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That's where you're wrong. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, and their derivatives) can deliver more useful energy than it takes to produce them. It's a cost-effective equation. If, as you claim, it took more energy to produce them then they deliver, we'd be in a sorry state indeed, and would have abandoned their use many years ago.

I think you missed part of my point. It will always take more energy to produce a fuel than it releases. (See Thermodynamics: Law of Conservation of Energy.) We have just gotten used to having most of the energy being put in by natural processes. Which, is also a possibility in using hydrogen, it is currently known that hydrogen exists in large quantities, trapped in sub-surface rocks. (it is mentioned by NASA here.) And, as such could be mined (just like oil). So in the end, we could get H2 in large quantities, with about the same trouble as oil. Moreover, according to the same article mentioned above, the supply would renew itself, quickly, and as such, would not run into the same supply problem we are headed for with oil.

I still say that diesel engines are a much better means of pollution reduction today than hydrogen.

This might be true, though, it would still face the problem that is getting in the way of cleaner technologies today: the consumer. People are comfortable with what they have, and don't want to switch. By the time you get everyone to switch over to diesel, hydrogen power will be available to the public, and then you are facing the same fight all over again. With the advent of such things as the GM concept car and the Ballard Field Tests, I think Fuel Cells are just about ready to mature into widespread use. It'd be better to wait the extra couple of years and only fight to get people to switch once.

Especially since all of the people who tout hydrogen are relying upon the magical appearance of cheap, effective solar power. If we had cheap, effective solar power today, we'd be running our electricity grid off of that instead of producing it by burning coal. Wouldn't that be a nice thing?
There have actually been a number of very successful experiments with solar power, unfortunatly, it only really has a chance in places that get a lot of sunlight. Plus it takes up a large amount of space. Problem is, its not as effiecent as burning coal (or commonly natural gas). So, it hasn't attacted much investment. Also, there is the problem that most power companies already have coal/NG power stations built, it makes terrible business sense to abandon a plant in the middle of its useful life cycle. Even if solar was cheap and effective, they are not going to shutter thier coal plants and build solar plants just because its cleaner, they would lose tons of money in the process, and that is what they care about.

Solar power in sufficient quantities to run even a moderate amount of the automotive traffic in the US is probably decades away. Diesel vehicles could be available today.

I will agree that the amount of solar power needed to run the traffic in the US is a ways away, though I don't think it will be the decades you claim. And yes, diesel is available today, in fact it is available in the US already, people just don't buy it. (VW Golf TDI).
I will agree that someone looking to buy a car today, would be well advised to look into getting a diesel vehicle, if they are looking for eviromentally friendly. Personally though I think they would be better servered holding out for a couple of years and getting an H2 powered car.

Once finished, the space station is to become brigther than Venus. And its size, pretty big ;-)

Check out this for cool information on the station.

Here is a link to 2001 KX76 last year's big Kuiper belt object. And here is some more background infor on the Kuiper belt in general.

Gcc, you jackass.

Beaten by at least both icc and VC++ in speed of generated code and speed of compilation. GCC cannot do precompiled headers. Better than it used to be, yes. (I use and love gcc, but it isn't best-of-breed.)

Glibc, you moron

Hmm. Actually, not sure about this one. Slower on at least some tests, but I've never seen glibc comprehensively benchmarked against competing libcs.

Bash

Not sure, again. Haven't seen any bash vs tcsh/sh benchmarks. Could potentially be faster.

automake

Hmm. Show me a competing system that's slower.

emacs

Um...the competition is what, vi? Emacs is damn well *not* faster.

make

Just ran a quick test -- Solaris make runs about four times as fast as gmake.

tar

Tough to tell. Runs about as fast as Solaris tar. Might be faster.

sed

super sed is faster.

patch

Could be. Haven't seen benchmarks of it.

nethack

Not a GNU project.

cvs

Not a GNU project.

Besides, I said "stunning performance". Linux is significantly faster than the competition, not "neck and neck, and maybe a little bit faster".

who know what it really means

Oh, get off your high horse. If you wanted to have absolute meanings, you should have used Esperanto. The standard use of "hacker" today is "one who breaks into computer systems". There are plenty of archaic uses of lots of English words. Get over it.

You can't stop the evolution of language.

And if you wrap it a little further down the (paper) match and put an un-folded paperclip along the side, you form a micro sized rocket engine. Remove the paperclip before launch and you have the tube for the exhaust.
You can even make the paperclip into the launchpad.

Here is some other designs:
http://www.matchrockets.com/fire/mr.html - This one has Video and info on calculating velocity!

http://users.bigpond.net.au/mechtoys/matchrocket.h tml

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/TRC/Rockets/match _rocket.html

http://mrockets.hypermart.net/brett/

http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/funexperiments/age subject/lessons/other/match_rocket.html

of the Fomalhaut system and planet is today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Ha! And look what I found when I went to the next site in my daily-visit-list :)

Causality seems like coincidence until it's proven. Seen any SOHO footage lately? Lots of new stuff flying around this neck of the galactic woods.

Enjoy.

Here's a NASA article on ProSEDS - a shuttle experiment to generate power by dragging a conductive tether through the upper atmosphere. In the initial experiment, the tether generated twice the predicted current, even though the tether didn't deploy properly. If I understand the physical principle behind it correctly, the higher the field differential between the ends of the tether (i.e, the longer the cable), the higher the current generated. A tether extending over many kilometers would be an outstanding power source -- although it's difficult to predict all the possible environmental implications (still, much less than burning tons of fossil fuel everyday.) Also, as with a conventional dynamo/motor, by feeding electricity into the tether, you can use it for propulsion - raising or lowering a vehicle through the upper atmosphere without expending propellant.

Think of the space elevator structure as a 100,000-km-long highway that will require ongoing maintenance and repair," says Smitherman.

How unrealistic can an analogy be? If a crack forms in some remote stretch of interstate, there's no danger of the rest of the interstate system suddenly ripping away and falling into space. Repairs would have to happen instantaneously without ever breaking an almost unimaginable ribbon tension. And this wouldn't be a very rare occurrence, either, as the ribbon would present a surface area of five to eleven million square meters on each side (5 to 11.5 cm wide, 10^8 meters long). And remember that it's on the equator, which every piece of orbiting debris crosses twice during each orbit.

And the only mentioned solution for lightning strikes (one of which could be fatal to the ribbon) seems almost totally unworkable, and doesn't take into account that a 100,000-kilometer-high conductive tower would generate its own lightning. Remember the ill-fated (but educational) Space Tether Experiment? And the tether was only a mile long. A space elevator's ribbon would intersect a huge chord of Earth's magnetic field, including both Van Allen Belts. Seems to me that, even if the ribbon didn't immediately blow like a giant flash-bulb filament, you still couldn't get within a hundred yards of the base due to the continuous electrical discharge.

Don't get me wrong--I've dreamed about space elevators since I was a kid reading about Clarke's hyperfilaments, but the more I think about it, the more unworkable it seems.

There were problems with this in Las Vagas. Not from terrorists, just casinos. Here's a page about it.

Planet Goatse

Actually, the Saturnian moon "Mimas" best fits the title of the Goatse Planet, or Goatse Moon.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950924.html

No, they mean all the known and numbered asteroids in our solar system. There's around 50,000 of them, and most of them are (relatively) tiny.

I don't think they've found asteroids (or any other small objects) outside of our solar system -- they're just too small to detect. We can't even detect Earth-sized objects yet (but we'll see them soon, hopefully).

The reason why Oklahoma is in favor of cheap space and Texas throws regulatory roadblocks in front of it whenever it can is here. Once you have your snout in the federal trough, it is hard to pull it out.

You're right on! I was at the JPL-NASA-Smithsonian event this spring with O'Keefe, congressmen, Press, past JPL Directors, etc. which very effectively documented JPL achevements in the past, current research and future missions. I doubt that other NASA Center (with Government restrictions) could accomplish such effective PR. It is outstanding what JPL has achieved for the U.S. public, but as you indicate the public is often confused by who actually does the work and research at NASA as often mission telemetry, video and data on space missions are fed back using the excellent JPL downlink facilities so JPL is often given credit for project actually run by other NASA Centers. For example, how many know that the first successful Mars Landings in 1976 (Bicentenial) were the NASA Langley managed Viking Project? There are actually some that think the '97 Mars Pathfinder & Rover was our first Mars landing.
To review NASA accomplishments, I like Apollo and Solar.

You're right on! I was at the JPL-NASA-Smithsonian event this spring with O'Keefe, congressmen, Press, past JPL Directors, etc. which very effectively documented JPL achevements in the past, current research and future missions. I doubt that other NASA Center (with Government restrictions) could accomplish such effective PR. It is outstanding what JPL has achieved for the U.S. public, but as you indicate the public is often confused by who actually does the work and research at NASA as often mission telemetry, video and data on space missions are fed back using the excellent JPL downlink facilities so JPL is often given credit for project actually run by other NASA Centers. For example, how many know that the first successful Mars Landings in 1976 (Bicentenial) were the NASA Langley managed Viking Project? There are actually some that think the '97 Mars Pathfinder & Rover was our first Mars landing.
To review NASA accomplishments, I like Apollo and Solar.

You're right on! I was at the JPL-NASA-Smithsonian event this spring with O'Keefe, congressmen, Press, past JPL Directors, etc. which very effectively documented JPL achevements in the past, current research and future missions. I doubt that other NASA Center (with Government restrictions) could accomplish such effective PR. It is outstanding what JPL has achieved for the U.S. public, but as you indicate the public is often confused by who actually does the work and research at NASA as often mission telemetry, video and data on space missions are fed back using the excellent JPL downlink facilities so JPL is often given credit for project actually run by other NASA Centers. For example, how many know that the first successful Mars Landings in 1976 (Bicentenial) were the NASA Langley managed Viking Project? There are actually some that think the '97 Mars Pathfinder & Rover was our first Mars landing.
To review NASA accomplishments, I like Apollo and Solar.

You're right on! I was at the JPL-NASA-Smithsonian event this spring with O'Keefe, congressmen, Press, past JPL Directors, etc. which very effectively documented JPL achevements in the past, current research and future missions. I doubt that other NASA Center (with Government restrictions) could accomplish such effective PR. It is outstanding what JPL has achieved for the U.S. public, but as you indicate the public is often confused by who actually does the work and research at NASA as often mission telemetry, video and data on space missions are fed back using the excellent JPL downlink facilities so JPL is often given credit for project actually run by other NASA Centers. For example, how many know that the first successful Mars Landings in 1976 (Bicentenial) were the NASA Langley managed Viking Project? There are actually some that think the '97 Mars Pathfinder & Rover was our first Mars landing.
To review NASA accomplishments, I like Apollo and Solar.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's an "engineering on steroids" shop. There's plenty of research that goes on there, from earth sciences to observation of space to novel robot research (PDF).

I think there are two big reasons JPL may seem like more of an engineering shop. First, JPL and NASA are under pressure to demonstrate their relevance to Congress and the American public, and the more practical works are easier to relate in this way. Second of all, the highest profile, most expensive projects (e.g. MER) tend to use proven, existing technologies, making it looks like JPL focuses more on application than development. This is not actually the case--the science just gets less press.

ObSelfLink: I have lots of pictures of the JPL and robots I met there here.

--Tom

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's an "engineering on steroids" shop. There's plenty of research that goes on there, from earth sciences to observation of space to novel robot research (PDF).

I think there are two big reasons JPL may seem like more of an engineering shop. First, JPL and NASA are under pressure to demonstrate their relevance to Congress and the American public, and the more practical works are easier to relate in this way. Second of all, the highest profile, most expensive projects (e.g. MER) tend to use proven, existing technologies, making it looks like JPL focuses more on application than development. This is not actually the case--the science just gets less press.

ObSelfLink: I have lots of pictures of the JPL and robots I met there here.

--Tom

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's an "engineering on steroids" shop. There's plenty of research that goes on there, from earth sciences to observation of space to novel robot research (PDF).

I think there are two big reasons JPL may seem like more of an engineering shop. First, JPL and NASA are under pressure to demonstrate their relevance to Congress and the American public, and the more practical works are easier to relate in this way. Second of all, the highest profile, most expensive projects (e.g. MER) tend to use proven, existing technologies, making it looks like JPL focuses more on application than development. This is not actually the case--the science just gets less press.

ObSelfLink: I have lots of pictures of the JPL and robots I met there here.

--Tom

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's an "engineering on steroids" shop. There's plenty of research that goes on there, from earth sciences to observation of space to novel robot research (PDF).

I think there are two big reasons JPL may seem like more of an engineering shop. First, JPL and NASA are under pressure to demonstrate their relevance to Congress and the American public, and the more practical works are easier to relate in this way. Second of all, the highest profile, most expensive projects (e.g. MER) tend to use proven, existing technologies, making it looks like JPL focuses more on application than development. This is not actually the case--the science just gets less press.

ObSelfLink: I have lots of pictures of the JPL and robots I met there here.

--Tom

Aerogel

JPL has always farmed out new technology to private industry. Its our secondary charter just under our NASA work. From what I've read of the press report linked, this just seems to be a re-organization and re-focus of the old Technology Affiliates Program. I've worked primarily for non-NASA reimbursable projects. In the 10 years I've worked at JPL, I've only charged to a NASA number ONCE. And then only for a summer. A reimbursable project is when an outside organinzation pays JPL (through NASA) to do work for for them, and they get something in return, like a research paper, technology, or a piece of hardware. JPL will do the work, and then will get reimbursed by the company at completion, IIRC.

As an example of some of the work either I, or my co-workers have done under the TAP-like programs include things like systems, hardware, and behavior software for autonomous urban robots like Urbie under DARPA. Ford has funded my group to develop hardware for Engine Control, Emission Control, and diagnostics using Neural Networks. 3-Dimensional IC stacks with Irvine Sensors Corporation for novel Neural Network architectures. Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIP) imagers by various companies. Active Pixel Sensors (APS, buzword category: CMOS Imagers) has been licenced to private companies like Micron (formerly Photobit, before they were bought by Micron). Our Micro Devices Lab has farmed out a metric buttload of MEMS instruments and sensors to more companies than I can remember.

That said, JPL WILL NOT compete with private industry. We're not allowed to and it doesn't make sense to. We don't do manufuacturing or marketing. JPL does things that no-one else does. Once we figure out how to do something, we give it to someone else and figure out how to do something new. Since we are a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, it is unappropriate for us to steal business away from legitamate business. However it is appropriate for us to be in bleeding edge research areas that are still not financially or strategically desirable for private industry. The Government usually plays anchor tennant to most technolgies.

As a peon looking up, I can see why they've started to emphasize more on reimbursable projects. NASA and Congress is getting more and more fickle on what and when to pay for new projects. The next rover is finishing up soon (The Mars Exploration Rovers, or Mars '03) and work is rolling off. Everyone coming off MER is looking for new jobs and the project that was supposed to pick everyone up (Mars '05) was pushed back to '07. So the scare of layoffs is real amongst us. I'm actually in the same boat since my projects had the misfortune of ending at the same time MER did, so I'm competing with them. (I believe I've got my funding covered, but I'm in the gap at the moment taking vacation). I'm not the only one I know in my situation. If JPL can get more reimbursable projects, I believe JPL can better weather the whims of congress.

I am glad that JPL is re-emphasizing in comercialization. Although Space missions are fun, novel technology is much more satisfying to me. If we can get more industry to fund new technology, I believe the US will be much better off.

Anyone know the _optical_ resolution for maximum "zoon" on Hubble...?

There was a relevant picture at The Astronomy Picture of the Day a few months ago that mentioned this issue:

With its 2.4 diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across.

Anyone know the _optical_ resolution for maximum "zoon" on Hubble...?

There was a relevant picture at The Astronomy Picture of the Day a few months ago that mentioned this issue:

With its 2.4 diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across.

For internal use only, there is no reason you can't be your own CA, as long as you prepare a standard client load for all of your internal users. SSL is no less secure, all the cert is used for is negotiating a session key anyway.

If you're going to enroll for more than 30 or so SSL certificates a year, you have a couple of alternatives to keep costs down. You can run a RA, which means you register the certs and a trusted CA signs them (VeriSign operates under this model), or you can get a subordinate CA that is signed by a trusted CA (RSA bought Xcert so they could offer this service).

The first company to offer a tool to let you manage your own CA was Netscape, which became iPlanet, and was bought by Sun. Their documentation is great, read this explanation of the benefits of a Self-Signed Root Versus Subordinate CA.

RSA writes very good docs too, but they're new to the CA business, and I believe the way their KCA product is positioned and pricing model will change. They are mostly interested in customers who use a lot of certs, for now.

There is a description of the differences between ITAR and EAR in the following link (note:it is a Powerpoint presentation) --> link

AFAICT, serious image manipulation/analyzation is done with IDL. Check out The IDL Astronomy User's Library.

The Helios project will provide the same functionality, but with cheaper maintenance and launch costs. It is a solar-cell powered flying wing that will soar at about 60000 feet or so, with 200 pounds of payload. It may very well be the specific reason they pulled the plug on Teledisc, since they realize that most satelites will be obsoleted too soon for them to proceed with the project.

Here's an overview at JPL.

Basically, they say traces of water vapor can be found in the Sun, to water ice at Pluto and beyond in the Kupier Belt. Water ice can also be found in comets, and some water on earth is thought to be from such comets.

However, only liquid water is life enabling, where the best candidates for this are Mars (beneath the surface) and below the icy surfaces on the largest of Jupiter's moons, especially Europa (Europa ice crust). The reason Europa might support life is because Jupiter's huge gravity likely affects the moon creating great forces similar to the tidal waves on earth, which could warm the moon.

If you ask me, the Europa shots look far more interesting to me. And Europa is easier to reach than Pluto anyway. :)

Here's an overview at JPL.

Basically, they say traces of water vapor can be found in the Sun, to water ice at Pluto and beyond in the Kupier Belt. Water ice can also be found in comets, and some water on earth is thought to be from such comets.

However, only liquid water is life enabling, where the best candidates for this are Mars (beneath the surface) and below the icy surfaces on the largest of Jupiter's moons, especially Europa (Europa ice crust). The reason Europa might support life is because Jupiter's huge gravity likely affects the moon creating great forces similar to the tidal waves on earth, which could warm the moon.

If you ask me, the Europa shots look far more interesting to me. And Europa is easier to reach than Pluto anyway. :)

Here's an overview at JPL.

Basically, they say traces of water vapor can be found in the Sun, to water ice at Pluto and beyond in the Kupier Belt. Water ice can also be found in comets, and some water on earth is thought to be from such comets.

However, only liquid water is life enabling, where the best candidates for this are Mars (beneath the surface) and below the icy surfaces on the largest of Jupiter's moons, especially Europa (Europa ice crust). The reason Europa might support life is because Jupiter's huge gravity likely affects the moon creating great forces similar to the tidal waves on earth, which could warm the moon.

If you ask me, the Europa shots look far more interesting to me. And Europa is easier to reach than Pluto anyway. :)

Jargon Dictionary

Earths mag field periodically reverses too, which could cause all sorts of mischief such as affecting climate.

Nature reported that the magnetic field off the southern tip of Africa has already flipped. Anomalies like these have already reduced the strength of the planet's magnetic field by about 10 percent.

Why wait until "days later" for a webcast?

You can watch NASA TV live every day, for free.

Though you'll get -much- better quality from a nice C-band feed, at least you can get Realvideo of the event live.

Assuming their servers aren't full.

Which, especially after this posting, they most certainly will be...

Step 1

Find a way to transmit at least STILLS at high res. Maybe talk to Canon [slashdot.org] or Kodak [slashdot.org]

They already did:

presidential_full.jpg

All this, with only 7 astronauts lost.

Still, a remarkably good safety record.

When I submitted the article (yeah, little bit of bitterness), I added the following link:

Web Sources for NASA TV, or http://www.nasa.gov/ntv/ntvweb.html for the link-fearing.

But every time we see astronauts we get low-quality tv screenshots

Not sure if this is exactly what you are after, but go to NASA's Human Spaceflight Web and use the gallery.

You can also try the Kennedy Space Centre Multimedia Gallery (try the 'Hot Pics')

Those two are space shuttle/astronaut biased, but there is a LOT of other stuff like robotics, astronomy, planets, etc at NASA's Photo Media Gallery.

All of these have lots of high res (I've found 72MB(!) jpg's there) images. Be warned though, you can lose hours of your life at these sites! Hope that helps.

But every time we see astronauts we get low-quality tv screenshots

Not sure if this is exactly what you are after, but go to NASA's Human Spaceflight Web and use the gallery.

You can also try the Kennedy Space Centre Multimedia Gallery (try the 'Hot Pics')

Those two are space shuttle/astronaut biased, but there is a LOT of other stuff like robotics, astronomy, planets, etc at NASA's Photo Media Gallery.

All of these have lots of high res (I've found 72MB(!) jpg's there) images. Be warned though, you can lose hours of your life at these sites! Hope that helps.

But every time we see astronauts we get low-quality tv screenshots

Not sure if this is exactly what you are after, but go to NASA's Human Spaceflight Web and use the gallery.

You can also try the Kennedy Space Centre Multimedia Gallery (try the 'Hot Pics')

Those two are space shuttle/astronaut biased, but there is a LOT of other stuff like robotics, astronomy, planets, etc at NASA's Photo Media Gallery.

All of these have lots of high res (I've found 72MB(!) jpg's there) images. Be warned though, you can lose hours of your life at these sites! Hope that helps.

According to the FAQ at mars.jpl.nasa.gov, the batteries were not rechargeable.

On a tangent to the above, you can send your
name to Mars for Nasa's next mission. Submit your name, and
it will accompany the Red Rover on it's trip on a DVD.

Insert a probe into the atmosphere (either from the orbiter or as a separate vehicle). This probe could use one or more of several techniques (parachute, winged design (no retro-thrusters at this stage as this may contaminate the samples)) to perform a fairly slow and controlled descent.

I don't see that a slow descent is necessary or even possible. Any way you do it, your velocity with respect to the atmosphere is on the order of kilometers per second.

The easy way to do it is to enter Venus orbit in a high elliptical orbit with periapsis close to the atmosphere. First, make a few close passes with optical, UV instruments and a mass spectrometer to try and get some idea of where to lower. Natural rotation of the line of apsides will allow you to look at different latitides.

When you're ready to go in, a small delta-V will bump either a probe or the whole spacecraft down into the atmosphere, where you take your samples - either using some kind of gas capture technique, or Aerogel like the Stardust mission. You could also run your mass spectrometer at the same time. You'd need a heat shield, of course.

If you have to have low velocity capture, best thing is to brake in the atmosphere, pop up to the top with a balloon, then do in-situ analysis. Returning anything you captured low-velocity would take too much velocity capability.

Actually i am dead serious... Note that we already infected moon with earth bacteria. It's very sirious concern for all future space programs. Project to jupiter's moon Titan was held back for few years because of that.

However.. there is also quite huge chance that earth life came from space and didn't evolve on earth at all.

While I'm all for anything that gets the human race back in space, the Moon shouldn't be our first destination. It's gotta be Mars.

The Moon is a harsh environment (some would say mistress), and colonies there will likely never be able to support themselves with native resources alone. Surface temps on the Moon are scorching, water is nearly impossible to find (despite the optimistic tone of the article), there's no atmosphere to speak of, there's a lack of important metals, and the nights are two weeks long. Lunar industry and colonists will probably always need help from Earth just to stay alive.

But not Mars. Mars has water, soil, sunlight, 25 hour days, and summer daytime temps that reach almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And did I mention the sunsets?

Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.

While I'm all for anything that gets the human race back in space, the Moon shouldn't be our first destination. It's gotta be Mars.

The Moon is a harsh environment (some would say mistress), and colonies there will likely never be able to support themselves with native resources alone. Surface temps on the Moon are scorching, water is nearly impossible to find (despite the optimistic tone of the article), there's no atmosphere to speak of, there's a lack of important metals, and the nights are two weeks long. Lunar industry and colonists will probably always need help from Earth just to stay alive.

But not Mars. Mars has water, soil, sunlight, 25 hour days, and summer daytime temps that reach almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And did I mention the sunsets?

Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.