So, do we shoot for the Moon -- yet again -- or should we head for Mars? We've got to do something, because right now we've got all our eggs in this one basket and we're gaining nothing by sitting here twiddling our thumbs. It doesn't look like any other world -- or even satellite moon -- in our solar system would be as relatively easy to take on.

I was a big fan of Bob Zubrin and his Mars Direct proposal. NASA -- which loves a bureaucracy -- wasn't so enamored of it and felt he was glossing over some of the difficulties inherent in the venture. I'd certainly like to see us going to Mars, and that right quickly, but how long will it take us to get the program to first launch with a Mars trajectory? 2030? 2040?

The way we're going, it's looking more and more like another 30 to 50 years, sadly.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Here's the plan for humanity...

1.) Invest in figuring out fusion technology. It will change everything.
2.) Invest in projects that make getting into orbit cheaper. There are many feasible ideas (or nearing feasibility) that could be done now. Sky hooks, space elevators, launch loops, and the like. The key is to drastically reduce the $/pound it takes to get stuff into space.
3.) Build large -- very large -- rotating space colonies. Gravity is necessary for human well being. Let's resign ourselves to it. We can just substitute centripetal force instead. Why go back and forth to mars when we can do so much build so much and learn so much near home?
4.) Mine the moon. It's much nearer to earth than mars. It would be worth it.

My personal opinion is that governments prefer puny, distant, inconsequential missions to mars because a true space revolution would bring too much change.

Fusion: I think I just read something about a small breakthrough in fusion technology. This is promising stuff.

Space elevators: there's hope for carbon nanotube technology for the tether, which would be anywhere from 60,000 km to 100,000 km long. Everything else seems to be too heavy or not nearly strong enough (including Kevlar and diamonds). It needs to be out where geosynchronous orbiting (where the tension between gravity and centrifugal forces could be made equal) is possible. Some space elevator developers think maybe 15 years, 25 years tops, before the tech can be implemented.

Rotation is key. Even Zubrin's Mars Direct mission plans call for space vehicles where a central core could be given spin (say 1 RPM) to provide gravity for space travelers. Zero gravity is a pure-d bitch on astronauts' bodies, unfortunately.

The Moon: Mine the hell out of that celestial body for sure. It's there, and everyone, by treaty, can partake of it.


All of this requires vision and determination and, just slightly, being a steely-eyed missile man. ;-) Do we still have the right stuff? And by "we," I mean "the global space community" (not just the U.S.).

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

What about the idea of the Great Filter? The idea that before life can colonize other planets, something does them in.


If the filter is after where we are on the development scale, nuclear annilation, and climate change could be potential reasons, but I'm sure there are others.

If the filter is before us and then it means that we got lucky (the right evolutionary conditions to evolve brain size and thumbs seems a likely candidate). There would still be many civilisations eventually though, but were talking an order of magnitude lower, such that it's more plausible that in our general area we could well be first (someone has to be). Or in other words: in order to get to us you needed at least a few mass extinctions caused by asteroids in just the right way (and not to kill everything). A few million kms to the left and the earth is still filled with dinosaurs.

The Great Filter has come up before in this thread. It's unknown whether we've successfully pushed through it yet or if we still must confront it. In the span of history, we've only just acquired the means to destroy ourselves -- and we can do that in a few ways, including nuclear weapons and some types of bioweapons, though nuclear would be easier to pull off -- so we've most likely not yet bumped up on the filter. I guess time will tell on that front. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."