Man to Mars and Moon
by Jamie Ross
(County Clare, Ireland)
Since Elon Musk came up, I thought I would throw in my two centimes.. I have worked with SpaceX on a couple of projects. Musk has a sweet deal going with Government subsidies which he moves around his three companies, skimming lots off the top along the way, much like most entrepreneurs. That said, his technology is a welcome break from the giant monopolies that have been dominating the American space program.
There is no point in going to Mars. See there I said it. The ONLY reason people want to send a man to Mars is because they all read Edgar Rice Burroughs and believe deep down that they will find beautiful women who will fall for the super strong Earthings. This is true. I have sat in meetings with NASA and when you ask WHY, they all hem and haw and give vague answers. There is nothing there of interest and trying to colonise a mostly dead planet when you can't even manage to maintain a living one is insane.
That doesn't mean its not worth going out there. The asteroid belt is full of asteroids which contains lots of metals we need (it's estimated one asteroid could produce 400 metric tons of Platinum, enough to crash the market). The outer giants have Helium 3 which could be the basis of safe fusion (see Harrison Schmitt on that subject). NASA says, show us a reactor and we will get He3, the Fusion people say, bring is He3 and we will build a reactor. University of Wisconsin is doing the pioneering work on a very small budget.
All of this can be done with robots by the way. Space is really a harsh place for humans. The Lunar regolith is incredibly nasty stuff which slices up everything making Lunar Bases very difficult. The Apollo astronauts wore through their heavy boots in an hour or so. Making electrical connections is even more difficult.
The moons of Mars are an interesting place to go, not down in the gravity well and can observe Mars.
This will take money and currently the civilian space program in the US is funded at $19B. The military space program is probably closer to $100B (bigger than the entire Russian military budget). If you could reorient priorities, then you might have a chance.. in the mean time, we can only write about what might have been
Le Meas! Jamie
{Comment from Zendexor: It's exciting to hear from someone who has been involved with the reality of the space program! I would agree that the urge to go to Mars is irrational - though to me that's not an ideological objection, merely a practical one. Maybe 'trans-rational' would be a better term, or 'meta-rational' if you prefer Greek prefixes to Latin. Beyond-logic rather than anti-logic, anyhow.
As for the Moon -
I didn't know the regolith was that bad - but still, the Moon has a huge advantage. As I pointed out before, it is so close compared to Mars. You can actually look up and see features on Luna with the naked eye, it's that close. Looking down on us and inviting us to establish the first ever human base on another world. Surely it's time it was done. And I'm not just saying that because I want to find the Moon Maid... though that would be nice.}