If Bob Zubrin says we should go to Mars; we should go to Mars

[zebonaut]

I wonder when this will ever be funded by an American administration?

[arcane1]

1. When kids have enough food to eat, and a roof over their heads.

No sooner.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

2. I understand your feelings...

I also think both are things that we could do if we would only make that choice. I want our species to flourish throughout the solar system. And beyond.

[arcane1]

3. I can't argue with that.

[project_bluebook]

6. That is for sure

We cannot spend like rich playboys when we have a 15% poverty rate.

[imthevicar]

4. Their is no doubt in my mind that we should be a space fairing race.

We know all our eggs are in one basket. we will be fools to leave them their.

[cpwm17]

5. We have evolved to live here on Earth.

We have no future out in space or on another planet. It would cost way too much and there would be little in return.

We should spend the money in developing our science programs rather than on a relatively useless expensive program to put a few men in space. The Apollo moon program cost over 300 billion dollars in today's money, and we quit going since there was little point in returning to the moon.

[DaDeacon]

7. The new world...

The new world was not settled when poverty left the old world. The Applying a "Utopia first clause" to exploration is wishful but not practical.

[semanticwikiian]

8. going to Mars is both immoral & unethical

Gosh technology lets us do so many things
... like atomic weapons
don't we/you realize that there's a moral/ethical content in everything?

Going to Mars (and I will view this later when I have time)
... and then the planets beyond !!! Whoopee !!!!
is the most nauseating idea imaginable.

How about doing something constructive like
... you know, maybe fixing climate change?
... you know, for the other 99.9999999999999999999% of us?

Nauseating, self-serving egotistic snake oil salesmen.
But I'll watch this with an open mind, later !

[D Gary Grady]

9. Thoughts on space versus other things

I very much agree there should be no hungry or homeless kids, or adults either, come to that. But I'd hate to see us just abandon everything else -- science, the arts, the humanities, public broadcasting, parks, libraries, infrastructure -- in the meantime. We can and should do more than one thing. It might help to recall that in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars, the grand total of all NASA from its creation in the 1950s through today (including the Apollo program, the space shuttle, the International Space Station, Skylab, Pioneer, Voyager, New Horizons, Mars rovers, and scads and scads of other things) is less than current U.S. defense spending for a single year.

It's quite reasonable to disagree about priorities, spending levels, human astronauts versus robot probes, and so on, but it might be best to discuss it without staking out extreme initial positions or denouncing any deviation from one's own views as nauseatingly immoral.

I also agree that we have an urgent need to address anthropogenic global warming. Keep in mind that much of what we know about it comes from the space program and planetary science.

[zebonaut]

10. It doesn't have to even be expensive...

If done right. No detours to the moon or asteroid belt.