Critical time (Mars Society defense)

From: Mark Collins
>> Support of a sustained continuous presence on Mars is going to be
very expensive. What do you expect to achieve at the end of it? The
best you can hope for is an independent Martian colony. Do you
honestly expect the tax payers of any country to provide billions
over many decades to produce an independent colony that will never
return any benefit to themselves?

Ditto for space colonies. Every word. Granted, a space colony could
probably produce profit sooner than a Mars base, but this is still
not within the range of returns that the attention-defecit public or
politicians want.

Mike C wrote:
> Zubrin said forget private industry; it's not going to open the
frontier for us. Well, for these reasons I don't see a national
program doing it either, and can't see a 3rd alternative.

Conspiracy.
As unlikely as it seems, a collaboration of the space cadet groups
towards a common agreement. (dreaming!) I have been in a few combined
efforts between the local Mars Society & NSS chapters. I get the
usual crap about "they dillute our message", etc. None of it matters.
If we get to do the presentations, then we all win. If we don't
collaborate, then we don't do the events, so we all lose.
If we collaborate, we get into space. If we don't then we'll sit
here & watch the oil wars, and get nowhere.

>> I say the idea of a Mars colony being the way forward into space
is the enemy. O'Neill's arguments were based on realism, sound
engineering and feasible economics.

And on getting congress to agree to pay for a program which throws
their campaign contributors out in the cold, not to mention makes all
their oil & coal company stocks so much scrap paper.

>> This is not so for the proponents of Mars Direct.
>
> Eh... let's say for the proponents of the mass settlement of Mars
(and more so for proponents of the terraformation of Mars). Mars
Direct is fairly near-term and is probably pretty doable (given a
government in the same frame of mind as the US in the days of
Apollo).

So you think that it will necessarily take a government effort to do
a Mars Direct? Any chance a private mission could be done for around
$5 billion?
No way a private mission could do it with advertising/"survivor"
reality TV/ public/private donations/subscriptions, etc? What do you
think of permanent.com "first private mission"
http://permanent.com/mission1.htm
What if it were combined with the profit potential of a Diemos
mine/base?

> The O'Neill viewpoint is based on hard facts and not any emotional
bias- he just looked at the best and most economical way of doing
things.

I see plenty of emotional content in all the pretty pictures of
idyllic colony settings -families at the beach in Bernal Spheres,
etc.
I saw far too few referrences to asteroids and their resources.
Do you really think it's realistic to think of congress-critters
bought into office by entrenched big industries voting for these
things?

>> Because Mars Direct does not involve any space infra-structure it
parodies the Apollo methodology of let's get there as fast as
possible without any thought for the future.

You're going too far in the opposite direction from the rabid
Zubrinites, here.
Have you actually read "the Case for Mars"?
Zubrin says that the SEI of 1989 failed because it was another
feeding frenzy of big-government aerospace/defense contractors. The
purpose of a Mars mission is to take a few astronauts & their gear
from Earth, set them down on Mars, and then bring them back to Earth.
The purpose is not to build up NASA centers around the country,
provide jobs & facilities for contractors, and pay for all their
budget problems for 20+ years, and allow all the heart felt wishes of
all these NASA centers & contractors to come true with all sorts of
revolutionary new things attached to the mission.
If you look at the problem of Exploring another planet, we don't
need to pay for a Lunar mine, a huge space transportation
infrastructure, and 30+ years of operations and R&D at the overpriced
ISS.
If you say we'll wait to do Mars until we can do it this way, then
the Martians have a right to be incensed. How would you feel if you
couldn't set human foot back on the Moon until 30+ years & hundreds
of billion$ have been spent?

Despite all this, he most certainly does put in place an
infrastructure for the future. It was all on the surface of Mars,
which is fine for suporting the further exploration of that planet.
(I've heard much criticism of that mission itself, when I say that it
is very robust & capable, and as safe as we can reasonably make it.
All these same safety factors make for a strong exploration mission.
Of these criticisms, I haven't heard any good debate on specific
issues. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to upgrade the
mission, without completely redesigning it, like the NASA baseline
mission or Semi-Direct. I say go with it as is.)
Go a bit beyond an infrastructure only being useful for exploring
Mars, and you can keep all these narrow minded martians happy, and
still get what the rest of us want.
Diemos.

>> Maybe I am being a bit judgemental here as I only corresponded
with a few people, I have recently corresponded with a Mars supporter
who was much more supportive of a joint effort.
>
> I'd say that your experiences were in no way atypical. They match
up with mine, and those of other HF supporters that I've heard from.

Ditto. I've been on the Mars Society message boards, and been through
all of this. In general, the ones who are the most closed-minded have
no other information than Zubrin's writings. When faced with superior
facts (space settlments, asteroid mining, etc) they drop out & don't
come back, unless it's by simply ignoring you or using circular
arguments.
Note that I get much the same response from those who favor living
on the Moon. They've never heard of mining rocks for fuel, or living
in spinning cans.

> The Mars enthusiasts, at their most generous, can only seem to come
as far as saying, "Let us have everything that we want first, then
you can have what you want later."

Hence, my proposal for a few Mars Direct missions to get things
started, but then we put a few loads onto Diemos, so we get water &
other ices back to LEO, to build the HEEO-Lunar mine/base.
The martians get their superiority from being the _First Big Thing_
which happens, but within a decade, we've got a Lunar mine, a HEEO
factory, and more that makes a few biogeochemists kicking rocks
around Mars seem small.