How are you going to deal with potentially hazardous forward- and backward-contamination and the pressure to conform to bioethics principles in the face of "go fever"? Two planets are at stake.

We have barely scratched the surface of Mars and do not know if there is bacteria or larger life there. I ask everyone else that is working on humans-to-Mars this question. Almost everyone that is pro-space has a cowboy attitude about it but the facts are that the first footstep on Mars begins the terraforming process and if Mars has any life that anyone going there is never coming home. "We'll deal with it later" does not work in planetary protection and spoils a lot of the bio-science that can be done virtually on a living Mars.

The MarsOne project will have a lot of "go fever" or pressure to execute because of the funding model. Any human mission to Mars needs to take the time to do the biological research before committing a crew to the surface. Four people dying from something hostile on the surface of Mars makes for a great movie but terrible reality TV.

Also every Mars one-way mission proposed has faced immense negative public pressure because they always are labelled as a suicide mission.

FYI my argument boils down to needing extensive realtime ops from Mars orbit in support of surface development and a need for an orbital forward base. Producing this resource is my long-term plan.

"The television station also reported the company isn't incorporated in Rhode Island, but rather Delaware as a limited liability company, which would deem 38 Studios ineligible for tax credits in the state."

This is fraud if anyone but a famous, rich athlete does it.

Water is by far the driving material resource. Metals are insignificant compared to water for human utilization. That Planetary Resources wants to track NEOs is also important. They have definitely done their homework.

When this news started to break last week it was unclear if they were just going after PGMs or had a more comprehensive strategy.

Electricity is the next step. Power beamed to provide propulsion and operating energy to other spacecraft. After that, beamed power to new space facilities, then gigawatts of green power to Earth.

Then water. Jim Head says "Follow the water." Find water sources that are at or near the top of the gravity well - Phobos, Deimos, Amor-Atens or Earth-crossing NEOs with high water content.

Those two resources enable reliable access to the Lunar and Martian surfaces. Minerals, lunar polar ice and many other elements are further down the list of needed (re: profitable) materials.

That said, such a well-heeled team has surely looked deeper into the specifics.

Vieques would be likely - Navy controlled territory in PR.

This could be an application for a Bussard Ramjet - collect the forward wave's particles for power or thrust. TFA said the problem is mostly blue-shifted components in the front wave, just remove the problem.

Also if Alcqubiere Drives are possible, they will make terrifying weapons. It's a neutron bomb for an entire solar system. *shudders*

Most of the younger generation knows "Santorum" as the slippery substance first and are surprised then LOL when discovering such a deserving ... person shares that name. Google has nothing to do with the search results beyond providing the framework. Search result modification by popular participation is a valid form of social critique.

This could become the SUSTAIN platform the USMC has asked for. Spacedrop a squad of Marines anywhere in the world within 40 minutes. The main question though is whether the crewed X37 will include commercial access or is this military only?

100X cheaper is roughly $100 per pound to LEO. That is absolutely doable with robust RLV architectures. It's just that no one has really tried yet. Musk has shown an entirely new way of building and operating otherwise conservative rockets. He chose the most known path (single core, 2nd stage, capsule) for a default cargo/crew system but used his knowledge of innovation to make that into the most affordable rocket on the planet, in 8 years.

This is one of the advantages of older water-landing proposals like the Boeing LEO from the 70s. It would have reached terminal velocity in the atmosphere then propulsive braking and dropped into a freshwater landing pond. That was for much, much larger hardware. Jon Goff has done extensive trades on propulsive vs heatshield/chute/etc reentry methods and propulsive comes out looking pretty good.

This reusable Falcon will have the same fireproof curtaining between it's engines and the rest of the outside is metal so not much of it will burn. Still has the issue of blast coming back from the tarmac. The animation's landing legs are pretty hefty, have to wait and see on real hardware.

It was to late to restart the contracting process by the time Obama came into office in early '09. To many contractors had already laid critical staff off. Shuttle was a dead letter after the Columbia tragedy; after RTF they were only flying out the remaining manifest. CCDEV, especially SpaceX and Boeing, is the way to go forward. Wings don't matter where there is no atmosphere.

We nuked each other, we'll nuke the little green buggers too.

My real critique of this is why would the aliens care so much for Earth's environment. We are a very aggressive, technical species with a penchant for things like nuclear bombs. Logically if they were going to exterminate us it would be for those reasons not because we don't tend the daffodils.

Go to the tech college in Takoradi, Ghana and install a FabFi mesh network. The students have to go to an Internet cafe for network access. They were one of the Fab Academy labs this year but had trouble keeping up due to lack of access.

This might not be as basic as digging wells or whatever but is much more technical.

Only really need: LEO, Earth-Moon L1 (EML1) and supplies in Mars orbit, then stage downward for surface expeditions.

But have to disagree with the message. We can not be seen as dumping/abandoning people in space. Dr. Davies' concept for crew transit has much merit but only if it becomes a sustainable method of transportation. We need to plan for the first crews to Mars but also for 10,000 people there.

We also need to plan for surface-to-orbit and Earth-return not just brush those aside. Cost-benefit to Mars orbit-only or orbit-early also need to be performed. Just dropping a crew on the surface has some serious unknown issues.