Category Archives: Science/Engineering

Nice sentiment. Makes a great bumper sticker. I used to have one. But the reality? Not so much.

SF author Bruce Sterling: "I’ll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach."

SF author Charles Stross: "Space itself is a very poor environment for humans to live in. A simple pressure failure can kill a spaceship crew in minutes. And that’s not the only threat. Cosmic radiation poses a serious risk to long duration interplanetary missions, and unlike solar radiation and radiation from coronal mass ejections the energies of the particles responsible make shielding astronauts extremely difficult. And finally, there’s the travel time. Two and a half years to Jupiter system; six months to Mars."

Nevertheless, Stross, at least, foresees a Moon base in twenty years and ten years later, one on Mars. I would add that both will probably be Chinese. American pols are too gutless and greedy.