By-Pass the Moon?

> From: John Frazer
> I guess your knee-jerk unreasoning rejection of anything to do with
> Mars is to be expected too, as a responese to his knee-jerk obsession.

A knee jerk rejection of mars should be expected by default. Realistically,
the reasons to go there don't compare up very well with other goals of space
flight. The most likely outcome of such a mission is NASA still not knowing
if there's any life there, and wanting another fifty billion so they can go
and look a second time. That $50B (or whatever figure you prefer) could be
used for many other space projects, all of which would produce much more
useful and immediate results.

> Neither place in space should be considered worthless until the other
> has been thoroughly opened up.

Or we could do the basic maths first. From a materials export PoV, Mars *is*
worthless for any number of reasons. From a PoV of supporting human life,
Mars does not compete well against Island Colonies. From a PoV of looking
for alien life - who cares? What difference will it make to tax payers on
the ground who are paying for all this?

Lunar exploitation could pave the way for SSPS generated power, global
warming sun shields, Island colonies, or other large structures, like NASA's
asteroid miner designs. Or indeed martian colonisation; for those who want
it.

> We really need to space-build some sort of ship to match the
> capabilities of the "advanced interplanetary" big Orion ships

That would indeed be nice. And with Aries-V or Jupiter-232 we might regain
the ability to build such ships.

> Neither Mars nor Luna should be indefinitely shelved in favor of
> funding solely the other, it's never been a question of breaking the
> planetary budget on doing either one or both and more together.

And for a third opinion...
Personally I'd favour shelving both for about 5 years to finally solve the
cost problem of launching things into orbit cheaply and reliably. Whatever
ends up replacing the shuttle (an issue I believe is far from finished with)
it's R&D costs could pay for several CATS designs. Pick a winner, refual it
in orbit, and send it to moon or mars for one tenth the cost. :P

John