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Europe Joins Race To Send Humans To Mars
hereisnowhy writes "CBC reports that the ESA hopes to send humans to Mars within three decades. They first hope to return a Martian soil sample by 2014. They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface, because "You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."" Kame-sennin links to a Reuters article on the plans.
The planet would be fully terraformed within a week.
Cheers.
They are still on a decades-long timeline. Here's hoping that The Mars Society can speed that up.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Suits that are sterlized? Then hit with some sterlizing solution before they leave the ship and before they enter?
1888 Franklin St.
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut."
With a chopping block and a knife....
Sure you can, just take the shielding out of his microwave oven.
Unknown host pong.
...is it just me, or does the price tag seem kind of low? I mean, if that's 1.13 billion Canadian, it's well under a billion US over the next 5 years.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
I would like to see us collaberate with the Europeans.
Not only for good relations, but because it is such an expensive venture
for us to go it on our own.
... the ESA and the Russian space agency will be co-operating now they both want to go to the red planet? Kind of doesn't make sense for Europe to have two separate space programs.
We need another space race, CMON people, pilgrims didn't send boats to america to collect soil, they populated it!
You can send my cats. They've been sterilized.
Oh wait, that's neutered.
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut."
Garden Shears.
"the robot starts to think.. i wonder what it dreams."
What's the point of going there then?
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...they probably won't use nuclear craft either. Nevermind that nuclear engines are the most efficient and workable solution. Nevermind that we were building nuclear ramjets in the 50's and production ready nuclear rockets in the 60's.
Oh wait. That stuff was done by the US. Has the EU ever even fired a nuclear engine? Nevermind.
*sigh*
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm sure like most people I read that they were shooting for getting a person on Mars within three decades and thought that seemed a little unambitious.
But then again, the need to return and examine samples prior to human invasion is necessary.
Of course this made me wonder A) can't they still speed up the entire process, even taking into account this need and B) what's the chance that anything we've sent so far has been less than 100% sterile.
Besides, even if we sent a person up and contaminated the place... how long would it take for that to confuse the matter of whether or not Mars previously had life? Can microbes really spread over an entire planet that quickly?
Given the massive amount of resources it takes to put a man in space, I think we as a community should really focus on encouraging cooperation between these different organizations. Not only would it allow us to make the problem more tractible, it would also be more efficient and safer. We all share one world, and if one party should introduce a biological danger it would affect ALL of us. Let's hope the beurocrats will use their heads--or at least listen to the reason of scientists!
They want to go in three decades? Psha. The US and China will have condos up by then.
Well you CAN sterilize humans, but it's really not very polite.
They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface, because "You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."
... made from an old cargo bay. It will be too late for the crew to realize that Mars had blown up during their long travel and that they were one planet off, indeed, they were on Jupiter, where a long exiled .....
I'd also be wary of any skeletons with fist sized holes punched outward in their chest cavities.
I'm sorry if this sounds trollish, but I think we really need to focus on stuff down here on the earth (like those WMD's) before we send anyone out into space.
The other day I was listening to some public radio when I heard this song being played called "Whitey on the moon" I think it was written during the 60s, who knows though. The lyrics went something like this.
Here I am standing in a welfare line
and whitey's on the moon
My kids are starving, that's why they're crying
Cause whitey's on the moon
The goverment takes taxes from my check
To send whitey to the moon
If I can't work from a broken neck
Whitey will still be on the moon
I'm still living in a ghetto project slum
And whitey's on the moon.
Should I rob a liquor store with a gun?
While whitey's on the moon.
Basically, it was a song from an angry black man. It was funny and entertaining to listen too, but it brings up a very valid point.
USA right now is still suffering from a financial downfall. The last thing we should be thinking about doing is sending our money up in a rocket.
NASA and it's foreign counterparts seem to have taken this whole life thing altogether too far. We've now sent many missions to Mars, and have yet to find any evidence whatsoever that there was at any point in time life there. We've found only scant evidence of liquid water, which although it's widely believed is necessary for life, it certainly doesn't gaurantee it's existence.
Although the conditions possibly could have been right for life to develop on Mars at some point in it's history, that is no reason to believe it did. At what point do we decide that we've done our best to look for it, but that life just never existed on Mars?
Narrative
How about beagle 2? Can you sterilize dogs? Maybe that's why it never reponded?
I don't know what the obsession with Mars is either. It's so close to Earth anyway. I'd rather know what's out in the farther reaches of space. We don't know much about what's beyond our own solar system. Let's send some robots to the deepest reaches of space and see what's there.
Free Wii Points
I really do wish that nations would quit thinking about sending ppl there and back. For at least the first few trips, it should be one way missions. There are plenty of ppl who would be willing to go even if it meant only a 50% chance of survivial. It would also be a out best chance of starting a real colony.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So if Mars supported microbes a million years ago, humans can never go there? Fuck that.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Flawed analogy. The pilgrims knew where they were going, and they were going there for good.
Nobody (not NASA, not ESA, not the Chinese) is seriously considering a one-way manned mission. Glorified soil sampling is all they are considering.
Going back to your New World analogy, you forgot that before America was colonised by Europeans that it was explored by them beforehand. Exploration is always the logical first step, whether we're talking about undiscovered continents (Americas, Australasia), extremes (South Pole), or heavenly bodies (the Moon, Mars).
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I found the original.
Whitey on the Moon
By GIL-SCOTT HERON
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.
I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.
The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.
No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.
I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon?
I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.
Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.
Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?
How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.
Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.
I think I'll send these doctor bills
airmail special....
to Whitey on the moon.
Russians and Europeans haven't yet figured out how to shoot good landing movies. /puts on tin foil hat
Is this timeline really optimistic? Bear in mind that Europe has never had a manned spaceflight mission before. Can they pull off a Mars mission? Maybe they'd be better off teaming up with Russia or the US. Or both.
Or, if you saw "Species II", they might bring microbes back.
Yeah... any travel agencies feel like setting up a round-trip static price for 11 years on mars?
Pls No Negative Modding!
that mars can sustain life? that the types of microbes and organisms that might hitch a ride on even the nastiest, most syph-ridden ass-tronaut would survive mars?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
why are people concerned about contaminating mars?
should there actually be life there, it would obviously be of the microbial sort
should this microbe actually exist, it's genetics would be utterly fascinating: is there shared code between earth and mars? or did life evolve on mars by itself? so is the comet-as-interplanetary gene carrier hypothesis viable? could there therefore be life on jupiter's/ saturn's moons, on venus, or even on some extra-solar system planet? is there some sort of inter-solar system comet gene carrier system at work in our galaxy/ universe even?
these are all fascinating questions, but i posit this: the value of all that information is outweighed by the need to start terraforming mars now: put on mars, on purpose, microbes that are known to be able to survive there, such as microbes that live in antarctic/ arctic deserts
liekwise, seed venus with microbes from hot springs/ deep sea vents
why?
we need these microbes to start making venus/ mars habitable by earth life, human life, asap, and while the crytozoological/ exobiological questions are fascinating, the terraforming needs of getting these microbes on these planets asap, so they can start putting oxygen/ water there, is far more important than any interesting things we can learn from exotic, non earth microbes
seriously
i propose we send out mars and venus microbe fertilizing robotic probes now... spirit and opportunity with an on-purpose microbe payload
i'm not joking, i'm making a judgment, a choice, and i know some may disagree with me, but i am serious: the exotic information we might lose by destroying mars-native microbes is less important than the needs of human interplantary coloinzation efforts to terraform mars' atmosphere
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seems that over half the problem with sending people to mars is getting them back.
Strikes me as this may be unnessecary. Surely there would be a large number of people out there who would gladly accept a one-way ticket to Mars?
Am I right?
Any takers?
What you're saying is only partially true. Let's first take a look at Russia: Yes, they've fallen on very hard times. What's their annual budget for spaceflight? $100M? It's something ridiculously low. But they're the country that keeps the ISS supplied. They have reliable, cheap rockets that get the job done. The US has no rocket that offers the same value as Sojuz does, nor does anyone else. So, some respect is due. Though it's plain to see that these times the Russians simply don't have the money to continue their pretty impressive work of past decades.
Europe: For one, Europe never put much effort into manned spaceflight. In the 60s, there was no European space program worth mentioning, and later on, there was no will to spend much money at it. Apart from some failures of early Ariane 5 models, Europe has shown that they can build powerful rockets. Their first Mars mission is mostly successful, and for an orbiter, Mars express can compete with anything anyone else has sent up there. The SMART-1 lunar probe is tiny and not exactly a racehorse, but its techonology is nothing to just diss either.
So, in short, nobody questions that the US is ahead. But don't discount the potential of other countries. In terms of technology, I doubt that either Europe or Russia are more than maybe a few years behind the curve...
We're seeing the new space race, and it's going to be something. Competition for the "high ground" between Europe, China, and the US is really getting started. If the US continues to become more insular, this will just be one more way that Americans feel the need to prove superiority. But it's also a way for Europe to assert its own primacy, and China's motive to be seen as the next superpower is clear, as well.
Whether any of it happens is almost immaterial: the perception will drive the funding, and scientists on all sides will take the money and attention happily. Let's hope that the end result really is "for all mankind".
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Seriously, some of us might but I think it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that it's going to happen. If it does so what? We're a species that contaminates everthing we touch and everywhere we go. What will make Mars any different?
I don't see us changing our S.O.P. so why try? Just get there, start working on setting up some sweatshops (build cheap domes too, lets get us some Total Recall three breasted hookers while we're at it) and get to work planning on polluting the hell out of the next place.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
that would explain why we made it up first doesn't it.
W00t! More job openings for me! :D
THIS is how you deal with outsourcing... Outsourcing... To MARS!
Lyndon Larouche, (for Eurodotters a pretty nutty felow and ex-felon who perpetually runs for president)
Anyhow in 1988 I watched a "special" he had on TV it was actually VERY interesting and insightful about the economic benifits of sending someone to the moon, not in actual direct benifits, but in US commercial exploitation of the technologies that would need to be developed, then offering the fruits liscnce-free to US firms.
The Europeans could try something like this
Look at all of the amazing technologies in use today theat were born out of th U.S. space program.
A link to the video of good old nutcase larouches planHere
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Call me a cynic but I'm going to be 40 this year. When I was a kid I figured that we'd be making our first attempt at Mars about now having setup our Moon base in the 80s.
Now I'm convinced that mankind will never reach Mars in my lifetime and unlikely to do so even when my grand children are old and dying. Assuming that they don't get nuked first.
Personally the way global politics is shaping up and American corporate greed is growing I doubt that we will have the money or the time to go to Mars as we will be busy cleaning up the mess from several small nuclear wars.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
A little offtopic, but apparently, the Swiss have developed some flying cars.
More details can be found here.
(yeah yeah, I know that they're technically hover-craft kinda thingys for brief over-water flight, but hey!)
Truly the principles of Christian and moral peoples has disappeared from our society. Instead we fantasize about going off to some God-forsaken planet (literally), so we can say, in effect, that we've got the biggest tonker.
> ...and Russia is a 3rd world country!
:)
Mod parent +5,Funny.
-- grmbl woz heer
Don't know from the hype of sending humans there and everywhere comes from but i think it's a pretty stupid declaration from any exploration program to even consider sending anything other than those Bud Light talking chimps. I mean look at them. They're pretty intelligent, they're... somewhat attractive ( compared to me ) and never complain about too much work. All we have to do is send a couple chimps with a couple of very horny human females et voila! We now have a freak mars colony we don't give a fuck about.
After all we don't need to send humans to get rock samples and we don't need to send humans to survey the red planet, since robots can do the job better. I say we send chimps! Not only can they probably do the robots' job, but they would support our most precious bodily fluids: beer.
P.S. Bud Light tastes like water, it isn't beer. Damn! We'll have to educate the little buggers before sending them to mars. Oh well, i'm sure it'll all be easier than educating humans.
Robots are where it's at. We don't need to send inefficient humans to go do a job a robot is much better suited for.
I mentioned this once before, but a while ago my friend and I were discussing about the feasibility of a Mars mission, and he suggested that NASA should get funding by selling the rights for a reality television series.
I don't know how well it would work, but if you put a promiscuous woman astronaut on that mission, the bidding war for the show would be insane.
You mean the USA and Russia's weapons of mass destruction, right? The ones that were made possible by the technological advancements of their respective space programs?
We (the US) had a space program in the early 40's? Wow, cool.
No sig for you!!
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."
Not quite correct. In practice it IS possible to totally disinfect an astronaut.
Of course, with the caveat that said process of sterilization will (due to the processes and procedures involved) necessarily kill the austronaut and thusly render said person useless for anything other than dead-weight (pun intended).
What he should have said was "You can sterilize an astronaut with only slightly more effort than sterilizing a robot. Of course, after all is said and done, only the robot has any chance of functioning, let alone functioning normally." or "You cannot totally sterilize an astronaut while keeping them alive. For a robot this not a problem."
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
USA right now is still suffering from a financial downfall. The last thing we should be thinking about doing is sending our money up in a rocket.
While I appreciate the concerns of spending tax payer money on space missions when their is poverty and a multitude of social ills here on earth, this is a project I like.
I say if my tax money is going for welfare to support people (ok not all of them but some people) who don't even want to get a job and earn their own living and cry for public assistance for everything to solve their problems when they don't want to put forth the effort to help themselves, then I say I want some of my tax money to go towards advancing humanity as a whole.
I kind of think of this like problems at work. You see people spinning their wheels on day to day problems, when their is a solution readily available that really help them out, it just takes some time to set it up. So what do you do? Many people choose to keep in running in the same circles b1tching and whining. It's true you can't drop all the constant problems that crop up. I say thithe your work. Spend a percentage of you time working on the long term solution. It's the only way out.
P.S. Don't go off on some Troll/Flame war over racial issues. This is truly a poverty vs. great advancement issue.
Survivor: The Red Planet
Humans aren't going to be the ones that build up Mars either. We can't take the extreme temperature changes, we're too weak, inefficient, and vulnerable to radiation. It's going to have to be robots. We do NOT need to send humans to do a job that robots are much better for.
I think it makes sense that we follow in the footsteps of our tools, which ready the planet for our habitation.
In the mean time, wouldn't it be a good idea to make sure we can have long term viability on planet Earth?
Serriously, Earth is the only suitable planet where we can freely exist in the natural environment, and there is nothing even close anywhere near by. Humans will not be leaving Earth in our current form. If the cosmic rays don't get you, the loss of bone mass will...or maybe the insanity imposed by the ten thousand years you would be travelling to get anywhere...if you could live that long.
I don't think the microbes will matter much if we dig down 10-20 feet and find a fossil record. And if we don't, I don't think the microbes will matter much.
Look at the bright side...if we introduce microbes to mars, in 200 million years they could evolve into intelligent life and worry about introducing microbes if they were to visit the barren planet Earth. Lets end that cycle now and never go to Mars.
Gil-Scott Heron! He also penned the incredible "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," for which I have the MP3 (in violation of copyright, naturally). He's a clever guy, but as with everything, you have to take it in context. You'd think that man has never heard of such a thing as a poor white person, and I've got news for him on that subject.
(9mb file from Mars site.)
p or tunity/20040202a/MSPan_B1_2x-B009R1.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/op
Make sure you're looking at the enlarged, full-size picture. Scroll to coordinates {6943, 818}, and look for the two-prong-shaped thing. It sort of reminds you of rabbit ears or fingers. One of the prongs is even casting a shadow on the soil.
As to what it may be, I don't know...but a geologist would have a hard time convincing me that it is a naturally-formed rock. And I doubt it fell off the lander itself.
Note that this file is from the official NASA website, not retouched or faked. Perhaps if this gets circulated enough, NASA will answer.
Or something particularly grisly...
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
The British are only sending a beagle...
NASA's budget really is insignifcant in that kind of context.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
actually I were more worried of astronauts getting bacteria on Mars and contamining heart
I was at a book signing by Robert Zubrin (Earth on Mars, The Case for Mars) and he had a Q&A session - I asked him "Have you ever seen any opposition to plans to send a man to Mars due to contamination concerns?".
His response was twofold - secondarily dismissing the possibly of a "superbug" from Mars (apparently he gets a lot more paranoid people than myself asking a similar question). On the question of us contaminating evidence of life there, he said that while we would probably spread some microbes and the like around that if we did find anything it should be easy to trace the origin back to Earth instead of Mars, so that is would pose no serious problem for scientific research. Also of course he brought up that Mars had very likely had some meteorites cast off from earth "contaminating" Mars already, so to worry about bringing new things there was foolish.
Besides, it seems like if you were really worried about contamination you would seek a few million samples, not taking two or three and then starting the landrush!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Make a FUCKING proper link you dipshit... Slashcode borks everything up.
Mod Up +5 SENSIBLE
Truly. I'd hate to see a priceless source of biological data lost if there WAS something there, but the only way to prevent it is extensive remote research with completely decontaminated robots. And I'm not even sure that's possible.
At some point, if we don't find anything, we'll just have to say we tried... and then it's our turn to go.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
And, introduce life to the planet if didn't exist before?
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
In the end it's like many other projects; a money hole. Just mindlessly throwing money at a project and saying "Hey, you! go colonize mars!" is a complete waste of effort, time and money. We need a clear goal, which is known to be achievable, in order to be successful and reap the technological benefits. In the case of going to the moon, we knew it was possible to create the computers to do the job, and the rocket and other technologies were there; they just needed fleshing out, refinement.
You have to know where you're going, before you start on your journey. It's a good idea to fund the space program, but the leadership has to be there too. And frankly, it's just not there right now.
Is what the europeans say when they're saying goodbye. I.e. Cheerio. Take it easy man, don't have such a spaz attack on such a miniscule topic.
I always wondered if life could have been brought here when someone forgot to decon their boots before they traipsed around. Heck even taking a wiz would probably let little critters loose (and don't even talk about leaving a big ol' pile on the planet).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
...and back here at Mission Control, Bob, they're all speechless. Noone seems to even want to try to explain why Astronaut Nolan decided to write his name on the Maritian surface with his own urine. Back to you Bob ...
RFC2119
I guess War of the Worlds is non-fiction ...
We introduce the common cold on Mars and kill all those bastard Martians before they have the chance to invade our peaceful planet
So we're already contaminating Mars. There's nothing we can do about it.
Damn fuzz always getting on the photos, making them seem like they have protrusions where the shouldn't be....Ahem.
o_O
Sure it might be expensive, but when the cost is divided up by several nations, it's not too bad. The good thing is that maybe for once, everyone will put their flags and differences aside and work together as humans, not nations. We're approaching a crossroads in humanity where we either A) Evolve to overcome our bad side or B) Destroy ourselves. The the mission to mars might be an indication of the premier slowly but surely coming into play. One of things I've seen in science fiction is that although it's fiction in its time, it can and has become reality in the future. 100 years ago, the notion of a personal computer was a thing of science fiction. A space ship called the USS Enterprise and the United Federation of Planets is science fiction we've seen since the 1960's. Maybe by the late 21st century, it'll be anything but science fiction. And if you've seen "The best of both worlds" on Star Trek SNG, the Borg breached the Mars Defense Perimeter.
And where the hell are my flying cars?!?!
some people have enough trouble driving on a flat surface, and you expect them to worry about what's above and below too? Until those cars get auto-pilot with accident avoidance systems i'm sticking to the good ol' automobile.
Then we can stop being stupidly morbid (or is it morbidly stupid?) What is it in our perverse nature that makes us think going off to some remote planet and committing suicide is a good goal in life??
They weren't production ready. Quite a bit of development work was Still To Be Done.
The to me the interesting thing is that if it's a real chance of leaving something living behind, then what does that tell us about life in the universe?
Basically it _could_ mean that every single time a lifeform visits a planet for the first time there's a chance that he'll leave something behind, which has the chance of evolving...
The first spacefaring race will then be responsible for spreading life throughout the galaxy (and beyond, depending on the laws of physics and their creativity etc).
Every now and then a planet will "die", something will happen that destroys most lifeforms living there; and if it happens quickly enough (maybe nanotech gone awry) it might even be possible that all lifeforms die.
If the spacefaring race of that planet isn't advanced enough they'll die, or instead of moving to a nearby planet they might have to leave that system.
Left behind in that system there'd be one dead (or almost dead) planet, and there'd be the "bugs" that that race left on other planets and moons.
Those "bugs" might evolve to a spacefaring race, which would then find that they're living in a system just like our solarsystem...
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
If all the funds spent on the Opollo program ware redirected on social issues instead, we would have ended up with the following.
a) We'd still have all our social problems.
b) We'd still be waiting to land on the moon.
If I may run up the old flag. .
I tend to agree, and NASA being an arm of government, I think, fits more than just somewhat.
Going to Mars is not the goal. At the moment, I think the goal is to gently warm up the public to the idea of real alien life. --A microbe fossile here. Evidence of water there. A degree at a time.
The fact that there are permenant alien base-ships in orbit around the sun and planets is not unknown to upper management. Especially now, as things are getting really near the reality-shift combustion point. --Oh, we 'Just discovered' all those dozens of 'new' moons around Jupiter and Saturn. Puh-leaze.
But, even amidst it all, you can't have the economic engine burp even as upper management prepares for a quiet slip into the safe confines of Vault 13, or whatever idiot scheme they mistakenly think will save their sorry skins when the shit hits.
For my part, I hope that I survive the culling so that I can see what form of sci-fi misery is waiting on the other side. Just for the sake of curiosity. (Think, "Variable Matter and the Illusion of Time lifted." Gee, fun. Can't wait. Why did I sign up for this again. . ?)
And of course, it should go without saying that, I for one welcome our. .
-FL
I am excited at the prospect of multi-national space competition. Now that we have a small handfull (the EU/Russia, China, India, and the US) of countries, rather than two, with endevors focusing on projects out of Earth orbit, prospects for that competition we have all been looking for are getting better and better.
My second thought is that its nice to see a government policy toward space which isn't pure politi-bullshit. Its cool that the ESA came out and said they want to make sure to get the soil samples before they send people. Their statements sounds like commitment, while Bush's space plan sounds like election year politics.
Last time I checked, babies needed to learn how to crawl before learning how to run a 6-minute mile.
How about we take some baby steps first? Or....Lets wait the thousands of years it would take to get a probe to even the closest star, let alone "the deepest reaches of space". That would be a REAL waste of time.
This isn't a flame, but seriously: what can people do that robots can't? I've said similar things about this in previous Mars articles, and I'll say them again: humans are too damn clumsy to send in outer space. We need food, water, oxygen... A robot needs solar energy. And there is plenty of it. It just makes NO sense to send people out there, except that average Joe in America or in Europe wants to be patriotic and say "we got the first man on [insert location here]." Please, someone, inform me of a good reason and I'll change my mind.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
It's a very common sentiment here, if not entirely accurate. The majority of immigrants to Australia in the 19th century were free settlers, just like the US.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Who cares if Mars gets contaminated. What could happen ? A group of aliens with hostile intentions will evolve and attack us in 500 million years ? I think its safe to say that a microbe won't spread around the entire planet and damage it indefinitely. The only reason I could think of not contaminating mars is that there might be possible conflicts with evidence of past life, but wouldn't it be relatively easy to tell the difference between 100 000 year old bacteria and the crap that came with the ship ?
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Also stop taking physics lessons from Star Trek. There is no button you can push that will transport you haflway across the galaxy in two minutes. Nor will there likely ever be one. No, you will likely have to get there the hard way - at some very very high speed that still takes you tens of thousands of years to get anywhere.
The ocean analogy has been brought up before and it continues to demosntrate how ignorant most people are of basic science.
Earth rules! It was practically custom designed to meet our every need and take our punishment. Why we are polluting it in favor of colonizing a dead rock is beyond me.
Garmong is right - man's accomplishments in space will be best reached when such endeavors are released from the government tether.
who's suplying the ISS right now?
huh, yes Russians
(someone ought to beat that attitude out of you)
and you'll get plenty of competition from China...in a few years.
Where in the constitution is the levy of taxes authorized to explore other planets?
We have much greater need for financial, technological and scientific resources right here on our own planet. Half a trillion dollars to do what? If this were proposed by private enterprise, the shareholders would fire management due to the low return on investment that will be acheived from the expenditure.
"You want to leave the island? Where are you going to go, the reef? Go, spend 90% of your short life on a boat. I will stay right here."
Mars would make an excellent fixer-upper, don't you think?
Decide whether you want to discuss interplanetary or interstellar travel, and we'll go from there.
if we're sure it can't are the euros just trying to slow are progress or change our adgenda?
1888 Franklin St.
Gill Scott was more than just an "angry" black man. He was a man who had lived through a very hard time, growing up at a young age in the rural south - where racism was abound, and then spending his teenage and young adult years in the city during the height of crack. He lived through a lot, and likely came from slaves who built the foundation of this great nation. And his point is valid. There was not always a "welfare" - and for people who had no education (dont give me that education is free crap, it was not always afforded to colored brothers and sisters) seeing a doctor, or paying doctors bills was not always an option.
;)
Don't get me wrong, I want to get off this rock as bad as the rest of you, but I think when we spends so much money on corporate welfare and defense spending, what if we put that money into humanitarian projects? Does any one person need more money than they can spend in their lifetime? Why shouldn't that money, that is just sitting there be used to help people who are sick? And why shouldn't it be used to send humans to mars and beyond?
I'm all for taxes. I dont mind paying them if they go to the right purpose, the humanitarian purpose. Most of us want to go to space to fulfill a fantacy, but we use as an execuse "we need to save the human race". And I agree, but I think we need to do it on all levels. Provide food, water, shelter, free education at all levels to all people on this planet. Oh, and colonization of the rest of the universe, maybe in the multiverse.
Clone some astronauts out in microgravity, and send them to Mars. Damn, those Babewatch lifeguardesses look hydroponically grown already - Mars needs women!
--
make install -not war
They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface
Hm how would they do that? It's easy enough to prove that something has existed but it's much harder to prove that it hasn't.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet
Isn't that a bold assumption? They haven't even proven there's been any life on Mars. I think that's one of smaller problems for sending an earthling to Mars.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...
The only one speaking of interstellar travel at this point is you. Mars is a six-month trip with current technology.
When I read "three decades," then double that (since it's a government estimate)
If you insult government intelligence you might *not* live to see tomorrow.
This comment is Fake-moon friendly.
The shuttle has definitely cost a lot of money (and lives), and perhaps has lived longer than it should have, but it was an important step in our ascension to space. It is not entirely clear that any other path would have been faster or even possible, given the issue of funding, and the positive feedback loop resulting in getting the USAF and government behind the program.
The shuttle was a marvel for its time, and now somewhat antiquated in a large part due to the onward march of technology. This will be the history of every major human technological achievement for the forseeable future. It is easy to look back and see all the flaws. But it is not so easy to stop a multi-billion dollar project and start from scratch when you barely have the funds to continue operating on the current path.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
I think the timeline proposed will lend the project to too much political muddling, much like the ISS suffered.
Watch our own politicians rail against NASA because of cost of the ISS. It's ironic, when much of the overrun is due to their required desing changes, all in the name of efficiency.
Well, the problem is that something as bold as a human Mars mission does take decades to prepare for.
Read "Mars on Earth" or "A Case for Mars" (both written by Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society linked to earlier).
He argues that if you focus NASA's current buget to the task, you could be there in sixe years. Even if you double that it's significantly less than even twenty.
It doesn't take a lot of new technologies to develop, almost everything we know how to do. It just requires the will to do it.
It will be interesting to see who gets there first.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Assuming we don't get something really weird like a drive that can accelerate every atom on a craft simultaneously, or some kind of space warp, the ultimate limit to spacecraft speed in the solar system is the acceleration that the human body can cope for extended periods, which presumably isn't much above 1 g. Given this, you build a craft that accelerates at 1 g until it's half way to Mars, turns around, and decelerates so that it's at zero velocity (relative to Mars, at least) when it gets there. One conceivable way to do this might be a lightsail powered by a really big laser, but anyway, that's kind of irrelevant, we're seeking boundary values.
The nearest approach from Earth to Mars in the past 50,000 years was about 55 million kilometres, so we'll use that figure as our distance.
So, the trick is to figure out how long, when accelerating from rest at 1 g, it takes to get to the halfway point, and then double that travel time. My calculations give about 75,000 seconds for the halfway point, so about 150,000 seconds total travel time. That works out to about 4 days and eight hours.
As a sanity check, I made sure that the peak speed isn't relativistic (in which case the Newtonian calculations I have used don't work). That turns out not to be an issue, with the peak speed about 0.2% of the speed of light.
So, we'll never have airline flights to Mars. It'll always be an ocean voyage.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This (one way trip to Mars) has been discussed extensively in previous /. article.
I'm all for it, and there are many smart, sane, competent people who would make a good first team and die with dignity and honor. How sad it is that in modern western society we've elevated the individual human life to such an extent that we cannot see this...
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For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
a Martian soil sample by 2014
?? Check the armpit of any French dude... The Europeans will find plenty of soil samples from all over the place.
And where the hell are my flying cars?!?!
The fact is, we can say and say and say, but until someone or something has enough competition, we will never actually do it.
Competition will come naturally when there is monetary profit or some nationalistic interest (or presidential reelection pursuit). I don't think there are any other incentives to go to the Moon or Mars right now.
Many people didn't see it coming, but it seems that China is, directly or indirectly, going to give a great push to space exploration.
Don't tell me McDonalds or Sony will start investing in worthwhile causes anytime soon?
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
nt
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
We know that comets frequently consist of massive amounts of water. Water is typically associated with life (little closed minded, IMO) - and thus micro organisms should be able to survive in comets and other space debree....
It's logical to assume there is a great possibility that many viruses and bacteria found on Earth were deposited here from another planet. Or rather, that it's very provable.
Likewise, much as 'humans can contaminate' Mars, it's naive to think that Mars couldn't contaminate Earth. We have no means or comprehension of what life possibly existed (or still exists) on Mars - nor what threat that life could pose to life on Earth.
They may very well bring back an unstoppable plague in those soil samples. Who knows.
Damnit, stupid beer. It seems to enhance the conspiracy sector of my brain. Thank God there isn't another lame SCO press release out - I'd go crazy on one of those right now!
Okay, let me get this straight...
A while ago they found a rock that they said came from the planet Mars. They found it up in the North Pole or something.
They analyzed this rock and determined that life exists on Mars because they found bacteria in the rock - except that in order to find these "life forms" they had to burn the rock up in a gas chromatograph.
So they fly this little spacecraft thingy off to Mars that can roam around and cook up some more soil by use of its miniatureized GC unit, and then they had the gall announce that life *does* exist on Mars!
WRONG!!
Life DID exist on Mars, until you KILLED IT! You Insensitive Clods!
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Imagine, the whole world watching on TV as the first human sets foot on Mars... and she shows us TWO "surprise guests" this time! Would NASA TV cut away as fast as CBS did?
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
Shouldn't isolating sentience and building a computer around that sentient core come first? Maybe we'll even be able to upload ourselves into it. This goal dwarfs space exploration completely, but once accomplished, Mars exploration will be a lot easier without having to deal with all that evolutionary load. No need to terraform.
-I am an elective eunuch.
More like flamebait. I was pretty offended. Keep in mind who first launched man into space, Mr.
That and cash infusions and debt forgiveness on NASA's part.
You can not serilize a human of harmful microbes - yet. Short of irradiating them, at least. Surely the advances to do so will come about sooner than later, on the cosmic scale of things.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Very interesting post. Here's my take, very rough and unchecked.
Considering that we're talking about a potential 4-hour trip, I don't think we can look back 50,000 years for the distance. Right now, we're at a 10 light-minute distance between Earth and Mars, which works out to 1.8e11 m (or 180 million km), slightly 3x what you used. This calc is from: 1. d=rt; 2. d=ct; 3. d = (3e8 m/s) x (10 min) x (60 s/min).
Next, I'll calc how long to get to the halfway point, which is 9.0e10 m away. Using 1. d=(at^2)/2; 2. t=sqrt(2d/a); 3. t = sqrt(2 x (9.0e10 m) / (9.8 m/s^2)); We get t=1.355e5 s (135000 s), or 37.646 hours.
Doubling that for the full trip is 75.29 hours, or slightly over 3 days.
So I can say, we both got the same order of magnitude (several days), but for some reason the calculations are off. I figured the distance further but got a shorter trip... Can a third party verify one of these calculations please?
And as a quick check for validity of Newtonian calcs, assume constant speed travel in this time over this distance, and check what velocity would be roughly. Calc with 1. v=d/t; 2. v=(1.8e11 m) / (1.355e5 s); 3. v=1.3284e6 m/s. Compared to speed of light (c=3.0e8 m/s), this is, as you said, less than 1%. Newton rules here.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
Christopher Columbus, et al, didn't sit down and talk about this when they brought over their diseases like the pox wiping out whole populations of native americans. I mean, it sucked, but the human race still lives on and we're still here to do arm-chair analysis and rant our way forward.
Umm, if we send an astronaut and he gets infected that's one person or team infected. If the sterilization doesn't work for the sample, it could be a whole planet that gets infected.
The Soviet Union managed to combine all their resources towards acheiving just a few goals. Military power, a world class space program, and Olympic sports superiority. And they did those things pretty darn well.
Of course, with everything else neglected, life there was hell in more ways than I care to enumerate. I have to prefer the society where everyone does what they feel is important to get done, and only unite behind goals for their own purposes.
The Russians don't need to go, its already the Red Planet ...
Europeans do want to send a man to Mars, but he is no Europen himself...
with two rovers taking plenty of super high quality photos and camera crews heading to Sedona, AZ the US government will have footage just in time showing astronauts on Mars beating out any opposition.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
The planet would be fully astroturfed within a week.
kampai.
There is a universal speed limit - c - but there is no lower bound on the amount of proper time it takes to get from one place to another.
.93-4 interstellar dust, and eventually gas, starts being a major concern. At these velocities a shield is essentual, which limits you cargo and fuel mass. The closer a ship is to C, the larger a shield. (Plus, gas and dust collisions also reduce ship momentum: over long voyage this is effectively a very non-linear viscosity ...). The trade-off and viscosity limits spaceship velocities so that time-dilations much more than 10 are not feasible.
Although I generally agree with the spirit of your message, this specific statement is not accurate:
First, there's a biophysical upper bound on acceleration: the body cannot concievably withstand much more than several g's for long. This limits your Lorentz factor.
Second, once v/c ~
Working for necessity's mother.
Government's not giving away enough free money so I should rob a liquor store?
Wait what? A *liquor* store?
Hey dumbass, let me get this straight. You're broke, you alledegly can't work, but you can get the energy up to go rob a *liquor* store.
"My kids are starving, that's why they're crying"
Hey genious, that *liquor* isn't going to feed your kids.
Maybe you should get a clue and go "rob" a soup kitchen. I'm sure your kids would be nice enough to bring you something back if you couldn't go yourself. I know the soup kitchen I helped at had plenty of bread they were giving away for people to take with them when they left.
Or if you're really up to robbing something, why not rob a super market so you can at least pretend it okay since it was so you could feed your kids.
That song might have a valid point if they author in any way shape or form was indicating how dedicated he was to at least attempting to help himself and his family.
As it is, it just demonstrates how lazy and thoughtless he is. He doesn't even have the sense to rob something that would benefit his kids.
It's amazing how many places are out there looking to help people but people like that demand it from the government.
Sorry, progress isn't going to stop because you've failed at life and refuse to act intelligently to make an attempt to rectify the situation.
There will always be poor. Better for government to spend the money on things that move society forward and let society (not the government) decide how much it wants to give out of its pockets to help those who need it.
Robbing a liquor store and bitching about starving kids in the same song. I've never read anything so pathetic.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Right now the population growth rate is supraexponential (that is the intrinsic rate of growth is an increasing function of time)
Great idea! Finally make the earth safe for the rest of us.
and I for one welcome our sterile overlords!
That's the real problem with sending people to Mars: they'll introduce microbes.
There is no rush to send people. I think we can easily get by with robotic probes for a century or two. It will take at least that long to even begin to determine reliably whether Mars has any kind of microbial life.
Bush and ESA's "human to Mars" efforts are motivated purely politically, against all scientific reason.
to think that we have a 3rd contender... the aliens and that they've already won :p
on a more serious note, hope all the interested people checked out the James Cameron vision on what Mars Exploration would be like.
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
In the 50s-80s, it was about beating the USSR, now, Europe is still behind Russia and Russia is a 3rd world country!
Perhaps your impression is just related to the fact that the US media like to portray joint missions domestically as pure NASA successes, a phenomenon not entirely absent from other kinds of international ventures the US participated in. One of the examples that annoys many people to no end is the US seemingly taking sole credit for winning WWII.
In any case, Europe has mostly focused on commercial and astronomical use of space: unspectacular, but either financially or scientifically profitable. "First to..." kinds of missions don't seem to have been of so much interest.
Using problems as an excuse for not doing anything, stating current limitations as reasons not to even try to overcome or deal with them is not wizdom. It's just plain-old, narrow-minded intelectual cowardice.
Yes, there are problems. Deal with them.
Yees, there are obstacles. Don't sit and whine in your little corner of the universe like a frightened little kid - overcome them.
In science, and I had the honor and priviledge to know and study from great scientists personally, everything which was not disproved is considered possible. If it's possible and important, than it should be tried. If it's deemed impossible and important, sometimes it should be tried also.
You think space-colonization is impossible. Perhaps you're eventually right (though not for the feeble excuses you gave):
But if humanity will not at least TRY, at least research and experiment and DO, not just moap and whine about what is hard to do or imagine - then we will all, as a specie, be as narrow-minded and cowardly as your post.
And BTW, IMHO, if judging from past experience: humanity, as a specie, eventually takes after our intelectually-brave. So I still have hope we wouldn't curl-up and die.
Working for necessity's mother.
George W. Buch told Tony Blair the CIA is ab-so-lute-ly sure Marsians are possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Imagine there's no heaven, etc. No doubt you are right that a united humanity could achieve some impressive feats, be it for good or ill. One question, though: if there are to be no political, religious, or cultural boundaries, then whose political, religious, or cultural agenda is being followed?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
as long as they use a safer landing method then they used for Beagle... Else the sterilization won't be the biggest problem.
After all, they've only just figured out that it might not be such a good idea to drop a dead weight from almost 3 million km high and expect it to actually land safely.
with a little luck, there'll be a chinese takeaway..
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Where's your misguided leftie compassion? Think of your children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children 500 million years from now!
Um... parent is a troll - exactly how?
Because you don't agree?
PUT SOME HARDWARE IN THE AIR!
Honestly, these old-world guys can talk a big tale. On paper, they have already done it.
I want to see the snow on the poles.
I want to be the 1st human to write their name in that snow!
Worst
"meteorites cast off from earth "contaminating" Mars already"
Even if Meteroites have not contaminated Mars what about our probes? I somehow doubt that the early probes were sterilized. If anything from Earth has already contaminated Mars, human probes would have to rank high on the list.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It takes approximately 6 to 9 months to get there. Imagine 6 to 9 months in a small cabin in space. And you need to go back to earth as well. Temperatures on Mars range from -225 F, (-143 C) to +81 F (27 C). Huge dust storms spread throughout the entire atmosphere with speeds of 15-30 m/s (33-66 mph). I think the chance to survive a trip to Mars is almost equal to zero. You need to be either very brave, or just plainly mad to apply for being the first astronaut that will be sent to Mars.
And as a quick check for validity of Newtonian calcs, assume constant speed travel in this time over this distance, and check what velocity would be roughly. Calc with 1. v=d/t; 2. v=(1.8e11 m) / (1.355e5 s); 3. v=1.3284e6 m/s. Compared to speed of light (c=3.0e8 m/s), this is, as you said, less than 1%. Newton rules here.
True (at least in order of magnitude, I do acknowledge the difference between your result and that of your parent post).
Just to play the devil's advocate here: the problem is the amount of energy required to reach these speeds:
Let's first make an approximation here: Earth's orbital velocity is about 30 km/s, and the extra speed to reach Mars' orbit works out to something in the O.O.M. of some 10s km/s. The energy related to this orbital difference can safely be ignored when compared to the top-speed of ~1000 km/s you list.
When assuming a space-probe of around 1000 kg, the energy to reach the top speed is about E=0.5 * m * v^2 = 8.8e14 Joules. Now that is a rather large amount of energy: it's equivalent to about 20 kilotons of TNT (say, a Nagasaki bomb). Plus, you need (about) the same amount of energy to deccelerate when arriving at Mars.
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
Donald Duck will have a SCREAMING ORGASM when ESA puts a man on Pluto!
had to be said
You didn't mean it this way, I know, but that kind of uniformity is just what our good friend Osama bin Laden is aiming for: Once God (his), one Nation (his), one Vision (his). No thanks, even if it is "mine" instead of "his". Maybe 150+ countries are a bit much, but a world government concentrates power in a way that makes me nervous -- ask your average German or Brit what they think of the European Union, and you'll see what I mean.
You say that, but right now, only Russia and China have the ability to put a man in space...
I just hope europeans will be more welcome than yankees
... there's a slightly dented unmanned probe with a small LCD screen displaying the message "Do you really want to deploy the airbags? [Yes] [No]". Theyr'e sending someone up to click one of the buttons.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Seriously... and whip up some kind of orgainizing medium. A web page, or use your slashdot journal. Hell, start a wiki and build ideas.
The parent post with the "imagine" idea, though flawed, has a point. United the human race can do amazing things. "Things" being plural. I can't wrap my head around what humanity could do if it decided to work together on stuff. It could certainly tackle space travel, and I am sure it would have plenty of energy left over to solve other large and complex problems.
But you don't need everyone to do it. Powered flight was a boondoggle pursued by the eccentric rich and enthusiastic hobbists, and upon that foundation a pair of brothers who ran a bicycle company achieved success. Just a few people. Plenty left to discover that chromosomes contain genes, build the Panama Canal, invent ice cream cones, formulate the theory of relativity, and write Heart of Darkness and The Wings of the Dove.
Let us have space.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Rocket scientists wouldn't be too happy having to muck about with microbiology, and the reverse is likewise. Writer's make lousy dancers, and painters, for the most part, can't act. Most, if not all of mankind's greatest achievements have come from people following their passions. Besides, people are happier when they follow their passions.
I also think there's something to be said for competition. It's another layer of motivation -- yeah, it's cool no matter who wins, but can I come up with a more elegent solution than my friend over there?
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
What a waste!! Better to improve our lives here on earth by investing in biotechnologies
anti age pill!
That's why I suggested a laser-pushed lightsail to do the job for the purpose of this handwaving exercise - as I've shown, that amount of energy is large but not unprecedented (and presumably will become much more manageable in the future if we get large-scale fusion power). To figure out how to build a laser array that puts out that much power with enough accuracy to keep it focussed on the craft is quite a challenge, to say the least. Finally, the light sail would want to reflect a very high proportion of the energy or it would melt real fast...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Don't you understand the first thing about thermodynamics? Do you realize how much energy it takes to keep an object suspended in the air especially if it needs to be designed for short hops? Seesh if you think we are dependent on oil now, how much oil do you think your precious flying car will take to run?
The hubble telescope did not require the shuttle for launch, only for the on-orbit servicing.
The telescope could have been designed without all the extra doors and panels and handholds needed for on-orbit servicing, which would have saved at least a hundred milion $.
Not to mention astronaut training costs.
It could then have been launched on a titan-4 class rocket which lifts 20ton to low earth orbit for $200m, less than half the price of a shuttle launch. (i.e the same way the keyhole spy sats are sent up, which are more or less the same size as hubble, except they point down instead of up!)
Now, I agree that there would still have been the mirror problem, and the gradual failures of various equipment on board. BUT, for the cost of each of the hubble servicing missions, they could have build and launched a whole new Hubble telescope every 2 or three years.
So, if they planned for that up-front, they could have mass-produced 5 or 6 units, (holding off on the camera designs to allow for tech improvments over the years), for probably a few hundred millon a pop.
And also blocked booked a titan launch every 2 or 3 years. That would also kept the airforce/nsa/cia happy since they have to subsidise the rocket companies to keep their production lines going in any case.
This approach would have been much cheaper, and would also mean that there would probably be 2 or even 3 hubble class telescopes operating simultaniously.
And, they could have built in a deorbit engine, so the 20t hunk of metal could be safely dumped in the pacific at the end of its life.
But of course, this could never happen, since one of the real purposes of the project was just to give the shuttle something to do in space in order to justify is 3.5-4 billion $ per year price tag.
But, at least it gave NASA some good PR for repairing it (and I do recognise the human and technologoical achievment of that)
But was it worth the cost (and risk) of all those extra shuttle missions?
It just goes to show, that the only really awsome US achievement(s) in manned space flight/science over the last 30 years, was repairing an unmanned space probe.
Most expensive repair call out in history.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."
contaminate it??!?!?!? Contaminate it?!?!? Its MARS....who cares! That's sort of like saying we've disturbed the pristine conditions on the moon, or the pristine conditions in ANWR. Look, if there's nothing there of value except expendable resources, what's the worry??
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
Don't they realize that with that announcement at this time, they are only supporting President Bush's re-election? Stupid Europeans...
Europe has MORE MONEY than the USA to spend on this.
Europe has MORE MONEY than the USA period, and we're havent landed ourselves with a whole lot of international "peace keeping" expenses we can't afford...
Did they sterilize that? I don't think they thought of such things that long ago; the possibility of introducing microbes to an alien planet.
I hope Europe does start a manned program. To trail the U.S., Russia, and China in space technology makes no sense at all. Europe already possesses a suitable launcher in the Ariane V. You would think that they could begin a program quickly.
an ill wind that blows no good
You can't sterilize an astronaut, but if he is wearing a space suit there shouldn't be any difficulty in soaking a sponge with bleach and rubbing it all round the suit before leaving the craft. You have to sterlize the outside of the spacecraft, but that same problem is faced with robots.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Given the current financial situation of some countries, and their huge budget deficits.
Is it really wise to spend billions on sending a man to a huge red rock in outer space?
I don't know about the rest of the world, but to me retreiving soil samples seems far more important/cheap/usable/practical/intelligent. I agree, it is less /newsworthy/.
The planet would be fully whitewashed within a week. ...
And the BBC would have to pay for it, naturally.
greens of the worls unite.
I could tell you were one of my brothers SubltleNuance. I agree. The U.S. is not free.
You system harps on about it but actually, because you have a non existent social welfare system, and bad unaffordable education system, you are not free at all. Scandinavian people know what freedom is.! But my question to you is:
Why do you want to live in the states?
Why don't you come and live in Europe - it's not perfect but it's better.
If you think things are better in the U.S you are wrong.
Technology in America is the best but it's not for the public. Your public transport sucks.
If you lived in France or Germany, or any of the Scandinavian countries you would instantly feel you are in a country that's years ahead.
You probably don't desserve to have to live in the U.S.
Really, besides jazz, soul, and baseball, what do you have?
I see bilboards all the time to sterilize people but never one to sterilize a robot! I can't help myself...I blame my parents (my daughter can blame me!
mod me troll...for get me...not coming back
I don't think the technology to send a man to mars will be there in the next 3 decades. They still need to come up with a way to launch from earth without having a launch tower. They have been trying to escape earths gravity with plane like vehicles but have never done it and they have been trying this for the past 10 or more years. Untill they can fly out off our planet and land on mars like a regular airplane then it wont' happen.
>And, of course, the Neandert[h]als might have some comments to add to the discussion, if they were still alive.
Uhh uMMMMMM GAAAAhHH. UrrrrRRRrr.
Celestial dynamics favor transfer of material from Mars to Earth 60 times over the reverse:
(1) Mars has 1/3rd the gravity and requires 1/9th the impact force;
(2) Mars has 1% the atmosphere (though could have had much more in the distant past);
(3) Mars is much closer to a source of meteors in the asteroid belt.
Also, Mars may have stablised geologically a couple hundred million years before the larger Earth did. It appears that life can arise in less than this time. Mars also died geologically much earlier than Earth too.
Its likely there is only one chemistry of life in the solar system due to the high interplanetary infection probability. There could have been thousands of rocks sent from Mars to Earth over the billions of years, considering we've found 18 Mars meteors on Earth without looking too hard. Other places for life uch as the warmer cloud layers of Jupiter and the oceans of Europa and Titan could have been infected too over the eons.
I too think it's GREAT that we have multiple players competing for achievement in space: China, Russia, Europe, USA, even Japan.
Good luck to all - we'll see you up there. Because humans always seem to do better when they are racing each other. Yes, sometimes it brings out the worst in people, but usually it brings out the best.
Per Astra, As Astra!
-Styopa
8.2296m
It's 1st and 10 on our own 20 and we've got a long way to go for a touchdown.
Push forward and give it to Jonny.
We can sacrifice a pound of flesh, until flights to Mars are a dime a dozen.
One euro for 150.
How sad it is that in modern western society we've elevated the individual human life to such an extent that we cannot see this
Very true. A while back when we were hearing more about the 'right to life' issues, I usually refered to it as the 'obligation to life'.
I'm sure there are thousands of people (at least) who would prefer to die young exploring another planet than sit around decaying and collecting social security here on Earth. And eventually, they will probably have a realistic option to make that choice, but probably not in our lifetimes.
They can't even land a small craft on Mars and they're already thinking about sending humans? Christ, I'd hate to be involved in that mission.
"What happened to Jim?"
"Well, we know he landed somewhere, but we can't really figure out where. It's a big place, you know."
"That's OK, I never really liked him anyway."
Right, but that was back when Russia was a second world nation. ;)
I don't think people realize just how many parts there are to a "Man on Mars" equation, and how difficult each part is. Getting to Mars, having enough food and water to sustain the trip, hitting a target that far away, then coming back is hard enough. But if you actually plan on landing someone on the surface, you've got yourself a HUGE problem.
Look, Mars isn't the moon. A couple of small boosters isn't going to cut it when you're trying to escape from planetary gravity. The shuttle may have diverted a lot of money from the "Let's Just Get Out There" fund, but if we're ever going to land a person on Mars, we'd better have a damned good planet-to-orbit-to-planet system developed. And that means a shuttle of some kind.
I personally don't see a Mars landing happening within the next three decades. No way. There are too many logistical problems to solve. While we've pretty much got the hang of hitting the Mars target from Earth (I don't think any of our Mars-shots have missed) we have a long way to go before we can reliably get a lander to the surface (we're getting better at this part). Then you have to factor in the large amounts of fuel you need to carry to Mars if you ever want to come back to Earth. The amount of things you have to have in place for this to happen is staggering. Just off the top of my head:
- Earth-> Earth Orbit vehicle [Yes, but needs improvement]
- Space station (ideally you would store your months and months of required supplies in Earth orbit) [Not really]
- Earth Orbit-> Mars Orbit vehicle [Not really]
- Mars orbital station (good for telemetry, as well as emergency way-station procedures in case crew get stranded) [No]
- Mars Orbit-> Surface -> Mars Orbit (Remember all that fuel you're going to need to escape the Martian gravity) [No]
If, in the next couple of decades, we can send a rover to Mars and get it back here I'd be impressed. But I don't see a lot of talk about how to overcome the issue of landing a rover to the surface that still has enough fuel to get back into orbit again. Think about how hard the current Mars rovers hit the surface -- now add a few thousand pounds of rocket fuel to the mix. We need a much, much more sophisticated shuttle designed if we plan on having humans land and then come back (fragile, air-breathing bastards that we are).a. The species jumping is a regular event. It is simply that sometimes the results are relatively benign. Lately however, that is not the case.
b. alien pathogen being able to attack our biochemistry are extremely low to non-existant only if we assume that the attack would be the same as those of Earth origin. As experience with the extremophile microbes indicates, we do not know what is possible or we wouldn't be continually surprised by where we find microbes. Yes, we can explain something after it is discovered but our grasp of biochemistry could only be said to be complete if we could predict.
c. a minor risk compared to the implications of the find! echoes the party line in the early years of the nuclear industry. Considering the preceding point, it is scientific arrogance in the extreme. Plus, how significant would the revelation of a common galactic ancestor be? The Creationists would yell, "Of course!". For the rest of us, neat but where's the value added?
Conclusion: we haven't got a clue what we will find and we are taking a huge risk. But that is human nature. The hope is that we will contaminate Mars and not the other way around.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Assume that your spaceship is steadily burning whatever, and you accelerate at a = 1 G. Assume that the exhaust goes extremely fast (ion engine) so that we can ignore changes to the spaceship mass.
Your speed goes as v = a*t.
Your energy goes as 0.5 * m * v^2 = 0.5 * m * a^2 * t^2.
Your power goes as d(0.5 * m * a^2 * t^2)/dt = m * a^2 * t.
Why the hell should your power be a function of time for a spaceship that is steadily burning fuel at the same rate. Somebody explain, please.
"As experience with the extremophile microbes indicates, we do not know what is possible or we wouldn't be continually surprised by where we find microbes. "
;-) The fact that there's no archeobacterial pathogens does tend to support this view.
Indeed. But it's noteworthy that not a single example of a pathogenic archeobacterium has been found. Biochemically archeobacteria are different to us, but not as different as might be expected from a completely alien bug. As I said even if dna/protein based the odds against triplet/amino acid compatibility sufficient for an alien bug's infection machinery to work must be astronomical
As to species jumping. It's only common if you consider it as a global phenomonon. And a per microbe generation basis it *is* extremely rare. True with avian flue for example we've got a potential nasty example on our hands, but with several million chickens infected in close proximity to humans we've only had a couple of dozen cases of cross-species infection so far and nothing sustainable. Hopefully it will stay that way. Point is though that *even* with flu - a virus successful because it can jump species relatively easily - the actual rate of it happening is still very low on a per infection basis, which suggests that the likelihood of a problem arising from alien bugs is very very low indeed, tending to nil.
Maybe they should just give us the money and help out with some manufacturing.
We've already developed the basic hardware
We've demonstrated the ability to land on other celestial bodies and return astronuats safely
We've just demonstrated our ability to land on Mars.
I'd love to see NASA and the US do it alone - but i think the possiblility of going to Mars is greater if we apply what we know, and pool our resources.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
They expect to be there late.
By joint mission, you are perhaps refering to the fact that the US shoulders ~85% of the cost compared to the European 8.3. Interestingly, the GDP of the US is 10.45 trillioncompared to a European 11.52 trillion (this is a bit of overestimate for member space nations, but not 80% off). So, yes, in some bizzare way the American media has come to conclusion that the ISS is mostly a NASA success.
Living in the US and talking to many people, I can tell you that few take complete credit for winning WWII. The general opinion is that it was the US, Russia, and England were the important players. If you believe resisting invasion for ~14 days should mean getting credit, then we will have to just agree to disagree. Victory in the war in the Pacific was pretty much a United States effort. In Europe, Russia and England showed amazing heroics holding out, but were in little danger of ultimately overrunning Germany by itself. (Keep in mind that although Russia did stage an impressive counter attack after stalingrad, this was possible in large part because a two (3) front war existed. Take away the US/British fronts and...) However, it was the massive influx of men and material from the US that in the end saved the day. So, yes we somehow believe that the US deserves a great deal of credit for the war. To me, this is not too far off base.
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."
By the time anybody gets there the Mars may be contaminated by this broken Mars probe, which wasn't meant to land on Mars (therefore wasn't sterilized) but chances are high that it will hit Mars nonetheless.
I would say that the world space agency's should work together on this. But, seeing how the ISS turned out (late, budget overruns, etc), perhaps its better if we all take a different path. After all, competition is a good thing!
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
It's a big Universe, and more than likely earth got 'contaminated' at some point. Its all space dust anyway...
Before you land on Mars, just go in to the airlock, leave in the space vacuum, and all cells will explode. I'am not this whether this will work with viruses, however.
Global military spending (warning: PDF file) was about $800 billion in 2002. With the enormous ramp-up in 2003, the total is probably over $1 trillion now.
A trillion dollars down the drain, every year. Imagine what we could accomplish if we used that amount productively instead.
"The hope is that we will contaminate Mars and not the other way around."
Human nature indeed.
I think it's funny that so many people view it as such a low risk. There either will be something bad brought back - or there won't. Sounds pretty 50/50 to me. Hell, they could bring something harmless back - that becomes or somehow contributes to some sort of plague in 10,000,000 years. Sure, seems mute now - but 10,000,000 years from now it wouldn't.
Not that I care, why bother myself with concerns I have no control over. It is food for thought, though, just goes to show how little people consider the ramifications of their actions.
Everyone is bent on the idea of exploring Mars, but you never hear any mention of what the reprocussions of that could be. Though, I'm all for it - regardless of the reprocussions. If we stop exploring and discovering - where would that leave us.
But hey, these people I'm referring to are the idiots who think SCO can not tell a lie - and they print everything as though it came directly from the Bible! All praise SCO and Darl McBride for blessing our planet - we wouldn't know what to put after bullshit in the dictionary if they weren't here!
like eating at McDonalds, wearing nike and getting some bling-bling?
That's important to some people, sure. And writing leftist posts on Slashdot is important to others. Whatever floats your boat is OK with me.
It's conceivable that I'm brainwashed and programmed by the prevailing forces of society. I don't think I am, of course, but if I were, that is exactly what I'd think.
That's not much of an argument for your view though, since it applies equally much to you. Maybe you're brainwashed to think the things you say here? You don't think you are, of course, but etc...
We may even both be brainwashed, but in different ways since we live in different environments.
Ultimately this is a fruitless topic. If we're unable to think for ourselves, we'll never figure it out since we're unable to think for ourselves. So why bother?
That's not to say that we're not subject to "opinion pressure" from the surrounding society, but if we work at it we can rise above it.
People occasionally cite Godwin's Law as Goodwin's Law.
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
All discussions of a hoax aside, aren't we like thirty five years removed from a successful series of manned moon landings? All this talk of manned Martian exploration seem premature when there isn't an established human presence on the closest celestial body. Re-establishing a human presence on the moon should be child's play. Use history as a precedent, deftly analyze the old launch data, and apply three decades of technological advancement and prowess to improving the process. In that regard, because the moon remains relatively equidistant from the earth, we can launch many times a year and establish a permanent settlement on the moon. From there, we can perfect methods of manned space flight over the limited distance and use that knowledge to remove some of the speculation from a longer manned trip. We can also use the moon base to assemble and launch components that don't otherwise need to *accompany* astronauts to Mars... such as surface lifesupport, surface vehicles and domiciles, and a return vehicle. Then we can just send astronauts at a later date in a one way ship.
un burrito me trampeó.
Between all the hot air they spout and the bullshit they sling around, Mars would be shirt sleeve comfortable and highly fertile in a matter of weeks.
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
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Karl Marx read it and wrote a scathing criticism that included such points as, "What I meant for government is a democratic republic" and "They call for abolution of profit? Of course there will still be profit in a communist system!" and most famously, "If this is what is called Marxism then one thing for sure, I am not a Marxist!"
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Bush says that Mars will cost over $80B, assuming 80M taxpayers, it will cost you $1,000 for the Mars trip. I'd rather keep my $1,000.
I would certainly agree, but the problem remains that this only applies to those who bother to stop and think about things. After all, America was fooled and did go to Iraq. The general population tends to see things too late, or not at all. And even if they do see the lies, how do you stop them?
Those voting machines, despite all we know about them, are steadily being placed in time for the next election. Nobody has shouted loud enough yet to have them removed. (Not that the old system worked particularly well, as we have seen. But you take my point.)
-FL
"We need to go back to the moon before we can go to Mars," he told space scientists, academics and industrialists in London.
How can the ESA go "back" to the moon, when they never went there in the first place?!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Perhaps eh we just send our new babies to Mars. When they grow up they will believe they are Martians. AND SLASHDOT WON'T TELL THEM. hehehehe Of course they'll beat us dog-eared once they enter space exploration Race. Takes a lot less energy to blast off of Mars. Eh. BTW, enjoy my website. http://www.newpath4.com/greeting.htm
Article I::Section 8:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;
The taxes on the US paying for planetary exploration provide for the common defense and general welfare of the US. The ROI on space investment by the US is very high, generally considered to be $40:1 over the 45 year history of NASA. US corporations aren't tapping this industry enough on their own, so the government shows unusual longterm strategic vision in seeding the R&D. The products of the space industry are all deployed on Earth, as well as the vast economic activity from the ripples.
All that is prior to any actual economic products, like energy or even mining extraction, and prior to any directly relevant science discoveries, like evolutionary insights. For example, if Mars happens to provide insight into a global ecological collapse before we manufacture one on Earth, we'll have a better chance of survival. You might be old enough to remember the innovation of a "global" mindset that was sparked by the first pictures of the "whole Earth" from space. If not, it's easy to understand how you could take the benefits of space exploration for granted.
Moreover, now that the US has (inevitably?) poisoned the well and militarized space, it cannot allow China to solely occupy the high ground, and leapfrog to the forefront of military power. Demilitarization is obviously a more practical solution, but the way out from the status quo requires following through on our footprints. If we can keep the military off Mars, we might have even turned the tide, but space exploration will keep the US military space tech ahead, even short of interplanetary.
If the covering the complexity and risk of this exploration were possible by private industry, it would be a terrific corporation to own. As it is, the corporations organized by the program are some of the most valuable: aerospace, computer, materials science. And continuing the research makes them more valuable still - in a unique endeavor that delivers ROI both to their shareholders, and to all humans.
--
make install -not war
Nice reply. But it still assumes that the mechanism is what we see with earth-based forms. What if it wasn't? Mental exercise 1: could we come up with a way that something different biochemically from us could survive, reproduce, and do us harm? Mental exercise 2: pick an existing pathogen and devise a way it _could_ become trans-species.
... living here."
The point is, that sort of proactive questioning does not seem to be explored except maybe in physics and mathematics where it is a matter of course to toss out a postulate and fiddle with it till it breaks or doesn't. Biology and biochem by comparison are very reactive. They seem to progress in a cycle of "This is so!", "Oh wait here's an exception.", "Ah, now we get it.", "This is so!", etc. It's never, "You know, according to my theories we should find
Once upon a time it was believed that if it got hot enough, all the bacteria died too.
P.S. - It's only common if you consider it as a global phenomonon. is splitting hairs. If it's common enough to have an impact, it's common. Murder is almost always locally rare, but globally common.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Well, I suppose you might count it as splitting hairs again, but the original question was about the usual alien super-pathogenic disease thingy ;-). Now it's perfectly possible that you might want to count your 8 legged squid-like alien coming along and banging you on the head as a disease, but real diseases, like flu for example, work by interacting with our biochemisty on a very specific level. To take flu again that infects because it can use it's proteins to get across our cell membranes. However the precise structure of these proteins needed is very specific for each species, so not all flu's can infect us. Mutations do occur obviously, but the take home message is that we're not suffering massively deadly flu epedemics on a weekly basis because it *is* so hard - despite flu being one of the most successful virii ever at evolving, mutating and species jumping.
So, if a disease that's been with us for a very long time and evolved in conjunction with our biochemistry finds it hard - despite being highly suitable to doing just that, imagine how very, very much more unlikely it is that something that differs from our biochemistry and has never seen us before is going to find it.
So, if a ... and has never seen us before is going to find it. Now _that's_ a good answer. OK, alien bug threat unlikely if they have different biochemistry.
;) Frankly, I don't think current biochem/biology can answer that but if you can steer me in the right direction it would be appreciated. Cheers.
But ever curious as I am: knowing flu's constraints, what is it that keeps it from being more successful and could we conceive of an organism that could overcome those constraints? What would it take to say, be a better influenza A (though it occurs to me just now that the answer to that might currently be classified
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
It's twenty years since I was involved in membrane biochemisty so my knowledge is probably somewhat out of date, but basically *the* problem for any infectious organism is getting across the cell membrane - which is hard. For a virus there's also the additional problem of hijacking the cellular machinery. This is unlike a chemical attack - infection is more like unlocking a door whereas a chemical attack would be kicking it down. Obviously to unlock a door you've got to be able to make a key that fits - hence the pressumed need for a matching biochemistry.
There's a nice article on the 1918 flu structure on the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3455873.stm which should give you some idea.
Incidently, 'better' in terms of disease organisms is never 'more deadly', quite the reverse. Ebola for example is a very poorly adapted human infection because it kills it's host within a few days. HIV is must better because it doesn't kill for years, and the various common colds are better than all of these because they are very infectious and very mild (victim still moves around so can spread while infected). In fact the best adapted 'disease' organisms can even end up as symbiots rather than parasites.