Is a trip to mars worth the expense?

Question

I read that they have allocated 1 billion dollars over the next ten years. The Russians are proposing a 20 billion dollar manned trip to mars. Could'nt we use that money for education and taking care of human beings here on earth? Maybe re- forestation.

Answer 1

I feel that it is not a worthwhile endeavor. It is one of those things where the purpose would only be to prove that we could do it; there is no real tangible or practical benefit that would come if it. Populating Mars is ludicrous, mining the planet for resources would not be cost effective. We had enough trouble landing a small rover craft on the surface, try imagining a huge space barge that could carry oil or minerals off the surface. And how many trips would they really plan? We haven't been back to the moon for 30 years. I think it is a waste of energy and money. We know more about our neighboring planets than we do our own oceans; let's try looking a little closer to home.

Answer 2

I don't think an American manned mission to Mars is a worthwhile investment, for either the public or private sectors. Proponents of a manned mission cite the obvious: that Mars is a worthy target for colonization. One day, there will no doubt be humans living on Mars. But we currently don't know enough about Mars to understand the psychological, social and economic ramifications of a permanent human presence there.

Most of the loftier visions for manned exploration of Mars came out of the 1980s and 90s, long before cutting edge technologies made robotic exploration of the planet more feasible.

As our technology advances, our space probes and robots are getting smaller, smarter and more cost effective explorers for the data they can return to Earth for analysis. The mission payload is small, requiring far less energy and travel time to reach Mars than even a modest human mission.

Robot missions are more flexible in terms of changing course on investigating Mars in light of ever changing models of the planet's watery past, current theories and the possibility for finding life there. A sample return mission could also be better handled by a robot explorer.

A manned mission to Mars would take at least 6 months to arrive, and after an expected stay for a year, would take at least as long to return. In terms of propulsion, radiation shielding, artificial gravity, long term life support and psychological health, we have a long way to go before we can safely send humans to another world. We have yet to demonstrate successful functioning on the Moon, an ideal staging ground for interplanetary missions.

The US will not lose if it postpones a manned mission to Mars. We're better off returning to the Moon where we can test strategies for colonization within safe distance to the Earth. America should continue doing what it has done best since the Voyager days of the 1970s, expanding our knowledge of the solar system through unmanned missions.

Answer 3

$20 billion would be a ONE TIME grant of $400 US to every man woman and child on the Earth.

Now, what do we do 2200 when the population of the Earth is 100 Billion and we don't have enough food to feed them all and crime spreads to the suburbs.

To SURVIVE on Mars we need to learn how to MAKE, Water and Air out of inorganic and organic chemicals that exist. We need to MAKE food on Mars.

1620 about 100 religious people landed at Plymouth Bay and by 1720, 100 years, they helped math an economy SO thriving that Carpetbaggers from England came over and took over and took the country away from them and the King of England and turned it into the United States and in less than 400 years the United States is the #1 economica producer in the World and one of it's states, Califronia, EXCEEDS FRANCE in Economic production.

One of the 50 states exceeds a country in Economy.

I predict 400 years after Man colonizes Mars MILLIONS will apply for immigration.

To escape crime, poltical regimes, bad air, bad water, tainted food.

In 400 years MARS could be a major exporter to Earth.

Don't forget there are ASTEROIDS out there, they may have Gold, Silver, Uranium, Tungtin, Aluminum, Iron ore, Borax and other chemicals that can be refined in space and sent back to Earth and end up being cheaper than what a UNION crew delivers out of the ground.

It's called OUTSOURCING and MARS is on the list to outscource.

What if the Martian soil is perfect for making computer chips and memory chips and these get made on MARS and exported to Earth and bring down the price of chips to $1 for a 100 GB SD card chip.

Right now you're pay $20 for a 4 GB chip. What if Mars could produce that for 20 cents landed cost on EArth.

Can you imagein the benefits or pay $1 for a chip for your IPOD.

Of course a lot of people in California's Silicon valley will become unemployed, but that's the price you pay for progress!

Imagine if Mars could produce Satilites and space probed for 1/10 the DELIVERED cost of what it takes to make on on Earth.

Remember Mars has HALF the gravity.

Answer 4

I feel that going out into space is our ultimate destiny if we are to survive as a species. Our resources here on Earth are already beginning to show the strains of our burgeoning population which today is far beyond anything that thinkers ever dreamed would even be possible. Technology has gotten us further than anyone imagined. The space race is one wellspring where huge amounts of technology were discovered which make today's society even possible.

Could these developments have happened any other way? Of course. It's ludicrous to say they wouldn't, but what better way to make progress than through challenges met? We know that we are at our best whenever we push ourselves to the limits, and not standing idly.

I feel that if we do not strive to go to Mars, then we risk becoming complacent - prefering to sit on the couch and use our remote controls; our cellphones to order pizza; living vicariously through our proverbial TV sets.

It's not until we've been there that we've fully experienced something. If we rely solely on robotic missions to do our exploration for us, then we will miss out on the big picture, telling ourselves that it's not worth the effort so long that we will come to believe it, and waste away fat, lazy, and stagnant. We will die. It will not happen all at once, but we will be on the path to our undoing.

We cannot afford to lose sight of what matters. There is so much money squandered by our government - on supporting its own bloated, ineffecient beurocratic infrastructure. If they were to simply improve the efficiency of the infrastructure itself, enough money would be saved to go to Mars 50 times over.

Is a manned mission to Mars worth it? It's worth more than anyone's ever planned on spending. We need a new challenge to keep us from imploding on ourselves and becoming nothing more than a fossil record for some distant future's re-evolved species to discover and ponder.

Yes, we are far from being able to establish colonies like those seen in science fiction. Yes we are nowhere near capable of building cities on Mars or even the Moon. If we wait until we have that technology in hand, we will not go because we will have long since lost the drive to do anything more than bicker amongst ourselves and tell ourselves that it's too great a feat; a bridge too far, all so that we can feel good about ourselves while we go back into the dust from which we came; cannibalizing all around us until nothing remains.

Answer 5

I would have to say that unmanned exploration has a better gain-to-cost ratio than manned exploration. However, a manned mission now and again serves to revitalize interest in the space program, so it's not all bad.

When it comes to money allocation, the military can spare more than NASA. The US military was given $440 billion in 2007.

Answer 6

The money would be better spent trying to save the starving people of this planet before jumping out into space looking at other planets.

Answer 7

Looking back at history one could ask:

Is a trip to the New World by Christopher Columbus worth the expense?



Christopher Columbus was a navigator and colonialist. One of several historical figures credited as the first European to discover the Americas.

It was Columbus' voyages that lead to general European awareness of the hemisphere and the successful establishment of European cultures in the New World.

Answer 8

Yes, it's awful hard to see any justification to the huge sums of money spent on space research. The immediate returns on those investments is miniscule in terms of material gain.

The fact remains, though, that Earth is rapidly running out of a lot of the resources we need to sustain our civilization. The only places we can turn to for these resources are solar system bodies other than our own, savagely raped planet.

Whether we truly want to or not, sooner or later we're going to have to 'mine' the solar system for our own survival.

Answer 9

Money is wasted in huge quantities in many ways. A billion isn't much to go to another planet - that's epic!

Answer 10

what if there's oil on Mars?