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I am working on a research paper about the mission to mars. I am not really into it or against it, but I do not have any kind of statistics or polls from either side. I thought people on this website might could help me find some. I fso please let me know. Thank you
Tabitha
If you have any information could you e-mail it to tmr1985_2000@yahoo.com.
Thanks
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I think that you're going to have to be a bit more specific about what you want if people are going to help you. What's the paper about? What sort of paper is it? (high school/college) What sort of information are you looking for?
Once we know that, we can help you.
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I should have been more specific. I am writing a college paper on wheather or not our nation has spent its money wisley in regards to Nasa and space exploration. I am trying to find polls or statistics about my topic. If you can help I'd appreciate it. thanks
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Hmmm, I'm not sure how much in the way of polls you're going to get here - it's much more of a motivated bunch of amateurs here rather than anything organized. Perhaps someone that follows polls more closely than I do might be able to help. We've had polls on the boards but I wouldn't call them scientific or statistically reliable by any stretch of the imagination.
As for facts, do keep in mind that anything you get from here is going to be biased. There's a pro-Mars exploration (duh!) bias here and quite a bit of anti-NASA sentiment. I think that this is fairly common amongst amateur space buffs. This is largely due to the perception that NASA, while still doing some really great work, has largely been taken over by politicians. The result is that vast sums of money have been squandered on projects that never get completed. We managed to get to the moon in 1969 and now, 30+ years later, don't even have the capability to go back there anymore.
The only really handy simgle reference I would point you towards is Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars. It's written by an aerospace engineer that used to work with NASA. It details a plan to get to Mars in 10 years for $30-40 billion. His plan, called Mars Direct was largely responsible for changing the whole direction of NASA's MArs exploration plans. Of course, reading a 300+ page book for your paper might not prove practical.
I'd recommend Googling and reading some of the threads here. There is a tremendous amount of stuff out on the Web critiquing NASA with figures and facts. However, to summarize what you'll find out there: The Space Shuttle was a poorly designed vehicle that has never lived up to its promise of a cheap, reusable launch vehicle. The International Space Station is nothing more than an orbital money pit. The ISS is basically $25 billion of military welfare to keep Russian rocket scientists employed so they don't work on 3rd world missile systems and to justify the continuation of the Shuttle program. The scientific benefits have been and will be approximately zilch - something confirmed by an NSF study about 3-4 years ago.
On the other hand NASA's unmanned space program of probes and rovers has been quite successful and produced large amounts of good data of ther last several decades. The Hubble, Gallileo, the Mars rovers (all 3), the Mars orbiters, Magellan, and a host of other lower profile missions have all worked wonderfully.
The general consensus of why NASA's manned space program has failed so badly is that is lack focus and has become home to many intra-agency factions that are all trying to get a larger piece of the funding. As a result, every new Shuttle replacement or Mars/moon program gets all these hangers-on that start adding non-essential baggage and requirements to it so that their program looks more important and gets more money. The result is a series of failed programs that have gotten bloated and unusable.
What NASA needs is a clearly defined direction and narrow focus so that the money is spent on clearly defined programs. Whether Bush's new space initiative is the correct way to go is up to debate. However, I think that most of the people here would agree that the mandate to return to the Moon is a waste of time and money.
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