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James Cameron's Illustrated Mars Reference Design
An anonymous reader writes "Terminator Director James Cameron commissioned renderings of the NASA Mars Reference Design [HTML, 4 PDFs]. The mission profile calls for a cargo ship sent ahead of a crew, a huge (Terminator-like?) rover, and inflatable habitats. It's not clear where Skynet and the T-800's hyper-alloy combat chassis fit in yet. Between now and then, the 5 Mars missions: 2005 Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, 2007 Phoenix and Netlanders, 2009 Science Lab Rover, and 2011 Scout. Skynet comes in 2026."
Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. I think it is a great idea to get some of the most imaginative minds to offer ideas to scientists on how to send humans to mars. My only question is, if they will send some large cargo container/ship ahead of a manned mission, how will the manned mission be able to land near enough to the cargo/habitat ship?? Or will this just orbit Mars? I hope I get to see a manned station on Mars in my lifetime.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
James Cameron may have spawned the Terminator franchise, but he had no connection T3 (the film was directed by Jonathan Mostow.) Rumor has it that Cameron was planning to buy back the rights to the Terminator franchise, and then produce/direct his own script, but was outbid. When the guys who bought the Terminator rights tried to hire him for T3, Cameron turned them down.
Those pictures are famous, and there's even an animated Disney documentary from the period.
The "Collier's space program" was far more ambitious than what's been done to date, or even what Cameron had drawn. The Collier's program had a big rotating space station in Earth orbit, a Mars rocket under construction in orbit, and heavy industrial traffic to and from orbit. Cameron has much lower ambitions.
... or is it just one of those memory implant holidays??
- Throwing resources? What's a few tons of aluminum to the Earth? All the money stays right here.
- We are not throwing resources, we are exercising imagination and initiative. These are not limited resources, they are amplified by being used... and they are the same things needed to solve problems on earth.
- "When there is no vision, the people perish." Giving people a reason to look up from their petty squabbles to see a possible future on another world might solve some of those problems. Crime fell drastically during the first Moon landings, because most everyone was glued to the story unfolding on live television. We should try to do this again.
- Shouldn't we consider it a general religious imperative to learn what we can about where we came from and what else there is, starting with the history of other planets (including the life on them, if any)?
That's hardly an exhaustive list, and it won't convince anybody who doesn't want to be convinced. But something along those lines might persuade even the moralists that they don't have the high ground all to themselves.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
You said: "Just to play a devil's advocate: what business do we have throwing our limited resources to other planets when we have so many problems already down here?"
I can answer that with a simple quote from Larry Niven: The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program.
Its a silly quote but its very true. The probability of humanity being destroyed or anhillating itself will drop dramatically once we have a self-sustaining colony on an extraterrestial object. Its like insurance for humanity in a way.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.