NASA spent billions to bring rocks back from Mars. Trump wants to leave them there
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-budget-calls-for-stranding-nasas-mars-samples-on-the-red-planet/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit
32 Comments
The billionaires can pay for it with all the tax cuts, I still don’t like this timeline, Biff got the almanac.
They’re really not going anywhere. Musk can bring them back when he visits.
Trump is a toddler smashing giant buttons without any regard for what they do downstream.
It would probably take an offhand comment to make him believe for the rest of his life we’ve never been to Mars.
When NASA spends billions it not like they take the money and deposit it on Mars. The billions spent are in the US economy.
Good. We’ve set millions of $ of spacecraft to Mars, they’ve sent 0. This trade deficit ripoff can’t continue.
200% tariff on Mars until we get a better deal (like buy presidential crypto). /s
Trump’s only goal is to make money. Primarily for himself and his family. He doesn’t GAF about scientific research, medical advancements and anything that does not put a buck in his pocket. He is purely transactional and immediate.
The US will probably ask for samples from the Chinese in a decade or so, the way I see it.
If you read the whole article it says man missions will bring samples back.
Bring the rocks back, send trump in their place.
Of all of NASA’s projects I think its probably the most questionable. All this effort spent on something can be done with ease the moment you have a generically capable lander at your disposal. So why not work out how to make that?
Course that doesn’t excuse what Trump is doing.
And then I a year Elon will blame nasa and SpaceX will get $10 billion to go recover it.
Tell him he can have the rarest, most expensive, kind of Martian desk ornament on the planet if he funds it.
> One recent review estimated that it would cost [about $11 billion](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bringing-mars-rocks-to-earth-could-cost-an-astronomical-11-billion/) and return samples to Earth in 2040—a price too high and a time frame too slow to be acceptable, Douglas-Bradshaw said.
>The cancellation is justified, the OMB document claims, because MSR is “grossly overbudget” and its goals of sample return will instead “be achieved by human missions to Mars.”
To be honest, if Starship does pan out, this project would become entirely irrelevant.
imbecile in office, he thinks not spending money is the same as making money
Nobody can trust the US anymore, the new president can just cancels everything they don’t like anymore.
The rocks are smarter than he is and he’d lose if they had an IQ contest
How about the president doesn’t have any say at all
Always hated the project because the costs were ramping up to be literally a significant fraction of the cost to just send people there and back.
Who cares about mars? How about we care about where we ALL live? NASA is dumb
Don’t worry, China will start doing all this stuff. They are the ones who are going to make the next big leaps in Space technology and exploration. Humanity does not need to rely on the USA any more. But thanks for getting us this far I guess.
Isn’t this old news? The return part has been in design review for the last 4 years and they projected $11 billion for a return in 2040, which is almost double their budget. Considering they want to send humans there within that time frame, why do the sample return mission at all?
MSR has been on hold since April 2024, not surprising they’re thinking of shelving it since the whole concept is nutty as hell
They spent billions and all they got was a handful of rocks? Classic NASA flex.
Because it would have been tens of billions to bring them back… These titles are always so misleading.
As usual the majority of people commenting seemingly didn’t comprehend, or at the very least read the entire article.
Or bots, same thing.
Has NASA not watched those movies about killer aliens that lie dormant on extraterrestrial things? Especially ROCKS? 🤔
So we have a trade deficit with Mars now?!? They must take some of our rocks!
They lost moon rocks. These things are of no importance to them. It’s dog and pony show as we have a Space Force in anti-gravitic craft
“Mars is ripping us off! We spent billions, billions with a ‘B’ on their exports. They have purchased $0 from us. And we did all the work. It’s a bad deal folks. And it stops, now!”
– DJT
Trump has a mandate to cut $2 trillion from the US budget. Saving $11 billion that doesn’t improve the lives of any Americans and has minimal scientific value seems like a pretty easy cut.
“Why are we giving the Martians billions for some stupid rocks? Why aren’t they buying our rocks? Our great beautiful American rocks are very, uhh, very good rocks, great rocks even. Many people are saying that! Nobody knows or does rocks like me!” – Donald Teump probably
I can not stress this enough- the whole “we’re sending humans to Mars” is not going to be a thing for several decades. It’s not going to replace samples already collected. It IS going to set back American knowledged and advancement.
If we were even 5 years from sending people to Mars, we would be doing test flights now. We’d have shielding concepts in space. We’d have unmanned missions going to and returning to Earth. We’d even have test flights with humans reaching the moon. NONE of this is happening.
Musk is basically selling the Simpsons Monorail to everyone and people are writing checks for it.
This is such a needlessly abrasive headline. A mars sample return as it was was gunna be incredibly financially inefficient. He cancelled that one because we’re gonna send humans to Mars instead and they can pick up the rocks themselves