[Prof Engineer]

PING

[jimt]

Bump for Mars.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Ours. ours, ours, ours.

[Sam Cree]

[LibWhacker]

Bring back Orion!

[AFreeBird]

Gee can we send Sheila Jackson Lee there so she can see the American flag we put there back in the 60's? Lets send her ahead of the ERV, say about 2 years before?

[RoughDobermann]

Rather, by freeing the Shuttle launch stack of the orbiter, and giving it a hydrogen/oxygen upper stage instead, we reconfigure it into a true heavy lift launch vehicle capable of duplicating the performance of the Saturn V. With such a system, we could deliver 120 metric tons to low Earth orbit (in place of the current Shuttle's 20), or send payloads in the 50-ton class on direct trajectories to the moon or Mars.

I like it!

[Physicist]

Humans to Mars.

Robots to everywhere.

[narby]

The real key to any sucess in space is cheap launch. And I mean, really really cheap launch.

When you can do that, then you don't need to spend so much time/money developing a space vehicle, cause if it fails in orbit, who cares? It didn't cost much to get it there, and you can just try again.

Expendable boosters are a stupid idea. Sure, they're the cheapest option now, because the NRE has already been spent. But the idea is to get a totally reusable, air breathing launch vehicle, designed at whatever cost it takes. Once you can get to orbit by just adding more fuel, THEN it's cheap.

But, government doesn't want it cheap. As long as its expensive, then they have a monopoly, and the bureaucrats keep their jobs. And then there's the security thing. If all it takes is airliner type money to buy an orbital vehicle, then Osama will buy one and then where will be be?

In the end, going to Mars or anywhere else will be limited by the difficulting in getting that first 100 miles.

As Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem".

[RightWhale]

Mars offers the most — scientifically, socially and in terms of what it portends for the future of humankind.

When Zubrin hit on the idea of social implications, he gave the strongest rational support to his project. Man on Mars could be the beginning of the end of social upheaval in the Middle East.

[ibtheman]

I believe we should can the shuttle! And use only un-manned ships. They will have no loss of life, if any problems occur. Use robots instead. And the vehicles can go much farther into space, than a manned ship. Plus it is much cheaper to fly un-manned ships. Less weight, less energy to explore. More efficient and safe to explore farther into space!

[narby]

As for the actual Mars trip, there was a proposal from Buzz Aldrin (second on Moon & orbital rendevus genius) to build an Earth-Mars shuttle that would remain in orbit around the sun forever. It would use orbital mechanics to slingshot back and forth between Earth and Mars.

The genius of this is that the EM shuttle could be as large and heavy will all the radiation protection and crew accutrements it wanted. Yet, you didn't have to accelerate/decelerate the whole d@mn thing every trip. The trip from Earth to EM shuttle would be in a small light vehicle that would bring people and supplies only. At the other end, another small vehicle would decelerate the passengers for landing. The EM shuttle itself would just keep on going.

Pure genius from two perspectives. 1) The technical perspective, because you could put all the goodies you needed on the ship, and only accelerate them once. 2) The political perspective, cause once you get the thing going, it would take a huge decision to abandon such an asset in space. Granted, the second point means it's more suited to a government program, but that may be all we get in space for awhile.

[Centurion2000]

We need to put a base on the Moon and Mars by 2010. It can be done.

[stck]

Why was the space program of the Apollo era so much more productive than that of today?

Maybe it had to do with the 100 or so German rocket engineers captured in Peenemunde that got America into space and to the moon?

[swarthyguy]

Fat chance! The sheeples are oblivious to space travel of any kind.

[DAnconia55]

Sign me up.

[Brett66]

NASA's problems run a lot deeper than a lack of bold vision. There's no reason to believe if we allocated a few billion a year for a manned Mars mission that NASA wouldn't turn it into another 100 billion dollar plus boondoggle before we even get the first ship built in orbit.

[KevinDavis]

I think space is the best was for the future of humanity for these reasons:
1. Make sure ideals of humanity goes on i.e. The declration of Independece, the Bible, The Constitution still goes on.
2. It is time for us to leave the nest, there are a lot of neat things out there. 3. Earth will not be around, I hate to see the human race die off when Earth dies of..

Need I say more?

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