Thanks for the feedback. I haven't heard of "bash strict mode" before. Haven't heard of envsubst either. I'll make a better rss script as I learn more about scripting.
Thanks for the links, it’s cool to see a video showing how the gliders could have looked liked if they were real. I haven’t heard of that film project.
Electrolyzing water would also give hydrogen which would make the transpiration of materials easier. I’m guessing that it would require a large amount of electricity to get enough hydrogen/oxygen from the water (they really would need a miniature nuclear reactor).
Edit: for my last comment (which I can’t edit now) I meant to say that hydrogen has a high energy content by mass but not by volume. So 1kg of the stuff has a huge amount of energy but also takes up a lot of physical space.
I don’t think it would be an issue finding people for a one-way mars mission. Guys already sign themselves to fight in wars that they don’t expect to return from. Being memorialized and known is enough (especially for the case for men) for some people to go on one-way missions. Being part of something greater than themselves is enough for some people.
That’s fair enough. If the goal itself was to get people there and back for the technical challenge/knowledge then a one-way mission does not make much sense.
But if the point was to start a long-term colony on mars then it would make sense to first send people that would not expect to come back. Robots are cool, but I’m guessing that us humans with our arms and fingers will be able to do general tasks better than robots will for a long while. Humans have ability to fix things, reach things, and to improvise which robots generally lack. Construction or factories on mars will require people on the ground managing those projects.
There would also be a scientific benefit understanding how people age and how long-term social relations can last on mars.
I haven't kept track much on how feasible the Starship rocket is. Maybe it's not that hard to make fuel on mars. Maybe humanity is making good progress figuring out how to transfer fuel in space. You sound much more educated than me on the advancements being made.
I still think it would way more feasible to just to find 5-6 guys in the 25-30 year range to send on a one-way expedition. Instead of spending all of their time maintaining a factory making fuel these guys could be spending time exploring the planet and doing experiments. In return humanity would memorialize them and try to send them stuff to stay alive. After a few years we would try to send another crew to join the first crew to make more progress on the planet and build from there.
There is also a tendency, especially in America, to reduce everything to discussing the baddies of ww2, or at the very least, to not separate scientific discussions from political discussions.
I haven't heard of Mars Direct, but from reading the link you gave me it sounds like a plan to start automated fuel production plants on mars to make fuel for trips back to earth. It requires the transportation of a small nuclear power-plant to mars as well as hydrogen to synthesize methane from the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Off the bat I would say that hydrogen would be a pain to transport to mars (hydrogen has a high energy density by weight but not by volume) but don't know much else to think about the project.
Within the decade? I wish I was that optimistic. There are only so many windows in the next decade where it's economical to send/receive rockets to mars. The planets have to literally align for it can be economical to send/receive people.
I really doubt that humanity will make trip to earth from mars in the next 50 years. It already takes a huge amount of fuel to land on Mars -- its not economical to launch enough fuel for a return trip (even if some of the fuel could stay in orbit like with the moon landings). Much better idea to find the few people that are fine living and dying on mars. Humanity has not returned a single sample from mars even though we've been landing spacecraft on mars for 50 years.
I wonder what's the math on trying to use a huge rail gun on Mars to shoot things into orbit. I know that people have talked about using rail guns on the moon to shoot and other materials ore back to earth (or even to mars) -- but the moon has less of an atmosphere and less of a gravitational pull than mars.