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.
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?
He's not saying we should never go. He's just giving a reality check: there are technological problems we need to overcome first, and at the rate we're progressing, we won't be there in the next 10 years. To shoot people toward Mars before those problems have been solved would be irresponsible.
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?
he puts on a good show, even if he "falls just short of being a joke".
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...
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!
There are other hard things we could consider doing, such as eliminating carbon emissions are establishing peace in the Middle East.
Arguably both much harder than a mere trip to Mars, but IMO much more valuable to the human race as well.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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 plenty of humans here on earth... some would say a growing concern of way too focking many.
We can spare a few heroic lives for the betterment of humankind, and indeed, for that of the overburdened Earth.
At some point, if we don't leave this planet, we will all die here. What if sorry ass humans are the Universe's best shot at an advanced life from?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Seeing as how there was food(*), water(**), oxygen, space to move around, gravity and protection from cosmic radiation on their voyages, your analogy is completely fucking bogus.
(*) I don't know how much they could fish on sea voyages.
(**) Not so much on sea voyages.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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.
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
The right isn't any better.
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.
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.
If a homeless guy walks into your office, rubs shit in his hair, proclaims himself a god, and asks you to follow him, would your line of reasoning be "Well, he COULD be crazy...but I had better follow him anyway, because I could just be being too pessimistic"?
The charge of pessimism and "lack of vision" are catch-all attacks you could use against anyone who dares questions anything, no matter how crazy. Yes, when THEY say that "X can't be done" they're sometimes wrong. But most of the time they're actually right. It just so happens that we're more likely to remember when they were wrong. You often hear the skeptics of human flight derided for their lack of vision. But no one ever brings up that the skeptics of "skies full of flying cars" were RIGHT.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Then don't ask *US* to pay for it.
I agree to an extent, but at this point, we'd just be sending out a 'few heroic lives' to do die lonely, pointless deaths that tell us nothing about anything. This isn't traversing the seas to get to the new world, this is going to a place where we know we'll die. Of course, we all die, but any Mars mission is suicide right now. It's no more and no less glamorous than throwing yourself off a train bridge to find out more about gravity..
Sure, if there's a reasonable chance of success, then by all means load a few heroes into the great sky catapult and see where the cards fall, but at the moment the only real people in the market are the proven charlatans of Mars One. That says everything to me.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
LMOL stupid people of the world unit.
...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."
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
Peace in the middle east is actually easy, its just nobody has the stomach to do the needful. Peace in just Syria is impossible because the bleeding hearts out there can't turn away the refugees. Question: if you let everyone of quality, educated, cares about their kids, wants a peaceful life, etc leave the place just exactly who is left? Answer: Those who like the hell because they profit from it, the Islamist nut jobs, and losers who lack the will to try and leave. That isn't a recipe for stability, let alone establishing a functional civic system.
If the EU really wanted to help Syria they would make it clear that nobody will be allowed in and folks who try will be put on the nearest military helicopter and dropped right back into Aleppo for all their trouble. At least that way the less crazy people would be incentivized to organize and resist the nut jobs.
More boradly we just need to step back and let the Sunnis and Shiites battle it out. Don't worry about what boarders it spills over, as long as it isn't allowed to spill into Europe, the Russians and Chinese can worry about their own boarders with the region. The Israelis will probably need to push their own boarders outward to ensure they are defensible, that will no doubt be a blood bath itself.
Keep the local populations bottled up, keep the aide groups out, feeding people is how you ensure a war goes on forever. Hunger is a powerful motive for surrender probably the most powerful. It will be ugly and probably take ten or fifteen years but when the dust finally settles you will have stable sensibly run middle east that will begin to modernize out of necessity. You will have leadership that will probably do something alot like China's great leap forward policies, faced with the alternatives of being unable to feed and defend itself and being again cannibalized by the west or far east powers. Give it another 10 years after that and it will probably be a decent place to live.
Make no mistake though a whole lot of people and probably cultures have to die to make that happen.
Oddly enough, the technology developed to go to Mars could conceivably assist with your first request of eliminating carbon emissions. I am sure the power and propulsion systems will be unique and require advances in that area. I am not sure why people forget all the technology and inventions that come from space exploration...much of which does make our daily lives better.
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
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.
This is going to sound harsh.
We have plenty of humans here on earth... some would say a growing concern of way too focking many.
We can spare a few heroic lives for the betterment of humankind, and indeed, for that of the overburdened Earth.
We don't have enough means to send any significant part of humankind from "the overburdened Earth", and it won't solve the problem - the missing part would be replenished in matter of a decade by those who remain on it.
At some point, if we don't leave this planet, we will all die here.
At some point we will all die in this Solar system, and at some point we will all die in this Galaxy, and at some point we will all die in this Universe anyway, so what's your point?
What if sorry ass humans are the Universe's best shot at an advanced life from?
If that is true, then who will be left behind to miss us once we are gone?
Chill. Some things are just too much to worry about. No matter what Jules Verne told you, there will always be things beyond our ability to control, so just relax and enjoy the beauty of existence while it lasts. Enjoy the climbing, don't dwell on your fear of height.
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
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.
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 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.
Overpopulation on earth will not be solved by colonizing Mars. You need to reduce Earth's population by a few billion to make a dent. Imagine the energy requirements to transport a billion or so people from Earth to Mars.
That ain't happening without Commonwealth Saga-esque wormholes. Which I think are a little unlikely.
I'm all for space exploration, but without new physics it's not going to solve the problems we have on Earth. We need to stop hoping to "get off this rock" and really focus on taking care of this rock. It's the only one we've got.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
establishing peace in the Middle East.
I like this plan. Let's send ISIS and pals to Mars. And we don't even have to care if they die on impact!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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...
If a homeless guy walks into your office, rubs shit in his hair, proclaims himself a god, and asks you to follow him, would your line of reasoning be "Well, he COULD be crazy...but I had better follow him anyway, because I could just be being too pessimistic"?
I'd do it for a day or two. Would be a good story at least, and it beats sitting in meetings.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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
We have the resources to do all three.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
OK, I’ll say it for him: we should never go.
How do you keep your bones and muscles at the same level of efficiency in 40% of Earth’s gravity? How do you deal with an atmosphere which provides little protection against solar radiation? How do you keep from being poisoned by perchlorates?
Some problems have technological solutions. For example, we might one day develop a reactor or some other energy source that will let us move huge amounts of equipment across space to Mars at minimal cost.
But some problems have no solution. How do you survive in the freezing vacuum of space without a space suit? There’s no pill or implantable apparatus that we could dream up which would allow this to happen.
In a similar vein, the challenges I outlined above aren’t likely to be solved by technology, because Mars is just hostile to organic life.
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.
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.
In retrospect the first exporters of the "new world" seemed to die pointless deaths too, but their exploration and their expanding of the known world was not pointless at all.
The same would be true of explorers to Mars. Trips there might be one way to start, but trips to the new world were essentially one way too in the beginning.
Hell yeah! We need to do those things and also clean water, cure cancer, underwater lungs, hoverboards and any other cool thing you can think of. But with almost 8 billion people we have enough to work on everything at the same time so its ok to do some Mars trip research now.
But yeah, energy is the key. Once we figure out emissions free renewable energy production we'll have plenty of time to figure everything else out.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Peace in the Middle East can already be accomplished, by pressing the big red button.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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+
He's not saying it can't be done but that the Mars mania is stupid.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
/Oblg. Hard to tell if you are being sarcastic or serious.
You DO realize that Hope is not just limited to one specific age group, right?
The Wright Brothers had faith and hope.
Astronauts and all of NASA driving the Apollo program had faith and hope.
There have been many men & women, young and old, that have had faith, and have overcome their goals.
Who really cares if it is the Millennials or not?
"At some point, if we don't leave this planet, we will all die here. What if sorry ass humans are the Universe's best shot at an advanced life from?"
Then it's probably best if we just philosophically accept that. Arguably the extreme depths of space serve commendably as barrier-isolation (in the medical sense) to prevent us from screwing up anything/everything else in the universe.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
.... is simply not made of the right stuff.
Overpopulation on earth will not be solved by colonizing Mars. You need to reduce Earth's population by a few billion to make a dent. Imagine the energy requirements to transport a billion or so people from Earth to Mars.
That ain't happening without Commonwealth Saga-esque wormholes. Which I think are a little unlikely.
I'm all for space exploration, but without new physics it's not going to solve the problems we have on Earth. We need to stop hoping to "get off this rock" and really focus on taking care of this rock. It's the only one we've got.
OP was not saying it would help reduce population, they were making the point that we have enough humans that a few could choose to go to Mars and we'd get on fine here. There are plenty of humans, we are not a scarce resource.
As to the argument to solve Earth's problems first, that's silly. There are over 7 billion humans on the planet, we can work on more that one thing at a time. And a few people leaving doesn't change the motivation or desire of those that are staying to take care of the environment. When a family moves out of an apartment building, do all the other families say "screw it, lets trash the place!"
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
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.
When a family moves out of an apartment building, do all the other families say "screw it, lets trash the place!"
Depends on the neighborhood.
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.
>I'm unconvinced there really are very many people willing to try.
There never has been many. If you take the total number of people involved in any such endeavor the number is low.
As a random example of exploration: if you count the people willing to do things like polar explorations in the early 1900s the number is really low, yet they existed and while many perished, like in any exploration and it was a tragedy to them, for the humankind as whole explorations have opened new possibilities and expanded our knowledge.
Well, colonizing other worlds is arguably more important for the survival of humanity than peace in the middle east. After all, we are an asteroid away from total annihilation, and there is nothing we can do with the currently technology available to avert such disaster in a relative short term.
And face it, the world at large is already sick and tired of their tribal hatreds and their barbaric behavior.
What, specifically, is so valuable about homo sapiens that makes it worth saving? The butterflies are also one asteroid away from total annihilation. As are the panda bears, the peacock, and the dikdik. Surely you don't propose we skedaddle selfishly away and leave the rest of the planet to their doom?
All good things come to an end, Picard.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
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.
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.
So why bother going to Mars after developing that technology? It's not like we'll develop it on the way there. And no the propulsion systems won't be of any use on earth.
That's the whole problem with "Going to Mars" for practical reasons. Anything and everything that involves going to Mars could be done more efficiently and cheaper than actually going to mars. Anti-Comet habitat to protect humanity: cheaper to do underwater, better to do underwater with more redundancy and easier return once the comet firestorm subsides. Anti-viral outbreak: again see underwater habitat. We can bunker for way less than the billions it would cost to send people to Mars. If you want to develop life support systems... do another BioDome for a fraction of building a biodome on Mars. Space Propulsion systems... eh, not that useful to humanity. Improved solar panels: just spend the money on the R&D but not the actually manufacturing. Also "better" isn't the problem, it's cheaper. Building super fancy, un-mass-produce-able solar panels isn't what we need, what we need is cheap printable solar panels that might weigh a ton and be terrible for Mars.
The only really persuasive argument for going to Mars is: it will inspire a generation of engineers instead of stock brokers. And *that* is worth launching a platinum plated crew capsule into space for. I know people who were english majors going back to school to hopefully work at SpaceX. Most people inspired will end up making solar panels or better keyboards or improved step ladders but you need that inspirational element.
Then the universe just might have to accept not having one.
There's really only two options: Either we're special little snowflakes and are the only life in the entire universe, or the universe is teeming with life ... because once it happens twice it probably happens many times.
Thus far, the universe hasn't demonstrated any particular preference for things lasting forever. And it's pretty arrogant to claim we have a duty to the universe to ensure it has intelligent life.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"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
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
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.
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.
I don't disagree with most of what you said, but this isn't a zero sum game. We can do both, and there is no reason to not try.
Population isn't going to decrease because we didn't launch a Mars expedition. We're not going to get any more resources if we don't launch a Mars expedition, except for the trifling amount that will go into the mission.
Going to Mars isn't going to require a mountain of resources, it may require a hill of money, but that money will be spent on jobs too. And those are jobs in fields that we'd still want to have to maintain our leadership aside from bullshit tariffs and populism.
Most of man's problems right now aren't due to a lack of resources, they're due to a lack of people viewing others over themselves. If anything, I'd encourage a Mars expedition for the simple reason that it shows people that we can do big things and if we can go to Mars, we can feed people at home. Being able to go to the moon has elevated the conversation. We do get to say, "if we went to the Moon, we can certainly 'x'." It was almost worth the whole Lunar program just to be able to say that.
Staying on Earth is fine, but it keeps our mindset parochial and inward-looking. The same problems with the same broken solutions. We don't need to re-prioritize ourselves to look at internal issues. We've been *doing* that. It doesn't help.
I don't see how any of those will be stopped by the other.
Eliminating carbon emissions has almost nothing to do with the amount of money used for an expedition. In fact, it's mostly a political and economic issue.
And peace in the Middle East is even more about diplomacy.
Unless you're suggesting that we'll be using up our precious stockpiles of diplomacy and politics for a Mars mission, I don't see how they even interact.
There are practical reasons to go to Mars, but they are definitely significantly more long term than most of the issues we'd look at in an election.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised that the "Great Filter" that has prevented the galaxy from being filled up with alien colonies is actually the simple inability for civilizations to actually have a concept of very long term planning.
At some point, global warming or even species extinction will pale against the fact that Earth is doomed no matter what we do. We're scheduled for extinction no matter what if we remain on Earth. Sure, something like global warming would have to be surmounted first, but we know what is causing it, and we mostly know how to fix it. None of those solutions requires us to de-fund a space program.
I agree that the reality of a Mars trip is some distance off, barring some sort of techno-religious singularity event thingy, but that doesn't mean we stop the effort, it just means we write out a 100-year plan and then budget modestly to see that through. As long as we *commit* to one plan, and modestly, but *consistently* fund that plan, we will make it to Mars.
There are other hard things we could consider doing, such as eliminating carbon emissions are establishing peace in the Middle East.
Damn shame that 7 billion people isn't enough to work on multiple things at once.
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
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.
It didn't cost a trillion dollars to send the old world explorers to their death. And sure, we will all eventually die here, but that could be thousands or millions of years away. It would literally be easier to establish a colony 100 feet under the ocean than on Mars. And if something went wrong, they could just eject to the surface. Even if a giant asteroid hit and scorched the earth, conditions would still be better here than on Mars.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I do believe you got that backward. The challenges of existing on Mars mirror the ecological problems that are mounting here on Earth. Pouring R&D dollars (and political will) into achieving a balance here will no doubt pay off in giving us the ability to establish a balance on Mars. Plus we get the 'little' bonus of saving humanity and its home, instead of perishing here with the cold comfort that a Mars outpost watches us dive before they do the same.
Its a cosmic intelligence test: Can you spot the Red herring?
"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.
We have plenty of humans here on earth... some would say a growing concern of way too focking many.
the psychological profile of people with a death wish aren't the same as those that you can expect to successfully live for years in an irradiated tin can.
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.
.. 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.
Travel to the moon did not succeed just because enough people kept trying to climb up trees.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
https://youtu.be/wlMwc1c0HRQ
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
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.
Overpopulation on earth will not be solved by colonizing Mars.
No, but reducing the asteroid metric[*] would be. Obviously not initially, since the Mars colony would be very dependent on support from Earth for quite some time, but you have to start with a dependent colony to create an independent colony.
[*] The number of very large asteroids needed to strike a planet to wipe out humanity. Substitute with any other sort of extinction-level event if you like.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah because establishing peace in the middle east has historically worked out so incredibly well, right?
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
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?
Then the universe just might have to accept not having one.
I think there's some merit to the universe needing an observer, a chronicler, if you will.
There's really only two options: Either we're special little snowflakes and are the only life in the entire universe, or the universe is teeming with life ... because once it happens twice it probably happens many times.
That sounds like hammer squarely meeting nail.
Thus far, the universe hasn't demonstrated any particular preference for things lasting forever. And it's pretty arrogant to claim we have a duty to the universe to ensure it has intelligent life.
To be fair, I was able to evolve into this arrogant state under the careful watch of the selfsame universe.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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
I believe we're on the cusp of something remarkable, technologically; yet simultaneously at the threshold of being able to end multicellular life on this planet.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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
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
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
Use fahrenheit and you will loose all creadability
Use 'loose' or 'creadability' and you lose all credibility.
Enigma
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
..."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?
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
actually not 100% true, the costs of those trips were massive, and if inflation was taken into account as well as the number of people in the world, I imagine the costs would be much closer.
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."
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.
Right.. Lol
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.
If a homeless guy walks into your office, rubs shit in his hair, proclaims himself a god, and asks you to follow him, would your line of reasoning be "Well, he COULD be crazy...but I had better follow him anyway, because I could just be being too pessimistic"?
Let's leave the Republican presidential candidates out of this.
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.
Said all the winners of Darwin awards.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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..
Yes but who was crazy? Goddard and Von Braun for believing rockets could take humans into space? The Write brothers for believing that human sized heavier than air aircraft could fly? Kennedy for believing men could go to the Moon? Even when the sceptic's are right like on flying cars - because they only argue a negative they are never actually proven correct - just that something is more difficult..
At the end of the day the core technology to take people to Mars is already there, building a real program is more about money than anything else. The real problem with humans going to Mars is that we keep pissing the money away on war and even worse on weapons that we don't even use.. and we spend far more on trivial stuff like phones, and a hundred types of 5 minute tat.. tax cuts for billionairs..
A great comparative statistic - in the 1960's NASA spent $25 (to 35) billion to send a man to the Moon. At the same time the US military spent over $100 billion to lose the Vietnam war, and between $200 and 400 billion on nuclear weapons that we didn't even use.... That's a ratio that hits something like 10 to 1, to 16 to 1. Military spending including stuff like the Iraq war/ISIS is at roughly similar levels today.. Even NASA's funding is not that different, but they now spend it on a lot of small programs rather than one or two big programs. In fact in money (adjusted) terms NASA get more now than they did during Apollo, though comparatively as part of GDP its only a third of the levels during Apollo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If NASA stopped spending on so many science missions we could afford a much more rapid manned Mars program - but a better option would be to give NASA the funding to do both. Increasing yearly funding to build a complete program more quickly is far more fiscally efficient, reducing the final costs by about 30% to over 50%.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
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?
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.
And people have not imaged going to mars for decades?
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They said the same thing years ago about the moon. Nobody went anywhere.
There are other hard things we could consider doing, such as eliminating carbon emissions are establishing peace in the Middle East.
Arguably both much harder than a mere trip to Mars, but IMO much more valuable to the human race as well.
I think people like to fantasize about the "reset" button; kinda like the "what if i could start over?" question we ask ourselves. What if we had a new world, without wars over religion or without arguments about if carbon emissions affect the planet or not. What if? That's why we entertain the idea, even if it's years or even impossible. We probably will never get there, but it seem we're sort of hoping to move where people don't know our name before the old place blows itself up.