Jonathan Silverlight wrote:
In message , Sea Wasp
writes

John Schilling wrote:

In article , Sea Wasp says...



There are reasonable ways for them to make

air and water from what's there, as opposed to the Moon, where you
really CAN'T do that unless you happen to be incredibly lucky about
what you bring and where you land. You can make fuel on Mars a lot
more easily than you can make it on the Moon.

s/can/must
Exploring Mars means, your e.g. water reclamation unit has to work or
you die. Exploring the Moon means, your water reclamation unit should
work or you have to go home and come back later.


Only if THAT is the disaster you are postulating. You can't
postulate "undefined disaster", and then specify one that's
necessarily worse on one end than the other. What about "lose 90% of
your breathing supply"? That would be lethal -- and nonrecoverable --
on the Moon, but on the postulated Mars mission it's just a PITA.


Once again, why? It's a highly unlikely accident, but in neither case
will the crew have a complete reserve for a long stay.

Because, in the postulated two missions, there is a way for the Mars
group to MAKE more air (that doesn't require that they use really
exotic tech or be real lucky about where they landed), which is NOT
available on the Moon. The Moon astronauts lose their air supply,
they're screwed. The Mars ones have that happen, they make more.

This is what I meant about postulating disasters specific to the
missions in question. The original posting was saying "if something
happens"; I was pointing out that it really quite strongly depends on
WHAT happens, and on the mission parameters. In many cases, the
resources we know exist on Mars permit the people there to make stuff,
like fuel and air, that we cannot make on the Moon.



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Sea Wasp
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