New Mars Forums

Heh!

I bet the GOP wishes they still had Tom Daschle to kick around. Talk about losing for winning. Harry Reid just issued this statement, or so I read:

George Bush wants to turn the Senate into a second House of Representatives, a rubberstamp for his right wing agenda and radical judges. That's not how America works. Harry Reid

Protection of minority rights is the cornerstone of the US Constitution. Since the Anglo-world (US, UK, Canada and Australia) together have less than five percent of the total global population, preservation of minority rigths would seem to be a good thing.

Actually, I like the Mars Direct architecture.

Mars quasi-Direct using 2 shuttle C to assemble the Mars transit ship and 1 EELV-CEV to ferry the crew might be better. More total mission mass and cost savings from not doing the Ares.

I am also far from convinced that honet-to-God RLVs are as economical as some seem to think but that is a purely amateur opinion.

I also think that a 100% science only Mars mission would be slaughtered on Capitol Hill. Lunar platinum and settlement (remember that Griffin dreams of settlement) are the types of activities that can motivate those who are not science-only people.

Even Zubrin wants to use MD vessels to return to the Moon, with early deployment of lunar LOX production and direct flights.

I favor those ideas as well.

But for me science is the frosting and settlement is the cake.

We beathe each other's exhaled breathe everyday, already.

No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with
modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the king.

Hamlet Act V Scene 1

Elsewhere Shakespeare writes about great kings being food for worms, which are eaten by fish, which are eaten by peasants.

Here or Mars? Makes no difference.

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More Michael Griffin:

We are all the descendants of people who left known and familiar places to strike out for the risky promise of better places, in an unbroken chain going back to a small corner of east Africa. Concerning the settlement of the American West, it has been said that "the cowards never started, and the weaklings died on the way." But this has been true of every human migration; we are all the descendants of those who chose to explore and to settle new lands, and who survived the experience.

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Why would anyone leave England to live in the wilds of Massachusetts? Or hike across the plains to barren Utah?

Roanoke colony failed. So what?

Those who choose to live on Mars inside tin cans and raise their children will die knowing that their children and children's children will be in a favored position to engulf an entire planet with their offspring.

And children raised on Mars will be far more capable of settling the asteroids that Terran raised children as they will be accustomed to the rigors of living off of the Earth.

Of course, there are two examples that depend on one's religous sensibilities. For the scientist, there is the early homo sapien migration out of the horn of Africa. For the western religiously minded - - Jew, Christian, Muslim - - there is the example of Avrum who left Ur to found a new people in the wilds of Canaan.

Why did Avrum make that trek? Wasn't Ur a nice enough place to live?
  :;):

Dook, the science we need is CELSS.

Once we learn to re-cycle CHONs with a high degree of reliability then the solar system starts looking like a sterile petri dish brimming with the stuff we can thrive on.

Perhaps its a reprise of when our aquatic ancestors flopped onto dry land.

Cobra, as you once said (brilliantly, btw) - - Americans can't work if they even lose their air condiitoning.

To engage in a particularly hot political civil war while fighting radical Islam and while facing growing global economic threats seems to be an effectrive way to burst the bubble of American global supremacy especially quickly.

Just seems like bad timing to be undoing the New Deal in the midst of a global war on terror. Multi-front wars are usually a bad idea. :;):

RobS, the carbon monoxide is recycled.

Ni + CO - - > Ni(CO)4

Vapor phase deposition leaves pure nickel in whatever shape you desire, as the Ni very precisely following the mandrel.

The CO is recovered for re-use.

To make CO I would use methane as the primary rocket fuel and use methane for supplemental power generators and rovers. Incomplete combustion (lean O2) of methane yields CO and water ( ! ) which has other uses.

Methane transport? $1000-$1500 per pound to LEO (Zenit/Proton at today's prices followed by solar ion tug to L1. Then drop to Luna. 

Its a great private sector program. Offer $5000 per pound for methane delivered to L1 in standardized tankage. THAT will give the private sector a launch market to fight over.

Also, any lunar presence will need water. Shipping methane and combusting with lunar oxygen kills two birds, so to speak.

Shipping H2O to Luna is foolish. What percent of water (by mass) is oxygen? Why carry any O2 to Luna?

Shipping LH2 to burn in lunar LOX is better yet LH2 is a much trickier cryogenic material. Liquid methane can be stored in lunar shadow. LH2 would require more effort to store, either at L1 or on Luna.

So, if we are shipping methane anyway, CO won't be a problem, IMHO.

Defeating nut-job Islam will be the work of at least one generation, maybe two or three. Its a marathon that will be won in the schools of the Islamic world and therefore our military cannot assure victory. We cannot set screws using hammers.

As a college lad in Chicago, I recall 100% Irish classmates drinking beer and getting all misty-eyed about Irish martyrs killed 400 years ago by British swine.

If we think nabbing a few al Qaeda leaders will solve anything we are sorely mistaken.

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That said, loud chest thumping about nabbing a few al Qaeda leaders is good for the image and poll rating of our President.

???  :;):

Answer: Spinning dollars into space exploration that are not taxpayer derived. NASA funding is 100% taxpayer money.

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ANYTHING (almost) that funds space exploration with non-tax revenue sources is good. Platinum can be sold, today, for almost $1000 per ounce. Sufficient reason, right there.

Nothing else on the Moon is remotely worth it. Lunar water? Too difficult to mine, if there is any.

He3? 30 years from now, maybe.

Platinum has a market, today. And fuel cells and catalytic converters predict a bigger market tomorrow. If we are getting Pt anyway, getting lunar Lox and nickel is an almost freebie spin off benefit.

As for platinum, start with a very thorough satellite recon. Photograph the entire moon down to 1 meter in resolution. Look for signs of intact Ni-Fe asteroid fragments. Then land there.

Collect Ni-Fe fragments and process.

=IF= we cannot find any, okay, the Moon is a dead end.

But back to the beginning. If space exploration remains single-payor (all funding is tax revenue based) then it will never amount to anything significant. Therefore, ANY prospect of getting real private sector interest (not to sell stuff to NASA but to invest) is worth pursuing.

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<Scratches head>  On paper?  What exactly might Cobra and Mrs. Cobra do, on paper? 

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Actually, I have heard that without gravity a couple might have trouble staying . . . well  . . .  docked.

Like MarsDog said, grappling is tricky

Is it happy hour yet? 

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What about just using RL-10s or an RL-60 for the re-useable lander?

How many times can an RL-10 fire? Establish a pressurized hanger (inflatable?) on Luna and service the engines and the landers.

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Fortunately, its a free planet. And we all have the right to lobby Congress.  :;):

Read Michael Griffin's testimony to Congress from October 2003.

How long before people live and work in space may be open to debate, but UNLESS that is the ultimate objective, I say cut all human exploration funding because its not worth the risk and expense, except to initiate permanent human expansion out into the solar system.

That said, doing some cool science along the way is a terrific fringe benefit.

Finally, if we don't start going in the next half century or so, America's chance to lead that expansion out into space may very well evaporate. Why? Simple demographics.