Trump wants the US to land astronauts on Mars soon. Could it happen by 2029? | Hacker News Reader

Trump wants the US to land astronauts on Mars soon. Could it happen by 2029?

space.com

6 pointsamichail9 comments

Well, that depends - do the astronauts still need to be alive when they get there?

I concede that it may be possible to iterate faster if one dis-constrains certain safety regulations (FAA, radiation protection, planetary protection).

I suppose we could comply with those safety regulations by dropping any requirement that the astronauts be alive during departure. Given that the remaining Apollo astronauts are all in their '90s, it seems plausible that a few of them might kick the bucket in time for a posthumous trip to the red planet before the end-of-decade deadline.

I mean even if no, the timing would be rather tight. The only launch window available is late 2026, arriving in late 2028. It would perhaps be feasible to get a dead human there in that window by Atlas V. Anything more seems optimistic...

All I see is an attempt to funnel infinite money by Musk.

Here is the article from 2016 (!!!): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/27/elon-musk...

If we were to trust Musk on this, we should already have a colony on Mars...

One day we will get there of course. But it's decades away. What's much closer however, is SpaceX getting tens of billions of $, to work on something they cannot achieve in a timeline remotely close to what's said in the article.

Edit: I'm done posting about Musk and all this bullshit, even if my blood boils every time I see the grift.

Thank you for raising your voice. Especially when these necessary conversations are being so heavily suppressed here on HN

I don't think Trump is trying to funnel money to Musk. I think it is more like he wants to say "Look at what I did. So, much better than any one else." Musk just happens to be near by and and lots of people talk about going to Mars as being fabulous. Going to the moon is so last administration.

Seems every successful space program requires at least one Nazi.

No.

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