What a Great Idea #13

I had an idea for how to get to other heavenly bodies (moon, Mars) faster. The biggest problem we have is getting all the stuff necessary to sustain life to the place we want to sustain life, along with the life we want to sustain. So why not send the stuff first? Just get a big block of ice (like a couple of tons worth) and put a big honkin' rocket under it, and hit launch?

I mean, you don't really even have to put retro rockets or stabilizers on it. So what if it crashes? as long as you send it somewhere that the sun won't hit, it will stay ice. Same with the frozen TV dinners the astronauts eat. Although you would probably want them to land nicely. I don't know about you, but I would hate for the peas to get mixed in with the cherry crumble.

I'm definitely one of those people who prefers that the different types of food on my plate don't touch each other. I mean, the point of having mashed potatoes with gravy is to taste mashed potatoes and gravy. But that doesn't mean I want to see what gravy and fruit salad tastes like. You gotta keep 'em separated.

Back on point, once you got the food and water on planet, start sending buildings. Modules of pre-fab housing and what not. As it is everything is automated now a days, so they could probably come up with something that assembled itself. By the time humans got back to the moon there would already be a little city waiting for them.

Heck, for that matter why don't we send a robot to the moon that can build a runway? Then we could take the shuttle to the moon, land it, and take off again. It can't be that hard to build a robot that can level dirt. All you really need is a flat stretch of ground to land a plane. Obviously the shuttle would need to be modified since it was only built for Earth-orbit, but all I'm saying is it can't be that hard.