Slashdot Mirror
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
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"
If Twitter is still popular at that time yes.
Publicity is a necessary component of NASA missions.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
They just need to open a realm on Mars.
It might be an empty world tho. I hope they won't ban bots or Rover will be pissed.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
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.
With an elephant in the cramped rooms you're likely to see on a Mars mission, the last thing on people's minds will be sex. The first thing will be "Oh shit, we're going to be crushed by an elephant," followed by "Man, that elephant stinks." I feel fairly confident that no one will be worrying about how the elephant will handle sex on such a trip.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I'm holding in the palm of my hand a device more powerful then the computer they used to explore most of our solarsystem. Called a cellphone. (actually a smartphone which is more then a high end computer could do 10 years ago.)
Now, let me tell you, context changes. Time changes. Our technology and knowledge about the universe has changed.
Be it by gazing at the stars and learning about the universe, about motivating and inspiring people to push the limits of the physical possible while they dream about doing awesome things, fed by media, scifi, fantasy, dream-technology or what have you. It inspires and makes you work for days, months, years without end to a seemingly useless purpose.
We have evolved these decades, we have new minds, a new "basic understanding", we process information differently and our younglings and the active working society has different morals, different insights and different goals or knowledge as decades ago.
Instead of shooting it all down, believing your world is fixed and you possess all the current knowledge, you've very intellectually gathered over all these years, as I, it's no reason to disallow discovery or handing over the flag to those who are still eager and unspoilt in their concepts but dare to dream. And their dreams, as yours or mine, are different too.
You wont restore your economy by suffocating it, but by creating economical activity and draw in foreign currency. The problem is when you have "fat years" in a country, people sortof lay back and consume and import. While they're at the same time exporting their wealth, just up the point where it tips over and they're dependent of import (of goods, services, knowledge, ...).
So let these suckers play around with their concept of science, give them boundaries in which they can manoeuvre and need to be creative (no needless large fundings and no "wealthfare" bureaucratic jobs.) things will look much different, then.
tl:dr; time changes.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Not a bad rant, but in a fiat economy, money is essentially a fiction. A trillion-dollars is no more meaningful a figure than a hojillion dollars.
What's significant is assets - the housing bubble which you lament left us with plenty of cheap real estate, which is a good thing - and work: whether people do it, what they do, and how efficiently they do it.
There are plenty of Americans who could be working on manned space exploration. If they're not doing that, what would you suggest they do instead? Till the fields? Watch Oprah re-runs all day while collecting welfare?
We can afford manned space travel. We can even afford government funded space travel. The only question is what we give up to free up the people to work on it. I'd say giving up Iraq and Afghanistan would be a good start.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.