Quantum Windbag
Gold Member
- May 9, 2010
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The distance from the earth to the moon is a mere quarter of a million miles. The distance from the earth to Mars averages around 300 million miles. Building a base on the moon would require enormous resources and a lot of time. And you would still have to go 300 million miles. The moon may be smaller than the earth. It may have less gravity, but it's still a world. Much larger than an asteroid.
Does that mean we should just ignore it? There is water, and everything we need to make atmosphere, present on the moon. Building a base on the moon and using it as a staging area for the trip to Mars would actually save us money.
Some asteroids are miles across. Some are made from water. Water can be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen.
You must have gotten your hands on a brand new science book. I hope the third grade reading level was not to much for you.
Most NEOs are miniscule. The only large asteroids we know of are all beyond the orbit of mars. FYI, that means that we would actually have to pass Mars to get an asteroid like the one you are describing.
We've been using the same old chemical rockets since the 60's. We need to develop new technology. Rocket fuel won't get us very far. It burns too fast. The rocket have to be huge. Remember, we are talking 300 million miles. We used enormous rockets to get us to the moon and back and didn't even have enough fuel left to land. We had to splash down.
You really have no idea what you are talking about.
If I climb outside a rocket and throw baseball in one direction I will me a rocket engine, and the baseballs will be fuel. Ion engines are rocket engines, and the fuel actually leaves them faster than the fuel leaves most chemically fueled rockets. It is not the speed of the fuel that matters it is the thrust. F=ma is a very simple formula, one I am sure even a person with your limited intelligence will understand. What makes a rocket go is how much mass you throw away and the acceleration at which it is thrown. Simple Newtonian physics.
By the way, we splashed down because we decided that made more sense than trying to land a rocket on land, not because we could not carry enough fuel to do so. It was an engineering decision, something that is beyond your limited brain's ability to understand the trade offs involved.
I think the right wing has difficulty understanding "innovation" and "new technology". Even here, they still want to do things the old fashioned way. They are not "forward thinkers". They are always "looking backward".
That is rich considering that you want to build ion rockets and use them to launch payloads into space from Earth's surface. I might be backward and hate new technology, but I at least understand how it works.
NASA's on board with this. They are excited about it and they are the ones that went to the moon.
NASA is not excited about this, they are just doing it because it is the only way they will exist until someone comes along with enough brains to see just how utterly stupid it is.
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