Obama/McCain and space exploration

[madmax]

Originally Posted by LightBulb

A friend who works at NASA told me that Obama wants to cut NASA's funding drastically. I researched this a bit a while back and found people writing that this was terrible because it would keep new people from beginning careers at NASA. Essentially, this said that when NASA started getting sufficient funding again, it would start back years behind schedule because a new set of people would have to be trained.

I don't know McCain's stance on this.

NASA is a waste of money. If NASA thinks their work is so important then let them sell their discoveries and fund themselves.

I hope the new President cuts NASA's budget. If I was President NASA would not be going to Mars unless there was oil there. We have our top scientists collecting rocks from Mars. They should be working on energy. If they develope a cheap fuel source then let them keep part of the profits and they can go back to collecting space rocks.

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by PrettyBoy

Mars does have life. This silly joker swears up and down he's from Mars. Check out his mothership.

OMG. My dad seriously LOVES Parliament, so this made me LOL. Really.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by madmax

NASA is a waste of money.
If I was President NASA would not be going to Mars unless there was oil there.

NASA's a waste of money??? and sending troops to Iraq isn't?

How do you know there isn't resources that can be used on Mars?

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

NASA's a waste of money??? and sending troops to Iraq isn't?

How do you know there isn't resources that can be used on Mars?

This is a thread about NASA, don't make it into something else.
There would have to be a resource worth the cost of obtaining it, which would be over $10,000 per POUND.

[LightBulb]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

This is a thread about NASA, don't make it into something else.

Thanks for saying this. It's not like we have to either continue the war in Iraq or work on taking people to Mars. Theoretically, we could do one, neither, or both, so the war is really not relevant.

[JonoBN41]

This is not a thread about what WE think about space exploration (or Iraq), it's about what the CANDIDATES think about space exploration. Once the readers know that, they can - in part - base their opinions of the election on the candidates' viewpoints.

So far, no one has explained McCain's view of space exploration.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by JonoBN41

This is not a thread about what WE think about space exploration (or Iraq), it's about what the CANDIDATES think about space exploration. Once the readers know that, they can - in part - base their opinions of the election on the candidates' viewpoints.

So far, no one has explained McCain's view of space exploration.

5 seconds in google does wonders...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...e/4260504.html

According to you I suppose the thread is over now?

[JonoBN41]

"Popular Mechanics"? I'm not even clicking on that link.

Doesn't McCain have something on his official website on NASA or anything pertaining to the space program?

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

NASA's a waste of money??? and sending troops to Iraq isn't?

How do you know there isn't resources that can be used on Mars?

A few reasons why atually.

1. We are decades away from setting up a permanent base there to even see if we can survive there for long periods.

2. We may be at least a century away from even being able to refine and ferry anything we find there and bring back

3. With the way we are wasting money here on EARTH tearing shyte up we won't ever be able to do one or 2....not at least in my lifetime.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by JonoBN41

"Popular Mechanics"? I'm not even clicking on that link.

Doesn't McCain have something on his official website on NASA or anything pertaining to the space program?

Whats wrong with popular mechanics? The only people I've ever met that had a problem with that publication are the "truthers" because popular mechanics systematically destroyed every statement in "loose change."

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

This is a thread about NASA, don't make it into something else.

Uhmm, been on greekchat long? How many threads on this message board start off as the "thread title" and end up something else?

Originally Posted by LightBulb

the war is really not relevant.

The war in Iraq is a waste of money. Scientific research and in this case space exploration is not. I would even like to see money spent on ocean exploration. There is so much life in the deep that we don't even know about.

Originally Posted by JonoBN41

This is not a thread about what WE think about space exploration (or Iraq), it's about what the CANDIDATES think about space exploration. Once the readers know that, they can - in part - base their opinions of the election on the candidates' viewpoints.

So far, no one has explained McCain's view of space exploration.

Exactly

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

A few reasons why atually.

1. We are decades away from setting up a permanent base there to even see if we can survive there for long periods.

2. We may be at least a century away from even being able to refine and ferry anything we find there and bring back

3. With the way we are wasting money here on EARTH tearing shyte up we won't ever be able to do one or 2....not at least in my lifetime.

Daemon, I agree partly, but if we cut NASA spending, I don't think we would know in even 100 years. I think we have the technology now, just with more spending and research we can make it a reality sooner than we think. I know all the stuff I posted earlier may very well be wrong, but no one on GC really knows. I mean, we could be on the brink of an amazing discovery. There are planets like our own all around us. Think about it. If you had a telescope like the one I have, and if you went to some of the places I go to look at the stars you would see what I'm talking about. I go where there are no city lights and it's beautiful. You can see everything. You can actually see a few thousand of the billions of stars in our galaxy alone.

20 bucks if the Cold War was still going on as we speak, I'll bet we would either have been on Mars or on our way there within the next few years. I also think that if there were images of some kind of life form there sent back to Earth we would find a way to get there now. People just think there isn't anything there based on the small amount of area that we've seen through cameras. I know Mars can be an ice ball at times, but terrestrial organisms have an extraordinary ability to adapt themselves to extreme conditions, including cold, acidic, and hot environments. Without more money being spent on research, how do we know if life can begin in such an environment? Life can adapt to extreme environments, but can it originate there? Like with extremophiles. They can live and adapt to an amazing range of environments. So that can make it possible for life to exist on other habitable worlds. I'm thinking that if extremophiles don't need mild climate conditions in order to evolve, then we can imagine a 1st glimpse of the variety of habitable planets among the stars, from frozen planets on the outer rim of their habitable zone, with bacteria living below the ice, to planets with high iron content in their atmospheres. So just because Mars isn't like Earth doesn't mean there isn't or hasn't been life there. We're just not pressed in spending the money to go because we haven't seen anything that gives us a reason to go, or so we think.

ETA: lol @ the "tearing shyt up" comment. lol

[PhiGam]

There is no intelligent life in our solar system. The nearest star is 4.3 light years away. The fastest that we could get there with our current technology and no snags in the mission is 19,000 years. Even with nuclear pulse propulsion, a technology that is nothing more than a dream, we're talking 85 years (if the human body could even handle it). If we're not exploring space to find intelligent life, then what are we looking for? And before you start talking about iron and minerals being on other planets I'm going to say this again: it doesn't matter what kind of minerals are on another planet, it is simply not economical to mine and transport the material.

I don't know what McCain's NASA policies actually are, he claims to support the program but I feel that if he's big on cutting government waste (which his record has shown him to be) then NASA will be one of the first programs to lose money in the budget.

[AGDee]

There's a huge article in the October 27th edition of Time about what we're doing with Mars exploration and where we're going with it.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

There is no intelligent life in our solar system. The nearest star is 4.3 light years away. The fastest that we could get there with our current technology and no snags in the mission is 19,000 years. Even with nuclear pulse propulsion, a technology that is nothing more than a dream, we're talking 85 years (if the human body could even handle it). If we're not exploring space to find intelligent life, then what are we looking for? And before you start talking about iron and minerals being on other planets I'm going to say this again: it doesn't matter what kind of minerals are on another planet, it is simply not economical to mine and transport the material.

Who said I was talking about intelligent life, and who's saying that life on Earth is intelligent? To us, yes, but maybe to something else, somewhere else, no.

PhiGam, yes it does matter what kind of elements there are on other planets. Carbon is probably the most important element there is, but I won't get into that or why I think it is. What about water? When it comes to fostering life, water has the highly useful property of staying liquid across what most biologists regard as a fairly wide range of temperatures. The trouble is, most biologist look to Earth, where water stays liquid across 100 degrees of celcius scale. Another planet doesn't necesarily have to resemble Earth to support life. Like on some parts of Mars, atmospheric pressure is so low that water is never liquid. A cup of H2O boils and freezes at the same time. Yet in spite of Mars' current state, it's atmosphere once supported liquid water. If Mars ever harbored life on its surface, it would have been then. Where there once was life, there are fossils. And who said anything about intelligent life? Like I was saying earlier, extremophiles are everywhere. As far as I know, extremophiles were the earliest life forms here. And to declare that Earth must be the only planet with life in the universe is pretty big headed. I say this, because planets cannot be all that rare in the universe if the Sun, an ordinary star, has at least 8 of them. So there is a lot to look for.

[nittanyalum]

I found your peeps, cheerful : http://www.interzonga.com/martianfed...elcome.htm#top

This is classic: Why I Want To Go