From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sat Dec 11 1999 - 16:07:08 MST
In a message dated 12/8/99 1:46:34 PM Central Standard Time, talon57@well.com
writes:
> In the Mars direct plan, after a voyage of 6 months, the team would
> spent a year and a half on the surface.
>
> Anybody think that is a bad idea?
For someone who grew up with the Apollo program as a sort of secular
religion, it's hard not to support the Mars Direct mission or others of its
kind. But I'm deeply skeptical of the possibility that such a mission will
be mounted in the current political and economic milieu. As others have
pointed out, the time-frame when missions of this kind could first be
realistically attempted (the 2010s) is when we ought to begin to see dramatic
impact from technologies that will create a new political and economic
environment, one in which much more ambitious projects can be attempted
within a relatively short time (by, say, 2025 or so), with less cost and risk
and more benefit. Accordingly, I think these plans are being made for a very
narrow window of time. I think working on such plans does no harm and serves
to keep people interested and enthusiastic about space exploration and
development. I just think they have a decreasing likelihood of ever
happening because they will be overtaken by developments outside the narrow
confines of space technology.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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