David Spain wrote:
David Spain writes:
3) The infrastructure needed to develop a return to the moon program as
currently envisioned won't serve us well for a Mars mission, where
durations in space are far longer. What I'd rather see developed is
something akin to the next version of ISS (or perhaps MIR), but with the
ability to *travel*. First to lunar orbit, where we could conduct test
flights to and from the moon, but using the next-gen SS/orbiter to conduct
surface studies, telerobtic landing site probes, etc. In other words the
next-gen station/orbiter becomes a space habitat that also happens to
travel. I can see where this would be infrastructure that would not only
open up the moon, but would directly scale to eventual planetary
exploration. I think Constellation aka Apollo 2.0 will be good at getting
us back to the moon and back and that's about all.

If we had a traveling space habitat, an interesting second destination after the
moon might be Venus. How about the mechanics of traveling to Venus and back,
say for a few months in orbit around Venus? Send down all sorts of probes,
take atmospheric samples, etc. Venus is much closer to the Earth than is Mars.
Would transit times be significantly less? I'd think the orbital mechanics would
also yield more frequent return windows? Maybe it'd make a good stepping stone
after the moon but before Mars?

Are you off your meds, David? First you question the science utility of
a human return to the moon, where humans can actually explore the
surface to a level of detail that no robot could possibly match, then
you post this nonsense about sending humans past Venus just so you could
drop probes into its atmosphere - something you could just as easily do
without sending humans (see Pioneer Venus)?