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What really bugs me about Mars how much of a political opportunity it is for a president to reverse the economic and scientific atrophy that plauges the US.

The president that will get credit for landing a man on Mars is the president 20 years later, not the president that initiates the program in the first place.

If you were to ask any person what they thought US's most notable achievement was - it's not unlikely they'll mention the moon landing. The moon landing was such a milestone, such a landmark achievement - it sent nationalism through the roof. That kind of pride and fervor would be extremely over the next few years, not only in economic recovery, but in growth and expansion of tech related fields.

Other than at the height of the lunar landing program, most Americans think it's a waste.

The only difference between Kennedy's speech and the Mars speech would be that Kennedy's was used to win the cold war, and the mars speech would be used to fix internal economic strife.

I don't think the space program alone is going to fix our underlying maladies, but it will help.

Are you sure on the first part? My read of the historical narrative is that folks attribute the success of Apollo to JFK, not Nixon, and not Johnson. However wrong or right.

(It should be pointed out that I was born in the mid-80s, and am frequently distracted by cat memes. But I have briefly worked for NASA.)

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but I am saying if you're wrong, it's because history tends to treat assassinated persons overly well (provided they were in good standing in the first place).

He's absolutely right and while the assassination certainly "helped" cement his legacy, the reason we give Kennedy most of the political credit is because he got the ball rolling on the national political stage and he was a great speaker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwFvJog2dMw

Watching this video makes me extremely sad because that's 1962. Here we are 51 (fifty fucking one!) years later and I can't begin to imagine a modern US president making a speech like this.

"Not because they are easy, but because they are hard!"

I don't know, man. I'm 24. For all I know, Harry Truman was a great speaker and we in modern times just aren't as familiar with his material. Nixon v Kennedy was the first GE with televised debates, was it not? And are not modern, TV-viewing American unwilling to listen to someone's speech if they can't watch it too? FDR had those "fireside chats" on radio, what was it, weekly? I've never once heard more than a ten second clip from one.

Furthermore, Kennedy was president during the narrow "American togetherness" window after WWII and before Vietnam, giving him the room to say, "Hey, let's we do this thing." Nowadays "we" can't do anything except "step up on education" and "not negotiate with terrorists." Anything more asks too much from a public that relishes picking sides for the sake of picking sides.

Only because JFK died and it was a memorial project. If he hadn't died, Johnson (or whoever succeeded JFK in 1968 (or '64, who knows?)) would have gotten the credit, if we'd made it by '69 in the first place - doubtful.

Besides, if the president who proposes Mars will get the credit, that'll be Bush. The president who actually pays for it will lose.

>Other than at the height of the lunar landing program, most Americans think it's a waste.

I think this has to do with the lack of notable "stuff" nasa has been doing over the past few dozen years because of budget constraints. People think nasa takes up a huge amount of the budget, and then when they hear that all they've been doing over the last few decades is LEO/probe work, it's not hard to imagine that a layman would be unsatisified with them.

>I don't think the space program alone is going to fix our underlying maladies, but it will help.

You're absolutely right on this. It certainly wont fix the problem, but finding a reason to dump a few hundred billion dollars into an agency that brings up to 14x economic returns in addition to a boost in national pride is a pretty good investment.[1]

[1] http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20100827_1798.php

> I think this has to do with the lack of notable "stuff" nasa has been doing over the past few dozen years because of budget constraints.

No, it has to do with 90% of NASA's current work having no benefit to the day-to-day life of 90% of Americans.

> It certainly wont fix the problem, but finding a reason to dump a few hundred billion dollars into an agency that brings up to 14x economic returns in addition to a boost in national pride is a pretty good investment

Your citation:

> Some early academic and other studies “made very ‘generous’ assumptions about the spinoffs, goods and services produced as a result of NASA’s investments,” G. Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor at Stanford University, said in an e-mail. A study commissioned by Hubbard in the mid-2000s when he was director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California on the center’s local economic impact found a “more conservative” 2- to 3-to-1 ratio.

So 14x isn't realistic, more like 2-3x. And there's no comparison with other public investments. Obama said the Human Genome Project returned 140x. One study said highway investment returned 52x in the 1950-1991 period [1]. Public preschooling allegedly returns 7x [2]. What about reducing crime, subsidizing college tuition, medical research? All of these things, by the way, are exactly what people mean when they say NASA is a waste and that problems "at home" should be addressed instead. I think these concerns are legitimate and should not be waved off as "not caring about science" (doing so definitely alienates those whose support you're trying get though). We all live on Earth.

Announcing a Mars mission won't bring national pride. Completing it will. The only way that will happen, and I'm certain it will, is a space race against China, once they solidify their currently vague space ambitions [3]. I hate to say it, but it was jingoism which spurred Apollo, and it will be the same with a mission to Mars.

[1] 32% per annum simple interest over 40 years, http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/nadiri2.htm

[2] http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/04/obama-administration-budget-m...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_space_program#Mission_...

  | it will be the same with a mission to Mars.

At a national level, maybe, but Elon Musk/SpaceX have ambitions of Mars. We may see the private sector make it to Mars first.

90% of NASA's current work having no benefit to the day-to-day life of 90% of Americans.

Not that Americans have ever understood the ROI of space research. Most of them don't know NASA makes their satellite weather a possibility - most of them don't even know that without satellites we wouldn't have even the forecast accuracy we do. Most of them don't know NASA makes their TV possible. All they know is the moon landings, and that was eons ago.

Add that to the fact that Americans have absolutely no idea how their tax dollars are spent, and bam - asking Americans about spending policy is just time wasted.

The president that will get credit for landing a man on Mars is the president 20 years later, not the president that initiates the program in the first place.

Are you sure? I don't think many people give Nixon credit for the moon landings.

>The only difference between Kennedy's speech and the Mars speech would be that Kennedy's was used to win the cold war, and the mars speech would be used to fix internal economic strife.

With all due respect, I am continually surprised by STEM folk who make this Mars argument. Kennedy-Moon Landing was one data point. That's not to say "we need more data" or something stupid like that, rather realize that in predicting data point #2 will be just as successful in every way, shape, and form as was data point #1, you are extrapolating a general trend from the single most unique event in human history.

It's impossible to get just as excited about Mars as everyone was about the Moon. (Yes, yes, a second green planet would be cool; the concept of terraforming is news to no one.) By the time anyone sets foot on Mars, it will have been longer between the Moon and Mars than it was between the Wright Brothers and the Moon. That's your context for how impressed the public is capable of being.

It's not going to be the least bit inspiring to send people to Mars and plant a flag, or ride around in a rover. Find a reason to go there and stay. If we could at least colonize it that would be some motivation.

If you want to drive the cost to get to Mars down, game it in some way. The X-Prizes seem to be an effective way to get lots of people working on various problems.

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

This technique has worked for centuries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_prize

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize

> It's not going to be the least bit inspiring to send people to Mars and plant a flag, or ride around in a rover.

Uhh... it would definitely be at least a bit inspiring.

Nope. In fact, it would probably be demoralizing because the public's appetite for spending money on the space program would probably be exhausted.

We've already ventured off the planent. Now we need to figure out a way to permanently leave the planet. What's the most effective way? Expensive manned missions to Mars is not the place to start.

I fully agree. But only because an American colony on Mars would be aesthetically preferable to a SpaceX corporate colony on Mars, where colonists'd predictably work fifteen year sentences as indentured servant miners to pay off their voyage.

Also, an extension of our country on another planet would probably be the first move toward humans getting past statism entirely. But that's just a guess/hope.

I fully agree. But only because an American colony on Mars would be aesthetically preferable to a SpaceX corporate colony on Mars, where colonists'd predictably work fifteen year sentences as indentured servant miners to pay off their voyage.

I prefer that we look at those colonies as societies of their own, not an extension of some country into outer space. Otherwise, the inevitable will happen, and we will have an ugly civil war 200 years into the future. It's better that we look at this as an altruistic enterprise that will eventually yield a shitload of benefit to mankind 200 years down the road.

Right but if a society cannot possibly survive on its own, then what? If the settlement is tied by umbilical to a company or country or treaty org here, it's hard to act like it's an independent entity, because it's not one.

I think we're certainly capable by now to create a charter that hands the colony over to itself at some point, 10, 20, 50 years in the future.

Who in their right mind would pay incredible amounts of money (or labour) to go to Mars? The only reason to go to Mars is for the sense of adventure (mining could get boring fast, unless you count the potential danger of it) and getting a place in the history books as one of the pioneers. Earth is a paradise compared to Mars.

I don't think it'd be the folks living in a paradise. It'd be the folks fleeing persecution or economic horror. Why'd folks leave Europe for the New World, or any other migration? (And I mean the early ones-- not the gold rush-thinkin' ones.)

Walter Miller's "Crucifixus Etiam" is a rather good story about this; essentially terraforming Mars as the new frontier for migrant labor, with all the harshness that comes from those types of frontiers (including the fact that it is, largely, a one-way trip for the laborers, since their lungs atrophy due to the special breathing equipment they're attached to).

>Also, an extension of our country on another planet would probably be the first move toward humans getting past statism entirely. But that's just a guess/hope.

So... have a state settle on Mars instead of a company of people mutually coming together will help us get past statism as a species? Brilliant. Truly brilliant.

Only because it'd spectacularly fail.

According to Elon Musk, the cost of the ticket to Mars will be $500k, and the cost of the return ticket will be free (after all he's bringing the spaceship back, doesn't cost much to add a body to it).

If he holds to something like this (inflation adjusted), then the availability of a free return will keep your nightmare from happening. Furthermore the free return makes sense from a PR point of view. It is easier to get people to take a risk like that if they believe that they can get back from it. (Though I'm sure at some point there will be interesting litigation around someone who sold their house, didn't bother to pay out the mortgage, then took the money to buy a ticket to Mars, then disappeared to another world...)

Is nationalism a good thing though? By thinking your own country/people is great, aren't you creating a dichotomy where you think less of another country/people. (i.e. racism...)

Maybe I'm over thinking it.