A few years ago SLAS has a NASA rep do a talk, he did bring all these things up.
It seemed to depend a lot on undeveloped and very unproven technology. Seemed they just hoped those problems would be solved by launch time. My opinion is Constellation was more about pork and too ambitious (" Better, faster, cheaper, pick two"), we still have a lot that can be learned from ISS. A more modest program would have eliminated the need to use Russian spacecraft. Erik and everyone else, I recommend the book "Packing for Mars" by Mary
Roach. Written a few years ago, she is a scientist/journalist who seriously researched all the "little things" that go into human space exploration. While you will laugh a great deal, hopefully you will, like myself, come to the realization it just ain't that easy. Thanks to her research, you will get a clearer understanding about what we, as a nation, asked all our astronauts (and cosmonauts - she researched them too) to put up with. It's not so much about the "right stuff" but more about " what are you willing to put up with to go into space."  Then contemplate a 500 day mission to Mars - yikes! Being alone with the same few p eople for 500 days, feeding those few people for 500 days, handling human waste disposal for 500 days, providing enough air for 500 days . The ability to get the ship and to and from  Mars is easy, the devil is in the details. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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