darkdestruction420
Well-Known Member
granted, but why send people?With a better spaceship ... the Jovian system. Europa is rather worth exploring ... cn
granted, but why send people?With a better spaceship ... the Jovian system. Europa is rather worth exploring ... cn
Imagine running an Apollo program with just remotes. Having people on the ground is an enormous value multiplier in terms of exploration/discovery.granted, but why send people?
Our technology for exploring other worlds is evolving quickly and many advances have been made and it is a hot area of active study/research that continues to speed ahead. In another 20 years i doubt their will be just about anything they couldnt do.Imagine running an Apollo program with just remotes. Having people on the ground is an enormous value multiplier in terms of exploration/discovery.
I have nothing in practice against robotic exploration ... it's better to get half the martian loaf than none, for example ... but robots at the current and reasonably foreseeable levels of capability can't do much.
Imo the future belongs to an integrated immediate/remote exploration program. cn
I've recently read the books by two mars project scientisis, one for Mars Pathfinder (the little Sojourner rover), one for the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity). I was impressed by how hard and complex it was to build/send machines that took months to do what an onsite smart operator cpould have done in minutes.Our technology for exploring other worlds is evolving quickly and many advances have been made and it is a hot area of active study/research that continues to speed ahead. In another 20 years i doubt their will be just about anything they couldnt do.
We have plenty of deuterium here, dirtside, for cheap.No moon, if Obama is re-elected. Not against Obama, like how he pops the bad guys, etc, but I think we have secret deal w/China to allow them a breather and become a spacefaring nation. Clinton gave them precision guidance technology to counter
the threat from India, you'll remember. I think the deal is to privatize the moon's resources since that's all that's allowed by current treaty.
The moon is cover in deuterium, the key to non-neutron flux fusion. Neutron flux is
so ablative, it's very hard on it's containment and represent a hard stop on that line
of research so far. The moon is abundant in Helium-3 another good fusion candidate.
Material can be refined and launched from long fast conver belts into earth orbit.
A whole new gang of robber barons. But, at least the nations won't fight, hopefully.
Superscript one Alt + 0185We have plenty of deuterium here, dirtside, for cheap.
Helium-3 otoh is a viable space resource once we get fusion facilities hot enough to do the <sup>2</sup>H, <sup>3</sup> He reaction. So far the only source of helium-3 is from decay of tritium stocks ... cn
<edit> I can't do superscripts!! Why the not!?
From the lunar surface, a linear accelerator makes good sense ... lotsa solar power, and no reaction mass. cnYou would probably launch each payload from a small rocket and slowly let it glide back to a receiver on Earth to be transported down somehow............ You wouldnt put it in a ship and turn on the engine, that'd be a lot of fuel for a little helium!