I think they pay by toner...glitzy graphs and images seem to help, but I'm not too sure. I do know that the CAIB report had a box which showed a NASA lesson...
In the quest for an ever more accurate design there are some issue which I wanted us to discuss at this point in time. First of all, in regards to having an...
Frank, Rather than progress to number-crunching, perhaps it would be wiser to outlay the options discussed thus far and compare them side-by-side before...
Actually Mike you have helped clarify one of my points here. "Number crunching" is a part of any real design, and for every option we have considered and...
Frank, Although I've always held an interest in engineering design, I'm not a qualified engineer (you might blame by my now-conspicuous aversion to number...
Mike, I think we can have it both ways by taking what I will call "a conservative approach to revolutionary ideas." This is not an exercise in coming up with...
... IMHO, we have no satisfactory answers at all yet to any of the big questions, anything we can properly label as "design", even less so than Mars Direct (by...
Sorry Frank, but the 100+ e-mail digests combing over the fine details and physics of payload delivery kind of scared off this little crop sciences molecular...
Ron, First off, thanks for your interest in the 'mobile hab' concept. My responses have been interjected: Ron: I think we can have it both ways by taking what...
Hi, Mike, So where are you in school? Yes, Methanogens are a very interesting tribe. My oldest son, who teaches Marine Biology at Harvard studies the critters...
Thanks for your interest Ron, I'll be transferring to the college of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champagne this spring, as due to ...
... I agree with Mike. There is the additional problem of what happens if our fixed base landers miss by 20km (possibly due to navigation error, more likely...
Helium 3 is a very rare isotope of helium and is *freakin'* expensive stuff ($10000s per gram). To use it in a fusion plant, we obviously need the fusion...
It really comes down to "who" will invest in a Mars mission doesn't it? If it is ultra conservative government agencies and science advisors what are they...
I suppose that one could if the rovers are hearty enough drive them up to the edge of the habitat, jack up the station and latch the side of the hab once...
Frank, Through a combination of careful trip planning based on geological analysis (in-situ and from satellite imagery), plus a well designed vehicle (i.e. big...
Frank, Leaving mobility to the second or third missions would be fine by me. I'm just saying that we need to 'ramp-up' our achievements after the first few...
I'm not quite sure of whether you mentioned the approximate prices of these isotopes for shock value, or implausibility of pre-launch testing, or as a reminder...
... We can only be so tight-arsed or nobody will ever go. Also, investors don't like constipation: if we work _too_ hard to make sure we won't lose the crew,...
We have pictures...I'll see if I can find one... http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070605_mars_hole.html On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 2:23 AM, Michael Bloxham...
On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 8:03 PM, dragon_slave4613 <hazel.mike@...> ... As gold is free for the panning in many rivers, especially in the Klondike region....
Amazing! These would make fascinating exploration targets... Are there any plans to explore such features in the future? Terry Wilson <aftercolumbia@...>...
Some good points, Terry. However, let me stress the point that a Mobile Hab architecture might be safer overall than conventional architectures which involve...
I'd like to ask- "who" are we thinking of when we talk of "investors"? This needs some serious thought because if we don't know who we are aiming at for...
Frank, I'd also like to ask- "what" are we thinking of when we talk of "MarsDrive"? What exactly are we hoping to provide? What is it that we hope to "sell"?...
Good questions and thoughts Michael. To answer the first question I'll use a parallel from other more established space groups like The Planetary Society or...
Frank, What you are saying sounds good, but I'm afraid that its far too vague. MarsDrive's growth strategy, like any business plan, needs to be thorough and...
Very interesting thread. I can't say that I disagree with any of it, but let me put my own spin on the conservative-vs-radical thing. Mike said "If we focus on...
Funny thing you mentioned the long stay strategy Ron, I had thought of that as I made my last reply :) It is radical, and it really goes back to our "Mars...
I agree. I figure it's probably better even to have a small rover (i.e.; reduced habitable volume) than a large stationary hab...to a point, obviously. If a...
