Re: What's a good "proton reflector"?

In article <1134077396.499175.176990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Sbharris[atsign]ix.netcom.com" <sbharris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>mmeron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> Note, though, that the trip ain't cheap. 5000 bombs comes to few
>> years worth the US production at the peak of the Cold War. Quite a
>> lot to expend on a single trip.
>
>
>Well, a single trip to the planets using conventional drive is
>expensive, too. Consider the bother of trying to keep people in space
>for 6 months each way, to go back and forth to just Mars. How big a
>craft to make sure their bones don't dissolve from the zero-g, and to
>protect them from cosmic radiation for that long? (Easier to protect
>from the low energy junk from the nukes!). Plus, your astronauts aren't
>obligated, as with conventional Hohman missions, to spend either a
>couple of weeks, or else 18 months on Mars, with no other time options
>in between.
>
>5,000 bombs (less for a Mars mission) might be mass produced at 10
>million each, marginal cost (I remember this figure from the neutron
>bomb debates of years past, where they were arguing that this was too
>much to spend to kill a Soviet T-72). And I think 500 billion is
>certainly in the range of interplanetary missions using tech that
>requires multi-year voyages.

Nah, nobody is going to spend anywhere near this amount. Especially
as this is a "per mission cost", not stuff like Apollo, with 20
billion (60s) dollars to develop the system, but just another half
billion or so for each additional shot.

As I wrote elsewhere in this thread, the issue is not just how to get
something done but how to get it done at reasonable cost and effort.
Granted, the boundaries of "reasonable" are fuzzy but there are still
boundaries.

As an aside, the numbers you gave before (2000 ton ship, 1 MT bombs),
forget it. It'll get vaporized.

> If you can cut trip time to weeks, you
>save a bundle on all that. Hey, it all sounds like a plan to me. But
>then I wanted to keep the Saturn V and avoid the space shuttle. What do
>I know?
>
>A friend of mine recently visited NASA mission control and they have a
>gift shop. Available is a T-shirt which says "NASA, it's not rocket
>science." On the back "Oh, uh, I guess it is, isn't it?" But that
>could've been left off.
>
:-)))

I'm afraid that what would fit better, nowadays would be the quote
(sorry, I don't recall the source:

"Many agencies have a PR department. NASA is a PR department that has
an agency".

Mati Meron | "When you argue with a fool,
meron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | chances are he is doing just the same"
.

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