Even if it was habitable, isn't most of the problem with going to Mars the fact that it takes a half of a year to get there - not a couple days like the moon?
Saturn is YEARS away. Like 4-7 depending on where the planets are at.
Saturn is YEARS away. Like 4-7 depending on where the planets are at.
Because the numbers just don't work for chemical rockets. The already-harsh rocket equations get even worse when you have to carry along the mass to feed, water, and breath, too.
There is ~4.5 billion tons of uranium already in sea water [1].
If that fact surprises you, you may just have not known it. If that fact scares you or makes you want to deny it, you're probably still stuck in the irrational fear I'm talking about. The world is not a pristine place with no radioactivity in it until Man comes along and somehow, like, manufactures it from nothing but his sheer Evil for the nefarious purpose of destroying the environment, mu-hu-ha-ha-ha. It's a thing that's already out there. It's not that terrifying if we take basic precautions that, it turns out, we already take because you know what's way scarier than a few dozen pounds of uranium falling near you? A flaming exploding rocket falling on you. So we already don't launch over cities and such.
And we really won't progress as long as people can not only act irrationally about the real dangers, but think they're being more moral by being irrational about the dangers than people actually using their brains and that it's vital to yell at the people using their brains and attempt to socially pressure them into just going with the herd and assigning infinite danger to the scariness of OMGRadiation!!!1!.
[1]: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/ferguson2/
So I don't know what you are raving about.
Yes, anything involving radiation causes fear. The reality is that the atomic bomb tests deposited tons of plutonium in the atmosphere and no one has detected any health consequences from that. I am not sure why someone would say a few dozen more pounds of plutonium would matter.
A lot of ethically questionable scientific research might potentially be performed by so-called "rogue states" that don't feel bound by international norms.
We're seeing something like that in regards to copyright and patents, where some countries that don't respect intellectual property have no problems violating copyright and patents of countries that do.
Similarly, cloning research and human-embryo research that might be banned in some countries is being performed by others. Launching nukes it to space is another opportunity to advance for countries that have no ethical problems with that.
Wouldn't it make sense to have a methane mining base on Titan anyway?