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Comment Cut the program (Score 1) 479

There are a couple of fundamental problems.
1. Chemical rockets are expensive and have low energy density.
2. Humans in space require ridiculous levels of life-support that steal much of what precious little energy we are able to cram into a chemical rocket.

Lets not have a repeat of the automobile engine. Lets move on to a new engine. The vast amounts of money being used to prevent astronauts from dieing in space could fund a whole lot of propulsion R&D that might well result in a drive system that would be safer and actually make human space flight practical from a both an economic and a safety perspective.

In the meantime, robots in space are cheaper and can go further than any human. No human could take the radiation exposure implied by a trip to Europa or Enceladus for example.

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