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Would such repetitive motions wear out the joints on a space suit?

I doubt past or present space suits come with a 100,000 squat warranty simply because its never been an issue, but for long duration missions it could. Especially with all the dust.

I always liked the idea of using blimps for long range trips.I'm not sure how well those would scale down though.

So why did he make all the other incredibly beautiful places with everything humans need to prosper? So we can make pretty screensavers?

Why would Nike want to advertise on spacesuits? They didn't make the boots. Aliens probably can't use them. I don't think many people are going be more apt to buy things because the manufacturer paid to to have their logo on a piece of hardware. If that kind of brand loyalty still existed GM could afford to send each of their union workers to space once a year.

The economics of space are quite simple. It falls to NASA and its counterparts around the world to work out the hardware, and the methods, and find reasons for private industry to follow to the point were the rest of us can afford the hardware, and know the methods and the means to thrive.

There just covering their butts on the off chance that they are wrong.

If there was a dispute about it, they'd have handfull of other possibilities of what it could be.

If you really want to read more, you could scroll to the bottom of the page To read the full article please download or read online the word document here. 

With the design decision they made, probably not. I would have perfered the Rosetta method of firing harpoons at the target, reeling yourself in, and scooping up samples.

Well, causing pebbles to fly at your space craft at high speed is generally a no-no.

And what else would suddenly cause a fuel leak?

Also I've heard that they won't actually know what, if anything is in there untill it returns. If it returns.

The trouble is they have nothing with which to do it with. They lack the shuttle, and even if they get that back they may not have the money or the time to perform the missions, even assuming that what they are doing now solves the problem.

They must take the shuttle out of the equation for getting the modules to orbit. We have a HLV on the drawing board. Pay the Russians to increase supply missions and crewed missions, retire one shuttle and prep the other two for long duration missions. When the HLV is ready, launch the remaining modules in bundles attached to modified tugs based on the EDS to be for the moon missions, then launch the shuttle only when needed to attach the components the ISS can't attach its self. With luck you can count such missions on one hand.

At this point its the only choice I see to both finish the ISS and make it worth our while, as the driving force behind the early developement of the HLV.

The ISS is the only large orbital game in town for at least the next 20 years, and we've aready paid for it. Lets turn it into the fire under our butts instead of the anchor on our ankles.

Just because something is hard, dangerous or expensive does not mean it should not be done. The journey is just as important as the destination.

As for the particulars, I think our primary goal over the next 30 years or so is to establish a permenent self-sustaining "location" on the Moon by using local resources. From there the local resources, low gravity, lack of an atmosphere, and the technologies developed along the way will allow us to go in any direction we want. Be it back to Earth to build orbital infrastructure, space evelvators and so on, or to Mars and the rest of the outer or inner solar system.

The advantage of a cycler is it big enough to be largely self-sustaining, with the capability to grow food, have simulated g, and support large crews comfortably. In other words negate most, if not all of the downsides of a long trip.

Also, there is simply no way that sending a relatively small shuttlecraft to meet up with the cycler is going to use anywhere near as much fuel as the comparitively much larger conventional craft. To meet up with it all you need to do is enter an eliptical earth orbit that happens meet with the cycler for the required amount of time. From there is a matter of very small changes, depending on your choosen method. That way if  you miss, your going to swing around anyway. A small burn will let you aerobrake. Granted, your going to need a hell of a push to deploy the cycler to begin with, but spread that out among several, if not dozens of cycles, its a bargain. I believe the point is that the speed is maintained via gravity assist on every planetary approach, thus there is little loss of speed.

The biggest cost of a cycler is setting up the infrastructure at both ends to operate your shuttle craft, and the cycler itself. Ultimately I think the people that control the purse strings will stomach a high starting cost better (going to Mars is suppose to be hard) than moderately high recuring cost (shouldn't this be getting easier (yes)).

IF we reduce the role of the Shuttle to merely being the instrument to attach the peices, then we can use the ISS as a means to jumpstart the VSE. Start the Heavy Lifter ASAP, and use the ISS modules as "operational guinea pigs".

Time is running out for that though.

But I thought the French Loved Tom Cruise. 

Anyway, its nice to see Chirac using the numbers of cars burned as a measure of success against the rioters.  Nevermind that the affected areas are probably running out of cars, or people are parking them out of reach. 

"The Germans arn't taking any more territory! We gave the rest of it to them."