"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: Which essentially says that it will never happen, Henry, since you
: have to start going there before there is an incentive to lower the
: cost of going there.
:
:Nonsense. Many many things have become affordable because
f advances not specifically directed at those things.

If you think it's nonsense, please tell us just what technologies you
think are sufficiently 'dual use' to Mars flights and something else
(and what that something else is) so as to drive down the costs of
Mars flights.

Otherwise, it would be you who is spouting nonsense, not me.

Note that if NASA figures are to be believed, it would cost MORE now
(in constant dollars) to put a couple men on the Moon than it cost us
the first time we did it.

Getting to LEO has become cheaper (although not as much cheaper as one
would expect) because LEO is a commercially viable place and because
we were putting stuff there for a long time.

I await your exposition on just what technologies you think will have
their costs driven down and why they will be driven down.

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw