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To: Brett66
I don't think going to Mars is all that important in the establishment of a true spacefairing capability.

Me either. Gravity wells are the enemy if you insist on using chemical propulsion. OTOH, the human body does not like long periods of weightlessness. So doing long missions aboard a space station gets you little in return except damaged hearts.

I guess more than anything, I want to see us get over our completely irrational fear of nuclear propulsion. Because with an Orion, say, there is no place in the solar system that we could not economically exploit. We could land and take off at will -- and at little expense relatively speaking -- on any planet or moon we wanted to, deep gravity well or not.

I know that may not fit in well with private efforts, but I'm just talking about what government can and should do, imo.

12 posted on 07/24/2002 8:47:28 PM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker
Conversely, Earth's gravity well can be your friend too, if you're interested in dropping big rocks on your enemies, in effect giving us a "third-strike" capability.

That alone should be enough reason for us to get some people and hardware into space (at least the Earth-Moon system) before our rivals do.

16 posted on 07/24/2002 9:00:28 PM PDT by adx
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