Re: Space travel is no longer SF

In article <slrnfg1v2l.jsc.dbd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
David DeLaney <dbd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Gene Ward Smith <genie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
JSBassior2007@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
How I think that _what_ would work? How people would use their
brains, hands and tools to _build things?_

Yes, how a hundred colonists dying on Mars equipped with some useless
milling machines and digital fabbers would meet their basic needs for food
and shelter. That's the bottom line, Dimwit.

So ... the moment they get there, they're going to start dying in a manner
that does not allow them to unload supplies, construct shelters, or run
machines? Are you positing some sort of 'life force aura' that only Earth
has, perhaps? Or are you supposing that they would not have been able to
escape from Earth without having their carefully-planned supply list gutted
and replaced by a list written in crayon by a bureaucracy? Because I'm not
sure why they're dying BEFORE things start going wrong, here.

Dave "Mars needs anti-toxins!" DeLaney

It's within the realm of possibility that the surface chemistry
of Mars not only is missing things that we need in the form that we need
the (Free O2, for example) but that the chemistry that is there way well
be actively toxic to us. It's just one of the possible problems that you
run into when you visit other planets.

I'm watching RACE TO MARS, which given that it is in an inferior
medium isn't too bad, and one of the complications they've run into in
the first half is an underestimation of how much damage the dust can do to
their machinery.

--
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