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Comment Threads

• brobof commented on More Thoughts on The Obama Space Policy
  And what's more, we don't even need to put a human there to do all this! Except the sitting on the back porch bit. Our avatars will be working 24/7. Poor things! As to power in a dark crater: that's what the SPS is for. Non laser based for obvious reasons... In the final analysis the Moon and Mars environments are too dissimilar for any architectural advantages. But in microgravity, one regolith covered space potato is very much like another regolith covered space potato. Except that under the regolith some may be water rich cosmic dustbunnies and others dinosaur killing...

• spaceman85 commented on More Thoughts on The Obama Space Policy
  "In a commercial world, NASA could go to dozens of companies for launching crew if a company folds" Maybe in a mature commercial world, but not a commercial world still in its infancy. Did the airline industry have dozens of carriers to choose from at the beginning ? No it did not....

• Scientist! commented on More Thoughts on The Obama Space Policy
  Good points, except for the fact the budgeting projections fo rconstellation neglected a lunar lander and any of this research you speak of. I agree these are great things to do, but we can do them without getting the primary transport concept established....

• cynical_space commented on More Thoughts on The Obama Space Policy
  "And what's more, we don't even need to put a human there to do all this!" You do if your goal is for humans to learn to live and work on planetary bodies other than Earth. "As to power in a dark crater..." Whatever. The point was not to debate the solutions to particular problems. The point is that there will be thousands of these little details to solve and everything we dream up here on Earth will not necessarily be correct. The only we way can ever know if a solution is correct or not is go up there...

• brobof commented on More Thoughts on The Obama Space Policy
  Planetary Hangup. We won't be living ON any planetary bodies in anywhere like the medium term. Instead we would have to be living in highly complex life support structures similar to those things we call cities here on Earth. But we won't. The Moon is three seconds away and your Lunar avatar doesn't need air or water or rest just power. And when you are not exploring, or rather when your Kids are not exploring, some other Kid will slide into that body and take over the shift. But enough about robots. Here's a question cynical_space: What if we need...