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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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That's as good as one I read around the 20th of December.
My wife wanted a Christmas tree in every room of the house. I said no-way. So we compromised and put a christmas tree in every room of the house. I call that a win.
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enhzflep wrote: So we compromised and put a christmas tree in every room of the house
The key there is to have a small house  .
Software Zen: delete this;
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The punchline elicited an actual LOL from me. 
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is only used by managers:
"You're over your estimated hours for this project, why isn't it 100% complete by now?" 
Oh, and yes, by Windows because we all know the programmers at Microsoft can't count.
Latest Article - Code Review - What You Can Learn From a Single Line of Code
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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So you're saying 100% is a Microsoftism for we have a Windows 10 update ready to push?
Don't let your mind wander too far.
It's too small to be let out alone.
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OMG. Do it better 
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100% complete is 33% slower now because the update fixed the problem with Intel Meltdown [^] problem.
 So just wait 33% more time and you're all done...133% done. Also known as "toast"!
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It means you're a 100% of halfway there.
Jeremy Falcon
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...when 'halfway' is defined as an arbitrary value meaning somewhere between the beginning and end, possibly 'at' the beginning, but never 'at' the end? 
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