Missions to Mars Graphic Shows 52.4% Failure Rate

If government is paying, no one's going to Mars until we can figure a way for Mars to make money. The PR has to present such an absolute necessity that we have to go. Then the people who get involved in the program can make money by government contract, the old fashioned way.

They'll say it's for the common good - but they're only there because of the government money.

Just like the wars - and this new health-care boon-doggle. A whole lot of -your money- going to private industry. Accomplishing nothing. None of it is necessary.

If we wanted to go to Mars, it really isn't all that expensive. I have a whole plan, and it only costs what strip of freeway costs.

Everybody receiving government monies, the Halliburtons and medical industrialists, the financial people, etc - they are only concerned with their shallow lives - their "luxury" homes, planes and golf scores. -They've cashed in the potentials of their lives, intellectually and productively for their "good life" which is only a colossal shallowness.

USA: The Great Ship of Shallowness.

And they steal everyone's ability to accomplish anything in pursuit of it.

We have a basically crappy mode of doing things. Rich guys looking for a place to stick 'their money" - talk about a redistribution of wealth! That system rapes the real value that money is to represent.

If you really want to do something, you just do it.
It requires at least some money though.

Why not get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan and devote that money to Space and science? We have no business over there killing people. We could just put the scientists to work coming up with easy and cheaper ways to fuel public and commercial transportation. and space travel. A trip to mars in 39 days would not be that bad. In the 1700's it took from three to six months to cross the Atlantic ocean. In the 1940's it took up to 23 days to go to Brasil and Argentina and to cross the Atlantic from Argentina to Europe took over thirty days on the old Liberty ships. So there are some lessons to be learned from the past. We need more scientists to fuel our future. One of our big problems is Politics in everything. If we had a civil space program without political interference and using privately employed scientists and engineers to do the scientific work and the special Civil Space Corporation to build space ships for profit and for science. We need an organization with ethics and integrity. As long as we have government and congress arguing and treating the people as if we do not exist as anything other than slaves, we will never amount to an ant hill. There was once a saying "God helps those who help themselves". I think that could very well apply to we the People. At present there are a couple of Civil Space Companies that are vieing for Space priviledges but Governmenr has gained control of Space and leaces nothing for the people. There must be some changes.

this is misinformation trying to promote the idea of running trips to the moon for water only to use it to return to the moon again for more water

Mabye this is a good thing. Now we have less of a chance of screwing up another planet.

People that have a problem with inherently hard tasks shouldn't complain about the success rate of those ventures because trying to convince the world that we shouldn't grow, evolve, mature expand because its hard is inherently hard.

the last 8 missions succeed! that's amazing. this is no easy thing, it is at the very limit of our ability. so much has been learned, and infinitely more to go.
here's where i get on the soap box again. the money we spend on space doesn't literally go into space, it is spent right here. i have experience with a little of this. here in santa barbara calif. we have several companies that built stuff for the space effort and during apollo and the early shuttle missions the guppy and super guppy were hangered here. money flowed down the streets and everyone was a big tipper. teenage gas attendants had big new 4x4s and homeless from around the country converged on our beaches.
what i'm saying is that most of the money spent on space is spent in america and makes an immediate impact on a local economy. this is second only to solar energy in smart investments for america to make.

i'm just happy no one is buying into the b.s. that the picture tries to depict. it's been a couple of months before i've been able to say good job current community for looking through the lines when it comes to stats and misinformation. the consensus is in: this article is out!

And yet 40 years agothey had a 100 percent success rate getting to the moon...with only one unable to land....

Ya right!

nasa thinks too much, they should just send robots.

To be fair, the ones that have made it, namely Spirit and Opportunity have been successes of the most extreme degree. I mean come on, for rovers that were only supposed to last a few weeks, 5 years and counting makes up for a couple failures here and there.

And I just realized half of those failures were the Soviets in the 70's! Seeing as they were scrambling to make up for the US beating them to the moon, of course they would fire tons of crap at Mars just praying to Marx that it would actually make it.

thats so freaking sad...i wanna goto Mars

its mostly china sucking it up. if only they could get the efficiency of the Olympics into the space program we wouldn't be forced to laugh.

But all the successful missions have a 100% success rate!

still, i like the odds. it is a bit of a gamble but i am sure that it would be worth it in the end.

^ good point

This is sort of like saying in 1910 that since so many people failed to fly before the 1900's that it must too risky to continue innovating and experimenting.

I think Mars just doesn't want us around. It's seen what we've done to Earth, and that scares it to death.

Featured at the "Space" group:

http://current.com/groups/space/

we should hurry on those improvements...

maybe the money saved by the government through health reform will help with R&D? (IMO)