The President has proposed manned missions to the moon and mars. JFK promised an American on the moon by the end of the decade and that was realized. Other previous presidents have also presented lofty goals for space exploration that they were not able to live up to. For instance Reagan wanted a perminantly manned space station by the end of the decade and Bush Sr wanted a manned moon base. Both were never realized. One thing is for sure whatever happens, the shuttle has to go. Do you think there will be manned missions to the moon and mars.

The President has proposed manned missions to the moon and mars. JFK promised an American on the moon by the end of the decade and that was realized. Other previous presidents have also presented lofty goals for space exploration that they were not able to live up to. For instance Reagan wanted a perminantly manned space station by the end of the decade and Bush Sr wanted a manned moon base. Both were never realized. One thing is for sure whatever happens, the shuttle has to go. Do you think there will be manned missions to the moon and mars.

Eventually, yes. Time frame? 10 to 50 years.

I saw a doco. on DW television (German TV), about german millionaires helping finance research and actually training them selves to try and go to Mars.

- Shifty Russian
www.WhoMakesYouSick.com

Will There Be Manned US Missions to Moon/Mars?
I hope not.
Our priorities are so fucked up.

I doubt it. GWB only used that line to try and inspire people at the time since he was screwing things up so much.

- N

I don't know if the United States will do it. I think China will go to the moon first if the US got things together enough to try. Mars would be trickier as there are a lot of issues with the crew's health and mental well being from long term isolation. The only way I think the US would try to make it first is if they had Space Race 2 against China.

If the Chinese can put a colony on the moon first, they can bombard us at leisure with missiles powered by very simple engines or catapult type launchers. It has been easier lately to fall into the belief that we don't have a body that's worth saving, but I'd still rather have what we have than Chinese rule.

We know what they are like. There is no way on Earth to support the illusion that they will not attack us if they think they can win. They will take risks that we won't to get people up there and they will move up there in masse. Even I can design a ship that is likely to make it up there with a million tons of supplies, tools, and personnel, if you don't mind the landscape getting irradiated a little. Am I the only one on this forum who has noticed that fusion jets are already on the market?

We could mistake the way the Chinese are doing things for a paranoia for safety. It's just about as hard to come up with hardware that will last for the warrantee period. Don't mistake a slow pace now for a slow pace five years from now.

I don't feel like having the Chinese as another threat where "we can't take the risk." It's going to be a bad enough circle jerk when they go to trying to contain bird flu when it has allegedly crossed over to humans. This was a craze that was just incidentally started by the Chinese.

If the Chinese can put a colony on the moon first, they can bombard us at leisure with missiles powered by very simple engines or catapult type launchers. It has been easier lately to fall into the belief that we don't have a body that's worth saving, but I'd still rather have what we have than Chinese rule
No, they don't have to be the first. According to the International Space law if someone builds a base on the Moon the they have the jurisdiction only in that base and the immediate surrounding area (as far as I remember),
i.e., if the USA builds a base there first, nothing prohibits China or any other country or corporation to build a base at some other place on the Moon.

Is the Chinese government going to obey a law that goes against its best interests? How are we going to enforce the law or inspect their bases?

We were able to put men on the Moon 36 years ago. Since then allegedly scientific and technological progress have accelerated, not decelerated. We could have left the Chinese in their well-deserved dark age, the one they inflicted on themselves, so they would have to come hat in hand to us for things that they want. Instead, we've retarded our own progress and in my opinion we have even gone retrograde.

You don't inspect and don't have the right to inspect their bases! At least as it stands now.
The same as you don't have the right to inspect Chinese scientific and military bases in the territory of China.
It's just that their laws work in their bases and the usa laws work in its' bases,
and you can't own and have a juristdiction on anything bigger than your base and the immediate surrounding area.

Instead, we've retarded our own progress and in my opinion we have even gone retrograde.
You want to know why, look at people like this:

I hope not.
Our priorities are so fucked up.
Yeah, fucked up priorities. Spending money on progress. On things to advance the boundaries of science and excite the imagination of the human race when we could be spending ever more money on government cheese.

Damn right, Madanthonywayne. The only reason we have as much freedom and prosperity as we do now, which is admittedly badly damaged not as bad as it could be, is because Russia and China haven't been able to take us over. China would own us lock, stock, and barrel if it hadn't been for their "cultural revolution" in which they murdered their own intellectuals and put thugs in power.

If we put our efforts into solving our own perceived social problems but leave ourselves without the means to defend ourselves, we're going to have lots bigger problems than we do now. We will find ourselves in the position where we might have to attempt to use million dollar or even 10 million dollar missiles to defend ourselves from missiles that cost the Chinese less than 100 dollars each.

From the place we were in 1969 to the place we need to be is almost a cakewalk. Doing the job would even help with our "social problems" because more people would have jobs and money, a lot more. Learning would be profitable, so people would do it.

You want to know why, look at people like this:

Yeah, fucked up priorities. Spending money on progress. On things to advance the boundaries of science and excite the imagination of the human race when we could be spending ever more money on government cheese.
I am so sick of backwards, closed-minded fuckwits like you making sweeping assumptions about who people are, what they believe, where they stand politically and ethically and everything else you possibly need to know about them in order to make judgements about them distingusih them as "wrong" and completely discount them and what they may actually have to say if you just shut your fucking mouth for half a second and ASKED a question, rather than make those limitless assumptions that conveniently justify your point of view.
People who do not give a shit about what anyone has to say except those who appear to agree with them on the surface; people who are not willing to even LOOK AT their own positions, nevermind challenege them; people who waltz through life secure in the belief that no one in the world could possibly teach them anything, or change their views on anything -especially someone who appears to have a different value system; people who ask questions, already "positive" of the answers simply looking to accuse someone of being stupid, wrong, Left, Right or anything else; people who are too damned cocky, self-absorbed and full of shit to give themselves an honest look... THESE are the people impeding progress.
FUCK OFF, you arrogant piece of shit!

salute to that

A lot of America's prosperity has been due to the space programs. We should never have let that lapse. Right after the end of active exploration came the deliberate destruction of the economy as we know it and "trickle-down" economics. This included the elimination of an economy in which the rich had to more or less earn their money by making things that people would buy. WTF is the idea with handouts to the rich? If you give that money to the wage-earner and even for welfare, it will pass through a lot more hands and trickle up, not down. There's more than one reason why so much of our modernized technology has become god-awful crap.

We solve our problems by putting people to work on improving the quality of life. Space is part of that effort. Too many people don't think of all the spinoffs we got, including the wages paid to millions of people who participated, which circulated in local economies and paid even more millions. We could have been on Mars in 1980 easy. We could have had an economy that could have had a lot more people owning their own homes. Instead of saving money by not going to space, we somehow lost money, like the 550 billion that was stolen from the savings and loans, and magically reprinted to refill bank accounts.