Poll: When Will Elon Musk’s SpaceX Get Humans to Mars
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As long as the climate change people keep funding him with out tax dollars through political appointments… we might fund his trip to Mars. I still don’t know why a human needs to go there though.
Richard G. “I still don’t know why a human needs to go there though.”
Why did the Monarchs of Spain sponsor Christopher Columbus exploration of America?
Why did Thomas Jefferson sponsor the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
We have to go to Mars to be sure it’s not flat like the Earth, obviously. 😉
Well said Klaus.
Ummm… they were looking for a faster way to The Middle East. I know they might not teach that in school anymore. They then returned because they found stuff they could take and land they could take and live on.
Mars… we knew it was there, we know there isn’t anything useful to take, and we can’t live there.
America… we didn’t know it was there, we found useful stuff, and we can and still do live here…
Good example as to why there isn’t a reason for us to go to Mars in human form.
I’m sure that sometime soon the hardware to go to Mars will be developed. What I see as an issue that could make the journey more difficult is the degradation of the human body in extended zero G environment. Sure astronauts can do exercises as they do now on the space station, but that would require a larger vehicle for the additional room. But that still does not totally eliminate the degradation. Until medical science comes up with a better solution I think long deep space voyages will not happen in my lifetime.
Perhaps the better question is when will Musk’s passengers “return” from Mars. One way trips are not likely to be popular.
If I knew I was going to die in the next year… it would be a nice quiet resting place.
At least until some rover dug me up to investigate my dead body. I find it interesting they don’t want to contaminate Mars with bio matter… but want to send a human body there likely carrying every decease known to man to contaminate the planet.
A fundamental question is stability of design.
If you try and patch until it appears to work, what will you have?
A thing that just ‘appears to work’.
If you do not have a solid understanding of your design, patches can foul up other things that may bite you someday.
Boeing proved that big-time with the MCAS system function. And proved that ‘process’ is no good if you do not think while following it and worse if you do not follow it (recall Boeing failed to update key safety analyses as MCAS morphed). And in the ‘management’ realm proved that you can fool yourself as it did with progress reports for the 787 development (Commercial division was so dense it did not heed the caution from its Military division, that was published in a newsletter widely read in Commercial.,)
It is proven routinely in software.
Clear discipline thinking is required for lasting success.