How many of you think we're going to set foot on the Moon/Mars?

[Stoic]

I think this is just another pie-in-the-sky fantasy to divert everyone from the disaster that IS the Bush administration. But what do YOU think?

[Nutmegger]

1. Other: Both. [n\t]

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

2. Someday? Undoubtedly Both. Can't Wait Either.

I love exploration and wish we spent more money and time with matters such as that.

[aquart]

3. You didn't say when.

Of course we're going to Mars.

[tularetom]

4. Until they find a way to pay Halliburton for not getting the job done

we won't be even attempting either.

[Selatius]

5. When we can somehow turn the Helium-3 found on the Moon into a viable fuel source.

Then we will start colonizing the Moon. The nation that can monopolize Helium-3 rules the world.

[Ian David]

7. Computer says Noooo..

The Case for Colonizing Mars
by Robert Zubrin
From Ad Astra July/August 1996

<snip>

It is this question that has caused many to incorrectly deem Mars colonization intractable, or at least inferior in prospect to the Moon. For example, much has been made of the fact that the Moon has indigenous supplies of helium-3, an isotope not found on Earth and which could be of considerable value as a fuel for second generation thermonuclear fusion reactors. Mars has no known helium-3 resources. On the other hand, because of its complex geologic history, Mars may have concentrated mineral ores, with much greater concentrations of precious metal ores readily available than is currently the case on Earth — because the terrestrial ores have been heavily scavenged by humans for the past 5,000 years. If concentrated supplies of metals of equal or greater value than silver (such as germanium, hafnium, lanthanum, cerium, rhenium, samarium, gallium, gadolinium, gold, palladium, iridium, rubidium, platinum, rhodium, europium, and a host of others) were available on Mars, they could potentially be transported back to Earth for a substantial profit. Reusable Mars-surface based single-stage-to-orbit vehicles would haul cargoes to Mars orbit for transportation to Earth via either cheap expendable chemical stages manufactured on Mars or reusable cycling solar or magnetic sail-powered interplanetary spacecraft. The existence of such Martian precious metal ores, however, is still hypothetical.

But there is one commercial resource that is known to exist ubiquitously on Mars in large amount — deuterium. Deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen, occurs as 166 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Earth, but comprises 833 out of every million hydrogen atoms on Mars. Deuterium is the key fuel not only for both first and second generation fusion reactors, but it is also an essential material needed by the nuclear power industry today. Even with cheap power, deuterium is very expensive; its current market value on Earth is about $10,000 per kilogram, roughly fifty times as valuable as silver or 70% as valuable as gold. This is in today's pre-fusion economy. Once fusion reactors go into widespread use deuterium prices will increase. All the in-situ chemical processes required to produce the fuel, oxygen, and plastics necessary to run a Mars settlement require water electrolysis as an intermediate step. As a by product of these operations, millions, perhaps billions, of dollars worth of deuterium will be produced.

Ideas may be another possible export for Martian colonists. Just as the labor shortage prevalent in colonial and nineteenth century America drove the creation of "Yankee ingenuity's" flood of inventions, so the conditions of extreme labor shortage combined with a technological culture that shuns impractical legislative constraints against innovation will tend to drive Martian ingenuity to produce wave after wave of invention in energy production, automation and robotics, biotechnology, and other areas. These inventions, licensed on Earth, could finance Mars even as they revolutionize and advance terrestrial living standards as forcefully as nineteenth century American invention changed Europe and ultimately the rest of the world as well.

Inventions produced as a matter of necessity by a practical intellectual culture stressed by frontier conditions can make Mars rich, but invention and direct export to Earth are not the only ways that Martians will be able to make a fortune. The other route is via trade to the asteroid belt, the band of small, mineral-rich bodies lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. There are about 5,000 asteroids known today, of which about 98% are in the "Main Belt" lying between Mars and Jupiter, with an average distance from the Sun of about 2.7 astronomical units, or AU. (The Earth is 1.0 AU from the Sun.) Of the remaining two percent known as the near-Earth asteroids, about 90% orbit closer to Mars than to the Earth. Collectively, these asteroids represent an enormous stockpile of mineral wealth in the form of platinum group and other valuable metals.

Miners operating among the asteroids will be unable to produce their necessary supplies locally. There will thus be a need to export food and other necessary goods from either Earth or Mars to the Main Belt. Mars has an overwhelming positional advantage as a location from which to conduct such trade.

More:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/mars/zubrin-colonize.html

[Ian David]

6. Not while Bush is pResident. The Moon/Mars program, as it stands, is a scam.

No Astronaut Left Behind is (at best) just a Bush scheme to bankrupt Earth science programs that universally warn of Global Warming.

At best it's part of Bush's scheme to build a magnetic railguns on The Moon to use as a massdriver, turning lunar regolith into Tunguska-style weapons.

Yeah, that's right. Weaponizing The Moon is the better scenario.

[cboy4]

8. Huh come you think it's a fantasy going to the moon?

I mean, after all we have been there.

Now if there was talk of going to Neptune, then I could see what you're saying.

Actually, we do totally agree about one thing:

"the disaster that IS the Bush administration."

You've got that right!!!!