From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com>
>>In the Mars direct plan, after a voyage of 6 months, the team
>>would spent a year and a half on the surface.
>>
>> Anybody think that is a bad idea?
>>
>Exactly how much would it cost and how long would the development
>period be?
>What you want to get at when looking at something like this
>is the opportunity cost of not using the engineers or funding
>on something that might provide a bigger net ROI.
10 years and 30 billion to develop everything we need, including a new heavy lift booster (the Ares) built primarily from existing shuttle components.
Additional missions at 2 billion a pop.
I like to add a couple hundred mill to see you get the funds for developing a self rep system.... ;)
Brian
Member, Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Mars Society, www.marssociety.org
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W