Mars is actually fiendishly difficult to land on, due to having an atmosphere, but only a very thin one. It's enough of an atmosphere to have to deal with it, but not enough to provide much in the wa… (View Post)

6 months or thereabouts is the one-way trip length. A round trip (there, loiter and back) can never take much less that 2 years or so because of the time between conjunctions of Earth and Mars. (View Post)

The only way that makes sense is if you think climate change will have no effect on ordinary people, which is obviouly incorrect. (View Post)

Even if we were to burn the all the remaining fossil fuel reserves, it's unlikely that it would initiate a runaway greenhouse effect a la Venus. James Hansen used to think it would, but later calcula… (View Post)

I doubt that there's much point in trying to mitigate climate change now. The world simply doesn't have the political will to it. Trump and Putin clearly couldn't give a fuck. China and Europe are ma… (View Post)