Going Back to the Moon and Mars

An anonymous reader writes "An interesting three-part interview with author Dr. Andrew Chaikin discusses whether humans or machines could best explore the moon or Mars and even whether a crew could get along with each other for three years on an extended mission. His Mars planning draws on Apollo mission transcripts, and he cites mishaps with the Apollo 15 lunar rover almost sliding catastrophically down a mountain, an astronaut argument as to who took the most famous earthrise picture and what after 14 months in space, the Russian record-holder uses to recover his land legs: 'One vodka, one sauna'."

Comments

Re:The bravery to take the first few steps...

[ibullard]

If traversing from the trees to the ground costed millions of dollars per person we would still be up there, governments or not.

I've also seen a silly comment cracking that our "ancestors settled America using unmanned prairie probes" and "Neanderthals also used unmanned probes to locate food and heat sources."

If you can't see the difference between exploration of the Earth, where in every example posted thus far you don't have to pack 100% of your water & food into a very expensive vehicle and pray your calculations are correct, and exploration of Space then I suggest you go pack your mule and explore the moon. It can't be that hard, right?

Damn politicians just don't know anything about space.