@NefariousDevil @redbarchetta3

Hrrm.. going to the moon is many times easier than going to mars, because physics. If mars isn’t in position to launch to (unless you want to take the long way around), it isn’t getting done by 2020.

Travel alone takes a few months, and like with the moon, we kind of like those people sent to come back home. Can we ship enough stuff that the crew can survive 18 months and perform a launch back to earth when planets are in position again?

@stark @redbarchetta3 oh I know. It was really bad and mostly drunk sarcasm. Bare minimum. You have 1 launch to test the rocket itself. You have 1 with expected payload weight. Then one to make the full round trip. No landing, just endurance test. You'll have to have preferably an unmanned landing test. Now we put the humans inside too see if the round trip is doable. Then maybe attempt a landing. It'll be a decade of work at minimum. After actually building the craft in question.

@NefariousDevil @redbarchetta3

And we must plan for “no immediate return trip possible” which means shipping materials and resources to build a base, enough people to perform the build and so on. I’m thinking multiple rockets launched inside a weeks window, or we wait with launching humans until all the resources have landed safely.

And it’s not possible to do a “swingby” with Mars. We go, we land.

If humanity does this before 2040, colour me surprised.

@stark @redbarchetta3 At this juncture, we can only guarantee a suicide mission. I'd still place bets on multiple launches to get all vehicles in space, then no doubt a supply launch. If this is going to be done in the next 50. Build the full vehicle configuration in orbit. One single launch I doubt would ever be optimal.

@NefariousDevil @redbarchetta3

What may be better spent time in the coming decades is a space elevator. If we can muster the material to build a proper one (like hyper-diamond described in Revelation Space).

Launching from ground is inefficient, and having a means to get above the atmosphere with materials would allow us to build bigger things to just ferry to/from Mars and “drop” things off.

Build a space elevator on mars and the there/back problem becomes easier to deal with.

@stark @redbarchetta3 Indeed. At this point we are running into the limitations of traditional launch. You'd pretty much need a mini space stations worth of crap even for a 1 way human trip. It's going to require a new generation of tech to make it plausible. It can be done with rocketry, but omg will it be inefficient.

And yes, I'd love for the space elevator to happen. Frankly though, we might be able to build a teleporter before we'd be able to build the elevator.

@NefariousDevil @redbarchetta3

Space elevator is just material science and engineering. Teleportation is verging on black magic. :)

@stark @redbarchetta3 Far as I'm concerned, teleportation could come down to energy and computation, obviously refinment of theory, and engineering. Not to mention A programmers bloody nightmare😎. It depends, if we are chasing ghosts or not. Cases could be made either way, but we will find out that out down the road.

As for the elevator yes in theory it is that simple. But availability and complexity of said materials, not to mention manufacturing costs could kill it on the cutting room floor

@NefariousDevil @redbarchetta3

Very true. It is simply not possible to pull off a project like that under existing capitalist system and where nations are not pooling expertise and resources.

There will be other things that humanity needs to deal with first before it becomes rational to pursue manned missions to Mars.

@stark @redbarchetta3 And in that, I wouldn't hold my breath.eventually we may paradigm shift that way, but it's gonna take awhile.

@stark @redbarchetta3 But I do love me some black magic. Honestly propulsion techniques will beat out both for a very long time. And there may be some radical new method of propulsion that will forever be more efficient.

But the truth is, without a short cut of some sort. Over coming gravity is always going to take tremendous resource. I suspect we will have AGI before we even get too mars. Which is good. We get to fight earth robots to prepare for alien robots 😈