If some dudes or chicks wanna go to Mars then good for them although a permanent colony is prohibitively expensive. But it's not as insane as this idea of mining Mars for use here. It cost $2.6 billion to get some shitty robot to the planet on a 1 way trip. Do you think a rocket could get there and back and bring back enough resources to make it worth it? Not for a very very long time. A lot of small loads would be a huge waste in materials to build rockets, while shipping a huge load would require more fuel than could be shipped over there. However, that idea is not as insane as the idea of sending humans to Mars to relieve population stresses (that don't actually exist anyway hippies) on Earth. Unless your idea is to just burn up so many of Earth's (read: our) resources shipping people to Mars that poor people all over the world starve to death, it's not feasible.
Did you just leak the storyline for Avatar II? Here's an idea. What if we were to send Honey Boo Boo, the Duggars and the entire Chinese Olympic team to Mars. Curiosity can follow them and send back video, which will be edited to shit and aired on national TV. We can call it Survivor - the Final Stand. It should make billions and fund the space program for years to come. Shit - I forgot to add that we would also arm them (heavily).
Well just sending up rockets carrying payloads of nuclear waste would be foolish, and a waste of petroleum. If we're sending spacecraft to Mars why not just dump it while the craft makes a wide turn, effectively slinging it into the endless void of space? Let the Krogans or Vulcans or whoever deal with it. Whats the worst that could happen?
How long would it take Nukes to reach Jupiter? (Just some well aimed and timed launchs is all.) Seriously, the world might just forget we did something silly like fire 50 nukes at a planet 40 years from now and then their MS Outlook reminder pops up and telescope sales jump. Maybe they hit and asteroid and become earths Bruce Willis, maybe they hit other cool shit. make sure cameras are always sending back data just incase. As for waste, why not lauch it at the sun where it'll just burn up. Why litter on Mars?
Here's some video on the logistics of the Curiosity landing. It really is amazing. Just for good measure (and because it was down for a bit) here's the NASA YT video. Watch it closely and tell me this ... at 3:26 - is that a 'special friend' hug?
Slight derail ahead. Spoiler You... uhh.. what? You don't actually believe this, and you're just fucking with me, right? Japan took care of their own while Haiti did not? The GDP per capita in Haiti is $1,300. In Japan it is $32,600. Given this 25x difference, I suggest that its more likely that the Haitians may not have been able to look after their own, rather than just going 'well, fuck it, let's kick back and have a beer and wait for Westerners to sort it out'. This website may help explain the flaw in your argument. In fact, while we're on the topic of Haiti: "It is alleged that this popular anti-American revolt against Sam threatened American business interests in the country (such as the Haitian American Sugar Company HASCO). Because of these competing interests and the possibility of the cacos-supported anti-American Rosalvo Bobo emerging as the next President of Haiti, the American government decided to act quickly to preserve their economic dominance over Haiti.[6] American President Woodrow Wilson sent 330 U.S. Marines to Port-au-Prince on July 28, 1915. The specific order from the Secretary of the Navy to the invasion commander, Admiral William Deville Bundy, was to “protect American and foreign” interests. An additional motivation was to replace the Haitian constitution which prohibited foreign ownership of land.[7] However, to avoid public criticism the occupation was labeled as a mission to “re-establish peace and order… [and] has nothing to do with any diplomatic negotiations of the past or the future” as disclosed by Rear Admiral Caperton.[8]" The summary is from wikipedia, but there's a stack of texts available if you want to look at the source material. Yeah, fuck those Haitians all right. We might have success by showing them the benefits of American capitalism? Seriously? The 3rd world has, to a fucking enormous degree, seen the benefits of American capitalism - the benefits which always flow from the third world to America. For fucks sake man, when countries in the third world try to use their resources for the benefit of their own people America has a charming habit of assassinating or otherwise deposing the relevant leader and installing someone who is more accommodating to American interests (see: Bolivia, Chile, half of Africa). Is the third world absolutely fucked-in-half broken beyond all possibility of repair? Probably. Is it because they just haven't seen the light of having smaller families, when they are have an infant mortality rate 20.8x that of the West and need the kids to function in an agrarian lifestyle? Come the fuck on now.
What's really amazing to me, is that all that animation and video was done well before the event actually happened. And, then they did it just like that. 140 million miles away, and they landed the rover in the trench of the crater at the base of Mt Sharp, just like they were aiming for. There is no joystick control with the 14 minute signal delay, so . . . yay computers! Fascinating.
Totally nuts. Launching and performing maneuvers, getting there: I saw the little press conference last night, where they guy with the bad teeth was explaining that in the trajectory simulation, that had the craft landing in section 64. It actually landed in 51.
Maybe I'm just a cynical asshole, but I feel like if we wait until we figure out how to end poverty/suffering/disease/the gas mileage of ballsack's SUV before we try to accomplish anything not related to those things, we would be waiting a looong fucking time. If we knew how to do all that stuff, and it was just a matter of spending $2.5 billion on that instead of the Mars rover, then sure... let's do that first. But we don't. I say, since we're just going to argue about stupid pointless shit while being a bunch of hypocrites about solving world problems anyway, why not accomplish amazing things like landing on Mars as well.
This is a new twist on the Medical Corollary (Source; Me). A dismissive statement meant to disparage celebrated technical achievements. Typically voiced by the elderly, trailer trash, and elderly trailer trash, the typical format is "Why can we X, but we can't cure the common cold?". Typically, X is substituted with phrases such as " land a man on the moon", "catch a giant squid", "make robot pron", or "invent no-stick frying pans".
Those damn nerds, making good money doing something they're passionate about. I can understand your dislike.
That's because you're a rube. You're also a lawyer arguing that rocket scientists are a drain on our society. I think the next thing we should ask NASA to work on is an electric generator that runs on irony.
As a matter of fact I've figured out a way to get cheaper gas. 1.) Quit using fucking corn for fuel. Ethanol lessens gas mileage; and fucks up engines anyway. 2.) Subsidize the building and operation of 15 new refineries in the United States by waiving all fee's, permit costs, etc. with the condition that the refineries are operational within 24 months. 3.) Take petroleum off the commodities market. I know jack shit about how the stock markets work beyond the basic concept. But if I recall correctly, at one time oil wasn't traded like it is now. 4.) Mandate that 25% of all new passenger cars in the United States operate on diesel fuel by 2020. There are some very clean, very efficient diesel engines available now. 5.) Reduce fuel taxes at the Fed. and State levels; as most of the price per gallon is taxes. This could possibly be accomplished by reducing spending on the enforcement of drug laws, thus reducing the burden of supporting a bloated inmate population (the cost of which nearly rivals welfare). There, a simple five point plan of action.
"Hurrrr, it's a golf cart. I COULDA SPENDED THOSE MONIES WAY BETTER." The utter lack of intellectual curiosity and imagination it takes to say that is just beyond me. The cost of US wars in just the last decade exceeds half a century of NASA spending (adjusted for inflation) by an order of magnitude. I think there are more egregious money sinks you could be raging against than a field that promotes scientific discovery, technological innovation, and education.
Locally gas is around... $3.39 per gallon. So 13% of $3.39 is $0.44. Subtract that from $3.39 and you get $2.95 per gallon. So figuring it takes about 16 gallons to fill up my SUV, (23mpg), 16 x $3.39 = $54.24 if fill up from an empty tank. $2.95 x 16 for instance equals out to... $47.20. $54.24 - $47.20 = $7.04. Depending on how you drive, reducing taxes to say four or five percent would save the average consumer a significant amount of money every year, reducing the impact that higher fuel prices have on the economy.
Without getting too deep into the gas tax argument, there are externalities to the operation of a motor vehicle that gas taxes are at least in part supposed to offset. Slashing gas taxes because we don't like the fact that the market value of oil has gone up just seems like another in a long line of "fuck the future, we want what we want" baby boomer decisions.