Quote:
Originally Posted by Slawomir
Before humanity sends people to Mars we would need to build a permanent base on the Moon. When it comes to water, astronauts on the ISS have a saying: yesterday's coffee is today's coffee...water is continuously recycled over there and astronauts drink recycled water for months at the time, so I do not see a real problem with drinking Martian water as long as it is safe to do so.
As for the cost, IMO space exploration is definitely not a waste of resources and there would be many potential benefits if we took space exploration more seriously. On the contrary, I can easily think of numerous examples where humanity has been continuously wasting enormous resources on - wars, shallow movies such as Fast and Furious 27, useless computer games etc...It as all about priorities and we humans do not easily give up detrimental habits.
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You are absolutely right here. The Apollo program was canned because people said it was to expensive yet, it was calculated that for the price of the Vietnam war, we would have been able to colonise Mars in the 70's. There may have been tech challenges that made that a lot harder but Armstrong and co were driving a LEM using a computer with less power than a hand held calculator does now. That was G&D on a grand scale.
The spin-off's from Apollo have been enormous including SkyLab and ultimately the ISS. Of course we have a huge responsibility with Mars especially if there is endemic life, but I suspect that
when life is discovered there, it will be the same as here due to sharing material from asteroid strikes. Lots of research to do before we even contemplate such a move.
I guess you have long range V short range thinking here. Long range says two rocks are better than one and a stepping stone even further, YEP!, interstellar or massive permanent habitats on asteroids or as independent space based colonies, ARKs, even. I certainly think virtually all heavy industry needs to be in orbit with mining of asteroids as the source of materials and, gawd dare I say it... solar as the power source
. Short range thinking is putting all your eggs in one basket that is ripping around in a shooting gallery tied to a big furnace that will get us in the end.
I for one think its vital to repair this glorious blue dot, but for the price of the worlds military budget we could be doing massive amounts "out there". I guess I think long
