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For the first time in more than six years, both chambers of Congress passed a bill that approves funding for NASA and gives the space agency new mandates [Ed: Link not AdBlock friendly].
The NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 is a bill that the Senate and House collaborated on for months, and it appropriates $19.5 billion to the agency. (NASA received $19.3 billion in 2016, or 0.5% of the total federal budget.)
When the Senate brought the bill before the House of Representatives for a vote on March 7, "no members spoke against the bill" and it passed, according to Jeff Foust at Space News.
The document asks NASA to create a roadmap for getting humans "near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s." It also calls on the space agency to continue developing the Space Launch System (SLS) — a behemoth rocket — and the Orion space capsule in order to eventually go to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
It also cancels a mission to capture an asteroid, and calls on the space agency to search for aliens.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday March 11 2017, @03:29AM (2 children)
We should only care about sending people there if we can create a self-sustaining permanent habitat there, with no resupply required. Send some robots in advance to build a habitat, sure.
Mars isn't as interesting of a target as Europa or other solar system objects with interior liquid oceans. If we're lucky, we might find something fishlike in one of those interior oceans. Real goddamn fish-analogues, swimming around for millions of years without humanity having any inkling of it. If not fish, microbes. And if there aren't any microbes, then fuck it, time to take a bite out of Ceres/Europa/Enceladus/Ganymede/Callisto/Rhea/Triton/Pluto/etc. [wikipedia.org] Mars? You might find some soil bacteria and have to wrack your brains on whether or not it's actually contamination from the tools sent to look for it. The value of Mars is in establishing a permanent habitat through technology. Sink a big ass amount into creating initial sustainable living space, and an industry capable of using Martian materials to expand and enrich that living space.
The more interesting science is going to be done by robots and space telescopes. The James Webb Space Telescope in particular. If we're lucky, it will find a biosphere among the exoplanet atmospheres it looks at. And if it finds/images Planet Nine, we have another gas giant to examine close by, along with lots of new moons, some of which could have interior oceans. Maybe we'll find a moon in our solar system larger than Ganymede... or even Mars. JWST goes up in late 2018.
If we keep funding NASA the way we do today, Mars 2035 will probably divert a lot from the budgets of more interesting stuff. Either NASA's budget should be doubled/quadrupled, or the Mars colony idea should be funded as a one-time large expense. Keep in mind that Congress has just asked for NASA to create a "roadmap" and there's no certainty on what kind of mission would be launched. It could be a manned flyby (wouldn't that just be a huge disappointment lol) or a temporary surface mission. You and I are talking about colonies, but is that even part of the plan for the 2030s? Stay tuned.
We should fund the asteroid capture mission too, but at least when it comes to asteroids, it seems that private industry will make an attempt to do it themselves. That could be idealism or a scam, but at least it's being openly considered by multiple entities.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 11 2017, @03:55AM (1 child)
Well, first thing - the robots won't get it right. People will have to make it right, no matter how much work the robots do in advance.
Interesting? Any new land is interesting. If you don't have an interest in Mars, then you can wait for the first ship to Europa. But - be warned. The first ship to Europa will be as likely to depart from Mars, as it is to depart from Earth. The really adventurous types will already be on Mars, and Timid Timmy will be calling the shots on Earth.
As I mentioned in another post - it isn't all about science. Adventure and drama fuel the human soul. Science is cool, in that it enables adventure and science. Aside from that, science has little real use.
NASA funding . . . Well, I'm no real fan of NASA. They lost their vision long ago, when they built a space plane, instead of pushing out into the solar system. Yeah, the space shuttle was kinda cool, but it ate up to much time, money, energy, and vision.
Today, we have private corporations working on important stuff that NASA should have figured out 30 years ago, like reusable rockets.
Let's go to Mars, and worry about solving problems when we get there. That's how Europeans got to America, after all. That's how Africans got to Asia, and Europe, and eventually North America, and then South America. (I don't think anyone knows how people got to Oz - there was probably a wizard involved.)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday March 13 2017, @06:28PM
Reusable rockets were part of the original plan for the space shuttle. As far as I can remember, they dropped the reusability of the rockets for budget reasons. A pity. It might well have saved them more over the years than it would have cost.