From Yahoo! News: Senators to NASA chief: Go somewhere specific
President Obama’s budget proposal would axe NASA’s planned trip to the moon. So where should NASA send astronauts? The long-term goal is to send astronauts to Mars, but what are good shorter-term objectives?
Here are two items that caught my attention regarding a future trip to Mars:
- Using inflatable spaceship parts
- Technological advances that would cut travel time to Mars down from three months to “a matter of days.”
On a humorous note, NASA has a graphic that shows possible destinations to send astronauts in upcoming years. I’m not sure that “Sun” is all that good of an idea.
Grace and Peace
GeoChristian 
What are Lagrangian points? I’m somewhat familiar with who Lagrange was – that he applied differential calculus to Newtonian astronomy during the Enlightenment, but I haven’t heard of Lagrangian points.
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Lagrangian points are where the gravitational attraction between two objects (such as the Earth and moon, or Earth and sun) cancel each other out.
There are certain types of satellites that are best placed in certain Lagrangian points. For example, a good place to place some sun observation satellites is at a point where the Earth and sun’s gravitational attractions cancel each other out. At this point, the satellite is always in the same position relative to both Earth and the sun.
As far as a place to send astronauts—rather boring.
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What I think is funny is how we cannot only orbit our moon but NASA has no problem landing on a Martian moon which we have never had any experience with.
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