bush plans to send people on mars?

[steve56]

funny i thought clinton was already up there.

[jj]

.......well, he's running out of room at Guantanamo Bay.........and the domestic prisons are overflowing.
And it'd be a handy place to intern all the illegal aliens.
Along with legal ones, if there are any.

[jj]

If we didn't spend all that money on weapons, we'd be able to afford to do both.
In which case there wouldn't be all that much wrong down here anyway.....

[Pervert]

At some stage, due to growing population and reduced resources, we're going to need another planet to fuck up. Mars is the only option available at present (though a couple of the Jovian or Saturnine moons might be able to sustain life at some stage in our future). It's expensive, yes, but it is also investing in the survival of our species. And as the history of our world demonstrates, we are always seeking a new frontier. Work done now will prove valuable down the line.

[crofter]

All this talk of let?s move to Mars is very strange, I mean does anybody actually believe that Mankind has set foot on the Moon to start with, I for one think it was just a cold war illusion, if we have done it why was the next logical step of setting up a moon base never done??

[jj]

......or spreading the disease that is humanity, if you want to take a pessimistic slant.

[jj]

Because the US went to the Moon to beat the USSR to it, not for any valid scientific reason.
Had the boffins had their way, we would have gone straight for Mars, avoiding the pointless slag-heap that is the Moon- at least until we'd learnt to strip-mine it cost-effectively.

[Pervert]

It was a psychological battle: having lost the race to put a man in space, the US needed a major victory, and JFK said the aim was to put an American on the moon by 1970. When he was assassinated, Johnson took over and kept the momentum going (helped by having NASA's headquarters in his own state). By the time Nixon took power, there was no point in cancelling, and he was able to take the credit when speaking to Neil and Buzz in July 1969. By the time of the last Apollo missions, the mood had changed. Vast amounts were being spent on the war in Vietnam, the fuel crisis was beginning to bite, and the TV coverage of missions had fallen away. If the US government had continued to back it, then a moonbase might have been founded and manned by 1980. Instead, the emphasis shifted, NASA found its budget being cut and had to concentrate of more commercial ventures---such as the space shuttle being used to help launch and maintain satellites.

In 1980, Arthur C Clarke put forward an idea. taken from one of his books (The Fountains Of Paradise), of having a space elevator. It would involve a super strong cable from a station permanently in orbit above an island (Sri Lanka, not surprisingly, was the old buffty's suggestion), and technology capable of lifting payloads into space where ships and so on could be constructed. He reckoned it would cost the gross product of the entire planet for a couple of years, but would easily pay for itself in a short time---and there'd be no more need for rockets. A visionary idea, and maybe one that might have worked (though an obviously tempting target for terrorists). But governments by their nature have a short-sighted approach, and forward planning to them usually means the next election.

[mart]

Your government is going to fund drugs for senior citizens. I assume you mean medication?
And you object to this!
I suppose you believe that if they can't afford to pay then just let them die.

Mart