After looking at the discovery channel's mission to mars episodes for a few weeks this is suicide. Rydiah please tell me you aren't thinking about being caught up into going up (since they need smart people up there to take care of problems if anything happens). This is crazy stuff, sure the moon was too but this is a loooooong trip. Can't we wait until we get hover boards and the carbon fiber elevator to space stations?
Also why go to a burned out planet in hopes to fix* it or make it suitable for living on after the water is found. The atmosphere is wrecked, an asteroid can hit it as good as it can hit earth, right? I just feel sorry for any astronaut that's going up there for the first round. The second round of astronauts will have it a bit better from lessons learned sure, but at the cost of the first round. They'll still have to deal with living in close quarters for up to 6 months, psychological, physical, and other problems.
Drinking purified urine, taking a bath with cloths and a few drops of water (space station situations). I know we can't send prisoners up to do this and all that but this is like cruel and unusual punishment.
Darnit Bush, you had to say it didn't you. Kennedy's effort was more realistic, this is madness.
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We're obviously advanced enough to handle this....