… For all of two seconds (figuratively speaking.)
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Pretty cool he was involved and you should be proud 
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Robotics are a key part of future space travel but will not replace a manned mission. The cost to me is irrelevant i would be happy to pay more in taxes if that money was ringfenced for a mission to mars.
For me a mars mission and exploration of Mars will drive innovation in technology, engineering, and of course space exploration. This will have benefits on earth and we will get new or enhanced technologies. Not to mention increase our knowledge exponentially.
But there is aso something more existential about space exploration and colonization. It offers potential survival against human extinction here on earth and fulfills human curiosity and desire to explore the unknown. As i said this is part of our DNA. With no new boundaries to push humanity will begin to implode. We are alreasy seeing the brginning of that.
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Every species of human has died. It’s a bit early to say we survived, especially given how chronically ill most people are these days.
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And maybe that is why we are seeing such a societal malaise. As a species we have no more worlds to conquer.
We need to go to Mars because it’s more than just a scientific or technological challenge. It is a declaration of who we are as a species. Getting to Mars will fire our drive to explore and push beyond what we know and embrace a challenge to do the impossible.
When we stop striving for new frontiers, we fall into an apathy at a species level. We send a message that we have given up on our potential as humans andthat we no longer care about our survival or our future.
This stagnation of humanity is in my opinion the root cause of many of the issues we see today, disconnected and more isolated populations, lack of purpose, and a failure to dream on a massive scale.
Going to Mars is a fight against that apathy. We need to prove to ourselves that we can innovate, unite and build a future for all mankind. It would remind everyone who has given up that himans are capable of greatness who do not want to live mindlessly from one day to the next but build a legacy for future generations.
Okay nemesis time to take a breath and center 
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What you’re describing isn’t going to be achieved by a bunch of rich investors investing in a humanitarian project with no hope of ROI.
It can’t even start until Charles Farmer makes his first launch (or second 
).
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Ha maybe thats what we need. Groups of like minded people cobbling together their own starships. I so wanted that movie to be true. 
.
Maybe there is an abundance of lithium on Mars and Ceres? 
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There could not be enough of any mineral on Mars to make it economical to go there to get it.
Mining spice on a faraway planet is fiction.
A gallon of water weighs about 8 lbs.
It would cost $83,000 to lift it into space.
Mars is smaller and has less gravity that the earth, but we are still talking about a lof of dollars per pound to transport minerals from Mars to Earth.
Yeah it was a reference to the books series The Expanse (also a fantastic TV show)
Asteroids could be worth the effort though. Especially if you move them into a Lagrange point around earth. Much easier to get to the Lagrange points than the asteroid belt.
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Unfortunately the only thing really useful on Mars would be producing fuel using the carbon dioxide from its atmosphere. Nothing there worth bringing back to earth to build fortunes with. But potentially useful as a way point one day.
Asteroids? That’s a whole different ball game. That could totally change the world’s economy. Because many of the metals we consider rare here on earth are stupid common in asteroids.
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The cost of overwhelming gravity even to get to a Lagrange point makes it virtually impossible to make space mining economical. Besides, the James Webb telescope already occupies the orbit of the most convenient LP. Hard to speculate what putting an asteroid into the same orbit would do to it. I suppose L1 is available, but being much closer to the Sun, radiation might be an issue.
Right now mankind is enslaved to the chemical rocket equation. There are other possibilities but they haven’t had much development because of A. Technical limitations or B. Moral and legal issues.
Until we move past chemical rocket reaction forces, we will never advance further into a space based society. The equation provides high thrust but its use of fuel is horribly inefficient. You just can’t carry enough fuel to make it work economically.
One possibility that was explored in the 60s was nuclear pulse propulsion. Issue is that they only got up to scale model development. They couldn’t go any further researching it since we stupidly decided to sign the outer space treaty, which bans nuclear explosions in space. And the partial test ban treaty that bans them in the atmosphere.
The scale development showed it was definitely a workable paradigm that could possibly replace chemical reaction rockets. But we never did full scale tests because of the two nuclear treaties. And no one carved out an exception for peaceful purposes. Which is unfortunate.
Then you have matter-antimatter reaction engines. Issue with that is far more technical than it is legal, though. Since antimatter is almost impossible to make and then actually containing the stuff without it annihilating all the matter in the engine is really, really hard. But it is possible in the future assuming those two issues are solved.
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We’ve got a satellite at L1 too. DISCOVR-GOES.
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I was stationed at MCAS El Toro, CA when that happened. Saw the replays when we went to lunch at the chow hall.
My son is an RF Engineer at Blue Origin, he does “something” RF related on the rockets they use.
Oh and yea I am DAMN Proud of him!!!
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Nations don’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an altruistic goal.
Hell, we only went to the Moon because the Russians embarrassed us and also scared us at the same time with their space program.
I get what you’re saying, and it’s a nice dream.
It will only ever remain a dream.
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Would nuclear pulse propulsion cost that much?
(Carl Sagan was a big fan of the idea.)
My wild ass guess is “no, not for unmanned flight.”
I also wanted to add that there’s good reason to believe that had Kennedy not been assassinated, we would have canceled plans to go to the Moon.
Almost as soon as the program started, it ran into to so many problems and the costs immediately started to accelerate in growth that there were calls to abandon the enterprise.
Especially when it became apparent that for all the apparent Russian dominance of the early space program, militarily we were still at the time superior and could remain so even by focusing primarily on low earth orbit projects and leaving deep space for robotic probes.
That’s where we’ve been ever since.
This strategic and geopolitical call is the primary reason the business of Moon Landing Denial is still a lively one.
But once Kennedy was killed, we felt we had to honor his pledge to accomplish this before 1970.
