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NASA: Planetary Exploration, Or Better Coffee
6EQUJ5 writes: "I sighed bitterly when I read the headline at MSNBC_SpaceNews_Front: "NASA voices 2020 vision for Mars" (OK, let's hope I live that long!) Bitterness gave way to sheer comedy when I read the next headline: NASA craft to watch coffee crop. Dan Goldin has the worst sense of priorities if he thinks 20 years is an acceptable time frame for a manned (and/or womanned) Mars mission -- in the meantime NASA picks up odd jobs like watching coffee grow." While these stories make a funny contrast, a) I'm sure there's a lot to learn (and plan) before sending a mission to Mars and b) if NASA's going to test cool new tech, like that solar wing, perhaps giving it a practical earthside purpose is a good idea.
Once the ISS is fully populated, we'll know enough about living in space (not to mention have our best launching platform for inter-planetary travel) to be able to establish a colony on the moon. The information gained from this exercise could allow us to easily begin population of Mars, without sending (wo)manned missions that have to return after a few months because they run out of food.
Much better to take the risk of things going wrong on the moon, where anything going wrong won't lose so much time.
In light of this, I can understand the careful planning. But I'm not sure that sending people to Mars is at all a good solution - it is expensive, dangerous (both in the human life and the PR senses) and takes more time.
Developing and sending better remote-controlled and semiautomated equipment would be a better investment, since a) it's cheaper and b) developments in robotics and AI will have added positive side-effects.
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Hans Petter
Agent Smith apparently never downloaded the Nature Channel. The only thing keeping animals from growing out of control and eating everything in sight is that they just aren't all that good at hunting/reproducing/staying alive, at least as compared to humans. Check out what happens in an area when a local wolf mauls some baby. The wolves are "relocated" elsewhere and the deer population starts exploding until they literally eat everything in sight.
I can guarentee that if some big preadator (like Lions or something) suddenly discovered an easy and effective way to hunt, their population would explode until the prey supply was exausted, then they would starve to death if they don't move on to another area. Humans are the only animals on the planet that actually make a concious effort to not eradicate certain speices some of the time, even when its in our power.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Never mind all the amazing technology (like, uh, the transistor...maybe you've heard of it...) that you use every day.
The vacuum tube was invented to improve the phone system, and the transistor to replace the unreliable, hot vacuum tube. The initial market was largely military, until Japanese companies like Sony developed the transistor radio. NASA didn't have a whole lot to do with it.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Heck, watching coffee crops on earth still has extraterrestrial implications - Watching vegetation for subtle changes has applications in watching for any kind of vegetation on a distant planet. It's one of the biggest uses of remote sensing technology today.
But we've all seen what would happen if modified bacteria from a NASA probe ended up back on earth. It's all documented right here. Nothing would happen? I think NOT!
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"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Ah, but Og, rather than send tribespeople, we can throw rocks into the next valley first. Rocks are plentiful, and if there is a an firebreathing invisible-ape, we will hear it go "ouch!" when the rocks hit it. Some same that this is less heroic or exciting than going into the valley ourselves, but it seems very clever.
So this mean's that NASA's now doing Java?
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Compare that to the slightly cramped, but well-equipped communcation-and-entertainment-equipment-laden (oh dear, it might take as much as *twenty minutes or so* for email to get through . . .) Mars explorer of the future, with a highly-trained and motivated crew knowing that immortality and fortune awaits on their return to Earth.
Draw your own conclusions.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Mir. If the Russians can manage to keep people alive for months at a time with their inadequate budgets, why can't a Mars ship? I don't doubt there are considerable problems, but I can't see that the life-support issues are the intractable ones.
Assembling things in orbit is an extremely slow and expensive proposition. It's much easier to screw bits together on Earth, where you can just get a technician to hit things with a hammer if they won't fit together :)
Seriously, having to design things to screw together in orbit adds significantly to the cost and complexity - though I suppose that the US, Europe and Russia are spending $60 billion or so to make their mistakes with the ISS.
As soon as the crew launches, you have a single point of failure - what if the shuttle/launch vehicle blows up? Seriously though, it might be a good idea to do that. Why not put the Earth Return Vehicles a couple of hundred kilometres apart, and equip the lander with a couple of cars with enough range to travel to either one? That way, you get the redundancy, and an extra bonus of another base you can use for exploration purposes.
As I understand it, the way the orbital mechanics work out, you can't do much better than a 180-day trip, regardless of the power source, until you can get something that can maintain a continuous acceleration for the whole trip (which would require fusion power or something similarly exotic). Of course, if you can do that, the whole gravity question becomes irrelevant :)
Finally, food? Are you serious? Ever heard of that remarkably complex technology known as "the freezer"? Ever seen the freeze-dried food bushwalkers eat (devised during the Apollo program, if I recall correctly)? Sure, they'll take along a few seeds to see whether the can make them grow in the Mars "soil", but they'll definitely be bringing their food with them using a combination of 19th-century and 1960's technology.
Compared with the difficulty of 100% reliably intercepting ICBM's with another missile, Mars is easy. The greatest problem, in my view, is one you *haven't* touched on, the risk of a solar storm.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This "burn in your minds" ain't new. It's been around here for the last 30 years. Yes, it's cool to state such things. But the fact is, that projects are dropped out, funds are cut and certain politicians even applaud some over-volunteered move from NASA to nail us on Earth.
Mars in 2020? Under the current political mood it would be impossible. Under the current administrative terms NASA rules it is not only impossible but also no less fantastic than a Heinlein's novel.
Today is 14 of May 2001. So we are twenty years from Goldin's dream. Today ISS flies with technologies that Russia created some 20 years ago. USA & Russia flies ships that were projected 30 years ago and have been flying for nearly 20 years. Today most rockets work on ideas that are as old as our fathers. And the large majority of engines preserve the same designs of 30 years ago. Apart from this, we have several interplanetary probes that work on designs projected on the 70s and most of the probes sent to Mars failed.
And today we scrapped nearly all interplanetary projects, except Mars. We also nailed into the coffin tens of projects to modernise and develope the present fleet of ships. The most flagrant, the desmise of the new Space Shuttle design (truly, the US Air Force took patronage of it but they are also not living their best days)
This is the status of our Space Conquer, exactly 40 years after Gagarin... Mars-2020? Give me a break.
I'm not a huge Goldin fan, but you can't blame him for talking about Mars while stuck monitoring coffee. Those priorities are set by Congress, and Congress is very suspicious of any program NASA funds that even slightly resembles preparation for Mars exploration by humans. For one thing, back under Bush, when Dan Quayle headed the Space Council, they delivered an Apollo-style to-Mars-in-20-years program that would have cost half a trillion dollars. Bush had called for the Mars plan, but when he saw the pricetag he didn't know anybody that had their names on it. Congress saw the pricetag and ever since they have believed that NASA is secretly lusting after a twenty-year pork barrel, and they'll try to get it by stealth if Congress doesn't watch carefully.
Meanwhile NASA operational costs are eaten up by a ridiculously expensive launch vehicle and a circular-reasoning space station that, while it has its benefits, doesn't really deliver for the dollar. Science and exploration suffer. NASA is frustrated, but Congress's point of view is that back in 1970 they promised a shuttle that would do A through Z for a dollar, and NASA delivered a shuttle that does A through maybe G for ten dollars.
Short answer: Congress does not trust NASA with money.
The $4B accounting overages in the station program this year are just one more example.
Again, I'm not a Goldin fan, but he does show creativity, as when he persuaded the Italians to maybe come on board the station program as full partners, not just as part of the ESA, by building the US a habitat module, maybe even the CRV. We'll see how that works in terms of actual funding.
For those who aren't aware, there's a nifty Mars explroation proposal called Mars Direct, which would cost a fraction of the NASA proposal -- perhaps $20 to 40 billion. NASA modified it into a $50-100 billion proposal dubbed Mars Semi-Direct. In any case, Congress still thinks a lower figure is a lowball figure and the taxpayer will get screwed in the end.
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lake effect weblog
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
And before we even get that far, we'd have all the same people making the fuss about genetically modified food and cloning joining forces with all the people making the fuss about NASA wanting to use nuclear power plants in its probes (and thus causing them instead to rely on overly complex solar arrays that probably contributed nontrivially to the recent Mars probe failures) to try to block the development of said bacteria. It's not natural! What if it goes off-course and crashes here on earth?! (Yeah, sure, in reality probably nothing would happen, but try telling that to someone worked up into (Self-)Righteous Indignation with their emotions firmly behind the wheel. They tried explaining that with the nuclear power plant in that outer-solar-system probe a few years back, as chronicled in the first chapter of that e-book about Australian hackers that was mentioned here in Slashdot a while back, and it didn't work then, no reason it would work for bacteria now or any time soon.) How dare we play God, Frankenstein, other classic movie monsters, etc. etc.
People are all starry-eyed about doing all these science fiction things exactly until it seems likely that they could actually become reality. Then all of a sudden all the (tiny) real and (mostly) imaginary risks cause them to scream bloody murder. Gregory Benford had a great column about this sort of thing in F&SF Magazine in September of last year.
In a very real way, one of the greatest obstacles to our space program is not lack of budget, it's all the protesters who will picket Cape Canaveral at the drop of a nuclear isotope. This is the sort of thing that causes NASA to ditch observatory satellites with at least several months of service left in them just to avoid the one in a ka-zillion chance that someone might be hit by it when it comes down otherwise. This is the sort of thing that makes every space probe and satellite we create nowadays more complicated and thus more likely to failure even before it gets into space. This is the sort of thing that will continue to dog us the more advanced our space program gets. Human nature. Human fear. Human stupidity. Is there a cure? I doubt it. Probably not for at least another couple of generations, until most of the fearmongers have died out and the new youth are more open to that sort of thing--unless the fearmongers pass their fear on to their progeny, of course . . .
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Probably not, though.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
So, what you're saying is . . . Mars is a harsh mistress?
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
But people hear the word "nuclear" in almost any context and have their own nuclear meltdowns. To quote Gregory Benford again:
People are scared of it far out of proportion to the actual risks, largely due to reading all those science fiction stories of the previous century in which SF writers wanted to scare people and relied upon the most convenient bogeyman available--nuclear power. We're paying for it now.Look at Chapter One of Underground, which chronicles the launch of the Galileo space probe, despite all the protestors trying to shut it down because there was an infinitessimal chance of something going wrong.
Nobody's saying we should just go ahead damning all risks. But the thing is, the scientists calculate the risks. The odds of Galileo inadvertantly re-entering the atmosphere were 1 in 2 million. The odds of something happening on launch were 1 in 2700. NASA was well aware of the risks, and had done everything it could to minimize them. But the anti-nuclear folks decided not to believe them, and went to court over it.
How infinitessimal a risk is "okay"? Should we not do something because of one in millions or one in thousands odds something might go wrong? Should we stick all our money in a sock under our mattresses because our bank might fail, taking all our livelihood with it? Should we take out mortgages on our houses and live it up, just because we might win the lottery and be able to pay it all back?
Perhaps we should stop using solar energy and look for an alternate power source, because the sun might blow up, destroying our entire planet.
Are these straw men? Perhaps. But then, it seems that most anti-nuclear arguments, like the one against the battery in Galileo, are founded on emotional appeals at their core--the fear of something that only might come to pass, at odds just about as infinitessimal as our bank failing or the lottery paying off, or, to use the old cliche, as being struck by lightning.
Heck, look at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accidents of all time. I mean, really look at them. Here's another quote from that first Benford article upthread:
People are against nuclear power because they're scared of it. And in many cases, for no real reason other than what might happen.--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Think there's anything in the world without risk?
Here are some excerpts from A Scientist's Notebook: Risk and Realities by Gregory Benford, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sep 2000, Vol. 99 Issue 3, p112, 12p., retrieved from EBSCOhost via my public library's website. (Much as I'd like to, I can't paste the whole thing without stepping far outside the limits of Fair Use, so to obtain it with all context intact, go to your local library or equivalent website.)
. .Risk is always present. We can confine it to within acceptible levels and move forward, or we can try to make everything completely "safe" and stay frozen right where we are--because no matter what, someone is going to object to any attempt to introduce bold new techniques or technologies (ion or nuclear propulsion, anyone?) as too unsafe to try out, even under carefully restricted study and implementation. We can't just stagnate, or we'll never get humanity off this rock and safely ensconced on other planets before someone finally goes nuts and pushes The Button.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I would rather spend less of my tax money on unmanned probes. I think I will get far more "spinoff" per dollar that way, without sending some poor people into space to deteriorate physically at best and die at worst.
I think we'll get FAR more cost benefit from developing smart machines to explore Mars for us. We can turn right around and use these smart machines here, WITHOUT the expense of boosting a multi-year human habitat and life support all the way to Mars and back.
Silicon survives in space better than people, after all. The only benefit of sending people instead of a probe is so that we can put footprints in Marsdirt.
Our trips to Mars should serve as the beginning to the eventual human expansion into space, and not some cheap theatrical stunt. They should be accomplished in a considered and sustainable manner.
But what will that do to FOX, and their cadre of "ex-spurts" and investigative reporters? If it is done well, in a sustainable manner, how can FOX run, "Did We Really Go To Mars" in 2051?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I think it was Popular Mechanics last fall that had an article on the debillitating effects of prolonged null-G living. They talked about rotating craft, but also about exercise machines that could create their own gravity. For example, a not-quite-stationary bicycle. Picture a vertical centrifuge, with a seat, pedals and handlebars in place of the "pod" that the person sits in. (Turn the centrifuge shown in so many space movies on its side.) Pedalling the "bike" causes the centrifuge to rotate, providing "gravity" to the person on the "bike." Possibly cheaper than a controlled rotation of the entire craft.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Twenty years? Dear God, the American rocketry program went from zero to the moon in eight years.
The problem has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with motivation. The American public is not sufficiently well-versed in history to realize that all exploratory endeavors like this pay back many times their cost. I'm making a purely economic argument...one which I believe is trivial compared to the sociological one. Humans are defined by the frontiers they conquer. Our lack of a frontier spirit shows up on the front page of every newspaper on Earth. Mars (and space exploration in general) provides an excellent goal. Why are we wasting 20 years to get to it? I've seen mission plans that cost 1/10 what NASA plans to spend, which allow us to set foot on Mars less than seven years from TODAY. Unfortunately, NASA is more concerned about preserving their monopoly on American heavy-lift rockets (a task for which the Space Shuttle is staggeringly ill-suited) and building Battlestar Galactica (er, I mean the ISS) to actually pick an EFFICIENT plan to go to Mars.
I want to go so bad I can taste it, but it looks like NASA is doing everything possible to thwart the dream...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Like what, smart guy? If not for the Cold War, the money would have probably gone into some useless black hole like welfare (we called it the Great Society back then) or educational reform...and gotten exactly nothing back from it.
The tax revenues from the communications satellite industry alone have more than paid NASA's funding. Never mind all the amazing technology (like, uh, the transistor...maybe you've heard of it...) that you use every day.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Considering the advances in life sciences and engineering we've made in the twenty (!!!) years since we went to another celestial body, and considering that getting out of Earth's gravity well puts you about half way to anyplace in the solar system (from a logistics standpoint), I'd say that an eight year plan to get to Mars is not overly ambitious. Twenty MORE years is just lazy.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Or think about Apollo 1. Gus Grissom, one of the astronauts who died in the fire on the launch pad, stated explicitly that the exploration of space is worth the sacrifice of human life. Every astronaut who ever strapped on a rocket knew the risks involved. They had huge numbers of brilliant people working beyond the limit of endurance to minimize those risks, but the risks were still there. The Challenger astronauts were no different...they knew that their chosen profession was risky, yet they stepped up to the line and took their chances. Any astronaut who thinks that space travel is "safe" is incompetent and not fit for the job.
r ea ctors.html
As far as your argument about pollution, I must infer that you haven't the faintest idea how a nuclear thermal generator works. If you did, you wouldn't be drawing these ludicrous parallels between NTGs and fission piles. They're about as much in common with each other as a yo-yo has with a semi truck.
Here's a bit about NTGs. Machines with zero moving parts don't often fail.
http://starfire.ne.uiuc.edu/~ne201/1995/cerven/
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
NASA is an arm of the US federal government. It operates on a 15 to 18 year cycle of high employment because otherwise its employees would start to acquire pension rights. Hence assuming that its operations will move at a faster rate is unrealistic. I think Goldin is being much more realistic than anyone is giving him credit for.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
How true. The conditions on Mars are so harsh that it will make an outstanding location for a penal colony. Mars will be our prison!
Ha! You never know... Maybe it will start out that way, then go the route of Australia. Actually, that would be kind of cool if the penalty for violating the DMCA was deportation to Mars... Copyright violation, here I come.
Could be so, it could be that Mars is 20 years away just like AI and (useful) fusion have been 20 years away for the past 30 years. On the other hand, it does sound like he's saying, "we'll be there in 10 years if you fund us more, 20 years if we keep up the current pace".
If he's not lying through his teeth, that's good enough for me.
I also find 6EQUJ5's whining about the 20-year plan to be misleading. Again quoting Goldin:In other words, if we put the same kind of effort and sacrifice into this that we did with the Apollo program, we'll be there in 10 years. Otherwise, 20 years. That's comparable to the timeline for the Apollo program, and it seems reasonable to me.
I wonder what the first human on Mars will say, and whether it will be as memorable as Neil Armstrong's famous words...
Telstar, the first communications satellite, was launched in July 1962. The design of Telstar started in 1960, before Kenendy's man to the moon speech.
Ironically enough, I work for Fox. Perhaps I'll propose, "When Mars Faces Attack -- II!"
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
We rushed to the Moon for political purposes, and all we have to show for it now is some grainy footage and a bunch of lucite encased rocks.
Our trips to Mars should serve as the beginning to the eventual human expansion into space, and not some cheap theatrical stunt. They should be accomplished in a considered and sustainable manner.
All us dot-bombers know what happens when you throw together a grand plan in too little time. Think IBM, not eLaundryBasket.com.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
I say we send Yahoo Serious.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"I personally love being cramped up in a 2-3 room house."
Cramped up in a 2-3 room house? Can you hear the sound of my teeth gritting? Sir, have you *ever* lived in an apartment? A poor-college-kid downtown studio 0-bedroom apartment?
Do you also have a Cadillac Escalade to go with your "cramped" 2-3 room house?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I wonder what the first human on Mars will say, and whether it will be as memorable as Neil Armstrong's famous words...
"FFP!!!!"
(As in, First Footprint!!!)
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
If there would have been any actual benefit, be it from exploiting the resources, the technological advances made, or just sheer happiness of the people, we wouldn't have stopped after less than a dozens trips to the Moon, all about three decades ago.
I cannot fathom one benefit from sending people to Mars. Sure, it would trigger some new technologies - but that's not Mars specific. After all, technology has advanced rapidly even after we stopped going to the moon, not to mention its progress the thousands of years before Kennedy's reactions on Gagarins first trip into space.
What did the manned trips to the Moon bring us that we wouldn't have had without them? Neither velcro nor teflon were mined on the Moon. And the handful of rocks that were brought back could have been brought back by unmanned flights as well.
-- Abigail
You are referring to the time they mixed up metric and imperial measurements, right?
-- Abigail
Given Three Miles Island, Chernobyl, Sheffield and a handful of smaller incidents, it's clear that either we apparently don't have the proper procedures, standards or training, or that your claim is incorrect.
Nuclear reactors, when handled properly, aren't any more dangerous than any other large, complicated thing that gets hot.
It's not the temperature that makes nuclear reactors dangerous. It's the thing that causes the high temperatures that's dangerous.
-- Abigail
Eh, yeah, right. Care to calculate how many rockets are needed before the moon has a base advanced enough to create earth bound satellites solely from the resources found on the moon? Could you compare that, taking into account that a rocket needed to shoot something to the moon is bigger and heavier than one to shoot a satellite into orbit, to the number of launches needed for satellites? And, while you are at it, compare the number of satellite launches to the number of launches needed to sustain the moonbase?
-- Abigail
Most certainly do we have people like that. And lots more than in the late '60s, early '70s. The problem is that nowadays there are far more places such brilliant people want to work, and that are willing to pay such people lots of money. The problem certainly isn't the number of knowledgable people - the problem is hiring enough critical mass of brilliant people.
As for the referred to article, the existance of a black cow doesn't decrease the number of blue parrots. I've little knowledge about the stock market, French literature and Hindi gods. But that doesn't prove anything about the quality of stock traders, French literature buffs or Hindi priests. Nor does it say anything about my qualities; at best it says something about my interests.
-- Abigail
I dont get it. With all the research going on surrounding hardy micro organisms that can survive extreme temperatures, why are they not looking into changing the climate of another neighbour of ours: Venus?
Is it not unreasonable to believe that we could develop a bacteria that can survive extreme temperatures and pressures? They already exist on this planet, so who is not to say they cannot (with a few modifications) survive there?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
If we do go we will need:
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some form of artificial gravity. I don't see the big deal here - just spin the damn space craft. I've heard some comments that there are problems controling two body systems in a stable way, but there must be some way around it (rigidity, three-body systems, active feedback...?). All this endless talk about overcoming weightlessness (sp?) is stupid when such an obvious solution is at hand.
- Lots of redundency. We can't, for example rely on having a single ship (fueled by one of these proposed fuel `factories') at the other end ready to come back. It is too large a single point of failure. We'll need to send at least two of everything and three of some things.
- Size. The space craft will need to be large enough that the crew don't go mad and actually are comfortable. No spacecraft to date has been comfortable. NASA's approach seems to be: design something just big enough that the crew don't rip each others bodies apart inside a month and call it a success. It all seems motivated by wanting to fit the whole craft on a single, Saturn 5 style, launcher. Why? Surely a ship can be assembled in earth orbit.
- Cost. Its going to be expensive. It'll cost at least $150 bn and probably more like $1 trillion. All this stuff about Mars on a shoe string is balls. It might be possible, but it won't be safe and nothing good would come of it. The crew would be miserable and in constant danger. Mars rather than a tax cut anyone?
- Propulsion. It'll need to be done as quickly as possible, which means propulsion. This in turn means Nuclear (either directly or more likely powering a plasma drive or something). Nuclear means hard time winning over the public (even though it is so obviously the only choice and I am not generally a supporter of nuclear fission)
None of this is in place. No propulsion system, no power systems, no space suits, no large ships (could we just fit out the ISS and actually make it useful?), no reliable food source (what if crops fail?) and heres the crux of it: NO MONEY. It will happen when there is cheaper access to low earth orbit and all these technologies are more mature. Perhaps I'm too young to remember Apollo, but that was a series of (remarkably lucky and I mean no disrespect to the people who worked on making it as safe as it was) week long outings. This is an eighteen month voyage. It is like assuming you can stay under water for two hours just because you managed to hold your breath for two minutes.Okay, I agree that there are a lot of agricultural applications for this technology. But a couple of things just don't jive when we are talking about coffee. The article states:
First of all, the coffee cherries are not picked all at once, which is why coffee havesting is still done by hand. They ripen at different times and only the ripe ones are picked. Whether to pick or to leave a particular cherry on the tree is a human judgement call that can not be done by machine.
The only way I could see this technology being applied is to determine the optimal time to strip-harvest the entire plantation by machine. It might actually save labour costs to sort the ripe beans from the unripe ones after they are harvested. But isn't this a terrible waste of otherwise good coffee beens, which, left on the tree longer, would produce good beans? Premature beans that get picked have to be composted to be of any use at all. Anyway, I think that such labour savings would only be significant in the US (i.e., Hawaii). In the countries where most of the worlds coffee is grown, stripping the unripe cherries from the trees would be more costly (through reduced yield) than by reducing the already cheap labour.
From a flavour point of view, all this is moot anyway, since most of the worlds good coffee is a) improperly roasted, b) blended with inferior robusta beans and/or c) stale by the time it reaches the consumer. Never mind that most people don't even brew it properly.
That's why I roast my own arabicas at home.
Confessions of a Coffee Snob
Dan Goldin has the worst sense of priorities if he thinks 20 years is an acceptable time frame for a manned (and/or womanned) Mars mission.
What's wrong with it? I think it's an admirable goal. NASA's technically there already in terms of technology...they did plenty of research and development in the 70's, figuring out how to launch humans with the power of a nuclear rocket to Mars. There is only one problem: round trip is 1 year, 3 months time.
What NASA has to do is figure out how to extend the physical and mental stress environments in order to accompany humans through space for that long period of time. Easiest (conceptual) solution: create some means of artificial gravity (I said a conceptual solution, not realistical). Well, either that, or make a faster rocket...
They could do it in ten years...heck, I'm sure they could "do" it in five years, but for reasons of PR and government funding, they need the other 15 for research, development, and PR work.
I imagine how this kind of aircraft
could be used for intelligence gatehring.
If this is ever tried, it either has to be a faster trip (which would require something other than chemical rockets) or a big spacecraft that rotates to provide gravity. Nuclear propulsion would work, but the political problems are tough.
We would have ended up with much cooler stuff if we had invested those enourmous sums of money into other areas. Instead of spending money going to the moon, we could have spent the same money on semiconductor research in the 1960's and 1970's and have jumpstarted the computer industry by 10 years.
You seem to be assuming two things:
1. There are insuffcient resources to engage in both space exploration and semiconductor research with any degree of success.
2. That desireable avenues of research and exploration are trivial to identify and commit to.
Re 1: History suggests that this is not true. Generally, resource shortages have always been due more to bad resource management than a true scarcity of resources. We could conceivably have both "successful" space exploration and "successful" semiconducto research - at the same time.
Re 2: Isn't it a little anachronistic to demand that your predecessors have the same desires and goals as yourself? Just because you would have chosen semiconductor research over space exploration in the 60s and 70s - if you knew then what you know now - this doesn't mean they should have made the same choice. In fact, it looks like everybody - the goverment, the populace, the scientists, &c. - wanted space exploration. So that's the direction they went in.
Your argument is like saying the ancient Egyptians should have researched Existentialism instead of Pyramids, or that the ancient Greeks should have come up with a polio vaccine instead of the Socratic Method.
Your criteria for evaluating the prior achievements of a society are underspecified.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Yes, we have everything we need here in Olduvai, so we don't need to do anything like explore what's over the horizon.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It would probably be a wise move to attempt colonization of the Moon before colonization of Mars. The moon would serve as a shakedown field test for technology and techniques. If something goes wrong, it's a lot closer back to Earth.
The key to major investment in the Mars program is potential profit. Mars is an untapped planet of ore, minerals, and *potentially* fossil fuels. While Congress might hesitate to fund a Mars mission for humanity's sake, they'd be happy to do it for Diamond's/Gold's/Oil's sake.
And while the concept of stripmining Mars may seem unpleasant, it's quite necessary, and is the only way we'll ever see real colonization attempts. (Such mining would be severely limited, anyhow, due to purely geographic reasons.) Just as the New World provided land and resource to 16th-century Europe, so would a new world to 21st-century America.
I imagine that such a massive endeavor is also going to require privatization. We've had the technology and resources to set foot on Mars for years. It's been a cf of silly alternate programs and disasters that have been the restraint. After the Martian rover wowed the American psyche, NASA should have intensified its efforts to get a manned expedition underway. A simple American flag on the surface would have been the catalyst for colonization.
Dennis Tito has probably done more for the space program than he ever could have dreamed. I suspect that cash-strapped Russia will continue it's space tourism sideline. Eventually, it's going to allow a private commercial enterprise (no pun intended) to begin space flight and exploration. American industry will eagerly invest in such programs, (think of the profits and PR) pressuring the American government to allow similar commercial exploration (under the auspices of NASA, who would serve as an administrative body. NASA would undoubtedly continue it's scientific work as well.)
In his upcoming report of massive military overhaul, Secretary Rumsfeld also seems to be casting an eye towards space for military endeavour. (Beyond the missile defense shield.) Not to sound too Trekker, but Starfleet may be closer than we think.
GenChalupa
I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation by Robert Zubrin when he was on my campus about 3 months ago. He provides a compelling argument for a direct-to-Mars project, utilizing technology which currently exists. We could be on Mars in under 10 years. Specs are located here. Zubrin, a succesful author, is also one of the leading supporters of the Mars Society. The most fascinating aspect of their proposal, is that they want to use "private" funding (ie not governmental funds). I really don't know of a cooler open source project. This could be the next SETI@Home.
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There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
Better coffee (be it better tasting, just a bit cheaper because of larger crops, or something else) could lead to the NASA Engineers being able to pull more all nighters and get us to Mars sooner!
The road to Mars is paved with double cream, double sugar!
Dark Nexus
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
I guess what you are kind of saying is "We got a lot of stuff out of the exploration of space and the shot to the moon because so many different technologies were advanced. But now that we've done that, we are really only extending the capabilities, and not therefore going to produce those neat spin-offs like astronaut ice cream and space blankets."
I kind of agree. What will we accomplish by landing there? It isn't like in the movies, when we find all these killer bug-like creatures or are enlightened and attuned with the unverse by meeting up with some wispy gay Martian guy. It will be like the Moon Landing, but with better audio/video, and much more coverage. Or no coverage; hard to tell since the timelines are so long.
On the other hand, why not go to the moon? We sure spend our money on worse things, and relatively speaking, this would be a somewhat noble human conquest, turning all our heads skyward. NASA represents a lot of what is Noble about being an American, and a human being, too.
The real answer, of course, is that we Are in our birthplace, and our graveyard, and it's our job to take care of everything in between. If you want to talk priorities, think of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth. Now there's a good spin-off, IMO.
One more thing: I got the pleasure to hear Dan Goldin talk at a company meeting. Very dynamic fellow, and compelling as well. I'm sure he's from my hometown area New York! I can't imagine a neater job than to be steering the largest non-military space program in the world, albeit after the Challenger disaster. (Well, except for that last part, the job would be cool.)
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Don't get me wrong, I think space flight is just as cool as the next person, but the return just doesn't justify the expense
Well sure, Armstrong didnt find huge amounts of gold on the moon, so of course that trip itself was expensive.
What you seem to forget is that there are huge spinoff effects, both in science and other areas. Money spent is money earned, which is money made... the economical spiral.
The travel to the moon has had great impact on humanity, where would the world be today otherwise ? No satelites ?.. that would suck
You're argument is like saying : It would have been better if Christofer Columbus sailed to America in 2000, it was to expensive at the time."
Time is of absolute relevance to research, the earlier, the better!
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
I'm all for a mission to Mars in 20 years, but I hope it doesn't take much longer to find a good reason to do it.
While it is generally agreed that Columbus was not the first European to discover America, he was the first to generate any kind of commercial interest to be there. Just 100 years after that, serious settlement began. The same thing could happen on Mars, perhaps within a similar timeframe. You might think that's an outrageous, not to mention expensive proposition, but I'm sure that Europe had the same sentiment just 500 years ago.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
"It would probably be a wise move to attempt colonization of the Moon before colonization of Mars. The moon would serve as a shakedown field test for technology and techniques. If something goes wrong, it's a lot closer back to Earth."
We'll probably go back to the Moon sooner rather than later. NASA has a 'secret' wish list called the 'Decadal Plan', which examines what they would like to do in the decade following the completion of the International Space Station in 2006-07. Rumour has it that they are looking at 100-day missions outside lower Earth orbit, either extended stays of 2-3 months on the Moon, or (even cooler), missions outside Earth orbit entirely to passing asteroids. The ISS would serve as an assembly and staging post for such missions. I wish I had a link for this, but it han't been leaked in its entirety yet. Any obliging NASA employees out there?
"The key to major investment in the Mars program is potential profit. Mars is an untapped planet of ore, minerals, and *potentially* fossil fuels."
Leaving aside the extremely dubious possibility of fossil fuels, it is unlikely that bulk materials mined from Mars will ever become a commodity here on Earth. You'd have to boost them out of Mars' gravity well and on a trajectory back to Earth. We mine mineral ores here on Earth by the millions of kilograms, so unless we develop antigravity anytime soon, it's unlikely to be economically feasible.
Far more likely is the exploitation of mineral resources in Earth-crossing asteroids. A lot of them are essentially billion-ton lumps of high-grade metals. We could install big ion drives or other propulsion sources on their surfaces and slowly coax them over a period of years into a (high enough for public-opinion comfort) orbit around Earth. It would then be simple to use Earth's gravity well to deliver the mined materials direct to Earth's surface.
Even this is unlikely to ever happen. We just aren't that short of raw materials here at home, and recycling is likely to be far more economical for the forseeable future.
"NASA voices 2020 vision for Mars"
That's good. We don't want any blind planets around.
Looks like NASA's finally responding to what the people want! [/me dodges thrown tomatoes]
Seriously though. You don't get advances by pumping money into something specific (better microprocessors), you get advances by pumping money into a *goal* (reaching mars), and then solving the new problems that arise. The former just gets you refinements of existing things, the latter tends to get you things that are completely new.
My mention of war was because war is often the other great instigator of technology. The amount of technical development we've had from the two world wars alone is staggering, simply because the necessity arose.
I'd rather set a goal, then reach for it, than depend on market forces or the coming of some dire necessity.
Gezundheit.
All personal feelings on this topic aside (and I assure, I've got 'em), let's stop for a second and ask ourselves what people really want out of NASA, anyhow?
/.'ers) as well as the guy/gal next door's. On the one hand, you have the fact that a lot of emphasis recently has been put on "staying close to home" with federal R&D money, which is what NASA funding essential boils down to. For people who lean this way opinion-wise, NASA should spend its time figuring out ways to enhance human life on Earth through space research.
Yes, I know I'm risking a science/culture/gov holy war here (so please DON'T GO THERE). I simply pose the question: What do the people want?
NASA is funded by YOUR tax dollars (at least, "your" applies to American
On the other side you've got the folks who are advocate pure research and "science for the sake of science." This crowd might as well start slapping "Mars or Bust" bumper stickers on their cars tomorrow.
I tend to go for a more middle-of-the road approach, as in "leverage *all* forms of space research, whether far from or close to home, for the direct benefit of all on Earth." Unfortunately, this requires more of the average citizen than is commonly found: the ability and interest in taking the time to *really* research what's actually happening in space tech, *really* research what's actually lacking in our societies as a whole, and merge the two into concrete objectives.
I'm as guilty of this as the next Joe, but it's generally a true statement the most people who are heavily involved in hard science and research aren't heavily involved in "human matters." Kind of a paradox, I suppose.
I'd appreciate comments on this (seeming) issue.
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Earth is our birthplace, not our prison. The purpose of humanity, if we can be said to have a purpose, is to disperse life throughout the galaxy.
That's nearly a direct quote from Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, a sci-fi story about a girl who fled her gated community when it was attacked by gangs and angry mobs. The dream that kept her going specifically was for humans to "take root among the stars."
I whine about "20 years" because NOBODY can be held accountable for that long if things go wrong. Even some murderers are released in less time. What if I promised I'll build you a huge, elegant mansion to live in.. but I won't be around when it's finished- how convenient! No earth can ever be broken on big, risky projects if people aren't held accountable. With a 5 or 10 year project, at least you'll have someone to blame when bad luck, incompetence, and cowardice all come together and the mission fails.
Helping coffee growers max out their yearly profits is absolutely ridiculous. It's a nice, safe mission, isn't it? I'm sure the iron men of the old NASA would be very proud. (lol)
The guy you replied to said:
"You don't get advances by pumping money into something specific (better microprocessors), you get advances by pumping money into a *goal* (reaching mars)"
You said:
"This is just isn't true."
To back this up you used the following example:
"Take the Human Genome Project. We get something very useful out of it (The human genome map) and we have devoloped several useful technologies along the way (better gene sequencers)."
How does your example support your statement that what the guy you were replying to said was untrue? The goal was to map the human genome. To accomplish this goal, new technologies had to be developed.
Now, I know the point of your response was "choose worthwhile goals." But the "not because it is easy, but because it is hard" reason for sending people to Mars seemed to be a good enough reason for sending people to the Moon. Besides, how is sending people to Mars not a worthwhile goal? You must think humans eventually being able to colonize other worlds to be a total waste of time.