Re: Newtonian ships or not?.
Not only travel but simple survival in space might be more difficult than we realize. It's amazing to think how little we really know about space travel. Only the dozen or so men sent to the Moon in the 1960s and early 1970s have ever been outside of the Earth's magnetic field. And that only for a few days. Everything else we think we 'know' about space travel is speculation from SciFi.
Just about every single lunar astronaut had some sort of psychiatric problems when they returned. You could easily assign this to 'stress' of course. They had been on a very dangerous mission (think of the creaky little tin-can space ships they traveled in!) and were trained very rigorously, so being released from that pressure and sitting back and realizing what a dangerous thing they had done could have had an effect on their mental stability.
But we don't have access to their medical records. Only the US Government has access to all of their medical records. I've seen some NASA people post on other discussion Boards that the 'real reason' we haven't returned to the Moon is classified. In other words, it was not simply budget reductions. There was a real reason that the Moon missions stopped. Could they have noticed something in the medical information about the returned astronauts? Were they affected in unexpected ways? Maybe life here on Earth has some important relationship with the magnetic field and leaving the earth's magnetic field unbalances something in our biology? Changing your home might not be as simple as jumping from one rock to another in space. Life processes could be dependent on other factors that we haven't figured out yet. We may be part of this planet in a way that we cannot change.
[ March 28, 2004, 00:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]
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