Without significant drag, distance becomes far less important than you might think in space. The real question is time, and people have spent a lot of time in space after 1980 vs any of those short visits to the moon. We could have built a slightly larger rocket in 1972 and sent someone to mars but we had no idea what such a trip would do to their body. And if we had tried it they would not have survived the journey even if nothing had gone wrong on the trip.
Note: Valeri Polyakov, launched 8 January 1994 (Soyuz TM-18), stayed at Mir for 437.7 days,[1][2] during which he orbited the Earth about 7,075 times and traveled 300,765,000 km (186,887,000 mi), returning 22 March 1995 (Soyuz TM-20).
Compared to that landing on the moon was physically easy. Valeri Polyakov took a long time to recover after landing, and you don't get a lot of help when you land on mars.
Valeri Polyakov took a long time to recover after landing, and you don't get a lot of help when you land on mars.
To be fair, you don't need as much help when you land on Mars, because the surface gravity is only 38% of what it is on Earth. You can lose a lot of muscle mass during the flight across before you're unable to stand upon landing.
If I attempted to improve your visualization by adding Mars to the monitor, Mars would actually end up in the school across the street from my house. The Voyager I space probe, the farthest extent of Man's collective attempt to reach out and touch something, is about a mile and a half from my house. And Proxima Centauri, the closest star, is either a) in the vicinity of Hawaii if my "monitor" curves with the surface of the earth or b) somewhere in the outer crust if it doesn't.
Interesting you mention Voyager I. Last I read it's going to enter the interstellar medium sometime between now and 2015, the first man made object to do so.
To me that's totally mindblowing. It's an amazing time in the history of homo sapiens to be alive.
While the merits of going to space are certainly arguable, stating that we haven't gotten very far from earth since 1980 is particularly irrelevant. We have been to the moon. We could go again, for less money, if we wanted to. Does the fact that we have decided not to have any bearing on the economics of spaceflight?
The linked article is not particularly convincing. Rather than begin with a short introduction and then present factual evidence for why space is infeasible, the author complains emotionally about the entertainment industry and how the public in general has inaccurate views of space.
Then he goes on to say that space is big.
Then he tells us that space is dangerous.
I seriously found it hard to finish this article. At some point the author says that if a life dingy is lost at sea edible fish may jump aboard (has this actually happened?) but hamburgers do not hit the side of space ships...Really?
Also, he says that biospheres have not been successful even though they have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
Though the crew reported hunger, they were able to survive for two years without importing anything at all from the outside world. Though not the best possible outcome, it was essentially (to my knowledge) the first time any one has attempted to do this, at least on this scale. No doubt our technique would improve with additional research.
I could go on...but the truth is that the only thing this article proves to me is that the author doesn't want space to be a feasible option.
I am convinced that we are currently biding our time and improving our technology. It makes little sense for us to spend a ton of money getting someone to Mars now if in 20 years we can do it for a third the cost. My bet is that we will start serious space exploration in as little as a hundred years (even I am not that optimistic). But to say that the space age is dead never to be recovered is ridiculous.
> Though the crew reported hunger, they were able to survive for two years without importing anything at all from the outside world.
but the wikipedia article you link to says this
> The agricultural system produced 83% of the total diet
and
> the medical team decided to boost oxygen with injections in January and August 1993.
and
> In November the hungry Biospherians began eating emergency food supplies that had not been grown inside the bubble.
Mission 2 was supposed to last ten months, not two years; but it didn't even manage that. Supposedly a closed system, it was un-sealed by two members of the first mission, the captain left and was replaced (and then the replacement was replaced).
But here are some nice pictures of Biosphere2 now:
Is it just me or are the high-resolution images from Mars absolutely beautiful. There is such a large amount of variance in the landscape even for such a barren planet. Some of the canyons, craters and mountains are breathtaking.
That's optimistic.
(http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/)
> Approximately how far have humans traveled from the surface of the Earth [. . .] since 1980 or so
> a) 600 km (low Earth orbit, 0.1 times the Earth radius)
> b) 6,000 km (about the radius of the Earth)
> c) 36,000 km (geosynchronous orbit; about 6 Earth radii)
> d) 385,000 km (about the distance to the Moon; 60 Earth radii)
As ascii diagram:
The answer is a few pixels off e.