“Why is it divorced from reality to oppose those who support war?”

The primary process is a mess. Every primary we complain about it, and after the election we forget about it.

It’s all rather technical, but basically, if Gary Johnson got 40% electoral colledge, Hillary 30% and Trump 25%, or something imilar, who do you think wins?

It’s all rather technical, but basically, if Gary Johnson got 40% electoral colledge, Hillary 30% and Trump 25%, or something imilar, who do you think wins?

“NASA hardly gets infinite government funding...”

Clinton Foundation or Clinton FAMILY Foundation? Because they’re different things.

“Humanity must become a multi-planetary species.”

So where do the astronauts stay while the hab is being fueled?

The problem is that classic architecture relies on infinite goverment funding, where squeezing every centimeter of delta V is worth millions in custom built one-off prototypes. (money which goes to hard working taxpayers- trickledown economics at its most effective)

I suspect Elon is paying a delta V penalty for the fast transits even after consumables are accounted for. The other aspects (reduced chance of solar storm during the trip, human muscle loss in zero G) is what’s really pushing the fast transit approach.

So you’re lifting the lander multiple times, along with any essential seats and cargo you havnt unloaded, in order to avoid lifting the hab section.

Er... you may be confusing Direct Entry (the act of hitting the atmosphere at interplantry velocities at the right place to slow all the way to landing speed in a single pass without using fuel, like Viking and Pathfinder) with Fast Transit. (Taking a more fuel expensive, faster transfer than a Hohmann Transfer, but…

They ARE making fuel on mars. They are NOT making fuel in mars orbit. In order to fill a tank, they have to bring the tank to the ground.

At modern rocket efficencies, that would require using Neptune as your fuel tank. Which has it’s own problems.

The radation is only deadly if you catch a bad patch, something you get a few minutes warning before you hit. Then you hide in the shadow of a tank of something with a lot of hydrogen atoms- Water, Methane rocketfuel, ect.

The problem is that the author’s hab idea would not survive elon’s planned fuel-saving Direct Entry approach, on both the mars end and returning to earth. actually inserting into an orbit would more than kill any benifit from using the hab approach.

If you rely on extra tanks on the hab, then those tanks will be empty when you have the exact same problem on earth return.

Imagine if the Space Shuttle brought it’s external talk all the way to orbit. Then imagine that, though a bunch of flights, you could REFILL that external tank.

Orbiting Mars to drop off the hab is wasteful of fuel. Elon’s plan calls for letting mars’ atmosphere do 99% of the work, whereas your plan requires enough fuel to remain in the tanks to propulsively slow the non-aerodynamic hab into orbit, THEN propulsively land on mars. Then do it all again when returning to earth.

You go over your Delta V budget when you try to slow the hab into mars orbit.