[meteorite-list] Re: OT: MOON TRAVEL?

From: mark ford <markf_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:32:02 2004
Message-ID: <6CE3EEEFE92F4B4085B0E086B2941B31014432_at_s-southern01.s-southern.com>

It's strange, I thought I would be excited about man going to Mars and
back to the moon!, but actually (assuming politics allow in anycase) if
this happens it will mean diverting all funding away from exciting
projects like the Mars Exploration Rovers (where genuine science can
happen at low cost).

If this goes ahead, I fear the US will be pumping funds into a really
deep dark hole

In any case the physical constraints of radiation shielding mean that a
man in a heavy space suit couldn't walk on the surface for more than a
few hours without getting nuked. What's the point of that?

 Better still would be to build a mars orbiting space station where
decent robots can be controlled in real-time and then bring up samples
to analyse in orbiting science labs.

Here's my idea:

Stick a couple of boosters on the international spacestation, surround
it with liquid water shielding and send it to orbit mars !

My 1.9p woth

Mark Ford




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Received on Thu 15 Jan 2004 04:20:29 AM PST