Quote:
Originally Posted by michaellxv
I was deliberately non-specific there 
Except to add that a Lunar base makes a good launch site for a Mars mission so it becomes a dependancy.
We may set Mars as a goal but I don't expect to see anyone committing to a date any time soon (the next 10 years  ). |
That's sitting on the fence...if you make a statement about terms of length of time, then you should be able to qualify those terms. Yes, a Lunar base would make a good launch platform for a Mars mission but a mission to Mars is hardly dependent upon it. It's just something nice to have because of its benefits, but you don't need one in order to go to Mars.
I agree with you there...it will take more than 10 years to prepare to go to Mars, but hardly 40 or 50 years, or even longer. If it did, then we'd might as well pack up, go home and forget about it now. If the reason was "Oh, but we could use better technology that might be developed after a little while, or in 10-20 years" (like they're doing now), we'd never get there. That just shows a complete lack of commitment, no confidence in themselves and another way to justify wasting money on some stupid war against the latest "bogey man" somewhere else in the world (which given the US's way of thinking, that's exactly where it'll go).