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AP-NORC poll: Asteroid watch more urgent than Mars trip
Americans prefer a space program that focuses on potential asteroid impacts, scientific research and using robots to explore the cosmos over sending humans back to the moon or on to Mars, a poll shows.
The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released Thursday, one month before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, lists asteroid and comet monitoring as the No. 1 desired objective for the U.S. space program. About two-thirds of Americans call that very or extremely important, and about a combined 9 in 10 say it's at least moderately important.
The poll comes as the White House pushes to get astronauts back on the moon, but only about a quarter of Americans said moon or Mars exploration by astronauts should be among the space program's highest priorities. About another third called each of those moderately important.
"More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @03:26AM (5 children)
The Moon has gravity. The supply situation there is completely dire. It's a horrible place to do anything.
Going from the Moon to Mars just ignores all the physics. You're not going to manufacture spacecraft on the Moon, so why land them there only to then launch them off to Mars? Skip the Moon landing to save energy, time, non-Mars engineering tradeoffs, and wear.
Not that I much value humans on Mars, but if we're going to do it we should just go direct. Launching right from Earth's surface is the obvious workable plan. There is a possibility that we might benefit from a separate launch of supplies, to be collected either in Earth orbit or in Mars orbit. Screwing around on the Moon is political nonsense, much as the hydrogen economy was.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Hartree on Monday June 24 2019, @03:58AM
Ridiculous.
If you're going to go to Mars, you have to maintain a presence on a different world for an extended period unless it's just a "plant the flag" mission. Even then, it entails longer missions in bad radiation environments than we've ever done.
There are going to be problems we haven't anticipated. It's a lot easier to get crew members back alive when you are 3 days away from full hospitals and safety than when you have a minimum of six months of travel (and that's if you get lucky and the problem happens at Mars and at just the right planetary alignment, else double that or so).
Even disallowing the time factor, with the problems of radiation en route, it's still easier to do the testing and learning of how to protect against it someplace outside the earth's magnetosphere but still close. The moon is fine for that, and if you have a massive solar flare and find your shielding isn't up to it you can retreat to someplace under a few feet of lunar soil and still be safe while you refigure your plans.
Going direct to Mars is IMHO a good recipe for needless astronaut deaths and too high a risk for failure. The moon's an easier first step.
If you just want to stay home or in LEO, then don't go to the moon, but if you're serious about learning to run remote manned installations in the Solar system, the moon is a good place to learn how.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 24 2019, @04:06AM (1 child)
There is a lot of evidence that humans need gravity to stay healthy in the long term. So, you put support facilities near a shallow gravity well, which is cheaper to dive into, then jump out of. The moon is a whole lot better than earth, if you're comparing costs of health benefits vs costs of launch.
Besides, no one is saying that the mars craft ever have to land on the moon. They can be in a high lunar orbit, or at a LaGrange point. The cost of launching toward mars will be considerably less than launching from earth, and also less than launching from the moon. Something like a Saturn 5 or Musk's heavy lifter, sitting at one of the LaGrange points, fully fueled and loaded, would make child's play of a transit to Mars orbit. And, back again, for that matter.
The whole point is, to expand our horizons, we have to stop diving deep into THIS gravity well, on earth. It is extremely expensive to climb back up out of earth's well.
Listening to the BBC's '13 minutes to the moon' today, there was a comment about, "wherever people explore, medicine follows", or words to that effect. We most definitely have to get "out there" for the medical people to figure out what is possible, what is necessary, and what is desirable.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csz4dp [bbc.co.uk]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @11:28AM
It sounds like you're supporting the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) and the like as an essential part of the "Journey to Mars". It just isn't.
BFR would refuel with multiple BFR fuel tankers coming from Earth and landing back on Earth until it has enough delta-v and fuel to reach Mars with the full payload. It would reach that point long before it reached the Moon or a Lagrange point, AFAIK.
You could produce methane from water and carbon from the lunar regolith, in order to ship fuel into trans-lunar space. This would be less straightforward than doing it on Earth or even Mars where there is abundant carbon dioxide, and would be more expensive. It would be useful for refueling spaceships that landed on the Moon (for the purpose of being there, not Mars) and need to return to Earth.
If there is any sense to going to the Moon before Mars, it's just that it should always be a cheaper and easier target to send humans to and study. It's relatively easy to reach, resupply, and return from. Mars may be a more attractive colonization target in the long term, but you could have a small base on the Moon for scientists. In any case, robots/rovers should be sent frequently. It will become cheaper to do this with BFR. No rocket crane needed for Mars, orders of magnitude more payload mass and fairing volume, and low launch costs. It could be tricky to lower all of the payloads to the surface from the upright rocket, but if they manage that, you could send out 100 rovers in one mission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday June 24 2019, @05:03AM
The supply situation on the moon is phenomenally better than in LEO. The moon has metal and water, so you can build hulls and tanks, and fill them with fuel, oxygen, and water. Only the high tech parts of a ship would need to come from Earth.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 24 2019, @07:53AM
And why not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford