We need some more giant leaps for mankind. Everyone laughed at it, but as much as I hate W, I think the mission to Mars would be a good thing for the country and the world. Yeah, the debate about how you get it done is big and complicated, but it's a debate I think we should be having. Especially after the last four years, too much of the world sees America, and the power that it wields, as imperialistic; a nation too powerful for the good of the world. I think we need to show the world, and perhaps ourselves, that there is a lot of good we can do too, especially things that other countries can't do. We need to inspire the world again.
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Yay! Someone who's not us looked at our page!
Anyway, the problem I have with a manned trip to Mars is that it'll basically be the most expensive PR stunt in history. You have to get humans, air, water, and food up into orbit, over to Mars (taking 9-12 months if it's timed right), and then down to the surface. Then double the amount of supplies consumed so far to get them back with the exciting martian rocks, which can tell us virtually nothing we didn't already know. And, of course, that's just for the mission to actually land. Remember how many baby steps the Apollo missions took?
If what we're interested in doing is science, it's a hell of a lot more cost-effective to send robots -- no air, water, or food needed, and we don't have to bring them back. I'm not saying we should never go visit, or even colonize, Mars -- it's just too expensive to move fragile animals around in space.
Well I'm not saying we have to put a man on Mars before the end of the decade of anything, or even that Mars necessarily needs to be the target. What my point really is is that doing things is space is something that we can do that basically no one else can do. And while it's true that we could also do other more practical things, there's just something daring and amazing about a space program that you can't capture with other projects.
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