newman

I kind of doubt any sort of mining is the goal behind the Chinese moon program. Anything you can mine on the moon you can find here at a much lower price. The problem is transporting 1kg of anything to and from the moon - the price of just getting 1kg of stuff into low earth orbit is prohibitively expensive. It would be exponentially more so with the Moon. And that's not counting the costs of building, maintaining and manning the needed infrastructure for such a mining operation. The only way a Moon mining operation would have any sort of sense would be if they either found something incredibly valuable up there that can't be found on Earth, or if they had a sustained colony up there and the resources went into maintaining it. Neither is the case nor it seems likely in the near future. Not sure where your friend's getting his info from, but I really doubt it's from any official source.

Um, even the Americans don't expect a Mars mission to become a reality before 2030-35. Expecting such a vast undertaking to happen in 10 years time is unrealistic. It took about that long to realize a manned Moon mission, and there was actually a funded project underway to do so. Right now there isn't a real mission to Mars under development, just a bunch of maybes as the SLS is being developed. Which, by itself, won't be nearly enough to get the job done. Sorry to spoil the mood, but if you see man walking on Mars during your lifetime, count yourself lucky. Even the 2035 projections are pretty optimistic without a serious start, and serious funding, right now.

Also, as far as I know, the US manned Mars mission plan always entailed a return to the Moon first, as a sort of a proof of concept. Since most of the guys who worked on Apollo are either dead or retired, people with actual experience on missions that involve manned landing to another body in space are becoming scarce. A repeat of a Moon mission would be a pretty good dress rehearsal for the Mars trip.

I am sorely tempted by ethoi (thanks newman), but I find 15mm eye relief a tad short. My 14mm UWA has 15mm eye relief, and it is not that comfortable (but an excellent EP otherwise). This is why I went for T4 Naglers and Radians. The Delos range (Deloi?) are another matter entirely. I might well get a 10mm to replace the Radian 10.

No problem. I'm considering a 10mm Delos myself right now. From what I could gather they should essentially perform the same as Ethoi, only with a 72deg AFOV instead of 100 and almost half the price - this makes them a very interesting prospect, indeed. After I have actually had some viewing time through an Ethos, I realized that it's ultra wide AFOV is the least of it's benefits; it's the image quality that has me really hooked, so it's not hard to understand how an eyepiece of the same optical quality, somewhat narrower AFOV and a much lower price tag would be really interesting. Reviews of both currently available Delos ep's are still scarce but those I was able to find were all quite favorable. BTW, does anyone know if TV plans to add more focal lengths to the Delos range? I did see some speculation about an 8mm, but I'm guessing TV is keeping a lid on things for now as I wasn't able to find anything concrete.

ethoi - Wiktionary

I hope that helps As for TV quality, the 17mm Ethos I now own is my first TV eyepiece. I can't say I looked through every brand out there, but I did look through a few most popular ones (plossls of most big brands, hyperions, etc) and it blows most of them right out of the water by such a large margin I was stumped. I'll never forget my first look at the seven sisters through the Ethos when I was testing it out. Best view of them ever.. and it's definitely not just about the FOV. Image is just sharper, right out to the edge, it feels more neutral than most ep's I own, in short everything just looks better. Like someone wiped the window of some foggy residue and I can finally see clearly. Probably not fair to compare a 550€ ep to the 50-70€ range ones, though. But I'm definitely a subscriber. I'd rather buy 3 premium eyepieces now that cover all my needs than buy dozens of mid range cheaper ones before I get the 3 premium ones anyway

Clear skies.