Skip the Preliminaries - Go for the Whole Shootin' Match

Nomen Nescio wrote:

We are wasting men and resources fooling around in low Earth orbit. Even a
die-hard space enthusiast can't get excited anymore when we shoot men up
250 miles and watch them go 'round and 'round. Sorry, but its the truth.

In the movie, When Worlds Collide, we went from nothing to an
interplanetary rocket ship in one quick project in less than a year.
That's the way it should be here and now.


Remember, it's easier to justify in that scenario where nothing you
do on Earth will soon matter at all.

In the real world, there are always competing interests.


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Nomen Nescio wrote:

We are wasting men and recivilizationsng around in low Earth orbit. Even
a die-hard space enthusiast can't get excited anymore when we shoot men up
250 miles and watch them go 'round and 'round. Sorry, but its the truth.

In the movie, When Worlds Collide, we went from nothing to an
interplanetary rocket ship in one quick project in less than a year.
That's the way it should be here and now.

A 1950's sci-fi movie. Now there's an authoritative source of what's
possible :-)

Mars is a big payoff and will restore our prowness in the eyes of the
whole
world. We cannot get that benefit with Shuttles, the ISS, or even another
Moon Shot. I say we have a nation-wide referendum and vote on my proposal
in an exercise in pure democracy. Its what the President would want, I'm
sure.

Ah, I see. "We" is not humanity, it's the USA. Sorry, we've already had
one exercise in US one-upmanship in space, Apollo, and because that was the
sole motivation in the view of the US government and public the program
died soon after the moon was reached. Simply, there was no other
overriding motivation in going further.

Without the ISS you'll have to set up something else similar to check out
how the human body adapts (or doesn't) to two years in low gravity space.
Bone density and other problems are not trivial and may not even be
solvable.

IMHO sending humans to Mars without testing out techniques and technologies
(and major parts of the actual hardware) in trips to the moon first would
be suicidal. If this were the mid-70's and the US were going straight on
from Apollo you might be able to get away with it (qv Stephen Baxter's
novel Voyage), but that opportunity was lost and we (by which I mean
humanity in general) now have to start from scratch again.

Its doable and doable with off-the-shelf technology, so what are we
waiting for?

You're joking aren't you?

Where's the heavy-lift launcher? For that matter, where's the engines to
power same? Where's the research on how to extract fuel from the Martian
environment without which the mass needed to start with goes up
exponentially? How do you make sure there isn't going to be an Apollo 13
two days into a two-year mission? How about radiation shielding?

And if medical problems caused by long periods of weightlessness do not
prove to be solvable, you'll need to drastically reduce the journey time
which means breakthroughs in propulsion technology.

Let's not also forget that the US is running a massive and unsustainable
budget deficit already. Where would the money come from? Raise taxes?
Gee, that would be popular in today's USA... Run a bigger deficit to go to
Mars? That would go down really well with the USAs international
creditors.

There's more holes in this proposal than a Swiss cheese.

(Personally I think the first true space-faring civilisations will be China
and India, but that's another story...)

--
Malcolm Street
Canberra, Australia
The nation's capital

It's possible to do a heavy lift project in such short time if the
resources and man power is focused.



As for a manned Mars spacecraft.

Well... Before doing that, one got to make sure that one already clear
all of the immigration bureaucracy with the Martian immigration.

If you haven't clear the Martian immigration, it doesn't matter on how
good your spacecraft is, you can NOT land, period.



As for good P.R. for landing at Mars.

Most people in the world are only interested in their own affairs.

How could landing at Mars is a good P.R.?

To rally people from all around the world or at least from one nation
to unite?

Well... That wouldn't fit with 'their' agenda of making people each
other. Just look at the publicity given to SpaceShip One, it had all of
the markings of "fight! fight! fight!", making people fight government
plus people who allied themself with the government and vice versa.



Personally, Earth is probably the only the place in the world we would
consider 'home'.

We were created on this planet, we live on this planet, and we will die
on this planet.

Feel free to voyage to other places though, but even the furthest human
voyagers probably will instinctly go back to Earth.

Of course, there's no reason on why we couldn't travel through the
universe using Starship Earth. Imagine Space 1999, with Earth.

wrote:

It's possible to do a heavy lift project in such short time if the
resources and man power is focused.

As for a manned Mars spacecraft.

Well... Before doing that, one got to make sure that one already clear
all of the immigration bureaucracy with the Martian immigration.

If you haven't clear the Martian immigration, it doesn't matter on how
good your spacecraft is, you can NOT land, period.

As for good P.R. for landing at Mars.

Most people in the world are only interested in their own affairs.

How could landing at Mars is a good P.R.?

To rally people from all around the world or at least from one nation
to unite?

Well... That wouldn't fit with 'their' agenda of making people each
other. Just look at the publicity given to SpaceShip One, it had all of
the markings of "fight! fight! fight!", making people fight government
plus people who allied themself with the government and vice versa.


(sigh) Don't confuse enthusiam, and an elementof national pride, with
violence.


Personally, Earth is probably the only the place in the world we would
consider 'home'.


Only so far. That's easy to say now. Ask me again when it's actually
practical to do otherwise.


We were created on this planet, we live on this planet, and we will die
on this planet.


A few people (primairily the Apollo 13 crew) have come close to not
dying on this planet, already.

(I don't count Soyuz-10, Challenger, or Columbia, as their crew
remains did reach Earth's surface. And even Jim Lovell has said that had
the situation been such that life-support was inadequate for them to get
back, he intended to make as sure as possible that their ship would
still be on an Earth-intercept course, albeit a destructive re-entry,
rather than being a tomb in a high Earth orbit...then let the ship
depressurize, rather than suffocate as the CO2 scrubbers failed.)

And expect inevitable space fatalities where return of the remains
will not be possible, or even against the previously stated wishes of
the deceased.

As well as the inevitable human birth somewhere outside the
atmosphere...



Feel free to voyage to other places though, but even the furthest human
voyagers probably will instinctly go back to Earth.


Considering that humans originated in east Central Africa, it's
arguable that we've done nothing *but* migrate elsewhere, and never look
back. (Espically where the US is concerned.) I don't live in the city
where I was born, myself.

I'm confident you'd find the stuff of space colonists on this very
newsgroup.


Of course, there's no reason on why we couldn't travel through the
universe using Starship Earth. Imagine Space 1999, with Earth.


We *are* moving through space, but like Space 1999, we've got no
control over speed or destination. Earth (and the rest of the solar
system) is a slow starship with no helm or throttle...

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