The technology that allows humans to survive in radiation fields that exist outside the Van Allen belts for more than a few days does not exist.
And we hear more from the post truth faction. Read my other posts with the links, and thn give a reasoned response, not just completely unattributed made up bullshit.
Problem management is going to be a biggie. Basically, no matter what goes wrong, you are on your own. Even in the most remote places on earth, if things go really, really bad, you can radio for help and if you can hold out for a few days, you will be ok. Not to mention that even the most hostile places on earth are several orders of magnitude more friendly to human life than Mars.
Its a little strange and sad that for all of the advances we have made, that one of the results is people with free-floating fear. So many are one thought away from being afraid to live more than a block away from a Hospital - just in case.
Not all people are like that though. Some people have a sense of adventure and wanderlust. Whereas once upon a time, we might hop a sailing vessel, or take wagons to new places. Some just want to live a life consisting of as little risk as they can expose themselves to.
Myself? I'd hop on a rocket to Mars one way for the adventure as well as the research. Robots are cool and all, and serve a good purpose, but I can tell you that for every interesting fact they turn up, a scientist is frustrated as hell because there are ten new questions that the robot can't test for. Simple questions.
If I were to die out there, well so what? Is the rest of humanity's fate going to be any different? If you iive ten years longer than me and spend it watching reality shows, has your life been more worthwhile than mine?
If I had the choice of meeting my death on a cold windswept world, I'd choose to die that way than live 25 more years as rather demented, hooked up to tubes or in a nursing home, drugged to keep me handleable, steadily draining away my entire estate like the older members of my family.
By the way - you know when they died? When their estate was emptied. Have fun! And be safe. Always be safe.
You're forgetting a few Ultimate Truths that you, as an engineer, should know:
It always costs more and takes longer
Murphy's Law, in general
Can we get them there? Sure. Will they survive the trip? Maybe. Will they survive long living on Mars? Coin-flip, at best. By the time we got anyone there and established, there'll be a thousand little problems that nobody thought of, or thought wouldn't be as serious as they turn out to be, any one of which will kill everyone. Anyone volunteering to be in the first wave of 'colonists' to Mars should consider it to be not only a one-way trip, but a suicide mission.
Sounds like a good idea to do nothing at all ever, just gather berrys and scavenge the occasional dead animal.
I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.
Radiation will be a big problem, especially if there is a solar storm during transit. Mass helps, but not as much as most of us think. Water would be helpful, since we obviously need a good bit, but then there is a plastic named RXF1. It shows a lot of promise. This is a link from 2005. https://science.nasa.gov/scien...
It has 3X the tensile strength of Aluminum, yet around a third of the weight. Bring polyethylene based, it is good protection against radiation - I don't know if NASA's product is borated or not, but the nuc industry is already using borated polyethylene. http://www.radiationproducts.c....
Regardless, most people like AC think that you need something like lead as shielding. Problem is, lead makes for a lot of secondary radiation when it is hit, so it isn't as good as people think.
It's amusing, but a bigger concern is making the poly based shielding fireproof. And a bonus is it is a ballistic shield - always a really good thing in space.
So while people like AC are busy calling this stuff a pipe dream or fantasy, We have a lot of stuff happening. Things like Orion and the Ares Rocket are parts that are pretty well known. the BEAM expandable modules are another. Wonder what that's made of, eh? https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...
Looking at the mass of the thing, it's almost ridiculously doable. Don't even need a big expensive Ares rocket to boost it to orbit.
Shit got real everyone, not a bit of wishful thinking needed. We got the tools, and we have the talent.
" What technology needs to happen that does not exist already? "
Since we have not sent even a rat to Mars, the answer to your asinine question is: EVERYTHING. Until you've BUILT and DONE it, all you have is WISHFUL THINKING.
I can easily build a lot of things in my garage, I have a mill, lathe, and the materials needed. If I decide to build a steam engine - already existing technology, I can do that, and it will work. No wishing needed, just doing.
Make certain to type your reply to me in all caps. That shows that you know what you are talking about, and really turns the ladies on.
This is the first time I've heard of this, my guess is it's in reference to yy chromosome. But considering at the time of the name change they were showing a lot of pro wrestling, I'm not sure much of their target audience would even think of that. I have no idea of what their programing is these days as I have not watched it in several years.
You've decided to stop making sense? What technology needs to happen that does not exist already?
This isn't even a concept that we shouldn't incorporate new technology as it happens, merely that the whole thing could be accomplished today, without any new inventions.
Imagine the work that had to happen to create say, the F1 engine. This was applied science, but a lot of new things had to happen to pump out that much power from a single engine. And we've built on that since then.
So we can get into orbit and leave Earth's gravity well. We can build structures in space that can maintain human life indefinitely. We can move those structures. We can get to Mars, We can land things on Mars. Questions remain about growing food, but no deal breakers are seen so far. All with present day technology.
And as new technology is learned/developed, it can only get easier.
that was their actual explanation. When they changed their name from "The Science Fiction Channel" to "SciFi", sure, I can see that. But when they changed to "SyFy" they did actually say that it was to appeal to women.
I'm not sure why this is modded down, but it is 100% correct. Most Space Nutters get their "knowledge" from scifi, not reality. The reality is that engineering is tough, very tough. I am not talking about programming either. Anyone who has engineered anything even moderately complex knows we are not going to be living on Mars.
There is no breakthrough technology needed to put a colony of humans on Mars. And I've been heavily involved in a lot of engineering. The questions are method, cost, and will to do it, not inventing new things.
This might be thought of as submarine level technology, not so much on the details, but on the concept of keeping humans alive and healthy in a hostile environment. In fact much of putting people long term on a planet like Mars is in many respects easier.
Questions of "should we?" are valid, and always worth discussing. Questions of "could we" have already been answered. We can.
Could be interesting in countries where interpreters of an old holy text have a significant influence on government policy and usually say that Deity would not approve of such technology.
My first thought. A case study might be Lysenkoism. It wasn't based on religion, but of ideology. And ideals, religion or otherwise, can trump truth - for a short time.
Most, but not all, problems solved AMD back to a familiar controllable (sort of) environment.
You hit it. I never used the word controllable before in this context but that is the perfect word to use.
With Windows 10, we are no longer controlling our own computers. The updates come in when they decide they come in, They tell you things work that aren't working, and have turned even administrators into plain users.
It gets laughable some times. I've had several cases where an update bitches up a sound driver, but since the sound card troubleshooter claims the driver is okay, the person with the problem insists that the driver is okay. A few have become pretty belligerent, one telling me to fuck off and quit wasting his time.
I was really surprised when he came back and apologized after finally trying my fix.
My all time favorite was when an update pooched an ethernet card on my network, and gave me a message of "Ethernet driver not installed correctly - connect to internet".
Debt is only an asset if you can collect it. There's no debt collector out there big enough to muscle up on the USA at the moment, so who is China going to call? And if they ruin our credit rating, what's that do to theirs? Nothing positive.
This is of course a hypothetical situation, but if the US were to deploy sanctions against China, China could call the debt they hold. If the US refuses to pay it, We've defaulted, and every other country that holds US debt will have a big problem with us. China holds a bit over a trillion, and ther countries bring the total foreign owned debt to around 4 trillion.
This is what the boys down at the shop call an "oh shit" situation.
This is what we get when we demand one sentence solutions to War and Peace length issues.
From the aritlce:
"A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US."
If limiting the number of students studying in the US is on their threat list then the list must represent the entirety of their leverage against the USA because that's a pretty insignificant threat to include.
Go tell a University that. That's only one thing, but Universities charge top dollar for foreign students. P
Anyhow, no, China and America have areal co-dependent thing going on that believe it or not, is helpful to both countries. Just see what happens if China demands the debt it is holding be paid back. They need us badly, and we need them badly.
Who's going to pick it once Trump deports all the Mexicans?
If you got rid of welfare, it would be the poor.
Nope - a machine would be doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Why do you think we're going to go back to the early 1800's just so you can have simple solutions to complex problems?
Reality trumps soundbites every time. Pun intended. Popcorn?
The US and China are linked like a heroin addict and dealer. Sure, if the heroin addict goes off, it will be brutally unpleasant and traumatic. But if the addict stops buying for whatever reason, the dealer's "suppliers" are going to make his life supremely unpleasant, up to and including murdering him.
Yes, we are adicted to each other. And move that the USA takes can/will be countered by a move on China's part. We are as co-dependent as an old alcoholic couple, with China needing US money, and the US needing the stabilization of China carrying a big part of it's debt.
A call on the debt will be a kick in the nuts to the US economy, and might just be the impetus for the Yuan to replace the dollar as the global currency.
The question is who would be hurt most, because it would be pretty devastating.
Meanwhile, just sitting here with my popcorn, watching reality rear it's ugly head.
China has absolutely no appreciation for how much of the Republican base and the blue dog democrats are at a total ZFG attitude toward free trade now. What are you going to do, China? Make my LG G5 that was made in South Korea more expensive?"
The problem such as it is, is that China is supporting us to the tune of over a trillion dollars. The only way that we can do the trade sanctions is to do them. So we start a trade war, and China calls the debt. Kinda like Mate/Checkmate.
Like it or not, the world is now interconnected. The results of the US going the isolation route are remarkably suicidal.
This is like saying that Global Warming is false because it snowed all week. Global economics are so complicated that anyone who feels comfortable talking about them casually in a random Internet forum should not be listened to.
The problem is, Pepe' likes one sentence answers. NO complex things allowed. So we gots us a fine soundbite Pepe'king.
If a trade war occurs with China, consumer prices will significantly inflate.
China has much more to lose in a trade-war than the USA does. Their economy is tightly bound to exports. China knows this and is bluffing.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I hope he pushes this issue, and encourages China to shift more to a consumer driven economy rather than an export economy.
And with threat of nuclear force if need be. Right?
There is one little teent tiny miniscule insignificant thing though.
That patry figure is how much the USA is in debt to China.
I suspect that if The new America decides to grab China by the Pussy, that China will simply call it's debt.
There is a reason why they call the new leader of th efree world naive.
Meanwhile, this is all shaping up to be much more entertaining than I ever thought possible. When bragging and bluster runs into the the hard cold wall of reality. Popcorn?
When Pepe's gets backed into a corner is when it will get deadly serious interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
The technology that allows humans to survive in radiation fields that exist outside the Van Allen belts for more than a few days does not exist.
And we hear more from the post truth faction. Read my other posts with the links, and thn give a reasoned response, not just completely unattributed made up bullshit.
Problem management is going to be a biggie. Basically, no matter what goes wrong, you are on your own. Even in the most remote places on earth, if things go really, really bad, you can radio for help and if you can hold out for a few days, you will be ok. Not to mention that even the most hostile places on earth are several orders of magnitude more friendly to human life than Mars.
Its a little strange and sad that for all of the advances we have made, that one of the results is people with free-floating fear. So many are one thought away from being afraid to live more than a block away from a Hospital - just in case.
Not all people are like that though. Some people have a sense of adventure and wanderlust. Whereas once upon a time, we might hop a sailing vessel, or take wagons to new places. Some just want to live a life consisting of as little risk as they can expose themselves to.
Myself? I'd hop on a rocket to Mars one way for the adventure as well as the research. Robots are cool and all, and serve a good purpose, but I can tell you that for every interesting fact they turn up, a scientist is frustrated as hell because there are ten new questions that the robot can't test for. Simple questions.
If I were to die out there, well so what? Is the rest of humanity's fate going to be any different? If you iive ten years longer than me and spend it watching reality shows, has your life been more worthwhile than mine?
If I had the choice of meeting my death on a cold windswept world, I'd choose to die that way than live 25 more years as rather demented, hooked up to tubes or in a nursing home, drugged to keep me handleable, steadily draining away my entire estate like the older members of my family.
By the way - you know when they died? When their estate was emptied. Have fun! And be safe. Always be safe.
You're forgetting a few Ultimate Truths that you, as an engineer, should know:
Can we get them there? Sure. Will they survive the trip? Maybe. Will they survive long living on Mars? Coin-flip, at best. By the time we got anyone there and established, there'll be a thousand little problems that nobody thought of, or thought wouldn't be as serious as they turn out to be, any one of which will kill everyone. Anyone volunteering to be in the first wave of 'colonists' to Mars should consider it to be not only a one-way trip, but a suicide mission.
Sounds like a good idea to do nothing at all ever, just gather berrys and scavenge the occasional dead animal.
I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.
Radiation will be a big problem, especially if there is a solar storm during transit. Mass helps, but not as much as most of us think. Water would be helpful, since we obviously need a good bit, but then there is a plastic named RXF1. It shows a lot of promise. This is a link from 2005. https://science.nasa.gov/scien...
It has 3X the tensile strength of Aluminum, yet around a third of the weight. Bring polyethylene based, it is good protection against radiation - I don't know if NASA's product is borated or not, but the nuc industry is already using borated polyethylene. http://www.radiationproducts.c....
Regardless, most people like AC think that you need something like lead as shielding. Problem is, lead makes for a lot of secondary radiation when it is hit, so it isn't as good as people think.
It's amusing, but a bigger concern is making the poly based shielding fireproof. And a bonus is it is a ballistic shield - always a really good thing in space.
So while people like AC are busy calling this stuff a pipe dream or fantasy, We have a lot of stuff happening. Things like Orion and the Ares Rocket are parts that are pretty well known. the BEAM expandable modules are another. Wonder what that's made of, eh? https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...
Looking at the mass of the thing, it's almost ridiculously doable. Don't even need a big expensive Ares rocket to boost it to orbit.
Shit got real everyone, not a bit of wishful thinking needed. We got the tools, and we have the talent.
" What technology needs to happen that does not exist already? "
Since we have not sent even a rat to Mars, the answer to your asinine question is: EVERYTHING. Until you've BUILT and DONE it, all you have is WISHFUL THINKING.
I can easily build a lot of things in my garage, I have a mill, lathe, and the materials needed. If I decide to build a steam engine - already existing technology, I can do that, and it will work. No wishing needed, just doing.
Make certain to type your reply to me in all caps. That shows that you know what you are talking about, and really turns the ladies on.
Why would the name SyFy appeal to women?
This is the first time I've heard of this, my guess is it's in reference to yy chromosome. But considering at the time of the name change they were showing a lot of pro wrestling, I'm not sure much of their target audience would even think of that. I have no idea of what their programing is these days as I have not watched it in several years.
I can't remember the last time I watched either.
Then you're not much of an engineer.
You've decided to stop making sense? What technology needs to happen that does not exist already?
This isn't even a concept that we shouldn't incorporate new technology as it happens, merely that the whole thing could be accomplished today, without any new inventions.
Imagine the work that had to happen to create say, the F1 engine. This was applied science, but a lot of new things had to happen to pump out that much power from a single engine. And we've built on that since then.
So we can get into orbit and leave Earth's gravity well. We can build structures in space that can maintain human life indefinitely. We can move those structures. We can get to Mars, We can land things on Mars. Questions remain about growing food, but no deal breakers are seen so far. All with present day technology.
And as new technology is learned/developed, it can only get easier.
So they were saying all kinds of things that made no sense.
Though one might postulate that perhaps they thought "SciFi" appeals to males, so they were divesting from that.
Sounds like cocaine might have reappeared on the scene.
that was their actual explanation. When they changed their name from "The Science Fiction Channel" to "SciFi", sure, I can see that. But when they changed to "SyFy" they did actually say that it was to appeal to women.
Why would the name SyFy appeal to women?
I'm not sure why this is modded down, but it is 100% correct. Most Space Nutters get their "knowledge" from scifi, not reality. The reality is that engineering is tough, very tough. I am not talking about programming either. Anyone who has engineered anything even moderately complex knows we are not going to be living on Mars.
There is no breakthrough technology needed to put a colony of humans on Mars. And I've been heavily involved in a lot of engineering. The questions are method, cost, and will to do it, not inventing new things.
This might be thought of as submarine level technology, not so much on the details, but on the concept of keeping humans alive and healthy in a hostile environment. In fact much of putting people long term on a planet like Mars is in many respects easier.
Questions of "should we?" are valid, and always worth discussing. Questions of "could we" have already been answered. We can.
Could be interesting in countries where interpreters of an old holy text have a significant influence on government policy and usually say that Deity would not approve of such technology.
My first thought. A case study might be Lysenkoism. It wasn't based on religion, but of ideology. And ideals, religion or otherwise, can trump truth - for a short time.
Israel will create one to wipe out Palestinians, and boy, will they be in for a surprise.
Well played sir - well played indeed!
Most, but not all, problems solved AMD back to a familiar controllable (sort of) environment.
You hit it. I never used the word controllable before in this context but that is the perfect word to use.
With Windows 10, we are no longer controlling our own computers. The updates come in when they decide they come in, They tell you things work that aren't working, and have turned even administrators into plain users.
It gets laughable some times. I've had several cases where an update bitches up a sound driver, but since the sound card troubleshooter claims the driver is okay, the person with the problem insists that the driver is okay. A few have become pretty belligerent, one telling me to fuck off and quit wasting his time.
I was really surprised when he came back and apologized after finally trying my fix.
My all time favorite was when an update pooched an ethernet card on my network, and gave me a message of "Ethernet driver not installed correctly - connect to internet".
Don't blame me for your foolishness.
Says the guy who thinks poor people will be picking cotton.
Take a deep breath Pepe'. Now relax. It will all be better soon. No struggles, only dreams.
Why don't you check other replies before making yourself redundant?
Because I think you needed reminded a few times so it would sink in.
But the best schools are already heavily oversubscribed so they wont be left wanting for students if China stops sending theirs.
Just not foreign students, who pay by far the highest prices. By far.
It's like replacing students who pay 10 thousand a semester with students that pay 2 thousand a semester.
Oh wait. The numbers might be off, but that's exactly the situation.
Debt is only an asset if you can collect it. There's no debt collector out there big enough to muscle up on the USA at the moment, so who is China going to call? And if they ruin our credit rating, what's that do to theirs? Nothing positive.
This is of course a hypothetical situation, but if the US were to deploy sanctions against China, China could call the debt they hold. If the US refuses to pay it, We've defaulted, and every other country that holds US debt will have a big problem with us. China holds a bit over a trillion, and ther countries bring the total foreign owned debt to around 4 trillion.
This is what the boys down at the shop call an "oh shit" situation.
This is what we get when we demand one sentence solutions to War and Peace length issues.
From the aritlce: "A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus. US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and maize imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US." If limiting the number of students studying in the US is on their threat list then the list must represent the entirety of their leverage against the USA because that's a pretty insignificant threat to include.
Go tell a University that. That's only one thing, but Universities charge top dollar for foreign students. P Anyhow, no, China and America have areal co-dependent thing going on that believe it or not, is helpful to both countries. Just see what happens if China demands the debt it is holding be paid back. They need us badly, and we need them badly.
Who's going to pick it once Trump deports all the Mexicans?
If you got rid of welfare, it would be the poor.
Nope - a machine would be doing it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Why do you think we're going to go back to the early 1800's just so you can have simple solutions to complex problems?
Reality trumps soundbites every time. Pun intended. Popcorn?
The US and China are linked like a heroin addict and dealer. Sure, if the heroin addict goes off, it will be brutally unpleasant and traumatic. But if the addict stops buying for whatever reason, the dealer's "suppliers" are going to make his life supremely unpleasant, up to and including murdering him.
Yes, we are adicted to each other. And move that the USA takes can/will be countered by a move on China's part. We are as co-dependent as an old alcoholic couple, with China needing US money, and the US needing the stabilization of China carrying a big part of it's debt.
A call on the debt will be a kick in the nuts to the US economy, and might just be the impetus for the Yuan to replace the dollar as the global currency.
The question is who would be hurt most, because it would be pretty devastating.
Meanwhile, just sitting here with my popcorn, watching reality rear it's ugly head.
China has absolutely no appreciation for how much of the Republican base and the blue dog democrats are at a total ZFG attitude toward free trade now. What are you going to do, China? Make my LG G5 that was made in South Korea more expensive?"
The problem such as it is, is that China is supporting us to the tune of over a trillion dollars. The only way that we can do the trade sanctions is to do them. So we start a trade war, and China calls the debt. Kinda like Mate/Checkmate.
Like it or not, the world is now interconnected. The results of the US going the isolation route are remarkably suicidal.
Had Carter won, there'd still be a Berlin wall and the effective enslavement of eastern Europe.
And had I won, there would be free popcorn for everyone, Pepe'.
The awesome thing about you Pepe', is you seem to know exactly how things that never happened turned out.
This is like saying that Global Warming is false because it snowed all week. Global economics are so complicated that anyone who feels comfortable talking about them casually in a random Internet forum should not be listened to.
The problem is, Pepe' likes one sentence answers. NO complex things allowed. So we gots us a fine soundbite Pepe'king.
Popcorn?
China has much more to lose in a trade-war than the USA does. Their economy is tightly bound to exports. China knows this and is bluffing.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I hope he pushes this issue, and encourages China to shift more to a consumer driven economy rather than an export economy.
And with threat of nuclear force if need be. Right?
There is one little teent tiny miniscule insignificant thing though.
1.185 Trillion dollars of insignificance. https://www.thebalance.com/u-s...
That patry figure is how much the USA is in debt to China.
I suspect that if The new America decides to grab China by the Pussy, that China will simply call it's debt.
There is a reason why they call the new leader of th efree world naive.
Meanwhile, this is all shaping up to be much more entertaining than I ever thought possible. When bragging and bluster runs into the the hard cold wall of reality. Popcorn?
When Pepe's gets backed into a corner is when it will get deadly serious interesting.