labworm
US Veteran
Searching for Candy Bars, what else.
What will "Curiosity" do on Mars?
- Thread starter PALADIN85020
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As fascinating as the space program is, I think the money is best left in the private sector. It is easy to point to all the advances that came from the space program. It is much harder to predict what inventions and advances we might have had but don't because the private sector had fewer resources.
As a practical matter how will any discoveries on Mars benefit us here?
As a practical matter how will any discoveries on Mars benefit us here?
Fat Old Guy
Member
It is the first step. As a species, we need to move out into space or face extinction.
We are not going anywhere meaningful in space for the next 500 years. Our thinking is clouded by military conquest where victory allowed us to use the captured "enemy" resources. Space requires self-sustaining life in an environment that only has solar energy to offer as "spoils." To carry enough stuff to leave the solar system would probably need a craft the size of Rhode Island. I realize we could make perfect ball bearings in a weightless environment. How would we get the foundry up? I feel bad for the folks on the "Space Coast" but I have watched the steel folks, the car folks and a few other industries go away. We don't make much here anymore and unless that changes, NASA will be tenuous at best. Joe
Fat Old Guy
Member
So? Are we supposed to wait 500 years before we start the journey?
"Colombus! Don't go yet. In 500 years we'll have GPS and SATCOM."
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marvin the martian
Member
You all can debate the benefits to mankind...I just want to thank you for the new golf cart! 
sipowicz
Member
I'm not sure..but I often wonder why aliens always land out in the sticks in the midwest and probe old guys in overalls. If I were to make such a long trip to earth from another galaxy, I'd land in NY and have a nice dinner and maybe take in a show....
sipowicz
Member
Not taking sides here...but that's funny!
35Rem
Member
Fishslayer
US Veteran, Absent Comrade
Actually the rover just went out to do a bit of shopping. They HAVE had to scale down a bit due to the budget cuts...
gunfighter48
US Veteran
People don't understand how much progress in all fields was made due to the space program. There isn't very much that we use, own, or even eat that the space program hasn't been a part of or as a direct result of the space program. As for spending money elsewhere, so much BS. The only place money goes is to the politicians, special contractors, and down right fraud by our government. I'd rather see it spent on space and technology any day.
COL Jagdog
Member
This news alert just in....................................................................
the Mars rover has been successful in it's mission to find Elvis.
the Mars rover has been successful in it's mission to find Elvis.
COL Jagdog
Member
It's a remarkable achievement to have sent yet another nuclear powered device to a remote planet, so far as we know, incapable of sustaining even the lowest life forms known to contemporary science, but this is no prognostication of being able to advance human exploration, much less colonization, outside Earth, our solar system, or beyond. Their appear to be some deduced "Goldilocks" planets (not too hot, not too cold, not too irradiated, not too toxic, not too dark, and etc.),but none are within the reach of any imaginable technology which would enable our travel to them, much less colonizing them.
Absent unlikely divine intervention, we're stuck here, for better or worse, perhaps reluctantly, until the sun burns out.
Fat Old Guy
Member
You got that wrong. The technology is not currently feasible but it is very imaginable. Not that long ago airplanes, submarines and space flight were all just wild dreams. Now they are all commonplace.
It took thousands of years for man to master flight but only fifty more years to reach space. It may take one hundred or even one thousand years before we see interstellar travel but, if we don't exterminate ourselves, it will happen.
What we cannot afford to do is listen to people like you who say that it cannot be done.
Bell Charter Oak Holsters
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It is IMHO a complete waste of money. When we still have hungry kids and senior citizens in this country who can't afford their medication or food. There are priorities. There is life on earth, not on Mars. There I just solved the billion dollar question for free. NASA can go to Mars....and stay there.
Lefty
Lefty
What ???
Or spend our money here on Earth more wisely and
take care of "THIS" planet.
Chuck
Fat Old Guy
Member
So you are in favor of expanding the welfare state?
NASA gets less that one half of one percent of the Federal budget. Some sources say that 70% of the Federal budget goes to handouts.
Fat Old Guy
Member
Yeah, we can take care of the planet and then when a big rock hits it and kills everyone, we'll be in great shape. That's not an "if it will happen" that's a "when it will happen."
Whats to keep the "Big Rock" from hitting Mars or
any other planet we inhabit tommorrow?
Are we playing "planet russian roulette" ?
Chuck
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