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Mars500 Mission Begins
krou writes "The six participants in the Mars500 project have entered their sealed facility. The project, which lasts for 18 months, is designed to try and simulate a mission to Mars, completely isolated and cut off from the outside world, with a '20-minute, one-way time-delay in communications to mirror the real lag in sending messages over the vast distance between Mars and Earth.' They also have limited consumables, with everything required being loaded onboard from the start. You can follow developments via the blog, or the Twitter feed of Diego Urbina, one of the would-be cosmonauts."
20 minute delay ... they won't be getting first post then
That's going to suck for WoW raids.
...so if the mission is supposed to be a "true" simulation, does that mean the cosmonauts would be using Twitter during the real voyage?
Living With a Nerd
Aren't they called Nursing Homes? Care for the Elderly is strangely akin to this...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Having had in-depth conversations with scientists that are actually in the field, I can confidently say that you're wrong.
We have the technology for a trip. We don't have the political will.
The trip would be return though - we don't have the technology to sustain a habitat there independent of earth.
.
Ground control operator: "Hey uh.....Steve, while you're in space and all, mind if I go over to your house and sleep with your wife? I'll give you about 19 minutes to say no"
... the blog's in Russian. In Russia blogs translate you, etc. etc. ESA has a mission diary available though, written by Diego Urbina and Romain Charles.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
First rule of new bio-dome: No Pauly Shore.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
We have the technology today, we could start designing, building, and testing a manned mars mission tomorrow. The risks would be high, the costs would be huge, and the time frame makes it politically difficult but we have the technology needed to start and by the time the start is done we'll have the technology to finish.
Because the risks are high, we will almost certainly set out to identify and quantify them before putting too much money into the program. One of the risks that we know very little about are the psychological problems of being trapped in a small, enclosed space with a handful of other individuals for a few years. Especially with such limited contact with the outside world and what is almost undoubtedly an boring, repetitive diet (you'd be surprised at how much something like that will drive people crazy after a while).
Personally I'd consider the distance to the, oh, let's say M31, as vast. Or even the distance to the other side of our own galaxy.
The distance to Mars is, all things being relative, right around the corner.
Did they see it as too big a risk to lock up mixed genders in there?
We are all God's parents.
Last time the Russians tried this, two of them bloodied each other and one of the women was nearly raped. No women this time.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
Well, it depends how you say it - we have the technology to develop the technology needed. But we don't have much of the rockets, landers, habitats, robotics and whatnot we'd need. Everything would have to be designed and simulated and manufactured and tested and... So even if you said "Go!" today, I imagine it'd take JFKs decade at best. And with no Cold War and huge national prestige breathing down their necks I suspect 20-30 years is a very realistic estimate. Of course with the current political outlook I wouldn't bet on it being the 21st century.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Reminds me of the big train sketch
:D
From 0:15 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u80ZMJSyEzo
Actually we do. we can easily create a sustainable habitat there we have the technology right now. It's all in money. We can create all the air we want IF there is water there we can tap into. send 3 nuclear reactors for power generation, (to have double redundant backup. We need a 13 month OH CRAP survivability window. if everything goes sideways for the next unmanned resupply to send replacements and hopefully land and not crater.
WE could probably do it for the yearly cost of the Middle East wars.
but war is profitable and preferable to humanity. so we choose that above a Martian or even moon colony.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But it's about as meaningful an "experiment" as that silly "Biosphere 2 [wikipedia.org]" trainwreck in the early 90's.
How dare you impugn the scientific credentials of a bunch of improv theater players! They got their credentials from a legitimate art gallery/café in London!
Right on... manned space exploration at the moment represents more of a really long, expensive camping trip than space exploration.
Humans aren't particularly adept physically and mentally to live in such confined quarters for months on end. Maybe someday, when we could build larger, sustainable biosphere-like micro-colonies that could stay in space indefinitely and engage the occupants' senses while it cruises around the solar system.
At least exercises like this Mars500 mission can provide us some more psychological insight in how to get along with each other right here on Earth. But for the near term, it would be cool to dump money in more robotic exploration, science, heck, even extraplanetary mining and fabrication.
How are they going to handle sex?
but war is profitable and preferable to humanity.
It's not about profitability.
OH MY GOD THEY WILL TRY TO KILL YOU KIDS!!!
Gets a lot more funding than.
Hey man, we could like send some people to Mars. It would be neat.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Some with one hand. Others with two.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
If you read the link your provided, you will see that Biosphere 2 was nothing close to a scientific experiment. It was not made by NASA, it was not made by scientists.
The questions about a trip to Mars are political. The only technical question is whether we can make it in 6 month or if we'll have an engine to do it in 2 months. The main science question is : what the hell do we need humans on Mars for ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Clearly we need to raise Orson Wells from the dead to do another broadcast of "War of the Worlds". Cause the only way we're going to Mars is if we need to bomb green people back to the stone age.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
http://kayrosblog.ru
Yes, perhaps I should have added modifier "realistically" to my 20-30 year estimate. I have no doubt that we could be on Mars in 10 years or less if we mounted an Apollo-program-like effort today, but that would require the kind of resources that we're extremely unlike to commit. At the height of the NASA's Apollo development (1966), NASA's budget represented about 5.5% of the total federal budget. To achieve that equivalent level of support today, you would have to increase NASA's budget by over 10x. With a huge (and rising federal) debt, an already out-of-control deficit, and two unending wars still hanging around like albatrosses around the neck of the country; it's pretty unlikely you could even get a Congress to DOUBLE the NASA budget, much less balloon it from $19 billion a year to $200 billion.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Russia, at the least, has few decades of experience in operating a manned spacecraft essentially capable of beyond LEO operation - heck, Soyuz was the first vehicle which carried macroscopic Earth creatures beyond LEO (around the Moon, to be more specific; most notably - turtles ;p ) and brought them back safely.
They've been toying with the idea for some time now, in low intensity mode. Who knows, they might try something with the heavy versions of Angara rocket and Mir-3, which is supposed to be also, basically, a specedock used for construction.
One that hath name thou can not otter
At minimum, humans in orbit around Mars would be handy for teleoperating small fleet of surface robots.
One that hath name thou can not otter
how the fuck is this a troll? Is Glenn Beck moderating on slashdot?
These people are obsessional fools, not scientists or explorers. If these morons were serious in finding out what it was like to spend 500 days locked in a room, they could just ask any of the millions of people that the government (USA or Russian Federation, what's the difference?) is holding in prison.
Space Exploration is a 20th-century quasi-religion that is beginning to manifest itself as a mental disease among those people who continue to believe it too strongly.
Get over it. Manned space flight was a 20th-century phenomenon that has been determined to be too expensive and too limited in returns to be continued at its former funding levels. We have serious problems now that we didn't have then, and throwing hundreds of billions of dollars (that we don't have anymore) into space doesn't solve them. Grown-up people who have to make hard and realistic decisions about our public funds and resources have decided this. Tom Swift halfwits can't accept it. Too bad. Time to get real.
People born into 20th-century America are prone to economic fantasy because they have lived their whole lives inside one. What they don't realize is that their country and their government is broke. There is no trillion dollars for space explorations. There is no trillion dollars for anything. There is no trillion dollars left anywhere in the USA.
There WAS a trillion dollars spent on a Iraq-Afghanistan war that accomplished nothing. There was a trillion dollars spent on maintaining the fantasy that some Wall Street banks and investment firms are too big to fail. There was a trillion dollars spent giving $600,000 mortgages to janitors. There was a trillion dollars spent on federal government budget deficits. Money is not a physical good. Money can be created out of nothing and can disappear back to nothing. Technical people never understand this. They don't study economics, and they don't understand economics.
There were trillions of dollars unwisely spent...and 'there were' means the past. America was rich, now it's not. There was money in the past but there isn't going to be in the future. The trillions of dollars that space enthusiasts believe could and should be spent on the glorious future in space and its endless possibilities for the betterment of humanity don't exist anymore. They've been already spent; and they're gone. The Burger Kings and endless suburban strip malls is what you got for it. It's all that you're going to get. This is the great tragedy that is America and what it could have been, but isn't and now never will be.
what the hell do we need humans on Mars for ?
Mars. Needs. Women.
How long its takes to Columbus to go from Spain to the New World and back ?
It's the same amont of time that someone will use do go the the next new world.
But, we're not there yet, we just begun the new dark age with some moors invasion and some inquisition...
You're looking on the wrong planet. Try Venus.
It sounds like World Championship Big Brother.
They should add Pauly Shore to the crew. This way, they recoup their budget expenses as a direct to DVD comedy release.
18 months in a confined, dark space is nothing for most Slashdotters.. ofcourse, sociallizing with 5 other people would be.
Cool.
we get to also watch them fry from radiation SHOULD be funny
Great... obviously no one read the article... or they might have understood this joke...
I RTFA... Bravo... I loled...
The main science question is : what the hell do we need humans on Mars for ?
Because it's there.
You're being very misleading. Yes, it's true that NASA accounted for a much larger percentage of the federal budget in 1966. But, it's ALSO true that the federal budget was IN GENERAL smaller in 1966. A far more accurate way of figuring out how much the 1966 Apollo budget would cost today would be to, simply adjust for inflation, which works out to around $38 billion, only about 1% of the 2009 federal budget. Even if you maintained NASA funding at an equivalent level of GDP, it would still only come to $100 billion, not the $200 billion you suggest.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
OH MY GOD THEY WILL TRY TO KILL YOU KIDS!!!
Good luck getting to the kids if they are on Mars.
There is a war going on for your mind.
It costs roughly $5 billion to construct a new nuclear plant on Earth. I'll let you imagine how much it would cost to construct, supply, and maintain 3 nuclear plant on Mars.
Needless to say it's a little beyond NASA's budget.
Actually, the biggest problem isn't technology, but social. The trip itself is technological - if we don't have it now, we probably will in the future. The social part isn't, and we don't have much research on long duration isolation. And if we can't solve the social problem, then even if we can send ships to Alpha Centauri and back, it'll be pointless if the crew kills themselves several months in. And yes, we have plenty of short-duration isolation studies (submarines, space stations etc. have all provided the research).
It's a LONG trip. And for the entire duration, you're going to be with the same people you started with. Interactions, positive and negative happen, and it gets important to see if there's a way to handle them before they get serious enough to compromise the entire point. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, people resenting each other, emotions, anger, hostility. It's all bound to happen when you coop people up for a year and a half and the best communications gets you is e-mail or video-mail. Basically, it's an extreme case of cabin fever.
Here's some things to ponder:
* What kind of crew makeup should there be? Male/Female ratio? Occupational makeup?
* How are contentions resolved?
* Can you even go this long without everyone going stir-crazy?
* Would having more space help, and how much space per person?
* Resource issues, workload issues.
It may literally take us 100+ years to do all the research simply because the durations are so long, the groups under study are so small and so on. You can repeat the same experiment with the same makeup of people (male/female, occupation, etc) and have wildly different results, which ask why.
Humans aren't particularly adept physically and mentally to live in such confined quarters for months on end.
Maybe they should study inmates living in segregation units in prisons.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
And what the hell do we need robots on Mars for?
I'm all for scientific progress and planet explorations, but this entire operation costs too much and yield much too little benefits. Let's not forget that the government is still trillions of dollars in debt.
Considering the supposed panic was itself largely a fabrication... (and that we're much more desenticised to thinga in the media; or at least I would hope so)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Are you perhaps familiar to one of the previous attempts where one of the Russian volunteers tried to force himself on a Female Canadian memeber of the crew.
There is a research university that recommended growing a Dwarf wheat as a Mars mission strategy, instead of trying to take all the food you need with you, you cultivate the grain, burn the stalks to turn them into a bio-char that can be used first to filter the air, and then later as fertilizer for to grow more wheat. If their premise is right and you can't possibly carry enough food for the trip then I'd want to see multiple crews practicing their farming skills here on Earth and get it right for 18 months at a time before I sent up anyone who was totally dependent on the system.
There is plenty of work we can down here to get ready to go out there.
Don't be silly. Nuclear *plants* provide gigawatts of power for hundreds of thousands of people. The OP is talking about a reactor capable of providing power for a few people. We already have designs for self-contained, maintenance-free shipping-contained-sized units capable of filling this role. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSTAR or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
This wouldn't be a full scale nuclear facility, more like one of the reactors used on ships and subs.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Couldn't we send supplies to the crew en-route, or would that be a practical impossibility?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Humans aren't particularly adept physically and mentally to live in such confined quarters for months on end.
I would recommend that you speak to submarine sailors about that "deficiency".
Peace
The power plant of a single nuclear submarine would easily power a large 60 person population mars base. Considering they are not moving all that extra power can be wasted on silly things to increase comfort. The temperatures that nuclear subs run at are similar to mars and therefore would not be hard to keep the entire base at a balmy 78 degrees. Going nuke for the base would eliminate the problems of solar that far from the sun and the dust that would have to be cleaned off. The same power plant can make pure water to drink and air to breathe, just like how they do on Submarines.
In fact 90% of what we need to create a base on mars is in a typical nuclear submarine. If we could launch and plop a boomer sub on mars, it would make for an excellent Martian base.
Being that far away, it's a good idea to have multiple redundancies.. unless you don't value the life of the crew, then don't waste money on spares.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The main science question is : what the hell do we need humans on Mars for ?
So we have somewhere to go when we're finished trashing this planet with things like massive oil spills.
And at least we got a crappy Pauly Shore movie out of *that*.
Well, we already got 2 crappy Mars mission movies so that's taken care of.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Some of the big problem areas involved - the psychological issues regarding isolation & small group dynamics, logistics of maintaining a sealed environment, etc... are exactly the kinds of things this experiment is supposed to address. Not that it couldn't be all for show, but it seems at least potentially worthwhile.
And regarding Biosphere 2: not really an apt comparison for the space flight portion of this. Biosphere 2 was meant to be an entire enclosed ecosystem, and yeah, it really did a pretty bad job of it - they had to ventilate it on more than one occasion (as I understand it) because the atmosphere was becoming unsuitable. Biosphere 2 had important lessons to teach us about forming an actual permanent colony on someplace like Mars (lesson: we still don't know what we're doing with respect to closed ecosystems, therefore we're not ready to colonize)... but about prolonged space flight: not so much. That mission is a lot like being in a submerged submarine, with artificial air purifiers, etc. We can already do that, but it isn't routinely done for such extended periods. So this mission will be helpful in testing that aspect out.
Wells was reporting on a real event. They just got to him and brainwashed him into saying it was a fictional event.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Humans AT Mars would either need to land ON Mars and tunnel underground to hide from the Radiation they would be exposed to due to the lack of a Magnetic field on Mars.
OR
Land on Phobos or Deimos and tunnel inside to hide from the radiation.
Mars has more gravity, CO2 ice and some Water Ice that we know of, if we could plant a dome over an ice patch and use a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator to warm a greenhouse, pump it full of CO2, and derive water from the water ice, you could grow UV resistant plants that produce Oxygen.
So even for teleoperating your fleet of surface robots, and maybe running a tow-truck-bot out ot help the stuck ones out of Sand Dunes, the Martian surface is a better place for your operator because more of what he or she needs to live is there on the surface.
Although honestly I think we'd do better sending rovers all over the Utah desert, and Antartica and fine tuning ComputerVision and Intelligent Agent routines here, so that the rovers could be given goals based on Satellite imagery and feed back data from interesting scenery on their way. When they show up to the site they take high rez pictures of interesting features, and a team of geologists back on Earth tell it which sites to whack with its little rockhammer first.
Then send 50 of them to Mars, not 2. Ask AAA if they'd like to sponsor the tow-truck-rover.
This idea keeps coming up, but repetition doesn't make it any more sensible. There's absolutely no way to make space mining or manufacturing pay off. Consider that 1) The asteroids, the Moon, Mars, etc, are made of silicates, iron, nickel, and a small amount of carbonaceous stuff. So is the earth. 2) There's no reason to fabricate anything in space because we don't really have a use for stuff in space. No one lives there, remember? 3) Even if you could think of a reason to mine/make stuff in space, you'd have to lift all the materials necessary to build your factory, mining equipment, whatever... millions of miles, and fight against earth's gravity to get there. Then you'd need to bring along all the people necessary to run this gear, plus their life support, minimal personal possessions, housing, etc. Then consider that it costs $10k/kg just to get to low earth orbit.
So what you're talking about is an absolutely colossal expenditure, and what do you get? The same stuff we can get right here on earth for a lot cheaper. There's a reason why the Lockheeds, Boeings, and Raytheons of the world are not going hog wild into this business - no one can figure out how to make any money at it.
And you choose Space Nuttery over life extension and anti-aging and talk about "humanity"?
While I could quibble with some of the particulars in your argument (the government is actually getting back almost all of the money spent in "bailouts", and a "deficit" is not something you can "spend money on", for example), the overall point here is correct. The economics of getting your ass to Mars simply don't work out. And a lot of the responses here only help prove your point - that people are in denial over this.
Who told you to say that? Who are you really working for?
We don't have the political will because ...
NO
ONE
CARES.
This stuff is childish nonsense. There's nothing in space. It's a vacuum. A couple of rocks. That's it.
Now get me my life extension and anti-aging, now THAT's something I can get behind!
Months long trips to desolate rocks? Who cares?
The main science question is : what the hell do we need humans on Mars for ?
I don't think that's a scientific question. I'm sure there's scientific benefit to doing that, maybe more, probably less than making a large number of probes. Personally, I don't think the motivations are that different than people colonizing random islands and going on voyages around the world.
"We" on Earth probably have little need for the resources on Mars right now. OTOH, it'd be a good first step into colonizing and mining the solar system. Titan apparently has more oil than the Earth. So, in 50 years, when we're starting to run out, I imagine someone will be getting rich off of that. Or we'll have switched to a new power and hydrocarbon source, but who's optimistic enough to say that with absolute certainty? Plus there are countless other potential resources.
Since I was curious, here's some math on Titan's oil. Crude oil has an energy density of 46.3 MJ/kg. Titan's escape velocity is 2.65 Km/sec. So, it'll take more than 3.5 MJ/kg to get the oil off of Titan, which seems quite practical if it were transported in bulk (even 10% efficiency would work). You could also gain 62.7 MJ/kg if you could somehow capture the energy involved in landing it on Earth (space elevator counterweight perhaps?).
Mars has an escape velocity of 5.0 Km/sec, so it'd take 12.5 MJ/kg to get something into space. That's an 80% reduction in energy needs if you build the necessary orbital infrastructure using Martian minerals compared to using Terran minerals. Nobody owns them yet, so there are no middle men driving up costs, and pulling rocks out of the ground will be easier in lower gravity. Environmentalists will love the fact that there's no ecosystem to destroy, and people tend to be a little better about working around aesthetically pleasing natural formations.
Heck, the physics of mining the solar system don't seem bad at all. When technology enables it to be done in an economic manner I'd imagine it's all but inevitable for the world to move to a space based economy. Personally, I live in America, so I'd prefer if we were the ones that got rich (or richer, realistically speaking) from that investment. But if we chill out and keep probing the outer planets (pun averted), our geographic knowledge of the solar system will be spectacular, but people on Earth will suffer and die while competing for limited resources.
Manned space exploration is also the groundwork for tourism, and I'd like to visit space sometime in my life, preferably another celestial body. Besides that, it's a lot more effective for generating interest in the sciences, so I think that's a good enough societal boon.
Yeah, I actually almost got recruited into the boomers, and have worked with lots of sonar technicians. Probably the closest analogy we have to space travel, where they just dive under water and disappear for months and travel through practically inaccessible places under the ice caps.
Might be a good size for a micro-colony, but I still wouldn't draw a comparison to camping out in microgravity in an enclosed space slightly larger than the Apollo for a year or so.
"We can create all the air we want IF there is water there we can tap into. send 3 nuclear reactors for power generation"
What nuclear reactor? A nuclear reactor on Earth needs 200 full time employees for the care and handling, and a giant LAKE for the heat sink. Not to mention all the assumptions made about atmosphere and gravity on Earth.
How do you propose just getting something like that packaged to be sent up by the thousands of rockets needed?
How do you propose designing a reactor meant to work in space? Mars is a dry, airless vacuum. Where are you going to put the employee's cafeteria?
You're nuts. You're a 100% certified Space Nutter, raised on myths, fantasies, science-fiction, movie posters and delusions. No clue about practical engineering reality. You couldn't manufacture a clothes pin, never mind space technology.
Get it through your head: We're not going in space. There's simply no way. We don't have the technology, and we don't have the energy, and the clincher: NO. ONE. CARES.
I care what's in space, out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. It may not be Star Trek but if you think it's a vacuum with a couple of rocks, you're a total moron. Total, total moron.
Now the fact that you're asking for anti-aging and life extension (all over this thread) instead of a cure for cancer or something tells me you're just old and not happy with it. Stop being a selfish, cowardly fuck and accept your mortality. You can already live far longer than any human could have in nature, if you're enjoying your life so much, just enjoy what's left of it and die in peace.
You "life extension fanatics" disgust me. After living long lives, you're just screaming "WAAAAAH I DON'T WANNA DIIIEEEE!!!! WAAAAAAH!!!" It's the most fucking pathetic thing I've ever seen.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For teh lulz.
SeaQuest DSV - "Splashdown" !!!
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
One of my favorite episodes.
There is no stronger instinct than that which dictates the need to preserve your life. From your post one can deduce that you're a young guy who hasn't had a serious visit to the hospital. In life you go through many stages, and the one when you realise that you're nothing but a frail machine that will inevitably break down in cruel ways is not easy to go through. Don't blame the GP for wanting to live as long as possible, and don't be so judgemental.
And please, doesn't a default score of 2 give you some sense of responsibility for writing comments without resorting to low personal insults?
Biosphere2 gets an unfairly bad rap most times someone brings it up.
The primary difference in the current experiment vs. Biosphere2 is that Biosphere2 made a number of mistakes that these guys appear to have corrected. The number one mistake was the use of concrete, which can take decades to cure, and in so doing, consumes Oxygen from the atmosphere. Inside Biosphere2, this turned into very low Oxygen levels, and a need to replenish the Oxygen frequently. The other issue was pre-loading of supplies (good for a mission, bad for a colony).
They also had crew/staffing problems, like the crew ordering pizza and letting it in through the airlock, in violation of the experimental protocols.
That said, Biosphere2 would be a good model for a moon colony, and not so good a model for a Mars mission, given that they dealt with a number of the issues that would have to be dealt with regarding expansion and contraction of the interior atmosphere, and that they depended on exterior sunlight (the reason they built outside of Tucson, AZ was because it has more sunlit days than almost any place on Earth). Neither of these would be relevant to a Mars mission.
-- Terry
Nah. If they did that, they'd have to admit that such things constitute psychological torture.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Regarding importing oil from Titan:
While we are set to run out of oil here pretty fast, it would be a really colossally [pun averted] bad idea to bring a huge source of hydrocarbons here and burn it. We're liable enough to kill ourselves off burning our own hydrocarbons, let alone a whole new space-rock of them.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
wouldn't it be more useful to bring a bunch of cats to the red planet then?
You can't handle the truth.
"t if you think it's a vacuum with a couple of rocks, you're a total moron. Total, total moron."
You lack the intelligence and imagination to conceive reality. Space is mostly empty for all practical purposes.
"Now the fact that you're asking for anti-aging and life extension (all over this thread) instead of a cure for cancer or something tells me you're just old and not happy with it."
Um, curing just about ANYTHING goes with "life extension".
"Stop being a selfish, cowardly fuck and accept your mortality."
Stop being a selfish (even though I want life extension for everyone and you want Mars trips for a handful of people) cowardly (what's cowardly about wanting to live longer, better lives? Isn't that pretty much what we've been doing for decades?).
Now stop being an unruly child and accept the fact that you were born on this planet and will die here.
"You "life extension fanatics" disgust me."
Really? Doctors? Hospitals? Medications? Curing cancer? Disgust you?
"After living long lives, you're just screaming "WAAAAAH I DON'T WANNA DIIIEEEE!!!! WAAAAAAH!!!" It's the most fucking pathetic thing I've ever seen."
I don't understand at all. What's wrong with wanting more life? You want more space, that's OK? Even though there's nothing out there and we'll have to haul EVERYTHING with us to live there? Isn't that life extension too? After all, you'd be dead in space if it wasn't for technology.
The vaaaaaast ENORMOUS scale of space REQUIRES us to live longer.
"if you're enjoying your life so much, just enjoy what's left of it and die in peace."
If you're enjoying your life on Earth, just enjoy this planet and die in peace. Leave the other planets alone.
They don't want yelling, screaming, immature quick-dying (and happy to, apparently) children like you around.
"You can already live far longer than any human could have in nature"
That's right, WE ALREADY HAVE LIFE EXTENSION TECHNOLOGY! AND *YOU* USE IT! Quick, go to Mars and kill yourself?
Have you considered getting help for your self-contradictory beliefs and obvious rage problems?
Me? I'm in aerospace. A small propulsion company.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Is Glenn Beck moderating on slashdot?
AGGGGH you have found my secret!!!!
One of the risks that we know very little about are the psychological problems of being trapped in a small, enclosed space with a handful of other individuals for a few years.
Maybe this hasn't been studied scientifically, but it is a common occurrence historically. Just look at sailing up to the late 19th Century for example. I don't understand the insistence on claiming this is a novel condition for humanity.
Oh, you are talking about actual colonization rather than just silly Apolloesque planting of a flag ? But this is not what most mars missions plan about. If you wanted this, we would need :
- Long term support for enough missions to bring there ~150 people (the minimum genetic pool I heard was necessary for a healthy population genetics)
- Plans for a martian base
- Legal status and serious discussion about militarization of this base
- Regular cargo missions from earth.
None of that is in the missions regularly talked about, and these missions never set steps for this. Actually putting a (wo)man on mars would have huge technological gains by solving the challenges involved in the mission, but would certainly not be the cheapest way to set the grounds of a Martian colony. Why not go the Japanese way and send robots build a base ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
If Mars had even a small sea made of 50% oil and 50% water it would be considered incredibely hospitable compared to what it is now. We may be trashing our planet, but others are still incredibely more hostile
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
more significantly, what happens when the uncaring old AC gets their life extension while we're still tied to this one rock full of breeders?
anyone looking for increased (corporeal) longevity needs to look at those "desolate rocks" and see "resources and living space" or they're going to find those extra years a mite uncomfortable.
I care what's gonna happen in a few thousand years, out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. It may not be Star Trek but if you think dying in a few decades while getting old is good, you're a total moron. Total, total moron.
Now the fact that you're asking to live on other planets instead of living longer here tells me you're just stuck here and not happy with it. Stop being a selfish, cowardly fuck and accept living on Earth. You can already see more of Earth than any human could have in nature, if you're enjoying your life so much, just enjoy what's left of it and die in peace.
You "Space Nutters" disgust me. After living long lives on Earth, you're just screaming "WAAAAAH I DON'T WANNA LIVE HERE!!!! WAAAAAAH!!!" It's the most fucking pathetic thing I've ever seen.
... ask my grandmother what it's like. She never leaves her house ... at least not for the last 20 odd years.
The guy is a anti-space exploration troll.
Just the other day he was against Japanese sending robots to the Moon claiming that "there is nothing there" and how "Space Exploration is a 20th century American quasi-religion that is beginning to manifest itself as a mental disease among those people who believed it too strongly.".
And he really likes to repeat that line.
My guess is that he was molested as a child by a close relative dressed as an astronaut and using a toy rocket.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
He is a bit of a racist.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Hey, other govs will be happy to do it.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Or one habitation module can be just surrounded by fuel tanks. Also, growing plants will be a bit less straighforward than what you descibe, with probably very high levels of salts in martian water.
Oh well, we'll see. Improving AI will be of course part of it, but it might be still useful to directly teleoperate a robot from time to time (and with better AI that can really mean whole fleet of robots + only very few humans; also, I don't think 50 robots basically around one tow truck is a good model - better to disperse them around the planet, perhaps in teams of "few ordinary ones + one sample return vehicle")
One that hath name thou can not otter