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We have a supervolcano - Yellowstone - that is 40,000 years overdue to let off in a BIG way; we're late for a asteroid strike; most wars are about space and resources; if we stay here - and only here - much longer there won't be a species to fix those problems.
I can't remember who said it: "a planet is a good place to grow up, but you wouldn't want to live there".
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Where did we go wrong?
Africa? South and north. Latin-America. Middle and far east...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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 Soapbox is over there ->
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OriginalGriff wrote: Where did we go wrong?
climbing out of the primordial slime?
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) !, One of my heros, coolest story we he retired he still turned up to Monday Morning briefings when he retired as he couldn't think what too do & because he felt he should!
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We need to find another place soon. At the rate we're using resources and polluting it won't be long.
Don't let your mind wander too far.
It's too small to be let out alone.
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Mike Hankey wrote: At the rate we're using resources
Then Mars is the obvious answer. It has all the resources we need. 
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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OriginalGriff wrote: Where did we go wrong
Don't get me started.
William Proxmire should be dug up out of his grave, resurrected, and then executed (slowly) as a traitor not to the United States, but to the entire homo sapiens species.OriginalGriff wrote: We should be colonising Mars by now
I disagree. The colonies on the Moon and Mars should be going concerns. Mining in the asteroid belt should be taking off. Exploration of the outer planets and their moons should be underway. We should be talking about, if not building, the first generation ships to nearby stars.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Yup! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: The colonies on the Moon and Mars should be going concerns. Mining in the asteroid belt should be taking off. Exploration of the outer planets and their moons should be underway. We should be talking about, if not building, the first generation ships to nearby stars.
We haven't even explored much of our own world and everyone is so eager to leave. Strange.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I think bases on the Moon and Mars are complete dead-ends. I do agree, however, that mining the asteroid belt could pay massive dividends.
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OriginalGriff wrote: Where did we go wrong? We should be colonising Mars by now
With not realizing that the size of the rocket, and thereby the cost, grows exponentially with distance.
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Rocket?
We should have a Beanstalk - or several - and an orbital manufacturing facility using lunar ore (again raised by Beanstalk).
And light sails, ion drives, heck - where's me Dilithium warp drive?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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If you solve the material problem they lower the amount of energy needed considerably, but you can't put a beanstalk between Earth and Mars.
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Regrettably, no - that's where the light sails and ion drives come in.
Mind you, once we get out to Jupiter or so, we can start harvesting ice and splitting it for oxygen and rocket fuel ... if the Prime Directive allows us, that is!
Mind you, the asteroid belt is full of water apparently (Localized sources of water vapour on the dwarf planet (1) Ceres | Nature[^]) so we might not have to go that far.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Not true. The vast majority of the cost is to get out of the gravity well. The actual delta V for Mars is not significantly higher than for the Moon. The Saturn V rocket that got them to the moon could also go to Mars with modern enhancements
I'm pretty sure I would not like to live in a world in which I would never be offended.
I am absolutely certain I don't want to live in a world in which you would never be offended.
Freedom doesn't mean the absence of things you don't like.
Dave
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Yes true.
The delta-v from LEO to mars transfer orbit is "only" 4.3 km/s when compared to the 9.3 km/s it takes to get from earth to LEO. But you'd be surprised at how much more fuel you would need for that.
It's a fairly simple differential equation if you're interested to calculate it yourself.
But if you're interested in numbers from better people than me, the mars vehicle that SpaceX is planning will weigh 3.5 times more than the Saturn 5. Which is slightly more than just "modern enhancements".
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Going to the moon -> 3 days
Going to Mars -> 6 months, if you are lucky.
Three men together in a telephone cell for three days already is torture. It's impossible to do that for six months.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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Indeed.
Adding more space to keep sanity will add even more weight.
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OriginalGriff wrote: We should be colonising Mars by now
I think good ol' Musk is preparing something.
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Also the only person to fly on Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle missions.
veni bibi saltavi
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They were made of Stainless Steel, if you get my drift 
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...must not mean what I thought it meant. 
(Window's Update...)
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That's customer speak, in our language it means bring sleeping bags and order plenty of pizza.
Don't let your mind wander too far.
It's too small to be let out alone.
modified 6-Jan-18 18:27pm.
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100% complete means finished only for very large values of 100.
Software Zen: delete this;
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