This morning der Donald said while speaking to astronauts on the International Space Station that he wanted NASA to get to Mars during his first term, or second term if they couldn’t make it that quickly.
While I want NASA to explore space in general and Mars in particular, this is not a practical proposal, even if Trump were to quadruple NASA’s budget. Even with a huge budget, getting to Mars with a crewed vehicle, even for an orbit or flyby, would be difficult or impossible. It MAY be possible to get to Mars by 2024, but we all hope Trump won’t be President in 2024.
At any rate, Trump apparently forgot he’s already directed NASA to go to Mars in the 2030s, but apparently, he wants to be in office when it happens and make the call a-la-Nixon did in 1969 (although the speed-of-light delay of 20ish minutes would be interesting to explain to Trump as he wonders why it’s taking so long to get a reply.
People who support space exploration should not let it become too tied to Trump. I am concerned that some people who oppose Trump will have a knee-jerk negative reaction to space exploration and oppose it because Trump supports it.
There are lots of good reasons to support space exploration, starting with it being a high-tech jobs program. Not only are highly technical and scientific jobs created, those jobs also need support jobs ranging from janitors to secretaries to construction and more.
The image of astronauts working in space along with the images from space (see an image of Mars above) inspires students to learn science and even if they don’t end up working in space exploration, they will have science skills to use in other job fields.
There is also the wealth of materials from the asteroids. For example, many metals used in our cell phones are rare on earth, but common in asteroids.
There’s more to say, but I’ll stop now.
#jtg