News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion. Parent comment

Re:Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-the... by signatoremo on Thursday February 17, 2022 @01:58PM (#30377121)
How long do you think until we can set up a base on Mars? Let alone other planets in the Solar system? 50 years, 100 years at the very least. If we don’t get started now, when will be the right time?

We flew to the Moon 50 years ago, logically there would have been human on Mars by now. That didn’t happen, so the next best time is as soon as possible. Like now.

As for limited resources, how much money do you think we spend for space exploration? We waste a lot more money and resource for other things. We should cut down those instead. Let’s take a trivial example. Do you think gaming is a waste of resource? Why don’t we cut down gaming?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-the... by gambiting on Thursday February 17, 2022 @02:18PM (#30377354)
That's not my point, I think either I didn't explain myself properly or people are missing it. What I want to say is that currently we have very limited resources(on the planetary scale) - no we don't have to wait for post scarcity to try, but I just don't understand why we're trying for Mars first instead of the moon, which is simply more achievable, cheaper, and fulfils all the goals of getting kids and adults excited about science again.
[ Parent | on HN ]