Lets go to Mars

The Moon is an excuse for space exploration, but Mars is a better one. I don't
know about you, but Mars looks more interesting. Also the landing site looks
kind of flat, just like those dry lake beds in California and Nevada. I guess
its not entirely a coincidence that Spirit is on this flat landscape with no
boulders.

Tom

In article ,
(TKalbfus) wrote:

The Moon is an excuse for space exploration, but Mars is a better one.

I don't want an excuse for space exploration. I want space development,
and the Moon is far easier to develop than Mars.

I don't know about you, but Mars looks more interesting.

Not to me.

Also the landing site looks kind of flat, just like those dry lake beds in
California and Nevada. I guess its not entirely a coincidence that Spirit
is on this flat landscape with no boulders.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Both the Moon and Mars have
regions which are rocky and other regions which are flat.

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In article , TKalbfus wrote:
The Moon is an excuse for space exploration, but Mars is a better one. I don't
know about you, but Mars looks more interesting. Also the landing site looks
kind of flat, just like those dry lake beds in California and Nevada. I guess
its not entirely a coincidence that Spirit is on this flat landscape with no
boulders.

Well, given that Spirit's mission involves looking for evidence of past
water, landing on something resembling a dry lake bed might well be
considered somehow related.

--
-Andrew Gray

I don't want an excuse for space exploration. I want space development,
and the Moon is far easier to develop than Mars.

What difference does it make? If we go to Mars, the Moon will fall easily
within our reach. Anyway in this era of space exploration perception is more
important than economics. People are more likely to go to Mars because its
interesting, than because there is a buck to be made there. The most economic
things to exploit are the Asteroids, but who has ever heard of them. A lot of
asteroids don't even have names. The kind of asteroid were most likely to
exploit are those small nameless ones that pass by the Earth unnoticed. We can
more an entire asteroid if it is small enough and their are plenty of asteroids
that are small enough, or else we can carve our own asteroids out of larger
ones and push them into Earth orbit. The technology aquired in going to Mars in
a big way should put these asteroids within the reach of private investors. A
dedicated Mars colonization effort can do this easily because if we are going
to send alot of people to Mars, we are going to have to reduce transportation
costs and by doing so we put the asteroids within reach.

Tom