How come there is no interest in the space program? Mars?

[Whaleboy]

Mars will be ours, and our intergalactic navy WILL rulle the universe!

Stand aside Darth Vador, the BRITISH ARE COMEING, AND WE BOUGHT OUR FLAG WITH US!!!

Space programme is the most important thing for humanity since we walked out of Africa imo. The problem is that interest in it was down to novelty, which has worn off, and competition with the Soviets, which is non-existent. Theres nothing I'd like better than for us to walk on the Moon for the first time in a third of a century, but the idiotic masses and the economists just dont care

[PLATO]

Sava, you really do give the best sig material!

[Dinner]

Where has our favorite little cracked out Equadorian gone to? I miss Fez and that brain damaged Finn Ottok.

[PLATO]

Cost Effectiveness. Once corporate America figures out how to exploit the resouces...we will go and we will go fast. Sad, but true.

[Sava]

Originally posted by PLATO
Sava, you really do give the best sig material!

heheh i try...




really I do...

[Joseph]

Plus the current President couldn't care less about space. I saw that written somewhere.
The Only President that care about space was L. Johnson. Even Kennedy did not care, he just wanted to beat the Russian.

[Odin]

I'll be the head of the terraforming department. When I heard that Humans are poisoned by too much CO2 my heart dropped, I guess we will have to start importing nitrogen from Saturn's moon Titan to get the air pressure up without the planet on fire from too much oxygen.

Lets go to Mars!

[Geronimo]

I think the public shows little enthusiasm because it believes that agencies like NASA simply are not going to do any of the bold exciting manned space activities that they had anticipated would have already begun long ago. If there was a real announcement of something like a manned visit to mars (with no possibility of cancellation) expression of excitment in the space program would show a huge spike. Even a manned mission to the moon would probably elicit such renewed enthusiasm. Unmanned probes and low orbital manned flight that goes nowhere interest the public a little due to an innate attraction to space activites, but the public still can't help but feel dissappointed by such anti climatic activities after the huge expectations raised by the Apollo programs.

[Dinner]

There's no interest because there's no money to be made.

[Dr. A. Cula]

We have yet to discover that huge Elerium-115 (tm) cache the aliens were storing on Mars.

[Snotty]

Theres a fair amount of interest here in the UK at the moment as a UK made probe (Beagle 2) is on its way on the mars express and is set the land on christmas day. I know what Im going to be watching. 5 Missions are currently on their way to mars, so even if the public is not interested then the space agencys are still making the logical steps in advancement.

Geronimo, I dont see a great deal of point announcing a mission when we are still light years away from the tech. Public interest would spike but then would drain away again when nothing happened. Far better to announce it when we have some chance of acheiving it. We need to move one step at a time, and whilst that is slow, and it doesnt seem like a lot is happening, its got to be done this way.

And no-one forget, wednesday night, closest in 60,000 years. The last humans to see such a sight were the cavemen.

[Ecthy]

there will be no more world wars.

there will be Mars wars instead.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yes, Mars Attacks!

Who says the Earth will come out ahead?

That's the real reason for the reluctance, rather robust native inhabitants.

[Ecthy]

native aggressiveness is very high (8). we'll have to send troops led by conquistadors before sending out colonists. or just build trade posts, but then there's no valuable resources out there.

[Rogan Josh]

Why would anyone want to go and live on a cold barren rock with no atmosphere --- wait... the British would fit right it... .

Seriously though, what would be the point?

I agree that space flight is tremendously exciting, but not the sort of space flight which is within our solar system. We need to invent travel 'between the stars' before it becomes interesting, and that is a long way off. Inter-solar travel is only interesting for things like mining and very very long term teraforming.

Now, for the amount of money we would spend on a Mars landing, wouldn't we be better trying to figure out how the universe works? There are so many interesting, exciting possibilities in particle physics just round the corner!

Do you know for example, that the new collider being built at Geneva may possibly find extra space dimensions? Wouldn't that be 'WoW!' time?

And this sort of collider costs less to build than a single day of fighting in Iraq!

If we want to do anything meaningful in space we need to first study physics a bit better. Only then will we get our 'hyperdrives' that will take us to the stars.