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Showing content with the highest reputation on 10/08/19 in all areas

  1. But if you want to retain any abort or return capability then Mars requires much more equipment and fuel than Deimos or Phobos. As a staging base they may provide resources (eg water for cracking to H2/O2 fuel for powered descent and return) that can be useful - although I remain unconvinced that, absent the hype and fiction, Mars is a desirable let alone a viable place for colonisation and think asteroid mining and space habitats, (whilst still not viable either) make more hypothetical sense to prioritise. As far as Mars as an object of scientific study goes remote controlled and autonomous equipment will probably continue to be more cost effective and I can see a human presence on a base orbiting Mars - or dug into one of those moons - as more achievable than any base on the planet itself. Including the capability of launching small payloads of samples from the surface to that base - which could turn out better with re-usable rockets fueled with the resources from those moons rather than attempting to do that by mining and refining on Mars. 24/7... err, 30.3/7 or 7.4/7 solar might be quite viable by siting tracking panels at or near their poles. Any base or colony on Mars will find that extended dust storms will make solar and overnight storage unviable - nuclear will probably be required. If there is continuing interest in asteroid mining (and at least it offers the potential of a genuine economic base to build on) it seems likely to be an interest in bases/space stations for servicing them, ie there will be continuing efforts to resolve the issues that apply to Deimos or Phobos. Or conversely, solving them for Mars' moons can apply to asteroid mining elsewhere.
    2 points
  2. They said that about calling ll Mexicans rapists, and the Access Hollywood tape, and about saying John McCain wasn't a war hero b/c he got captured, and about calling predominantly black locations shithole countries, and for disowning our allies, and for having secret service rent golf carts from his properties every time he travels, and for golfing more than the last several presidents combined for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payer money, and for tweeting classified satellite images of Iran, and for telling his team to fire Mueller, and for not releasing his tax returns, and for saying he had no reason to believe our intelligence community or disbelieve Putin, or for raising our cost of goods through tariffs with China, or for asking again for foreign aid in our elections, or for having the military book and pay for vacant rooms at his properties even though they weren't staying there, or for having the VP fly across Ireland to stay at his properties when his meetings were 3 hours away, or for robbing his charity for kids with cancer, or for calling senators unamerican for being black or muslim, or for saying there are very fine people of both sides of a white supremacist rally, or.... or again... and or some more...
    1 point
  3. I think FatherTed straightened us out in that one:
    1 point
  4. I don't have the book in front of me. I remember seeing the problem in the book, ~40 years ago when I took the class, and ~30 years ago, when I was a TA for the class.
    1 point
  5. "usually" And yet, there are so many different groups across Sub Saharan Africa and many of their noses aren't that flat and the genetic variety is so widespread across the continent, that broad and sweeping generalisations like that are highly amusing...
    0 points
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