Slashdot Mirror
Going Back to the Moon and Mars
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting three-part interview with author Dr. Andrew Chaikin discusses whether humans or machines could best explore the moon or Mars and even whether a crew could get along with each other for three years on an extended mission. His Mars planning draws on Apollo mission transcripts, and he cites mishaps with the Apollo 15 lunar rover almost sliding catastrophically down a mountain, an astronaut argument as to who took the most famous earthrise picture and what after 14 months in space, the Russian record-holder uses to recover his land legs: 'One vodka, one sauna'."
We're stayin we're goin' make up your mind... I vote we all stay and die.
Why do I do this? Because the money's good, the scenery changes, and they let me use explosives, okay?
Bringing humans into space is just PR, humans are fragile, require massive resources (living quarters, food, oxygen, water etc), and are error-prone. Humans in space is just pure national-ego and PR.
:)
Of course remote-controlling stuff is very slow, but it still requires less resources and time than to put actual people into space.
I think our best bet at exploring other planets "from the ground" is still machines, even more so if we can improve their AI:s and self-sustainability and adaptability in different conditions.
But then again, who wouldnt love going into space anyway?
You make it a REALITY SERIES.
"Three astronauts, picked to live in a spaceship and have their mission taped to find out what happens when people take a trip to Mars and start being real. The Real Mars."
If it takes 3 years, great! Imagine the ratings for each episode as they get closer to Mars, and the ratings for the finale? WOW!
ABC/Disney needs something big to combat Survivor and the Apprentice. I believe this is it.
It seems we could solve two problems here. Since food for a bunch of astronauts is a problem on a three year mission, basically include enough for all but one, and at some point in the mission plan on the majority voting for one fellow astronaut who gets eaten, solving food problems and getting rid of the most annoying astronaut in one fell swoop! Film it for transmission back to earth and you could get TV funding too.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The way I see it is, if you have to depend on someone completely to live, you'll be friendly.
Banaaaana!
To anyone with any authority in the Federal government in general and/or NASA in specific (which means probably not SlashDotters, but hey, a geek can dream...):
1) Stop debating it. Stop doing cost-benefit analysis. I DON'T CARE IF WE DO LOSE A FEW LIVES. We NEED to proceed in our exploration of space.
2) Those who would be at risk to have their lives lost (read: astronauts) are willing to die in the line of duty anyhow, so who the hell are you to care?
3) We made it to the moon in fucking 1969. It's 2004 now, and we're still fucking around in orbit. In fact, we're barely doing that, and we're chicken-shitting out at every possible opportunity. (e.g. <voice timbre="Principal McVicker">Ohh, oh noo, we can't go back to fix Hubble again, someone might d-d-die...uhhhhh....<voice>) Where the fuck did we go wrong? Was this whole "space exploration" thing just the World's Biggest PR Stunt To Piss Off The Commies?
4) A decent space station is the first logical way station in our long-term trip to the stars. Stop slicing the budget of ISS. Actually, better yet, completely forget about ISS (after taking the guys there down...) and build a space station that doesn't suck, and that we won't do a half-assed job on completing. Mir, and the older Russian stations, and especially the American Skylab, were much more impressive in their day than ISS. This is fucking ridiculous. Our computers are 10,000 times faster than when we first went to the moon, and our space station technology is practically back-pedalling?
5) A moon base (yes, a permanent manned structure on the moon) is the second logical way station. We were supposed to have a moon base by the 1990s, right? That's what America was promised in the 1960s...right?
6) Only far-fringe lunatics care if you use nuclear bombs in space as a way to propel space vehicles (read: not as a weapon). Speaking as a very liberal child of hippies, I say: Use them. Use the bombs! If it's the quickest way to make a spacecraft that can travel at appreciable fractions of c, go for it! (Use them together; use them in peace...)
7) Even if we haven't completed (5) or (6): MANNED MISSION TO MARS. FUCKING NOW. IT'S 2004. WE'VE BEEN WAITING SINCE 1969.
8) WHY do we need to continue to explore space? Eventually, we'll lose Earth. Either we'll blow it up (highly likely), we'll wreck its climate (highly likely in the short-to-mid-term future), or an asteroid will hit it (unlikely in the near-term future but virtually ineviable in the long-term future). We have all of our eggs in one basket, and evidently we don't give a damn. What use is your short-term, corporate-style thinking if we're all going to die eventually? Take a lesson from the Japanese and start thinking long-term. Japanese firms regularly embark on projects that won't be finished until all of the founders are dead. They think long-term. America should emulate Japan in that respect.
9) (OT) Do not let Hubble die!!!
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
One vodka?
So is that one shot of vodka, or a 750ml/1000ml bottle?
Being russian, I'd only hope it were the 2nd or 3rd. Not a hell of a lot that a vodka shot is going to do for a man.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The primary goal at this point regarding manned spaceflight should be developing new better safer more efficient ways of getting into orbit, rather than blow massive resources on something with little payoff. We will never be able to colonize space with out a major advancement in this area.
Mod parent down as flaimbit. The link goes to a picture of a woman with shit on her face.
mishaps with the Apollo 15 lunar rover almost sliding catastrophically down a mountain
That's okay. I saw an AAA bumper sticker in one closeup.
Table-ized A.I.
I suggest that the pool of astronauts considered for a trip to Mars be limited to those who have successfully parented difficult children. It is an experience that teaches one incredible patience in working out solutions when one's emotional forebearance is stretched beyond what one would consider possible. This common shared experience of such a team would provide a bond that would likely transcend the difficulties of the mission. Additionally, such candidates would be very happy to get off this planet.
better yet, instead of trained astronauts, send the guy who designed spirit/opportunity, a box of random robot parts, and lots of bad movies.
who better to have on board if the ship ever got hit by some of those styrofoam micro-meteors?
WTF do they have to do with colonisation of space?
Space is there to be taken, the way America was taken; land, money, resources, power, independance, freedom.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm glad we didn't have governments a million years ago, we'd all still be up in a tree in Africa somewhere deciding whether or not it was safe enough, or practical enough to go down to the ground.
Down modding? I say publish the trolls name and address here.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space."
--Douglas Noel Adams
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Transhumanism should come first. At first it's perhaps the brain and spinal cord hooked up to wires. Then we'll start replacing parts of the brain (we've already built an artificial hippocampus). At some point we'll know just what makes consciousness, and will have a machine do that as well. The end person would be just as sentient as a human (or dog, or chimp). After that, you can drop youself in a neutron star shell and explore the sun for all you want.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I'm all for exploration of the moon, and mars - but I guess I wonder if they've done a pros/cons list on this one ... "billions" is quite a bit to spend, isn't it ?
I really don't know much about the benefits of this kind of research, but with so many other issues at hand, what does the investment net us in the end ?
I'm wondering what personal pet project of his Dr Chaikin would rather see the money saved from not sending humans into space go towards.
;)
Are we really content to just sit here on Earth and send machines off to see the rest of the universe? Are we content to say, "Well, yeah, we could've gone to Mars, but it wasn't safe"?
I think the answer to anyone who says we should stop sending people into space should be, "Well, when people stop wanting to go, we'll stop sending them." I mean, I'd be the first one to volunteer to go to Mars.
When it comes to actually landing on a planet and having a look around, a human (equipped with the necessary scientific instruments) could do a much better job than a robotic probe. The Spirit rover spent, what, a week just sitting there after landing because the JPL guys had to decide the best way to get it off the landing pad without it getting stuck? A human on Mars would have no such trouble.
And, of course, having humans on Mars would settle once and for all whether or not NASA's coloration of the Mars Rover images was accurate or not
I remember reading that at the Chernobyl accident, the doctors gave the reactor workers vodka for its "anti-radiation" properties.
If the cosmonaut's quote is any indication, Soviet space medicine has advanced beyond Soviet nuclear medicine, if only by the addition of the sauna.
...that they can't have hot space sex.
Pretty much sounds like Linus Torvalds releasing another Linux kernel.
Space is there to be taken, the way America was taken; land, money, resources, power, independance, freedom.
:)
Let's not forget fucking big bombs
"I was expecting an earth shattering kaboom!"
- Marvin Martian
I don't think it would be right to fill space with the radiative effects of nuclear reactions.
Well, without them the sun would go out.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Of course, those were the plans. Plans and reality do have a way of disagreeing.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
The history of unmanned space exploration provides little support for the notion that robots can explore another planet as well as men. The Viking Mars lander was preloaded with experiments that were expected to provide a definite answer to the question of whether there is life on Mars. Yet the interpretation of those results is debated to this day. Despite all of the efforts of earthbound scientists to design definitive experiments, the results were ambiguous. And one thing a machine cannot do is design new experiments to clarify ambiguous results--something a human with basic lab equipment could readily do. When dealing with the genuine unknown, it simply is not possible to anticipate all of the possible questions.
Hey, NASA makes some extra pocket change by licensing their designs for toys. Why not ease the taxpayer burden a wee bit more by letting The Learning Channel or someone else do a weekly roundup series? NASA is already the publicity oriented government agency we have, I suspect a few extra cameras wouldn't be such a big deal.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
> If something ever happens to this rock we're
> on, human kind is finished.
How noble...how full of crap.
Let's destroy this planet like were doing now and see if there are other worlds we can destroy.
Were doing it for humankind..yeah, thats it.
The destruction of humankind will become like the 'if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody care?' riddle.
We wont be missed except in the egos of some.
We've destroyed countless civilizations and no one cares, were destroying our planet and many still dont care, I fail to see how the future and possible destruction of all our civilization
should rate higher in peoples mind.
At best, youll be able to send a few chosen ones (hell, you can start a whole religion about these new chosen ones!) to some rock which isnt made for human beings... or doesnt have DSL.
zeke
OFL
If you want to send humans into space, you will need to dedicate a huge amount of the budget on comforts to keep them alive. With robotic missions you can spend the money on science. People treat human exploration as a given since they tacitly assume humans must explore the cosmos. Yet most of these people understand little about space science what is already known about the deleterious affects space has on our bodies. We are already in our perfect environment, there is no natural impetus to leave.
Crossing the ocean and crossing the cosmos are not the same thing. Scale matters in science. Added to which the sea can actually keep you alive if you use it wisely - the dangers of transoceanic journeys hence do not compare with interstellar travel.
Why aren't we going to the asteroid belt? No strong gravity. Plenty of sunshine. No atmosphere to deal with. Gigatons of high-quality nickel-iron just laying around.
Instead of Mars, with its attendant difficulties in distance and time spent in space, I propose an alternative for a manned space flight: Venus!
I mean this only half in jest.
The negatives:
1. At 92 bars surface pressure, an inadequately protected capsule would be crushed like a can of spam.
2. With a surface temperature of 464 C, Martian days at their balmiest would seem quite comfortable.
Yet the positive is hard to deny: Venus, at its minimum distance to earth, is roughly (very roughly) half the distance to Mars. The flight time is cut in half, and problems with fuel and radiation diminish dramatically.
Apart from its extreme heat and atmospheric pressure (and composition), Venus is remarkably similar to earth in size and mass. What's more, the heat factor is largely due to a greenhouse effect, with might conceivably be reversed in a future terraforming project.
Going to Venus would bring about major advancements in mettalurgy, heat protection, and so on, without the drawback of spanning great distances. Obviously, exploration for lifeforms would be meaningless, but we might find minerals of great value back home.
Hasn't this been, like, achieved a zillion times before? polar, oceanic, military exploration has seen similar challenges all the time.
The problem with Bush is that he fails to recognize the felt necessities of the times and insists on replicating the policies and actions of previous presidents regardless of their appropriateness for the situation.
Instead of sending spaceships to the moon and Mars perhaps we should have something new. A new National Information Technology Administration (NITA) instead of rebuilding an antiquated NASA that was designed to combat Cold War fears of intercontinental air warfare. Intercontinental air warfare is not the enemy of America anymore. We don't need to pump billions more into it.
Kennedy transformed NASA into a symbol of American determination, sure, but NASA is already a symbol of American determination. What good is replaying an old record, Bush? You're a President, not a record player.
Sure, humans are expensive and fragile. And sure, robots are improving, are cheaper, able to go p[laces humans can't, and they're of course expendible. But humans are much more adaptible and flexible, they can improvise, and they can think for themselves. Robots are DUMB. Take Mars as an example: cool as the robots are, they are lucky if they can move 100 meters in a day. And that's assuming they don't get confused by loose ground. Or have a flash formatting problem and just sit there for weeks...
But above all, humans are essential not so much because of what they can do as because what they represent: the future. The whole idea of space exploration is that ultimately we want humanity to settle the stars. Not to relieve population pressure, and not because we want our vacations on Mars. But because that is what life itself does. In the end, if space exploration is just a question of going a few places, taking some pictures, and maybe doing some science, then sooner or later it will die out. People won't keep spending $G for blue-sky science indefitiely. If you don't believe me, ask a particle physicist how much public support they're getting these days. However, people do largely understand at a deep level that space is about the next frontier, and that is why NASA enjoys even the level of support it does.
My colleages (I'm a scientist) have a tendency to forget the human side of the equation. They get carried away by their science (that what it takes to BE a scientist), and forget just how reliant they are on public support. It's easy to think "imagine what we could do if we spent 5 $G on robots", when the truth is that there would never be the same level of resources available for robots. And for good reason - if space exploration is merely a science, then it should compete on a level playing field with other, equally important sciences, like biology. Or particle theory. Or agricultural sciences, or medicine. Or mathematics. But of course, NASA gets a disproportionately large share of the "science" budget.
That being said, I think that NASA's human spaceflight is a total clusterfsck. They need to actually accomplish something! Even something simple like figuring out how to -- or if it's possible -- to avoide bone loss in long-duration spaceflight.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
What's more, the heat factor is largely due to a greenhouse effect, with might conceivably be reversed in a future terraforming project.
The rotational period is too slow, and there is no way to speed it up. So even if all the other major problems were overcome, you'd still be left with a baked planet.
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Actually that was a slight miss-translation, he asked for a suana full of vodka.
Mycroft
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Why and how to use them:
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I think one of the false dichotomies that winds up being used is: if you're in favor of space exploration, then you must support NASA and everything it does.
The problem is, I look at NASA's human spaceflight "program" and see failure. They have not built successively better capabilities towards a goal. In fact, it's hard to state with any seriousness that there has been a goal. "Permanent manned presense in space" is not a goal, it's... not even a tactic. What is it? I don't really see a whole lot of "the vision thing" in the current Moon-Mars proposal. Is there a goal? Why will the next 10-20 Congresses continue funding it, if there is not a tangible benefit?
Contrast this with the JPL-led Mars exploration program. Unlike the manned "program", JPL really does have a program worthy of the name. They keep building on past successes. They exploit current assets to increase capability and reduce cost and risk (e.g. they use orbiting probes to relay telemetry from landers, just one example). Each time they go, they don't throw away what they learned last time.
It's really hard for me to see how NASA will succeed in going to the Moon when they can't even find a way to take the risks needed to service Hubble. There has been a loss of technical competence, programmatic vision, and boldness (appropriately tempered by realistic assessment) that makes it hard to see this succeeding.
But blah blah blah... why do I bother writing these things. No one pays any attention anyway.
NASA will be barred from doing any more R&D in new launch systems. Re-usable launch vehicles, X-plane program, space plane research, the SCRAMJET stuff that was tested recently, are all going to be the domain of government [defense] contractors.
The space program is going to be run like a Pentagon defense project, and the big defense contractors are going to get a large slice of the space budget pie.
This is funding that will be cut from Universities and other similar institutions. There are many people doing research at Universities around the country, many not in aerospace engineering, that are supported by grants from NASA.
Here's the next (mad^2) + house sequel. Only in a space craft on it's way to Mars, trials anyone? Sex in SPACE!
Arguing about whether humans or machines do science in space better is missing the point.
Human space travel is just that: h-u-m-a-n space travel. It's about going from Here to There.
Space travel offers a wonderful venue to pursue science. Likewise, much science needs to be done to support human space travel. But those are secondary motivations.
We didn't populate the Earth because we wanted to "do" science. Ditto the rest of the place.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The Solar System contains virtually unlimited resources in terms of energy materials with respect to the human population.
Why aren't people arguing about the best way to exploit these resources?
If America is going to be a dominant technological power with jobs for science and technology graduates, we have to make new science and new technology. This means somebody has to pay for it... and that's us. This is where our public sector R&D needs to be going.
If we have a human industrial presence in space, the science will follow, and far more of it than anyone is discussing doing today, either robotically or using human explorers. If a university can get a research project done by sending a grad student to a space station or moonbase lab via commercial space flight, its going to be a lot cheaper to do this than to build a satellite payload and find a launch platform. Plus, if something unexpected happens, whether it's a design error or something interesting, it's a lot easier for a human to reconfigure his planning than to reconfigure the hardware configuration of a satellite already in orbit.
Low hanging fruit: A profitable space power satellite network is probably achievable using more or less current technology based on Russian satellite launch prices. However, the time to profit would be a lot shorter with a Space Elevator or earth-to-orbit railgun as a launch platform.
For more information, check the link in my sig.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Having experienced free-floating as they departed the Earth's gravity, the moonwalkers had to adjust to the moon's one-sixth value compared to terrestrial gravity.
Every science writer who makes this mistake should be made to leave Earth's gravity.
The latest Slashdot meme.
...going back to the moon?
What's that?
Oh no!
It's Buzz Aldrin!
He's gonna punch me!
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
I disagree with your premise that it would not be feasable to put somebody on the surface of mars with current technologies, but I want to hit on the Martian Orbit-only manned presence.
I think this is a worthy goal, with perhaps a "landing" on Phobos to establish a fixed and stable point to begin human activities in and around Mars. A rotating permanent team of 10-20 astronauts in some sort of international laboratory with replacements both coming from and going to the Earth, as appropriate orbital windows permit. Many minerals and other resources can be obtained from the soil of Phobos directly, and the ability to achieve escape veolcity of Phobos is relatively trivial compared to trying to get away from Mars. The whole trip could be done with Ion propulsion instead of chemical rockets, decreasing time necessary for a round-trip. Chemical rockets would only be needed for manuvering thrusters and station-keeping activities, and for the very short burst to get away from Phobos. Some of this could even be manufactured on Phobos as a back-up reserve supply (just in case).
With the sole exception of trying to get an Ion Propusion engine going (and there are current experiments trying to get that accomplished), this whole concept can be done with current technology, other than trying to rediscover some of the lessons from Apollo. The only time necessary is trying to simply put together a unique packaging of equipment to get this accomplished. Launching it directly from space also makes incredible sense, and give justification to keeping the ISS (since its science mission has already been essentially destroyed). The ship can be assembled in space, and the crew flown up on ordinary LEO shuttle rockets, and even dock at the ISS before final departure to Mars.
This would also provide an excellent back-up resource for any manned activity on the surface of Mars when that does occur. If a surface exploration team is having trouble trying to stay together (personality conflicts), it can be broken up and reassmebled with other crew member from the Phobos base. Coordination of multiple surface sites being simultaneously explored can also be controlled from one location. These can be both manned and robotic explorations.
The only real draw back that I can see (assuming a docking to the ISS) is interplanet biological contamination would be almost impossible to stop. I think that both Mars and the Earth have shared many rocks with each other in the past anyway, but is something to consider what must be done if truly sterile conditions must be kept for anything going to Mars. NASA blew it with the Apollo missions, so I seriously doubt they will really make much of a difference in regards to Mars.
Send two women and one man.
Two men and one women guarantees a murder. The opposite will probably be a very workable unit.
Going back to the moon...? Did we ever go there in the first place? Going back to the moon and Mars...? We went to Mars too? Where have I been!? ----- What if the moon missions were performed on a government sanctioned sound station? Perhaps in Area 51, or perhaps they just rented at Universal Studios... I mean, we couldn't possibly be left in the dust by the USSR! The Cold War was still being waged! It would have been what we call a "psychological victory" for the USSR. Just a thought. -Xeon
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
...you'll hear him say...
"Seachrest OUTTTTAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaauuuuugh...."
The chances of surviving a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean is so astronomically small as to be irrelevant.
There are two ideas here that are seemingly in conflict. Firstly that robots are cheaper and easier to get 'out there'. Secondly that humans need to get off this planet because we need multiple home worlds for reasons of risk-abatement.
I agree with both of those views because they only conflict in the immediate short term.
If you want to get people to Mars in large enough quantities to be meaningful, then you need to do the science on the planet first. If robots can achieve that Mars mission more effectively - then in the short term we should use robots in order to hasten the time when understand enough about the planet to go and live there.
In the very long term, I predict we'll have either machines which are truely as intelligent as us - or a way to put our own thoughts and emotions into robotic bodies (after one generation, it matters very little which of those it is). Either way, sending them to colonise Mars will be just as valid as sending our 'bags of mostly water'. Beings whose thoughts are essentially just software can travel at low cost and at the speed of light with no inconveniences of any kind.
www.sjbaker.org
Council of exploration: Meeting convened Just-After-Sol-Moved-Behind-Big-Rock
Item, Oog present plan to explore beyond Place-where-Mammoths-Panic.
Item, OogCousins observe that half the tribemembers who visit the mammoths don't come back.
Item, Also Discussed: those found after mammoths leave are generally flat, or at least, never the same again.
Item, Elders noted that the OogFather went as far as Sunny-Shore-beyond-Mammoths about 400 moons ago. Nothing worth eating either there or on way back.
Item, General dissent on cost of amulets and war-axes for visits in direction of Sunny-Shore-beyond-Mammoths. Much time lost to carving which could be better used scraping skins or digging roots.
Item, Oog scorns 'neanderthal' values of previous comment.
Item, Meeting broke for breaking-of-heads with OpenSourceFlintAxe.
Item OogWife noted cave is getting rather crowded, but more OogSprogs expected soon and skins and roots in very limited supply
Rest of transcript lost due to broken tablet
of course someone at the peak of physical fitness is going to go bonkers spending three years in a cubicl^h^h^h^h^h spacecraft with no place to go outside.. there are people who spend months playing with computers, who hate going outside, and don't have the energy to move around much.. send the video gamers, no to lan gamers, they like to get out too much
send my wife, who spends entire days playing diablo with her perfect IK set, doing deliberate incomplete baal hell runs with 3-7 other people that would make me cry, and I can't stand to watch, she'll do it for 8 hours in a row... these are the people who can make the journey..
course, they're useless when you get there....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Sure that's true. Eventually we need to get off this one single planet and out into the rest of the universe. Did you hear the sun's going to envelop the earth in as it becomes a red giant? We really need to worry about that one. You'll excuse my sarcasm, but really 2/3 of the earth surface is is water. Each time a deep sea mission occurs we find a new species. We know more about the surface of the moon then we know about the bottom of the ocean. Lets put money into using that space. Better yet lets make what we have right now more livable. Lets put together a national program to get the world off oil and onto fuel cells! Besides the government in my opinion is incapable of colonizing other planets. Bureaucracy is simple to bloated to innovate in the ways we would need to colonize another planet. Private firms will get us into space. Lets put money there instead. How about more competitions like the x prize?
It's really hard to have a meaningful conversation about future space exploration, when the key participants have hidden agendas, political considerations, and egotistical motives. There are only a few significant issues that should color the choices we make;
1. Earth is a dangerous place, and the human race barely escaped extinction once already. We need to get life all over the place, and at the top of that list, human life. By spreading us all over, we preclude the largest list of possible extinction scenarios. That and the earth is only going to be a happy home for a finite time anyway... we should get our behinds out into the void and start having the kind of fun you can only get as a space faring race.
We must move into space... it is our destiny.
2. Making space habitable is very hard, and extremely expensive. We need to build smart machines that can build sustainable habitats on the moon, mars, a whole bunch of asteroids chock full of useful resources (including water), and the jovian moons. Once there are fully operational facillities in these places, supporting a growing and healthy population of people in space will be cake. The skyhook will reduce the cost of moving resources, and the development of smart self learning robots will have fantastic applications here on earth.
We must move into space... it is our destiny, but we should do so thoughfully, and make sure that each new foothold supports the next. We must avoid stupid and pointless excess for the sole purpose of flaunting our egos, or controling the masses.
3. Keep the military out of space, whatever you do. The only way we can afford to place weapons in space is if they're pointed away from the planet, designed to protect us from an external threat. Literally make them impossible to point at Earth. Any other scenario has one nation lording space based weapons over others and world politics dictate that this nation will be hated and despised. We want to protect ourselves from the small and fearful minds of angry men with little or no vision.
The short term benefit for humanity is; wealth of resources, new technology, protection from potential extinction. The medium term benefit is abundant new housing off planet for a burgeoning population to move... the human adventure of space pioneering. The long term benefit is that life from our world has been preserved, we are allowed to evolve fully into whatever we will become, and the planet is preserved so that it remains a garden, allowing new and interesting life to evolve, mayhaps even joining us as we travel into space.
In short, we must make our homes among the stars, and we need to do so, such that the entire race see's benefit, value, and is part of the process. If we can do this... our future will indeed be bright and boundless.
Genda
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" -- George Bernard Shaw
It's really not a question of "if", but rather, "when". I think when the world ends [and I don't mean religious reasons], we will find the motivation, I'd reckon, though we may not have the time.
Comments here mention the difficulty in sending everything a fragile human need for three years in the case of Mars, the food, water, etc.
Would it be so difficult to send robotic probe-supply ship type vehicles at the right velocity such that the human Mars craft would meet up with several en route and resupply? Maybe send a few extra, just in case?
I realize the acuracy required for two vehicles with extreme speeds meeting up, but you'd have months to make adjustements - and when you got close enough, the crew could take control of the supply ship and tweak it to make the hookup smooth...
Okay. How's this?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Manifest destiny in space? If we can't maintain our own little corner in space, we certainly don't have any "destiny" off earth. Not to mention there's no place to go to sustain life, and no way to send more than a few people. Get over yourself. Humanity is an evolutionary accident, and the jury is out on whether it was a successful one. Better to clean things up here and put the money into VR research so pasty fat geeks can engage in simulated sex with alien princesses. Always wondered why Kirk didn't doom humanity with some alien form of HIV.
TransAtlantic voyages were nearly death wishes 600 years ago...
So while the analogy seems far fetched, just remember that telling people the world wasn't flat was just as far fetched...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The real reason why there's not people there is because of all the conflicting territorial claims making the easiest thing to do to declare it nobody's. If somebody clearly owned it, they'd be exploring for oil so quickly your head would spin. Mars is the same. If there's money to be made there, colonisation will happen. From what I've seen, there's a very good chance that there will, eventually, be money to be made there as a supply base for asteroid mining. Maybe not in my lifetime, but eventually. There's got to be something useful we could do with million-ton chunks of stainless steel, which is what some of the asteroids essentially are.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It is considered charlatanism to even refer to subjects like antigravity/ZPE in scientific communities. This must change: what if antigravity/ZPE exists ? I think that scientists should start searching for solving the antigravity/energy enigma; if it is solved, then the question 'robot or human' will no longer be relevant, as interplanetary travel would be a commodity.
Instead of wantonly & shamelessly plugging my website (which my name does magnificently pounding THE NAME out to THE /. WORLD), I would say that astronauts on a MARS MISSION will never turn to cannibalism in a crunch... so long as they know there is a backup ship of robots already launched behind them. Even tho the parts are interchangeable... a BIG PLUS for robots. Uhm, we should always give humans a head start.
Fake WHOIS info on teh spoke!
I don't get it. How will scientists wasting time on nonsensical bullshit that doesn't work help anything?
The Altitude record set by NASA with a ballon lifting 3/4 of a ton :
0 2/h02-163.htm
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/news-release/releases/20
161,000 feet is a good starting point for a floatation based launch platform
firing a rail gun canister of material into low orbit .
It can be picked up in Low orbit by a robotic type device , and fired again
into high orbit if the initial shot cannot get it free of the gravity well .
We can do inflight refueling , we can land a robot on an asteroid during the
NEAR project , we can do this with the right grey matter at the helm .
At this time the forces are too great for a human to withstand it , but the
equipment/supplies to support a human in space weigh far more than the human .
Using a high altitude launch platform for materials, and supplies it would bring
down costs a great deal .
Alot of ppl mention the reverse force when firing a railgun , this can be eliminated
by firing equal weight of water in a cylinder towards the earth .
Thus a nullifying equal force , both rail guns back to back simultaneous firing .
As for humans, perhaps something like one of the X-prize craft could launch from this
altitude and reach high orbit .
Getting the first 49 kilometers with just simple lighter than air gas lift would
be a good jump start .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Uh, I call bullshit on this.
http://www.wri.org/wri/media/schmidheiny.html
Was that a right-wing troll, or just plain ignorant?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog