What NASA learned from the Shuttle and ISS is that all plans for human spaceflight have to be bureaucratically armored against Congressional defunding, caps on capital expenditure, and flaky international partners, which is why you get these preposterous mission configurations.
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This is part of my argument that you really don't want us to go to Mars, even though you think you do. Everyone dreams of an Apollo scale effort with modern tech, but what we'd get is the ISS with three rockets strapped onto it and a single landing before never returning again.
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The NASA I dream of fires the entire human spaceflight division and launches two New Horizons probes a month to the weirdest parts of the solar system, in perpetuity. Let China and Russia figure out how to keep abrasive moon dust from blocking the space toilet.
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I'm not against human exploration in principle, but let's get the tooling in place to do it right. Work on a next-generation concept like a space elevator or the scary nuclear bomb powered rocket that can put a small town into orbit. Let's arrive on Mars in comfort and style.
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Facts about a Mars mission I think don't get enough attention: 1) It would take years, for orbital reasons 2) It requires several foundational breakthroughs, all of them in boring life support areas rather than anything fun. 3) First mission would be a flyby It really is ISS+
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Replying to @Pinboard
“The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”
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Replying to @Pinboard
You really want to be tied for last when people sort by “planets colonized”?
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Replying to @HoboStew
There might be a leaderboard I care less about but it would take time to think of one
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Replying to @Pinboard
As far as leaderboards for humanity as a whole goes, I have that right near the top. I think a universe with life is better than one without. Ymmv
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That's a non-sequitur, though. Your original quote posits a universe full of life. Anyway, we don't even have to agree on this point to get to the other one, which is that expensive boots-and-flags missions are a dead end for space travel and we need a more serious capability
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Replying to @Pinboard
You assume that just because life exists it always will. Life, as far as I can tell, is a ponzi scheme that requires expansion or else it will cease. Again, I prefer a universe where life exists.
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