dayton3
Chief petty officer
Posts: 118 
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Post by dayton3 on Jan 15, 2020 15:39:11 GMT
Zubrin pretty thoroughly debunks the usefulness of using the moon as a base for a Mars mission. He says flat out that even if there were already huge stores of rocket fuel on the lunar surface it would still make no sense to bother launching a manned Mars mission from the moon. He seems to have the numbers to back him up.
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archibald
Ensign
The PRC was standing on the edge of an abyss. And Mao said "let's make a Great Leap Forward"
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Post by archibald on Aug 3, 2020 14:59:45 GMT
SpaceX. Not a country. Seriously ? The United States. Through SpaceX. Well they are lucky to have kept Musk: could have been Canada or South Africa...
China hasn't set the bar high enough; you don't go to Mars launching on Shenzhou every three years...
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lordroel
Administrator
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Post by lordroel on Aug 3, 2020 15:04:03 GMT
SpaceX. Not a country. Seriously ? The United States. Through SpaceX. Well they are lucky to have kept Musk: could have been Canada or South Africa...
China hasn't set the bar high enough; you don't go to Mars launching on Shenzhou every three years...
You are forgetting the United Arab Emirates mission to mars launched not a couple of weeks ago. But China and the United States with both NASA and SpaceX are the biggest contenders to send a manned mission to Mars in the future. |
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archibald
Ensign
The PRC was standing on the edge of an abyss. And Mao said "let's make a Great Leap Forward"
Posts: 359
Likes: 364
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Post by archibald on Aug 4, 2020 19:21:07 GMT
Zubrin pretty thoroughly debunks the usefulness of using the moon as a base for a Mars mission. He says flat out that even if there were already huge stores of rocket fuel on the lunar surface it would still make no sense to bother launching a manned Mars mission from the moon. He seems to have the numbers to back him up. It's Zubrin but he is quite right. There is LOX in the lunar crust and LH2 at the poles cold traps BUT churning rocket fuel out of this to fuel a Mars mission... the basic maths work, but the economics are simply awful. Musk went the CH4/LOX way because Mars. He put the ISRU at the end target rather than from the side of the road (the Moon). On the Earth side, he build BFR/Starship huge to haul up to 150 mt f methalox and refuel in Earth orbit. Again, bypassing the Moon.
The irony of course is that NASA finally managed to hire SpaceX for Artemis...
The Moon-vs-Mars stupid and sterile debate dates back from 1969 when NASA had to chose between Apollo and going to Mars (Ares ? Baxter ? Voyage ?) and got none of the two.
There was also a lunar-Zubrin, vociferous zealot in the shape of the late Paul Spudis (whose untimely death two years ago was very shocking).
Spudis and Zubrin polarized the Moon-vs-Mars debate to levels unseen outside Democrats-vs-Republicans in Congress. And since Congress and the President hold NASA human space policy in their hands since JFK in 1961... you guess why NASA hasn't moved by an inch since 1972 and Apollo 17.
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