razark

As long as everyone being sent understands and accepts the risks, is it really that big a problem? Might as well practice for a trip to Denver by camping in Antarctica. The moon and Mars a different enough that knowledge gained from the moon wouldn't be practical for Mars. Check out Robert Zubrin's book. A Case for Mars, I think. He lays out the Mars Direct approach. I lent my copy to a friend a while back, and I can't remember if he returned it or not. As for gravity by spinning: basically, you create a long tether. The longer it is, the slower you can spin the ship. Also, the longer the tether, the less gravity differential there will be between levels in the cabin. On the other end of the tether, you can place dead weight (a spent transfer stage) or a nuclear reactor (keeps the people away from it).

Put your crew capsule on one end of a tether, and put something heavy (a nuclear reactor might work, or water, supplies, fuel, engine, etc.), and spin the whole thing. Instant gravity to keep your crew from wasting away. If you need to, spin it at partial gravity to get the crew accustomed to Mars normal on the way there, or spin it at full Earth normal to keep up as much normal as possible, as well as to prepare for returning to Earth. Radiation in travel is a problem, but it's not something new. It's a problem that has to be dealt with on ISS, as well.

Yes, so what is the plan to fix it? What's the ETA on getting everybody on Earth fixed up so that we can move on to other projects? And if you're that disturbed by it, why are you posting it to a video game forum instead of laying sewer lines for people who have never even heard of the internet?

A. Yes. You can pick up a lot of rocks and dig a lot of holes during a year long stay. It will make a great comparison to the 0 pounds of rocks brought back from Mars so far. And it will provide a lot of information that we don't have that will make the second landing even better. B. If not now, then when? If we wait ten years to wait for technology to improve, what do we tell people in ten years, when they want to wait ten years for technology to improve? Columbus could have made it across the Atlantic a lot faster if he had just waited for steamships to be invented. It would be even faster in a 747. (It would be even faster in a sub-orbital ballistic passenger craft that hasn't been invented yet. Which is obviously why no-one ever crosses oceans these days.) Because we can. Because we must. Because why not? We can send rovers. Rovers can start preparing a site, start filling water and oxygen tanks, and creating fuel out of local resources. That's a great idea, and I fully support it. But we do not need to rely only on rovers. We can wait and wait and wait until the technology improves to some arbitrary goal, or we can start doing what we need to with what we have available. While we're working towards that goal, guess what? Technology will continue to improve. We can incorporate those improvements as we work towards the goal. Or we could just give up. Someone will do it later. There's other stuff we need to do now. Space... exploration... pushing the boundries out ever further? Yeah. It can wait. That's why I drive past an unused Saturn V every day. We've got LEO, and that's good enough.

And when the part that repairs parts breaks, you write off the machine. A human, on the other hand, can rewire, rebuild, modify, and jury-rig what he needs. Once we get into the era of reliably self-repairing complex machines, I'll revisit my opinion.

There may be issues. There are no issues that cannot be solved by applying today's technology and massive amounts of money. We could have gone to Mars on Apollo or Gemini levels of technology. It would just be insanely expensive to do it. Fix the rover when it breaks. Faith 7 was a completely automated craft. It took a thinking, adaptable human to bring it home.

They can think.

If you don't mind, I'm wondering how old you are. I'm curious if there might be a difference in attitude towards nuclear weapons for those that grew up during the Cold War and those that grew up afterwards.

Are you copying your programs to Archive (or volume 0)?

Soyuz can't bring a satellite back from orbit. The design has been in use since shortly after humans learned to get to space, nearly 90% of the manned space flight era, so it must be doing something right. They both fail at the ballroom dance competition, and ovens are a far sight better if you're trying to bake cookies. So to determine which one is better, you need to define what it is better at.

The technology exists to send a manned mission to Mars. The problem is funding it. NASA/JAXA/ESA/Russia should all get together to do joint missions. Invite the Chinese as well. There's no profit in going to Mars yet, and profit is what gets private companies to do things. The private space industry is beginning, and has started carrying out missions to supply ISS, launch satellites, and such. Let them handle research and supply for profit in LEO. The government programs should be doing the missions that private companies aren't ready or willing to handle, like going to Mars.

I tell the tourists on the passing trams that everything was filmed on a soundstage. (My co-workers don't let me out much anymore.)

I can confirm that. Just don't ever select the option to start the mission from the VAB. Even with time compression, rolling out to the pad takes forever! And be prepared to learn where every switch is.

Nope, that's the real thing. The roads to the pads are largely straight, with some turns. Those crawlers are tracked vehicles; they can spin around in place if they need to. (Slowly, of course.)

Something where I don't have to worry about furloughs, budget cuts, program cancellations, contract changes, or the whims of whatever administration is in charge at the time.

I think neither one works particularly well as a potato masher.

Actually, they do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Space_Flight_Medal John Young and Robert Crippen even got the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for the first shuttle flight.

Build small?

I heard that it's being changed to "Digger" in the remake. Personally, I think it would have been fine not to change it, it was the dog's name, not something some script writer came up with. But I can understand changing it. It's a movie, not a documentary.

Don't forget The Dam Busters. Some of the trench run dialog was taken straight from that movie. The Dam Busters: Gibson: "How many guns do you think there are, Trevor?" Trevor-Roper: "I'd say there are about ten guns - some in the field, and some in the tower." Star Wars: Gold Leader: "How many guns do you think Gold Five?" Gold Five: "I'd say 20 guns. Some on the surface, some on the tower."

I disagree. All ancient Chinese rockets I'm aware of were extremely sub-orbital, and crewed rocketry dates to the 16th Century.

Can you explain that staging? I see three engines and two radial decouplers. Which engine in staging is which engine on the rocket? And are those two radially mounted engines pointed sideways?

Whackjob: When it absolutely, positively must be delivered to space (and you've got a week to wait on lag).

Notes from the Hairdresser's Fire Development Subcommittee: We've had a breakthrough. We're pretty sure that this new development can not be fitted nasally, but it is showing some possible potential in the transportation market. Further research will need to be done.

Can you imagine what Michael Collins would have felt coming back to Earth alone?