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Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

If you are citing Interstellar as a reason to believe this, I don't know how to help you.

For anyone else:

Obama in 2010: to Mars by the mid-2030's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obam...

Bush in 2005: to the Moon by 2020, to Mars soon after 2030 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program

NASA 1998: DRM 3.0 calls for first launch to Mars in 2011, human crew in 2014. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1998021...

Bush in 1989: 90-day report, which was a joke, but also 30 years to spend $300 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative

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I am not sure I believe it, fuck believing it. I have worked on enough software projects to know its not entirely true. But why should I not get excited? I got excited when Obama announced his policy and I will continue to get excited. It means people are still thinking about Mars and space exploration and that is a positive amongst all this cynicism.

If you lap this up, they'll give you more of it.

"This" being "plans 20 years in the future."

I get that this is your first time getting your heart shattered. I'm the old crone who doesn't understand the true love you found with your soulmate who is promising you the moon, er, Mars. But if you repeat our mistakes, you will repeat our heartbreak.

The more excited the public is, the more NASA sees it as a blank check to cram more things as "necessary" for a Mars mission. The 90-day report is the perfect example. Today's press conference is talking about creating "solar electric propulsion," something that was never mentioned for prior Mars missions but is now suddenly a requirement.

That's the pattern. The public wants a Mars mission, then NASA says "yeah, we'll get there in 20 years, but first we need to spend time inventing <new tech>." It's a different <new tech> each time.

Unless you think that <new tech> is somehow detrimental to getting to Mars, I don't see what the cynicism gets you. In fact, I've never understood how cynicism helps achieve anything at all.

We'll send humans to Mars when it makes sense, when we can, and when we want to. If we stop wanting to, we'll never go...we'll never even develop the capability.

Mankind spent a long time--hundreds, maybe thousands of years--using boats before we started sailing across oceans. Going to Mars is way more complicated and dangerous, and that's still only the closest planet.

Enthusiasm for plans might create license for NASA to experiment, but lack of enthusiasm would be far worse. There's no lack of other people who would love to spend NASA's money. And even the private sector spaceflight companies are largely dependent on NASA today.

Yes, <new tech> is detrimental. It becomes another hurdle that every subsequent Mars mission has to clear in the debate. "We can't go to Mars, we don't have <new tech> yet!"

I think they mean <new tech> for <new tech>'s sake. Not <new tech> that's absolutely necessary for reaching Mars.

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