Glad to hear Obama wants to send men to mars by 2030 but...what happened to the moon?

[RocketMan_Len]

Though I wonder about the effectiveness of a Lunar radio telescope as opposed to say, one at the lunar L2 point...

Well... for one thing, the lunar L2 point is unstable. You'd have to constantly 'tweak' the orbit in order to remain stationary. A surface-based installation wouldn't have that problem.

 

[RisingFury]

If we can go to Mars, we can go the Moon. Less gravity, no atmosphere, less Dv required.

Also Mars is a real planet, the Moon is "only" a natural satellite. That's another psychological step towards the stars where probably lies the future of the human race (provided humans begin to seriously care about their fate as a species, not as two hundred of warmongering countries)

Yea! I'm still waiting for Slovenia to go on a global domination campaign...

Mars is talked about more because it has a 'First Man' situation. Going to the Moon to get headlines means doing science, and there is a indifferent feeling towards science in general. Look at the idiots who are taking about dismantling the ISS now that it can do the orbital workshop stuff that it was built to do. If there isn't a way to get something quick no one would do it. Even the Apollo missions got underfunded, with the idea that it was all just go to the Moon and that was it. I wonder what would have happened if Kennedy didn't die and Apollo became something like Constellation or Space Station Freedom. Would America even gotten to the Moon had not one Presidents words became a legacy?

Yep, can't argue with that logic. Let's spend 200 billion bucks for headlines.

 

[orbitingpluto]

By headlines I meant the "wins the election' kind of headlines. Getting to the point where Moon Exploration wins a politician an election is going to take almost as many years as the ISS project and way more money than the ISS. A politician can't rely on something like that, because he could be out of office when the project yields results or someone could steal his thunder. Not to mention supporting such a project with the money it needs would call for getting most of a legislature to sign off on it, meaning so many deals, favors and pork.

I don't believe America(as a government) will actually get to the point where it will do the science willingly.

 

[jguillaumes]

Mars is a interesting place scientifically. But it is a difficult place to get in and to get back. Mars has an annoying atmosphere, which prevents a soft landing using just retros, Apollo style, but is too thin to let you land a heavy craft using parachutes. It is heavy enough to require a respectable rocket for the ERV. It's more feasible to use robotic explorers, controlled in real time from an outpost in martian orbit (or in Phobos). It would be more cheap to land some small sample lifters capable of reaching Phobos.

IMHO a better destination for human exploration would be Ceres. It seems it has a thick ice crust, and it could have liquid water underneath. Think of it as a more reachable Europa. Dawn will get there in two years, so we will have plenty of information to decide.

Ceres is smaller (easier to land on and to take off), does not have any atmosphere (the negative part: no aerobraking) and it is not too far away. And it could be a nice outpost in the main belt, just in case mining the asteroids becomes feasible.