I guess I’m supposed to be impressed at the record number of women in space right now. I’m more depressed about how, almost fifty years after the beginning of human spaceflight, how few there are.
18 thoughts on “Mars Needs Women”
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I have some clients who fly really big jets, little jets, fighter planes and helicopters. Some fly in battle zones. I am not impressed about much that anything the Space Agency does these days — they are busy studying Toyota throttles and the climate. Might as well be the Vice-POTUS.
I meant to say “lady” clients. Sorry about that
John
The guys who’d settle “the west” in a Conestoga wagon the size of your local “Costco” are wowing us with their top-down progressivism. We’re wowed but not in the way that they’re thinking.
I wonder how different things might be with a modern Homestead Act. XX acres for robotic landing, YY for manned, ZZ for manned tenancy-for-a-year, WW for self-sufficiency.
I saw the article (include a link!) and was thoroughly unimpressed.
You could give them the whole planet, it wouldn’t get them out there any faster.
Didya know Mars doesn’t have a darkside like the Moon?
“Redhots. Get yer redhots here. Redhot real estate fer sale.”
Love the title Rand.
Mr. Anthony – The Moon doesn’t have a dark side either. In any case, the probability is that the best of space real estate will be that which we create for ourselves. “The best thing about land as an investment is that they aren’t making any more.” That statement, in about 100 years’ time, will be just plain wrong. Either that, or there will be very few people to make it.
Fletcher, or we could settle the oceans.
Mr. Anthony – The Moon doesn’t have a dark side either.
That’s my point Fletcher. Perhaps I should have added the /sarc tag for you.
You didn’t understand my redhot ref either I suppose?
Fletcher, or we could settle the oceans.
I say do it all as it makes economic sense to do so. In space it would make economic sense if we first make the sunk costs needed. Those with vision that value expansion into space will take on that burden.
Fletcher the site I linked talked about the Moon having a dark side. I thought it so funny I linked and ref’d it in my comment. Sometimes my sense of humor isn’t appreciated. Don’t worry, you’re not the first.
For future ref, when I use words like Didya, yer and fer… It probably means I’m in my lame humor mode so you may have to look below the surface to find my real meaning. It’s a personality defect of mine.
I think there’s strong history parallels between the dream of colonizing space and colonizing the oceans. They both start with “given abundant cheap energy, it seems trivial….” and it really is, shame the nuclear genie got pushed back into the bottle. Over the years there’s been various efforts to reignite the dream with lower energy engineering. OTEC for the oceans, solar power sats for space.. and there’s the diehards who think colonizing the ocean with solar power and diesel generators and colonizing space with chemical rockets and ISRU wouldn’t be so bad. (Guilty as charged).
it really is, shame the nuclear genie got pushed back into the bottle
That may be the most important reason of all for pushing up the curve faster than economics would suggest. Ever since I read Pournelle’s ‘Step Farther Out’ I think of survival with style. Once we are in a radiation rich environment and have to deal with that there will be no place for enviro-histeria. The abundance of riches available to human’s in this solar system could put the poverty level somewhere above where Bill Gates is now.
Ken,
but imagine the taxes that could be collected if we were all rich!!! Even the poorest of the rich wouldn’t need free cheese!! We could have a huge tax base capable of sending every kid to college and it would be totally free.
If we were all rich, Obama would be able to pay for his health care for the poor rich people that get created.
I’ve got a shiver running up my leg!
(hey, it’s no crazier a idiotoid rant than spending us into being rich again!!)
My secret hope is that some privateer will figure out how to get to Mars, cheap, and quietly and that they effectively steal the event from the gub’ment, and I also hope that 50-something fat guys, with technical / power generation backgrounds are prime candidates for the trip.
Frau Der Schtumpy told me I could go.
(hey…come to think of it…it was her idea, first)
OTOH, one day our history books may contain the unimaginable statement that America used to have some of the richest poor people in the world.
it was her idea, first
She must know my ex!
So here’s the plan: We send a dozen woman and one really horny guy…