The pictures are just the tip of the iceburg. If they are able to get Spirit over to some of those rocks, it'll perform tests on them that may detect signs of life. Now that's some tax money well spent.
Don't get me started on the real ways tax money is wasted.
I think you're mixed up. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, the sky on Mars is indeed red and not Blue. The atmospheres vastly are different in both content and pressure. Also, there's probably a lot of rust dust in the air colloring things.
You might be thinking of the Martian sunset, which is blue.
Honestly, I think things will be interesting but not apocalyptic if life is discovered on Mars. If it is, there's a decent chance that it came from Earth or that Earth life came from Mars. I know it sounds crazy to think that critters could have gotten over that span of space but when dealing with the timescales, impacts, resiliency of life and distances involved, it's not all that far fetched.
Creationists will call it a hoax, some "pot-haters" will call it confirmation that life is everywhere but I'm betting that the mystery will remain largely in place.
What I'd like to see though is increased interest in Mars which it is bound to foster.
I would suggest that you read "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society. At worst, it's optimistic. Far from fiction, the Mars direct plan is based on 30 year old tech and established human capabilities.
Humans have existed in harsh conditions on Earth and a microcosm of Earth's atmosphere will get you a long way. No one ever said that you'd be able to duplicate the full Earth biosphere but that isn't needed either. There are thousands of people who would jump at the chance to be part of a Mars base in hard but livable conditions.
Humans on Mars isn't held back by technology or biology but rather politics and mismanagement. I would reiterate that you should educate yourself a bit more and not just spout off some defeatist environmentalist rhetoric or pop biology.
You don't need to launch a complete American suburb into space for people to survive. Russians have spent more than a year in orbit which is less than the time it takes to get to Mars. Once on Mars, humans can make a good deal of their provisions with the local resources.
You would do well to educate yourself on the issue before commenting on it.
I'm not a psychologist but I have taken coursework in the physical psychology so feel free to take this with a grain of salt.
While fractals and holographs sound very sexy, I don't know of any work done to prove this model of memory. I don't even know if we have the capability to detect this. If you do know of any research done is this vein, please, post some links. I'd be interested.
That said, the holographic/fractal model of memory does sound right to me and elegant to boot. One thing to remember though, the mind is often modeled after whatever the current sexy technology is. Freud thought the mind was analogous to a steam engine. Fractals are cool now so fractals it is. A greater understanding of string theory could yield a model that relies on quantum events. Who knows?
I think we're always getting closer to a true understanding of the mind but you should be careful when saying "the mind is build like this" or "memory is stored that way". The brain is poorly understood and psychology is a science in its infancy.
While this is a bummer and very bad PR for Mars exploration, I'm stoked that Mars Express made it. I believe that it's going to be a LOT more useful than Beagle.
This may sound like sour grapes but I don't think the chances of the Beagle finding life were too good to begin with. Being able to figure out where the underground water is on Mars is invaluable. Based on that info, a manned mission will have a very good chance of becoming self sufficient very quickly. Not to mention the fact that if the water news is good, so is the terraformation news.
I just hope that this doesn't set manned missions back another 30 years. Say your prayers for Spirit and Opportunity!
Dude, this is so wrong it isn't even funny. If you look at the cash breakdown here you'll see that more than half the money goes to researching desease. This is a noble cause no matter what you think about his opperating system. The Gates Founddation does wonderfull things even if I hate Clippy.
The best Mars plan on the table is Mars Direct. It calls for a manned mission to stay on the surface for a Martian year of 669 days. They will be getting hit with both solar flares and cosmic rays but so are we on earth. It's going to be about an order of magnitude worse on Mars but that's only on the order of 5 rem per day. 75 rem per day is where people start to feel barfy. Also, that 5 rem is if you're sunbathing on the surface. on day one of the landing, the explorers can just fill some sandbags and put them on top of the shelter to cut down on that figure by a lot. If people are willing to pay for tanning beds on earth, I don't think there will be a shortage of people who are willing to deal with such conditions on Mars.
in the medium term, native shelters will have to be topped with a bunch of dirt, ice or permafrost. In the long term (centuries) an ozone layer can be created and magnetic "umbrellas" (electromagnets on towers) can be created to cut down on that even more.
If you haven't already, check out The Case for Mars. It's written by the same guy who debunked the nytimes report. Before you decry it as ravings of a lunatic, keep in mind that wanting something is not exclusive to being knowledgeable about it.
going to mars will require neither 0G nor exposure to deadly amounts of rediation. People have been in space for longer than the amount of time it would take to get to Mars and have recoverd quickly and completely. Anyway, if you just attach the habitation module to the last stage of the rocket used to get off earth with a teather and spin the whole thing, you get free gravity. Make it about 350 meters and you don't get those strange fake gravity effects that you do with a short spin arm.
As for the ratiation, there's nothing special about radiation from space. The levels of it are higher than at sea level but still well below the daily dose required to induce radiation sickness. yes, there would be an elevated risk of cancer in the long term but only about 1% more. If you smoke, you're at a much greater risk.
We've been gathering data on all this for decades. How much more research do you want done before taking known (and small) risks?
It doesn't run directly off the solar cells
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Living on Mars Time
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actually, the rover has solar panels that do nothing but charge the onboard batteries. Since the power coming in from panels could go up or down, it makes much more sense to have the thing run off of batteries for a constant charge and then recharge the batteries with the solar cells.
You've got to be trolling me at this point. Just in case you're not, check this site out. It outlines how to do a direct from Earth launch to Mars on a shoestring and do it right.
Yes but what good is ISS? The shuttle is basicaly a 0G test lab already. I haven't heard of anything that ISS can do that can't be done in the shuttle. It's a foothold in space but what good is it? it's sucking up billions but is the science we're getting from it worth that much? A presence in space should be on planets or moons. There's nothing in space but space.
I'm going further and further off topic but space stations are a dead-end in space exploration. once you get there what do you do? They are uterly dependent on support from Earth. On the Moon, you have the chance of being self sufficent except for a few things that have to be thrown up every now and then. On Mars, after a short building period, you can be totaly self sustaining. Anything less is a money pit and a technogical deda-end to boot.
You mean besides an idea of what we need to learn before we can reach Mars while still alive?
How has the shuttle program done anything to contribute to a manned Mars mission? We'll do better figuring out how to get to Mars if that goal is in mind and we test tech that we plan to use to get there. There's no way the shuttle is going to be used for anything but LEO. The billions that we are burning keeping the shuttle maintained could easily be used to kick off a manned Mars program.
Besides a bunch of functioning satellites?
France has put up a bunch of those too for lower cost with unmaned rockets.
I am not a rocket scientist and you are probably not either. I am not bashing the engineers at NASA. They are not the people calling the shots. I am disapointed in the mismanagement and lack of direction. I am sure that there are visionary zelots in NASA but I've also spoken with peoplw who have worked at NASA describing government workers who might as well be working at the DMV.
For all your name calling, I didn't see you list any benifits that the shuttle program has gotten us. if you look at the homepage for the shuttle program, it looks like they don't either unless you count Grammy nods.
A question I would put to you is this: Why isn't NASA fulfilling my dreams of a spacefaring race? Their shoestring budget is $17 billion. With slightly more than that adjusted for inflation we got to the moon in the 60s. Seriously, how has human spacefaring done in the past 30 years? It has regressed. It has not gone anywhere. What difference has it made in the past 30 years. My expectations are not any more zelous than the Apollo program was.
By the way, China called, they said they'd save us a few square miles on Mars.
This is just a hair-brained idea a-la "I Love Lucy" but would it be possible to generate a fake magnetosphere in the event that we are without one for a few hundred years?
IANAP but would it be possible to place a giant electromagnet at L1 and have it deflect incoming Solar wind and particles?
It would probably have to be very powerful and possibly large (nuclear powered, 100 KM long) but would that work?
Sounds great. Now go and write your congressman. That's not a troll, it's probably the only way you or I can help drive the space program in the proper direction. I've already written mine.
The shuttles are old. They are general purpose vehicles that have been overworked, and should have been replaced.
Replaced with what? If your answer is more resuable shuttles, you should really ask yourself why. What has the shuttle program gotten us but dead astronauts, a few satilites and vital data on ants sorting tiny scrwes in space?
NASA needs a target not a veachle. Once it has a place to go, it should then design a means to get there. Lower Earth orbit is esentially nowhere. Let's hear it for Mars or at least the Moon.
Actually, I would tend to disagree. a new shuttle is just what we don't need. The problem that NASA has had for the past 30 years has been developing tech for tech sake. Scratch that, for politics sake. Developing a vechile just for the hell of it wastes money, resources, time and down the road lives. NASA needs to be goal driven, not driven by developing tech for niche interest groups.
as far as the moon base goes, there are some good things to be said about a moon base. I'd be happy if they at least made that their goal. messing around in low earth orbit has gotten us nowhere.
Wrong. It should be a priority. Do you think we'll develop tech to sheild us from radiation if we have no plan on going there? NASA needs to set a goal and develop the tech to get there.
If your attitude was around when we were all still in Africa, we'd all still be there because developing clothing is just too darned hard.
I've contributed over 5000 work units to SETI and even found one of those "interesting" signals. I stopped a while ago. Why? a few reasons:
1. I realized that the amount of time a civilization would use anything recognizable over radio waves would probably be pretty short. From the invention of radio until every signal is compressed and/or encrypted would probably be a few hundred years at best. compressed and encrypted data would just look like noise and probably wouldn't stand out. So it's either no-radio or unintelligible radio signals for billions of years with a small "hearable" window. not too promising that we'd be able to catch that.
2. There are better or at least more interesting causes out there for CPU donators. Folding@home has the potential to contribute to a nanotechnological or medical revolution. United Devices is a project to test cancer drugs and the results go to Oxford in case you're wondering about the for-profit nature of the company behind it. Finaly, the climate prediction project is contributing to a better understanding of planetary climate dynamics.
My side interest is Mars exploration and terraformation which is a pretty much just consists of reading literature on the subject. However, with contributing to nanotech, cancer drugs and climate prediction, I am making a small dent in the effort to adapt both ourselves and technology to making a new world. I realize that last part was a bit offtopic but I thought I'd at least give a little reasoning behind why I choose to run those ones.
Because if you build it in space, you have to build the panels on earth and launch them up. you waste a ton of energy doing that and it will take a long time to get back. On the Moon, you invest in a mining and fabrication facility and you can coat the "dark" side completly. That's half the size of Africa. Try putting something half the size of africa in orbit and see how many people complain.
Slashdot Mirror
I would suggest following the link in my sig. That and write your congressman. That's the most direct thing you can do to get humans to Mars.
By the way, terraformation is more likely to take about a 1000 years.
The pictures are just the tip of the iceburg. If they are able to get Spirit over to some of those rocks, it'll perform tests on them that may detect signs of life. Now that's some tax money well spent.
Don't get me started on the real ways tax money is wasted.
I think you're mixed up. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, the sky on Mars is indeed red and not Blue. The atmospheres vastly are different in both content and pressure. Also, there's probably a lot of rust dust in the air colloring things.
You might be thinking of the Martian sunset, which is blue.
Honestly, I think things will be interesting but not apocalyptic if life is discovered on Mars. If it is, there's a decent chance that it came from Earth or that Earth life came from Mars. I know it sounds crazy to think that critters could have gotten over that span of space but when dealing with the timescales, impacts, resiliency of life and distances involved, it's not all that far fetched.
Creationists will call it a hoax, some "pot-haters" will call it confirmation that life is everywhere but I'm betting that the mystery will remain largely in place.
What I'd like to see though is increased interest in Mars which it is bound to foster.
I would suggest that you read "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society. At worst, it's optimistic. Far from fiction, the Mars direct plan is based on 30 year old tech and established human capabilities.
Humans have existed in harsh conditions on Earth and a microcosm of Earth's atmosphere will get you a long way. No one ever said that you'd be able to duplicate the full Earth biosphere but that isn't needed either. There are thousands of people who would jump at the chance to be part of a Mars base in hard but livable conditions.
Humans on Mars isn't held back by technology or biology but rather politics and mismanagement. I would reiterate that you should educate yourself a bit more and not just spout off some defeatist environmentalist rhetoric or pop biology.
You don't need to launch a complete American suburb into space for people to survive. Russians have spent more than a year in orbit which is less than the time it takes to get to Mars. Once on Mars, humans can make a good deal of their provisions with the local resources.
You would do well to educate yourself on the issue before commenting on it.
I've voiced my displeasure with NASA before here but I'd like to give mad props to the men and women who made this a success.
Now let's follow up with some humans.
I'm not a psychologist but I have taken coursework in the physical psychology so feel free to take this with a grain of salt.
While fractals and holographs sound very sexy, I don't know of any work done to prove this model of memory. I don't even know if we have the capability to detect this. If you do know of any research done is this vein, please, post some links. I'd be interested.
That said, the holographic/fractal model of memory does sound right to me and elegant to boot. One thing to remember though, the mind is often modeled after whatever the current sexy technology is. Freud thought the mind was analogous to a steam engine. Fractals are cool now so fractals it is. A greater understanding of string theory could yield a model that relies on quantum events. Who knows?
I think we're always getting closer to a true understanding of the mind but you should be careful when saying "the mind is build like this" or "memory is stored that way". The brain is poorly understood and psychology is a science in its infancy.
While this is a bummer and very bad PR for Mars exploration, I'm stoked that Mars Express made it. I believe that it's going to be a LOT more useful than Beagle.
This may sound like sour grapes but I don't think the chances of the Beagle finding life were too good to begin with. Being able to figure out where the underground water is on Mars is invaluable. Based on that info, a manned mission will have a very good chance of becoming self sufficient very quickly. Not to mention the fact that if the water news is good, so is the terraformation news.
I just hope that this doesn't set manned missions back another 30 years. Say your prayers for Spirit and Opportunity!
Dude, this is so wrong it isn't even funny. If you look at the cash breakdown here you'll see that more than half the money goes to researching desease. This is a noble cause no matter what you think about his opperating system. The Gates Founddation does wonderfull things even if I hate Clippy.
ok, I'll throw down.
The best Mars plan on the table is Mars Direct. It calls for a manned mission to stay on the surface for a Martian year of 669 days. They will be getting hit with both solar flares and cosmic rays but so are we on earth. It's going to be about an order of magnitude worse on Mars but that's only on the order of 5 rem per day. 75 rem per day is where people start to feel barfy. Also, that 5 rem is if you're sunbathing on the surface. on day one of the landing, the explorers can just fill some sandbags and put them on top of the shelter to cut down on that figure by a lot. If people are willing to pay for tanning beds on earth, I don't think there will be a shortage of people who are willing to deal with such conditions on Mars.
in the medium term, native shelters will have to be topped with a bunch of dirt, ice or permafrost. In the long term (centuries) an ozone layer can be created and magnetic "umbrellas" (electromagnets on towers) can be created to cut down on that even more.
If you haven't already, check out The Case for Mars. It's written by the same guy who debunked the nytimes report. Before you decry it as ravings of a lunatic, keep in mind that wanting something is not exclusive to being knowledgeable about it.
This very report has been debunked point per point here.
going to mars will require neither 0G nor exposure to deadly amounts of rediation. People have been in space for longer than the amount of time it would take to get to Mars and have recoverd quickly and completely. Anyway, if you just attach the habitation module to the last stage of the rocket used to get off earth with a teather and spin the whole thing, you get free gravity. Make it about 350 meters and you don't get those strange fake gravity effects that you do with a short spin arm.
As for the ratiation, there's nothing special about radiation from space. The levels of it are higher than at sea level but still well below the daily dose required to induce radiation sickness. yes, there would be an elevated risk of cancer in the long term but only about 1% more. If you smoke, you're at a much greater risk.
We've been gathering data on all this for decades. How much more research do you want done before taking known (and small) risks?
actually, the rover has solar panels that do nothing but charge the onboard batteries. Since the power coming in from panels could go up or down, it makes much more sense to have the thing run off of batteries for a constant charge and then recharge the batteries with the solar cells.
You've got to be trolling me at this point. Just in case you're not, check this site out. It outlines how to do a direct from Earth launch to Mars on a shoestring and do it right.
Yes but what good is ISS? The shuttle is basicaly a 0G test lab already. I haven't heard of anything that ISS can do that can't be done in the shuttle. It's a foothold in space but what good is it? it's sucking up billions but is the science we're getting from it worth that much? A presence in space should be on planets or moons. There's nothing in space but space.
I'm going further and further off topic but space stations are a dead-end in space exploration. once you get there what do you do? They are uterly dependent on support from Earth. On the Moon, you have the chance of being self sufficent except for a few things that have to be thrown up every now and then. On Mars, after a short building period, you can be totaly self sustaining. Anything less is a money pit and a technogical deda-end to boot.
You mean besides an idea of what we need to learn before we can reach Mars while still alive?
How has the shuttle program done anything to contribute to a manned Mars mission? We'll do better figuring out how to get to Mars if that goal is in mind and we test tech that we plan to use to get there. There's no way the shuttle is going to be used for anything but LEO. The billions that we are burning keeping the shuttle maintained could easily be used to kick off a manned Mars program.
Besides a bunch of functioning satellites?
France has put up a bunch of those too for lower cost with unmaned rockets.
Besides contact w/ Alpha Centauri?
???
I am not a rocket scientist and you are probably not either. I am not bashing the engineers at NASA. They are not the people calling the shots. I am disapointed in the mismanagement and lack of direction. I am sure that there are visionary zelots in NASA but I've also spoken with peoplw who have worked at NASA describing government workers who might as well be working at the DMV.
For all your name calling, I didn't see you list any benifits that the shuttle program has gotten us. if you look at the homepage for the shuttle program, it looks like they don't either unless you count Grammy nods.
A question I would put to you is this: Why isn't NASA fulfilling my dreams of a spacefaring race? Their shoestring budget is $17 billion. With slightly more than that adjusted for inflation we got to the moon in the 60s. Seriously, how has human spacefaring done in the past 30 years? It has regressed. It has not gone anywhere. What difference has it made in the past 30 years. My expectations are not any more zelous than the Apollo program was.
By the way, China called, they said they'd save us a few square miles on Mars.
This is just a hair-brained idea a-la "I Love Lucy" but would it be possible to generate a fake magnetosphere in the event that we are without one for a few hundred years?
IANAP but would it be possible to place a giant electromagnet at L1 and have it deflect incoming Solar wind and particles?
It would probably have to be very powerful and possibly large (nuclear powered, 100 KM long) but would that work?
Sounds great. Now go and write your congressman. That's not a troll, it's probably the only way you or I can help drive the space program in the proper direction. I've already written mine.
Find your reps here
The shuttles are old. They are general purpose vehicles that have been overworked, and should have been replaced.
Replaced with what? If your answer is more resuable shuttles, you should really ask yourself why. What has the shuttle program gotten us but dead astronauts, a few satilites and vital data on ants sorting tiny scrwes in space?
NASA needs a target not a veachle. Once it has a place to go, it should then design a means to get there. Lower Earth orbit is esentially nowhere. Let's hear it for Mars or at least the Moon.
Actually, I would tend to disagree. a new shuttle is just what we don't need. The problem that NASA has had for the past 30 years has been developing tech for tech sake. Scratch that, for politics sake. Developing a vechile just for the hell of it wastes money, resources, time and down the road lives. NASA needs to be goal driven, not driven by developing tech for niche interest groups.
as far as the moon base goes, there are some good things to be said about a moon base. I'd be happy if they at least made that their goal. messing around in low earth orbit has gotten us nowhere.
Wrong. It should be a priority. Do you think we'll develop tech to sheild us from radiation if we have no plan on going there? NASA needs to set a goal and develop the tech to get there.
If your attitude was around when we were all still in Africa, we'd all still be there because developing clothing is just too darned hard.
I've contributed over 5000 work units to SETI and even found one of those "interesting" signals. I stopped a while ago. Why? a few reasons:
1. I realized that the amount of time a civilization would use anything recognizable over radio waves would probably be pretty short. From the invention of radio until every signal is compressed and/or encrypted would probably be a few hundred years at best. compressed and encrypted data would just look like noise and probably wouldn't stand out. So it's either no-radio or unintelligible radio signals for billions of years with a small "hearable" window. not too promising that we'd be able to catch that.
2. There are better or at least more interesting causes out there for CPU donators. Folding@home has the potential to contribute to a nanotechnological or medical revolution. United Devices is a project to test cancer drugs and the results go to Oxford in case you're wondering about the for-profit nature of the company behind it. Finaly, the climate prediction project is contributing to a better understanding of planetary climate dynamics.
My side interest is Mars exploration and terraformation which is a pretty much just consists of reading literature on the subject. However, with contributing to nanotech, cancer drugs and climate prediction, I am making a small dent in the effort to adapt both ourselves and technology to making a new world.
I realize that last part was a bit offtopic but I thought I'd at least give a little reasoning behind why I choose to run those ones.
Because if you build it in space, you have to build the panels on earth and launch them up. you waste a ton of energy doing that and it will take a long time to get back. On the Moon, you invest in a mining and fabrication facility and you can coat the "dark" side completly. That's half the size of Africa. Try putting something half the size of africa in orbit and see how many people complain.