Slashdot Mirror
Let's Not Go To Mars
HughPickens.com writes: Ed Regis write in the NYT that today we an witnessing an outburst of enthusiasm over the literally outlandish notion that in the relatively near future, some of us are going to be living, working, thriving and dying on Mars. But unfortunately Mars mania reflects an excessively optimistic view of what it actually takes to travel to and live on Mars, papering over many of the harsh realities and bitter truths that underlie the dream. "First, there is the tedious business of getting there. Using current technology and conventional chemical rockets, a trip to Mars would be a grueling, eight- to nine-month-long nightmare for the crew," writes Regis. "Tears, sweat, urine and perhaps even solid waste will be recycled, your personal space is reduced to the size of an SUV., and you and your crewmates are floating around sideways, upside down and at other nauseating angles." According to Regis every source of interpersonal conflict, and emotional and psychological stress that we experience in ordinary, day-to-day life on Earth will be magnified exponentially by restriction to a tiny, hermetically sealed, pressure-cooker capsule hurtling through deep space and to top it off, despite these constraints, the crew must operate within an exceptionally slim margin of error with continuous threats of equipment failures, computer malfunctions, power interruptions and software glitches.
But getting there is the easy part says Regis. "Mars is a dead, cold, barren planet on which no living thing is known to have evolved, and which harbors no breathable air or oxygen, no liquid water and no sources of food, nor conditions favorable for producing any. For these and other reasons it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet's average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit." These are only a few of the many serious challenges that must be overcome before anyone can put human beings on Mars and expect them to live for more than five minutes says Regis. "The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
But getting there is the easy part says Regis. "Mars is a dead, cold, barren planet on which no living thing is known to have evolved, and which harbors no breathable air or oxygen, no liquid water and no sources of food, nor conditions favorable for producing any. For these and other reasons it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet's average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit." These are only a few of the many serious challenges that must be overcome before anyone can put human beings on Mars and expect them to live for more than five minutes says Regis. "The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
We choose to go to mars not because it's easy, but because .... Wait... it's not easy?
Oh, well lets give up then
Something tells me Ed Regis isn't about to climb Everest either.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
It's about going everywhere else. The tech developed going to Mars will undoubtedly be useful when going other places. You crawl before you walk, you walk before you run.
Mostly because Everest is cold. But also because climbing it is hard.
Ed Regis prefers lunch.
momkind rises... we're having a 'management' shakeup? https://twitter.com/FactTank/status/645920994201366528/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw ...you go larry lessig,, truth & mercy = justice
No sh!t such an endeavor is hard. That's why we have engineers, scientists, and people willing to take risk to give humanity the steps needed to advance.
Why doesn't Ed Regis do us all a favor and stop writing. I think it's more accurate to call the NYT's office a veritable hell in its own right
You all stay cows. Cows say moooo, and nothing else! YOU NON EVOLVING COWS!!!
.. but actually not.
Great discoveries and advancements come about because there are humans willing to try to do hard things. Often when you do those you fail, but in the end when enough tries succeed the humankind is better off.
There have always been naysayers and there will always be naysayers, luckily for us there have been enough people willing to try.
Pointing out the clear reality of a situation isn't leftist. It's realist.
... let's not go to Mars. It is a silly place.
It's the logical stepping stone always has been.
Easier to get to.
Can actually get aid to in case of emergency.
Will have a much quicker return on investment.
Once we have it colonized, it will be much easier to spread into the solar system from there.
Mars Mania is just rather strange.
"No, Columbus, let's just stay here in Europe instead with the plague and the overcrowding, the racial tensions and all the other problems plaguing us. Because that will be good for the world."
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
"The notion that we can start colonizing Mars within the next 10 years or so is an overoptimistic, delusory idea that falls just short of being a joke."
If it's not a joke, if it falls short of being a joke, then he's admitting there is a possibility! Cool! I'll start packing!
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Genuine question...
Given the difficulties of getting to Mars, the fact that Mars is barely any more suited to habitation than space and the fact that trips to and from Mars need to deal with the planet's gravity well... why do we assume that the first off-Earth permanent habitation would necessarily need to be on Mars, or indeed on any other planet?
If we want a permanent off-world habitat, would it not be more worthwhile to devote energy to exploring the possibility of permanently-habitable, (near) self-sustaining space stations? These could be closer to Earth , would presumably have rather better access to solar power and journeys to and from Earth would only need to deal with a single planetary gravity well. They would have their own challenges; dealing with radiation and with the effects of zero-gravity on the human body in the longer term, but those don't instinctively feel as difficult as some of the problems highlighted in TFA. Other challenges, such as those around hydroponics and recycling, might not be that different from those associated with a settlement on Mars.
Or is there a good reason why this is in fact more difficult than Mars-colonisation which I've just overlooked?
Why do anything?
Leftists/realists didn't make the world we live in today. The only thing they're good at is whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
Technically, humanity probably could colonize Mars already. It would be expensive and unpleasant, but lots of things that have advanced humanity were expensive and unpleasant at first.
A bigger reason not to colonize Mars is that there are far better things to do in space. Mars is a deep gravity well, and there's little evidence that there is anything in it we want. The asteroid belt, on the other hand, is full of useful stuff in convenient orbits.
He starts by saying the first problem is the lengthy trip to Mars. However, the first problem is really the excessive cost of getting equipment out of the earth's atmosphere and into space. We're never going to get anywhere until we give up on chemical rockets and try something a bit more risky like a launch/Lofstrom loop.
Sadly it seems governments would rather piss billions down the drain on something that won't offer any significant advancement but has a high chance of working, rather than taking a gamble on something that would be a game changer if it could be built successfully. That said, it's not just governments; Musk and the other private space companies are taking the pointless low risk option.
I'd rather take a risk and fail spectacularly than succeed in mediocrity.
Going to Mars is a bad idea for a whole range of reasons.
First, aside from proving that we can do it, what is the point? Going to the moon is *way* easier, we do have the technology to establish a base there right now, it is immeasurably cheaper to finance - yet no one is suggesting seriously that we open a colony on the moon. And why would we? With Mars - it is the same thing. At first, going to the moon was totally exciting, electrifying the entire world. After the second or third landing, people stopped caring. Been there, done that. If we go to Mars, the first trip would make headlines, so may the second, but then attention will fade. People will care about a colony on Mars as much as they care about the international space station.
The biggest problem with the long-term prospects of the endeavour is that there are no good economic reasons for it. But without economic reasons, this is not sustainable.
And about the argument that it will be great for technological breakthroughs. I suggest to think again. The biggest tech breakthrough we will have in the next generation is the development of machines that can act ever more independently. From that perspective, going to Mars could be a great boost - if we decide not to send humans but restrict ourselves to probes. Then we will have the biggest technological benefits.
In the meantime - if you want to live on Mars, why don't you apply to become a researcher on the south pole. Compared to Mars, life there will be paradise. And there is plenty of interesting research to be done there as well. Of course - no one will give a flying f*** about it - but this is about science and progress for humanity - not personal vanity, right?
I've been hearing about landing people on mars over and over since the early 70's. I remember 1983 was one of the years mentioned in around 1976. Then the Russians said they'd do it by 1993.
Fast-forward to 2015. What is it, today, that is likely to make it more feasible than forty years ago? Have we discovered awesome new ways get a payload into orbit? Have we discovered astounding, new methods of producing power? Is our software so much better? Is the hardware it runs on that much more reliable?
Keep dreaming. And keep funding NASA so they can build a better weather satellite for NOAA.
he puts on a good show, even if he "falls just short of being a joke".
What if the Pilgrims had the same thought or the pioneers said the same thing about going west. We are all about going where no man has gone before!
every source of interpersonal conflict, and emotional and psychological stress that we experience in ordinary, day-to-day life on Earth will be magnified exponentially by restriction to a tiny, hermetically sealed, pressure-cooker capsule hurtling through deep space and to top it off, despite these constraints, the crew must operate within an exceptionally slim margin of error with continuous threats of equipment failures, computer malfunctions, power interruptions and software glitches.
I feel like I'm in the travel agency from The Truman Show. People will do all that and more, because after that, they get to be on fucking Mars! You know that sailing westward from Europe was once considered certain death, don't you? The people who first(*) embarked on that journey didn't even know for certain that there was land within reach. Their hope of surviving was based on a severe underestimation of the distance around the world to India. Compared to them, we're pussyfooting this space exploration thing.
(*) for varying values of first
AIUI, the radiation exposure is the biggest threat to getting there uncooked.
But thhe biggest question, IMO, is WTF should we be investing money into a trip to Mars, when according to most people and demagogues we can't even afford our current spending needs and habits.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Colonizing the moon first sounds like the reasonable choice...
Leftists/realists didn't make the world we live in today. The only thing they're good at is whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
And telling YOU that you didn't make that.
Because they can't.
Leftists...
Since it's a metaphysical certitude that Elon Musk doesn't vote Republican or belong to the Tea Party, your comment pushes the bounds of stupidity.
Unless you're doing a Poe. In which case.... "Well played, sir!"
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This really is a great analogy. Both are really hard. Everest, however, is within days journey of civilization, has a steady pipeline of supplies, has oxygen all on its own, and there are many smaller/easier mountains to practice on until we figure out what gear and techniques are needed to be successful.
So all we need is a continuum of planets between our orbit and that of Mars that are increasingly hostile and distant; that will allow us to work our way up to Mars. Hey, let's start with the Moon!
but for now, till i can remember what email i used to sign up:
Your opinion sucks, and i have no idea who you paid or blackmailed to get it posted on /. as a "story" but kindly pack it the hell up and GTFO.
These men actually tried some of the privations of a trip to Mars, on a budget:
http://channel.nationalgeograp...
The "Rocket City Rednecks" are a wonderful mix of genuine scientific research on a budget, and the sort of project some of us tried on long weekends when we were much younger.
To everyone with the "We HAVE to leave earth or we're doomed!" argument:
With the exception of a planet-destroying asteroid (similar to the one that formed the moon), there is no conceivable disaster that will leave the earth less inhabitable by humans than any other body within our conceivable reach. The nearest planet or moon where humans could live in an even remotely self-sustainable way is so far away that even if we could travel near the speed of light, it would still be well out of our reach.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
We have been maintaining human life on the space station for years with individual stays lasting longer than the trip time to Mars. In what way would life on Mars be worse than life on the space station? The simplest argument is that we could put extra thrusters on the International Space Station and move it to Mars. Yes, I know there are much better ways to do it. Just making the reductionist argument.
And once there, water and soil could be extracted. Hey, that's easy living compared to living on a small space station. And the added benefit? Gravity! So life on Mars would be paradise compared to a space station. It's just a matter of investing the resources necessary to establish an eventually self-sufficient colony that will ensure survival of the human race when the big one (whatever that may be) eventually hits Earth.
... Ed Regis is the author of “Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology.”
I'm not sure but I think I sense a theme.
No one is asking YOU to go; if you don't like it, fine, don't go, but don't take away the freedom of those who want.
Leftists...
I wouldn't be so unkind as to say it that way but no one seems that concerned with the offices being built for today's workers. Most companies are building campuses that provide everything you need. Aside from having to get into your car to drive home, many people don't leave the building until quitting time - which might be 10 hours. 2 hours to commute, 8 hours of sleep, 3 hours for meals you have 23 hours of a work day accounted for that don't require you to be outside throw in some TV and your set.
I would say the author needs to work a low to mid level job at any corporation. It's not that much different than what he describes.
I wish there were a better option, but for now Mars will have to do.
No one is taking your freedom, we're just refusing to fund and encourage your delusions.
Leftists/realists didn't make the world we live in today. The only thing they're good at is whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
You know what the Darwin Award winner said to the realist who was trying to talk them out of a very stupid decision?
They said nothing at all, because they're a Darwin Award winner.
That's not whining you're hearing. It's the low roar of the intellectuals who truly miss Common Sense in this world. If it sounds foreign to you, we know why.
I have been saying we should colonize the moon first then worry about colonizing Mars. We would definitely know alot more about it than we did previously. And with rescue missions and resupplying all being totally possible. We don't have to terraform the moon. We just need to survive in a completely inhospitable place, I think the moon had Mars beat in this category if you remove the relative proximity to earth each are.
Something tells me Ed Regis isn't about to climb Everest either.
Humans going to mars would be a human achievement like climbing Everest a million times over. A more apt analogy would be like trying to live at the top of Mt Everest. Except the top of Mt Everest is a 1000 times more hospitable than Mars. We don't even have the practical technology to make our own deserts places people can live, let alone the airless lifeless desert which is Mars. Talk to me about a cloud city on Venus though... that is a hot idea.
Everest, however, ...has oxygen all on its own
Excellent argument, except for that part.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
So they can come in behind and mine it to fatten up their portfolios.
They won't go and take the risk though, because the odds are it's too expensive to maintain an outpost there and there is no feasible way for a return trip to bring back goods or even people.
Unless we find something there, and then big money will be tripping over themselves to get there and stake a claim.
There is nothing there I need, therefore I have little use for the notion.
The right isn't any better.
There is a difference between hard and stupid. We don't remotely have the technology that would make colonization of Mars possible. Economically and autonomously mining an asteroid might get us to the point where we have some of the technology necessary to collect enough on site resources to be self sustaining. Until then it would take massive support from Earth to sustain even a brief exploration and even more to sustain a longer term settlement.
And worse, if you are talking about any tax money going towards this you are literally choosing between saving thousands,ten of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of human lives here on Earth and a vanity achievement with no practical benefits for mankind here on Earth.
If people want to go to Mars and have the private money to do so, then fine... it is better than building toilets made of gold and having pet tigers, but it is similarly vain and pointless.
Is not complicated. Nor is it difficult bringing several orders magnitude greater "stuff" than the article contemplates.
But this will not happen without nuclear propulsion. With Project Orion powered space craft, we could send 100,000 ton vessels to Mars, single stage, capable of landing, with a trip time of weeks, not months.
This is the difference between trying to explore the new world, from Europe, with 5 people, paddles and a canoe; or a fleet of diesel powered amphibious vessels holding thousands of tons of cargo, and hundreds/thousands of expeditionary personnel.
Exploring Mars (or pretending to settle it) with chemical rockets is really just playing with toys, the science equivalent of masturbation, and we really shouldn't bother with the cost. If mankind wants to expand beyond the earth, it will take nuclear propulsion.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
We have been maintaining human life on the space station for years
The ISS is under the Van Allan Belts. It's also frequently resupplied from Earth.
with individual stays lasting longer than the trip time to Mars.
And they're experiencing all sorts of medical problems because of it.
And once there, water and soil could be extracted.
(Gotta love the passive voice. Always a favorite of PR firms and politicians.)
With what kind of (heavy) machinery would the water and soil be extracted? And what would power it? Don't say "solar power", because the Sun appears much smaller when viewed from Mars, and thus receives much less energy.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
So basically, it would be exactly like the passage to the New World was, only a) without gravity, b) with far better entertainment and medical options, and c) you can actually phone home.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
People have summited without oxygen. It doesn't have much, but it has enough to get to the top, and it has enough to get just below the summit without carrying oxygen.
going with a sail boat from Europe to the Americas ;)
Also, it ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
Well, at least Ed Regis is in the esteemed company of people that believed that you would fall off the earth if you went too far east or west. I'm looking forward to toasting Ed Regis with the local moonshine from a beautiful view sitting above Candor Chasma Rim. Seriously, find reasons to do things instead of excuses for giving up.
-- $G
This never stopped our predecessors and defined science and discovery in ways unimaginable. That's why you leave it to those individuals at the extreme.
it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet's average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit
Hell, that would be Venus:
The CO2-rich atmosphere, along with thick clouds of sulfur dioxide, generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 C).
Wow, getting to Mars will be tough! Who knew?
Might as well tell the guys spending a year on the iSS as a Mars mission study to come home now.
No, he's right; there is oxygen. And air of course (our nice nitrogen / oxygen / carbon dioxide + minor constituents "air"). The only problem is the low pressure which results in not enough oxygen. In theory, instead of oxygen tanks to raise the partial pressure of oxygen in the mix you are breathing you could simply pressurize (with some sort of compressor) the air that is already there and use that. However you would need it for your external environment (outside your body) too (like a spacesuit) to avoid getting things like the bends. Also, about 5% of climbers of Everest do not use oxygen tanks.
I saw an Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary some time back that shows that Mars has humanoid women with three boobs. There's your reason to go to Mars. I plan on watching a newer documentary, The Martian, to learn more.
For these and other reasons it would be accurate to call Mars a veritable hell for living things, were it not for the fact that the planet's average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
Except that hell is a cold and desolate place. No, I'm not talking about Michigan, I'm talking about the place that Lucifer calls home. All these claims about how hell is scorching and has magma and sulfur and such is new-age nonsense.
Moon Base Alpha, it's just as practical as a Martian cemetery..
from NASA --> "VASIMR Rocket Could Send Humans To Mars In Just 39 Days" It's time to make your travel time up to date
If the NY Times author wants to criticize the time lines that's perfectly fine and dandy... and very much so accurate. However with the Slashdot OP suggesting removing it from our list of goals altogether, that's a far worse joke than the joke "Mars One" and "Inspiration One" are making. Out of the bunch, (Elon Musk) SpaceX, is the only one that can be taken seriously. NASA however is the most honest about it, they have it slated for 2035 at this present time which we can already suspect will slide backwards. I'm fine with the general mania though. It's a similar kind of mania that got us to the Moon. The timeline by which the US (and almost Soviets) achieved that goal with the technology they had was pretty ridiculous. All problems can be solved with the correct dosage of time and money. Nearly all the time, lots of both of those resources are needed.
I sorta agree. Mars is dead. Humanity (for the most part) vastly underappreciates how vital internal heat is to life on Earth... and the lack of the same on Mars will make it a perpetual sinkhole for any energy we invest into it. Nuking the poles won't change that... just give a very brief warm/wet spell. Any colonies on that planet will have to be enclosed and perhaps even sub'martian' for the most part... until we've grown powerful enough as a specie to move it into a lunar orbit around something massing enough to knead its core back into action, akin to galilean moons, perhaps. That said, this is not reason not to go. The path to other stars will need a few steps along the way, and for that Mars is a worthwhile part of the path. 'omg, it's hard' is a terrible excuse.
And once there, water and soil could be extracted.
(Gotta love the passive voice. Always a favorite of PR firms and politicians.
Gotta love the passive voice Nazis; if they don't have anything else to say, that's always a good cheap shot. No content whatsoever, but whatever.
We could extract water from the soil, because it is present in subsurface ice, as well as in the form of water of hydration.
With what kind of (heavy) machinery would the water and soil be extracted?
Shovels.
And what would power it? Don't say "solar power", because the Sun appears much smaller when viewed from Mars, and thus receives much less energy.
Solar or nuclear, take your pick. Each has advantages.
Incident sunlight is about 500 W/m^2, about half that at Earth's surface, although it depends on season and dust loading in the atmosphere. You don't seem to be aware of it, but we have been operating a solar-powered rover on Mars for well over ten years. We know solar energy works on Mars: we have done it, we are doing it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There's a great West Wing episode which discusses why we should, but somehow I think that wouldn't gain me much here. Discussions of the nature of man, and the establishment of wonder being particularly squishy in hard science terms.
Instead I'd point out that all safety critical systems are engineered around the notion of redundancy. Shit happens, and when it does, things break down. When that unexpected thing happens to our Earth-bound ecology, what, exactly, is our safety strategy? Hide in a hole? For how long? What if it's biological? What happens if someone accidently creates Card's molecular disruption device. We can't reasonably colonize another star system (yet) but we aren't *that* far from being able to establish some very worthwhile planetary redundancy. It's worth it because we are stuck on this rock that I think we should rename 'The Single Point of Failure'.
I'm sure there is a huge psychological discrepancy between being in orbit around Earth in a space station equipped with an emergency escape capsule, and being out in the middle of space with little to no hope of rescue.
""First, there is the tedious business of getting there. ...would be a grueling, eight- to nine-month-long nightmare for the crew,"
I guess your great grandparents came with a Concorde to the US and didn't have to endure a grueling sea voyage where thousands died, then the long voyage to the west on foot where thousands died as well from hunger, sickness and exhaustion.
Thank god at least here are no Mars-Indians. :-)
First, I note that all the arguments about getting there are childish inferences of weak emotion. You are certainly not one of them Regis, but there are plenty of people that can handle the stress. Actually living there is not as hard as it would seem once you have enough infrastructure in place. And that is just a matter of time and money, nothing more. The only thing keeping us from going is the will of people and government to commit the resources to doing it. The delusion is not that of the optimist, but of the defeatist.
The author obviously has no clue about science.
o Who cares about the average temperature of the planet when a landing spot will be close to the euator?
o what is the longest stay in space, people already have done?
o why do inhabitants of the ISS not care if they hang "wierd in space"?
o did he once check the size of your personal space in a submarine?
o while Systems may fail, mankind has build enough complex systems that lasted for decades (hint: pioneer and viking space probes)
o while he is right that the atmosphere is not breathable, there is enough CO2 to produce all O2 we ever need there, and likely with water we have it even more easy to produce O2
I for my part would happily join a trip to mars, even one way under a few conditions.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We don't even have the practical technology to make our own deserts places people can live,
Well... Las Vegas
let alone the airless lifeless desert which is Mars. Talk to me about a cloud city on Venus though... that is a hot idea.
Thanks!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"In what way would life on Mars be worse than life on the space station?"
This is actually an excellent example of why space nutters are delusional. The fact that the question is even asked is delusional. You also see this line of thinking in AI/singularity nutters: "Well Siri can answer questions on a mobile phone! AI is right around the corner!"
he seems to bring up alot of things that we already have overcome, the only thing that would be the most problem is the health issues like "your body’s muscles, including your heart..." etc and the water problem
the thing I see is that we might aim for Mars but end up on the Moon first, people seem to think just because we didnt achieve the primary goal then a secondary goal is not a option, and doing\planning for something harsher will give a "easier" goal like settling on the moon a better chance of succeeding
What in hell makes Mr. Regis qualify as a competent judge on the feasibility of interplanetary space travel ? Just askin'....
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact, it's cold as Hell
And yet maybe we SHOULD terraform the moon. Shooting rockets off the moon would require less energy than shooting them off the earth.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Solar or nuclear, take your pick.
Certainly you understand how low-power that RTGs are, and how unlikely it is that boosting up some larger nuclear plant would be?
Incident sunlight is about 500 W/m^2, about half that at Earth's surface
So.... you're agreeing with me that it's not much.
You don't seem to be aware of it,
Sure I am.
but we have been operating a solar-powered rover on Mars for well over ten years.
Let me quote the Wikipedia article for the Spirit rover: Solar arrays generate about 140 watts for up to four hours per Martian day (sol).
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Then don't ask *US* to pay for it.
Use fahrenheit and you will loose all creadability
"Tears, sweat, urine and perhaps even solid waste will be recycled, your personal space is reduced to the size of an SUV., and you and your crewmates are floating around sideways, upside down and at other nauseating angles."
This just proves that this Ed Regis does not know a thing about space travel or microgravity and is just spouting someone's agenda.
Eight to nine month nightmare for the crew? Come on. There have been many people that have been on the ISS for more than a year, the Russians for more than 430 days on Mir, all with 1980's Russian technology. Another Russian more than 740+ days cumulative time. That means he keeps on willingly going back to "this nightmare". Regis also claims there is no liquid water on Mars. It is already known from actual NASA data that Mars has huge amounts of water ice. Despite what Ed might think, producing heat to melt ice back into liquid water is easy.
However, there being no proven liquid water reserves on Mars, water, too, must be produced from raw material sources, specifically from the soil.
Sorry Ed, this does not match actual NASA data.
Mars is definitely doable in the near future, but will be very difficult and expensive. Something closer might be a better first step (such as an Lagrange colony), but this Regis guy is just spewing misinformation and FUD.
I think the first wave of nutters don't expect to come back or much care if they do. Sign up for a one way trip and go down in history for FUCKING EVER!
"We faked the moon landings. On Venus." - Richard Nixon
...I'm guessing Ed Regis has never had children?
Something tells me Ed Regis isn't about to climb Everest either.
And why should he, exactly?
I'm not being a troll here, nor am I trying to dissuade anyone from their mountain-climbing hobbies. I've enjoyed climbing on small scales myself, though mostly I prefer hiking (even on more difficult terrain).
Anyhow, I can see some idea of "human achievement" in having the first person summit Everest. On the other hand, this was achieved in the days before we had robots or planes or whatever to do the exploring for us.
But nowadays, you're talking about investing a huge amount of time and energy and money (probably $50k or more), not to mention the resources required to get there, the litter most hikers leave on the mountain (including garbage, human waste, etc. which especially befouls the most popular -- and now frequently crowded -- routes), etc.
And even if you make it to base camp, you have only about a 50% chance of getting to the top. And now you have a lot of random idiots with minimal climbing experience who want to do it too.
What does it prove? You're a badass?
I'm all for people having goals. But I for one would be happy if fewer idiots were leaving their garbage trails on Everest just to have some sort of "notch in their belt." A hundred years from now, we'll probably look at many of these climbers today as many people look at the dentist who killed a lion recently... yeah, it was awesome to go on "big game" hunts and collect trophies in Africa 100 years ago, but is that really a practice that we should put so much cultural value on anymore?
Going to Mars is a similar exercise in human folly unless or until we can find a way to make it legitimately sustainable and useful, rather than just some sort of random "goal" to do "just because it's there." Decades ago when Azimov and other writers were imagining bases on Mars, there was also a legitimate point to such exploration -- we needed humans to explore because the idea of robots or machines being sophisticated enough to do it for us was also far-fetched.
But imagine how much MORE we could learn about Mars if we invested the amounts of money necessary to transport a human mission there into really developing better robotics with the equipment and sustainability to do serious testing there. And after a more thorough analysis of some possibilities and further exploration, we could make a determination about whether it would at all be feasible or useful to send humans there.
Of course, that would be logical and probably the most efficient use of funds, research, and effort -- but humans are not known for being logical or efficient. And lots of funds will only materialize with the notion of human exploration... even if it's another quest for some crazy humans to put a "notch on their belt."
Leftists/realists didn't make the world we live in today. The only thing they're good at is whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
Actually, the "leftist" mentality is more about emotions and less about the cold hard reality. The revel in the pride and accomplishment that "going to Mars" would bring them and look at the folks who are talking about how many problems have to be overcome as the complainers....
It's cold, it's distant, landing mass on the surface safely is really difficult, there are no natural resources to utilize once we are there etc, pale in comparison to the "We went there and left footprints" (and piles of useless garbage), at least to the leftist... They are about instant gratification, and not into all the hard slogging that it takes to accomplish their goal... But they are the dreamers that push the righties out of their comfort zones, encourage them to take risks. Both are necessary.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
it's like living in manhattan?
Yah, it's like Jerry Pournelle said in an essay - to the effect that, space pioneers have to understand, this is dangerous as hell and some of them are going to die. We'll name a street in Luna City after them and keep heading out.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
(Gotta love the passive voice. Always a favorite of PR firms and politicians.)
And people who can't understand past the third grade level.
With what kind of (heavy) machinery would the water and soil be extracted? And what would power it? Don't say "solar power", because the Sun appears much smaller when viewed from Mars, and thus receives much less energy.
ahem.... There are solar powered doodads on Mars as we write this, happily motoring about, an doing research.
At least they could be doing research.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Let's all sing a round of 'Whitey on the Moon', and run out and get a copy of Moondoggle (if you can find one)... It's _easy_ to come up with reasons why we shouldn't try and do hard things. We can, should, and will, do them anyway.
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most
Both are necessary in balance or NOTHING gets done...
All leftists and you get emotional decisions that lack technical vision and proper engineering... Left to themselves, leftists are going to go out with a half baked solution that *might* work if they are lucky because the attempt is the reward and the possible success is valued above all.
Righties when left alone, never take risks, never try anything new, never leave their comfort zones until they are *sure* it will work. They figure, engineer, test and re-test until their resources and schedule are exhausted and always choose the least risky, less reward route.
It takes both types....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Everest, however, .... has oxygen all on its own,...
For the first 25 years, Everest appeared to require you to bring your own oxygen.
Sending a crew without first solving the issue of sustaining life upon arrival is putting the cart before the horse. Otherwise you've just managed to send them in orbit. Terraform the thing, engineer a station that can be deployed on-land, built-up piece by piece, etc.
So you do confirm that tiny solar panels on a tiny rover can generate about 140 watts for up to four hours per Martian day. That gives us the data (known solar panel type, surface area, power generated) to know how many and how big the solar panels would need to be for a Mars base.
I don't mind if people want to go although it would be nice to hold a funeral service prior to them leaving.
If we as a species cannot create livable habitats on our moon and have people living there for a reasonable amount of time then what chance would so called Mars colonists have. At least with our moon living on it is feasible with our current technology and it would be a great jumping off point for future maned space exploration.
Please don't think I am against space exploration, I am definitely all for it but I do think the so called Mars colonization idea stems from reading too many Sci Fi books and not enough science and engineering ones. There is a huge difference between our "Age of Exploration" and Space Exploration since on our planet we have an atmosphere and although many explorers did die they did not die through lack of oxygen or have any reason to take it with them unless they drowned or were killed by hostile natives or animals.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
People were the same way about the moon forty years ago. Everyone imagined people living on moon bases, even though it was never really clear WHY we needed moon bases. At least on the short-lived TV series, "UFO", the moon base served the purpose of intercepting extraterrestrials -- because, apparently, the moon is always in the same spot, and the aliens always have to fly past the moon on their way to the earth. But really, since their aren't any nefarious UFOs to intercept, the reason for a moon base boils down to "scientific research" which very few people find interesting enough to pay for.
We may eventually send people to Mars, but once that is accomplished the world will let out a collective "yawn" and that will be the end of it, unless and until there is some quick, inexpensive way to get there.
Proverbs 21:19
Because Aliens won't let us do it.
"Terraforming" the moon isn't even sort of possible. Gravity is too weak to hold an atmosphere, no magnetic field, tidally locked with earth so it's slow roasted and half deep frozen (a lunar "day" is 29 days long...solar wise. 27 days sidereal).
Maybe you could colonize it, but you sure couldn't terraform it.
And I doubt you could really terraform Mars, either, with no magnetic field.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Seriously, the entire 1st paragraph quote in the summary just sounds like a description of ISS, and yet...
I'm sure there is a huge psychological discrepancy between being in orbit around Earth in a space station equipped with an emergency escape capsule, and being out in the middle of space with little to no hope of rescue.
Kinda like the days of sailing ships. You were out on the ocean in a little wooden ship, and no one to save you. Safety culture has most people people brainwashed into accepting no risk. Which is why we have houses in gated communities that are protected by ADT Security, and with a handy safe room.
There is another whole world out there, more interesting and more exciting than getting a good return on your investments, and extracting every last possible second out of life. And safety culture is doing it's best to stamp that shit out. WIthout hurting anyone of course.
And Safety culture really really really hates the idea of going to Mars. It's a scary place. Someone might get hurt.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Didn't you read your Cyril M. Kornbluth?!
Mars One is a vital necessity to ensure human civilization can survive when the Great Space Goat eats Earth!
I nominate Kanye for captain. Naturally, Kim will want to accompany him.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
No one is taking away your freedom. Adults are telling you that the physical reality of the universe is taking away your freedom.
Space Nutters...
Everest has been done to death. It's just a premium selfie location for rich assholes now. Not a technically challenging climb either. You just trudge through the world's longest, most horrible amusement park lineup for your moment at the top.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The New York Times article has the title "Let’s Not Move to Mars" and is basically a rant about how we won't be living on Mars anytime soon (if ever). Changing the title for the Slashdot article to "Let's Not Go To Mars" implies that the author is suggesting we don't even try to land a person on Mars which is not really the point of the original article.
I think we should try to have an unmanned mission return to earth from Mars before we attempt to have a manned mission go to Mars.
I think too many people envision Mars as a planet we can inhabit with only some difficulty. Mostly that coming from getting there. But the reality is we do not have the means to do so effectively with the propulsion systems we have, we also do not have the means at this point to build or sustain the living conditions for Mars. Nor do we have the money to invest in such endeavor. If mars is to be colonized it will come from private sector investment which right now is not interested. Where is the payback to go to such a distant planet with no substance or value as we know of right now? The days of going just to plant a flag are over. To conquer a planet or the Moon just to beat another Country is over. We must explore space not without purpose and reason. Too many things on Earth need our attention and investment.
The Star trek wannabe's will have to accept that until our cheaper non human exploration justifies a much more expensive trip. We will have to be satisfy with what we have. So far our unmanned space craft have given little hope that we could sustain life or find much life on these planets. If people like Elon Musk have their way we will see us nuking a planet to create a atmosphere to sustain life?? A brilliant guy who thinks several nuclear bombs will make Mars habitable? This guy should stick with cars.
Sounds no different than crossing the atlantic, a few hundred years ago, in a small wooden cabin, on a dizzyingly pitching ship, forever adjusting the sails and bailing water, developing all sorts of mysterious new illnesses (e.g. scurvy), under constant threat of pirates.
Now you have a choice.
You can choose the earlier voyages, where the only benefit was for a shorter route to some spices -- man, how bland was their food?
Or, you can choose the later voyages where you'd be reaching a new, classless world of hostile animals and savages.
The trip to mars is for precisely the same two reasons as any trip has always been: for land, and for the pioneering spirit.
I was first, and it is mine!
The best source of power for Mars would be to build Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs). After you have those running you could do anything. First we need them here on earth though. :(
The people who reduce Mars resource extraction to simple "We'll simply do this, then that" statements have clearly never had to work building or maintaining mining, ore processing, and refining equipment on Earth, let alone on Mars ;) We've never done any sort of actual mining on other worlds (no, using a RAT or taking tiny dust samples is not "mining"), and most of the stuff one might consider even close to "refining" we've done in space has proved to be a maintenance nightmare. Seriously, how often has the ISS lost things like its oxygen generators, its urine reprocessor, etc? And all of these are quite toward the easy end of "refining" tasks. Heck, the oxygen generator literally just dumps its hydrogen overboard and they never attempt to tank the oxygen. I remember that one of the reasons that the oxygen generators were failing at one point was that the water they were feeding it was "slightly too acidic". I mean, seriously, and you want to use dug-up muddy Mars ice with who knows what in it as your feedstock? And that's when the system's not trying to kill you - they've had corrosive chemical leaks, near-fire situations, etc.
Everyone who says "We'll just dig up X for resource Y" as if it's just that simple needs a serious reality check. These systems can take decades to refine to the point where you can rely on them being dependable enough for the long periods of time involved in a Mars mission to have peoples' lives hinge upon them. And they're anything but "simple", even for the simplest tasks like water production and oxygen generation.
To reduce risk, reasonable mission profiles for Mars that involve in-situ actually call for a long "prep phase". In such a phase, one tries to produce everything robotically and then store it, with the idea of having everything present on-site and ready when people arrive. That way, if the system fails, or produces resources that for some reason or another are not usable, people don't die. But it also means long delays before you can launch people, even after you get the mission there.
One example is with MOXIE. They're considering including it on the Mars 2020 rover (although somewhat controversially - I wouldn't be too shocked if it got cut). It takes CO2 from the atmosphere and makes O2 and CO - both just released to the atmosphere, no attempt to store it. The idea being that the atmosphere should be a more consistent and reliable source of raw materials than mined water ice. If it works right and lasts, then the idea is to make a 100x bigger system with its own dedicated high power RTG (read: expensive), as well as tankage, compressors, etc and send that to Mars, leave it running for 5-10 years, and if it completes storing up enough O2, then use that for a human mission. So this would mean:
1) Hope that MOXIE doesn't get cut before launch ... competing with a wide range of other scientific proposals for mission money. Hope it gets approved.
2) Hope that Mars 2020 makes it into the 2020 launch window
3) Arrive at Mars after a long cruise phase. Hope that there's no accidents in launch, transit or on landing.
4) Spend enough time with MOXIE operating to prove that it actually works in a Mars environment (dust storms, radiation, temperature swings, etc). Hope it actually works.
5) Take proposals for the expensive oxygen generation mission
6) Hope that people are willing to go ahead and lock future manned missions into a particular site chosen that long in advance, before the mission hardware is even designed.
7) Spend years building the refinery-craft, hope for no cutbacks or cancellations.
8) Launch the refinery craft, hope for no accidents.
9) Wait through cruise phase (hope for no accidents) and landing phase (again, hope)
10) Hope that the new system actually works as desired for many years on end (which means keeping breakage-prone things like compressors running for long periods of time).
11) Hope that a manned Mars mission actually gets funding -
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
People have summited without oxygen. It doesn't have much, but it has enough to get to the top, and it has enough to get just below the summit without carrying oxygen.
Ask them why they call it the "Death Zone".
Difference between there and space is it takes a little longer to die if you try to exist without supplemental O2 mix. Some distinction.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sounds like Ed Regis wants more welfare instead of a future out in the stars.
We don't even have the practical technology to make our own deserts places people can live,
Well... Las Vegas
Dubai
No sig today...
Well, it depends on what country's Tax payer money you are talking, but for US the NASA spending is less than 3% of the military spending.
Thus shaving of even 1% of the military spending would help more than 25% from NASA spending and and there should be something to shave in the Military budget as US spends about 1/3 of the world total military spending.
So if you want to save those lives, you may want to start looking somewhere else.
As for the vanity achievement.. well, you might want to read what all benefits came from the Apollo program.
And it's still a very, very hazardous trip. However, in the name of tourism, it's been pedestrian-ized to the point that even a average mountain climber can reach the summit, if the weather is good.
Of course, that doesn't mean people don't die, your chances of dying on Everest still remain quite high (usually on the descent). But that doesn't seem to stop anyone from going.
And hanging around at the summit is a good approximation of Mars -- there's almost no O2, it's incredibly cold, and without some kind of life-support, you're likely to die quickly.
But the point is: people do it. lots and lots of people do it, dangers be damned. Mars is no different.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
is a trip to Mars practical? nope. is it exciting? yep. What the hell is wrong with dreams? what's wrong with thinking through the problem even if we can't actually make the trip yet? how the hell do you identify the challenges and requirements without getting lots of smart, enthusiastic people involved?
I get so sick of this "we can't do it so don't even think about it attitude". With the demise of manned flight at NASA, space geeks are on their own to find inspiration these days. So piss off Debbie Downer...
She is married. With three kids. Give up.
Tidal locked to the Earth, not the Sun. The "dark side" is not actually always dark.
By that logic, we can send a solar powered probe to Pluto.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
And with that note, the whole argument fails. Most people making these remarks are missing all sorts of bets on things...just like this one.
If you can't manage to realize that there's insufficient O2 on Everest such that you have to cart bottles of it WITH you (since we don't have concentrator tech portable enough or power supplies that would last long enough...) then you have absolutely no business talking about this subject whatsoever. NONE.
TFA author's little better in this regard.
A Venusian cloud city isn't as "romantic", as you never get to physically walk on the surface... but it is indeed easier (very easy entry, much better radiation protection, earthlike gravity, more frequent launch windows, much easier EVAs, no landing site restrictions, much more sunlight (and nearly doubled due to reflection from below), etc) as well as being more useful. Latency doesn't matter much when operating Mars probes remotely, but on Venus, when any atmosphere-diving surface explorer probe is going to have a very limited period of time at the surface before it overheats, command latency is critical; also, maintenance needs on your surface probes are probably higher, which also calls for humans. Plus, any good Venus exploring program would have power generation/recharging, cooling, and sample analysis done at altitude in a centralized aerial station rather than hauling down (and back up) a lot of sensitive equipment that you have to protect from the heat - which makes it easier to just declare that central station a manned laboratory. You can explore the whole planet rather than just the area immediately around your landing site. And lastly, we've explored Mars way better than we've explored Venus - there's far bigger outstanding scientific questions about Venus than about Mars.
It'd also be a lot more comfortable to live on Venus. Buoyancy = space. People will have a lot of room to move around in. Or grow plants or whatever else. And could potentially walk outside on the surface of the craft in as little as an oxygen mask and eye protection (the CO and SOx levels are too high for the eyes but might be tolerable to the skin). Some SOx-hardy plants might even be able to grow on the exterior of the craft if properly watered and nourished.
I daresay that Venus also has more potential to be profitable than Mars in the distant future. There's a lot of potential for precipitating out exotic compounds in the high pressure / high temperature environment, the Venera probes found some types of lava flows often associated with rare mineral deposits, and there's good evidence to suggest large carbonatite flows which are often associated with even rarer deposits.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
Yes, don't bother going because it's tough. We might have to try new things, create new ideas, and take new risks. Instead, We should scale back expectations so Someone Else can point out "the new expectations are too hard as well" and We scale them back again, lather, rinse, repeat, until simply staying Alive is "too hard" and We exterminate All Life including Ourselves.
Mr. Regis, please point out on the doll reality touched You.
I'm amazed at how otherwise rational people get bamboozled into the idea of space colonization or asteroid mining, which are endeavors so expensive and perilous and with little practical value as to be impossible.
Take asteroid mining. The costs alone are incredibly prohibited, not to mention the fact that if you did mine gold, for instance, it would be the most expensive gold ever to be sold, because the costs would be so high. There will never be a point at which the rate of return on space-gold exceeds the cost.
But these techno-utopians won't listen to reason and always just dismiss the real-world or technical limitations inherit in a venture like this as Ludditism, when it's just realism.
This Sig does not Exist.
Frankly, I'd be kind of surprised if Ed Regis is able to walk to a grocery store. After all, the elevator could malfunction, it's a really long walk, and he could be hit by a bus, or break his leg, plus the groceries at the store aren't very good, and then he'd have to carry all that heavy stuff back...
The entire editorial sounds like a more erudite version of "it looks hard, so let's not try".
Fanatically anti-fanatical
RTGs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
100-600 watts of electricity. Ship a couple there, along with a few larger solar panels, you've got several kilowatts. Just in case anyone forgets, AND is better than OR.
NASA's pretty good about doing things very efficiently, so I'm sure they'd be happy to have that much power.
John F Kennedy perfectly told the world WHY we should do hard things.
We do them not because they are easy, but because they are hard
We need to dare to dream. We need to do hard things. If not, then what the hell are we fighting for? What are we doing? Every society worth remembering, every great nation in history did things that were impossible. We can't stop doing that. We can't stop dreaming, or we will die. We will deserve to die.
That sounds more than a bit like The Martian.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
No, because we know that the amount of light reaching the solar panels well past Mars is insufficient to power a probe.
We're talking about Mars here, not about Pluto or any other celestial object.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Other than as a PR stunt, people on Mars is pretty stupid. The amount of resources required to maintain humans, could be much better spent on other things. Humans with physical limitations, and restrictions won't be all that more useful if they were not there at all. Send up more robotic rovers. Send up some experiments. Lets push the limits of robotic exploration, particular autonomous.
Not to mention the corpses. Slobs!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Space is just the quasi-emptiness you have to pass through to get somewhere.
Space exploration is NOT about the exploration of space. It's about the exploration of the stuff IN it.
Mars may not be the GREATEST place to go, but it's what is within our reach. Until something better comes along I say go.
Well, except for all the sherpas.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The naysayers would be the ones still standing in the rift valley as the rest of humanity expanded across Africa and the globe. I always think of those Polynesians who found and colonized Hawaii. Someone poked around 1500 miles into the pacific, found islands, went home, and brought their families with them. Same thing for Moon/Mars/and beyond. As a species, we either expand our range, or go extinct.
As someone who is an engineer, and works in this field (I have both a normal day job, and a space side effort), I can tell you humans will not only plant boots on the planet, but some will go to stay. With 2 hectares of space farm you can recycle air/water, and grow food for 100. Most likely the colonies on the Moon and Mars will be sub-surface, the exploration outposts initially, on the surface. 6 missions to LEO, plus a nuclear-cryogenic stage puts the colony's mass on mars in 1 year. The technology exists now, just need the will to do so. Eventually the cost will continue to drop, and the momentum will push out, gov't support or not. Sometime in the next 10-15 years we go there, in less than 80 humans will be permanent and growing, including the first children born off Earth, on the moon, mars, and space habitats.
For the religious, 'Be fruitful and multiply' applies adding 'spread across the universe, bring human life to all corners of space'
2. Mars is dead. Great. So we don't have to worry about indigenous pathogens or conserving the Martian ecosystem.
3. Mars is cold. Great. Technically, heating is easier than cooling. Also, heat engines may be more efficient than on Earth due to the lower heat sink temperature.
4. It is not known whether living things ever evolved on Mars. Great. We can investigate this question while we're there.
5. No breathable air. Oh well. We know how to build airtight containers.
6. No oxygen. Well, not entirely. There's plenty of oxygen in the soil, just no O2 in the atmosphere.
7. No liquid water. But there's frozen water. And see 5.
8. No sources of food. Well, none besides the ones we bring/build.
9. No conditions favorable to producing any - unless we create them.
Both are necessary in balance or NOTHING gets done
That's about the dumbest thing I've heard this year. The year of Trump.
And then you follow it up with your own short sighted, preconceived notions of what 'both' sides are.
You could make a movie: Dumb, dumber and dumbest.
We've known for a long time that going to mars would be difficult, and living there even more so. This is not news.
Also, and I feel silly that this is even worth saying, but just because something is difficult does not mean it's not worth doing. Personally, I'd rather stay in bed all day, yet I chose to go to work.
I don't think anyone that's serious about going to Mars is assuming that resource extraction and management is a cakewalk. Many science fiction authors that tend toward Campbellian work like Kim Stanley Robinson have contemplated what a permanent Mars mission would look like, and before a human ever climbs into a rocket the nation-state has sent dozens of missions to begin the resource extraction process, mostly in the case of the science fiction authors, atmospheric extraction of vital elements, but the point still stands that a lot of mechanized work will happen autonomously to prepare the way for permanent human habitation.
Personally I think we should build an outpost on the Moon. It's a lot closer to Earth and it would actually be possible to build both lunar-escape vehicles and even to maintain a standby rocket ready to take a rescue mission to the Moon if an outpost had a horrible accident and still get there while people could be saved. The lack of atmosphere isn't the same as Mars, but the pressure on Mars is so low that it's probably good experience for long-term exposure of gaskets and seals to fine particulates without having significant air to help clean. It also has a practical side of being able to be used for Earth observations and even possibly as a telescope mount for space telescopes where humans could service them more easily than an orbital telescope.
There are lots of very difficult problems to solve, but we're pretty good at solving problems.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Yeah I'd much rather go to Saturn. All this let's go to mars bs. What a bunch of pussies.
Look, dreams are all fine and whatever but life happens when we're awake. We need to face reality, and reality is that there's nowhere to go and we're not going to have the technology to go anywhere, ever. We've reached and passed the energy peak: from now on we'll have to de-escalate on the way to an ecotechnic society, which ultimately will consist of many small self-sufficient communities with very little in the way of technology not needed for agriculture. Forget the internet. In fact, forget about computers unless you count the abacus among them. Forget spaceflight and even regular flight. Want to visit another community? Take a horse and prepare to spend some days alone, there will be way less people, with the whole of mankind numbering maybe a hundred millions on the whole world. It will be a quiet world. The Earth abides.
A better strategy would be first to send probes to at least partially terraform mars to make it more viable for human life. When the conditions are bearable enough for human life then send the first humans there.
There's almost no technical point to colonizing the Moon. As far as we know, there's no mineral wealth to be mined from the Moon. (He3 could be harvested if some form of fusion power could be commercially utilized.) The ONLY advantage to colonizing the Moon is that access to the Moon can be accommodated by primitive chemical rockets with a 3 day transit time. Any Moonbase that requires support from Earth is basically doomed.
Any real attempt at putting Man on Mars requires developing a new form of space propulsion. There are cutting edge nuclear pulse rockets technology which could reduce a 2+ year transit time to 5 months. We know that humans can survive over a year in space with no permanent deleterious effects. This would make a Mars expedition (& eventual colonization) feasible.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Mars, much further away than the Moon, much greater gravity well, no magnetic shield that could protect a terraformed atmosphere (its core is dead). So why are we hearing about its potential colonisation so much? Because the dream is a product. It can stay indefinitely in "development" while earning its promoters real world goodie tokens. They get publicity pandering to myths we all grew up with as kids while being able to postpone the dream delivery a couple of decades so as not to be called on it. Maybe humans will one day create sustainable habitats within the solar system and beyond. I certainly hope so. But not before we deal with a severe resource, energy, pollution and over-population problem here on what is by far the most interesting "rock" in the universe that we know of.
I hate that the unadventurous tries to nanny state the decisions of people willing to give it all to be the first person there, to live a miserable and short life, to be a pioneer.
Fuck them all.
140 watts for 4 hours a day? That data, along with a little math and a sense of reality should tell you how wildly impractical solar is. It isn't just the enormous quantity of solar panels you need to generate a significant amount of power, but the batteries required to store the energy for the other 20 hours a day. Sadly, many people here on earth have similar fantasies about solar powering our own world. However, no amount of faith will bend reality.
On the other hand, the Liquid fluoride thorium reactor provides an extremely dense source of energy, which could enable significant activity on mars. The LFTR concept was originally developed for powering an aircraft, which should give you an idea of how compact it can be. It was never quite practical, because of shielding requirements, but that is not a problem on mars.
The truth is, we aren't going anywhere until people can learn to accept and embrace nuclear power. After that, we will have a boundless supply of energy, that will enable all manner of progress. It will also do so with the smallest environmental footprint of any existing option by far, and with the least loss of human life, even considering solar and wind.
we need to look at encasing venus in an envelope of water, to start cooling it down enough to terraform.
Heh... GP poster's clueless.
At 29,029 feet above sea level, the summit is at the altitude that jetliners cruise at. People summiting it without supplimental O2 are insane and I question their having done it to be blunt. I think it's a "full of shit" item- and they couldn't have actually done it even if it's claimed to have been done.
Hypoxia will cut in well before you summit.
Here's a decent chart of effective O2 availability at quite a few known altitudes.
At the summit of Everest, you have only 6.9% versus 20.9% at sea level.
If you had a cabin rupture of a jetliner at the average altitude of FL300 (30000 ft...) you will have a time to unconsciousness of 1-3 minutes depending on your overall fitness. You will die shortly afterwards. There's a reason they have oxygen masks that pop out on jetliners in a cabin breach condition- that gets auto-triggered at depressure. This isn't because you suddenly lost O2 pressure- this is one of those things you honestly and really can't "build up to" like is implied there. There is just insufficient O2 in the air to function. There's a reason they call it the "Death Zone" on the mountain.
Here's a few parting links:
A Chart of the SpO2 percentages at relative Altitude
A pretty detailed aviator discussion of O2 at altitudes...
Quite simply put...I can't see how **ANYONE** could actually do as claimed by the GP poster there. It's bullshit.
There's a deal killer right there. Imagine the lag time to get a response from Siri. All of human knowledge would be lost without low latency access to the internet.
Or a nuclear submarine reactor. If you are talking about shoving reactors on mars and don't care about the launch expense.
The only thing they're good at is whining, bitching, moaning, and complaining.
Sounds more like the Republican party platform than leftists/realists.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
We choose not to go to Mars. We choose not to go to Mars in this life and do the other things, because they are hard.
Yes, I know. I said that. If you stand on the moon such that the sun is directly over your head, it won't be directly over your head again for 29 earth days. That spot will be in sunlight slow-roasted for 14-ish days (depending on the horizon) and then deep frozen for another 14-ish days. Nasty.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Oh, not another "but humans in space are a waste, send robots!"
Robots are cool, and they are useful. But if we sent humans to Mars instead of rovers, they would have done all the exploration and experiments in a matter of days, not months and years.
You guys are really depressing. Why bother to explore, to travel, to even get out of your house? You can visit almost any street of any big cities in the world with Google Street view, you can do a video conference for free with anyone on earth, you can work from home... So why waste fuel by transporting humans?
The real waste is not the money spent on the ISS, it's the trillions of $ spent on the defense budget. Address that problem and you'll have enough money to send robots AND humans in space every day of the year.
Try it! Library of Babel
Dante's hell was cold, with Satan frozen in the very center, so Mars may be more comparable to the medieval understanding.
The magnetic field is needed to shield the ionizing radiation, but little else. You can terraform it, but it'd be needing hardier lifeforms more resilient to radiation exposure to do it.
In space, no one can hear you BSOD..
[Sorry, that's presumptuous..]
In space, no one can hear you core dump. Oh, that just doesn't sound quite right.
Safely first and go from there?
Also lets face it, we'll need much better tech if we want to go to Mars in a reasonable amount of time and with sustainability.
The way it is right now, it's like sending a can of 'Spam' to Mars to see if it's going to keep. Nothing logical about it...
Like JFK said... "We choose to go to [Mars] not because it is easy, but because it is hard."
Does anybody else feel Fermi's Paradox hovering over humanity like the Sword of Damocles?
It's not "fantasy" to have solar power powering much of our world. There's a huge amount of open space that can be used for solar panels; building rooftops come to mind, as do parking lots. There's quite a few people who power their homes with solar power exclusively, and make so much extra they can sell it back to the utility. Of course, storage (for nighttime or rainy days) is a problem, but if our utilities ran well and compensated solar users properly, this wouldn't be a problem, as the solar users could supplement generation capacity during the daytime when there's a peak load anyway (due to A/C usage and other daytime usage), in exchange for using utility power at night during non-peak times. In my opinion, the ideal combination is solar + nuclear: solar for daytime peak loads, and nuclear for baseline day and night. In some areas, this can be supplemented with wind power, and in other areas, hydro can provide baseline power. Between these four types (plus maybe tidal), it should be entirely possible to eliminate fossil fuel usage for electric power generation.
Now, for powering a colony on Mars, things are rather different, to say the least. It sounds like there's about 1/2 to 1/3 as much power available, which is a big problem combined with the high launch costs (how much it costs to get stuff transported to Mars, which makes it infeasible to simply bring more solar panels to make up for it). And of course the storage problem is a big one; with only 4 hours of usable sunlight (according to posts above), that means you need a lot of storage capacity, and batteries are heavy and costly to transport from Earth.
Finally, I agree with the naysayer in TFA: this whole idea is silly. We should be building a Moon base first. It's much closer, easy to resupply, easy to get people back to Earth from, etc. It's a much more sensible first step if you're going to try to establish a human presence on another celestial body.
... else what's a heaven for? --Robert Browning
But you better keep my water right here. And if, for some reason, you bring water with you, you better bring it back. We needs it here.
Send supplies ahead of the crew in several stages. Continue sending supplies after the crew has landed, giving them both the tools they need to build a colony as well as backup supplies should their plans fail.
Exactly 100% correct. The space nutters always just say "well we will dig up the soil to get the ice to make water". With what? "Oh shovels and stuff". Powered by what? "Oh nuclear energy or solar". Where is that material coming from? "Well we will make it or ship it"
I say: go ahead and try doing that in your backyard first. You won't even make a thimbleful of water. Then go try it in the Arctic tundra. Let us know how it does.
Nuclear submarine reactors require seawater for cooling.
Mars requires bigger solar panels than Earth, and a Pluto mission just requires bigger panels than a Mars mission. I'm applying the same techno hand-waving that Mars Nuts apply to mining Mars.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What altitude range has survivable conditions? I was under the impression that at any reasonable pressure it would be too hot, but I'm now realizing I've never actually looked into it. Wouldn't the atmosphere chew up equipment quickly, even at altitude? Or can the right materials fix that?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So you do confirm that tiny solar panels on a tiny rover can generate about 140 watts for up to four hours per Martian day. That gives us the data (known solar panel type, surface area, power generated) to know how many and how big the solar panels would need to be for a Mars base.
The Mars Exploration Rovers were powered by 1.3 m^2 of solar cells.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...
If you want more power, make larger solar arrays.
Solar power works on Mars. That really should not be controversial; we've been doing it since Pathfinder. If you want an alternative power source, use a nuclear reactor.
Or use both; your choice.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Screw Ed Regis. If we have that attitude, we'll never leave the fucking house. So what if it'll be difficult to endure? That's the fantastic part of it. The chance to forge out into the dark void, bringing the Emperor's light across the stars... Who would pass up that opportunity?
Seriously I can imagine a future where all the poor people live on mars and can only dream about one day being rich enough to live on earth.
After all, they've spent their entire lives being told that anything is possible if they just wish hard enough. That's all it takes. WE CAN DO THIS!
Does he realize that in our future the sun will expand and grow and possibly scorch earth? FOR that alone we should get at it making perhaps not a colony at first but at lest a base where we can then epxand outward more perhaps to a few candidates around jupiter that are wrmed by its tidal forces ?
the idea that just cause its tough and hard is not enough....people live in canada's north just fine...have done so for a long long time.....
people live in deserts for a long long time also....
we may not have evolved to start out there but our greatness is adaptation. DO no underestimate human need to explore and adapt to the new.
Why not send containers with every spore/fungi/seed/bacteria/virus/extremeophile we can to Mars and see what will survive? I'm sure life would find a way.
Then send humans to cultivate what took hold.
Try it! Library of Babel
... and I mentioned it on one of the gawker blogs and I pretty much got denounced as an anti-science troll. It's an unpopular opinion, but sending squishy meat-bags to mars is a waste of time, money and other resources that can be directed to other, more pressing priorities on this planet, or to projects that use robotic probes for exploration.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
take china russia and the usa 50% of there army and every 5 feet put a soldier for 30 years.....
THATS THE ONLY SOLUTION so that no one can start a fight....
it wont ever happen til we do the real fix, get rid of the right wing govts all round the world that are bent on arming and fighting for there profit.
and yes i consider china a right wing commie govt, as i do putin and the usa....as well as britan
Except who? Sherpas use oxygen too.
Gotta love the passive voice. Always a favorite of PR firms and politicians.
Also, scientists.
What active-voice alternative do you recommend for "momentum is conserved"? Because the best one I can think of is: "The Flying Spaghetti Monster conserves momentum".
The passive voice could be left out of this.
And what would power it? Don't say "solar power", because the Sun appears much smaller when viewed from Mars, and thus receives much less energy.
I'll ignore the baiting remark about solar power because realistically solar power is only used now because of its extremely low maintenance requirement (or cost in comparison to an RTG) relative to other power sources.
Let's consider wind power for a minute. You can try to argue that the thinner atmosphere means that the wind doesn't convey as much energy, but that works both ways because it also means that it imparts less friction on the blades. You can then say that most of the friction comes from the internal components of the generator, but adding power to the system is a function of the surface area of the blades and with less than half of the gravity we have here on Earth large scale construction would be trivial. As for dust gumming up the bearings, that's a design constraint, I can think of a couple of impractical ways of preventing this so I'm positive that a smarter guy and NASA can come up with a more functional one.
Personally I think that sending people to Mars is a stupid idea. But if enough Astronauts haven't grown up yet then who am I to stop them? What I want to see is a radio telescope, or some other kind of permanent outpost on Mars before I go.
3% of total spending
addign 1% = 33% increase
this is one issue the usa needs fix
They could provide them with anxiolytics and other drugs to prevent crew stress and conflict.
VR could be used to give a feeling of infinite personal space and perfect privacy.
The cost should dramatically drop once Musk gets his rockets fully reusable, and once we start making use of space materials.
In his cave dwelling, free of SUV fears. We, the pioneers of society, we think different.
We'll just get Magical elves to build nuclear reactors needed for energy, huge domes for habitation and food growing, build chemical plants to extract needed minerals; including oxygen; from the subsurface, the pipelines from the poles to carry water from the poles; even if there is usable water there; and magically transport colonists there. The logistics are huge.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I agree. Think seeding and not colonization. Do not think solely of humans surviving but Terran genetic material, possibly engineered to survive extremes. Fire thousands of probes, or millions, at "Goldielocks" planets light years away and seed the galaxy with Terran life. For me that is more likely to work, unless we invent a warp drive.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
8-9 months nightmare? You've got to be kidding. Many explorers throughout history have endured worse. Let's talk scurvy and rickets, no fresh water, bugs and rats, freezing cold and poor clothing. Compared to what many explorers have endured a trip to Mars in an amazingly well planned and funded mission would be a luxury cruise. I imagine there were many people like Ed at the time of the likes of Columbus who though...ooh, that trip is so hard, we shouldn't go. No one can predict all of the outcomes that trips to Mars will bring, but we can say by looking at the past that exploration has yielded amazing outcomes.
What I want to see is a radio telescope
A telescope of any sort on the far side of the Moon would be a fantastic idea.
But if enough Astronauts haven't grown up yet then who am I to stop them?
I'll try and stop them from using my money.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Don't go until our AI tech is advanced enough to build a self-sustaining infrastructure. Otherwise, it's a big waste of time and money--and a big risk to human life.
Floating around at nauseating angles is a reason against going to Mars?
He was doing OK with the argument that it was dangerous, difficult, and expensive - but floating around at nauseating angles just wrecks his arguments and puts him in the class of ready made world, no older than 5000 years people.
In any event, going to Mars (or establishing a colony of people on a one-way trip to Mars) isn't justifiable practically or economically. It is justifiable as an adventure, or for other non-economic reasons. I have faith that going to Mars will lead to great things - but it's the nature of faith that it can't be justified rationally.
The magnetic field is needed to shield the ionizing radiation, but little else. You can terraform it, but it'd be needing hardier lifeforms more resilient to radiation exposure to do it.
Isn't it needed to keep the solar wind from blowing the atmosphere into space?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
They're actually genetically changed to use less oxygen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"In May 1999 he spent a record 21 hours on the summit without supplementary oxygen, even sleeping there."
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Relevant SMBC
" You were out on the ocean in a little wooden ship, and no one to save you. "
Yes, in an environment that can sustain life, heading to a place that might have something you want. Don't get me wrong, I think safety culture is stupid but the notion that it's in any way valid to compare it to early ocean voyages is breathtakingly naive.
Lets take baby steps. Lets us colonize the moon first. It is much nearer.
Or Reinhold Messner. They said it couldn't be done without oxygen tanks.
I agree that just because you and me don't like crowded conditions, stale air, and risk; does not mean others aren't willing to suffer for glory, achievement, and the challenge.
After all, others can't figure out why us nerds are so happy in mom's basement. Mom's basement could be transported to Mars and we'd never know the difference. (Although, I hear they don't have pizza delivery there.)
Table-ized A.I.
Good Point. But there is more.
We need to loft a multi-megawatt reactor to power those engines, provide ample power for life support, and generate a magnetic shield for protection from various forms of radiation.
It would need it to be big enough to support a centrifugal section for living and working quarters. And that would have to be big enough to provide space for medical facilities, a galley, hydroponics, recycling, etc.
In short, we'd need to build an actual, for real Ship, not just some tin can that is shot into orbit on a chemical rocket.
No one is talking Star Trek Warp engines....Ion would do just fine. Maybe those EM Drives if they turn out to be something other than another Cold Fusion. But trying to get to Mars with the current or even the next generation of space craft is like setting out to cross the North Atlantic in a dingy.
Seems to me the technology is available in bits and pieces here in there. Political will, focus, determination and of course money are all that's needed. We went from shooting small rockets into orbit to landing on the moon in less than a decade using slide rules and pencils. No reason we can't actually build something like this.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Wahey it's Space Nutter AC retard. Don't you usually capitalize "Space Nutter"? I hope you're not letting your standards slip. Unfortunately any valid point you might have is lost due to the maniacal grievance you have against any human activity in space. Remember: if everyone were like you, we'd still be in Africa banging rocks together. Cheers !!!
The moon is a harsh mistress.
It doesn't do any good to establish a colony that is just capable of self-sustaining. It needs to be capable of self growth in order to establish a colony of its own otherwise the primary population is wiped out with the "redundant" population stuck at the bottom of a gravity well in a far more hostile environment.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Here's a Discovery article that proposes Venus as a better option:
http://blogs.discovermagazine....
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Talk to Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler... Otherwise shut up and move along.
These are the first two guys to have done it. Messner has done it multiple times.
You're a denier just like the loony moon-landing deniers.
i don't wanna go : (
The Earth is going to shit, with it civilization at some point, so there must be something else.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
There's not a snowball's chance in hell of a long-endurance spacecraft using the existing state-of-the-art in life-support and logistical technology to endure for 9 months in space. To build such a thing is still decades off, and this is just one of the more trivial details of things that people fail to understand. No doubt its FEASIBLE, but that degree of engineering doesn't happen without a LOT of buildup. Look at the plan diagrams that have been published, they include several generations of technology in this area before we're really ready.
Beyond that no existing technology will land men on Mars with the ability to take off again. A lunar-lander style 'direct descent' would require a huge amount of fuel because the ascent engine would be pretty large, on top of the lander itself, and thus the descent engine would be prohibitively large. This means we have to design some sort of aerobreaking/parachute/glider/rocket hybrid approach. Those which have been used in the past are only good for a up to a couple 1000 kg, not enough for a manned landing by a long shot. Again, its FEASIBLE to do this, but we are at least a decade away from such a thing, maybe more.
So, maybe we mostly agree at some level, but I think your 10 years, even for an insanely useless project, is highly optimistic.
As for your ideas on reasons to go or not go, I heartily concur. Mars is a useless waste of a place to go except perhaps as a science destination, and in that case you can send 100 unmanned rovers per human. While a rover is far less than a human 100 sophisticated rovers with advanced manipulators, semi-autonomy, and sample return capability are unlikely to be outperformed by one miserable man who can only move a few km from his landing point and can't stay more than a couple weeks.
If you want to 'colonize Mars' it would make FAR more sense to colonize Antarctica, or the deep ocean, both of which are infinitely more hospitable and closer.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If Mars is a stepping stone, then start with the nearest one, the Lunar surface is a good proxy for most of the rest of the Universe.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The whole point of building such a colony from the survival point of view it to get it to the point that it can survive without supply drops, it is also the only way that a long term sustainable colony could work given the costs of transport and the long term lack of interest from earth. Despite this saying "If you fail then you wont be useful" is not, by itself, a reason not to try. I do agree that we need better technology base before starting, better hydroponics, better chemical synthesis improved manufacture, e.t.c. but that does not mean that we should not work on the real bottlenecks, while ignoring the silly stuff.
Since we want it to work without supply drops we need the ability to locally manufacture it's own supplies. In order of difficultly and importance (as far as I can tell) life essentials (to prevent death in in the event of temporary problems) bulk supply minimisation (the big simple things like construction materials plastic simple textiles etc, to allow expansion for much reduced cost) and finally cut-off resistance (things to bring technology to a self sustaining level, such as simple local medicine advanced part manufacture "basic" chip fab, especially new solar panels). We can do the first in terms of science, but not engineering, we have only really got early stage work for most of the second and the third will be "interesting" but this is where we really need work, not the rockets, and none of these things are insurmountable only hard.
52,5km is Denver air pressures with ~37C/100F air temperatures, which seems a nice balance. Plus, it's a "dry heat" ;)
The SOx isn't actually as concentrated as most people picture, it's a diffuse mist... more like a bad smog. Yes, it's corrosive to some materials, but not to everything. Most plastics, for example, are indifferent to it. So are many metals (at practical Venusian concentrations, most metals are probably fine, even steels). And on the upside, you don't have the dust problems as found on Mars, have far less radiation exposure, and far more constant temperatures.
There are of course a couple disadvantages to being at altitude while exploring the surface. One of the most notable is that the winds are far faster at those altitudes than at the surface, so you'd have to play "catchup" with your surface-exploring probes. One way to do that is to have the probes float up even higher than the base on return from a surface trip, into even faster winds. There are also some concerns about turbulence and lightning, although we think these are confined to lower altitudes. Unfortunately, we've explored Venus so little that it's hard to make definitive statements. :P
Another common misconception is that there's "no water" on Venus. Actually, Venus's atmosphere has almost as much water vapor as Earth's atmosphere - it's just mixed in with a *lot* of other stuff, mainly CO2, which is why the percentage is so low. The percentage is however notably higher at "typical floating colony" altitudes than at near the surface. In addition to carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur in the atmosphere, at those levels Venus's atmosphere also contains a number of other useful chemicals - lots of nitrogen (as N2); moderately low amounts of argon, low amounts of helium and neon; very low amounts of chlorine (as HCl) and phosphorus (as H3PO4 - it's more commonly found lower); and trace amounts of hydrofluoric acid and what appears to be volcanic ash/dust (the Venera probes identified small amounts of probable iron and silica on detectors during descent). Thankfully there are notably different properties between the atmospheric constituents - for example, a chilling stage would first draw out a mixture of acids (containing the water and dusts), then the bulk CO2 would freeze out, leaving the N2 and noble gases. Further steps would depend on what the goal was. So if one wants to look at the long term view, there's a lot of potential to produce a wide range of plastics and plant macronutrients just from the atmosphere - although metals and many of the lesser plant nutrients would probably have to come from the surface (such as the tailings from the rocks being studied (nearer term) or mined (longer term)) unless one is highly effective at capturing ash/dust.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
...there is some sad sack ready to throw cold water on it. Where's the harm in dreaming?
Ok, skippy. You can probably hardly climb a set of steps without getting winded.
Not for nine months. Not even close. You were going land to land and would spend about a month at sea in any one stretch. Also the air around you is breathable, the water below you has food in it. So not comparable i wounder about you ppl that compare these things. You clearly have *no* idea about the orders of magnitude of difference between the 2 endeavours.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Or you could take the helicopter.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
The direct comparison to climbing mountains on earth is super funny.
Keeping people sane under transport and habitat conditions for the rest of their lives with our current (and even 20 years in the future) understanding of our own minds is super funny.
Assuming that going to and living on Mars is anything like visiting the moon is super funny.
Frankly, I hope everyone that thinks this will work will go - as their corpses decay or freeze, the rest of us can focus on the problems on earth.
Oh, man! Look at those cavemen go.
We'll name a street in Luna City after them and keep heading out.
Oh great. Now we will have a Martin Luther Khan Street too.
.... is simply not made of the right stuff.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Trip To Mars.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
> At the summit of Everest, you have only 6.9% versus 20.9% at sea level.
So there is quite a bit of oxygen, AS IT WAS STATED. When we're comparing it to the Moon and Mars, 6.9% is a huge amount.
Me write in the Slashdot that today we an witnessing an outburst of enthusiasm over the literally outlandish notion that in the relatively near future Slashdot editors will actually be proofreading, editing and correcting submissions prior to vomiting them onto the site.
i really like the part where he ignores that we've had people in such cramped conditions before.
aboard ship in the military personal space the size of an SUV would be considered a luxury.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
There's a great West Wing episode which discusses why we should, but somehow I think that wouldn't gain me much here. Discussions of the nature of man, and the establishment of wonder being particularly squishy in hard science terms.
Instead I'd point out that all safety critical systems are engineered around the notion of redundancy. Shit happens, and when it does, things break down. When that unexpected thing happens to our Earth-bound ecology, what, exactly, is our safety strategy? Hide in a hole? For how long? What if it's biological? What happens if someone accidently creates Card's molecular disruption device. We can't reasonably colonize another star system (yet) but we aren't *that* far from being able to establish some very worthwhile planetary redundancy. It's worth it because we are stuck on this rock that I think we should rename 'The Single Point of Failure'.
Make an objective scientific argument in favor of the survival of the human animal as a species.
For bonus points, make sure that you do not co-incidentally argue for the preservation of all species on the planet.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
I think it's ironic that this piece of dribble is published by the same newspaper that called Robert Goddard a crackpot who didn't understand High School Physics because everyone knows I rocket can't fly in a vacuum-- since there's nothing for the thrust to push against.
Wow, a veritable river of "something could be wrong" is modded "Informative."
Yes, it will be hard. Yes, it will take a long time. Yes, there will be setbacks. So what?
I don't understand why people get there panties in a bunch because someone else is willing to take risks to try to do something they are passionate about.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
You may find it convenient to get part of your power from solar panels, but it does entail a big capital investment. The batteries or grid-connected power for night time power would be another big capital investment. Currently many of the power companies are using gas-fired generators to minimize that investment (and to enable them to ramp up quickly when solar or wind power suddenly drops). You suggest backing up the solar with nuclear, and that can work. However, the current generation of nuclear power requires an even bigger investment in capital. Few owners want to let any significant amount of its capacity go unused. I think the ideal approach is to (1) invest today in enough research that the next generation of nuclear power (e.g., LFTR) will be much less expensive, (2) also invest in battery technology for grid-connected storage, (3) put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, (4) let the price of electricity float during the day, and (5) let the market decide what combination of solar panels, extra nuclear capacity, and grid-connected storage makes the most sense.
The real fantasy is that the 600M people in India without electricity could rely on solar power. They do not have the land or the money to invest that way.
It's certainly a clever idea. What about power? Is solar power any better at that altitude than on Mars? Likely anything involving heavy lifting to another planet would be "post-fusion" anyhow, but it seems unique in that you could stay "dayside" forever on Venus, if that was desirable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
7.5) Make enough Pu 238 to power the RTG.
1815
Do you know how hard it will be to build a railroad all they way across the continent? It'll be dangerous. People will die. Boilers are dangerous, the passangers will be taking their lives in there hands. No one will ever ride the thing. Trains will never be safe, it's pure folly.
1915
Do you know how hard it will be to make a heavier than air vehicle fly? And it will be small and cramped. And it will smell bad and break down and fall out of the sky. People will die. Airplanes will never be safe, it's pure folly.
2015
Do you know how hard it will be to transport equipment to Mars? To make a reliable life support system with sufficient backups to last long enough for the 2 year round trip? To make sustainable habitats? To develop in-situ resource utilization systems? People will die. Etc...
Why yes, we do know how hard it will be. But it's not impossible. And that's what makes it interesting. Luddites need not apply.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Looks like somewhere around 53-56km altitude would be a decent pressure/temp range, according to wikipedia. That's right near where 'sulfuric acid clouds' changes to 'sulfuric acid haze', though, so equipment would have to be able to survive that.
Don't know why no one talks about something like this:
o an inflatable small greenhouse
o probably some self repairing sheet which can heal if small enough mini Meteors damage it
o obviously a kind of web cam
o closed environment with enough earth and water to let a few bean plants and / or potatoes grow (you probably have seen big glass bottles with a small "garden" inside" http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-a-...
o if the balance is right, you can close the bottle air tight (my mother used to have such bottles)
o probably we could abuse the "airbags" current mars missions use and save on "extra" equipment/costs
o instead of "earth" a fleeze might work for certain plants to grow on
o by sucking in CO2 (first initial filling might come from a small gas bottle) slowly more and more plant mass is created and the rotting plants provide dirt
o I guess with some luck we can have a self running greenhoouse close to the equator (where seasons are pretty constant)
o insulation over night might be tricky, probably plants that can stand a bit of freezing might be better
o ofc, only plants that can spread without need of
bees would work in the beginning
o settlers could bring bees that don't build hives for the flowers
If the results are "good" we could shoot up things so big that they inflate to 10x10 or bigger greenhouses.
Probably surplus O2 can already be captured.
The basic concept can ofc be tested on earth, too.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Are we anywhere near close to that for astronauts?
You have a couple hundred thousand people ready to go to mars and die.
Settling it is feasible.
I think the moon should come first. That will dramatically lower the cost of building and launching the mars ship.
If we could be on mars in 10 years- we SHOULD be.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They are impressive, but they are not magical dwarves or genetically engineered.
If you actually talk with or read about people that go to Everest, sherpas do take oxygen with them.
Also, Superman is not real.
"And once there, water and soil could be extracted"
Don't confuse what's on the surface of Mars with soil. Soil has a huge organic content that helps it hold on to water and that acts as a pH buffer, amongst other things. The stuff on Mars is just dirt, and toxic dirt at that, contaminated with perchlorates and other salts. Once that stuff is washed out, you are still stuck with dirt. Then again, I suppose you'll have a lot of human poo to mix in, so there's your organic content.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Then why are the people who constantly come to me with half-baked requests that *might* work if they are lucky because the attempt is the reward and the possible success is valued above all right-wingers? (Oh, and when it blows up as expected and procedures I've recommended and have been told were put in place aren't followed, it's always my fault, to the point I'm suspecting gaslighting. Heinlein's razor and all.)
I think you're mistaking the politician vs. engineer mindsets for political viewpoints.
A quick google reveals the author to be a philosopher with no apparent training in aerospace, planetary science, astronomy, or anything else that would qualify him to have an informed opinion. Why should I care what he thinks about the technical challenges involved in going to Mars? And why the hell would the NY Times publish his opinion on this?
Actually, they are (self) genetically engineered.
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
Some sherpas do take oxygen. Some don't.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I always find this puzzling. Then why when it comes to the business world I see all these characteristics from right-wingers?
That's not to say working with left-wingers from California who think I can program a HAL-9000 with a 4-hour estimate isn't a pain in the ass either.
The living conditions described in several posts are disturbingly similar to those on the ISS.
Sending heavier equipment in advance would solve some problems upon arrival, such as building habitat, industrial processes, etc. Even sending them well in advance so a crew has some hope that their tools and machines will be available to them, which makes the voyage somewhat more tolerable.
Solar power on Mars is not as useful as on Earth, but not without some application. So nuclear power is probably the answer, and we will have to decide if we want to do that.
Obviously food and water are critical, and if the plans to grow and extract these on Mars fails, then the crew returns unexpectedly soon. If that's not possible, then we don't send people we want back, or who want to come back if it doesn't work out.
All of this is basic planning. It's not the planning, it's the execution. And budget. I vote we try the Moon first, on a small scale. Useful experience.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So we can drop bombs on the people there who are opposed to us.
Seriously, you want to run before you learn to walk?
What we need are near Earth space stations - closed ecologies that are sustainable. Once we've gotten those down, we can push one or two off to Mars at our leisure, send one down as a living environment and keep the other up for emergencies.
I might point out that we can't even get an artificial closed ecology capable of supporting humans on Earth working yet. Boisphere I and II were informative, but not successful.
We've got some time. No hurry. Mars isn't going anywhere for a while yet. Let's start with achievable, useful goals, like creating a satellite based internet service with manned maintenance and repair stations, or a manned orbiting power stations, or some asteroid capture and mining facilities. Something that pays for itself first.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
We should get first humans which do not age, are radiation resistant, and handle micro gravity (as well as normal gravity) well.
Let's all go and fuck up another one.
I agree with you 100%; but you have to remember that for large periods of history people leaving sight of land had all sorts of scary perceptions about sea monsters, and falling off the edge of the flat Earth, etc.
Anybody who thinks that "exponentially" means "greatly" isn't competent to discuss technical subjects.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Solar power is way more powerful than at Mars. There's little attenuation overhead (the main cloud deck is below), the solar constant is 4,4x higher than on Mars, and you can get nearly as much power from the underside of your panels as from above due to reflection from the cloud deck. And there are no global storms of electrostatic dust to dirty up your cells.
Indeed, if you used propulsion (propellers) you could track the same spot, although you'd need to maintain a very high velocity (~100m/s) near the equator to do that (less and less the closer you get to the poles, to near zero - although there are weird twin-eyed cyclones that reside there, with peak winds of 35-50m/s). Venus is what's called a "superrotator", in that the atmosphere circles the planet much faster than the planet rotates. If you just drift you spend two Earth days in the sun and two days in the dark.
While the wind speeds are high, that shouldn't be confused with turbulence. Nowhere that's been observed shows any significant turbulence at 52,5km altitude... but again, we have so little data, it's hard to say with confidence that there never is any. Also note that the ideal altitude may vary depending on where on Venus you are. Near the poles there are areas of upwelling and downwelling which can give you warmer or cooler temperatures than normal at a given altitude and pressure.
So, from what we know, there shouldn't be any problems with having a colony floating in Venus's "habitable zone". But we really need to have a robotic exploration mission spend several years drifting or motoring around the planet to make sure of that.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
Didn't they say the "average surface temperature is minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit". That would go a long way towards cooling.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
ISRU is stinking easy if you are just pulling resources from the atmosphere. Anybody suggesting that you start with subsurface martian ice or lunar regolith or asteroids deserves to be ridiculed, but there are no technical barriers to cracking atmospheric CO2 to get oxygen for starters, and then if you bring a small reserve of hydrogen you can make your own water and methane (rocket fuel) besides.
Arguably you applied ISRU to get to work this morning - you used atmospheric oxygen in a chemical reaction to propel your vehicle. Internal combustion engines are also much more complex mechanically than the basic system I described would have to be.
I guess if you've got a gas mask pressures down to below half an atmosphere are fine. 56km is an atmospheric pressure similar to that at the top of Denali. But, since you'll be breathing through a mask anyway, I guess you might as well choose whatever temperature is the most comfortable, so long as the pressure isn't so low that the it starts dehydrating your skin :)
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
C'mon everyone! The trip to the moon was all about the space race vs the Russians AND developing the guidance technology for longer range ballistic missles! You know, Mutually Assured Destruction and all that? The military funded the space race, either in the open or under the covers. Since there's no military reason to go to Mars, is there really any surprise we haven't colonized it yet, tech notwithstanding?
Phobos has been proposed as an early target for a manned mission to Mars. The tele-operation of robotic scouts on Mars by humans on Phobos could be conducted without significant time delay, and planetary protection concerns in early Mars exploration might be addressed by such an approach.
Phobos has also been proposed as an early target for a manned mission to Mars because a landing on Phobos would be considerably less difficult and expensive than a landing on the surface of Mars itself. A lander bound for Mars would need to be capable of atmospheric entry and subsequent return to orbit, without any support facilities (a capacity that has never been attempted in a manned spacecraft), or would require the creation of support facilities in-situ (a "colony or bust" mission); a lander intended for Phobos could be based on equipment designed for lunar and asteroid landings. Additionally, the delta-v to land on Phobos and return is only 80% of that for a trip to and from the surface of the Moon, partly due to Phobos's very weak gravity.
The human exploration of Phobos could serve as a catalyst for the human exploration of Mars and be exciting and scientifically valuable in its own right.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
"I don't want to go there myself and I think Mars is stupid, so noone else should go there either."
We got like 8 billion people on this planet. If a couple dozen want to go to Mars on a one-way ticket one some project that is not a hoax and/or publicity stunt, and a couple of the 0.01% want to fund it (and generate lots of valuable technology and research), then let them go. People take major risks all the time in e.g. extreme sports. I did not read about any outcry the first time someone designed, put on and tested a flying suit and jumped off a cliff. If that didn't work, he would be just as dead as if something happened to him on Mars. Just because you personally don't accept the risk (and neither would I), doesn't mean someone else should not get the opportunity.
I like to think that we should get some people "out there" on perhaps first the moon and later Mars, because it would be an achievement in and of itself, we would learn lots from it and get great progression in various technologies, and it is a way to give humanity a better chance in the face of various potential extinction events. Eventually we'll have to leave the solar system anyways before the sun blows up.
Yes, an extinction event may seem like paranoia and something not very plausible, because humanity has never experienced one. Neither had the dinosaurs. Here is a hint - you never get to experience more than one extinction events, and predicting the next one based on the previous ones, makes very little sense. And the dinosaurs probably did not have the ability to engineer such events, nor had individuals whose personal desire is that everyone in the world should meet their maker.
come on noob
Until you got survey and/or ran out of fresh water...while you are stuck in the doldrums or in the horse latitudes and aren't moving anywhere anytime soon.
Who's naive now?
Erm that should be scurvy.
Sounds pretty much my last job's environment.
When the next flight takes off? Where do I apply?
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Left vs right are political stances. Not emotional or psychological conditions. In the US at least, we're stuck with two parties which means that each party must include many different conflicting viewpoints. But I forget, this is slashdot where everything must be simplified into stereotypes.
Well, if you were one of the sailors on the first circumnavigation of the world (Magellan, 1519-22), the probability that you wouldn't come home alive was about 92%, breathable air or not. That's certainly higher than any conceivable Mars trip today would incur (unless you count in the proposed one-way mission profiles). In fact, I'm pretty sure if you make a serious and educated estimate of how likely it would be to die on such a trip and put that in a historical context, you wouldn't have had that good a chance of surviving an intercontinental sea voyage until the mid or late 18th century or so. By that time however, thousands upon thousands of people routinely made such trips, and contrary to space travellers today, not all of them did it voluntarily, and most of the others were low-paid sailors who were forced by serious economic pressure and would've had no income if they refused to participate.
Lets just give up on the whole thing.
I agree and don't forget, they're only taking about living on Mars indefinitely because it's a one way trip. Who wants there to be some spooky mars base full of skeletons hanging around? Further, if u want resources, collect asteroids.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
Nuclear submarine reactors require seawater for cooling.
It's a submarine, it operates in seawater. Air cooled systems can also work, as well as, water based.
Polar sites with microwave transmission. Combining these concepts with windmills would allow for greater flexibility. Possibly, resonance coupling.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
True but there was something they wanted waiting for those sailors. There is nothing on Mars. *nothing*
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
...we went to the Moon. And never went back?
Mars will be the same. Go once for the glory, never to go again in a lifetime.
You really need to step outside yourself for a moment. "Mars nuts" is like "flight nuts" were a couple of hundred years ago. It is possible to go there, we simply need to put work and research and funding for both into it.
Even if we dump billions into the research and one little detail causes us to fail, we will still have made massive progress and will be that much closer.
It's a win-win whether we actually succeed or not. The only way to lose is to sit on our butts and say "you're nuts, we can't go to mars."
Go to the Asteroid Belt and find nice valuable rocks and volatiles floating around. No need to expend Delta-V to land and take off. Even the big asteroids have minimal gravity. Really though, what we need to concentrate on is finding habitable extra-solar planets and send some probes there. Earth may be a burnt cinder by the time we hear back, but the longer we wait the longer it will be. Inhabit the Solar System and then move out, even if we get there and the planet is a dud we can live in space indefinitely.
Why does the refinery have to land? Or even launched? You are going to Mars for the long haul.
Orbital refining and construction will be the "job" of the future. Metals, resins, composites and ceramics are all capable of being produced in zero-g. Don't forget the transportation requirements. Orbit to planet fall, and back, will probably a Teamster union.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
In the case of the space station, Earth is right outside the window, and accessible in a few hours time in the case of an emergency. That's not going to be true on a trip to Mars. There's no escape. There's also not just the trip there, but the time on the planet and the trip back. Those on the Space Station are in a much, much different psychological bucket than on a trip to Mars.
It really depends on the goal.
If you create a moon colony to run and maintain solar panel plants, you're in good shape, because the resources needed for that work are fairly readily available, and the rest of it can be shipped up with supply drops that you'll need forever anyway. If the goal is to have a self-sustaining colony, the moon is a dead end (both literally and figuratively).
Mars has at least the *potential* to become self-sustaining. Power generation can be done with wind mills. Many more mineral resources can be harvested from Mars. You'll still need supply shipments for a good long while, but at least the majority of the basics (water, air, fuel) can be generated on site. Food is the tricky part, and it may well be possible to grow food on Mars given sufficient shelter from the wind. (People have only just *barely* started seriously investigating the possibilities there.)
Much less mars. Robots remotely operated by humans from the comfort of earth are more than sufficient for off world exploration.
The US will go to Mars when the Chinese or some other country decides to go. Personally, I think it would be a huge leap for our civilization to step foot on another planet. It opens the Universe to us, inspires our children, creates new technologies, new industries, jobs, brings advanced manufacturing to the US, and so much more. It's not just "a cost."
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
No, no, no... It'll be Martian Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Seriously, you missed that pun to go far 'Khan'?
Let's not write shitty articles that summed up as "I think that X is hard, dangerous and impossible therefor let's not try and do that" .
And again, Fuck you Ed! You are embarrassing the human race.
I don't know about you, but my car, despite having had its engine design refined for over a hundred years and benefitting from massive amounts of investment and testing, cannot operate for years nonstop without maintenance.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
We just shouldn't set up permanent residence. Pushing further out in to space is something we as a species need to start taking seriously for practical reasons, instead of romantic ones.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This idea of circumnavigating the globe is purest folly. Such a journey would take many months, maybe even several years with men living in cramped isolation, in the harshest conditions and no recourse to medical aid should an emergency arise. Passage through the southern ocean will be fraught with peril, both from extreme winds, tremendous seas, and a chilling cold no man could survive. If they should find respite on some forsaken spit of land there may be hostile men, beasts, or monsters unknown, and there they may well lack fuel for fire and simple sustaining water. Only the most foolhardy would undertake such an expedition, and for what possible profit except the increasing of useless and esoteric knowledge. I strongly urge any considering such a journey or even providing funding for such an outrage to return to their senses and keep to their warm and safe beds forever.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
I'll try and stop them from using my money.
Because your tax dollars are MUCH better spent dropping bombs on brown people
The one very important thing on Mars that we absolutely can't get on Earth is another place to be in case something happens to this planet we're on.
All our eggs are in one basket right now.
They're radically different. The Moon is in darkness for two weeks, Mars is not. The Moon has wildy variable temperatures, Mars is much more temperate. The Moon has no atmosphere, while Mars does have one - which effects everything from space suit design to lander design, etc... etc...
They are only "not that different" when, as you did, you completely ignore all the actual differences. Details matter.
I very much doubt even a well equipped colony would survive very long on Mars, nor would they want to after a while. Face it, we're limited to life on this planet or something very similar. If you want an insurance policy, the Moon is just as good since it could only be a temporary hideout until the Earth is safe enough to re-colonise.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
JFK chose to go to the moon because of the immense military side benefits to making the effort to do so. It was easier to fund the necessary Cold War technology research if it could be considered peaceful science.
Over a short term, say millennia, the magnetic field is probably unnecessary. If we can put an atmosphere on Mars, we can presumably put another one on in a million years or whenever.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And you'll get there with time. Or maybe not.
Mars is twice the distance from the sun that Earth is. Something called the inverse square law means it has one quarter, not one half, the insolation of Earth.
Both the soil and any water will be full of perchlorates. To understand what that means for crops, take a potted plant and saturate the soil with bleach. Then drink any left over bleach.
The dust on Mars has been ground over billions of years to such a fine consistency that you can't clean or filter out of anything. It is actually gone enough to enter your blood stream through your skin. So you can't avoid the super toxic perchlorates that make up as much as 10% of Martian dirt.
We can't even live off the land on a frozen continent that's what, an 8 hour air trip from civilization? Nor does anyone WANT to live there permanently.
I'm sure a few people THINK they want to 'live on Mars', but almost none of them really do if you ask me. Nobody is going to create a colony there, probably ever, certainly not for centuries.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
KSR himself says that subsequent research has convinced him human settlement of mats is impossible. Namely the perchlorate problem.
The objections to Columbus were not the technicalities, but the fact that he was using an estimate of the size of the Earth that was way too low. If he hadn't lucked out by running into previously unknown land (on the principle that land is never properly known by non-Europeans who just happen to live there), he and his crews would have died at sea.
As far as the analogy goes, I'm pretty sure we won't just stumble on a previously unknown Earthlike planet along the way.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There isn't much in the way of volatiles, but there's other stuff there. Aluminum, vanadium, titanium, iron, silicon, oxygen, sulfur, all things that are useful to a space program. There's even a tiny bit of water.
Launching heavy stuff from Earth, like radiation shielding, is a non starter. But if you could make iron rad shielding and silicon solar panels on the moon, you could save a lot of expense in the long run. If you bring your own hydrogen, you can even make water. Bring your own carbon and nitrogen and you can grow crops, make plastics, and a bunch of other useful stuff. If you ship it as LNG and ammonia, you can carry it in fuel tanks the rockets use.
Colonizing the moon won't work, but that doesn't mean it can't be a useful base like we have on Antarctica.
But he chose to go to the Moon, and not Mars, because Mars was way too hard. Seriously - JFK first proposed sending men to Mars and had to be convinced this was plainly beyond what could be done in a decade.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You'd think that if that MOXIE technology really worked as advertised, they'd use it right here, right now...to fix the planet we're currently filling with CO2. Isn't that the current biggest danger to us as a civilisation?
No cost of delivery. Just get it working out in the shed. Scale it up and start fixing the atmosphere 7 billion people *currently* breathe.
Excuse the cynic here, but I imagine if it worked, we'd be jumping on the tech now. Says to me "unreliable pixie dust machine".
Use fahrenheit and you will loose all creadability
Use 'loose' or 'creadability' and you lose all credibility.
Enigma
You had me until you showed your pettiness
Maybe some people are looking for "nothing"
Historically, colonists/settlers/pioneers have had pretty appalling mortality rates.
Early settlers to the Americas had a very high chance of dying, with many settlements dying out entirely within the first year.
The high probability of death wasn't a secret; the colonists knew they had a high chance of being dead within a few months of arrival.
Yet they came by the boatload. Repeatedly, even after entire colonies collapsed, even after selling themselves to a near lifetime of indentured servitude to pay for the cost of their emigration.
It's a mistake to underestimate the horrors humans continue to undertake to live in a new place - whether it be immigration through deserts and war zones, stifling rides locked in cargo containers in deserts for weeks, refugees drowning on overcrowded, sinking ships, all the while risking criminal prosecution or racial or ethnic persecution... people go through situations with very poor chances of survival right here on Earth, right now.
Culturally, all of humanity is already used to accepting shockingly large number of people gambling their lives with slim chances of survival to live someplace new.
Lots of people will die trying, as we always have. It's difficult to see that aspect of humanity suddenly changing.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
...the litter most hikers leave on the mountain (including garbage, human waste, etc. which especially befouls the most popular -- and now frequently crowded -- routes), etc.
You leave off my favorite human litter left on Mt. Everest dead bodies, some of them popular milestone markers used by climbers.
But this site assures us the "The number of climbers who have died on Everest is 6.5% of the 4,042 climbers who have reached the summit since it's 1953 first ascent is 6.5%, not necessarily an alarming number." Perhaps, but a one-in-15 chance of dying in a hobby jaunt, might well be an alarming number to most people.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
lighten up francis.
..."and we'd probably see a number of astronauts either splattered across the Martian surface or stranded down their until their life-support systems gave out (landings and lift-offs are hard)."
I say the landing part is one of the easiest problems to fix. How many astronauts have crash-landed on the Moon using 60's era technology?
Lift-off is hard but no harder than the way we ALREADY launch people to low earth orbit. I think the biggest problem is the getting there form LEO. The biggest danger would be getting lost in space, or killed there by some freak impact or solar outburst. Once on Mars, it's just a matter of burrowing sufficient deep in the ground that you can weather any dust storm. Mars not being as geologically active as Earth means the chances of a catastrophic earthquake or volcanic eruption are slimmer. So burrowing under a sufficient layer of Martian earth should against most natural disasters.
Agreed. I just don't see what the drive is to go to Mars at this point (with humans; with rovers, sure).
Asteroids look like a much better way to collect resources than Mars, because asteroids are literally flying by us all the time. Then we could have a Moon base to do refining and some low-g manufacturing operations. Mars is just too far away for resource extraction to be worthwhile; it'd take so much fuel to get anything back it wouldn't be worth it, but with asteroids or a Moon base, it wouldn't take much energy at all to drop stuff back into Earth's gravity well.
And what about the Moon itself as a mining target? Have we even begun investigating what kind of composition it has and whether it has any valuable ores? We collected a few rocks from the surface, but that's about it I think. And with all the asteroids that have obviously collided with it over the aeons, there should be a lot of mineral resources there. Why go someplace that's 6 months away (and even then, only every 2 years) when you can go someplace that's only 3 days away?
This article implies a future manned mission will be small.
How do they know there won't suddenly be a huge effort to get to Mars and it will actually get a budget of worth and not the puny budget most space agencies get now?
Equally, combined with a spinning chamber to simulate gravity (equation spits out 150 odd metres for radius to simulate gravity without it feeling sickening, forgot the rotation speed), less awful effects due to lack of the gravities.
Now you just need to pile material around the outside to prevent radiation piercing the insides.
Have most of the ships fuel and other storage crap in the middle, the actual living space is just a space between the outside wall and the internal storage chamber.
Modular landing systems, the ship stays in space.
We are speaking multiple cruise liners budget to create a ship that would be about the size of one. The size just solely that big because if you are going to go there, you may as well go all out and attempt landings with modules that may or may not fail.
If everything fails, just turn back.
It is doable though. Very doable.
It's just that the only effort likely going to get there is private because governments don't give a damn about space unless it is a threat.
The pitiful science budgets are, well, pitiful, compared to the military space budgets granted. Because fuck yeah gotta have more spy satellites to take the same damn picture of a desert in a pointless war that has only made things worse.
You may find it convenient to get part of your power from solar panels, but it does entail a big capital investment.
Not so much any more. The prices are constantly falling. Just look at how well Germany is doing rolling out solar panel across their nation, and they're not exactly a sunny country unlike the western US.
The batteries or grid-connected power for night time power would be another big capital investment.
No, it'd be free, or pretty close, for the grid connection. You have to convert the DC power to AC to use it in existing buildings anyway; hooking it up to the grid doesn't really cost any more. Batteries are costly, but not grid connections.
Few owners want to let any significant amount of its capacity go unused.
That's why nuclear is used for base load power, not for peak loads. It's always been that way; nuclear plants can't spool up and down quickly to meet load demands, so they supplement it with other things (like gas-fired generators like you mention). Solar and wind can help supplement, as well as other stored-energy methods already in use such as hydroelectric power (you use excess generation capacity to pump water uphill behind a dam, then let it flow back downhill when you need energy--this is used in Arizona to store excess power generated by the Palo Verde nuclear plant).
I think the ideal approach is to (1) invest today in enough research that the next generation of nuclear power (e.g., LFTR) will be much less expensive,
I don't see why this is necessary; why not just hire the French? They're already experts in cutting-edge nuclear plants, and run most of their country with it, and even sell power and nuclear plant services to other EU nations. And they haven't had any Chernobyls, Three Mile Islands, or Fukushimas. Maybe we should cut out our NIH.
The real fantasy is that the 600M people in India without electricity could rely on solar power. They do not have the land or the money to invest that way.
Well, some electricity is better than no electricity, right? If they're getting by with none right now, solar would be a big improvement, even if it's insufficient to meet our Western 24x7 availability expectations. Any they're not far from the equator, so solar should work better for them. Besides, it's not like they have no electricity at all, they have really unreliable electricity with rolling blackouts last I heard. Supplementing that with solar would probably be an improvement because the blackouts probably happen during the daytime, which is when solar generation peaks. And I don't think nuclear is a good option for them; if the Italians don't trust themselves to run nuclear plants safely and vote to buy power from France instead (because of all the corruption problems in Italy), then India would be even worse. Solar is great this way: it's pretty hard to fuck up solar and cause a catastrophe, unlike with nuclear power. It's easily the safest power-generation method in existence currently.
This, a thousand times over. Thanks for reminding us of such a basic trait of human nature. Why go to Mars? Why colonize such a wasteland? As wanderers, nomads, explorers, seekers of the unknown, if not for simple instinct or survival like migratory birds/locusts/mammals, then for plain bragging rights, for "glory", to inscribe our names in History, to extend our necks and fulfill our human nature, that so much separates us from the animals! Not because it is easy, said your president a few dacades ago, but because it is hard! Because we FUCKING CAN!
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
If the POTUS promises and delivers the world will watch.
"Yes, in an environment that can sustain life, heading to a place that might have something you want."
Early navigators didn't know that. Ridden by superstitions, doubts, inaccuracies. I've recently visited a -- they say -- size-accurate replica of Pedro Alvares Cabral's caravel. Official history say that he was the first to arrive in Brazil in 1500 A.D., a few years after Columbus's trip in 1492. It's about 100 ft in length (30 meters), and held about 150 men. Columbus's ship were about the same size. In that time, there was no GPS, no radio, no refrigerator, not even an engine. Maps were populated with "here be dragons", "end of the world" and such - today we know it - nonsense.
Today we know exactly what waits for us in Mars: cold; radiation; lack of atmosphere pressure; lack of breathable air; scant natural resources. We know exactly how to go there, and exactly how long it takes. So, is taking humans to Mars really as daunting a task as taking humans from Europe/Africa to the lands on the East?
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Mars is twice the distance from the sun that Earth is.
Really? I'd advise you to check that.
Launching heavy stuff from Earth, like radiation shielding, is a non starter.
I'm thinking more like building robots to send to the moon, create automated factories to synthesize H2O, and using that H2O as the "radiation shielding".
Hell, in my pipedreams, we send the robot factories to Mars to synthesize crucial raw materials (on some form of nuclear pulse or ion rocket), and then send the human crew to hog the spotlight.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
That's not even remotely close to the effects of perchlorates on adult humans. It inhibits thyroid production, and as far as we know that's about it.
We used to prescribe them regularly for hyperthyroidism. It's really not all that dangerous, it's just an inconvenience that would have to be worked around.
There's a big difference between perchlorates and hyperchlorides. That's like saying "Don't put salt on your chicken, it's the same as bleach!' just because it contains chlorine atoms. Which is to say "false and stupid."
It's actually the starts and stops and constant jarring that are so dreadfully hard on car engines. If they ran at the same RPMs and had a better oil system they would run pretty much forever.
There was that one car they did back in the 60s or 70s, something they drove for 300,000+ miles nonstop using some crazy "live oil change" system they rigged up. And that was running variable speeds. They just never turned the car off, not for refueling or anything else.
Lots of fields out here run pumps on old muscle car engines, they've been using the same engine for like 40 years and my understanding is they require pretty sparse maintenance.
Let me get this straight. You think the science must not work because we aren't building giant machines that convert CO2 (greenhouse gas) into CO (poison) all over the planet? What?
It's pretty obvious why we aren't using these poison mills here on earth, but on Mars it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't make the unbreathable atmosphere any worse if we fill it with carbon-monoxide.
Ed Regis has wrote the most sane words on going for Mars in a long time. FUCK MARS! If we go to Mars, it will be Apollo all over again. We will get there, get boring with no payoff and then quit.
Lose that fixation for living in massive gravity wells. Build cities in space, O'Neil colonies, that resemble paradises!
Essentially, the story is it's hard, so we shouldn't go because people will die.
Imagine if people said that during the Age of Exploration. How many explorers died? Away from home in Europe for years on end. Magellan's expedition took years to get home. Sir Henry Hudson had years of supplies to travel the arctic. They didn't shy away from likely death.
We are all too cowardly. We should be able to accept a 10% total failure rate. There are enough humans on Earth to support 90% failure rates to establish a sustainable base on the Moon and Mars. And it should be considered a species imperative to move beyond on celestial ball of rock, due to inherent hazards of being in one place (just ask Cantor Fitzgerald what it felt like to have an entire company at one location on 9/11)
Help the poor, heal the environment? How does it help people if we die because we simply didn't plan for high risk low chance events that kill everyone? Do you buy fire insurance? Do you expect to be burned out of your home? Or do you plan that if you get burned out, you can rebuild?
The price of insurance is counted in human lives we sacrifice to establish a colony on Mars, because it is an insurance policy that is statistically meaningful to species survival. Helping the poor does not appreciably help our species survive.
Then again, Germans don't start rioting or similar when the price for electricity hits $0.30/kWh.
Sample return and basic manufacturing are pretty fundamental building blocks of future space exploitation and we just don't seem to have much coming up with that. I readt about MOXIE a while ago, which is very interesting. But yeah, if we can't routinely do sample return from the Moon, then we're not close to having a permanent presence.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
While I love the romantic notion of space faring being the next logical step for humanity, I'm afraid we are nowhere close to where we need to be technologically. When it comes to space travel, we aren't 15th century Europeans with big sailing ships, we are the native Americans with dugout canoes. While it's technically possible to cross the Atlantic with a dugout canoe, actually attempting such a voyage would be close to suicidal, and could never become sufficiently routine to establish a viable colony. Likewise, inter-planetary travel with chemical rockets will never become sufficiently routine to establish a colony. Even after 80 years of liquid fuel rockets, the failure rate causes accidents to be almost routine. The costs are still astronomical and will always be due to the physical limitations of liquid rocket fuel (i.e. the tyranny of the rocket equation). Instead of dreaming about trying to go to Mars in our dugout canoes, we need to be figuring out sailing ships. That means a non-chemical rocket method of getting to space (space elevator?) and perfecting non-chemical rocket interplanetary propulsion.
Your car faces much harsher conditions though - constant starts and stops, bumps and potentially abuse from owners that don't follow maintenance schedules. Look at something closer to a generator, which can be made for extreme reliability. Also, nobody ever said there couldn't be maintenance - the entire intent is to support manned missions, so it is fair to suppose that astronauts will be on hand and the system will be designed to be serviceable in the field.
You are all space nutters. Space nutters say Mars. MARS! MARS! Space nutters say Mars. MARS say the space nutters! YOU SPACE NUTTERS!
"Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it!"
advancing science and figuring out the secrets of the universe are NOT vain and pointless. this is a step along the oath of increasing our knowledge and our science to levels that could save us all. it has been proven that the science from space exploration tends to benefit our lives here. this would be no different.
And even probably easier in a way: no wind storms! Scientifically wise we would benefit from having Human effort setup instruments in the farthest reach of the Solar System rather than automatic systems. Any number of (miniaturized) instrument may be installed and certified, almost to any complexity. Trip wise it does feel like just a distance and size escalation from trips to Moon. Though of course we are still at the level of planning single ship missions (essentially a matter of budget ?). Problem is it would take too long to be a REAL INCENTIVE for current participants! So Mars sticks. NASA achievements, though, do give the impression all basic problems of reaching and staying in orbit have already been solved, so it is not seeking solutions but making better solutions what matters now. Which is a matter of adding more computing power and mathematicians to designing and the time to produce and test the new solutions. - djb
(think multiple and parallel, add budget at will)
Right.. Lol
Its important for the human race to search for other places to live. Not sure how long our current home will be able to support our crazy lifestyle!!
I agree, in the long term, but it's not a one step process. You throw people an resources at the problem, expecting to lose some in your ignorance. But humans are explorers. We (well, some of us) have curiosity and drive to do novel things, so there will be people willing to be the first at great personal risk. Leaving the water was risk/reward, climbing that first tree was risk/reward, climbing out of the trees was risk/reward, sailing around the world was risk/reward, going to the moon was risk/reward. We've just got to realize that both sitting on our ass doing nothing and venturing to mars are also risk/reward choices.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." -Lao Tzu
Make an objective scientific argument in favor of the survival of the human animal as a species.
For bonus points, make sure that you do not co-incidentally argue for the preservation of all species on the planet.
All existence is subjective. I think therefore I reach. I don't really care about objectivity, because I'm not objective.
But, if I were to try, I guess I'd base it on the existence of self awareness. Science cannot exist without the self-aware mind to posit, observe, and reflect. For there to be a science or logic within which this argument can be judged valid or invalid there must, therefore exist that mind. Given that you find value in scientific objectivism, you by extension hold value in the self aware mind.
I doubt that's acceptable, as you'll probably call it circular, but, as I said initially...I'm not objective when it comes to my own existence.
we gave up on the moon then? did a little joyriding, decided it wasn't much of a vacation spot?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
No one is asking YOU to go; if you don't like it, fine, don't go, but don't take away the freedom of those who want.
Leftists...
Uh, are you saying you are volunteering to go, or are you volunteering to pay? Or are you saying that those who want to go are leftists? Makes sense, they'd be going on the public's dime.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
John F Kennedy perfectly told the world WHY we should do hard things. We do them not because they are easy, but because they are hard
That explains Marilyn Monroe.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Sheesh. The whole problem with this post is that it repeats the same old lines again - and still without understanding the basic technology. The critical new technology needed for a trip to Mars is a more efficient more powerful rocket engine. With that engine your ship can make orbit around the Earth (1 stage) dock and refuel. Fly out to Mars (1 stage), refuel, land (1 stage), take off back to orbit (1 stage), refuel, and back to Earth (1 stage). All done in one single core stage, using one primary ship, plus an orbital refuelling point at Earth and a second refuelling ship orbiting at Mars.
The crew quarters are large and comfortable and behind foot thick radiation barriers, and during flight the ship has 1/10 Earth artificial gravity.
And the secret isn't new technology, it is technology that was 90% developed during the 1960's and 70's. The secret is nuclear rockets. Ok to do everything in one stage you do need a new rocket tech - high energy gas core engines with closed cycle, but even for them the designs have been around just as long. A second tech that can do it in one or two stages is the Orion pulse nuclear drive - also nuclear rockets but instead using micro nuclear bombs. And the great joke is? the crew get less radiation exposure on a nuclear rocket than they do on a chemical one, potentially a lot less.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
It's called Venus. It's about the right size, right distance from the sun, just one little problem... it's hotter than puck! Just fix that little tiny problem, blow off or convert the CO2 somehow, and it should be pretty sweet. Unless there's volcanos, constantly spewing more CO2, in which case, maybe not.
Still a HELL of a lot easier and better an idea than PUCKING MARS! Mars is too damned SMALL. It can't hold an atmosphere you could breathe, even if you corrected the temp, and O2 percentage, somehow by magic, it doesn't have enough mass to hold atmo at a high enough pressure for you to breathe it. There'll be humans walking around Mars, unprotected, breathing outdoors on the same day they can do it on the pucking MOON, in other words...
NEVER.
Maybe we should focus our efforts, unsexy as this may seem, on not pucking EARTH up any more than it is. Maybe we even clean it up a little? Straighten ship out? Stop polluting for no reason? Quit dumping our garbage into pits, into the air, and into streams and rivers all of which we either breathe, drink, or take our food from, in one way or another. If you want to go somewhere where it would be tough to live, with danger, the unknown, a long pucking way from home, why not try living under a dome at the bottom of the SEA! That'd be different, and WE HAVE THE TECH FOR THAT! It would actually be pretty simple, especially compared to pucking MARS!
Make an objective scientific argument in favor of the survival of the human animal as a species.
For bonus points, make sure that you do not co-incidentally argue for the preservation of all species on the planet.
All existence is subjective. I think therefore I reach. I don't really care about objectivity, because I'm not objective.
But, if I were to try, I guess I'd base it on the existence of self awareness. Science cannot exist without the self-aware mind to posit, observe, and reflect. For there to be a science or logic within which this argument can be judged valid or invalid there must, therefore exist that mind. Given that you find value in scientific objectivism, you by extension hold value in the self aware mind.
I doubt that's acceptable, as you'll probably call it circular, but, as I said initially...I'm not objective when it comes to my own existence.
You are correct. There are zero non-circular objective arguments for preservation of mankind. Every animal has an instinct for self-preservation, because over time natural selection cannot help but produce such an instinct. When a hungry dog rips into an unlucky rabbit, murdering it for no other reason than to preserve itself, we do not attempt to make a rational argument in favor of the dog's moral right to murder other animals. Does the dog have a right to exist? Is there some absolute standard against which we measure the survival of humankind and find a moral justification? Certainly not. All we have done with our wonderful Sentience (and we know it is wonderful, because we sentiently tell ourselves so every day) is cloak the plain savagery of nature in successive onion layers of Meaning. In this way, our Sentience actually makes us the lowest, most depraved species on the planet. Because at least the dog (or any other creature) doesn't craft for itself elaborate lies about why the rabbit deserves to die and the dog deserves to live.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Does anyone here really trust the opinion of a "pointy-haired" type who knows nothing about exploration or technology development?
Not to mention the loneliness of being on a planet with no ocean, not forests, no grass, no natural flowing water. No ability to walk out into the air and feel the wind and hear the birds. A horrible pathetic way to live out ones life in confined solitude of a man-made prison-like shell. And that assumes no medical emergency or other inevitable catastrophe.
Living on Mars would be a lonely pathetic existence. One would never again see an ocean or a forest and feel and breathe the ocean mist and the forest dew, or be next to a stream with flowing water, never be able to walk outside and feel the wind and breathe the air and listen to the birds. One would be confined in a prison-like artificial shell for the rest of ones life. What a miserable life that would be. And that assumes there would not be the inevitable medical or other catastrophe.
I, personally, have been confined to a small space for an extended period with an uninspiring cellmate. It certainly isn't pleasant, but lots of people do it today. It's a tolerable experience, and if I had a higher purpose, I would voluntarily endure it again.
However, as submitter points out, that's not the only problem with colonizing Mars. The return trip is unimaginably difficult, so we're talking on-way. And for what? Nowadays, we can telepresence there. The human body is an obsolete actor in terms of challenging the planetary frontiers.
(||) Nehmo (||)
OK, but I'm still not doing the dishes. Paper plates on Mars for the win.
Only boring people are ever bored.
You, fella, are going through life with blinders on for who knows what reason if you intend to make anyone believe solar power is, anything but practical. The technology drops in price every year, there is a breakthrough called a "nanodot" which can double solar's efficiency, and thousands of homeowners are very satisfied with the effect solar has had on their power bills. More breakthroughs both large and small will continue to increase the efficiencies; and even in cloudy climes such as the UK, solar works well enough to make a difference. I'd very much like to know exactly who you are so that I can tell you "I told you so" not only on the proliferation of solar, but EV acceptance and home energy storage that allows homeowners to run their homes on the energy they collect on their own roofs. Take your negativity elsewhere, there are too many SlashDotters that are realistically optimistic of the future and are working toward sustainable lifestyles.
They said the same thing years ago about the moon. Nobody went anywhere.