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Comment by smoyer | Hacker News Reader

"Data-sharing deal will help SpaceX land Falcon 9 on Earth and NASA put humans on Mars"

I find the sub-title a bit ironic as (right now) I'd bet that SpaceX astronauts will beat NASA astronauts to Mars.

Dicey bet... NASA has a ton of experience and technology that would help - space suits, working on other planets, driving vehicles around on other planets, etc. As least assuming that the people who know the most about how the Apollo missions worked didn't all retire without leaving any notes.

SpaceX has some funding and a lot of will, but it's hard to say how far they'll be able to go with that, without securing some other massive source of funding.

Seems to me that it wouldn't take much to recruit those people out of NASA if SpaceX actually had a manned project to Mars ready to go.

I'd bet NASA astronauts will go to Mars in a SpaceX rocket bought with NASA money.

Hard to say and kind of irrelevant. The ideal scenario is that they both make it. In fact, if China and Russia could do it, that'd be even better.

I'm curious, why is it better if Russia and China do it first?

Because then space exploration would be a political issue again, and we'd have another space race (hopefully)

I believe @melling implied that it would be better if Russia and China could also get humans to Mars.

The U.S. is just so far ahead in terms of space technology. I am sure one day other countries will catch up, but it is going to be awhile.

It's a matter of will, not necessarily of tech. The US has shown it lacks the will to achieve its former dominance.

It's not irrelevant to me ... I've been a fan of NASA since I was little and clearly remember watching Apollo 11 in awe. I also remember wondering why the Russians could land people on the ground be we had to have a (dangerous) splash down. I guess what I'm saying is that "I'll cheer for all the participants" (and you left out India) but watching the U.S. legislature decimate NASA's funding in combination with NASA's lack of "big feature" projects leaves me wondering about their future.

As an aside, I used to have an E.P. with Kennedy's "New Ocean" speech on one side and key communications between Houston and the spacecraft on the other side as well as a set of cool charts showing the entire flight's trajectory.

Water splashdown is preferable because you don't have to deal with obstacles. Russia simply didn't have the blue-water navy to perform recovery, so they capitalized on their large landmass instead.

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