the martian was amazing, go see it. such a delight that such upbeat, yet accurate movies about the future continue to be made.

Read a fascinating and well-written popular article on NASA’s newly released “Roadmap to Mars.” It is so good to see progress in the bureaucracy adapting to ideas some of use were bruiting decades ago — like in-situ production – on Mars – of the water and fuel and oxygen astronauts will need, instead of expensively hauling them all from Earth. (Note this concept was largely absent from The Martian.) It also includes testing our methods with asteroid retrieval projects that could wind up benefiting humanity and Earth more than the Mars missions would! Certainly it is good to see the plan almost completely leave out our sterile/useless (for now) moon. Been there. There’s nothing (for now) there.

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