/sci/ - Science & Math

>anons really thought Musk was serious about Mars and it wasn't a smokescreen for Starlinkbux and DODbux
lmao

>L5 News: Opinion – The Case Against Mars, October 1984
>Mars fits in poorly. To advance space development, we need cheap resources in near-Earth space. The Moon is obvious and attractive: the velocity increment needed to escape the Moon and bring materials to near-Earth space is fairly low, and the Moon holds oxygen, rock, metals, and (perhaps) water at the poles. What is more, it can best absorb any politically-inspired mania for a planetary base, being close enough to do so at a comparatively modest cost. The asteroids are less obvious to the casual eye, but more attractive: the velocity increment needed to bring materials from suitable asteroids is lower than that of the Moon, and asteroids contain oxygen, rock, water, hydrocarbons, steel, nickel, cobalt, and precious metals.
>Why, then, do some cry out for expeditions to Mars, as at the recent Case for Mars II conference in Boulder? Some may do so because they don’t really see space as a frontier, or because they have given little serious thought to strategies for space development. Seeing all advances as equally useless (or equally useful), they blow the horn for a space activity that seems both exciting and understandable — that is, to go through free space (a place so strange and hard to think about) and then promptly leave it again to land on another planet.
>The Martian dream also has roots in the traditional thinking of those antique times when “space” meant chiefly “space exploration.” As a planet, Mars appeals to Earthbound prejudices and habits of thought. It has an atmosphere, a tinted sky, weather, and a desert-like surface on which one can imagine building a cabin from wood miraculously found beyond the next barren hill. It still basks in the glow of its past reputation as an Earth-like planet and an abode of Martian civilizations, though this glow fails to warm its dry-ice polar caps.
https://space.nss.org/l5-news-opinion-the-case-against-mars/