New Mars Forums

Only if they intended to use the methane SM/LSAM engines on either Mars landers or transit stages, which I doubt. You can't really scale those things cheaply.

The big concern now is boil off. Prepositioning reliquidfying equipment in LEO and LLO might be required for long term missions. Which if done right can be turned into an advantage.

Your a little late. 

Lik ants under a magnifying glass

I always liked those kenetic energy pentrators, the [dramatic ehco]"Rods of God"[/echo]. The Ultimate in bunker busting technology.

On a more peaceful note, should the air force decide to deploy on of these, they'd need a CaLV. You'd think if you are going to spend the R&D money, they'd spend some money on the pratical end of it as well.

Its going to happen. Might as well get there first.

I was of the impression that the reason we have a problem with illegal immigration on the Mexican border is because the border patrol was underfunded. That would indicate that Mars money was not going to the border patrol.

The answer to the Mexican border issue is instead a very long and tall wall, and enhanced options for immigration and migrant workers. The problem we face now is not so much that there are migrant workers and permenent immigrants, but that they are crossing the border at will, along with god knows what else. We have every right to say when, who, and how many cross the border, and we can't right now. And that must be rectified, no matter how much the folks in Mexico City whine. That said there is a need both for migrant workers and immigrant both in this country, and to remove them from Mexico. Let the alphas come here and pick our veggies. It serves their needs and ours. And it relieves pressure in Mexico. If you think Mexico is bad now, just imagine if there was no escape valve. The ensuing chaos would be far worse for both our coutries. Imagine a teapot welded shut, and set to boil. Can you see a Mars mission launching while we have to run a peacekeeping mission many times the size of our current engagement in Iraq?

If you want to know were your Mars money is, you have to look at the whole budget. The war is expensive, but far cheaper than the alternetive. Letting a bunch of people who think they have a devine right to rule the whole planet take over the worlds primary source of energy is unexceptible, and would torpedo any chance of going to Mars anyway. The road to Mars may very well go through Tehran, Riyadh, Damascus, and Islamabad.

Of course we spend far more more money on ourselves. We through away more and more money every year on welfare programs that breed dependance. Remember Katerina? All those horrible sights are symptoms of a failed system that  spends money and produces nothing. Bush had, at one time something called a faith based inititive that would have put respondibility for rehabilitating capitalist misfits on the hands of local religious and social groups who donate their time. Theres an army of people who think the fate of their immortal souls depend on helping people for free. Back when it was still on the agenda, it was bashed for exposing hobos to religion, but it would have saved tens of billions of dollars.

But ultimately space exploration isn't just about Mars, or the moon, but each and every one of more than 100 substantial terrestrial bodies in the solar system, and countless smaller bodies. That means taking our time, and deciding what to do with a body to contribute to humanity and furthur exploration efforts. We could have done a Mars direct mission a decade ago, but it would have accomplished very little to enable long term exploration of the planet. Exploration can only really begin when carve out the resources we need from our destination. We only beginning to think about it on the Moon, and kicking and screaming the whole way.

Its possible that off center impacts would spin the crust faster than the mantle or core, thus improving the magnetosphere.

Alternetively if we halt the spin completely, heating and then blasting the atmosphere away, providing a massive landmass permenently shielded from solar radiation.

Though I do like the idea of harvesting the carbon in the atmosphere. Its a relatively short term possibility.

None of the pics I've seen show the horizon.

Once your population gets big enough (and it eventually will), your inevitably going to have a criminal element.

:? 
I suppose 90% of the time strangers waltz through your living room in the wee small hours of the morning, they only steal the neat things they happen to see.

[/sarcasm] 

How much of HAB weight will have to be devoted to heat shields or control surfaces?

A atmospherericless moon is a much safer place to gain a foothold in system. From there we have a fallback position.

And Rhea has plenty of water too.

Or we could just adapt our agricultural processes to be less suseptable to climate changes, which will happen regardless of what we put in the air.

Science is alot like a puzzle. You'll spend lots of time and money searching for a tiny little piece that only makes sense when you find all the surrounding peices.

That said, given the finite resources we have, we need to do a better job of prioritizing.

And I don't think you could find a less relevent test subject to study human reproduction than fruit flies.

People rewrite history because its easy to do if no one calls them on it.

This thread is proof.