Here's a blatant self-link (to my company's blog, no less) -- my business partner is pretty sure he invented prior art on these patents in high-school:
Well, to start, posting the question anonymously means that nobody who actually does this sort of a thing for a living can contact you:-). Not sure if that was the intended effect or not.
I run a 25-engineer development shop in Colorado named Cardinal Peak (http://www.cardinalpeak.com). We do quite a bit of development on OS/X and Linux, including open-source development, and I'd be happy to talk with you about your needs.
Please forgive the obvious self-serving nature of this response, but it seemed on-topic for the original question.
Any reasonable Mars mission profile would entail assembling an inter-planetary ship in earth orbit and then flying that ship to martian orbit.
I am currently reading the book The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. I highly recommend it. He would take exception to your statement: The "Mars Direct" plan he favors involves Saturn V class rockets sending a crew and Earth Return Vehicle straight from Earth to Mars, with no inter-planetary ship needed.
I am not expert enough to know whether Zubrin's ideas are sound or not, though he certainly seems to have thought the plan out. One thing I CAN say, however, is that if we're going to Mars we've got to find a plan that is relatively fast and relatively inexpensive. NASA estimated in the 90s that it would cost $50B over 10 years to implement "Mars Direct". That's a lot of money, but is still less than the President asked Congress to find for one year in Iraq on Sunday. So if we choose to, we can definitely afford something like Mars Direct.
I'm not as certain we can afford to build inter-planetary ships in a LEO space-dock, as you propose. I bet the government contractors would like that -- which is why they are trying to shape opinion in the science community around what you are proposing -- but I'm not sure we can build the public consensus needed for that level of investment. Nor am I convinced it is good, elegant engineering.
Funny though, you never hear about people who are 30 lbs. overwieght smokers getting rejected for coverage.
I don't know about this... in the US smokers pay more (a lot more) for life insurance, and to get life insurance above a certain coverage amount you are forced by the insurance company to have a medical exam. Is medical insurance that much different than life insurance? There is a 100% chance that everyone covered by life insurance will die in the end...
I don't like the policy any more than you, but I think there are already precedents for varying the price of medical insurance based on the risk involved. You may not have to take a medical exam to get coverage as an individual, but as someone who has negotiated for group coverage I can tell you it is a lot cheaper to buy medical coverage for a bunch of healthy 30 year-olds who exercise a lot than it is to buy it for a bunch of older people. DNA testing is coming too, I'm sure.
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Here's a blatant self-link (to my company's blog, no less) -- my business partner is pretty sure he invented prior art on these patents in high-school:
http://www.cardinalpeak.com/blog/?p=633
Well, to start, posting the question anonymously means that nobody who actually does this sort of a thing for a living can contact you :-). Not sure if that was the intended effect or not.
I run a 25-engineer development shop in Colorado named Cardinal Peak (http://www.cardinalpeak.com). We do quite a bit of development on OS/X and Linux, including open-source development, and I'd be happy to talk with you about your needs.
Please forgive the obvious self-serving nature of this response, but it seemed on-topic for the original question.
Any reasonable Mars mission profile would entail assembling an inter-planetary ship in earth orbit and then flying that ship to martian orbit.
I am currently reading the book The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. I highly recommend it. He would take exception to your statement: The "Mars Direct" plan he favors involves Saturn V class rockets sending a crew and Earth Return Vehicle straight from Earth to Mars, with no inter-planetary ship needed.
I am not expert enough to know whether Zubrin's ideas are sound or not, though he certainly seems to have thought the plan out. One thing I CAN say, however, is that if we're going to Mars we've got to find a plan that is relatively fast and relatively inexpensive. NASA estimated in the 90s that it would cost $50B over 10 years to implement "Mars Direct". That's a lot of money, but is still less than the President asked Congress to find for one year in Iraq on Sunday. So if we choose to, we can definitely afford something like Mars Direct.
I'm not as certain we can afford to build inter-planetary ships in a LEO space-dock, as you propose. I bet the government contractors would like that -- which is why they are trying to shape opinion in the science community around what you are proposing -- but I'm not sure we can build the public consensus needed for that level of investment. Nor am I convinced it is good, elegant engineering.
I don't know about this ... in the US smokers pay more (a lot more) for life insurance, and to get life insurance above a certain coverage amount you are forced by the insurance company to have a medical exam. Is medical insurance that much different than life insurance? There is a 100% chance that everyone covered by life insurance will die in the end...
I don't like the policy any more than you, but I think there are already precedents for varying the price of medical insurance based on the risk involved. You may not have to take a medical exam to get coverage as an individual, but as someone who has negotiated for group coverage I can tell you it is a lot cheaper to buy medical coverage for a bunch of healthy 30 year-olds who exercise a lot than it is to buy it for a bunch of older people. DNA testing is coming too, I'm sure.