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"Ehem"... it's warmer here than the previous years Mr. Cook... near the equator... just thought that this might help... but it's snowing in Louisiana? That's funny in a weird way...

Maybe this is one of those areas or diseases where nano-technology could help... maybe tackling it with the idea of treatment when the disease is already in the latter stages then attempting to cure it is not the way to treat it... maybe if early symptoms have been detected (the disease is still at its infancy or beginning to occur, then maybe something could be done to prevent it from rapidly progressing or totally halting it). Since these "plaques" tend to form clumps in the brain, maybe some sort of scanner could be used and mandated for people at a certain age (for Alzheimers due to old age) or from childhood (for those types that are not brought about by old age). It's a protein right? Am thinking of some way of halting the protein build up that causes the clumps by some chemical that would leave the other types of protein untouched but would remove the clumps. Maybe the answer is just so simple that we fail to discover because we need a certain "paradigm shift" on things. Just like the movie Lorenzo's Oil which was based on real life, I believe, maybe the cure or solution would be something like that, something so simple. It's like there's an article before here in Popular Science wherein they featured nano-technology delivered medicine that's supposed to eliminate cancer cells but leaves good cells unharmed. I dunno much about biological stuff, but I hope that this would help. In addition, if there would be resveratrol pills in the near future, then maybe this cou

Hello Mr. Mike Cook, you're proposing that the ship would travel at 5 Gs for it to reach its destination of Phobos early. But, how long will that 5 G acceleration be? Coz if it would be months I don't think that humans could withstand that amount of Gs for a very long time. Or could they, I'm thinking that maybe they have to decelerate or stop everytime they have to eat, sleep or eat, am I right? Besides the focused light beam propulsion that you've proposed... is there something like that in existence right now. And if so, wouldn't there be attenuation of the amplified power due to the distance involved? Sorry am grasping at straws here coz am not knowledgable about propulsion systems and other stuff. But, are my ideas valid or not?

I believe we should take small steps first. Colonizing Mars would be a very ambitious project indeed. I believe that we should try to colonize the moon first, then from there if everything turns out well we could turn to colonizing Mars or one of its moons Deimos or Phobos. I know that it would be difficult for us to colonize the Moon but we have to start there first and there will be mistakes because we do not know every scenario that might take place even though we try to anticipate everything but there are some things that might be overlooked then once we have encountered them, then we might have a better understanding of how to colonize Mars. Besides, it would take a lot of resources like fuel for the trip to Mars - and the Moon is relatively nearer to us. Maybe build something like a biosphere in the Moon first or make it habitable and then Mars...

Similar to the previous spherical surveillance rovers for Mars, wouldn't this have difficulty treading steep inclines or up somewhat steep slopes or hilly terrain?