Oooh that's not a good example, workload is off the charts, QOL sucks bad. They hook you initially with marketable training and lengthy service obligations, and then pay massive retention bonuses to keep a few select people to move up the ranks (highest paid military personnel in the world). SSN = "Saturday, Sunday & Nights".

Missile boats are better, due to two crews, but nobody aside from strategic weapons techs can hide out in boomers their whole career.

But NASA did actually leverage Navy culture in the early days, there were a large (disproportionate) number of Navy pilots then (and half the AF pilots were Annapolis grads). The Navy guys were used to living on the ship after the flying was done, USAF OTH was used to hitting the links and the O-club bar.

 

Dunno? I’d just as soon do some laps in one of the those fan motor para-wing seats you see at the beach than ride into outer space. No way, regardless of pay.

 

Technically, they weren't in outer space. Just low earth orbit. Think of it as a great circle route a little above the flight levels.

 

Icarus tried that. Too high for wings, not for air breathing folk.

 

Outer Space is kind of a loose term.

They were definitely in Space (Karman line).

They were definitely not in Deep Space. Only the Apollo guys have been there as far as I know.

 

They weren't in inner space, so they had that going for them (which is nice).

 

Exactly.

I'm a bit of a Musk fanboy, but when you do the slightest digging, the Mars stuff doesn't pan out.

The journey itself would be awful. The lower gravity plus DNA damage from the trip would probably mean you're DOA, or shortly thereafter. Progeny would be an absolute mess.

Makes more sense to colonize the bottom of the ocean. A million times easier.

 

There are numerous nasayers who point out the challenges of a mars trip.

But all of the challenges are known and can be mitigated. The biggies...

Overall duration and space exposure: advanced propulsion systems can get there *much* faster. Or just send fuel tankers so you can run the engines more.

Radiation: Shielding. Submarine crews actually get less exposure submerged than sitting home in their living rooms, despite being a few feet from a reactor producing power levels measured in large numbers of megawatts. Need to get creative to save weight, but lead isn't the only suitable shielding (layers of various materials actually work better anyway).

Gravity: Any four year old on a playground knows intuitively how "artificial" gravity works. And you wouldn't actually need 1G... 0.3-0.4G (Mars local) would work fine. We already know how to recover astronauts back to earth after lengthy ISS stays, the trick on this mission is being able to function on arrival at Mars without length rehab.

Really it all comes to down to money.

 

You're not the least bit embarrassed to say it, either. Remarkable.

Unfortunate, but remarkable.

 

I am too, regardless of his current party affiliation or politics.