For instance having a track record of wrong predictions in specific economic questions doesn't seem to invalidate your status as an "expert". So what does? And what could an "expert" possible be if there are no usable criteria.

> Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”[1]

Rhodes here is talking about geopolitics, but it extends to everything. So many news outlets don’t actually have many people with practical experience anymore, and so they call random people for quotes.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-nov...

And on twitter. It's pure cancer to journalism and "journalists" can't seem to help but do all their reporting from the comfort of their home browsing twitter for the "news" and takes all day. Honestly I think honest journalists should take an "Oath of No Twitter" to keep their jobs.

The underlying reason for the higher CTR is that most readers want to engage with articles that are more certain than less and their inability to fill in the unstated uncertainty gets exploited.

This isn't the Apollo era, we're pretty confident we can send spacecraft all over the solar system and keep humans alive in space for years.

Are we? In outer space? Radiation, psychology/isolation, months away from any support in case of an emergency? My understanding is that there are a lot of open questions, and that even a mere fly-by mission would constitute a major new step in manned space flight.

Gateway program is such a baby step, assembling a base in moon orbit.

Ultimately, we would need an orbital facility to assemble bigger ships well without paying the immense costs of ultra heavy launches.

* short enough that radiation issues can be swerved.

* can build shielded moon bases (or dig them?) to protect people on the moon itself.

* can mine the resources for and build heavy, shielded ships on the moon itself and launch far more cheaply.

* can also build (on the moon) the shuttles needed to ferry people from earth orbit out to the moon, making it so that the only people exposed to any radiation at all are the first crew to arrive on the moon and stand up a moon base.

We have a few vague ideas:

* Thick plating. (How? Not like we can launch it, so we'd have to build the space craft in space using materials mined from e.g the moon or asteroids)

* An artificial magnetosphere, which researchers are still doing feasibility studies on. But there'd be a litany of challenges there as well, such as figuring out how to design it so that we don't see deleterious effects on electronics or people.

Moon jaunts were short enough that it didn't matter, but anything interplanetary will need this challenge to be solved lest we want our explorers to suffer excruciatingly painful deaths.

A venus flyby would be similar to Apollo 10 where they would go to another body, and then do a free return fly-by, maybe with engine assist, and return back in a year. Regardless of if/when we go to mars, there will be at least one "free return" mission before they attempt future missions that have a "parking orbit" around mars.

Going to Venus would allow us to simulate a mars free return trip, but in only 1 year (which would mean for a mars-class ship, a minimum safety factor of 3 (really, six) for fuel, water, air, food, medical supplies etc), instead of a 3 year mission with only a safety factor of 2.

#Apollo 10 was functionally identical to Apollo 11, to the extent that the only difference was that they did not provide enough fuel on the lander/ascent module to return to lunar orbit, to deter Apollo 10 astronauts from "going rogue" and attempting a landing ahead of schedule

Also, for completeness sake, Apollo 1 crew died during testing in a fire; Gus Grissom, Edward H. White II, Roger B. Chaffee

Doing all of that with no actual plans to land seems silly.

Actually landing people on Venus could only be a disastrous mistake.

Simulate what ? Sitting in place ? We can do that on earth orbit. Engines running for long time ? No need for people aboard for that.

Not with chemical rockets. Perhaps you meant "engines sitting idle for years in interplanetary space, and then restarting reliably".

Nitpick: Apollo 11, 12 and 14-17 were boots on the ground. 13 had no boots on the ground.

Sure seems a _lot_ more interesting than Mars at least.

However, Geoffrey Landis has (among others) proposed that we put an atmosphere-floating habitat "on" Venus. PDF: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20030022668/downloads/20...

Abstract:

Although the surface of Venus is an extremely hostile environment, at about 50 kilometers above the surface the atmosphere of Venus is the most earthlike environment (other than Earth itself) in the solar system. It is proposed here that in the near term, human exploration of Venus could take place from aerostat vehicles in the atmosphere, and that in the long term, permanent settlements could be made in the form of cities designed to float at about fifty kilometer altitude in the atmosphere of Venus.

N2 is only 13% of the atmosphere, but if my calculations are right, that means a very great deal more nitrogen than we have, just dissolved into a lot more air.

To terraform, release machines that crack CO2 in the clouds and drop diamonds. You release way too much oxygen, but that will bind to the surface minerals. Main thing is to keep the carbon from oxidizing again before you're ready.

All of these "Not Mars" people always seem to fall into the same boat where they know there's zero point to sticking human beings and life support systems into an observation probe so they trot out this "it's good practice, guys!" horseshit. Scientific progress is not the point of putting the first set of boots on Mars any more than it was the reason for first climbing Everest. The point is to prove it can be done. After that you can quibble about the most efficient method of further human spaceflight development. It's like they're standing in the way of us learning to walk because they insist we figure out the best brand of shoe first.

The only plausibly valuable exports from Mars might be the engines that got your supplies there. With their bells cut off.

As we are out there exploring & homesteading, maybe we will realize what a gem the Earth truly is.

Peanut butter reliably on the shelf certainly is a greater achievement than people on Mars would be, if we ever bother. When Elon quits hyping it, Mars will slip out of the collective consciousness.

The point is not and could never realistically be exports.

The point is to overcome the challenge and develop capability.

You can't learn how to live on another planet in silico

If you can manufacture it on the Moon, you need a lot less rocket.

Not astrophysicists.

/jk