US House of Representatives Ban Mars Funding

I've searched ATS for similar articles but have found nothing, so appologies if this as been discussed previously.

I've been reading an article in a mag this week saying

Is there life on mars? Who knows, but if the US House of Representatives gets its way, no human will be making the trip to find out. Its proposed yearly budget for NASA contains a provision banning the funding of anything related to human exploration of Mars.

Link to article

My question is: Why?, Why ban funding for that kind of mission. Why are they holding us back and preventing our progress into the solar system. Do they have something to hide? is there something that they are not telling us?

I'm aware of John Lears comments about mars being populated already by us humans (since 1960's i think!) supported by the secret astronaut corps (I have to say that i do think that this is partly true).

Are we being warned off the exploration of mars (still !!) ?

The Mars Society is trying to raise funds to allow missions to go ahead (this will be a BIG task). What would happen if the money is raised and we DO get to go ..... will the gov try and stop us .......









typo
[edit on 27-9-2007 by scepticsRus]

[edit on 27-9-2007 by scepticsRus]

I don't think it is because they have something to hide, but rather they are ignorant politicians catering to special interest groups (of which us space geeks are not a large enough one, lol)

I think it would be a shame not to pursue further space exploration, especially anything related to Mars.

That link isn't working for me but it could be my computer. It's not playing nice tonight.

When is the article dated?

Politicians make no sense to me most days.

reply to post by GAOTU789


Hi its dated 26th Sept 2007

One interpretation I read is that it's basically an attempt by one party to kill unpalatable funding that the other party has put in a bill. Basically, it's like "If you get any closer with that outrageous pork barrel spending, I'll shoot Martian exploration funding in the head!"

I think it's a bluff, and nothing more.

www.unmannedspaceflight.com...

reply to post by uberarcanist


Ingnorance - possibly, Bluff - unlikely.

The MUST be aware of the importance of discovery, afterall if it wasnt for others just having a look around about 200 years ago the USA would never been settled and never have become what it is today.

Politics must not get in the way of very very important work like this. its human nature to explore. Like it or not, if Nasa wanted to go to mars no funding gaps would stop them... they would find a way.

Could the reason for not wanting to push exploration of mars be because we are already there?

cant they legaly do that?
say spain or France wants to send a manned mission to Mars, the US will stop them?
am i missing something...

reply to post by omi_kron_gravitron


true it wouldnt stop other countries, but the US has a LOT of influence over most ...... so saying that you are going could be political suicide !

reply to post by omi_kron_gravitron


This is just dealing with the US and NASA.
============================================

As for not funding mission to mars. It probably has something to do with the nine trillion dollar debt and a war that cost 750 million dollars a day and has no end in sight.

[edit on 1/10/07 by Pfeil]

reply to post by scepticsRus


No, they have two space programs. The public one is supposed to give the appearance of exploring space (thats NASA), while the private one funded by NSA is the real space program. They work with the reverse engineered alien technology and so on.

But since they have always been trying to put up a good show up until now, im not sure why they would stop funding the Mars trip in the public one.



[edit on 1-10-2007 by Copernicus]

reply to post by Copernicus



My guess is way to much to hide ..... Bush said that we will be on the moon by 2020..... mars 10 years later ...... i would like to see it the other way around ...... lets go to mars first.

reply to post by scepticsRus


Its all for show anyway and the public wont find anything interesting out, so whats the point really.

I think the problem is that there's a new space race to the moon to mine helium-3. So the US doesn't want to waste money going to Mars when they need to be competing in the helium-3 market. Going to Mars would be cool, but in the next 20 years NASA's going to be competing against 4 or 5 other nations in space. So NASA's going to have to start finding ways to make space exploration profitable, if they don't other countries will.