Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 10, 2017

The original “Planet of the Apes” movie scared people from the whole deep space travel business.

Duct tape was good in the 70’s its still good today.

It’s not about research, Zonk, it’s an attempt at an escape hatch so wealthy and powerful people have another excuse to turn the planet into a pit. Get with the times, man!

Trudeau makes a point I’ve been saying ever since this Mars manned-mission planning started being hyped a few years ago. It’s insanely expensive. The money would be better spent here. If they’re serious about the Mars manned missions, it probably is with the anticipation that the rich will need somewhere to escape to after Earth has finally been trashed beyond hope of redemption.

When I was young, in the 1950’s and early 1960’s I always thought that by the time I was in my 50’s we would have achieved space travel. The golden age of space exploration was all around us in the early 60’s. Then I realized if I wanted to explore anything beyond the moon the only way was to buy a large telescope and learn the sky. My generation is not going to the outer planets, let alone the stars, but you can visit the cosmos every night if you are blessed with a dark sky and a good scope.

Cut off all the lights at night instead of wasting power keeping them on and then you can see the stars. The same ones that transfixed our ancestors. Mars is a pipe dream right now. Let the Chinese go. More power to them. Our people have been putting trillions into a secret space fleet that no one else can touch.

Weed tales

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke had manned flights to Saturn (Jupiter in the movie) by 2001. Didn’t quite work out that way.

We’re on Mars now, using rovers. They actually have the surface available for viewing on Google Earth. Zonker is right: Actual human beings would add almost nothing, and be incredibly difficult and expensive. The fact that it would be an emotional rush to do it isn’t a good enough reason.

If it moves and it’s not supposed to: Duct tape

If it’s supposed to move and doesn’t: WD-40

Yes, it will be expensive, but we have to go, because it’s our only basket and all the eggs in it that we are trashing.

netpaul12:the red green show

The final statement is right though – people don’t fix things much.

Why would anyone want to go to Mars when they can stay here to help Make America Great Again and be governed by Donald and Ivanka Trump?

@WaitingMan In 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke had routine manned flights to the Moon.

Duct tape – the binding force of the universe.

A friend of mine rebuilt the rusted-out tailgate of his pick-up with duct tape. Ironically, it has been found to not work very well on ducts.

Zonker seems to be uncharacteristically wiser than he has been in the past.

If we want to go to space and colonize, why not go to Saturn’s moons? Or set up a refinery/factory on the moon for mining the asteroids?

It was duct tape that got the Apollo 13 boys back home! That said, I use Gorilla Tape now, it’s more expensive but makes duct tape look like a dollar store bandaid.

Early argument at NASA: robots vs. astronauts. Robots don’t need the expensive life-support measures like Zonk said but robots aren’t made into inspiring heroes to motivate a nation

Name the first ships Magellan & Cook as a reminder that you don’t have to make it back to be remembered as a great explorer. If you insist on a return trip you can’t go nearly as far.

Looks like we are having a trump break this week, while also watching out for Hurricane Irma.

Any number of well informed, thotful scientists have observed that space can be explored much more quickly, cheaply, and safely by robots than by human beings. Seldom in world history has a statement been so completely accurate while so utterly missing the point.

In one of his last books, Carl Sagan pointed out that no really long-lived civilization could survive unless it develops space travel, because major asteroid impacts will be inevitable in any solar system over the course of millennia. Larry Niven summed up the situation with the memorable phrase: “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.” And we will deserve to become extinct if we don’t have one.

The biggest problem with sending people to Mars is how to get them back to earth. That’s why some people are talking about one-way trips.Except, of course, for Alex “Info Wars” Jones, who claims that NASA already has colonies of child slaves on Mars. Plus an asylum run by the inmates— oh, wait, that’s what “Info Wars” is.

Does no one remember Apollo 13? Saved by duct tape holding the improvised air scrubber together.

Why would anyone want to live where there are no TREES?

Why go? We can mechanically mine what we want there and bring it back. Not worry about oxygen, food, getting killed or hurt. We will also have to realize we need to take better care of Earth.

Neil Degrasse Tyson (excuse my spelling errors) makes the point that why should we go and trash another planet. Wouldn’t it be a better use of brains and money to fix this one. That doesn’t mean that exploration into outer space should be stopped, it just means that it shouldn’t have a focus of putting humans on Mars, rather it should be finding out other stuff. I have to say that I agree.

Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side, a dark side and it binds the universe together.

It would help if we weren’t spending over half a trillion dollars on a global spanning imperial sized military.

As good as the ganja is these days, Zonker doesn’t need to leave planet Earth to make it to Mars and beyond!

We no longer teach critical thinking or creative problem solving skills. We teach them how to use the internet, and test-taking strategies. When we TRY to teach those higher order thinking skills, our principals criticize us for not teaching to the objectives, or getting off subject.

RE: Red Green ;-)