Life on Mars? Funds to Find Answer Fade - "The Pipeline is being shut off, and that's not what anyon
43 replies, posted
[B]Source[/B]: [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/science/space/life-on-mars-funds-for-nasa-to-find-the-answer-fade.html?_r=1]Link[/url]
[quote]Just as NASA is on the cusp of answering the most fascinating questions about Mars — is there, was there or could there be life there? — the money needed to provide the answers is about to be abruptly withdrawn, a victim of President Obama’s budget request for 2013, scientists say.
Two ambitious missions that NASA had hoped to launch to Mars, in 2016 and 2018, will be canceled. The first would have sent an orbiter to measure gases in the Martian atmosphere — methane in particular, since methane does not last long. Its presence could suggest that Martian microbes are busy at work emitting the gas (though other explanations are also possible).
The second, in 2018, would have set the stage to fulfill the longstanding desire of scientists to bring pieces of Mars back to Earth for close-up study with the full arsenal of instruments available in their laboratories. Now the prospect of bringing Martian rocks to Earth is likely pushed to the mid- or late 2020s, all because of budget cuts.
“The pipeline is being shut off, and that’s not what anyone wants,” said Bill Nye, executive director of the Planetary Society, a nonprofit group founded by Carl Sagan and others who wanted to foster interest in outer space. “We are closer than anyone has ever been to discovering life on another world.”
President Obama’s budget request for 2013 calls for cutting NASA’s robotic exploration of the solar system by 20 percent, to $1.2 billion, and the Mars program would be particularly hard hit. Already, NASA has withdrawn from a collaboration with the European Space Agency that would have launched the missions in 2016 and 2018, angering the Europeans and disappointing astrobiologists and planetary scientists.
“We seem to have gotten the drastic cuts relative to other parts of NASA,” said Raymond E. Arvidson, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “Why?”
There are still a few tidbits left. A NASA rover called Curiosity is to land in August and look in ancient sediments for carbon-based molecules that could serve as the building blocks of life. Its instruments could also confirm the controversial claim that Mars’ atmosphere contains methane. But Curiosity will not be able to provide definitive answers to the question of “Could there have been life on Mars?”
And a modest orbiter mission called Maven, to study Mars’ upper atmosphere, remains on track for launching next year. By measuring the escape of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapor to space, scientists hope to gain insight into the past climate of Mars.
But scientists are dismayed that they are being hamstrung on the brink of major breakthroughs. The problem, they say, stems from NASA trying to cram too many big-ticket items into a $17.7 billion budget — $1.75 billion less than what Congress had promised a couple of years ago.
“Right now NASA’s Mars science exploration budget is being decimated,” Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “We’re not going back to the moon. Plans for astronauts to visit Mars or anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit are delayed until the 2030s on funding not yet allocated, overseen by a Congress and a president to be named later.”
Dr. Tyson implored Congress to look beyond the near-term budget travails, noting that of each dollar in taxes sent to Washington, only half a cent is spent on NASA. He told the senators they should double NASA’s budget.
“The moment the culture wants to innovate, that penny on a dollar becomes an investment,” Dr. Tyson said, arguing that the nation had benefited greatly from the halo effects of the space program in the 1960s and 1970s and has been coasting since.
The sidelining of the Mars program is one of several depressing developments at NASA. The space shuttles will never fly again, and the agency’s reliance on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station is likely to be extended, because financing of commercial companies to take over that task has been limited. The James Webb Space Telescope, meant as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is delayed and over budget, now at least six years from being ready. The new heavy-lift rocket that is to take astronauts on faraway missions will not carry any astronauts until 2021. All of the big projects are slipping into the distant future.
In a letter sent March 5, a group of Mars scientists that provides feedback to NASA said it was “appalled” by the proposed budget cuts. “Among the many dire impacts, the cuts threaten the very existence of the Mars exploration program which has been one of the crown jewels of the agency’s planetary exploration,” wrote David J. Des Marais, a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in California and chairman of the group.
Because the Curiosity is already finished and launched, “from this point now forward, there is nothing active in the queue,” Dr. Des Marais said in an interview. “The gap begins now.”
Agency officials strongly dispute the notion that NASA is being idled. “We still have very exciting things to do in science,” said John M. Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science.
While NASA will not have anything to launch to Mars in 2016, Dr. Grunsfeld said the agency was aiming to come up with a new mission to fill the 2018 slot. A planning group appointed by Dr. Grunsfeld is to provide a draft framework for a revised, cheaper Mars program this month.
The Europeans could possibly turn to Russia as a new partner for the Mars missions that NASA will no longer pursue. While NASA has laid the groundwork of Mars exploration for the past 15 years, other nations could conceivably swoop in for the most significant discoveries.
But only NASA has had any success at landing on Mars, and more likely, whatever mysteries Mars holds will remain mysteries for years longer.[/quote]
[img]http://www.funri.com/img/3149a_tumblr_lmt2401ZsU1qa5z1ro1_500.jpg[/img]
But on the real, it's quite disappointing that our Earth isn't more eager to discover the infinite universe. War is just soooo important for us.
It infuriates me that we're so preoccupied with petty in-fighting that we're missing the opportunity to improve our chances to create a lasting civilisation. I mean if we're still all just sitting here when the sun reaches old age we're toast.
[QUOTE=danharibo;35146878]It infuriates me that we're so preoccupied with petty in-fighting that we're missing the opportunity to improve our chances to create a lasting civilisation. I mean if we're still all just sitting here when the sun reaches old age we're toast.[/QUOTE]
if you think the lifecycle of the sun is a pressing problem for humanity, I can guarantee you that we have all kinds of other shit to worry about beforehand
[editline]15th March 2012[/editline]
space-related and not
So the government would rather cut the budget that is .005 percent of the yearly gain, and doesn't want to stop a war in the desert, a war on drugs, and a war on science.
[QUOTE=danharibo;35146878]It infuriates me that we're so preoccupied with petty in-fighting that we're missing the opportunity to improve our chances to create a lasting civilisation. I mean if we're still all just sitting here when the sun reaches old age we're toast.[/QUOTE]
I thought about this the other day. For centuries we have wasted so much time by just fighting each other. Imagine if we were always keen on bettering our selves. Eliminating disease, making transportation just a snap at the fingers, deciding which planet we want to live on, famine gone, etc. the list goes on with how much wrong in this world that there is that should be right. Not to start a religious war, but it honestly has held a lot of people back. We should not be where we are at right now in time. We are just destroyers when we could be the creators. I feel we are almost too late to change the world. 7 Billion people? Good luck changing 7 billion family tradition, religious views, political views, etc. Would have been a whole lot easier for us now if we had just stuck with each other from the beginning.
[sp]I was also very stoned so my thoughts had a huge sticky orgy about this topic[/sp]
[QUOTE=danharibo;35146878]I mean if we're still all just sitting here when the sun reaches old age [B]we're toast.[/B][/QUOTE]
hhhaahaha
I doubt though we'll still be here when the sun expands. That's several billion years from now, and by then we've either killed ourselves or moved on. It's a nice thought to move out into space, but I think we're not ready yet. Give us maybe a thousand years and we'll have the technology and power to do it.
I would like to see something along the lines of the ship in Wall-E, though.
I'll tell you one thing, its a damn shame NASA doesn't get all the money they want, they can change the course of history in a few years if only the money was allocated.
Actually, its even more appalling that money needs to be cut from them at all, because for a agency that size, doing what it does, they take up an extremely small amount of money (0.18% of GDP annually).
[QUOTE=Marbalo;35146992]This is nowhere near an accurate estimation. It's more in the 30, 40, or 50 years.[/QUOTE]
I like to look at numbers pessimistically. Same with when I buy groceries. I always round upwards to nearest 5 or 10. And 50 years? Nah. 50 years ago we expected to have personal air planes and moon-bases full of people. We can't have unreal expectations.
[QUOTE=Derp Y. Mail;35146971]hhhaahaha
I doubt though we'll still be here when the sun expands. That's several billion years from now, and by then we've either killed ourselves or moved on. It's a nice thought to move out into space, but I think we're not ready yet. Give us maybe a thousand years and we'll have the technology and power to do it.
I would like to see something along the lines of the ship in Wall-E, though.[/QUOTE]
In about 2.3 billion years the sun will grow too luminous for Earth to have water, and in 5 billion years the sun will die.
Speaking from a human standpoint if we don't do something to research a space colony in the next hundred years, then I don't think we will make it to that time.
[QUOTE=Marbalo;35146992]This is nowhere near an accurate estimation. It's more in the 30, 40, or 50 years.[/QUOTE]
I agree. Mars can be colonized now, in fact its not even money that stands in the way. Its the failure of political leadership by Washington, and allowing NASA to delve into "technology-mode", in which all they do is develop technologies only to cancel their funding prematurely, simultaneously never going anywhere interesting, and fiddling away funds when they were scarce to begin with.
Look at it like this, NASA in the "Apollo-mode" was like a couple that wanted to build a house. They hire an architect, design plans, choose a location, and build the house. 1-2-3 and the house is done.
NASA in "technology-mode", however, is like a couple that, instead of doing that, walks around to garage sales and picks out pieces of a house that they may want to use when they do decide to build a house at some arbitrary point in the future.
One gave us everything we have to do the things we do in space, in only ten years, while the other got us nowhere in particular and still cost the same.
Humans am I right.
if the human race isn't united under one banner we're just gonna to squabble at petty stuff like money and oil, getting to the stars and coloniz should be humanity's #1 priority if we ever want to survive.
but thats a pipe dream, greed will kill us in the end.
[QUOTE=krakadict;35147082]if the human race isn't united under one banner we're just gonna to squabble at petty stuff like money and oil, getting to the stars and coloniz should be humanity's #1 priority if we ever want to survive.
but thats a pipe dream, greed will kill us in the end.[/QUOTE]
Pessimism has not ever done anything for us, I would be really interested to see a pessimist that has ever done anything great for humanity.
Bad religion and pro-war tards bogs progress down massively.
[QUOTE=Shiftyze;35146966]I thought about this the other day. For centuries we have wasted so much time by just fighting each other. Imagine if we were always keen on bettering our selves. Eliminating disease, making transportation just a snap at the fingers, deciding which planet we want to live on, famine gone, etc. the list goes on with how much wrong in this world that there is that should be right. Not to start a religious war, but it honestly has held a lot of people back. We should not be where we are at right now in time. We are just destroyers when we could be the creators. I feel we are almost too late to change the world. 7 Billion people? Good luck changing 7 billion family tradition, religious views, political views, etc. Would have been a whole lot easier for us now if we had just stuck with each other from the beginning.
[sp]I was also very stoned so my thoughts had a huge sticky orgy about this topic[/sp][/QUOTE]
welcome to the world.
[QUOTE=Porkychop~;35147088]Pessimism has not ever done anything for us, I would be really interested to see a pessimist that has ever done anything great for humanity.[/QUOTE]
since when it's bad being pessimist? i just want what's best for humanity, when the goverments of the world are more concerned with debt and money then humanity, then something very very wrong.
[QUOTE=danharibo;35146878]It infuriates me that we're so preoccupied with petty in-fighting that we're missing the opportunity to improve our chances to create a lasting civilisation. I mean if we're still all just sitting here when the sun reaches old age we're toast.[/QUOTE]
Blah. We'll nuke ourselves to kingdom come before that becomes an issue.
BILL NYE COMMANDS YOU TO FIX YOUR SHIT AND GET YOUR ASS IN SPACE
And we had better listen
[QUOTE=Porkychop~;35147088]Pessimism has not ever done anything for us, I would be really interested to see a pessimist that has ever done anything great for humanity.[/QUOTE]
You look at stuff rationally you don't rely on concepts that nullify opposing positions because they don't 'hope' for the best possible outcome of the situation. They are positions of thinking valuing one argument more so than the other with little in terms of practicality and realism. What happened to the optimist that crossed the railway line ended up leaving the pessimist the only one alive.
[QUOTE=Shiftyze;35146871]
[img]http://www.funri.com/img/3149a_tumblr_lmt2401ZsU1qa5z1ro1_500.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
You could totally still explore earth on a ship, and it'd be way cooler nowadays, show up some place with women and booze instead of rocks and resources.
It's probably for the best that this race won't reach out into space. We don't fucking deserve this vast universe, the way we fuck everything up.
[QUOTE=J!NX;35147137]Bad religion and pro-war tards bogs progress down massively.[/QUOTE]
nah I think bad religion's a pretty cool band man
You cant put it all on hiatus, I know it might be crazy to say it, but a cold war to get to Mars the fastest would be really good at the moment.
[QUOTE=Disgruntled;35147396]It's probably for the best that this race won't reach out into space. We don't fucking deserve this vast universe, the way we fuck everything up.[/QUOTE]
There's probably some world out there in the cosmos that think the same way and are 2x badder than Earth.
[QUOTE=Disgruntled;35147396]It's probably for the best that this race won't reach out into space. We don't fucking deserve this vast universe, the way we fuck everything up.[/QUOTE]
Don't deserve it? A) Who's gonna stop us, and B) who says so?
On the whole, the only real reasons there's much inflicted suffering on the world are ignorance and insanity. Both, I'm certain, you would encounter in any functional mind, and any creature that doesn't have one is a bit of an unfair standard to hold us to, really.
I'm reading a book from 1994 where Carl Sagan suggests that we should have been on Mars back then.
Get your fucking ass in gear governments!
That image in OP really fucking depressed me.
shit.
I would rather focus on our circumstance here on earth instead of blasting 17.7 billion worth of money into space because that's what we are doing. We are wasting government resources measuring a fart on another planet that has nothing to do with our situation here, how we can function and knowing what the solutions are.
Its easy to say 'Well if everyone would just stop fighting and work together', the reason people are fight is because they cant work together. Everyone is out to protect their own interests and as long as there are two people alive there will be something to fight about.
[QUOTE=Daemon;35149226]I would rather focus on our circumstance here on earth instead of blasting 17.7 billion worth of money into space because that's what we are doing. We are wasting government resources measuring a fart on another planet that has nothing to do with our situation here, how we can function and knowing what the solutions are.[/QUOTE]
You say 17.7 billion is wasted by doing scientific research on other planets? What about the $1 trillion+ that the US spends on basically developing and researching new ways to kill people rather than help people or researching ways to sustain our race for longer?
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ[/media]
Exactly what I thought of when reading the title
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.