F-35

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This article estimates that 9 manned missions to Mars would cost substantially less than the price tag of the F-35:

A ballpark cost of the first Mars mission in 2035 would total $230 billion. Second and subsequent missions, occurring at three-year intervals, would cost about $142 billion each including SLS and Orion costs.... if we send nine crews to Mars, the total bill would be in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion.

https://spacenews.com/op-ed-mars-for-only-1-5-trillion/

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Not at all. If funding started now, the first manned Mars mission would launch in 2035 and every 3 years for the next 25. Total time period for those expenditures is approximately 40-50 years.

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The timeline you have here suggests we could launch humans to Mars tomorrow without any initial investment. But it'd need at least 15 years of funding before the first mission would launch.

In terms of cost overruns. Yeah, lol, kinda like the F-35. But keep in mind this number as is is still hundreds of billions less than the F-35 project. Would you rather have an obsolete jet or a moon colony?

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Your comment about Mars missions holds equally well for the concurrent development and production of the three variants of the F-35.

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Prove it. We were on the moon 50 years ago. The ability to go to Mars in person is there, it just seems we would rather build clunky aircraft to blow stuff up instead.

What would you rather have?

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It sounds like you're saying that all the technology exists save for the ability to launch speedy rescue missions?

If you were an American taxpayer, would you rather pay for A) a fancy upgrade to a jet that already did a pretty good job blowing things up or B) a colony of humans on Mars.

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They needed the B29 to deliver the nuclear bomb