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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. "
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.
On the other hand, sending people to Mars or the Moon with the intention of leaving them there, now that's interesting.
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!
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
-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
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!
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"
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
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