Ray Bradbury's Reasons to Go to Mars

An anonymous reader writes "Ray Bradbury's testimony to the Presidential blue-ribbon Commission, 'Moon to Mars and Beyond', covers a range of rather optimistic space-related topics, including why three Italians should be the first on Mars. But at age 83, Bradbury's next book, entitled 'Too Soon From the Cave, Too Far From the Stars' seems to set an overall vision that this is an in-between generation caught between the brutal and primitive and the advanced."

Comments

Ray Bradbury rocks

[Laxitive]

I love Bradbury. He's one of my favourite scifi (and other stuff) authors. It's not that he's a good science fiction author - he's a good author period (read some of his non-scifi stories - The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit, A Medicine for Melancholy).

The thing about Bradbury is that what he focuses on is not the science, but more the social aspect of humanity. He writes about people, not spaceships.

For example, some of the earlier short stories use SciFi as backdrop against which to express more immediate social concerns. There are stories in which a population of black people build their own rocket, and quietly depart for Mars, where they can live in peace.

In the context of the civil rights movement and equality rights, this is a powerful and strong statement. It strongly reflects the simple sentiment that these people just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace.

Bradbury is a wonderful and imaginative author. He was a large influence on my views and perspectives. What he beleives and says deserves respect - because he is a respectable man.

-Laxitive

Re:I believe it was Clark who said...

[Surt]

The US is permitted to borrow so much because they continue to be able to pay out the interest.

The US will be continued to allow to borrow so long as people believe that the government can repay those loans in the long term. During the Clinton administration, there was hope that we might actually pay down the debt in 15-20 years.

If the debt reaches a level where the US cannot make an interest payment, there will be serious repercussions in the world economy. A depression worse than any previous is a likely outcome of that situation. Hopefully we'll be smart enough to raise taxes and cut spending before that happens.

Re:We Like Tha Moon

[Paulrothrock]

Alright, here goes:

The moon suffers from three main issues. First, it has no atmosphere. Second, it has a 28 day light-dark cycle, and third, it is very resource poor, from a survival standpoint.

Not having an atmosphere is a big problem. Experiments have shown that C02 can be cheaply made into hydrogen and oxygen, with little more than hydrogen feed stock. From hydrogen and oxygen you can get air, fuel, and water; three of the four things you'll need on a colony. Mars has a lot of C02. Plants also use C02 to function. This means that a Mars base can use pressurized greenhouses to grow food. On the moon you would have to create a biosphere, which we've never succeeded at on Earth, let alone on the Moon. Also, the atmosphere on Mars provides protection from a lot of radiation. This means that a Lunar base would have to be underground in order to work, making construction that much more difficult.

The 28-day 'day' on the moon presents another problem. Plants have been growing on earth with a 24-hour light-dark cycle for billions of years. To get them to grow like heck during the 14 days of light and then to lay dormant for 14 days of darkness on a lunar greenhouse would be very difficult, not to mention the glass would also have to provide protection from radiation as well as thermal extremes of ~400 degrees. Growing them underground would require having enough light bulbs to last for a few years and a nuclear reactor or solar panels and enough batteries to run for 14 days straight, unless it was a polar station (which limits the amount of space we have to build on considerably). Martian greenhouses could use construction much like terrestrial greenhouses, and with the Arean (Ares, Mars. Get it?) day only about 30 minutes longer than that of Earth's, the plants would adjust quickly. Not to mention that the Martian colonists wouldn't be out of direct communication for half the time they are there.

Finally, there is no atmosphere and very little water on the surface of the moon. Most of the water has been evaporated away. Unless we find a lot of water, there's no economical way we could colonize the moon: I'm not going to pay to ship water to a colony on the moon. Mars has recently been shown to have lots and lots of water, as evidenced by the Free Shrimp Give-Away from Long John Silvers. This is easily processed on the surface into all the things needed for life.

Also, space is such that the total cost of going to the Moon is only slightly smaller than going to Mars, because most of the cost is from getting off of Earth and out of our gravity. And since we have to ship everything to the moon (air, food, water) the cost rises quickly compared to the needs of a self-sufficient Martian colony. Not to mention that Mars is closer to the asteroid belt, which is where all the really great stuff is, like raw materials.

So, as you can see, a Martian colony, though farther away, is a better option than a lunar colony, unless you want a nice, quiet place to set up a major astronomical station. (The far side of the moon is always radio-silent and has lots of ready-made craters for radio telescopes and no atmosphere to interfere with visual/IR/UV observation.)