>>>Apparently astronaut Young didn't realize his microphone was on
>>>
>>>http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html
>>>(1. click "Apollo 16" link
>>>2. then click "Debrief and Goodnight" under "The First EVA" under the "The Journal"
>>>3. look at around 128:50:37
>>>at around 128:53:58 he's informed about the hot mike )
>>
>>What I find interesting (to me) about the Apollo images is they don't look old because there has been no progress in manned lunar exploration since. But if you look at the images from on the ground at the time, the cars , the clothes , the technology all look very dated
>
>Of course, when one considers the cost of such a venture, perhaps it's not surprising (IIRC the Apollo program cost was estimated to be around $20~$26 billion in 1969 dollars -- or around $120~$170 billion in 2015 dollars). Let's not forget that the time spent on lunar surface was measured in days (shortest was slightly less than a day, longest was just over 3 days).
>
>As far as Mars is concerned, that's a orders of magnitude harder. The moon is only around 2 days trip to get there and around 2 days to get back. Mars would be something like 9 months out and 9 months back, and since it takes so long to get there, you probably want to stay longer -- so the total time for the expedition would be close to 3 years. Also it's probably reasonable to say that you're not going to want more than 2 people on the surface. I don't think that such an expedition will come cheap.
>
>
>It's interesting to note how the Saturn V rocket that was used is pretty close in specifications to the early proposals using the (never built) Nova rocket. In addition to this, the Nova was designed with the idea of a direct ascent profile (where astronauts didn't transfer from one vehicle to another for landing), rather than the lunar orbit rendezvous profile that was eventually used (the LOR profile ends up being much lighter and compact). Looking at some envisioned plans for lunar expeditions, the launch vehicles that were planned (where Nova was considered the ultimate in size) would seem seriously undersized (unless you used the Earth Orbit Rendezvous profile, where you used multiple rocket launches and assemble the expedition components in orbit). The late 1930s BIS lunar spaceship looks even more seriously undersized for the task.
>
>Other bit that's interesting -- an early General Electric proposal for Apollo has a configuration that's very close to the Soviet Soyuz craft.

Eventually something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler would be interesting. Not equipment thats throw away.