On Monday, October 3, 2016 at 7:28:32 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Sunday, October 2, 2016 at 11:54:14 AM UTC+13, bob haller wrote:
at some point a nuke booster for travel from earth orbit to mars will be necessary..

to shorten travel time, and lessen supplies for the manned portion of flights.

a realtively small but very fast booster would be nice to have available for emergencies.

hey the water recycler is totally kaput, get earth to sen a replacement immediately!

of course sending one manned vehicle to mars with 2 backups flying close by will also help

Suspended animation, ...


Which we don't have.

Tell that to the people whose lives have been saved by placing them in suspended animation before they were transported to the ER.

We don't have Mars ships yet either. But we can see how they can be built. By the same token we can see that by the time we're sending large numbers of people to Mars, suspended animation will be a viable way to reduce costs dramatically and improve safety given the ability to shield people in stasis.



... improved virtual reality, ...


Which is unnecessary.

A cruise ship has about 4100 cubic feet of space for each passenger and crew. The weight of this is about one ton of displacement for every 100 cubic feet. 41 tons per passenger! This is obviously too damn heavy for a spacecraft. Advanced materials, and improved construction techniques radically reduce weight. Reducing required volume to that of a first class airline seat is possible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84WIaK3bl_s

But to stay 100x the 15 hours of a Dubai to New York City flight requires the perception at least of larger space.. You can either build a bigger ship, or equip a smaller ship with improved virtual reality. The best approach is the latter to reduce costs.


in combination with a long-duration second skin type spacesuit, ...


Gods, he FINALLY suggested something that we might actually be able to
put into production in a few years.

I've been talking about mechanical counter pressure suits in this thread for 20 years - and ever since Paul Webb donned the first one in 1971 in my home state of Ohio!



... can do much to achieve very efficient travel along hohman transfer orbits from Earth to Mars and back.


snip remaining Mookie fantasies

You're a clueless idiot.


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine