Why Mars Is Not the Limit For Human Space Flight

"Mars is not just the next or most accessible human destination, it is the ultimate one," writes Louis Friedman, executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society. He says the concept of manned spaceflight is progressing so slowly, and robotic developments so swiftly, that Mars will be the first and last planet humans set foot on. "By the time human spaceflight technology is theoretically capable of journeys beyond Mars, humans in modern space systems will be virtual explorers interacting with the environments of distant worlds, but without the baggage of physical transportation or presence." Mark Whittington disagrees, saying Friedman is demonstrating Clarke's First Law, and that the history of human exploration is rife with periods of stagnation interrupted by technological achievement that led to swift progress.

Comments

Dead wrong

[Spy Handler]

if it's possible for humans to go somewhere, they will go there. History has proven that. Only reason we haven't been to Mars or Titan or Ceti Alpha V is that we didn't have the means to. But Elon and others are trying to change that...

Re:Dead wrong

[crutchy]

the reason why we haven't gone anywhere in space is that we're drowning in greed and corruption

"we" haven't even really been to the moon... only a very small select few astronauts went on very short demonstration trips, in which each only went once, and all on a defense budget

if we ever are to have any chance of getting anywhere in space, it will require a catastrophe that falls barely short of complete human extinction to make people realise that survival is more important than money and power... the problem isn't that space is too expensive or that we can't develop the technology... the problem is simply human nature

unless some robotic thing finds some kind of mineral that will make some corporation a lot of money (akin to the gold rushes of yesteryear or the oil rush of today), no government will bother investing in it. even the space "exploration" going on the surface of mars at the moment is probably a mineral hunt under the guise of searching for ET; the US government (that provides NASA with funding) doesn't give a fuck about ET... all they care about is money and power, and not for the US in general, just for themselves because many politicians have stock in the corporations that would benefit

until the nuclear winter of post-ww3, when all the fat greedy politicians, welfare bludgers, corporate CEOs and stockholders die of starvation and there are no corporations, and government is actually run by the people for the people (for their very survival), "we" will never have any hope of ever getting to the moon or mars

Utter BS

[gweihir]

It seems this person has never heard of the speed-of-light limit to communication delays....

Re:Utter BS

[crutchy]

It seems this person has never heard of the speed-of-light limit to communication delays....

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

even you can't be sure that ftl communication is impossible... you just believe it because you were told that it was the case and because of peer pressure (if you say otherwise you're afraid your friends and colleagues will think you're a kook)

Earth

[Weaselmancer]

Mars will be the first and last planet humans set foot on.

I believe Earth would be the first planet humans set foot on.

Sadly, no, we are not advancing

[Catbeller]

I've been a member of the Planetary Society. But, I disagree with the basic thrust of their scientists' stated position on manned space flight.

First, manned flights weren't eating the money that would have gone towards unmanned science missions. We've cut manned flight for over forty years. We've it down to zero, right now. And no money seems to be newly flowing to the unmanned side of the house, is it? False enemy they've made.

Second, we are proceeding at a glacial pace! And even if we launched a fleet every two years, we are still communicating at a top speed of 8 kilobits a second. We've high def cameras that can transmit 4K, yet we are still looking at 1976 Viking-speed photos slowly uploading from Curiosity. What use is this? We can't see nary a damned thing. We need a high speed relay in orbit around Mars, preferably nuclear powered, to beam back a laser signal, or at least short wavelength radio. This is ridiculous. We were supposed to launch one, but, no money. A trillion for other things tho...

Third. The hell with Apollo. Kids, that was a political stunt. No, no NO. We do not send a manned expedition to Mars. We send a colonization wave to Mars, or why bother? Send people to land and stay for life. No get-rocks-and-come-back-yay-science. Live there. And you will get science in petabyte amounts, a whole new world of science. It costs far less to land them without the enormous complexity necessary to send them back. Anyone who wants to spend 9 months in transit most likely never wanted to come back in the first place - these will be true believers. I'd go. Not to mention that if a meteor hits Earth and wipes out all life, Mars will still be there, the backup drive.

Fourth. Space scientists for thirty years have been banging the is-there-life-on-Mars gong, because it was the one facet they thought they could interest Americans in. Give it up. I don't give a damn about the cellular life that might have lived there once. We will never find it, launching a lander every ten years or so. Only humans can find such things, and they have to be there to do it, with hammers and drills and microscopes, right next to the damned rock. Besides which, if you send life to Mars, there WILL be life on Mars. And if we don't, inevitably there won't be any on Earth, either. We can't keep all our bets on the blur marble; it will be hit someday by Lucifer's Hammer.

Re:With the exception of Mercury and other stars..

[wierd_w]

What minerals would those be?

The venusian surface is over 500C. It is so hot that there is no mantle convection, and the crust is squishy. There are no carbon compounds in the crust, and all the chemistry in the crust is high temp chemistry.

Unless you are talking things like lead sulfide, which can be made in just a few minutes in a lab, I don't know what you could be referring to.

What venus potentially offers is a geoengineering opportunity.

I have contemplated what I would do concerning venus. That planet will *never* have a natural biosphere containing more than microbes without human intervention. So, here is what I would do:

Genetically engineer atmospheric terrestrial microbes to produce long flagella out of polyaramid plastic. Poly aramid has a thermal breakdown temperature approaching that of venus's surface, but venus also has mountains. The polyaramid "snow" would slowly sequester atmospheric co2, reducing surface temps until the snow could last on the surface, then the process would rapidly accellerate.

The venusian atmosphere is mostly co2, with anhydrous sulfuric acid, nitrogen, and some trace gasses.

The sulfuric acid and co2 are the primary items of interest here: we need microbes that can use anhydrous H2SO4 as their cytoplasmic solvent instead of water, and which can produce any water they would otherwise need through photosynthetic reactions powered by a sulfur cycle metabolism. Once venus cools enough, it has sufficient mass to produce a magnetic dynamo once there is crust convection currents to power it. That means venus will become a lot more interesting, and all we have to do is drop the surface temp.

That's what the germs do; the drop the surface temp, and rain out the CO2 as white plastic fibers. The plastic has a high albedo, and reflects energy back into space, and is sufficiently nonreactive that it will stick around for very long periods. Coupled with continued biological activities, simply seeding the atmosphere with such microbes would initiate the biological transformation of the planet.