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There are other departments that cover Earth Research and Education. The prizes should just get bigger and bigger until some one wins one of them. The second and third prizes are for the second and third flights to Mars, these reduce the risk to the compeditor of losing, and when the first prize is won, the second prize becomes the first prize and that build up until someone wins that. NASA devotes a portion of its budget to building up the prizes, generally the first prize is largest followed by the second prize and the third prize. When the first prize is one, the second and third prizes become the first and second prizes and a third prize is added, and the same heirachy is maintained, the prizes increase in value over time with the first prize always being the largest, and this is the way I propose to fund a Manned Mars program. You'd end up with a bunch of private corporations competing with each other and launching their own missions, to maximise profits they try to reduce costs, this keeps the management of the programs lean and efficient.
The way I see it, conventional wisdom got us as far as the Moon but got us no farther. NASA got more interested in spending money than actually getting results out of it. I think awarding prize money is a results oriented approach. Congress can appropriate $30 billion for a Manned Mars mission for any given year, it is candy for any private company that wants to collect that money. I also think we should make the Ares I and V along with CEV available for sale to all private US companies that meet the security requirements. Have NASA develop the Ares I and V and then allow the contractors to make additional sales and fill additional orders for those rockets. And private US companies will then have the option of either buying Ares V and I launches or of building their own launch vehicles, they would then develop their own spacecraft to bring their astronauts to Mars. The great thing about prizes is that they cost the government nothing until someone wins them.
Since money is budgeted on an annual basis, perhaps it can be done this way. Lets say President Gingrich first year in office is 2009, for that year he asks Congress to appropriate $30 billion for the Mars prize, at about this time the Ares I rocket is tested for the first time. Most likely no one collects on this prize, the money goes back into next years budget (2010) as revenue. Next year NASA has a budget of say $27 billion + $30 billion if the prize is collected for 2010. Out of NASA's budget, NASA may decide to add a portion of its budget to sweeten the prize a little bit so that $5 billion gets added to the pot so now the prize is $35 billion, in 2010 no one succeeds in collecting on this prize and so the $35 billion gets collected again as revenue for the 2011 budget. NASA gets $27 billion for that year and adds another $5 billion to the pot, the prize goes up to $40 billion, NASA decides to split this and make a first prize for $30 billion and a second prize for $10 billion in 2011 no one collects on the prize so $40 billion goes back as general revenue. In the 2012 budget, NASA gets $27 billion dollars and of that $27 billion NASA adds $4 billionm to the first prize and $1 billion to the second so the prizes now are $34 billion and $11 billion. While all this is happening, various aerospace firms are eyeing these prizes and raising money from private capital markets to try to win one of these prizes. The progression of increasing the prizes continues until the first prize equals $42 billion and the second prize equals $13 billion, at this point NASA's $5 billion is split this way, $1 billion for the first prize and $4 billion for the second making the prizes $43 billion and $17 billion respectively for 2015, for 2016 the prizes become $44 billion and $21 billion, for 2017 its $45 billion and $25 billion, for 2018 its $46 billion and $29 Billion, and hopefully by now the price of each mission can be brought down and NASA will contribute $5 billion for the third prize in 2019. The idea is to keep on adding sugar increasing the incentive and increasing the private competion to win one of these prizes.
You actually only need to move Phobos if the elevator is stationary, but what if its not? What if you rotate Phobos and then extend two cables from it so that each end in not moving in relation to the ground when it touches down, sort of like the spokes of a giant invisible wheel. I think it would take less energy and reaction mass if you tried to spin up Phobos that to move it from its orbit. Phobos would stay in its orbit, and two or more cables would extend from its surface, each one would be the same length as Phobo's minimum orbital altitude. You could have one cable, two, four, maybe eight all radiating outward from phobos and there would be a number of spots where the cable would touch down, and it could hook onto something and then fling it into space. Phobos has quite alot of mass and momentum, so it could fling quite a bit from Mar's surface and into orbit. You could extend a similar cable from Deimos and time the rotation just right so that it always misses Phobos.
Has anyone ever tried this? What about rigging a special chamber, evacuating out most of the air and placing a sandbox inside filled with rock and dirt. Then you have an astronaut put on a Mars space suit and go inside. Have the airplane take off and fly on a parabolic trajectory which produces a condition of 0.38-G on the inside of the Mars chamber, and while its doing this, have the astronaut attempt to walk around in the Mars suit and attempt to pick up and collect rocks in the sand box.
How much do you suppose an experiment like this would cost?
One thought that occured to me is that if we build Ares V launchers, we might order additional copies of the Ares V to send probes to distant regions of the Solar System For example, to launch space telescopes, communication satellites and the like. How might the additional capacity of an Ares V launcher be used in interplanetary probes?
It appears Newt Gingrich may be running for president, he hasn't said no or yes, but as I seem to recall, he once had a proposal to award prizes for achieving various objectives including a Mars Prize. I read about in in the Case for Mars book. So what do you think his chances of running for President and getting elected are? Is this the man we should be supporting? Would he be the one that could make a manned Mars program happen?
Any way you slice it, any entity that enforces the law is by definition "the government". If people had total freedom to do what ever they wanted, some of that freedom would include making allies such as that posse I just mention. If that posse succeeded in getting rid of George Martin and his family, it would become the defacto government. Mob rule then becomes a clan or a tribe and the person who instigated this becomes the tribal leader, it is a form of government, not neccessarily a democratic form of government, its just that it has the guns or the force of arms necessary to rule and get everyone else to obey the laws they make. I'd rather not have governments decided this way. Anarchy is temporary, it lasts until one person decides to impose his will on another through brute force or through recruiting allies against him, governments evolve out of this, and you can't stop it, because people like to feel safe. If there is no authority, they will attempt to impose their own authority because they got no choice, and once they do they end up becoming the government. I'd rather have a global authority to protect peoples rights and to minimize conflict. If the global government enforces the law, there is less reason for people to form clans and tribal governments to enforce their own law. They say that people should not take the law into their own hands, but without a government people have no choice! Without justice, or at least a government trying to enforce the law, then people will have no choice but to form vigilante groups.
Who's ignoring them, they receive the amount of attention in proportion to the threat the represent, which is not much. On the otherhand Islamic radicals have taken over whole countries, it would seem on the face of it that Islam lends itself rather well to these radical ideologies. The theology of Islam has Mohammad leading armies, contrast that to the cheek turning Jesus Christ. Islam has its Jihad and Christ turns the other cheek. It seems that the radicals of Christianity go to extremes in turning the other cheek, which makes them mostly harmless, while radical muslims go to extremes in waging their Jihad. All-in-all I feel safer around someone who won't defend himself, believes the world was created 6000 years ago and that the end of times is at had, than around someone who wants to convert me or else chop my head off. Christianity is at its heart a pacifist religion, when it goes to extremes, it goes to pacifist extremes in not fighting back. I think that is what happened in the Middle East. The Arabs who were Christians went to extremes of pacifism and wouldn't not defend themselves against the conquering armies of Islam, and thus Islam, a more warlike religion took over the entire middle east and north African region. And those Arabs who were fanatical Christians had their children converted into fanatical muslims who would die fighting fortheir religion just as their parents would die not fighting for it.
Its fairly obvious the differences between the Christian World and the Muslim one. You can argue many things to finding exceptions to everything. I think however Christians by and large are peaceful and Muslims less so. When prominent people say bad things about Islam, they have to watch their back. Everytime I go to an Airport I'm reminded that Islam is not as peaceful as the politically correct people say. Before Muslim extremists, airport security was lax, and you could bring beverages onboard airplanes, no questions asked, now because of Islam and their culture we cannot, and the fact that you can find extreme examples Christianity on the fringes of societies doesn't change any of that. What, for example, was that Lunatic of an Iranian President doing at the US representing Iran? I thought Islam was a peaceful religion, then how come this leader calling for the destruction of Israel is representing this peaceful population of Iranians at the UN. You'd think if the Iranians were truly peaceful they wouldn't have elected this warmongering nut to be their President. You'd also think they would boycott their mosques since the head of their Religion goes around calling for a host of all evil things, assassination, murder, war, Death to America and to the Jews etc. Surely this religious figure who is the spiritual leader of a Nation much bigger than the Vatican could not truly be the head of a peaceful religion, and if he is not, what are peaceful Iranians doing attending his mosques every Friday? You'd think that a long time ago they would have figured out their religion was nothing but a crock, and excuse to murder people or to beat up women. How many peaceful Iranians boycott their religion in protest to its evil and its violence advocated by the Ayalollah?
One possibility is that the Rover could come equipped with rocket engines to fly over impassible terrain.
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Isn't it interesting that this flaw in Christianity seems to be the opposite of what it is in Islam. Reasonable moderate Christians would say that this statement does not mean that a Christian can't defend himself against his enemies. An unreasonable extremist Christian would obey the above statement to the letter, this is not a moderate position, but this idea when taken to extremes produces Christians who turn the other cheek and don't defend themselves. I don't think that pastor would qualify as an extremist under the above definition.
As for what to do about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I'm really not sure. Roman logic would of course lead to the Israelis doing some rather unpleasant things to the Palestinians in order to obtain peace, this would enrage the Islamic World which would in turn mean the Israelis doing some unpleasant things to them as well. Once the Arab world has had its fill of bloodshed and assuming the Israelis can survive the encounter, then it may be possible afterwards to have peace for the Arab world would have grown its own crop of peaceniks and consciountious objectors who are tired or war, but so long as the struggle is cheap and easy for the Arabs to continue, they will. Its like of like the Arabs are saying this, "If your merciful to me, you are weak. If your unmerciful to me, you are cruel."
That is why space exploration is so important. When peace is impossible, there is always space. When the Universe is basically limitless, and as far as the human race is concerned it might as well be, retreat is always a viable option. We can deprive the Arab world of an enemy and then they'll turn upon themselves and in one million years they will be gone. The rest of human kind can return to the Earth or what's left of the Earth and rebuild. When ever you have two mutually disagreeable ideologies, you can either fight it out till one is eradicated, or with space colonization, the human race can split up and put some space between one group and the disagreeable party that will not have peace. Perhaps this is a better solution that the Roman/Carthigean one.
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Maybe Christ said that, but it doesn't mean that most Christians believe it. There is another saying, "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." I guess many Germans can be considered "good Christians", they did not resist the evil done unto the Jews. When their Jewish neighbors we're hauled away by the Gestapo or the SS and put on the trains bound for the Death Camps, they "turned the other cheek", and some of them turned over more Jews to the Authorities.
Not resisting evil means that evil wins. That branch of Christianity that believed the above statement quickly became extinct. You got to have Christian values that are conducive to survival. There are ways of resisting evil without murdering innocent people, there are means and ways that alot of Muslims seem totally ignorant of, so quick are they to go for the gun and the bomb.
I'm not talking specifically about what Jesus Christ said or Muhammad said, but about how these two groups of people behave. In the Christian World their is an accepted body of values considered appropriate behavior, in the Muslim World there is also, but comparing the two societies as a whole, the Muslims' general tendency is toward more violence when they don't get their way, the Christian tendency is toward peaceful protest. In the spirit of the above quotation, Christians try to find nonviolent means of resisting evil first before resorting to violence as a last resort. Christians gennerally are not eager to start a war, Muslims on the other hand, tend to value their current existence less, are less concerned about whether the live or die, and easily led to commit violence.
You can go over the bible verse by verse and I don't care, there is a Christian community of values, in those values it is acceptable behavior to defend oneself from evil, but murdering people is wrong. Common sense means that you don't follow chains of logic startiong out with axioms from the Bible and then come up with ridiculous conclusions saying that a Christian is not allowed to defend himselve and must therefore let radical Islam trumph and force his children to convert to Islam at the point of a sword. A vast swath of the Muslim World was once Christian you know, perhaps Islam was so successful there because the Christians they conquered "turned the other cheek" and their sons and daughters were forced to convert to Islam. Those Christians that resisted the Islamic onslaught learned that dogmatic adherence to Christ's teachings regarding "turning the other cheek" was not conducive toward survival, and so they fought back, and so we had the Crusades. One oft unacknowledged fact is that the objective of the Crusades wasn't to win new lands for Christiandon, rather it was to roll back the Muslim conquests in North Africa and the Middle East.
I don't think you can live in Palestine and be a moderate. But you are right there. The election of Hamas means all hope for peace there is gone. And it doesn't bring great tidings to the larger situation either.
The Palestinians don't want peace, but the Israelis do. The Israelis were trying to be reasonable by offereing some land as incentive, but the Palestinians wanted none of that, they elected terrorists, but just remember the Romans eventually got their peace after repeated attacks by Carthage, Tacticus said that the Romans "made a desert and called it peace." To be fair, I don't know what other choice the Romans had, the Cartheginians certainly didn't give them any other options. Maybe some people don't deserve to be attacked all the time just because the other side doesn't want peace and has their eyes fixed on the prize of conquest.
What do you do when one side is incapable of winning but is unwilling to sue for peace, not even on favorable terms for themselves, they want the fruits of victory and would settle for nothing less than the other sides destruction yet they are incapable of bringing it about? What Israel has been doing is giving the Palestinians the kid glove treatment in order to maintain the good graces of the World Community, that means Jews keep on being attacked, how long they'll put up with this situation, I don't know, but the road to peace still exists, it is just unpleasant to implement. There is the peace that occurs after a major war, when much that was good is ruined and people are sick of fighting. I don't see much evidence fo the Palestinians ever getting sick of the ravages of war, perhaps because the Israelis aren't ravaging them enough. The Israelis are holding back at the World's insistance and the Palestinians perceive it only as weakness, and the Jews are beginning to perceive the World's insistance that they hold back as antisemitism. The world is basically saying, "don't fight back, let them kill you, don't over react!" I bet some Jews are saying that the World will keep saying this unti the very last Jew is killed.
A few other options to consider:
Would you want an open top Rover and require the astronauts to sit in their spacesuits uncomfortably unable to even scratch their nose? You can't get you hand inside your face plate to scratch you nose. What if an astronaut sneezes while doing work in his space suit and its splattered all over the inside of the glass obstructing his vision? An enclosed rover allows the astronaut some creature conforts, he can have plush leather seating, a DVD player, his seat can fully recline so he can sleep in it etc.
What else can you include on a Mars Rover? How about windshield wipers. No doubt dust can accumulate on the windshield and make it harder to see out off. Perhaps the wipers will be more like brushes. If you squirt cleaning fluid on the outside of the windshield, it will boil away, but can it remove dirt before it entirely does so?
I think a rover could use headlights and a GPS system. How about airbags? Maybe a spare tire. I think a sun roof would be a nice feature. The windows of course would not roll down.
I think achieving some method of Suspended Animation would put the stars within our reach. With the near infinite patience that suspended animation would bring we could wait as long as it takes to get there. I do not believe that the idea of Suspended Animation violates any laws of physics, its just that we don't know how to do it.
A more exotic possibility is wormholes. As you know its theoretically possible to move one end of a wormhole independently of another while the distance on the inside of the wormhole remains the same. Using relativity, you can make a wormhole that is a two way passage to the future and back, you can go as far into the future as you like and yet travel back to the present when your done. You can "fast-forward" time this way and speed up the process of terraforming a planet at the far end of a wormhole, or you may do the same with a wormhole that leads to another Universe with the same set of laws of physics.
Tom Kalbfus wrote:
People who blow themselves up to kill other people are acting in an unchristian manner, so he cannot be said to be laying down his life for Christ when he is violating his principles.
Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes, from moderate Muslims ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/islam.htm wrote:
Q: How does Islam view terrorism?A: Islam does not support terrorism under any circumstances. Terrorism goes against every principle in Islam. If a Muslim engages in terrorism, he is not following Islam. He may be wrongly using the name of Islam for political or financial gain.
That is just one man's opinion of what Islam is.
If you take the community of Christians and the community of Muslims you come up with certain tendencies among their societies which are very revealing about what these two religions represent. Do you know the difference between a fringe group and a mainstream movement? What is mainstream in Iran, is it the moderate muslims that says that Islam does not support terrorism under any circumstances, or is it the Ayatollah that says, "Death to America! Kill the Jews! The Holocaust never happened!" Who runs this country the moderates or the radicals? To get an equivalent ideology among the Christians, you have to go way out on the fringe. You have to use fuzzy logic, what do most Christians believe? What do most Muslims believe.
If most Muslims were moderates in the Palestinian territories, do you think they would have elected terrorists?
If most Lebanese Muslims were moderates, do you think they would let a terrorist group control their territory in South Lebenon? It is really interesting the the Lebanese weren't really offended at having a terrorist group occupy their country, but when Israelis move in to clean them up, suddenly there is great umbrage over foreign invaders taking over territory which they said wasn't under their control in the first place, it another case of them trying to have their cake and eat it too. Oh no, it not that the Lebanese were waging war on Israeli, oh no, it just that some group that was beyond their control waged war, and they weren't interested enough to take back their country, but suddenly when the Israelis moved in, suddenly they want to take back their country and give it back to Hezbollah. Duh! The Lebanese government and by extention its people are collectively guilty of starting this war because the majority of them are not moderates, I know its a politically incorrect conclusion to come to, but given that its a democracy and given that they share power with a terrorist group that should rightfully be in jail and not in government.
There is something very wrong with many Islamic societies that the Pope can't speak his mind about Islam honestly without causing riots and violence against Christians. You know well that Christians have been called many terrible things by many Muslim leaders, and their reaction was much more muted.
Talking about un-Christian manners, what ever happened to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you" ? You'd think the words of Christ would carry some weight among Christians.
The bible doesn't say anything about letting your enemies harm you, kill you or exterminate you. I don't see why you can't love your enemies from a distance, a very long distance! Do you have to be vulnerable to your enemies in order to love them? You can love them, but you also can defend yourselves from them. Christianity is not a suicide pact, in contrast to certain branches of Islam, most Christians don't interprete loving your enemies as letting themselves be killed by their enemies. A Chrisitan will fight in self-defense, not out of hatred. Hatred is illogical and unreasoning, it is an emotion. The best way to fightRadical Islam is with reason and steps to contain it, and limit its ability to harm you. You can love the human being, but you don't have to love his ideology or the ideas he has. Some people interprete Christianity as meaning that we should not defend ourselves, and that is wrong.
If we make excuses for radical Christians we are no better then the moderate Muslims condoning the extremists. Like them we become complicit in the consequences. Stop and think, what are the consequences of teaching kids to kill for their religion. I don’t care if Muslim extremists are worse and more wide spread. That doesn’t make it right.
I just don't think the example cited of Pastor Fischer is a real good one. In the quotation cited, he doesn't call for kids to kill for their religion, he calls for them to lay down their lives. There is a difference you know.
There is a rather curious article in the Christian Science Monitor.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0928/p03s02-ussc.html
I always considered us lucky not to be neighbors with a region full of cross-eyed fanatical muslims wanting to blow themselves up in the presence of Americans. I sometimes wonder about the sudden so called facination with Islam in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Do people actually join the religion because they want to kill someone? Do they want a palative for the violence they intend to do, and reassurance that they'll go to heaven for doing it? Al Qauda needs recent converts that don't look like Arabs, and blend in with the large hispanic popuklation of the USA so they can get close to their victims prior to blowing themselves up.
We've seen how Chavez suddenly converted himself to the champion defender of Islam by making an alliance with Iran. Islam has suddenly become neat and cool right after 9/11, perhaps people are wiching they could do something like that to Americans and so they convert to Islam. If someone goes "blah blah blah Islam is a peaceful religion blah blah blah" they'll accept it as a means of getting close to Americans and nothing more. You see if they are ostracised by Americans, they can't get close to them and blow themselves up, and without their intended American victim, the gates of heaven are closed to them, perhaps that is their way of thinking. Perhaps those muslims thinking that Islam is a peaceful religion are suddenly inundated with converts who want to do violence and are looking for an excuse. :evil:
Would you want a rover that couldn't go any faster than an astronaut could walk?
I guess its not expected that astronauts would ever be in any hurry for whatever reason, but lets think about it for a second. Lets say the astronauts have a base and a rover. Probablythe only place the rover can refuel is at the base.
Now what if the rover crawls as fast as an astronaut can walk? Remember the Astronauts are going to stay here for two years. During the early part of the mission, the astronauts might concentrate on the area around the base, but later on they might want to go further and further out. If the rover crawls, its going to slowly pass through terrotory that the astronauts have already explored, before getting to those sites that are of interest.
There is no equivalent to fundamentalist Islam in Christianity
They cry, pray to Bush and wash out the devil - welcome to Jesus Camp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1883730,00.html...
At one point Pastor Fischer equates the preparation she is giving children with the training of terrorists in the Middle East. "I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam," she tells the camera. "I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine."
...<sarcasm> Yay. </sarcasm>
You say that Pastor Fischer equates the preparation she is giving children with the training of terrorists in the Middle East, but the quote you cite indicates nothing of the kind. "I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam," is the cause of Islam terrorism, this sentence doesn't explicitly say so. "I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine." He is not explicitly saying Christians should murder people, which is what the Middle East Terrorists do, he is saying people are laying down their live, it could mean they are laying down their lives as Jesus Christ did on the cross. Perhaps he means the other Muslims besides the terrorists, who are simply murderers, suicidal murderers in some cases, but I would't call someone who commits murder and suicide to be laying down his life for his religion.
I read the story by the Guardian and the pastor himself didn't make this comparison to terrorists, only the person who wrote the artical. What people are laying down their lives for Islam? Is it the terrorists, or is it their innocent victims? I say the terrorists are not so innocent, so it isn't they who are laying down their lives, rather it is they who are making human sacrifices of other people for a religion that does not demand the blood of the innocent. I see no comparison between that and Christianity. By maryr in Christiandom we mean somebody who is willing to lay down his life for Jesus Christ, that is if someone threatens him with Death if he refuses to change his religion, then he would freely accept death, rather than convert to some other religion while under the threat of death to do so, or someone who dies as a result of following the tenants of his religion, like that of a German Priest who sacrificed his life to save a Jew from the Holocaust. People who blow themselves up to kill other people are acting in an unchristian manner, so he cannot be said to be laying down his life for Christ when he is violating his principles.
I suppose a Mars car is umlikely to be traveling at 75 miles per hour without an established road. What would a Martian road be made out of anyway. I'm not sure if asphalt would be the best thing. How would one come by asphalt anyway, requires a source of petroleum, most likely synthesized from the air. Perhaps concrete would be better.
When you terraform planets, nothing is going to happen in your lifetime anyway, unless there is a means of artificially extending it. Generally I like the idea of biostasis, putting people in starships in a state of suspended animation and taking a slow starship to a planet that's light years away on a journey lasting thousands of years, and then spending thousands of more years terraforming a local planet, maybe bringing some people out of suspended animation to direct the process and then rotating them back in replacing them with others, and then when the majority of colonists are brought out of suspended animation, their is a terraformed planet awaiting them.
One of the problems with terraforming planets in our own solar system is that history intervenes, there is society and billions of humans who have ideas that keep on changing, they may have evolved into something completely different.
The human population explosion has slowed down. Projected into the future, it may come to a complete halt. There are about 100 billion stars in this galaxy and billions more in galaxies beyond. If colonists travel far enough beyond the Solar System, it maybe possible to conduct terraforming with colonists waiting in suspended animation for thousands of years.. I think if the human population stabilizes at 12 billion, then at most we could colonize 12 billion stars.
I think terraforming planets and travelling to the stars both operate on similar time scales, so why not marry both operations together. I doubt any planet other than Earth will support human life right off the bat anyway, even if it does have life on it.
Phobos and Deimos, might make good radiation shelters for long term orbital space stations around Mars. You just dig a tunnel and bury a crew module and you have something that can stop cosmic rays and protect against the worst solar flares. If it is a solid rock, you could perhaps spin it up and turn it into a free space colony with the pull of Earth gravity at the equator. Or perhaps an Island Three could be made out of it.
Suppose we could trade Mars' moons for Earth's, what if Phobos and Deimos orbited Earth and Earth's Moon orbited Mars, what would that mean?
Ok, so it mechanical motion to generator to electricity to electric motor to mechanical motion. Isn't this somewhat inefficient. The engine produces both heat and motion the motion drives the generator and in the process the friction in the generator loses some more heat due to moving parts in contact with each other, then an electric current is generated travels down wires that are not perfect conductors so their is heat generated due to electrical resistance, and then the electricity powers the electric motor which turns the wheel and their is electrical resistance and friction in that as well. I suppose on Mars this waste heat is put to good use.
Direct drive is what? I haven't seen that option in many showrooms.
So what works best for Lunar and Martian conditions. a Rover with a stick shift or an automatic transmission?