While the technical achievement of a mission to Mars would be phenomenal, the danger involved in such a mission would be huge in comparison to those that didn't require descent into a deep and unforgiving gravity well.
Mars is also known to be arid and has a poisonous atmosphere so there would be a need to take every ounce of air and water required for the whole trip even if recycling was good..
Furthermore, the explorers of old didn't launch themselves on a journey into the unknown with a high probability of no return without first trying things out in more familiar and friendly local waters.
It's relatively easy to get a spacecraft down onto a planet. You can fall mos of the way. You just have to be travelling slowly enough that the last few feet are not a problem. Getting up off the planet later is however an enormous challenge.
A mission to Ceres in the asteroid belt would pose far fewer problems however. Ceres has water in the form of ice and so air, fuel and drinking water would be far less of an issue. Even rocket fuel can be manufactured by electrolysis using sunlight so a mission to Ceres would require far less material to be taken with the mission and the duration of stay could be longer and simpler.
We may not discover quite so much on such a mission but it would be far more useful from the point of view of learning how to do an interplanetary voyage.
Finally, getting off Ceres at the end of the mission would be a walk in the park in comparison to trying to loft a spacecraft from the surface of Mars back to orbit safely.
I strongly recommend manned asteroid missions before manned missions to Mars or anywhere with a significantly steep climb out.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Seeking Julie
On Saturday March 5th 2011 My family and I went to Mont St Michel in France. It was a beautiful day and a lot of other people had dcided to take the trip also. I had remarked to my wife that there were a lot of japanese tourists around that day, stylish girls and thin young men, all having fun.
We picnicked in a walled garden near the top of the mount and my children played hide and seek in the bushes and rocks of the garden.
They were befreinded by a little Japanese girl of two or three years who came and picknicked with us, much to the amusement of her parents. The couple were a young man of European and Japanese extraction who spoke good French and a young woman in her twenties. He told me that the little girl's name was Julie, a coincidence because my own daughter's name is Julia.
They were obviously on holiday so one supposes that they returned home sometime during the last week or so. Now, I am haunted by the vision of that beautiful child and her young strong parents and I wonder what may have become of them given the awful circumstances of the recent days. I just hope that they extended their holiday or live in the south west away from tsunamis and radiation.
I would dearly love to know that they were well.
We picnicked in a walled garden near the top of the mount and my children played hide and seek in the bushes and rocks of the garden.
They were befreinded by a little Japanese girl of two or three years who came and picknicked with us, much to the amusement of her parents. The couple were a young man of European and Japanese extraction who spoke good French and a young woman in her twenties. He told me that the little girl's name was Julie, a coincidence because my own daughter's name is Julia.
They were obviously on holiday so one supposes that they returned home sometime during the last week or so. Now, I am haunted by the vision of that beautiful child and her young strong parents and I wonder what may have become of them given the awful circumstances of the recent days. I just hope that they extended their holiday or live in the south west away from tsunamis and radiation.
I would dearly love to know that they were well.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Design tutorials
I have absolutely no artistic talent but I fervently wish that I did have.
I see the web sites and applications that are created by those designers that instinctively know how to assemble colours, images and layout into something that is intrinsically pleasing to the eye and I become purple with jealousy.
Well, like me, you may have the artistic talent of a gnat and all the creative abilities of a turtle but you'll have no excuse whatsoever for saying that you don't understand how to create a UI experience with Blend because now you can use this great site to learn step by step how to utterly fail to be talented and stylish in your UI design.
I see the web sites and applications that are created by those designers that instinctively know how to assemble colours, images and layout into something that is intrinsically pleasing to the eye and I become purple with jealousy.
Well, like me, you may have the artistic talent of a gnat and all the creative abilities of a turtle but you'll have no excuse whatsoever for saying that you don't understand how to create a UI experience with Blend because now you can use this great site to learn step by step how to utterly fail to be talented and stylish in your UI design.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)