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Petition for Human Exploration of Mars
jonwiley writes "The Mars Society and thinkMARS have teamed up to create a web-based petition for those who support the human exploration of Mars. Their goal is 1,000,000 signatures by November 2000 and they plan to present the petition to Congress, the President, and to other world leaders. "
A million signatures, and then they are going to submit it to the government? This sounds like a nice dream, but a very bad to go about it.
If a million people really care about it that much, how about they all kick in a hundred bucks, and do it privately? That'll get ya a hundred million dollars. Not enough money? Ok, kick in five hundred bucks, or even a thousand. That is not a lot of money to spend on something grandiose that you really care about. You spent more than that on your stereo system, and this is space exploration that we're talking about here. Anyone who signs this petition but won't write a kilobuck check is a hypocrite.
But the people that sign this stuff don't really want to pay, do they? They want everyone to pay, whether the other 249 million people in the country sign the petition or not. Whether the other people can afford to pay (or care enough to pay) for it or not. The purpose of this petition is to make it so that everyone involuntarily pays. If this were just a voluntary thing, they wouldn't need a petition; they would just need a fund raiser.
This is immoral. It is theft. I am sick of people trying to get the government to back their own agendas (no matter how good intentioned they are) as if government money (and government power) just grows on trees. If you really care about something, get off your ass and do it yourself. Or educate others so that they see the benefits of space exploration. Make the people want to do it, instead of making government respresentatives want to do it out of fear of not getting re-elected.
Do not sign this petition! This isn't about space exploration; it's about communism.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is a false dichotomy. Another scenario is we we drop back to a much smaller population that is supported with sustainable energy sources/agriculture/etc. In your eco-sensitive world what resources are we running out of that the pie is getting smaller?
It is not a false dichotomy. Even a smaller population will be using resources, which in turn will result in less resources for further generations. A shrinking population will slow the inevitable, not stop it. Even in the rosiest scenerio all the metals will eventually have been recycled to the point to where there is nothing left (remember, no process is 100% effecient -- the laws of thermodynamics don't permit it). Ditto for numerous other resources we take for granted, such as arable land, for example[1]. The net result: someday we will have consumed all of the non-renewable resources of this world, until there are enough left to support a population of exactly 0.
Now, if you are arguing we should give up our luxurious lifestyle and return to the trees then yes, we could probably live in a fashion sustainable by this world until conditions change such that human life is no longer possible. We did it for 3,000,000 years or so, after all. However, I do think there are valuable aspects to a modern, technological society that are worth keeping, and the only way to do this on any kind of long term basis is to move our exploitation of resources away from the Earth's biosphere, which cannot sustain such abuse much longer.
Technology demands resources, many of which are not renewable, even through recycling. Those which can be recycled are not 100% recoverable. No procedure is 100% effecient (the laws of thermodynamics prevent that), so even in a world of shrinking population and wonderful levels of ecological sensitivity, you will, eventually, wind up with a world capable of supporting 0 people in a technological society, or alternatively some tens of millions as unusually clever animals.
Even if you "terraform" every square meter of the earth's surface and ocean floors, you will only slow, not stop, the erosion of resources over time. In the end, the only alternatives are either a decreasing standard of living, or obtaining new resources elsewhere. Whether the decision is done in time to allow billions to benefit, or done when only millions can, or postponed so long until the choice is no longer possible, won't really change that rather unpleasant fact.
Our goals should include the colonization and exploitation of the other worlds of this solar system, and whatever nearby stars we find ourselves able to reach in the centuries ahead. There is wealth almost beyond counting, in the form of usable energy, minerals, materials, space, and even worlds. We would be fools to turn our back on it.
[1]Unless we use sustainable, non-absolutist agriculture, as proposed by Daniel Quinne and others. This is really a completely different discussion, orthogonal to the arguments pro and con as to the benefits of space exploration and exploitation.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Point most definitely *not* taken. There will always be things to fix on Earth, and by the reasoning you present that means we'll never do anything other than stay at home trying to fix things.
The time to explore the planets is as soon as we have the ability to do so. That doesn't mean we need to stop trying to improve the situation of our home planet.
In fact, learning about other planets is a good way to find out more about how our own behaves, and how to fix its problems.
We're stuck on one very fragile planet. If this one breaks we need a backup. A backup solar system would be nice too.
Humanity has all its eggs in one basket, and that's a guarantee of extinction in the long term.
Going to Mars is one of the very early steps in the process of improving our species' survival chances, and as such is incredibly important.
The ideas that have been presented here are amasing. But it seems that no one has touched the real point. Humans have to, one day, to deal with Mars. Like it or not. What has been done till now is mostly child's play. Or what was called Caligula's conquests some good time ago.
Mars is a planet with an History. And look at it with an History as old as the planet you live. And if anyone takes the care to look carefully then he may note that there are a lot of wrong things with that planet. In any case that planet is a BIG MISTAKE. It is something much like the cross between a mouse and an elephant that was forced to run faster than a leopard and had to face a full crash. That's how I "subjectively" see that thing over there, after many years of observations. A funny analogy but also very tragic and alarming.
Mars presents problems starting from its orbit. It goes over what is called as "proper movements". They don't fit well accepted schemes and predictions. Note that due to this Kepler has managed to find the laws of planetary orbits. Because Mars didn't fit any acceptable scheme.
Martian general geology is also a serious problem. The inners of the planet are assymetric. A pure planetary aberration. Tectonics and magnetism seem to have existed. However what we get of their remains are not answers but more and more questions.
The atmosphere is also a big problem. Yes most people tell you about its thiness and a lot of bla-bla-bla about its past. However 90% forget to tell you that this atmosphere could not exist for too long. It is dynamically unstable. So it is either recent or there is something we are missing.
The channels exist. Look through a telescope and sooner or later you will note them. However these are not Martians or water flows. It is that same crazy atmosphere playing games with the landscape. A strange tidal game of harmonics that shows how highly unstable it is.
Life in Mars? 99% that you will find nothing. Even ashes to ashes. The planet suffered serious hits and got hotter than a steam pan. Just look at Hellas and you may get what I mean.
Water? Probably some. And probably not the one that formed its rivers lakes and seas. By the same reason above.
Aliens? Maybe yes, maybe not. But forget looking at Mars Face as a shrine sending telepatic messages to Earth. That thing is interesting but it is very hard to consider it an alien product. In fact a lot of things shown as alien are far from such. However there are a lot of very interesting places where anyone would start seriously think if "Aliens? Baaa..." would be enough.
Colonization? Don't be crazy. It is probable that humans will find much easier to colonize Io than that piece of overfried pan. Besides that planet has really Bad Luck. More than 80% of crafts had a mission not fulfilled or a strange disappearence into the Black Houl of Mars.
But should humans stay away from Mars? Absolutely not. They should go there and try to find the answers for the questions this planet arise. Talking in "martial" terms they should make expedtions to find its comrade MIA. And give him an honourable burial. It is a moral duty for Earthlings to look at the fate of its brother planet. For the sake of their own future. One day, Earth may suffer similar fate.
This can be only accomplished by going to Mars. Note that sending machines is not an answer. Machines can only give snapshots. And very incomplete ones. Human presence can give a serious weight to the process of search by trial and error. Human decisionmaking will allow a faster development on investigation. Besides humans may receive a unique experience by exploring the harshest friendly planet they know.
This is not without risks. There will be deads. There will be coffins returning home. There will be eyes staring forever over an empty landscape. But without this, there will be humans, that one day will not understand why they deserved a tragic fate sitting in their armchairs, laying in their beds or walking on the street. There will be humans that would never understand, what really could mean a flash of light over the skies. There will be a Mankind that suffered millions of years to see its children dying in the most stupid of deaths.
The fact millions of people would like to see it happen isn't a surprise. In fact, not getting a million people to sign in just less than a year would be a major surprise. But the petition doesn't mention costs.
The petition would have made some impact if it said "It's ok to raise taxes the next 15 years", "I am willing to flip burgers instead of getting a scolarship", "I deal with traffic for the rest of my life instead highway improvement", "I don't think I will be old - I don't need care then", "I don't mind potholes" or "I won't upgrade my computer for the next 10 years - I invest in the Mars mission".
Even more impressive would be asking for a small contribution. Say, $100 dollars or so. Then, when the petition is presented, one can say "here are a million signatures, and a 100 million dollar cheque. It will barely get you away from Earth, and not bring you to Mars at all, but it's a start.
-- Abigail
On the other hand, sending people to Mars or the Moon with the intention of leaving them there, now that's interesting.
Sending robotic probes to do chemical analysis is probably more worthwhile in a science-for-you-buck sense, but more spectacular missions help drum up general public interest, which helps NASA secure funding.
:)
Think of the microphone on the current Mars mission. Not much real scientific value, but it is cool and will (hopefully) get some positive publicity.
Mind you, they should probably work one their Mission To Mars Success Ratio before they send humans out there
Dana
I have two sources of reservation on this topic:
- It will give the defense forces even more justification for their exhorbitant research budget
- We have fucked up one planet already. I think we should leave the others alone until we've learned how to be better managers of the environment.
Space probes sent to other planets are heated to sterilise them. Try doing that to a human.
-- mind over pixel
Check out the regulations; it's just a bit tricky to get permission to fly a private rocket.
And once you've got permission, where are you getting the cash? The big aerospace companies are sitting pretty; it isn't often that you find a market where the government will pay you hundreds of millions of dollars to build a vehicle and then throw it away ASAP. And the small aerospace companies are dying through lack of private investment after being told by investors (and rightly) that it doesn't pay to compete with the government.
So now we have NASA paying a billion dollars for Lockheed-Martin to produce an over-weight, over-budget "technology demonstrator" while companies like Rotary Rocket and Kistler are hunting their couches for spare change.
I think Slashdot has already been over the interesting international treaties regarding private ownership of celestial territory..
Even in the rosiest scenerio all the metals will eventually have been recycled to the point to where there is nothing left (remember, no process is 100% effecient)
Please; I've seen better discussions of thermodynamics in creationist literature...
That forced inefficiency refers to usable energy (work), not to *mass*. Yes, it costs energy to recycle material.. but 100% of the material is still there, and the Sun is currently hitting us with 100+ million gigawatts of power, and will continue doing so for about 4 billion years.
We don't need to go into space because we're in danger of "running out of resources" on Earth; we may want to go into space because it will allow us to use even more resources, and to use the ones we have more efficiently.
You're right this would be just another huge governmental blunder! I remember that one time Thom Jefferson paid $15 million for a piece of land from France that nobody knew anything about. What a waste... can you imagine what we could do with $15 million dollars??? And then, we paid the Russians $7.2 million for a hunk of ice which mostly lies above the Artic Circle. AND it's not even connected to this country! Who needs it. Damn the "potential", give me the MONEY...
The choices which face us are fairly stark: either accept an ever sinking standard of living, or find more resources elsewhere.
This is a false dichotomy. Another scenario is we we drop back to a much smaller population that is supported with sustainable energy sources/agriculture/etc. In your eco-sensitive world what resources are we running out of that the pie is getting smaller?
We don't need a manned expedition to Mars to get very cheap energy from the sun. Similarly, if you don't want to curb population growth there is plenty of space on this planet that isn't being used. Why terraform Mars when you can terraform Kansas or Wyoming or, hell, even Western Massachusetts. And that's not even counting oceans. We also don't need a manned expedition to Mars to get mine minerals from the asteroids -- although now that I think about I've never heard a explanation for why we need to mine minerals from asteroids, are we running out of them on Earth? We don't need a manned expedition to build space habitats.
If those things are our real goals then we should make them our real goals. If Mars is just a PR stunt to help us towards our real goals then I can do without the waste of money.
You might want to go back and re-read the book. The space elevator was built with in space, with space resources ... and one was built by Martian colonists first! (Building a Mars elevator would be technically easier, if perhaps less immediately useful.)
And don't forget the spinoffs. Robert A. Heinlein did a wonderful speech on the importance of space program spinoffs. For any space program massive amounts of new technology must be created to solve even the most mundane issues, this tech does not go to waste. From simple things like Tang, and Space Ice Cream to advanced medical monitoring and telemetry equipment, everyone benefits from all the neat stuff space explorers develop in their quest to conquer the universe.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
We live on a world that is fully explored - there's not a square meter of land on the surface that hasn't been mapped, prodded, and trodden.
Close enough to true, perhaps, but consider that 2/3 of the planet is ocean and we've really only begun poking around at the surface in the few decades since Cousteau invented the aqualung. Given that no-one has ever seen a live giant squid (a rather large animal), I'd have to assume that there's all sorts of interesting critters down there for us to discover. Hell, they even keep discovering large new mammels on land every decade or so!
Manned space exploration is really a gimick. I'd rather see larger scale and more ambitous robotic exploration of mars.... and if NASA is building decent robotic systems, how about also having a few robotic subs roaming and exploring the oceans!
For me the only real purpose of manned expeditions would be working towards permanently manned habitats leading towards colonies. The best step in this direction would be to first learn how to do it on earth! How about a large scale Biosphere project populated with a dozen or so people... better than MTV's Real World!
Basic ecology says that sooner or later there will be much to many Earth inhabitants; rather sooner, though. And when an ecological niche is filled up, the natural selection strenghtens: for us, that means wars, famine, diseases, basically - call me Kasandra - the end of the european civilization. We could expand our niche if we start it doing early enough... but I'm pessimistic whether this is possible: unless someone will actually make money with sending people to a Mars collony there will never be money for it.
A mission to Mars is nevertheless possible; and I will sign this petition - maybe it works, who knows? I still dream about pigs... ops. humans in space.
Regards,
January
I'm sorry if I go on a bit of a rant here, but so far the posts I've seen on this topic are NOT what I expected out of Slashdot people. Wanting to not put money into space? Wanting to put (Throw away?) more money into local 'social issues'? Personally, I think WAY too much money is wasted on saving the starving now as it is. I'm not a cold hearted bastard (Believe it or not) but the more we prop these people up, the more they are going to have more poor starving children, creating a vicious cycle. And for that matter, it could be argued that these very starving millions are a good reason to go to space. There are plenty of resources available, just sitting there for the grabbibg, if a way to easily/cheaply get them can be arranged. We're never going to figure out how to do it if we don't try going there in the first place. As far as 'wasting' money on space exploration. I can't think of a better cause the government has every spent money on! Yes, part of it is admittedly an ego-trip. Part of it is even nationalistic bragging rights on the first/only one to do something. A lot of it is also people being able to be proud of what people have done. Is there anything wrong with having pride in your species? Anything that helps boost global morale is, IMHO, generally a good thing. And I'm not even going to get into the scientific run-off of inventions/perfections/discoveries that wouldn't have/won't happen if it weren't for manned space flight
Oh well, I better stop before my rant gets too unreadable. I'll probally get flamed/moderated down for this, but I just had to say what I had to say.
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
They are also NASA spin-offs.
cpeterso
You're going a long way from an internet petition to putting humans on Mars. The world has 5 billion people. 1 million people probably isn't enough of a groundswell to get it to happen. Now get an internet petition consisting of 1 billion people each investing a few thou in the project and we might get there.
Personally, I just signed it. It's worthwhile to me on a personal basis.
However, I can see part of the concerns that others may have. For information purposes, yeah, it's a lot cheaper to send un-manned missions to Mars to collect more data than we currently have.
But, depending on the scope of data to be collected, that may not be as feasable as one thinks at first. For instance - when something goes wrong with a piece of equiptment, like the Mars Rover, when it's dead, it's dead. Humans out there on Mars, on the other hand, can do a lot to fix problems like that. Great technology is no replacement for human inginuity when in the field.
Plus, look at the different options for data collection there. With the Mars Rover, it was a long drawn out process just to select, and drive to a single location. When you got there, well... there really wasn't that much the rover could do about it, except grab some very limited soil samples, and take pretty pictures. Humans, on the other hand, can continue an investigation MUCH farther. For example, if something interesting extended under a rock - no problem. The human picks it up, and examines under it.
There's so much more that a human can do, and given the lag in movement, the bandwidth restrictions, and the problems even a small fault can incur on unmanned missions sometimes, sending humans there could be a great option.
And, lets not forget the matter of human pride. We will have stepped on an alien planet for the first time. It would be great.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
...to continue spending on the space daem^H^H^H^Hprogramme could come from wireless (duh) communications companies.
Think about designing interplanetary communication systems. Think about implementing them.(isn't there already a protocol under review?) Think about AT&T sponsoring it, 'cause they will be on of the few that could afford the R&D outside the gov't. Unless Buzz Aldrin can find a way.
It would make a cool Nokia/PCS/Iridium(sp) commercial to have an astronaut calling for pizza as a joke from orbit, or Mars..
"Microsoft is a proud supporter of the U.S. Mission to Mars(tm)"!!
+&x
Why waste the money? There are plenty of domestic causes that money can go to. I see no reason at this point to send humans to mars. Unless, and until, we find that there is some reason that we must send humans to mars, that there is something that probes and robots can't do, there is no reason to blow all that money. Feed some mouths with it.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I would indeed rather have the emotional fulfillment. It's an entire planet worth of knowledge, we're not going to learn it all in a few decades, and we're not going to learn much of it until we have scientists living there, working hands on. Here's a question as a reply to yours: Would you rather get started on proper colonization now, allowing serious research to get started as soon as possible, or would you prefer to save some money for the time being, send robots which are of limited scientific use in the long term, just so you can feel "fiscally responsible"?
Intolerant people should be shot.
Well you know, normally I'd be glad to support this (hey, if the stars are my destination why I am not there yet?), but then I saw Manufacturing Consent last night and realized I don't have to.
I hope that many Slashdotters, whether they love or hate him, are familiar with Noam Chomsky but briefly, he's an MIT linguistics prof (who originated the idea of context free grammars!) and a leading anarchistic social dissident whose primary thesis is that America is ran by power elites who subvert democracy through media control.
One of Chomsky's more interesting ideas is that military spending is primarily a way of subzidizing scientific research (a subtle departure from the usual military-industrial-complex-tyranny-theory or the necessary-external-enemies-theory!).
Thinking along these lines suggests Martian exploraiton by the United States, whatever the direct benefits, must be very appealing to the Secret Masters of Government because:
- Intellectuals (both 'left' and 'right') and other potential trouble-makers tends to like the idea
- It gives the rest of the population sometime to be patriotic about, which makes them generally more pliant politically
- It gives us a new way to spend lots of money on scientific research... which is badly needed since the Soviet block imploded.
Now I hardly agree with everything Chomsky says, but I do find this sort of logic pretty compelling... which means that even if Mars-loving geeks like me step aside Martian exploration in my lifetime is pretty inevitable anyways.
Cheers,
~yair
But the point is not only the things we would learn about mars but the technology we would develope in the process. It is really amazing what we developed in the space race. Think when Kennedy said go to the moon would not have been able to make it in that time frame with the current technology...but we did because we had a goal and humanity has been using technologies developed for the space program ever sense.
-Omar@wheeee!.*crash*.com
If NASA wants to drum up popular support, they should involve high school science classes by running a contest for cheap probes. Offer to launch probes for high schools and colleges. Here are the specifications: NASA will provide standard power and telemetry, and a ride into space.
Your team of high school students or college students or drinking buddies has to build everything else: sensors, computer, programming, and some neat bit of random science.
I would love to build a probe using an old 386, an A/D card, some thermocouples and pressure sensors and lob it into Jupiter. Could you imagine how much fun this would be? Imagine how excited your local high school would get to have their probe picked for launch. Imagine the pissing war between the engineering departments of MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc.
And some cool science might just happen along the way.
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
Is it only me? I've always thought the "Space Race" was a grotesque display of materialistic BS. All the many hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent world-wide on missions to space (many with little or no scienctific value).
Dang useless weather satellites, who cares how the weather is going to be, hurricanes are much more fun if you no warning about them.
And forget about studying weather on other planets, the only people who would benefit from being able to predict weather months in advance would be farmers, and people that eat.
Military recon satellites, a big effin' waste. I feel much more secure not knowing how much weapons my enemy has, and whether or not they're massing arms at my border. Let's just start a war on a whim, or a guess about an oncoming attack.
I'm sorry, I don't see your point. There have always been poor, starving diseased people. Probably the first group of proto-humans to leave their tribe was told "why do you want to go over the hill, stay here and help us dig roots."
The Mars Society is talking a $20 billion dollar price tag. Assume half the Earth is starving, poor and diseased, and we split that $20 billion among 3 billion people. $7 is going to make their life better?
George
What many here may not realize is that the mission to the moon is still regarded as one of the most important stories of the twentieth century (3rd, I believe.)
Of course, at that time *there was no robots* who could have pilotted the craft and colected the moon rocks. Back then, the only choice was to spend the huge amount of money to send people in order to do the scientific study. Today, we could accomplish these things as well with cheaper, faster programs like sojourner and the downed climate observer.
But humanity is less completely enthralled by such programs. They don't hold the promise that the manned moon missions did. The thoughts of building houses and colonies on the moon in the lifetime of the astronauts who flew there. We're not pacified by the more scientific but less human mars program currently running.
Therefore, I think we may wish to try it the old way. Send men to mars, get them back. We don't have the technology to do this efficiently yet, but we may have it very soon. What this petition is about is the goal. Not for scientific purposes but for equally valid social and human purposes. I believe it will be an important step to solving one of humanities greatest problems: our eventual extinction we face by keeping ourselves locked into a single planet.
-Ben
I also question comparing "living off the land" in an ecosystem replete with food and breathable air, on a planet we evolved on, to living in a near-airless icebox that certainly has no life more complex than a microbe. Nonetheless, I think Zubrin makes some very good points, and I'm glad we have him as a cheerleader for Mars colonization.
Well, how do you want to do it? Do you want to spend a couple billion dollars and a decade of R&D to develop reusable SSTO vehicles to take people to low orbit cheaply? And another decade and a few more billion dollars to develop things like air-breathing scramjets to reduce launch costs for people and sensitive equipment, and magnetic catapults to really reduce launch costs for fuel pods, structural materials, and other cargo that can take extreme G's? And yet another decade to develop high-thrust ion propulsion or nuclear rockets to give us the high specific impulse necessary to make reusable interplanetary tugs efficient? And maybe another decade and another couple billion to develop better space suits, in-orbit construction techniques to make those deep-space-only tugs, and large scale self-sufficient human habitats? If you want humanity to do that, then by the time you die we'll be in a position to put a city on Mars, start bussing scientists and tourists back and forth, drill kilometers into the crust, and generally do space exploration the way it should be done.
No. This petition is for people who want to spend $30 billion (the lowest estimate I've seen, and who doesn't think this thing would pork barrel like the Shuttle and ISS?) to plant a flag on and take some rock souvenirs from the Martian surface, then stay away from the place for 30+ years because "it's been done, and it's too expensive." We screwed up that way with Apollo, and we don't need to do it again. If all you want is a Mars rock, let's send another RC car and get a Mars rock.
I'm really not concerned with writing of the debt of Africa. Is anyone willing to write of the debt of the United States?
The way I see it, and I'll get flamed for it. There has been poverty and homelessness and disease since man first walked erect. I'm not homeless or poor (but am diseased - Cancer - Twice) because I make a living for myself. African (and other nations) took it upon themselves to get into debt, so why should anyone write off that debt? No one is willing to write off my debt for me.
I think it is far more important to explore and discover than it solve all the World's ills. Because we will never solve the World's ills, and it is foolish to think we will.
Unlike what was shown in the Babylon 5 TV series, you'd have to spin down for manuevers. But during the long balistic trajectory part of the mission it should work fine.
This is not a comment for or against the topic of the petition. I would merely like to point out to slashdotters considering signing the petition that by doing so they may jeopardize their personal privacy. This comment is particularly aimed towards slashdotters who may not thoroughly understand computers. (I'm sure there are still some of those :)
The petition site is not secured by SSL. Hence any personal data you volunteer will be transmitted in the clear to the thinkmars server. Ordinarily this would be a limited risk, but considering the prominence that a slashdot citing must bring, I would guess that thinkmars is by now the target of at least one and probably more than one packet sniffer deployed by some misguided spammer.
Sorry if that sounds alarmist. Just would like to mention that aspect of the petition so that people wishing to sign it can weigh the risk.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I disagree. Humans throughout history have always had a frontier to explore, and it drove humans to expand, imagine, and innovate. Those who wanted something new could always find someplace new. Granted, it's a little bit more than "Go West, Young Man" to head to Mars, but we have have a new frontier to explore.
If I knew my $100 would further the effort and be used on it.
There are only a few situations in which a petition is a useful way of getting something done, and this is not one of them.
One example of a situation where a petition is useful is when the constituants of one particular politician present that politician with a petition dealing with a specific, concrete point that the politician does not already agree with. By this, the constituants can show the politician that his or her views do not agree with what the people in his or her region want to see happen. Politicians want to be re-elected, so a petition may cause them to re-think their stance on a particular point if they can see that many people disagree with it.
In the case of exploration of Mars, a petition isn't going to do anything whatsoever. First, just about everybody already agrees that we should send manned missions to Mars, given infinite resources. The fact that we don't have infinite resources means that we need to find a way to balance many interests simultaneously (e.g., the need to explore Mars, the need to feed the nation, the need to reduce crime, etc.). The percentage of resources spent on each interest is not a clear-cut issue, and regardless of how many geeks get together and sign a petition, as long as some way exists to continue exploring Mars (I'm thinking of unmanned missions that are going on now) politicians are going to call that good enough and focus on other social aspects nearer to home. If you don't believe this, the next time the United States gets involved in some conflict overseas, listen to the number of people who complain, "But we should be focusing on issues HERE AT HOME, not in some foreign country."
As far as the industrial people that the petition is directed towards, they won't care either. The only thing that drives them is whether they can make money at something. If you can show them that they can make money off of an investment in technology needed to send a manned mission to Mars, you'll get industrial involvement. Otherwise, you won't.
The concept of technology brings up a second major reason why this petition is pointless: technology. Yep, many people agree that we should send a manned mission to Mars, but just because they all get together doesn't magically make the technology to do this appear. One might argue that a petition might spark new developments in technology that might make such a feat possible, similar to what happened in the Apollo project. However, the difference between a mission to Mars and Apollo is that in the case of Apollo, going to the moon was envisionable with the current technology plus a marginal amount of improvement. In the case of a manned mission to Mars, there are fundamental technological hurdles that need to be figured out. How do we take care of fuel? How do we pack enough food/water for a manned crew to survive for the lengthy trip? How do we ensure that we can get them back home safely? These are major obstacles -- probably more challenging to us now than the obstacles facing the Apollo project were in the 1960's.
1) New technology developped for the space program will filter into mainstream society. The amount of new technology we received from the Apollo missions has improved the lives of millions, probably a lot better than if we just give a huge welfare check to X.
2) Yes, as previoiusly stated, it's a great backup in case of something devastating earth.
3) Moving onto Mars puts us in the state of mind to move farther and farther away from the Earth successful. Care to put a estimate on how long the sun has left? And before you say, "We'll be off-planet *long before* the sun goes nova", remember: people said the same thing about Y2K ("the computers with be updated *long before* the year 2000 is reached").
But I understand the people who ask about today's problems, and why we should fix those problems first. IMO, those opinions are very valid. But, as expensive as establishing off planet bases seems, I think the resources going into the space program are not sufficent enough to fix those problems. IMO, those problems (world hunger, crime, etc) will *allways* be with us. It's a lousy opinion, but a true one.
Look at history. There was poor in Europe before Europeans decided to colonize and control the world, there were poor people in Europe *while* they colonized the world, and there are *still* poor people in Europe now, after they colonized the world. But guess what. Look at all the opportunities the New World (America/Australia) created for Europeans!
Space travel *is* a good thing for the lower classes of people. Again, look at history. Who do you think the people who settled America/Australia were? Upper class snobs? Hell no! You ship the lower class! If they die en route, or while building the infrastructure, you ship more! Space colonization will happen the same way.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Why do they need all of the fields filled in?
Can anyone verify that this is a serious effort on the behalf of some group to get manned exploration of Mars? It asks for a fair bit of information including requiring that we provide the email addresses of others. Similarly, Shouldn't they require some sort of mail based confirmation in order to prevent ballot stuffing at this time? I loathe pyramid scams of even the chain letter sort and want to make sure of this thing before I sign it.
Thanks.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
Uh, space investments pay my salary. If money isn't invested in space, I go on welfare. I'll warn you, I'll be spending more time on slashdot if I were on welfare.
/., or producing productive technology to help research and science that affect you?
At least with my current work, you'll get a better understanding of weather patterns and environmental research to help prevent any harmful effects of global warming that humans might be causing. My work might also help with other detector technologies (from MRI to the CCD in your camcorder). My work will also provide opportunities to research physics that can better improve your life through safety, better medicine, cheaper products, and possibly more environmentaly safe products.
Now, what is better, spending welfare money reading
My personal part might be small, but I find it rewarding.
Maybe your idea of spending money is to go to the movies. Now really, how good of an investment is that in the long term? You paid somebody to occupy your attention for 2.5 hours and wasted countless time discussing it afterwards. I say get rid of some of the entertainment industry before you pick on the space industry.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
A manned mission to Mars, a waste?
What? Is this really Slashdot, or am I suddenly reading _The Whole Earth Review_ or something?
We live on a world that is fully explored - there's not a square meter of land on the surface that hasn't been mapped, prodded, and trodden.
Why go to Mars? Because it's there! Because it's something we can do as a species, not just as petty, small-minded individuals. Something bigger than all of us. Something new, something grand, something great!
Where's your sense of adventure, fer crissakes?
Hell, give me a one-way spaceship, something I can use to make food, water, and air, and enough equipment to get me started processing raw materials (like a solar-powered electric steel furnace) and I'll go. In a second. Even if there's a 75% chance I'd be dead in a month.
You naysayers should be hanging your heads in shame!
Sending humans to the Moon was expensive in 1969, now anything similar is just out of reach, i.e. way too expensive. The first goal should be in acheiving a permanent and cheap low earth orbit station, ala "Fountains of Paradise". Once out of the gravity well, it becomes extremely easy to reach any planet in the Solar System. There would be no limits on the size, shape, weight of such vehicles. Raw materials could be easily harvested from asteriods or the Moon. The journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step. --Tao te Ching p.s. If your curious, "Fountains of Paradise" is a sci-fi book where we reached space by linking the Earth to a space station with a 30,000 mile ribbon super-strong wire. Then materials were just lifted into space with an elevator. Cool!
The more you want, the less you have.
You are what you eat, and on mars, waste would all you'd have.
The technologies we would need to develop to go to Mars, and more importantly to live there, would definitely apply back here on Earth.
Think of the hydroponic gardens, self-contained and genetically engineered to provide for proper nutrition. Encased in a small greenhouse, cheap and adequate for human use in no time at all. There's no where here that something like that would be of use. Not in the remote-most reaches of Cyclone ravaged India. Not in Kosovar refugee camps, nowhere.
The medical technology necessary to diagnose and monitor human health, and to make the necessary adjustments to physiology - when the nearest hospital is millions of miles away... What a waste!
Light, strong and durable building materials, air scrubbers and anti-radiation shielding. Useless.
Heh! It's starting to sound like a Visa ad:
Interplanetary rocket technology: $200billion.
Self-contained geosphere environment: $100billion.
Superconduction: $50billion.
The peace of mind in knowing that when the doomsday rock hits Earth, you have somewhere to go: PRICELESS!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Just kidding. (The subject is a line from "Where the Buffalo Roam" starring Bill Murray that I've always wanted to use. Thank you for giving me the perfect opportunity to do so. :-) )
Seriously, while taking care of the weak, poor, and less fortunate makes us all feel nicely warm and fuzzy, doing so at the expense of your future posterity is not only stupid, it is IMHO criminally negligent of your own children's future.
The resource of Earth are finite and rapidly being depleated. The choices which face us are fairly stark: either accept an ever sinking standard of living, or find more resources elsewhere. I suppose a third option would be to hope for a magic new technological breakthrough a la' Star Trek's replicator, but, just as occasionally someone wins the lottery, death by lightning strike is far more probable. And frankly, there is little else that would suffice: recycling cannot result in 100% recovery, so even in the best, most eco-sensitive world, with a population that stops growing, we will be sharing (or, more likely, killing each other over) an ever shrinking pie.
While space is hardly a panacea for all the world's problems, the space program, including manned space exploration, is a critical first step in building a sustainable infrastructure for exploiting the cheap energy and mineral wealth of the solar system. It is, in its infancy, expensive, dangerous, and requires some level of sacrifice, but it is nevertheless very important that it be done. Space provides opportunity for additional living space, very cheap energy from the sun, and sufficient mineral wealth to sustain economic growth and prosperity for millenia. Not that this alone will automagically solve all our problems, but at least it will help provide us with the means to do so, which staying planet bound to Earth will not.
The effort to reach Mars has allot of value. It will push technologies and demand resources (and infrastructure) that will facilitate commercial and industrial uses of both near-earth and martian space. Possible medium-term benefits include moving much of our industry into space and away from the Earth's biosphere and microwaving very inexpensive energy back to earth. Long term benefits are too numerous to mention, but include the possiblity of seeding a new biosphere on mars and creating a wealth of new living space in space habitats with access to inexpensive energy and minerals.
To squander all of today's limited wealth feeding the world's poor is to condemn everyone in future generations to a much lower (and ever decreasing) standard of living, until one day the exploited Earth is home only to the impoverished, rightfully cursing their shortsited forfathers for condemning them to their fate.
The approach currently being taken is the correct one -- spend some money alleviating some of most acute the problems of the world, while spending some on building an infrastructure that can sustain and assure future generations of opportunity and wealth. While we may argue over how much should be spent on one versus the other, the contention that we should spend all of our wealth on quick and temporary bandages for today's problems while ignoring the investments necessary for a prosperous future defies all reason and common sense.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
(a) space exploration is pointless, we should spend it on alleviating poverty, or
(b) Of course we should invest in space, its the only way we will have any future.
As someone else put it, back in the earliest days, there were groups of people saying "Why do you want to explore the next valley? Stay here and help us dig roots" and people boldly going where no man had gone before...
I'd argue that there's a third point of view: maybe we should look at the mess we're making here on earth, and keep our hands off Mars. After all, we're demonstrating pretty well that we have no conception of sharing the planet with other species (I mean, what kind of sick planet has hog farm waste threatening North Carolina estuaries? Oil slicks in Alaska? Clear cuts of ancient redwoods for a few quick bucks? Elephants hunted down for overgrown teeth?). And our science is still incapable of deciding whether Mars had or might have life forms of its own some day - when our sun goes red giant, mars will be warm and toasty enough for its own life (maybe for its life forms to re-emerge, even).
So my position would be, leave Mars alone until we show that we can take care of a planet. I realize this echoes the position of the "Reds" in KSR's Red Mars, and that this post sounds like I'm a tree hugging green zealot neo-luddite, but I'm actually an astronomy grad student, and I'm strongly pro-exploration and pro-technology... I just have too little faith in human feet treading lightly.
Plus there's plenty of space to explore here - what happened to those deep-sea habitats? Mine pure metals on the sea floor, live in a closed community with minimal external inputs, you get the idea. Leave Mars to the robots, which won't start grabbing land and arguing independence just yet...
(This comment is probably worth 4 cents. Or maybe nothing. I can't decide)
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
You have no idea. A few cents can per person can pay for a years clean water, a few more for grain, a few more for medicine. $7 is a HELL of a lot for a HELL of a lot of people.
Yes, and then they have children, and you have twice as severe a problem as before, so instead of needing $20 billion, you need $40 billion. These kinds of problems aren't solved with the kinds of short term bandages you suggest. What is needed are more resources, less expensive power, economic growth and yes, economic help for the less fortunate. Both goals must be served: (1) short term comfort and help and (2) long term investment in infrastructure for space exploration and exploitation, to provide us with the resources future generations will need in order to enjoy a standard of living comparable (or even better) than our own. If there isn't enough wealth to do both, then short term comfort needs to take a back seat in favor of long term prosperity. Failure to do this will condemn everyone in future generations to ever increasing levels of poverty, until all of the resources of this one planet have been exhausted and there is literally nothing left.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The moon isn't much better. Aside from rock (with some additions due to the solar wind and "gardening" by meteroids over the eons), there doesn't appear to be much there either. There are tantalizing hints of water-ice (nothing confirmed yet) but no nitrogen or carbon. You'd have to import pretty much everything you need for carbon-based life, and that $10,000/lb just to get it to LEO is pretty daunting.
Mars is the nearest place we can go that has all the basics. The atmosphere is chock full of carbon and oxygen (CO2 97%), it has nitrogen (3% in the atmosphere) and we know water (and thus hydrogen) is present; the Vikings sent back pictures of morning frosts on the ground under conditions too warm for dry ice to form, so we know that the relative humidity exceeds 100% at times under natural conditions. All the essential elements of life are there in vast quantities compared to any place other than Earth. This makes Mars the nearest place where people can easily "live off the land", and thus our best bet for a viable colony.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.