It's not about laziness. If it was about laziness, I'd jump on the new tech because it saves me the "arduous" step of *plugging in* (gasp). Instead I'm planning on staying with the far more demanding step of actually plugging in.

It's about forgetfulness. As I grow older and more senile, I plain and simple don't *remember* to put my devices at their designated charging locations every single night. If there was a tech that charged my devices no matter where I left them inside the confines of my house, that would something that would produce a useful value add for me.

Eliminating the plugging in phase does not produce a useful value add because I'm not so lazy that plugging in is some huge obstacle.

I don't really see the point. As long as you have to put the device in a specific location anyway, I don't see that it's much of an improvement over having to connect it with your charger. You have to connect it with a location just the same, with this new tech, just the plug is different (a pad vs a plug).

Wake me when you have a tech that charges my mobile from the moment I step in my home door and leave my mobile in my jacket pocket hanging in the foyer.

Until that use case can be satisfied, I think this is just the same-old, same-old.

Isn't that the shape of the Delta Flyer diving towards the camera?

A rocket engine is a pretty specialized piece of hardware, and without any major world wars going on, who's going to invest in advancing the technology for faster rockets? The airline industry is in dire straits as it is, it's not exactly going to be developing rocket jetliners anytime soon.

So I don't really see which of currently researched techs could make the rocket engine cheaper. I'd like to hear your thoughts on which of the technologies you mentioned (or any others) look likely to produce a better rocket engine?

What makes you assume such time will come without investing in it?

You're suggesting just sitting on our asses and hoping some magical tech will just materialize that will make everything just teddy bears and rainbows.

It proved it could be done. That's pretty meaningful.

Without Apollo, we'd still in 2009 be wondering if putting a man on the moon was even possible.

Now we *know* it's possible, it's just a matter of money.

That's a pretty damn meaningful difference.

Actually no, it's not. They both have the same delta-v requirement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

From LEO to lunar orbit is 4.1 km/s.

From LEO to L4/5 is *also* 4.1 km/s.

I imagine it's actually cheaper to go to the L-point on the line between Earth and Moon but it's less interesting than 4-5 IMO.

Until someone can come up with that "something better" than ion/chemical rockets, this is the only road available to us.

Travel with us on it, or don't.

We fully understand how massive an operation manufacturing is. That's why we need to get started *now* so we can get something built someday.

We either do something with what we tangibly, actually have, or we sit down and dream about, "oh, we could do so much if only we had MacGuffin so-and-so".

However, propellants can be mined in space instead of exported from the very expensive Earth gravity well. Hence, a mining station. I know I said "smelting", but I didn't mean an exclusively metal processing yard. NEOs have volatiles too, and they can be mined and processed into fuel without needing to import volatiles from Earth. So, a station at L4 that mines both volatiles and metals, would be invaluable to space exploration.

Yeah, that's why we need to build bases at the LPs, so we can finally experiment and figure out if we can make artificial gravity work right to compensate for things like bone loss.

One of the possibilities for radiation shielding is picking an interesting NEO and burrowing inside it, letting its crust take care of the shielding. Or the moon. Either, really. A NEO would be easier to spin up for artificial gravity experiments, though.

I agree that flag-planting missions are pointless. Unless something permanent is built, one might as well not do it.

You are correct, though, when you say that an L4/NEO mining station would have bigger long-term delta-v costs than a moonbase mining station.

We got the Apollo modules to the moon and back. L4/5 are easier to get to than the moon. Ergo, there is no technical barrier preventing us from ferrying Apollo module sized chunks of ISS-A to L4 and leaving them there. Accumulate them over time and build.

You're absolutely correct that moving the ISS itself is unfeasible. I meant building a new ISS, call it ISS-A if you want.

Yes, it would require massive amounts of tonnage to be lifted from Earth, but at least it would be a long-term investment that won't fall out of the sky someday like ISS will. Build it slower than the ISS for all I care, but something permanent needs to be built in space, and unless you get it to a Lagrange Point, it will be a wasted effort.

The delta-v required once you've achieved Earth escape velocity, to the closest NEOs, is 0.8 km/s. That's *half* of what you need to get from lunar surface to lunar orbit, in other words the Apollo lander module's fuel supply would be enough for a trip to a NEO and back, once you've gotten out of Earth's gravity well.

Not really. It just hasn't been tried yet because NASA, for all its achievements, isn't exactly a daring and innovative agency.

There's no big technological barrier preventing us from an L4 - NEO - L4 trip. It's totally within the realm of possibility. It only needs to be done.