The Legal, Medical, and Engineering Professions are the triad which enables civilization to exist. All the fools here blathering about doing away with those pesky lawyers are the idiot children of the human race. If they actually believe what they are babbling. I suspect most are just playing that game we have seen in government for the last 4 years; the firehose of falsehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi….
“Thus, an army of trolls can influence a person’s opinion by creating the false impression that a majority of that person’s neighbors support a given view.[1]”
Mars is not the second home of humanity. One of the first conclusions of Gerard K. O’Neill’s research group in the 70’s was that no natural bodies in the solar system other than Earth are suitable for human colonization- the very first reason being human beings evolved in 1G. Mars is a gimmick.
A marketing ploy.
Artificial wings are fine but artificial gravity is pretty much a problem that can only be solved in an efficient way when you start with zero gravity.
See how that works Mr. Cartoons-make-me-smart?
This is akin to impact threat deflection: entities offering their “cheap” solution for a price when it is no solution at all. There is no cheap.
The problem is the thousands and soon tens of thousands of satellites in Earth orbit when there should be at most a few hundred. Ideally human-crewed GEO platforms equipped with “laser brooms” could keep Earth orbit fairly pristine.
This would require lunar water shielded “fat workshops” to be transited from the vicinity of the Moon to GEO. Which would require a state sponsored program of Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLVs). Of which there is only the SLS being stacked right now and for years to come. Unless you believe a certain entrepreneur who is promising a shiny starship impossibly soon.
Many years ago a certain organization was pushing their “gravity tug” as the solution to deflecting impact threats instead of using nuclear weapons. This is an example of placing civilization in danger to benefit some individual or group’s business plan. Criminal. The strip-mining of Earth orbit is the same dynamic in my opinion.
Starliner and Crew Dragon, if they would replace their substandard escape systems, could be used to intercept a fleet of Lunar Cyclers providing transportation between the Earth and Moon.
Other than that…all an incredible waste of resources in my opinion.
I would suggest they de-orbit that 4 billion dollar a year money hole and redirect the funding to a lunar return. If they had splashed it in 2016 as planned that would already be 16 billion that could have been used on a cislunar infrastructure. If they keep it up there till 2030 that is 40 billion down the drain.
“The ISS has been described as the most expensive single item ever constructed.[385] As of 2010 the total cost was US$150 billion. This includes NASA’s budget of $58.7 billion (inflation-unadjusted) for the station from 1985 to 2015 ($72.4 billion in 2010 dollars), Russia’s $12 billion, Europe’s $5 billion, Japan’s $5 billion, Canada’s $2 billion, and the cost of 36 shuttle flights to build the station, estimated at $1.4 billion each, or $50.4 billion in total.”
What will happen if there is any anomaly has already been demonstrated- loss of crew (that explosion was in no way survivable). That could not happen with an escape tower. The problem is that spacex fanboys like you will never entertain any criticism of your fantasy world. Not tolerated. That is why you try to paint me as “banging the table and screaming.” It is actually you doing that.
Baloney. An escape tower is not going to explode like that over 3000 pounds of toxic hypergolics wrapped around the crew compartment would. No way. They persuaded “actual technical professionals” there was no problem with the shuttle having no escape system and the same culture of cheap has taken precedence over crew safety yet again. Thank you for blocking me. I just wish all of your gang would.
Ice on the Moon 