Slashdot Mirror
The Mathematics of a Trip to Mars?
hakonhaugnes wonders: "Since trips to Mars seems commonplace (NASA has sent one every 26 months), I thought it made sense to try to understand how the interplanetary trajectory is calculated. NASA's page is deploringly void of intricate details. I found this
excellent page, but it still left me feeling that I was missing something. Surely the calculus must go beyond two bodies (mars/earth)? (It seems there are commercial MATLAB scripts available but at $150 it went beyond the defensible to satisfy my curiosity). Are there any curious Slashdot readers with the usual great insight into how to calculate a trip to Mars?"
Why don't you go suck some pig cock, tree fucker?
I realize that this is a 'geek' site. Nevertheless, I am compelled once again to point out that plotting, planning, and financing a trip to Mars is about the biggest waste of public funds possible. (No corporation, especially a corporation with stockholders, would dream of wasting funds in such a spectacularly stupid fashion).
Take all the people who are currently seriously spending public money on a trip to Mars. Divide that by the amount of money being spent on these people. Take all these people and instead buy them round trip tickets to Paris and have them spend several days in Mlle. Monique's Maison de la Magnifique. They'll be happy. We'll be happy that they didn't blow all that money on science fiction fantasy. Or send them to Amsterdam, feed them some space cake and let them loose in the red-light district. Trip to the red planet indeed!
Space exploration is nothing more than welfare for the geeks. It consumes tons of money and contributes nothing of any value to anyone who doesn't have a billion dollar no-bid US government contract.
But we learn so much from space research!
We don't learn shit from space research. Any peripheral knowledge gained would have been gained much cheaper by focusing the research on the subject in the first place.
The world may blow up or self-destruct and space research will provide us with a Noah's Ark
Son, LSD and religious fundamentalism doesn't mix. If you want rapture, go to Mlle. Monique's Maison de la Magnifique. You'll get raptured. By the way, LSD and super-sex doesn't mix well either. Focus on one at a time.
A trip to Mars will inspire humanity to a new vision... A movie about a trip to Mars will inspire humanity to a new vision, and be much cheaper. Besides all the billions spent on the trips to the Moon sure did a lot for world peace, didn't it?
Any justification for spending billions on a trip to Mars is going to just as valid 200 years from now. Think long term. The money spent on a trip to Mars would be better spent on a global systematic defense against a global pandemic, like 1918 influenza or the 1348 black plague.
Hell, the money would be better spent on brain research to determine why a fanatical minority feel that a trip to Mars would be such a good thing.
Before mod'ing me into the minus regions, consider that the questions that I'm raising are going to get stronger as real problems get more serious and justifications for space expenditure get more ludicrous.