And I'd like to hear a rational (not suicidal), feasible (including fiscally) plan for doing so... not just "because I'm bored and/or need inspiration" rationalizations.

"But should the coming-out party for the next generation of human spaceflight really be a mission to a cold, dark, almost certainly lifeless pebble?"

Is it so much better to go to a (mostly) cold, (sometimes) dark (invariably bombarded by deadly radition), almost certainly lifeless big rock?

Part of the problem is the consistent, punishing budget cuts. Both the Moon and Mars missions keep getting pushed back due to funding, and features from the existing missions continue to be cut for the same reason. Want really amazing space missions in our life time? Give the space program some gawd dang money!

A NEO mission could be interesting, but I agree, it seems really risky. I doubt the gents proposing it thought it was the best option either - just the most dazzling on the penny budget they have.

Actually, I think an asteroid shot could be kind of cool.

Granted, it will never have the cool-factor of Mars or Luna, but there's no reason to trash it because of that.

"Judge me by my size, do you?"-- Yoda

There's a problem with your logic here. I'm all for the spirit of adventure and everything, but what, practically speaking, was our reward for landing on the moon? Yeah, we did something really cool and we can pat ourselves on the back for that, but what practical progress was made?

I'd rather see scarce resources put towards doing real science, rather than woefully impractical and expensive efforts which serve no purpose other than to make us feel self-satisfied.

It's not the distance. I mean, there are some personal problems that need to be accounted for in terms of crews spending weeks and months in tight quarters. There are some engineering issues in terms of life support, radiation protection, and the like.

But the real big issue is the mass. Mars is big. The moon is also pretty big. If you want to land on either of these, you need to have enough fuel to get back. That means you have to expend energy to move that fuel around. That adds up and gets really expensive fast.

Going to a NEO would be a more ambitious project than going to the moon- longer trip, more scientific interest, for starters. It would be vastly cheaper too, because we have to spend much less energy moving fuel around- you don't need a lot of fuel to get back from a NEO.

I will absolutely trade a NEO-shot for a Mars-shot, if we can blow it up when we leave. Clearly, blowing up the Moon or Mars, while fun in theory, is just too problematic in practice.

But blowing up an asteroid? Hell, why not!* Plus, and this is really just icing on the blowing-shit-up cake, it will help us practice for our inevitable Deep Impact/Armageddon moment when we actually have to blow shit up. You know, to save the planet and stuff.

*Note: This is rhetorical. I am not actually interested in reasons why not, because there are no good reasons why not.

NEO missions make much more sense than a moon base, if you really want to get to Mars. It's a testing ground for propulsion technology, prolonged exposure to radiation and weightlessness, and self-sufficient environmental systems. The Moon is only a testbed for that last aspect. The Moon is a dead end. A "permanent" base there would be a permanent dollar-sink that would kill any effort to get to Mars in this century.

Also, there is a good chance the Chinese or another nation will be landing someone on the Moon before we can return there. The USA will still have the prestige of the first lunar landings, and it's far better to be moving in a new direction than playing "follow-up" to a Chinese moon effort. If the NEO missions are sold in the right way as the next stepping stone to Mars, I think the public will buy into it.

@Darcy: And just how much money and science would have been spent on such projects had NASA never gone to the Moon? I'd say it would be a tiny fraction of the already pitiful amount we have now. We do live in a democracy, and that means the American public needs to be convinced that going into space for any reason is a good idea. A similar rational applies to inspiring young scientist and engineers. "I want to design a more efficient communications satellite" is nowhere near as inspiring as "I want to design a Mars buggy" in convincing an 18 year old to head into aerospace engineering, despite whatever he or she may know about the relative probabilities of doing either.

The problem with arguments about "practicality" is that at a certain point, knowing about the magnetic field of Jupiter or the composition of ice on Pluto isn't really that useful either, certainly not to the average American voter. If their money is going to be spent on something, I think a lot of people would rather have something that they feel is tangible: an American standing on Mars next to an American spaceship, than a bunch of dry scientific papers they will never read and wouldn't understand if they did.

In closing, consider the single most reproduced photograph in the world. It's wasn't taken by the Hubble, it wasn't taken by LEO satellite or a rover on Mars. It was taken by a man, with a camera, standing on the Moon. That, I think, should tell you what counts as "important" in people's minds.

You are trapped in an Apollo mindset. I'd be more interested in projects that actually advance our capabilities in space. Things that make it easier, cheaper and safer to get to the Moon, Mars or wherever.

I'd also like to see NASA go back to how they did Apollo: announce what they want and let private sector actors do the engineering and design for less money than the government ever could.

I'd like NASA to say

1. We'll pay $1 Billion dollars for the first person to put refueling stations in LEO and GEO (and $500MM for the second one).

2. We'll pay $1 Billion dollars for the first person who builds an H2 mine on Shackleton crater on the Moon.

3. We'll award $500 MM to the first team to make a working nuclear powered rocket engine, and then we'll buy 5 of them.

4. We currently pay $10,000 to put 1 kg in orbit once every six months. We'll award $500 MM to the first team who can do it for $1,000 on a weekly schedule - and from then on all astronauts will go on your rockets until someone underbids you.

5. We're letting go 90% of the people who work in Houston and Florida. We only need highly trained professionals to evaluate private sector designs (and they can work anywhere) and we don't need to be in space-traffic control business. The multi-billion dollar comsat industry is more than mature enough to set up a jointly-run traffic control tower.

**********

In other words, I'd like to see NASA be more like a combination of DARPA and the Navy (part research granter and challenger, part purchaser of private sector services). The army has come a long, long way since the 60s, but NASA has been stagnant since Vietnam. It's time to shake things up.

30-50 Years from now when an Asteroid really will fuck us up, I'll blame it on you Michael Reily for swaying public opinion in the wrong direction.

Damn you Michael Reily, Damn you.

:P

Some say that going to the moon would be 'practice' for a Mars landing. But I've heard that landing on an asteroid would be more similar to a Mars landing than returning to the Moon would be.

Any space geeks know the real story, or did I just hear some stupid strawman argument?

Keep 'em comin', Gleep Glop.

Let's just hope they get the whole Feet/Meters thing mastered...

kp

@DangerousDac: Dac, I accept responsibility for the destruction of the human race, but I'll never forgive you for spelling my name wrong.

@Brock: Good call, Brock.

At the astrobiology conference last week, Paul Davies suggested a $10 billion prize for putting a person on Mars.

I had a rough time getting through this post, grammatically speaking. I mean, they can't all be winners, and I'm really tired, but three passes is two too many for a blog post.

@Michael Reilly: ...his ex-wife's new boyfriend!!!

Ha Ha! (Dank you, Dank you. I'll be here all ze week!)

It saddens me to say this but I'm past the age where space travel fascinates me. Maybe because I know that there's really nothing on Mars worth going there for. Just like there was nothing on the Moon worth going back for after the Apollo missions.

"Because it's there" doesn't work for me anymore.

Yes I know the Apollo missions spawned enormous advances in aerospace technology, and so will a Mars mission. But that's just... practicalities.

Unless we find some kind of artifact on Mars, it would just be "go there, plant a flag, come home".

@Brock: Cash awards are great for projects that a) are near viable and b) have continued economic potential. The giant, glaring flaw in most of your examples are that neither of those are the case. Consequently, no one would be able to raise the billion dollars (did you even pause to consider how astoundingly difficult that would be?) to accomplish such a thing. And so far, most of the awards NASA has given out, and the X-prize, cost way more to achieve than the prize was worth. For something like landing a man on Mars, there's little or no way for anyone to recoup money from that. If we followed your plan of forcing the private sector to make revolutionary innovations, rather than refining and perfecting existing ones, we'd probably have never gotten off the ground in the first place. It's a serious chicken and egg problem, for which one of the best solutions has always been to have someone come in who isn't vitally tied up in making money, and let them have first crack at the problem. In this case, that's a role NASA has fulfilled for half a century, and likely would continue to be able to succeed at if only they'd be given enough funding.

Oh, and they're already doing the only one you listed that fits both of the criteria I suggest, #4. That's the COTS program in a (loose) nutshell.

I've seen some compare a Mars mission to, say, Columbus or James Cook's journeys. Well, setting up colonies in the New World and creating trade routes were extremely profitable. To start off, the Spanish plundered enormous amounts of gold. Spices from India and China were worth more than their weight in gold. Later on, the English imported tea and cotton from colonies. And the money rolled in because shipping was very very cheap.

There is just no incentive to go to Mars, or even back to the Moon. Unless there is a fountain of immortality on Mars, I don't see why sponsors would pay 10 billion dollars for the trip.

Brock makes good points. The only way humans are going to start expanding our capabilities is if we begin to make it profitable to do so. However, like Brock said, the government needs to be involved to reward success and help prevent loss. If not, the first ambitious project could become this era's Roanoke colony, and set back business interests in space for a long time to come.

My feeling is that the future of mankind in space is tied not to another massive gravity well, but how and what we do with free floating small asteroids. We need easily tapped resources for everything from ship and habitat building to fuel to hydrocarbons for growing food. These are things we don't need and can't use Mars for. Maybe Mars' moons will have some of what we need. Maybe it'll be asteroids. Maybe NEO's and stray comets. We'd better get used to that idea and come up with some strategies and experiments to do it. It may not be sexy, but sexy doesn't get us into space to stay!

@icelight: I am very aware of COTS (I think it's a great step in the right direction too). Your points are not completely wrong either, but I didn't think a comments board of io9 was really the place to spell out a detailed awards program for NASA to follow.

My main points were that NASA is stuck in a 1960s mindset and needs to get with the times. If private sector contractors and off the shelf tech works for the NSA, the armed forces and the CIA, it's more than good enough for NASA.

The fact is that NASA's COT's spending is a very, very small fraction of the amount of money its spending in-house to "develop" the clusterfook that is ARES, when it should be the other way around.

We really do need to get away from this Orion garbage.

If NASA is to succeed we need to get rid of the government regulations that prevent NASA from getting outside funding. How much would Coke or Microsoft pay to have their logos on spacesuits and spaceships?! Yeah, it kinda cheapens the overall feeling of awe and coolness, but look at how much money is made in advertising with Nascar!

If we want to get to Mars in any of our lifetimes we need to go private. It's the only way. We need to get money to people like Robert Zubrin and the Mars Society. The private sector is the future of manned space exploration in my opinion.

In that case, stand back - We're Goin to Pluto!

"If private sector contractors and off the shelf tech works for the NSA, the armed forces and the CIA, it's more than good enough for NASA."

Haliburton on the moon. Oh god. lol

Mars? Ho-hum. Gravity well. The pits.

(Stop fantasizing about naked Barsoomian chicks)

@Michael Reilly: Aw shit.

Gotta pay closer attention next time. ;)

God if we only did have squirt bomb powered Orion's as large as skyscrapers (like in the image).... Getting to Mars or anywhere else in the Solar Sysytem would be far easier.

Dreams of manned missions to Saturn by 1970.. lost to the sands of time and bureaucracy.

There are private individuals and private equity funds that can invest hundreds of billions of dollars in a space project if it makes good investment sense. Let someone go fetch an asteroid filled with good and other metals. put it into a safe orbit Mother. A new little moon would be an ideal anchor for the Bean Stalk, the other end of which needs to be on the equator. And it would be pretty to look at night.

@Signal: I was once at a conference were Burt Rutan was asked the question: "Why should we go into space?" His answer was the best one I've ever heard.

"I don't know, and I don't really give a damn." He made the point that Jamestown was originally going to be a mining colony - for prospecting gold and silver, but it's real strength turned out to be exporting tobacco. Who'da thunk?

Once we GET to space, we'll figure out PLENTY of ways to make money out there. But until you go look around, you don't really have any idea what the opportunities are.

@Jeff-Minor:
I'm pretty sure that would some very serious damage by changing tidal forces and rerouting currents. The Moon is pretty damn important to making things work the way they do here on Earth, adding another celestial body with significant gravitational force is not a good idea.

@Belabras: The biggest asteroids in the solar system are a hell of a lot smaller than the Moon. Any asteroid we could tow into orbit would be much, much smaller than Manhattan. For tides and such, it wouldn't make a difference.

The whole point of the Moon landing was to give the Russians a huge bitch slap after Sputnik caught us off guard. Now, there's another uppity bunch of communists who are in serious need of a bitch slap. Trying to put out the Olympic torch isn't teaching the Chinese a damn thing. Maybe landing on Mars would show 'em we're still badass, despite all the efforts of our current government.

You may be interested in liveonmars.org. Some very interesting ideas going on over there.

On a different note, we need to get off of this planet. We have a super volcano in Yellowstone park and numerous other problems. We need to go to Mars as soon as possible. Maybe once we are there we can get to other places. But this is not an option, we must get this done. I don't care if it's public or private. It is necessary for the survival of our species. Is that a good enough reason? I think so.