if someone comes in (as US president in 2009) and has no interest, he can just say, 'thank you for rationalising the space station' and leave it at that. |
It has as many similarities to Mars as you are likely to find anywhere on Earth. |
It's an important science study that has not been done by a NASA center. Before we can send people on a mission with artificial gravity, it's important to find out the effects, |
Mars coming this close is an excellent opportunity for amateur astronomers to see Mars, ... With a good amateur telescope right now, you can easily see the ice cap on the Martian pole. |
the first rational plan in any sense that I've seen from Nasa in decades. |
The testing of life support systems will certainly be useful, ... But on the psychological side, the real human factor is not whether people go crazy living in a tin: they don't. It's whether they can put up with the overwork once they arrive on Mars and start a rigorous programme of field exploration. |
The thing that makes this a winner is 1) there is a negligible cost difference to making flex fuel vehicle, 2) such cars can use existing gasoline. |
They have an inferior lunar mission mode per se…but if they make the heavy-lift vehicle, they make everything we need them to make. That's the most important thing the lunar program can give the Mars program. |
This is incredibly exciting. What this means is that we have a chance to find ... extant life. |
This is really groundbreaking research, ... There has been almost no research on artificial gravity in space and none concerning martian gravity. |
This is the first time that anyone has done experiments on higher life in martian-like environment, |
This thing has got to get underway. |
We are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Given the will, we could have humans on Mars within a decade. |
What they're really developing is equipment to do a rational space station and a Moon programme later, |
Will they undergo the same physiological deterioration we see at zero g [gravity], or will one-third g be enough to counteract that effect? |