Before it becomes the story of the day...

[W.Lynn]

Anyone who's heard of NASA and the ISS, may be aware that some very smart people are trying to make a permanent human presence in the universe. Or at least, permanent until the Almighty's judgement day. The general feeling among these brainy nerds & science fiction fans, is that our best hope lies in being in too many places (orbit, Moon, Mars, and anything else we can reach,) for any one act of stupidity to wipe us all out.

Rather than spreading a downer kind of message, they're trying to make it fun, and get people thinking outwardly. Keep space science in front of people, on twitter, on reddit, pretty photos (OMG pretty photos!) One of these efforts is a chance to send your name to Mars on the next launch going that way. Millions of names, stored on a chip, and you get to be a Martian - if only by name.

This bit of fun is at this NASA web page of course, and it's free. But it needs done by the 8th, there's making the chip to be done, test read, etc.

And you get a pretend boarding pass you can print up and hang on the wall, and "frequent flyer" miles. Kids can go to the maps link and see if there's a lot of people signing up from their state, or their country (looks like a bunch of people in India would like to go.) So many countries are listed, even if there's only 2 or 3 signed up for this journey of names.

One of my grandsons is already listed, I'm going to put the other at the last minute and see if it makes much difference. The first one already has 60,000 "frequent flyer miles."

[southernmom]

Space really interests me, always has. I have always had a thing about Mars and yes I am one of those people who reads about UFOS and watches all sorts of history channel specials about them and Space documentaries in general. So thanks for this post

[Cwi555]

I'm not sold on the logic of going to mars first. First problem should be getting to the moon again. Primarily due to energy concerns.
From all sources, tritium 3 production is roughly 469 pounds per year on the earth. After 1 half life, half of that activity becomes helium 3.
So every 12.3 years, 2,884.35 pounds of helium 3 is produced. The US, China, EU, and Russian scientists have ceased all other hot fusion research after ot was proven helium 3 provided an energy density that got more out than went in to produce it. China at this time is in progress of building a full scale test plant. We are two years behind that effort with everyone else behind us.

The science on it is a done deal, working out the engineering is in progress. The rat in the woodwork is in the helium 3. There simply isn't enough of it to go around, with each pound of it produced here costing millions effectively. Cost would kill the idea if it cannot be significantly reduced.

Enter the moon. Probes from various space faring nations have found large volumes of water ice on the moon aka H2O. They have also found large volumes of tritium 3 and it's decay product helium 3. Since tritium 3 is a product of hydrogen, all the ice crystals found on the moon are under constant bombardment of neutrons from the sun. In effect, both tritium 3 and helium 3 can be found simply laying around on the lunar surface.

Upfront cost for a lunar mining base would be ~5 trillion estimated. Yet even with that cost taken into account, helium 3 cost would be reduced to ~5000 dollars a pound over 20 years of production. Most of which would due to paying off that upfront cost. A fifty year look ahead would further reduce that cost.

With that said, fusion powered space craft become a reality instead of science fiction. By the pound it will produce ~50x more energy than its nearest competition with very little byproduct.
http://m.space.com/8009-rocket-engin...s-40-days.html
That's one possible engine but it still requires reaction mass.
http://m.space.com/26713-impossible-...nasa-test.html
Nasa poopooed that in 2010. Now they are eating crow.
http://emdrive.com/
That engine has been proven to work. It requires no reaction mass. It does so by the same principle of a solar sail which also has been proven to work. It's basically a microwave engine propelling photons out of a nozzle producing thrust. The catch is it requires loads of electricity.
Enter the fusion plant. Couple the energy density of a fusion plant with that and no place in this solar system is unreachable within a reasonable amount of time and expense.

All of which gets us back to the moon. Lay out fields of locally harvested ice on the sun ward side of the moon and we have effectively created a helium 3 farm letting the sun do what it always does. That in turn opens the door for cheap fusion energy and all that follows with it.

That sheds a whole new light on the apparent Chinese and Russian preoccupation with lunar landing and fusion. In fact, by the end of this year China will have launched their next mission to the moon to test mining and return to earth of those materials. It also sheds light on why they built their own full sized em drive and tested it 2013 time frame.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...nd-cold-fusion

That btw was what forced Nasa's hand.

What is it they say... oh yes 'lead follow, or get out of the way'. I'll add the old military axiom of 'taking the high ground'.
America has effectively abdicated it's lead in this realm. It is high time we take it back before we end up being left behind sucking wind.

[southernmom]

Oh wow, Cwi555 thanks! Amazing information and I am so glad you posted it-it actually begins to make many things make a lot more sense.

[tk]

Cwi555 I was going to post the exact same thing. NOT. My brain hurt just reading it.

[W.Lynn]

Getting some of us off this rock will only work by stages, orbit, then the moon, but it can be hard to keep interest up when it comes to planting people some place as "old news" as the moon.

[kickstand]

I've got a lot of folks that I would like to ship to a distant planet. If they get "chosen", do they get to say No?

1 Kenyan in Chief
2 Mrs Kenyan
3 I did not have Sexual relations with that woman
4 Mrs I did not have Sexual relations
5 Eric the Penis Holder
6 The Senate
7 The House
8 The rest of the Cabinet

I could continue , but wont.
P.s. I don't mean to hijack this thread...so I'll leave now.

[W.Lynn]

Kick, I like the way you think, and suggest your list needs to include an entire assemblage of self-important foreign idjits that think they need to spend our money to run this world, and want us to be happy about it. I would also suggest the entirety of your list and my addition might be better employed for depth-testing the Marianas Trench, or going personally to take surface temperature readings on the sunny side of Mercury (wouldn't want to piss off E.T.)

Or feeding hogs.

[kickstand]

Well, I just didn't want to fill up our entire server with my list...it's quite large.

[Cwi555]

As an update;
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2...t_21830336.htm
With no explanation China has backed up the next moon lander by four years. That's highly unusual. If they had the means to make it happened, they would at any expense. Something somewhere made them stand down.