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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: d[-_-]b who wrote (575615)	7/17/2010 10:33:57 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1570746

"Mission to Mars scraped for mission to Muslims -" Nonsense. Two totally disconnected factors. Any sort of outreach is going to be very cheap. Mars, not so much. A practical Mars mission will need something other than conventional chemical rockets. Now it could be done, but the cost would be very high to send anything worthwhile. Like the spiking of Constellation, the technology is in a state of flux and it is better to fund the research into alternatives than continuing down the same old paths we have been using for decades. If a decision were to be made today, I'd like to see a Project Orion-style craft for a Mars mission. It won't happen for mainly political reasons, but it would be the best choice with current technology. However, there are several technologies that don't have the political baggage that a Project Bang-bang would have. Pure fusion might be in the cards very soon. If not, then a fusion source producing neutrons to catalyze fission engines are almost practical. Ditto with nuclear fragment rockets. Heck, the experiments in compressing Xe compounds and storing energy in the distorted molecular bonds might be the ticket for a very compact, extremely high energy source. Bottom line, for Mars we need more research and less hardware. Now isn't the time for a hard schedule with lots of dollars allocated.