Here is the 28 page Mars Flyby Architecture Study Report Summary
This proposal seems to be worth the risk.
People go in the thousands every year to climb Mount Everest and about one in 20 die.
This would be the biggest achievement in Manned space since the first moon landing in 1969.
If we are going to make big advances in space and not wait many decades then we need to be willing to take some risks.
NASA is not spending $16-18 billion each year to do anything else nearly as interesting.
The best use of NASA money would be drive down the cost of access to space by ten times or one hundred times or more. However, that has not been done.
Here is a 2 page factsheet about the Mars Flyby.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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