• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

New Space race

A

Androvski

As the Chinese space program is gaining momentum,will it just herald another Space race with the USA,or would there be the possibility of co-operation with NASA,ESA,NASDA(Japan)to initiate the plans for an international manned mission to Mars?
 
Last edited:
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
if it's a race we got like a forty year head start


Yeah I know that,but the Chinese Space program is developing very rapidly and the NASA program is fairly stagnant at present,plus there is very little co-operation with Europe and Japan.
I know that China are still way behind,but they won't take long to bridge that 40 yr head start with the ambitious plans they have.
It would be nice to think that there could be international co-operation,that way the huge cost of a manned mission to Mars would be shared.
I remember reading sometime ago that it would cost in the region of $30 billion.I think that's a conservative estimate!
 
Androvski said:
Yeah I know that,but the Chinese Space program is developing very rapidly and the NASA program is fairly stagnant at present,plus there is very little co-operation with Europe and Japan.
I know that China are still way behind,but they won't take long to bridge that 40 yr head start with the ambitious plans they have.
It would be nice to think that there could be international co-operation,that way the huge cost of a manned mission to Mars would be shared.
I remember reading sometime ago that it would cost in the region of $30 billion.I think that's a conservative estimate!
Now I think of it,it may have been $300 billion,now that sounds more realistic.I know there was a 3 at the beginning.:doh
Manned mission to Mars £3(right I'm off)
 
Last edited:
Androvski said:
Yeah I know that,but the Chinese Space program is developing very rapidly and the NASA program is fairly stagnant at present,plus there is very little co-operation with Europe and Japan.
I know that China are still way behind,but they won't take long to bridge that 40 yr head start with the ambitious plans they have.
It would be nice to think that there could be international co-operation,that way the huge cost of a manned mission to Mars would be shared.
I remember reading sometime ago that it would cost in the region of $30 billion.I think that's a conservative estimate!

I think the best chance for leap frogs in space tech would come from private enterprise, just like what happened in the airplane industry, do you realize that there's an asteroid up there not to far away that's made out of raw iron ore and worth billions? It's great that another country finally put a man in space but I think the private launch a few months back was more of a milestone which will hopefully spark a renewed vigor for technological advancement.
 
Why Waste the Money?

What's the point in going to Mars? What will be accomplished, what will the rate of return on investment be?

What d'ya expect to find? Water? Haven't done the orbit calcs, but I'm sure it would be cheaper in delta-V to snag a comet than it would be to go down to Mars and back up with it.

Gonna do the exciting "search for extra-terrestrial life" adventure? What happens when you find it? The day a living alien bacterium if found on Mars is the day Mars manned exploration will stop. There's green Nazis infecting all our courts waiting for a day like that.

Geological samples? We're gonna risk men for rocks?

Wanna see how a long duration space flight outside of earh's protective magnetic field will work out? Why not orbit the moon for a year?

There is the moon, of course. Our personal exploration of that planet was like the baby ant just touching the tip of a fin of a blue whale. There may very well be water in the polar regions. The data the Lunar Prospector collected wasn't conlcusive.

The moon's a nice place. Think about it. Half the moon has a great view of a really unique place. Plenty of room for souvenir shops. Near, yet totally alien. Could become an ideal retirement community, especially for those with weak hearts. Lots of natural vacuum for those hard to do science experiments.

So what's the rush to get to Mars? Ego? Define the goals, please.
 
Re: Why Waste the Money?

Scarecrow Akhbar said:
What's the point in going to Mars? What will be accomplished, what will the rate of return on investment be?

What d'ya expect to find? Water? Haven't done the orbit calcs, but I'm sure it would be cheaper in delta-V to snag a comet than it would be to go down to Mars and back up with it.

Gonna do the exciting "search for extra-terrestrial life" adventure? What happens when you find it? The day a living alien bacterium if found on Mars is the day Mars manned exploration will stop. There's green Nazis infecting all our courts waiting for a day like that.

Geological samples? We're gonna risk men for rocks?

Wanna see how a long duration space flight outside of earh's protective magnetic field will work out? Why not orbit the moon for a year?

There is the moon, of course. Our personal exploration of that planet was like the baby ant just touching the tip of a fin of a blue whale. There may very well be water in the polar regions. The data the Lunar Prospector collected wasn't conlcusive.

The moon's a nice place. Think about it. Half the moon has a great view of a really unique place. Plenty of room for souvenir shops. Near, yet totally alien. Could become an ideal retirement community, especially for those with weak hearts. Lots of natural vacuum for those hard to do science experiments.

So what's the rush to get to Mars? Ego? Define the goals, please.

I dont suppose there's a lot more that can be acheived scientifically by a manned mission than by robotic.There is the advantage of independant Human thought,communication delays can be as much as 40 minutes,it could mean the unification of mankind behind a common goal.
There are many dangers to humans in space,the most obvious being exposure to cosmic radiation,especially that from Solar flares and CME's,though it may soon be possible to forecast "space weather".
The dangers to the body during prolonged periods in space are well known,such as muscle atrophy and loss of bone density due to zero gravity.
The cost of such a mission is prohibitively expensive(I just checked and the current estimate is $40 billion)which raises the question,could that money be better spent elsewhere?which I'm sure it could be!
At the end of the day,there is not a lot that can be achieved other than the acheivement in itself and then I suppose we are coming back to ego.
I don't really know how I feel about it,I would like to see it happen in my lifetime,but I agree that there is no hurry to get there and we should really get"our own house in order"first.I think that former NASA administrator Dan Goldin's estimate of the year 2020 for the mission is too optimistic!
 
Last edited:
Putting people in space is very expensive & of little or no use.
Unmanned space probes & telescopes advance our knowledge of universe far more than any Manned probe can.

However manned missions are very entertaining & what's a few $billion if the cost is born by hundreds of millions of people ?

If some fool wants to spend two years in a tin can just to go & bounce up & down on a barren ball of rust 80 million miles away & no doubt pin the stars & stripes on it, then fine by me. I think it's a wonderfully absurd thing to do :lol:

I do wish though that money would be spent on a bigger & better replacement for Hubble in optical wavelengths & on preserving our rainforests. They are far more precious than mere rust.
 
Last edited:
robin said:
Putting people in space is very expensive & of little or no use.
Unmanned space probes & telescopes advance our knowledge of universe far more than any Manned probe can.

However manned missions are very entertaining & what's a few $billion if the cost is born by hundreds of millions of people ?

If some fool wants to spend two years in a tin can just to go & bounce up & down on a barren ball of rust 80 million miles away & no doubt pin the stars & stripes on it, then fine by me. I think it's a wonderfully absurd thing to do :lol:

I do wish though that money would be spent on a bigger & better replacement for Hubble in optical wavelengths & on preserving our rainforests. They are far more precious than mere rust.

I want to Preserve our rainforests,but how are we going to stop "them" cuttting the trees down,short of "doing a number on them"?
 
Last edited:
Androvski said:
I want to Preserve our rainforests,but how are we going to stop "them" cuttting the trees down,short of "doing a number on them"?
Therein lies an excellent subject for another thread. Without going on for too long OT... Money can buy most things. Land owners/governments need compensation for the timber revenues they would have recieved. Perhaps we should pay them also for the carbon that these trees keep out of the atmosphere.
 
Last edited:
PS if we don't do something soon then before too long you won't need to go to Mars to bounce around on a barren ball of dirt LOL
 
robin said:
PS if we don't do something soon then before too long you won't need to go to Mars to bounce around on a barren ball of dirt LOL

Your not wrong there,I'm sure I read once that an area the size of Belgium is cut away in the Amazonian rainforest each day,hard to imagine!
 
Androvski said:
Your not wrong there,I'm sure I read once that an area the size of Belgium is cut away in the Amazonian rainforest each day,hard to imagine!

In retrospect,I think that estimate was referring to all the worlds rainforests,not just those in South America.Still pretty shocking though!
 
Area of Belgium = 30,518 sq km.
Area of Brazil = 8,511,965 sq km
Well I guess it's rainforests of the world, as Brazil would be gone in 279 days if not !
Mind you even if was the forests of the whole world, an area the size of Belgium seems an exageration.
Aprox area of world's rain forests 2.6 million sq miles = 6.7million sq km.
6,700,000/30,518 = 219 days & all the forests will be gone !
Just goes to show. You can't trust stats from the net :roll:
 
Androvski said:
Yeah I know that,but the Chinese Space program is developing very rapidly and the NASA program is fairly stagnant at present,plus there is very little co-operation with Europe and Japan.
I know that China are still way behind,but they won't take long to bridge that 40 yr head start with the ambitious plans they have.
It would be nice to think that there could be international co-operation,that way the huge cost of a manned mission to Mars would be shared.
I remember reading sometime ago that it would cost in the region of $30 billion.I think that's a conservative estimate!



Teenagers in the US can fund it and have 140 billion left over for the movies.
 
Current estimates are that it would cost about $30 billion to return to the moon with a semi-permanent presence, using Apollo-type landers and hardware. The project currently has an estimated completion date of 2018, assuming congress would fund it and then leave the engineers alone.

Won't happen. The national will isn't there.

I'll remind everyone about the story of the tortoise and the hare. The United States is definitely in the Bugs Bunny seat.
 
robin said:
Area of Belgium = 30,518 sq km.
Area of Brazil = 8,511,965 sq km
Well I guess it's rainforests of the world, as Brazil would be gone in 279 days if not !
Mind you even if was the forests of the whole world, an area the size of Belgium seems an exageration.
Aprox area of world's rain forests 2.6 million sq miles = 6.7million sq km.
6,700,000/30,518 = 219 days & all the forests will be gone !
Just goes to show. You can't trust stats from the net :roll:

I thought it sounded extreme,probably just trying to scare us,mind you that might be what we need!
 
this time America pays for china's space race
in jobs and trinkets bought at Walmart
help support china's space program buy chinese
and adopt a mexican gang it helps the american space program go under
while your at it
 
Canuck said:
this time America pays for china's space race
in jobs and trinkets bought at Walmart
help support china's space program buy chinese
and adopt a mexican gang it helps the american space program go under
while your at it

Wow, you Canadian bastard, you really have no idea about the future of the U.S space program do you? It's going private welcome to plannet starbucks ass hole. Now go slam down some maple syrup and talk to me when you got an army.
 
Due to the Bush administration's abysmal 'spend and cut taxes' philosophy and the unexpected double-whammy of Katrina/Rita, some Congressmen are already talking about slashing NASA's meager budget.

This threat to scuttle NASA has implications well beyond space-travel and exploration. Can anyone even vaguely remember the last influential Russian contribution to science? I didn't think so.


 
Tashah said:
Can anyone even vaguely remember the last influential Russian contribution to science? I didn't think so.





Non-Euclidean geometry


Math is probably Russias best contribution in the last 100 years and I agree with you in that we should not cut funding to NASA for several reasons.

Maily because NASA has over 1000 patents being transferred to public technologies.

Technology Transfer Program
 
robin said:
Putting people in space is very expensive & of little or no use.
QUOTE]

NASA owns over 1,000 patents and patent applications that protect inventions in hundreds of subject matter categories.

NASA solutions

For all humankind

Even just the satellites require manned maintenience every once in a while.


You like eating? Clean water? Saving the whales? Preventing landmines from blowing up kids? Oil spill clean up? Cancer early detection systems? "Smart" surgical tools?Fetal activity monitors? Camera-on-a-chip technology? Aeronautical safety technologies? VR remote control technologies? Scratch resistant glasses? Rescue worker technologies? Any cordless technology?
Home heating insulation technologies?


As long as you dont eat,take a bath, go outside,get sick, get old, dont use electricity, dont use money, dont make phone calls, dont play sports, dont fly on an airplane, dont watch TV, dont use a computer, your property is immune to fire,
then you are abolutely correct.

Manned missions in space are useless to you.

Since you are posting on a forum I suspect you are shooting par for the course however.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
do you realize that there's an asteroid up there not to far away that's made out of raw iron ore and worth billions? It's great that another country finally put a man in space but I think the private launch a few months back was more of a milestone which will hopefully spark a renewed vigor for technological advancement.
It's thing like this that make me wonder why we aren't already doing such things. Asteroids, the Moon and Mars could all be stripped mine without any consequences. There is no ecosystem to damage and no consequences for Earth from doing it. We may find new resources that are not available to us on Earth.
 
scottyz said:
It's thing like this that make me wonder why we aren't already doing such things. Asteroids, the Moon and Mars could all be stripped mine without any consequences. There is no ecosystem to damage and no consequences for Earth from doing it. We may find new resources that are not available to us on Earth.


How do we get it down here?
 
Sorry corrected. That silly 10 minute edit time limit :x

akyron said:
robin said:
Putting people in space is very expensive & of little or no use.

NASA owns over 1,000 patents and patent applications that protect inventions in hundreds of subject matter categories.

NASA solutions

For all humankind

Even just the satellites require manned maintenience every once in a while.


You like eating? Clean water? Saving the whales? Preventing landmines from blowing up kids? Oil spill clean up? Cancer early detection systems? "Smart" surgical tools?Fetal activity monitors? Camera-on-a-chip technology? Aeronautical safety technologies? VR remote control technologies? Scratch resistant glasses? Rescue worker technologies? Any cordless technology?
Home heating insulation technologies?


As long as you dont eat,take a bath, go outside,get sick, get old, dont use electricity, dont use money, dont make phone calls, dont play sports, dont fly on an airplane, dont watch TV, dont use a computer, your property is immune to fire,
then you are abolutely correct.

Manned missions in space are useless to you.

Since you are posting on a forum I suspect you are shooting par for the course however.
Don't be too bowled over with glossy corporate type speak.
Virtually all of the patents listed there would have been developed whether the probes were manned or not.
Even hydroponics would have been developed without manned space missions, but for arctic bases or submarines instead.
Even then, If there had been no space programme, which is not something I advocate BTW, many of these things would have still have been developed in military rocket programmes.
I'm going to go against my nature now :2razz: & be a proud boastful Englishmen & point out we invented 80% of everything in the world & it was nothing to do with any space programme...... The steam engine, steam turbine, Microwave, radar, MRI, CT, jet engine, 1st programmable computer, electric motor, battery, vacuum cleaner etc etc etc etc.
Remember I'm not anti manned space mission. I find manned missions to be very entertaining, plus there has been the very occasional useful one that has enabled maintenance on the Hubble telescope.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom