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Aerojet Completes Early Risk Reduction Engine Testing

As the author of this topic, allow me to restate what it's about. It's about the  problems of putting humans on Mars as discussed by Bushnell and then Rapp in their recent detailed radio interviews. Hopefully most of us here agree that we want to put humans on Mars as soon as possible.

Yes, clearly Humans will use robots to achieve this immensely difficult task, robotic systems are already used for almost every other aspect of spaceflight.

Will we pay the cost - we already are, but are we willing to pay more to make it happen faster?

Yes, in Sadr City they are mostly militias, the Mahdi Army is backed by Iran, one the key supporters of Shia Islamic terror.

Where's your evidence Gregori? so far it's just your opinions. Surely accusing the US of "genocidal sanctions" and insisting on massive repatriations requires a little bit more than that?

There's plenty of evidence to show the current military strategy is working and terrorism is being defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan. As is often said, the Islamists can't win their war with the West, but the West can lose it.

So what's the alternative for dealing with radial Islamic terrorism, surrender and convert to Wahhabism?

Nope. At least 300,000 graves, and they keep finding more.

Unlike some people who believe the largest number they read, the number of people who have died in Iraq since the removal of the Baathist terror regime is not precisely known. What is known is that the majority of them have not been killed by Coalition forces, and the majority of those that were, were terrorists and insurgents. Furthermore, many more civilians would probably have died under five more years of Saddam's rule.

Indeed, human spaceflight has been one of the most productive and positive activities of the 20C for stimulating technology, science, education and industry, as well as lifting the eyes and spirit of the human race. The cost is enormous, but probably less than spent on other activities such as tourism, sport, entertainment etc etc.

Thanks again Jon.

Turning things upside down usually results in nonsense. Just because a cost/kg can be calculated doesn't mean that it has any sense. There's no meaningful correlation between cost per kg of human missions versus robotic ones unless the same types of missions are compared, and that's almost impossible. Likewise it doesn't even make much sense to compare the cost/kg of communication sats with navigation sats, and they are quite close in functionality and location. Comparing the cost/kg of different types of communication sats that have similar capabilities would make sense.

Human missions are totally different to robotic ones. Human missions are enormously expensive will continue to be so for a long time.

Yep, photons are affected by gravitational fields. If they travel near big fields they followed a curved path. Several objects have been discovered that do this, they're called gravitational lenes. As far as I know none have been found in the local galaxy. There is a super massive black hole in the galactic center, but no lensing has been seen - probably because it's too near.

The frequency of photons is affected by the velocity of the source, this is a one off effect. Frequency is also changed on the cosmological scale by the expansion of space - the famous red shift - this won't affect photons traveling inside the local galaxy.

Yes again, exoplanet atmospheres have been detected and spectroscopically analysed during transits.

Progress P29 Docking - 16 May 2008

Me do massive trading with China? All I buy are a few clothes and some electronics assembled there  

China's military machine is not state of the art, that art is changing rapidly and the West has a clear edge. Any sensitive technology transferred to China will help them advance. Ever heard of Missile defense? These are real worries. Until recently most of China's technology has been imported, and that includes nearly all their space and military technology.

The future is really difficult to predict, simple extrapolations usually don't work. There's no way of knowing how far China will develop and how fast. Right now the Chinese economy in dollar terms is smaller than Germany's, it has a long way to go.

All national space programs have connections with their militaries and the US is no exception, however the US has had a clearly defined civilian space program with little military overlap since 1958 when NASA was founded. .

Technology flows in free markets and free markets thrive in democratic states. China is still not part of the global system, it's developing its own standards and has isolated itself from the global internet. Anyone opposing the government is arrested and imprisoned. Furthermore it has invaded and occupied East Turkmenistan and Tibet for decades and threatens the separate state of Taiwan with war if it dares to declare itself independent. It supported Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. North Korea and Iran are its close allies and it supports and arms the Sudan military in its genocidal war in Darfur. Why is China so loved and admired for its barbaric behavour and the US despised for liberating the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and protecting the free world?  BTW the US also helped free China from Japanese occupation.

Yes, fully automated factories that have lower production costs than human operated ones are in the future.

Soyuz was built during the days of the Soviet Union, when engineers and technicians were effectively slaves controlled by the government. They also had blank checks for whatever they wanted. Nothing stood in the way, if anyone objected they disappeared in the Gulags. The media dare not report the accidents and cosmonauts who died were erased from history. Today Russia is different, even with petrodollars flowing in, funding is tight - that's why they need ESA euros.

Thanks for you comments Jon.

Let's finish this ISS v MER comparison instead of wandering off to another system. MER in LEO without  fuel to reach Mars is useless, it's an incomplete system. This would like excluding the solar arrays on ISS, excluding parts of a system does nothing except change the numbers. This type of analysis is pointless and so is using the metric of cost per kg to compare human and robotic systems that do entirely different jobs in completely different locations. That's why nobody uses it.