Jon Berndt wrote:

"Hagar" wrote in message

Because George W. Bush has ordered the cancellation of
everything that doesn't directly swupport his moonbase.


Not to the detriment of appropriate unmanned spacecraft serving as
"pathfinders".

Hagar was trolling, of course.

But, in fact, if one was going to put down a step-by-step Mars
program, a prime and long-lead project would be to demonstrate the
practicality of in-situ propellant and oxygen generation. It should
probably be doable, but you're sure going to have to be a lot more sure
than we are now before committing anyone. Doing the whole thing
stand-alone like a really big Apollo is obviously a whole lot more
challenging than refueling on site.

To get to the point of demonstrating such a process, you first have
to have to know exactly where to go to best find the fixin's, and then
be able to put your plant down in exactly the right spot. That's about
20 missions worth of work, right there, and it has to be done up front
before you can even contemplate the rest of the mission. Lunar
demonstrations might be somewhat helpful, but not directly applicable.

To the original point, it looks likely that this "plan" would result
in far more unmanned lander missions than could reasonably be expected
otherwise.

I think the Moon/Mars plan is headed nowhere, and has about 6 months
before it's forgotten entirely, but it's an interesting thought
experiment to think it through a little.

Brett