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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

You can also rotate the crew on the moon. Can send things to the moon you didn't anticipate. Can send replacement/repair parts.

Can't do that for Mars.

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Of course you can, it just takes a few orders of magnitude longer.

If the one specialist in your mission dies and it takes 8 years to send a new one, that's not called an effective replacement.

It doesn't take 8 years to get to mars unless you are waiting for the most efficient orbits with chemical rockets. NERVA was built and successfully tested 50 years ago, and it will get you to mars in a few months.

Just send the information and teach a new specialist onlune.

(And don't forget to take an ebook-reader with you in the spaceship with an extensive e-books library).

Has it ever taken 8 years to send something to the moon?

At least in the US, if we urgently needed to send something to the moon in 8 years, we would not be able to do it. Between politically making it happen, deciding who spends the money on it, choosing a contractor that represents the right disadvantaged special interest group, years of contract negotiation, town hall discussions, environmental impact studies, project management failures, budget overruns, pork barrel carve-outs and jobs programs for various congresspeople's districts, etc. it would take way more than 8 years.

Depending on how you count, e.g. May 1961 (Freedom 7 flight) to July 1969 (Apollo 11 flight), yes.

By then you'll be dead if you actually needed those replacement parts.

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