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President Obama has released an op-ed at CNN entitled "America will take the giant leap to Mars":
One of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as our astronauts returned to Hawaii. This was years before we'd set foot on the moon. Decades before we'd land a rover on Mars. A generation before photos from the International Space Station would show up in our social media feeds. I still have the same sense of wonder about our space program that I did as a child. It represents an essential part of our character -- curiosity and exploration, innovation and ingenuity, pushing the boundaries of what's possible and doing it before anybody else. The space race we won not only contributed immeasurably important technological and medical advances, but it also inspired a new generation of scientists and engineers with the right stuff to keep America on the cutting edge.
[...] Last year alone, NASA discovered flowing water on Mars and evidence of ice on one of Jupiter's moons, and we mapped Pluto -- more than 3 billion miles away -- in high-resolution. Our space telescopes revealed additional Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars, and we're pursuing new missions to interact with asteroids, which will help us learn how to protect the Earth from the threat of colliding with one while also teaching us about the origins of life on Earth. We've flown by every planet in the solar system -- something no other nation can say. And we continue to drive down the cost of space exploration for taxpayers.
This week, we'll convene some of America's leading scientists, engineers, innovators and students in Pittsburgh to dream up ways to build on our progress and find the next frontiers. Just five years ago, US companies were shut out of the global commercial launch market. Today, thanks to groundwork laid by the men and women of NASA, they own more than a third of it. More than 1,000 companies across nearly all 50 states are working on private space initiatives. We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station.
The next step is to reach beyond the bounds of Earth's orbit. I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space. These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth -- something we'll need for the long journey to Mars.
More specific details are available in this article by John P. Holdren and Charles Bolden.
Then you have articles like this about the risk of "space brain":
Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep34774) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @09:21AM
I do not get it, instead of building things on the moon so we can build things in orbit for the BIG ASS space ship we will need to get our big asses to mars, NASA wants to jump from ground to mars up a huge gravity well, oh and in the mean time try to bring an asteroid into earth orbit, for which there are no possible down sides at our current level of knowledge.
Did IQ's drop precipitately while I wasn't looking?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:34PM
No, they were always pretty low. They tell me that 100 is about average, which seems to represent the cognitive capabilities of a squirrel.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:59PM
Don't insult the squirrels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:33PM
Nah. NASA has stopped focusing on doing real science and is concentrating on keeping the gravy train going as long as possible.
Mars means more money than building stuff nearer. And it doesn't have to actually work before the current batch of parasites are retired. There will always be convenient delays.
I'm being too cynical? Well why do they keep doing those "let's send administrators to Hawaii for a holiday, oops I mean to test how long "astronauts" can stay locked up in a habitat" tests? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HI-SEAS [wikipedia.org]
OK let's do one in Texas too: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/02/four-people-a-small-cabin-a-month-of-isolation-only-for-nasa/ [mysteriousuniverse.org]
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEEMO [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Siffre#Main_Achievements [wikipedia.org]
Fact is there's plenty of real world info on what happens when humans are locked up for months in enclosed environments and how to handle stuff. Go ask the US Navy nuclear submariners:
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/confessions-of-a-u-s-navy-submarine-officer-1715113243 [jalopnik.com]
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/06/politics/life-on-uss-missouri-nuclear-submarine/ [cnn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:00PM
You do know there's a lot more crew members on a nuclear sub than on the sort of Mars missions NASA keeps planning, right? (SpaceX's ITN is supposed to carry 100 settlers, but that's not NASA.)
I'm not saying you're wrong about the big picture, but it's absurd to claim that data from nuclear subs with over 100 people tells us everything we need to know about extended space missions with less than 10.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @07:11AM
See the other links, they've already done plenty of such experiments. In contrast how many experiments have they done to show what would happen to humans or even mice living in Mars gravity, after 1, 2, X months? They cancelled the centrifuge module!
Trying to send humans to Mars is like trying to get a baby to jump before the baby can even stand properly. Even if it's possible it's still stupid.
Mars is wrong for our next step. We should be working towards building space stations with artificial gravity, radiation shielding etc. Starting at a smaller scale (centrifuge module) and working up. This step should come way before the Mars step. Because with this step we can do long term tests with animals and humans at Mars g or Moon g. Once we have the results we have a better idea of how much Mars is worth to the human species. If it turns out Mars g is not good enough, then we shouldn't investing much into putting humans on Mars. With our current tech we can't adjust the g on Mars, but we can adjust the g in a suitable space station.
Thus most of the Mars stuff is a distraction and a waste of time and resources. We have a limited amount of time and resources to become a space-faring species. That is assuming longer term survival of the human species is considered an important goal. If it isn't then we shouldn't give a damn about AGW.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday October 12 2016, @11:28PM
Consider Mars a practice run for the Moon. It costs about the same to ship supplies to either destination, escaping the Earth is the hard part, and Mars is far less challenging. To name a few advantages:
Mars has large quantities of oxygen and water that are likely to be readily available very rapidly with minimal processing.
There's no razor-sharp unweathered moon dust destroying air seals and moving parts,
The day is only 24.7 hours long, versus 708 hours on the moon (night lasting two weeks makes solar power kinda worthless)
Mars gravity is 38% of Earth's, versus 16% on the Moon, meaning any gravity-based health problems are likely to be less extreme.
The only real advantage the moon offers is shorter transit times - and that's not really much of a difference except for radiation exposure during the trip. Realistically, it's a fairly small percentage of possible disasters that could happen to a space colony where waiting a few days instead of several months for whatever minimal help Earth can send is actually going to make that big a difference.
The moon offers some enticing long-term benefits, but it would be completely dependent on Earth for basic supplies until it has a major industrial infrastructure built up. It's a lot harder to make air, water, and food out of rock than it is to make an algae greenhouse using local water and CO2. It's just really not that attractive until we're ready to dedicate some serious resources over several decades to build it up to the point that it can support itself. It's one of those projects that doesn't really start making sense until there's already a thriving market for near-Earth orbital construction and refueling.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 13 2016, @01:47PM
> The only real advantage the moon offers is shorter transit times
Don't forget the fact that we actually know how to slow a spacecraft down to human-survivable landing speeds on the moon, but that remains an unsolved problem on Mars. Mar's gravity is too strong to simply use rockets like on the moon, and its atmosphere too thin for aerobraking - hence the ridiculously complicated skycrane contraption they used for that latest rover.
Aerobraking and lithobraking work well enough for small, less fragile payloads (ie previous two Mars rovers), but anything with people in is going to be a *lot* more challenging.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 13 2016, @03:00PM
Umm, you do realize that "ridiculously complicated skycrane contraption" would be trivially modified to set things down even more gently than it did, right? The landing was as rough as it was because the system was designed to be fail as recoverably as possible without any human input during the landing sequence.
And perhaps you've missed the news, but we can now fairly reliably land rockets on *Earth*. There's still work to be done, but it's a far greater challenge what with our crosswinds and 2.6x greater gravity. And as it happens, Mars actually has enough atmosphere to shed a great deal of orbital velocity too, just not nearly as much as on Earth.