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All the Mars programs have failed because they have lost momentum, not for technical or financial reasons. Your 'proposal' is not all that different from Lockh

by nickff 10y ago

All the Mars programs have failed because they have lost momentum, not for technical or financial reasons. Your 'proposal' is not all that different from Lockheed's recent proposal, but neither would help humans get to Mars. Very few people are willing to stick with a costly program for over 20 years in the hopes that something may eventually happen; Apollo took less than 10, and it almost got cancelled.

Super_Jambo 10y ago
Right so we need to send some heroic looking astronaut types asap to hold the world hostage for re-supply missions. I agree. No doubt you also want an ever growing number of highly skilled people to build things since they will doubtless be faster than remote operated stuff from earth. Plus you may as well make use of the infrastructure you're building. But beyond that I don't see why you'd send people who will have a very real chance of over-burdening your infrastructure and dying possibly taking down others with them. Plus building a remote operated robot factory on earth sounds like awesome fun, surprised no one seems interested! I don't see what other open hardware & software project could make a bigger difference to human space colonization.
- nightski 10y ago
  We probably need less people throwing out answers and more people actually trying to make them a reality.
  - pavs 10y ago
    To be fair, we need to be able to answer the hard questions before making things a reality. Going to mars and making it habitable is not exactly something we have a lot of experience in, so there are a lot of questions but very little reasonable solutions. I personally think we should go as soon as possible and I would love to see a lot more competition in this area. Maybe if China starts making major progress towards mars then probably the head will start rolling in the USA and maybe even Europe.
- colechristensen 10y ago
  Round-trip to mars is between 5 and 45 minutes. "remote operation" is much more like automation. The Curiosity rover has traveled 9 miles in 4 years and is remotely operated. That sort of statistic shows a little bit of how a human on mars could be many orders of magnitude more productive.
marcosdumay 10y ago
I wouldn't even aim at Mars first, but whatever. The proposal of a self sufficient makerspace here, were we can even place at the neighborhood (just make it a hassle enter the building) is something that is: # Cheap; # Possible to start now; # Open to research by several people all over the world; # Required if we want to go anywhere. Whatever people decide to do on the space front, there are other fronts to act on.

by nickff 10y ago

Super_Jambo 10y ago

Right so we need to send some heroic looking astronaut types asap to hold the world hostage for re-supply missions. I agree. No doubt you also want an ever growing number of highly skilled people to build things since they will doubtless be faster than remote operated stuff from earth. Plus you may as well make use of the infrastructure you're building. But beyond that I don't see why you'd send people who will have a very real chance of over-burdening your infrastructure and dying possibly taking down others with them. Plus building a remote operated robot factory on earth sounds like awesome fun, surprised no one seems interested! I don't see what other open hardware & software project could make a bigger difference to human space colonization.

nightski 10y ago
We probably need less people throwing out answers and more people actually trying to make them a reality.
- pavs 10y ago
  To be fair, we need to be able to answer the hard questions before making things a reality. Going to mars and making it habitable is not exactly something we have a lot of experience in, so there are a lot of questions but very little reasonable solutions. I personally think we should go as soon as possible and I would love to see a lot more competition in this area. Maybe if China starts making major progress towards mars then probably the head will start rolling in the USA and maybe even Europe.
colechristensen 10y ago
Round-trip to mars is between 5 and 45 minutes. "remote operation" is much more like automation. The Curiosity rover has traveled 9 miles in 4 years and is remotely operated. That sort of statistic shows a little bit of how a human on mars could be many orders of magnitude more productive.

marcosdumay 10y ago

I wouldn't even aim at Mars first, but whatever. The proposal of a self sufficient makerspace here, were we can even place at the neighborhood (just make it a hassle enter the building) is something that is: # Cheap; # Possible to start now; # Open to research by several people all over the world; # Required if we want to go anywhere. Whatever people decide to do on the space front, there are other fronts to act on.