Moon is part of Mars

[Nakara]

Justt when I thought people believing that the Earth is fucking flat was bad enough, now there will be people who believe that the Moon is part of fucking Mars.

Can someone PLEASE give the President at least a kindergarten-level education on the Solar System, and that if we can’t go to the Moon, we sure as hell can’t go to Mars. The Moon is a stepping stone, and an excellent candidate for a spaceport/mining colony that can make going to Mars or wherever the heck else much easier.

[Anomalocaris]

Americans trying to go to mars in a unilateral manned effort without major international cooperation would be the most monumentally wasteful vanity project in human history. What is more the bragging rights would probably to mild and of short duration.

Going to the moon exhibited rocket and space technology that was believed to have major military implications in what was expected to be the imminent full militarization of the space around the earth.

Going to mars would exhibits no similar thing.

It would just be a trophy on a mantle brought, not awarded, at tremendous cost by a country whose economy is an increasingly small percentage of the world’s economy.

[arewethereyet]

Justt when I thought people believing that the Earth is fucking flat was bad enough, now there will be people who believe that the Moon is part of fucking Mars.

Can someone PLEASE give the President at least a kindergarten-level education on the Solar System, and that if we can’t go to the Moon, we sure as hell can’t go to Mars. The Moon is a stepping stone, and an excellent candidate for a spaceport/mining colony that can make going to Mars or wherever the heck else much easier.

With all the cuts being made to education and additions of religion that declare the Biblical flood to be fact, this is probably where things are going.  sigh

[Fake Messiah]

I think the Great Carrot was trying to communicate that going back to the moon was part of the plan to go to Mars, i.e a staging area.

Nah. Let's face it: the guy who thinks that windmills cause cancer and how there is a great conspiracy behind removing CFC from hairsprays because "it can't harm the ozone since it is used indoors", probably also thinks that Moon is indeed part of Mars.

Nevertheless, talking about carrots, the "Mars carrot" was something that W. was also using in his midterm elections. He was promising how he has a plan of humans colonizing Mars and then the solar system.

[Anomalocaris]

Mars is always foolish distraction.  The project is too large and expensive, and practical benefit is too dubious for it to makes sense for a unilateral single nation nationally sponsored vanity effort.

Also, given the atmosphere in the world and the general trend in development of world climate, unilateral national effort would likely heighten tension and potentially lead to war as threat of imminent success by anyone would be seen as some celestial land grab.

I think for the foreseeable future, any declaration of intention to pursue manned mars exploration by any country can be seen as a deceit meant to make it look like the country is a great leader of mankind thinking great thoughts, while deflecting attention away from lack of matching investment and real effort.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Mars is always foolish distraction.  The project is too large and expensive, and practical benefit is too dubious for it to makes sense for a unilateral single nation nationally sponsored vanity effort.

Also, given the atmosphere in the world and the general trend in development of world climate, unilateral national effort would likely heighten tension and potentially lead to war as threat of imminent success by anyone would be seen as some celestial land grab.

I think for the foreseeable future, any declaration of intention to pursue manned mars exploration by any country can be seen as a deceit meant to make it look like the country is a great leader of mankind thinking great thoughts, while deflecting attention away from lack of matching investment and real effort.

I mostly agree.  That being said, I still think a let's-go-to-Mars programme would have tremendous spinoff benefits.  No one would actually need to make the trip, just hire loads of engineers and technicians and have them behave as IF someone is going to make the trip.  Sort of like reaping all the tech benefits of a war without actually having to kill people.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

I think the spin-off technology argument is spurious.    If the spun off technology was worth the cost of going to mars, then even more spun off technology can be realized for the same cost by doing the same R&D as before, but then dispensing with the cost of actually going to mars and devoting the funds freed up to do further R&D.   In that case the technology to investment ratio would be even more favorable.

Going to mars can only be soundly justified if going to mars is a sufficiently desirable goal in itself to justify the investment.

The spin off technology argument was used to justify Apollo landing.  But the real justification for the cost was really a way to do more R&D for the defense department without any apparent and prohibitive increase in the defense budget.

[Fake Messiah]

You really think that something like Mars project to land people on Mars would not inspire people to get interested more in science? I mean it is said that Apollo program inspired generation of youth to enter science and engineering. The number of science graduates in the US doubled in the 1960s at every level.
And if there would be some solution to have people for extended period of time on Mars their future would depend critically upon the progress of science and technology, premium on intelligence, practical education.

If it was done in US then it could even draw more scientists from other parts of the world.

Also humans on Mars could do much more exploration than any robot. I mean send Opportunity and Curiosity into the Rockies and it is likely thousands of years would pass before they find a dinosaur fossil or a stromatolite. And if astronauts managed to find fossils of some organisms that lived on Mars it would no doubt capture human imagination like nothing ever before.

But reality is that it is probably beyond any politician in US to ever organize such feat. I mean it would take congress and senate to agree as well and people, and when ever there is a talk about some space program people usually react like "Why waste all that money on that?"
Even Trump in that tweet complains "For all the money we are spending" on NASA(?) and yet NASA is getting like 1% of overall federal budge,t but even that seems to most people as "too much". People never react similarly when they see SR-71 or B-2 Spirit, and it is something that Carl Sagan even try to "fight" against.

[Anomalocaris]

A major unspoken reasons why Apollo program inspired new interest in science is it to many science as exemplified for human space travel offered a hopeful escapist diversion from the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation on earth.

Such a motivation does not exist now.   So people who in Apollo era would have sought to cling to a futurist vision afforded by manned exploration of space would instead mostly resist diversion from more mundane priorities.

[Jehanne]

From no less an authority than El Presidente de los Estados Unidos, the man worthily entrusted by the great and wise people of America with the ultimate control over 4000 nuclear weapons.

All that mumbo jumbo about the moon being a satellite of earth?   FAKE NEWS!!

It is likely that as our solar nebulae was collapsing, there was some mixing of material, and so, yes, there were likely atoms of Mars and our future Moon that got mixed together at some point.