[ExI] Moon Bases Not Needed

[David Lubkin]

John Clark wrote:

>Yes but that's not what people mean when they say they want to go to 
>Mars, they're talking about spending a hundred trillion dollars or 
>so to get half a dozen people to Mars, have them fuck around Mars 
>for a couple of months, and then spend another hundred trillion 
>dollars to reverse that herculean task and bring them all back to Earth.

Is there anyone *here* advocating that? Even in historically NASA-boosting
space advocacy groups, I think only a small percentage want a traditional
boondoggle. The nearest I've ever heard here to what you describe is Mars
Direct.

We here and over there talk about Mars, the Moon, or the asteroids as
components of a bootstrapped, incremental, profitable migration of
industry and man off-world.

(I believe with $10G one could fetch a nickel-iron asteroid to a stable
near-Earth orbit and convert it to factory and community. (The price
originally cited for the fetch was around $150M, circa 1976.))


-- David.