Brains
Nasa has decidedly become obsessed with Mars. 7 of the 14 planetary missions that have been sent or are scheduled to be sent [1997-2020] to planets (or asteroids) are heading to Mars.
NASA will spend $4.53 billion on missions to Mars by the year 2020.
The obvious question is:
Q: “What the hell does NASA want with Mars?”
A: “They wanna find Aliens!”
Right now, the Mars Rover named “Curiosity” is mainly trying to find evidence of life. Finding evidence of past or present life on Mars would inarguably be the largest discovery humans have ever made. So, there’s that.
REASONS NASA WANTS TO GET ALL UP IN MARS’ CREVASSES:
– Find out why Mars turned hostile
– Search for water and evidence of water
– Determine types of rocks and soils exist on Mars
– Read the full descriptions of objectives here: NASA Mars Rove Objectives
The graphic at the top of this post is very cool. It’s neat to see exactly where planetary missions will be and when. New Horizons left Earth in 2006 and won’t be near Pluto until 2015. Unreal.
Where else are they gunna go? Mars is close. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto…not so much
They’re actually scouting a Red Bull mission for bike riding
Venus is closer than Mars. Many asteroids are closer than Venus. The Moon is closer than them.
Arguably the easiest place to get to is the Moon. The easiest place to get to that’s similar to Earth is Venus. Some time ago Earth was worse than that, and life survived, and there’s plenty of places for life on or above Venus.
Cooper’s analogous idea of curing cancer:
We have cancer now. We won’t have cancer someday. Just get to that day sooner, and we’ll have solved cancer. It’s that easy.
It’s kind of George Mallory also I think: “Because it’s there.”