build things from extraterrestrial locations, and once energy production on a massive scale is in space, the economies of scale may well shift. And, how we travel on Earth may well change dramatically on the time-scales we're discussing.

[mistermack]

Embarassing though it is, I agree with much that Coito says.

There are gigantic benefits to be had, once we're able to live and move about in space.
And the advances that are made in the process will surely have other uses too.

Space elevators aren't pie-in-the-sky, once a strong enough material can be made cheaply. Carbon nano-tubes are currently the only material that has enough theoretical strength, for a given weight. But they can't be made big enough, as yet.

But even if they NEVER become feasible, the materials that we develop are bound to be incredibly useful for other applications that need huge strength with little weight.

And even if an Earth space elevator never becomes possible, you can still get materials from the Moon and Mars, for manufacturing in space. The energy is there in abundance, for next to nothing, and the rocket fuel is also there in abundance, if there is as much water on the Moon as they now think.

The first real benefit to the Earth population would be cheap clean energy, collected on solar panels, and beamed back to Earth.
And that would be a massive leap forward.

[Coito ergo sum]

Embarassing though it is, I agree with much that Coito says.

Oh, shit. Now I have to go back and review, to see where I was wrong.

[mistermack]

Embarassing though it is, I agree with much that Coito says.

Oh, shit. Now I have to go back and review, to see where I was wrong.

Why change the habits of a lifetime?

[JimC]

Embarassing though it is, I agree with much that Coito says.

Oh, shit. Now I have to go back and review, to see where I was wrong.

Why change the habits of a lifetime?

(for both posts...)

[Warren Dew]

1962 doesn't seem that long ago to those of us who are in our forties and up. It's the blink of an eye.

I wouldn't have called 2012 the "near future" back in 1962 - and I would have been extremely disappointed to hear that we wouldn't be anywhere near a permanent moon base, and would be piddling around with tiny robots on mars instead of sending manned missions to the outer planets.

[Rum]

1962 doesn't seem that long ago to those of us who are in our forties and up. It's the blink of an eye.

I wouldn't have called 2012 the "near future" back in 1962 - and I would have been extremely disappointed to hear that we wouldn't be anywhere near a permanent moon base, and would be piddling around with tiny robots on mars instead of sending manned missions to the outer planets.

Me too, but people simply had no idea how expensive it would be and how little political will there would be to do this stuff.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

1962 doesn't seem that long ago to those of us who are in our forties and up. It's the blink of an eye.

I wouldn't have called 2012 the "near future" back in 1962 - and I would have been extremely disappointed to hear that we wouldn't be anywhere near a permanent moon base, and would be piddling around with tiny robots on mars instead of sending manned missions to the outer planets.

Me too, but people simply had no idea how expensive it would be and how little political will there would be to do this stuff.

I think you're far closer with the "political will" part than with the "expensive" part.

It's not about how expensive (or otherwise) it is. 90-odd percent of the general population never had (and still don't have) a proper clue about the costs involved anyhow.
The real problem is the public's perception of the costs and difficulties involved. Somewhere along the way (starting embarrassingly shortly after Neil Armstrong first placed his foot on the Moon's surface) the idea started to grow in the public psyche that this was all hideously expensive and not worth the effort.
Not that their aren't large costs involved in space exploration, but vast swathes of the public seem either to have a totally bullshit fictional idea of how much is spent on such stuff, or do actually know the real figures but are totally incapable of viewing them with any kind of actual sense of proportion.

What has held us back is not any practical problem, it's a cultural problem, a mindset problem.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Heinlein once said that he put most of his more "far out" predictive stories in an era that would most likely be after his death for a simple reason, he didn't want to hear people tell him he was wrong.