I feel like picking nits to don't take this personal.
I would venture a guess that Mars has more hydrogen than Venus. Mars has visible polar water ice caps plus God knows how much frozen water in the surface. Plus, even though Venus has a higher escape velocity, it's much closer to the sun so the solar wind is that much stronger there.
Mars also has a thinner atmosphere because a good deal of it is allowed to freeze to the ground. No so on Venus.
In either case, if terraforming is done, the loss of atmosphere and hydrogen is likely to take much longer than the lifespan of the human race anyway.
Actually, Venus' atmosphere is overwhelmingly CO2 with no surface water and only 70 ppm H2O. Even the H2SO4 in the clouds doesn't add up to a whole lot. That's effectivly none compaired to Earth or even Mars with its polar caps.
Actually, Venus' atmosphere is overwhelmingly CO2 with no surface water and only 70 ppm H2O. That's effectivly none compaired to Earth or even Mars with its polar caps.
Not necessarily. Venus is as big as earth but has no magnetosphere. It's very geologically active but still no core dynamo. That might be due to its slow rotation. it will of course loose gasses but hydrogen will be the first thing to go and that's what you need for water.
counter quibble: charged particles will knock H out to space. with a magnetosphere, there is a higher chance that the H will drift back down and form water again.
nope. if it had a meaningful magnetosphere, it would be even hotter but still have water. water vapor can get hot but it would have stayed in the atmosphere if not allowed to erode off into space.
The key element (literally) lacking in both is hydrogen. The thickness of the atmosphere depends on a lot of things, not just distance from the sun. a sun-close Mars would probably develop a thick CO2 atmosphere but still loose water because of its lack of magnetosphere. Venus might cool down a bit and develop some dry ice poles but it would still have no water.
Both Mars and Venus are bone dry because they have little to no magnetosphere. This allows water vapor to be broken into H and O by UV radiation and since the H is light, it can acheive escape velocity much faster when hit by unhindered solar wind.
I've heard that one of the big drivers for the development of more powerful computing hardware is games. Like it or not, with games constantly pushing the envelope of what users demand from machines we are left with rapidly accelerating development of powerful personal computing hardware. One beneficial side effect is that we have ridiculous computing power that is only beginning to be tapped by United Devices, Folding at Home, climate prediction not to mention SETI and all the other distributed projects out there.
So in its way, games forcing the development of PC hardware is contributing to the advancement of science. If fully realized, all that computing power could change the world.
But again you're only talking about things that are useful for maintaining a space station, which is a dead end. Once it is determined that humans can survive in space for 7-9 months, you're set to go to mars at least from the human factors point. Rather than training astronauts to be space janitors, they should have been developing a mission plan to go to Mars and training the astronauts for the mission.
The trap with a space station is that it will never be perfect and there will always be room for improvement. You could do it for a hundred years and still say "look at how much we've learned and there's still ways we can get better prepared to go to Mars".
the most direct way to get prepared to go to Mars is to go there. The preparation for it will provide what's needed as was demonstrated with Apollo.
Right, Mercury and Gemini. We were only part way through Mercury when Kennedy made his announcement. Everything from mid-Mercury was devoted to the long term goal. At no point did they do missions just to learn and nothing else. it was about beating the Russians and getting to the moon. Very focused and goal oriented. No pure research projects. in fact, it was the pure research folks who probably held Apollo back the most. They wanted to test dozens of chimps to death before sending a man. only when the Russians send a guy up did they shut up because they realized that they would have wasted time.
Actually it's a lot more expensive to do it that way. Each shuttle launch was what $500 million? One shot satellites are the way to go. Launching to an orbiting point to launch to another orbit just doesn't make sense.
The reasons to go to the moon were largely political but the long term goal is to expand the reach of earth life and to make us a multi-planet species. No amount of robots will ever do that.
No. You're mixing apples and oranges when talking about nuclear research as opposed to space exploration. I'm not well versed on nuclear research but as space goes, it has been clearly demonstrated that if you have a specific goal in mind, you get all the spinoff technology you can handle plus you get the end goal you set out for in the first place.
starting a project for the sake of developing spinoff technology is bullshit.
And no, if we had a moonbase, that would be cool but it would be a distraction from a Mars base. That's the money shot. space stations simply aren't very useful. I'm not just bitching for bitching sake.
Getting to mars requires several months of 0-g living and life support.
So your justification for ISS is so that we get better at fixing problems on space stations? At what point do we say, "we're good at fixing space stations, now let's go to Mars"? We'll get good at being a spacefairing race when we restart traveling through space to get to other worlds. Dicking around in a vacuum with no clear destination is nonsense.
My beef is that all the zero-G and life support stuff was established with Skylab and Mir. Further development would have been done as part of a Mars mission or further Moon ones. Apollo was done right because they had a clear goal and had to figure out the details in between. Randomly developing technologies is very inefficient if your mindset is "this will be useful for something someday". That was the justification for ISS for the most part.
Actually as the other poster pointed out, civilians went too.
As for the degrees, not of people were inspired to get an education for that exact reason. This was a benefit that I don't think NASA had even envisioned but was probably more enriching to our country than anything else.
No one looks at shuttle astronauts and says "wow, I want to go into orbit and go back down again". The idea of being real explorers was very engaging. I only hope the new Mars push gets seen through. It will have the same effect if not more.
Amen. Don't even get me started on the shuttle. You know what sold Nixon on the idea? The crazy idea that we could use it to steal Soviet satellites. One silly star trek style selling point and the space program was put in idle for 30 years.
If NASA got half the military budget, it would be about 12 times its current size. Shit, we could have a bustling Martian population now with that kind of support provided the proper direction. Of course, it's possible to piss all that away on go-nowhere stuff like the ISS.
With the proper direction, there should be a Martian population now. When the NASA focus was switched from the Apollo mindset to low earth orbit and shuttle thinking, it crippled NASA as an productive organization.
Slashdot Mirror
Crap, I was hoping for a Mars mission.
I feel like picking nits to don't take this personal.
I would venture a guess that Mars has more hydrogen than Venus. Mars has visible polar water ice caps plus God knows how much frozen water in the surface. Plus, even though Venus has a higher escape velocity, it's much closer to the sun so the solar wind is that much stronger there.
Mars also has a thinner atmosphere because a good deal of it is allowed to freeze to the ground. No so on Venus.
In either case, if terraforming is done, the loss of atmosphere and hydrogen is likely to take much longer than the lifespan of the human race anyway.
Actually, Venus' atmosphere is overwhelmingly CO2 with no surface water and only 70 ppm H2O. Even the H2SO4 in the clouds doesn't add up to a whole lot. That's effectivly none compaired to Earth or even Mars with its polar caps.
Actually, Venus' atmosphere is overwhelmingly CO2 with no surface water and only 70 ppm H2O. That's effectivly none compaired to Earth or even Mars with its polar caps.
Not necessarily. Venus is as big as earth but has no magnetosphere. It's very geologically active but still no core dynamo. That might be due to its slow rotation. it will of course loose gasses but hydrogen will be the first thing to go and that's what you need for water.
counter quibble: charged particles will knock H out to space. with a magnetosphere, there is a higher chance that the H will drift back down and form water again.
nope. if it had a meaningful magnetosphere, it would be even hotter but still have water. water vapor can get hot but it would have stayed in the atmosphere if not allowed to erode off into space.
The key element (literally) lacking in both is hydrogen. The thickness of the atmosphere depends on a lot of things, not just distance from the sun. a sun-close Mars would probably develop a thick CO2 atmosphere but still loose water because of its lack of magnetosphere. Venus might cool down a bit and develop some dry ice poles but it would still have no water.
If it turns out that it had water for billions of years I would call that a long time.
Just because we don't see it now doesn't mean it was short lived. Remember that dinosaurs lasted much much longer than humans have so far.
Both Mars and Venus are bone dry because they have little to no magnetosphere. This allows water vapor to be broken into H and O by UV radiation and since the H is light, it can acheive escape velocity much faster when hit by unhindered solar wind.
Anyone remember this from a few months back? And it's been how long since TCP has been out?
20 years might not be enough.
I've heard that one of the big drivers for the development of more powerful computing hardware is games. Like it or not, with games constantly pushing the envelope of what users demand from machines we are left with rapidly accelerating development of powerful personal computing hardware. One beneficial side effect is that we have ridiculous computing power that is only beginning to be tapped by United Devices, Folding at Home, climate prediction not to mention SETI and all the other distributed projects out there.
So in its way, games forcing the development of PC hardware is contributing to the advancement of science. If fully realized, all that computing power could change the world.
But again you're only talking about things that are useful for maintaining a space station, which is a dead end. Once it is determined that humans can survive in space for 7-9 months, you're set to go to mars at least from the human factors point. Rather than training astronauts to be space janitors, they should have been developing a mission plan to go to Mars and training the astronauts for the mission.
The trap with a space station is that it will never be perfect and there will always be room for improvement. You could do it for a hundred years and still say "look at how much we've learned and there's still ways we can get better prepared to go to Mars".
the most direct way to get prepared to go to Mars is to go there. The preparation for it will provide what's needed as was demonstrated with Apollo.
Then why has Mars only been announced as a goal in the past year. It's all 0g juggling until a real intention is defined.
Right, Mercury and Gemini. We were only part way through Mercury when Kennedy made his announcement. Everything from mid-Mercury was devoted to the long term goal. At no point did they do missions just to learn and nothing else. it was about beating the Russians and getting to the moon. Very focused and goal oriented. No pure research projects. in fact, it was the pure research folks who probably held Apollo back the most. They wanted to test dozens of chimps to death before sending a man. only when the Russians send a guy up did they shut up because they realized that they would have wasted time.
Actually it's a lot more expensive to do it that way. Each shuttle launch was what $500 million? One shot satellites are the way to go. Launching to an orbiting point to launch to another orbit just doesn't make sense.
The reasons to go to the moon were largely political but the long term goal is to expand the reach of earth life and to make us a multi-planet species. No amount of robots will ever do that.
um, how do you think we got to the moon? Did NASA draw upon decades and decades of moon exploration or did they boldly figure it out as they went?
No. You're mixing apples and oranges when talking about nuclear research as opposed to space exploration. I'm not well versed on nuclear research but as space goes, it has been clearly demonstrated that if you have a specific goal in mind, you get all the spinoff technology you can handle plus you get the end goal you set out for in the first place.
starting a project for the sake of developing spinoff technology is bullshit.
And no, if we had a moonbase, that would be cool but it would be a distraction from a Mars base. That's the money shot. space stations simply aren't very useful. I'm not just bitching for bitching sake.
Getting to mars requires several months of 0-g living and life support.
So your justification for ISS is so that we get better at fixing problems on space stations? At what point do we say, "we're good at fixing space stations, now let's go to Mars"? We'll get good at being a spacefairing race when we restart traveling through space to get to other worlds. Dicking around in a vacuum with no clear destination is nonsense.
My beef is that all the zero-G and life support stuff was established with Skylab and Mir. Further development would have been done as part of a Mars mission or further Moon ones. Apollo was done right because they had a clear goal and had to figure out the details in between. Randomly developing technologies is very inefficient if your mindset is "this will be useful for something someday". That was the justification for ISS for the most part.
my bad
Actually as the other poster pointed out, civilians went too.
As for the degrees, not of people were inspired to get an education for that exact reason. This was a benefit that I don't think NASA had even envisioned but was probably more enriching to our country than anything else.
No one looks at shuttle astronauts and says "wow, I want to go into orbit and go back down again". The idea of being real explorers was very engaging. I only hope the new Mars push gets seen through. It will have the same effect if not more.
Amen. Don't even get me started on the shuttle. You know what sold Nixon on the idea? The crazy idea that we could use it to steal Soviet satellites. One silly star trek style selling point and the space program was put in idle for 30 years.
If NASA got half the military budget, it would be about 12 times its current size. Shit, we could have a bustling Martian population now with that kind of support provided the proper direction. Of course, it's possible to piss all that away on go-nowhere stuff like the ISS.
With the proper direction, there should be a Martian population now. When the NASA focus was switched from the Apollo mindset to low earth orbit and shuttle thinking, it crippled NASA as an productive organization.
I didn't realize that the subgenuis thing was in reference to something else.