Space Policy: Why Mars should be our top priority.

On Apr 12, 2:46*pm, Marvin the Martian wrote:
On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:04:47 -0700, BradGuth wrote:
On Apr 12, 12:12*pm, Marvin the Martian wrote:
Tired of all the flame wars? Insane posts? Off topic postings?

Want to try a moderated forum?

Then Get your ass to Mars!

http://OnToMar.org/forum/

A new forum where you can discuss space policy, particularly if you
understand why Mars, and not the moon, should be our immediate goal of
our space program.http://www.ontomars.org/blog/?m=200903

Why the Moon isn’t a Stepping Stone to Mars

Mars has an atmosphere however thin, the moon doesn’t. A Mars day is 24
hours and 40 minutes, a moon day is about 14 earth days. Temperatures
are different between Mars and the Moon. The new technologies needed to
go to Mars like the simulated gravity tether and large mass aerobraking
to get to the Mars surface, have nothing to do with the Moon. So, other
than they require totally different technologies, the moon has little
to offer in the way of Mars development.

The moon would be a good place to build telescopes. Better than Mars.
That’s just about the only thing the Moon has going for it. Now, what
does Mars have?
Climate Science.

Many people are interested in the science of climate change. Mars is a
cold planet that once was much warmer. Further, like earth, the climate
of Mars is also changing. Ice core samples taken on Mars would advance
the science of climate change a great deal.

Since we WANT a warmer Mars, tinkering with greenhouse gasses on Mars
would not only help to terraform Mars, but provide a great deal of
science about climate change.

You don’t get any of this by going to the Moon, the Asteroids, NEOs or
any other dead rock.
Biology

The Moon, the Asteroids, and NEO are all dead, lifeless rocks. In the
past, Mars had an ideal environment for life with a warmer environment
and flowing water. What’s more, gas releases from Mars suggest that
life may be there to this day. What a fantastic discovery it would be
to find fossil life on Mars. And the probability of finding
extra-terrestrial life on Mars would be the most significant scientific
discovery since… well, FIRE. You don’t get this by going to the Moon. A
Home for Humanity.

Mars has carbon. Mars has oceans of frozen water. Mars can be
terraformed. The moon has no carbon, trace amounts of water. It makes
no sense at all for a carbon based life form made mostly of water to
try and colonize a world where there is no carbon and almost no water.
What’s more, because there is no volcanic activity or water on the
moon, there are no ores. Materials like copper will be hard to gather
on the moon. You can build bases on the moon, only on Mars can you
build a colony.

What’s more, you can grow crops in greenhouses on Mars, as the Martian
day is close enough to an earth day that our plants can grow there in a
greenhouse with a low pressure atmosphere. On the moon, the nights are
two weeks long!

* *Mars is the Gateway to the inner solar system

Because Mars can support a colony and the moon can only support a base,
Mars will eventually become humanity’s gateway to the inner solar
system. Once every two years, the energy required to go from Mars to
the Moon is much less than going from the earth to the moon! You can
get much larger payloads into space from Mars than you can from earth.
A Mars civilization would be a spacefaring civilization. The Danger of
going to the moon

Most of you are too young to recall, but in the early 1970s, when the
Apollo program was returning bags of rocks from the moon, people were
saying things like “We can go to the moon but we can’t cure the common
cold” or “We can go to the moon but we can’t end poverty” and so one.
People saw the product of the moon program: Moon rocks, which appeared
to be ordinary earth rocks and were only of interest to scientist. The
payback for space programs seemed small. Many people could put together
a bag of rocks for far cheaper. Space programs seemed wasteful, and the
Mars program was convicted by guilt by association with the Moon
program in the eyes of public that didn’t know better. There’s a
PAYBACK for going to Mars.

History repeats itself. Today, it is very much like it was in the
1960s. We have a plan to return to the moon in 15 years or so. However,
in 15 years , the people are once again going to see bags of rocks
coming back from the moon. They will not see the discovery of
extraterrestrial life. They will not see new discoveries in climate
science. And they will not see an exciting new self supporting colony.
WE didn’t learn from Apollo and we are in danger of making the same
error.

--http://OnToMars.org*For discussions about Mars and Mars colonization

I agree, that Mars would make a super terrific off-world penal colony,
that which I think only the rich and powerful should have to pay for.

Then we can get our greedy and selfish selves back to our primary task
of raping and systematically pillaging mother Earth for all she's worth,
before our Eden is taken over by ETs that have other ideas.

*~ BG

So, you disagree with me, and are not going to actually discuss the merit
of human missions and a human presence on Mars.

Why did you post this stuff, tho?

--http://OnToMars.org*For discussions about Mars and Mars colonization

Talk to William Mook about how dirt cheap and easy life on Mars is,
because you will get loads of infomercials and no naysay arguments as
long as you do everything his way.

Technically Mars is doable, though it's to/from is time consuming, a
wee bit on the lethal side, and damn spendy by all known methods of
research and accounting, of course that's other than by whatever
William Mook and good old Zubrin think is doable for less than ten
cents on the dollar.

~ BG

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...


Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:


Reminds me of space bugs in the movie version of Stormship Troopers. They
apparently could far glowing gas balls out their arse at near relativistic
speeds.

Yeah, I couldn't make heads or tails of that either; how were those asteroids
getting to Earth anyway?
My God, those things could fart with more accuracy than a sniper can fire
bullets. :-)
In the animated version of SST ("Roughnecks") the bugs were running around up
on Pluto sans spacesuits.
Apparently in Europe the movie was considered a parody along the lines of
"Bill, The Galactic Hero", poking fun at the Gung-Ho Americans*.
(I have to admit when you watch it with that concept in mind, it is pretty
damn funny,



I think the original movie had just that concept in mind, not the US, but
humanity.
The very last scene in the movie made the satire clear. Remember, the entire
premise was that we were being invaded/infected by hords of mindless bugs
instinctively attacking and dying en masse as if moths to a flame. And we were
only holding them off with our 'advanced' technology. But in the very last
scene, when
they had captured the brain bug, they showed our 'scientists' trying to figure
out how
they think by ...ramming things it's throat...right! We were the ones
invading/infesting
their system. And our troops were the ones mindlessly going to their slaughter
en masse.

WE were the bugs/animals...THEY were the intellignent beings with the advanced
technology, which was so far above us we couldn't begin to comprehend how
they did it.

That was great sci-fi imo.


as they take the story and kick it up that extra notch into absurdity, rather
like "Space, Above And Beyond" unintentionally did.... yeah, your flight
commander carries a Kamikaze prayer around with him, and you are going to fly
with _him_ into battle?)
In my series "Space Command Ultra Marines ("SCUM") we shall see the dropping
of the troops onto Glitch, the moon of Fubar in the Gremlin System, under the
command of Commander "Snafu" Burnside...his bold plan of having the troops
free-fall into the atmosphere and open their parachutes at around 500 feet
would have worked brilliantly if only Glitch had _had_ a atmosphere.
But the attack was not a complete failure, as much Flunki** military equipment
was destroyed by the kinetic energy of the Space Marines striking the surface
at around 2,000 mph, like human earthquake bombs. And even today on Glitch the
craters they made show the outstanding accuracy of their drop pattern...as
well as greatly simplifying the construction of "The Glitch Memorial Cemetery"
which merely required tombstones to be added to the pre-excavated graves.






* If that's the case, then Heinlein's ghost must really be ****ed.
He saw BTGH


BTGH? Back to God hour?


as a direct slap military sci-fi in general, and his work in
particular, and didn't ever talk to Harry Harrison again after it was
published.
To see SST turned into a parody would have _really_ torqued him off.

** A slow-moving but fast-talking race of intelligent giant millipedes bent on
galactic conquest - one foot at a time.

Pat

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:48:00 -0500, "Jorge R. Frank"
wrote:

Marvin the Martian wrote:
On Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:30:33 +0200, jacob navia wrote:

Marvin the Martian wrote:
Then Get your ass to Mars!

http://OnToMar.org/forum/


(1) Mars is beyond current technology. Only machines can live in there.
Any human expedition to Mars is just science fiction.

Actually, NASA was planning on going to Mars right after Apollo, back in
the early 1970s. This technology is almost 40 years old.

And it's a good thing they didn't; they *thought* they had the
technology but they didn't. There is no ****ing way that Apollo-era life
support systems would have sustained a crew to Mars and back,

Wait... SkyLab lasted 6 months of occupation and wasn't on the verge
of breaking down when the last crew left. There was a lot of work to
do, sure, but the Mars flight was tentatively planned for 1981, 8
years after SkyLab. "Life support would never have worked" sounds a
little too "Capricorn One" to me.

Brian

"Marvin the Martian" wrote in message
...

Tired of all the flame wars? Insane posts? Off topic postings?

Want to try a moderated forum?

Then Get your ass to Mars!

http://OnToMar.org/forum/

A new forum where you can discuss space policy, particularly if you
understand why Mars, and not the moon, should be our immediate goal of
our space program.
http://www.ontomars.org/blog/?m=200903

Why the Moon isn't a Stepping Stone to Mars

Mars has an atmosphere however thin, the moon doesn't. A Mars day is 24
hours and 40 minutes, a moon day is about 14 earth days. Temperatures are
different between Mars and the Moon. The new technologies needed to go to
Mars like the simulated gravity tether and large mass aerobraking to get
to the Mars surface, have nothing to do with the Moon. So, other than
they require totally different technologies, the moon has little to offer
in the way of Mars development.

The moon would be a good place to build telescopes. Better than Mars.
That's just about the only thing the Moon has going for it.



Right, and our military has already laid plans to use the moon as a base for
gathering intelligence for our missile defense shield. This is the true and only
justifiable reason for our plans to return to the moon, for military purposes.
"The moon is the ultimate high ground", according (to quote) our US Air Force.

Don't you realize we are being lied to? For national security reasons as we
don't wish to start a military space race to the moon with the Chinese.

Oops! That ship has sailed ...hasn't it?


Now, what does Mars have?
Climate Science.

The primary thing Mars has that is ....scientifically....interesting is the
strong
possibility of microbial life in it's past or even the present.
We can fully study this question with robotic missions not only much much
cheaper, but even much faster. It might take five years to build and land
an advanced rover. Manned missions are still thirty of forty years off. By then
we'll know all we wish to know about Mars.

Even a casual analysis of our current space goal of using the moon as a stepping
stone
to Mars shows it's deliberately misleading. Meant to help the military gain the
ultimate high ground on the moon. With manned missions to mars being nothing
more than a straw man.




Many people are interested in the science of climate change. Mars is a
cold planet that once was much warmer. Further, like earth, the climate
of Mars is also changing. Ice core samples taken on Mars would advance
the science of climate change a great deal.

Since we WANT a warmer Mars, tinkering with greenhouse gasses on Mars
would not only help to terraform Mars, but provide a great deal of
science about climate change.

You don't get any of this by going to the Moon, the Asteroids, NEOs or
any other dead rock.


It's still an indirect means of learning about the climate of earth. And given
it's distance and expense, a very inefficient way of advancing earth science.
Not to mention the odd orbit of mars means it's climate of far more complex
than on earth, complex meaning harder to predict and understand.
Global warming on earth is an imminent crisis which requires the /most/
efficient ways of finding solutions. Not the most /diffucult/, slowest and
most expensive way.



Biology

The Moon, the Asteroids, and NEO are all dead, lifeless rocks. In the
past, Mars had an ideal environment for life with a warmer environment
and flowing water. What's more, gas releases from Mars suggest that life
may be there to this day. What a fantastic discovery it would be to find
fossil life on Mars. And the probability of finding extra-terrestrial
life on Mars would be the most significant scientific discovery since.
well, FIRE. You don't get this by going to the Moon.
A Home for Humanity.

Mars has carbon. Mars has oceans of frozen water.


Earth has more.


Mars can be
terraformed.


A concept or goal that spans centuries is 'pie-in-the-sky' science for the
simple reason it takes so long and so much effort only the most
pressing needs could possibly justify the huge effort and time span.
And pressing needs rarely spans centuries. This makes such concepts
a logical contradiction


The moon has no carbon, trace amounts of water. It makes no
sense at all for a carbon based life form made mostly of water to try and
colonize a world where there is no carbon and almost no water. What's
more, because there is no volcanic activity or water on the moon, there
are no ores. Materials like copper will be hard to gather on the moon.
You can build bases on the moon, only on Mars can you build a colony.

What's more, you can grow crops in greenhouses on Mars, as the Martian
day is close enough to an earth day that our plants can grow there in a
greenhouse with a low pressure atmosphere. On the moon, the nights are
two weeks long!

Mars is the Gateway to the inner solar system

Because Mars can support a colony and the moon can only support a base,
Mars will eventually become humanity's gateway to the inner solar system.
Once every two years, the energy required to go from Mars to the Moon is
much less than going from the earth to the moon! You can get much larger
payloads into space from Mars than you can from earth. A Mars
civilization would be a spacefaring civilization.


Why is it always ...assumed...humanity is destined to, or will need to colonize
the solar system??? I believe the first signs of an intelligent or civilized
life
is the ability to control it's environment in a sustainable way.

And once we learn to do so, we no longer need to expand. Hence the
logical contradiction with colonizing. If we don't know how to build
sustainable societies on earth, how could we possibly succeed in space
with the limited resources and unforgiving nature of space?

Once we have learned to build sustainable societies/colonies on earth, we no
longer need to expand to space. If we can't our colonies will fail.


The Danger of going to the moon

Most of you are too young to recall, but in the early 1970s, when the
Apollo program was returning bags of rocks from the moon, people were
saying things like "We can go to the moon but we can't cure the common
cold" or "We can go to the moon but we can't end poverty" and so one.
People saw the product of the moon program: Moon rocks, which appeared to
be ordinary earth rocks and were only of interest to scientist. The
payback for space programs seemed small. Many people could put together a
bag of rocks for far cheaper. Space programs seemed wasteful, and the
Mars program was convicted by guilt by association with the Moon program
in the eyes of public that didn't know better. There's a PAYBACK for
going to Mars.

History repeats itself. Today, it is very much like it was in the 1960s.
We have a plan to return to the moon in 15 years or so. However, in 15
years , the people are once again going to see bags of rocks coming back
from the moon. They will not see the discovery of extraterrestrial life.


Robots will have discovered it long before then. And given us millions of high
res
color pics on the surface of mars. So many it's as if we already live there.
By the time men set foot on mars, it'll be ho-hum. We need a space
goal that becomes more justifiable over time, not less.

They will not see new discoveries in climate science.


By the time men walk on the moon, where I live will be thirty feet underwater.
I'm not exaggerating, for South Florida the most recent and respected
projections
show the entire south of the state underwater in .....forty years. Those
projections
came out last spring, a few months later the real estate market in South Florida
bubbled, setting off a nationwide real estate panic and world wide recession.

The effects of global warming are here already. It's too late to fix it.

We need to 'circle the wagons' so to speak and start using our scientific
abilities and resources as if our national existence were at stake.

To the moon and mars define the antithesis to what is practical, logical and
needed.


And they will not
see an exciting new self supporting colony.


What we ....need....and need desperately is to create a new self supporing
colony.....HERE ON EARTH.

Unless of course you intend to move SIX BILLION PEOPLE to a space colony.
How will the public respond to the notion of devoting our entire national
science goal
just so a few selected people can abandon the earth just before all hell breaks
loose?

Lucky few eh? I bet the public would embrace that notion with all the derision
it can muster. At best to the moon and mars is a Guilded Safari for those
living in Ivory Towers ...to milk ...at the expense of our national survival
and the future of the planet.


WE didn't learn from Apollo
and we are in danger of making the same error.


The lesson of Apollo, according to Neil Armstrong in his address to Congress,
was
that Apollo as a goal had too much emphasis on pure science and exploration, and
not balanced with the tangible needs of society. Hence the short term support.

Long term support, which is CRUCIAL requires clear, massive and easily
justifiable
tangible returns for society. Our /primary national science program/ should
be
oriented around our greatest national needs and problems. Such as global warming
and energy etc. Not some fancy safari for the rich and famous.

We used to have such a goal, remember ssto? Remember space ports? Remember
space solar power? Bush killed /it all/ for a military oriented goal. A small
base on the
moon for our missile defense sensors.


Instead of building the true infrastructure we need to exploit space, single
state to orbit
space ports ect, we building another one-shot deal. Instead of solving global
threats
like climate change and energy shortages, we spend all our dough kicking around
some moon rocks and drilling little holes for bacteria.

If we do that, we deserve what we likely to get from Nature. Another hundred
thousand
year long ice age that kills off just about all life on earth.

Cheers!


Jonathan

s






--
http://OnToMars.org For discussions about Mars and Mars colonization

On Apr 12, 10:51*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:

The moon has one enormous advantage: three day return trajectory from
Earth.

That means you can learn long-duration planetary surface operations on
the moon without it killing you like on Mars.

You get a major leak in your spacesuit and either place will be just as
fatal inside of ten minutes.
You seem to be suggesting that the majority of the major health problems
encountered will be serious enough to demand evacuation to Earth, but
not serious enough to kill you inside of three days.

Mechanical problems, not health problems. Long term presence on the
Moon - or travel to and from Mars - will require fairly closed loops
for life support. These systems are historically complex and
unreliable. When your water recycling system breaks down on the moon,
you can make it back with not much more than some lithium hydroxide
canisters for CO2 removal and some form of humidity control and
thermal control. When your water recycling system breaks down on
Mars, you die.

-jake

David Spain wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
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,

That is true. And that appeals to Dr. Schmidt and... ?

Many. Dr. Paul Spudis, for one:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/

There are others. Just because you are ignorant of their existence does
not mean they do not exist.

then you post this nonsense about sending humans past Venus just so
you could

Actually to orbit Venus for a few months, dropping probes, placing
satellites
in orbit around it, maybe doing atmospheric sample returns, etc. A Venus
orbital
exploration mission would be a great warm-up for a Mars mission.
As you said small steps. We could do all that with a traveling space
habitat.
Try to do that with Constellation.

There is still no need to send people. Everything you list could be done
more cheaply without them. That will always be the case for Venus,
because it is impractical for humans to explore its surface directly. It
is not the case for the surfaces of the moon and Mars, where not only
can humans explore more effectively than robots, but more
*cost*-effectively as well.

Venus has an atmosphere that has "global warming" run amok. There might be
some useful science to be done there with Earth application.[/quote]

However, no science that requires people.

The moon
offers
us... ?

Lots. Dr. Spudis explains it more eloquently than I could; I suggest you
look over some of the past articles in his blog.

But putting all that aside, my actual point is a space habitat could
travel.

I don't see why we need to jump down the gravity well of the moon just to
establish how to do long endurance space living. The ISS is a start. But
then it looks to me like from a policy perspective I don't know what the
plan is
after shuttle. A few Orion visits? Then what?

At least six years, probably ten or more, of ISS operations after
shuttle retirement.

A space habitat could be built in LEO, travel out to the moon or elsewhere
and then return to LEO, where it would remain accessible even after a US
moon program is abandoned. We could park it near the ISS. In fact the ISS
would serve as a good construction site for the traveling habitat.

Nope. As someone with over 15 years experience working ISS, I can tell
you it's a ****ty site for construction. All the features of SSF that
would have enabled large-scale in-space construction were gone by the
time it morphed into ISS.

"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

David Spain wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
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,

That is true. And that appeals to Dr. Schmidt and... ?

Many. Dr. Paul Spudis, for one:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/

There are others. Just because you are ignorant of their existence does not
mean they do not exist.


Agreed. And I can line up several experts that claim a return to the moon is a
waste of time and money. The fact that you choose to ignore them does not mean
they do not exist.

http://planetary.org/programs/projec...y/roadmap.html
http://planetary.org/special/vision/results.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...html?series=35
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0801/18avweek/

then you post this nonsense about sending humans past Venus just so you
could

Actually to orbit Venus for a few months, dropping probes, placing
satellites in orbit around it, maybe doing atmospheric sample returns,
etc. A Venus orbital exploration mission would be a great warm-up for a
Mars mission. As you said small steps. We could do all that with a
traveling space habitat. Try to do that with Constellation.

There is still no need to send people. Everything you list could be done
more cheaply without them.

There is no need to send people to the moon either. Tele-robotics will work
just fine on the Moon, unlike the planets, because the round trip
communication delay is on the order of 2 seconds. People can work around that
very effectively. A 20 min to 2 hour delay makes that impossible for
planetary exploration via tele-robotics. You have to rely on some amount of AI
in your probe programming. And that is not easy. And tele-robotic exploration
will be far far cheaper than a moonbase. In fact after the political will to
stay on the moon is gone, tele- robotics may be the only remaining viable
option that will allow NASA to "afford" a long-term lunar exploration program.

impractical for humans to explore its surface directly. It is not the case
for the surfaces of the moon and Mars, where not only can humans explore
more effectively than robots, but more *cost*-effectively as well.

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what could be done
with tele-robtic explorers.

But more to your point, sure if surface exploration is the end all and be all
of exploration. But I disagree with that as well. Much can also be learned
from orbit. Think about the ability to alter the experiment or create new ones
based on the results obtained during observations. That is very hard to do
with unmanned probes. I mean if we can't get to the surface should we not even
*ever* attempt future manned missions to Jupiter or the outer planets someday?


Venus has an atmosphere that has "global warming" run amok. There might be
some useful science to be done there with Earth application.[/quote]

However, no science that requires people.

How do you know that definitively? Maybe if we had an orbiting laboratory the
science would present itself?

The moon offers us... ?

Lots. Dr. Spudis explains it more eloquently than I could; I suggest you
look over some of the past articles in his blog.

OK. The page you pointed me to didn't really put much of a case forward for
lunar exploration. It was more of a lament about the decline of the US
aerospace industry (a lament I share), but I'll poke around a bit.


But putting all that aside, my actual point is a space habitat could
travel.

I don't see why we need to jump down the gravity well of the moon just to
establish how to do long endurance space living. The ISS is a start. But
then it looks to me like from a policy perspective I don't know what the
plan is after shuttle. A few Orion visits? Then what?

At least six years, probably ten or more, of ISS operations after shuttle
retirement.

We'll see. Esp. if moon fever takes over NASA as I have a feeling it will.
These things tend to snowball.


A space habitat could be built in LEO, travel out to the moon or elsewhere
and then return to LEO, where it would remain accessible even after a US
moon program is abandoned. We could park it near the ISS. In fact the ISS
would serve as a good construction site for the traveling habitat.

Nope. As someone with over 15 years experience working ISS, I can tell you
it's a ****ty site for construction. All the features of SSF that would have
enabled large-scale in-space construction were gone by the time it morphed
into ISS.

OK, I'll defer to your expertise and accept that. And more's the pity. We
should have downscaled SSF into something we (US) could have used more
productively. And in-space construction is one of those functions we should
not have sacrificed.

All the more reason to get cracking on building useful space infrastructure in
LEO now, rather than another one-off to the moon that the politicians will
abandon when the polls tell them to. In the meantime we will have squandered
another 25 years and more billions of dollars before getting back to building
the kind of infrastructure that we really need.

BTW Jorge, thanks for engaging me in this instead of succumbing to the
temptation of writing me off as a crank. I'm the first to admit that space in
not my profession nor my area of expertise. But I learn a bit every day and I
highly value the input from those like yourself who are involved. Thank you.

Dave

Pat Flannery writes:

David Spain wrote:
Well, I'd suggest a landing technology similar to that used for the Mars
Exploration Rovers would work well....

;-)


I never saw that movie, which was supposed to suck. Ever notice three odd
things about "Robinson Crusoe On Mars"? 1.) They abandon the Eleanor M
because it's decaying out of orbit... but somehow after they land it goes
right on orbiting, with an perigee that appears to be around 2,000 feet.

Maybe the Newtonian effect of jettisoning from the Eleanor M (along with the
reduced mass) was enough to inject it into a higher, stable orbit. Or maybe
one of the flaming meteor ball's gravitation pulled it into a stable orbit.
We all know Mars orbit is filled with flaming meteor balls right? Gee, Pat the
movie had to assume *some* level of knowledge on the part of the audience.
;-D

2.) At the end of the movie they are dying of thirst while walking around in
a snowstorm. Unless that's CO2 snow they could just eat it.

Or maybe they could have survived on filtered monkey ****! If only they'd used
Friday's pills and that monkey more effectively!


3.) Christopher Draper never makes the slightest attempt to determine if the
alien Friday might have a vagina rather than a penis. If "he" was actually
sort of a "she" this could change the whole timbre of the movie. Don't knock
this concept; if that had been Commander William Riker, that's the _first_
thing he would have checked. :-)

Pat

That surely would have cured him of dreaming about Batman!

;-)

Dave

David Spain wrote:

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what
could be done with tele-robtic explorers.

Which teleoperated rovers? The ones of 2050 or 2060?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

(Derek Lyons) writes:

David Spain wrote:

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what
could be done with tele-robtic explorers.

Which teleoperated rovers? The ones of 2050 or 2060?

D.
--

Well after we've squandered away the years and billions on
Constellation and a moon base that the Chinese have taken
over in our absence, I'd say 2075!

Of course we could have it alot sooner if we'd just choose to.
It's all about the choices we're making today.

I don't think this will go down in history as one of President W's
better decisions either.

Dave