Any major manned project at this point is going to involve a lot of robotic probes and preparation.
Yeah, we're already doing that.
No, not really. We're sending out unmanned probes for getting data. What I'm referring to is robotic mining and fabrication facilities.
I disagree entirely. For simple probing around, sure, that'll work OK, but if you want to do any really serious work, you have to have boots on the ground. Remotely-operated vehicles are *not* going to build factories, mines, etc.
Pretty much all the technology needed for autonomous repairs and for remote operation exists. We aren't deploying it in current environments because there isn't much need to in most environments. In the one environment where they would be helpful, satellite repair, the organizations with an effective monopoly on launches have little interest in pushing the technology.
But why would you build "factories, mines, etc." on the moon anyway? The moon is a fairly deep gravity well, so getting stuff off it is not all that easy; and the stuff we're mostly interested in (metals, volatiles, organics) is much harder to get from the moon than from either earth or asteroids.
But there's no reason we can't get started building habitats and industrial facilities on the Moon simultaneously.
Depends on what you mean by "we" and "no reason". If you assume unlimited funding for governmental space agencies, they can, of course, put manned habitats on the moon while also doing other things. But for anything that survives a cost/benefit analysis and is self-sustaining long term, I don't think the moon is going to make much sense. I think that was the issue with the moon program in the first place: there just hasn't been any economic reason for going back.
I'm assuming that we need to make economic tradeoffs and that space exploration will only survive if it makes economic sense. And under those assumption, the asteroid belt is the only way to go. Building lunar and Martian colonies is technically feasible already, but very costly, and provides little economic return; I think those colonization plans will only take off once other space related activities have expanded our economy to the point that we can afford them as luxuries.
Like I said, NASA says you're wrong - and they're the ones doing the actual research on survival on Mars. Get over it.
Apparently, you can't even be bothered to read your own sources:
"But now that we know it's there, I am confident we will be able to design around it," he said. "I have a lot of co-workers here at Johnson Space Center who work in the human exploration side of things, and none of them seem to think perchlorate is a showstopper.
Mining asteroids only sounds great in theory - until you get down to the cost/benefit equation, or if you never intend to earth. Ever. Get over that too while you're at it.
NASA and private investors disagree with your Luddite beliefs, both spending a lot of money on making asteroid mining happen. I would point you at pages for the relevant projects, but that is pointless, since you are obviously incapable of comprehending anything longer than a headline.
So, if you know actually what it is, why do you make irrelevant references to it to support your incorrect idea that Martian perchlorates are a significant threat to astronauts? Are you saying that that you are being deliberately misleading and deceptive?
Even the clouds of Venus makes more sense
We weren't discussing whether it "makes sense" to go to Mars, we are discussing your erroneous statement "The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you."
As I have said before, I think the obvious next step is commercial, robotic asteroid mining, followed (many decades later) by constructing space habitats for humans.
And we're simply not going to Mars. Period.
You certainly aren't going anywhere given your level of scientific ignorance and your inability to make a coherent argument. Are you in marketing or HR? I certainly hope you aren't in any engineering or scientific position.
People from NASA in this interview [space.com] disagree about the risks.
Well, what can I say, not every NASA scientist is an expert on everything, and Peter Smith happens to be wrong on this one.
So does NOAA [noaa.gov],
That's a material safety data sheet, and the "Health Hazard' quoted there is just the generic health hazard for oxidizers. Really, try to understand what you cite.
and if you look further, so does the DOT.
The DOT classifies perchlorates as "hazardous" because they are oxidizers. That is, when mixed with combustible materials, they turn explosive. That is not an issue for a Mars mission.
It's not benign.
Neither is table salt. But it's not a significant concern for a Mars mission. Explosions are not an issue. Acute toxicity is not an issue either, because astronauts are not going to be exposed to enough of it. Long term toxicity is potentially an issue, though less so in adults. Long term toxicity is due to the effect of perchlorates on the thyroid. That's not a show-stopper, since there are several ways of dealing with it.
If anything, the widespread availability of perchlorates on Mars is useful, since they can potentially be turned into breathable oxygen and rocket propellants.
Core K-12 CS Practices'. "Participating in an inclusive computing culture encompasses the following: building and collaborating with diverse computational teams, involving diverse users in the design process, considering the implication of design choices on the widest set of end users, accounting for the safety and security of diverse end users, and fostering inclusive identities of computer scientists.
I was worried for a moment that generations of elementary school children would be forced to suffer through actual computer science content, like programming, sorting, assembly language, and computer architecture. I'm relieved that my worries were unfounded: they just seem to be forced to suffer through the same social activist crap they already have to sit through, except instead of the penguin getting along with the lion, it will now be expressed in the more kid-friendly terms of "inclusive design" and "team diversity". Yay!
It's much too far away; it's even farther than Mars. It also doesn't have that much mass, and it's all spread out except for Vesta and Ceres. We should be sending probes there, for sure, but we're nowhere near ready to send people there. Even Mars makes more sense than that.
Any major manned project at this point is going to involve a lot of robotic probes and preparation. But asteroids are a lot easier to get to and from than Mars, precisely because of their lack of gravity and lack of atmosphere. Mars has just the wrong amount of each: enough to be a nuisance, not quite enough to make it really Earth-like.
A lunar space elevator might be a nice project. But in the end, the moon is a really harsh environment, the resources it has are hard to get at, and it, too, has just too much gravity. The proximity of moon to earth also means that remotely operated robots are a reasonable alternative to manned exploration. The 3s delay is annoying, but something remote operators can learn to deal with, in particular when assisted by robotics.
I still think our primary focus should be exploration of the asteroid belt, first with robotic probes, then towing asteroids into lunar orbits, creating habitats, and finally moving out there.
I'm intensely interested in why people like you (or the role you are pretending to play, perhaps as a paid shill) want the government to have MORE control what LITTLE you know.
In fact, I believe strongly that the government should have less control of what I know and that the power of government should be greatly reduced.
Instead, people like you vent your outrage, demand special deals for media-savvy personalities, and argue endlessly that if we just elect the right Leader, everything will be better. And that's why I despise people like you: you pretend to be on the side of liberty and freedom, and at the same time, people like you are primarily responsible for the massively increased intrusions of government into our lives.
Not when the doses of perchlorates and peroxides is 10,000 times higher than earth
That has nothing to do with it. Perchlorate just isn't very toxic or very corrosive at high concentrations, right here on earth. Its acute LD50 is roughly the same as table salt.
and do you have any idea of how hard it will be to get that dust off suits?
Yes, I do. As I was saying, perchlorates are water soluble and hygroscopic. That means they stop being dust all by themselves in a normal atmosphere.
this fight is over him being extradited to Sweden for unrelated trumped-up rape charges, and then extraordinarily rendered to the US.
That's just Assange's conspiracy theory, not actual fact.
In reality, the US could simply ask the UK to extradite Assange; they wouldn't need to cook up some complicated scheme of having him charged in Sweden. He got charged with rape in Sweden because Sweden has stupid rape laws, he slept around there with the wrong women, and the whole thing irritated a prosecutor. That's all.
Even if you think he legitimately should be tried for espionage in the US, the CIA's actions are totally indefensible.
There are lots of CIA actions that are "indefensible". But, then, the same can be said for MI5 and BND.
However, I'm not aware of the CIA actually having done anything to Assange in particular.
Despite the US not having made an extradition request, US Attorney General Eric Holder has previously said American officials were pursuing a "very serious criminal investigation" into the matter.
My point is that it's not inconsistent to believe that what Assange did was useful, while at the same time believing that the US could legitimately extradite him from Sweden for a trial if US prosecutors actually wanted to charge him. In different words, a courageous and useful act of civil disobedience shouldn't result in people being able to claim freedom from legal prosecution.
Seems to me most of the people people of the "well you just do this" persuation have never even put together an Ikea chair, never mind a building.
I've built quite a few structures. Ikea chairs and buildings are a lot of work and take a lot of resources because of the constraints on them: they need to be cheap, easy to ship, and easy to put together with no tools or skills. If you're willing to spend more money on materials and have skilled users, structures can become much lighter and stronger. Conversely, if you need to build structures just from dirt, you can do that too, but it takes more power and equipment.
A Mars habitat would probably start out with ultra-lightweight high tech shelters that are easy to set up (probably inflatable, possibly in caves), and then people would switch to something more like compressed earth blocks for additional structures.
(Sending a lot of equipment up first with unmanned trips is, of course, a good idea. I also think Mars is not such a good target anyway. But I think it is feasible.)
There are no alternatives. We have evolved to live on Earth only.
Our bodies evolved to live in warm, humid African climates. Then most of us got a functioning brain and managed to create things like houses, fire, air conditioning, clothes, etc. Now we can live in deserts, on ice sheets, at the top of mountains, and even under water.
Also we cannot "colonize other planets". They are too far away. You are limited by physics from reaching the ones outside of our solar system.
Even with current technologies, we could build a rocket to reach Alpha Centauri in 100 years. Things only get better from there.
And the ones in our Solar System cannot sustain human life. We are stuck here.
"Sustaining human life" is relative to available technology. Many of the places people live today couldn't have sustained human life a few centuries ago.
The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you.
Perchlorate isn't all that toxic, it is water soluble, it's easy to counteract its effects, and the exposure would be limited (since you couldn't go outside without a suit anyway). It's also not very corrosive.
http://smt.sandvik.com/en/mate...http://mykin.com/rubber-chemic...
A mission consisting of a 180-day cruise to Mars, a 500-day stay on the Red Planet and a 180-day return flight to Earth would expose astronauts to a cumulative radiation dose of about 1.01 sieverts, measurements by Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument indicate.
To put that in perspective: The European Space Agency generally limits its astronauts to a total career radiation dose of 1 sievert, which is associated with a 5-percent increase in lifetime fatal cancer risk
That's with little shielding on Mars. A permanent colony could get equivalent shielding to that on earth by being under about 10-20 ft of water or rock. If you send older astronauts, radiation becomes even less of an issue.
What matters is putting the fear of gawd into anyone else who is thinking of doing something that causes similar embarrassment to sufficiently rich and powerful people.
Assange's revelations embarrassed the US government and the US military, not "rich people". And you're right: the purpose of a trial and conviction is to act as a deterrent.
Returning to Assange, I actually think it was his taste in women that was used to set him up. I would say he's losing his freedom for being a sucker, but he actually lost his freedom years ago.
I really don't know whether Assange is guilty of anything under US law, or whether Sweden should have an obligation to extradite people like him to the US, or whether the rape accusations against him are valid or not. What I dislike intensely about Assange and his defenders is that they try to make a special case out of him because they like the particular documents that he leaked. That's wrong.
Remember: acting shitty and acting legally are, alas, not mutually exclusive.
Neither are doing the right thing and acting illegally. Assange leaking documents was arguably doing the right thing. But he probably acted illegally doing so, and hence the US can reasonably charge him and demand his extradition. It is for a US court of law to decide his guilt.
That's a fantastic idea! No one should ever make waves, or make things uncomfortable for The Powers That Be(tm)!
There are all sorts of ways in which people can "make things uncomfortable for The Powers That Be". Assange has chosen to leak secret documents. I'm glad the information came out. But that doesn't mean that what he did should be without consequences. Furthermore, Assange's activities seem to have been motivated in significant part by vindictiveness and a desire for notoriety and exposure, not altruism, and that makes him less than sympathetic to many people.
So, thanks Julian for the documents you leaked, but you still have to face the legal consequences of what you did and deal with the fact that nobody in their right mind would trust you.
Wake up people. Sweden is just a front for law enforcement in the USA.
No, it's not a "front"; it's a country that has an extradition treaty with the US.
The entire goal of this disgusting show is to get him on US soil
If the US has a legal and valid arrest warrant for him, then any country that the US has an extradition treaty with needs to extradite him; it's as simple as that. Where do you see the problem?
where he will be "disappeared".
Assange is far too prominent to "disappear", nor would there be any point to it. If the Obama administration wants to get their hands on him, it's for the trial and the publicity.
In regards to your second point, any form of institutionalizing a negative score for disagree stifles debate.
No, letting people decide what scores to assign to different kinds of moderations doesn't "institutionalize" anything; in fact, it does the opposite: it individualizes it.
Likewise, as stated before, a disagree with a zero score is pointless and disagreeing without explaining why is as such.
Hence my proposal: people should be able to assign their own scores to moderations. E.g., "disagree from a friend = +1", "disagree from anybody else = 0", etc.
stifles debate
You wouldn't believe how much it "stifles debate" when people leave Slashdot. And as someone who has been here nearly since the beginning, I'm getting pretty close to it.
If something is factually incorrect, just post a response explaining why. Responding is always better than moderation, because then your response can be evaluated and moderated on its merits and people have a counter view to judge the parent comment by.
I'm tired of correcting nutcases and idiots; some people just have nothing worthwhile to contribute and they will never learn.
I'd just like to be able to remove people from my Slashdot experience entirely, and share that choice with others. What we need is kill files.
I couldn't disagree more. A "disagree" mod that didn't affect a posts score would be pointless. What's the point of disagreeing if you can't post a contrary argument or idea?
There could be a "factually wrong" mod and a "disagree with the values" mod.
As for if the "disagree" mod has a -1 value, down voting is in essence silencing a person
We could go back to having you decide on your own what the value of different mods should be: you may choose a "0" for disagree, others might choose a "-1".
Slashdot Mirror
No, not really. We're sending out unmanned probes for getting data. What I'm referring to is robotic mining and fabrication facilities.
Pretty much all the technology needed for autonomous repairs and for remote operation exists. We aren't deploying it in current environments because there isn't much need to in most environments. In the one environment where they would be helpful, satellite repair, the organizations with an effective monopoly on launches have little interest in pushing the technology.
But why would you build "factories, mines, etc." on the moon anyway? The moon is a fairly deep gravity well, so getting stuff off it is not all that easy; and the stuff we're mostly interested in (metals, volatiles, organics) is much harder to get from the moon than from either earth or asteroids.
Depends on what you mean by "we" and "no reason". If you assume unlimited funding for governmental space agencies, they can, of course, put manned habitats on the moon while also doing other things. But for anything that survives a cost/benefit analysis and is self-sustaining long term, I don't think the moon is going to make much sense. I think that was the issue with the moon program in the first place: there just hasn't been any economic reason for going back.
I'm assuming that we need to make economic tradeoffs and that space exploration will only survive if it makes economic sense. And under those assumption, the asteroid belt is the only way to go. Building lunar and Martian colonies is technically feasible already, but very costly, and provides little economic return; I think those colonization plans will only take off once other space related activities have expanded our economy to the point that we can afford them as luxuries.
Apparently, you can't even be bothered to read your own sources: "But now that we know it's there, I am confident we will be able to design around it," he said. "I have a lot of co-workers here at Johnson Space Center who work in the human exploration side of things, and none of them seem to think perchlorate is a showstopper.
NASA and private investors disagree with your Luddite beliefs, both spending a lot of money on making asteroid mining happen. I would point you at pages for the relevant projects, but that is pointless, since you are obviously incapable of comprehending anything longer than a headline.
So, if you know actually what it is, why do you make irrelevant references to it to support your incorrect idea that Martian perchlorates are a significant threat to astronauts? Are you saying that that you are being deliberately misleading and deceptive?
We weren't discussing whether it "makes sense" to go to Mars, we are discussing your erroneous statement "The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you."
As I have said before, I think the obvious next step is commercial, robotic asteroid mining, followed (many decades later) by constructing space habitats for humans.
You certainly aren't going anywhere given your level of scientific ignorance and your inability to make a coherent argument. Are you in marketing or HR? I certainly hope you aren't in any engineering or scientific position.
Well, what can I say, not every NASA scientist is an expert on everything, and Peter Smith happens to be wrong on this one.
That's a material safety data sheet, and the "Health Hazard' quoted there is just the generic health hazard for oxidizers. Really, try to understand what you cite.
The DOT classifies perchlorates as "hazardous" because they are oxidizers. That is, when mixed with combustible materials, they turn explosive. That is not an issue for a Mars mission.
Neither is table salt. But it's not a significant concern for a Mars mission. Explosions are not an issue. Acute toxicity is not an issue either, because astronauts are not going to be exposed to enough of it. Long term toxicity is potentially an issue, though less so in adults. Long term toxicity is due to the effect of perchlorates on the thyroid. That's not a show-stopper, since there are several ways of dealing with it.
If anything, the widespread availability of perchlorates on Mars is useful, since they can potentially be turned into breathable oxygen and rocket propellants.
I was worried for a moment that generations of elementary school children would be forced to suffer through actual computer science content, like programming, sorting, assembly language, and computer architecture. I'm relieved that my worries were unfounded: they just seem to be forced to suffer through the same social activist crap they already have to sit through, except instead of the penguin getting along with the lion, it will now be expressed in the more kid-friendly terms of "inclusive design" and "team diversity". Yay!
Any major manned project at this point is going to involve a lot of robotic probes and preparation. But asteroids are a lot easier to get to and from than Mars, precisely because of their lack of gravity and lack of atmosphere. Mars has just the wrong amount of each: enough to be a nuisance, not quite enough to make it really Earth-like.
A lunar space elevator might be a nice project. But in the end, the moon is a really harsh environment, the resources it has are hard to get at, and it, too, has just too much gravity. The proximity of moon to earth also means that remotely operated robots are a reasonable alternative to manned exploration. The 3s delay is annoying, but something remote operators can learn to deal with, in particular when assisted by robotics.
I still think our primary focus should be exploration of the asteroid belt, first with robotic probes, then towing asteroids into lunar orbits, creating habitats, and finally moving out there.
In fact, I believe strongly that the government should have less control of what I know and that the power of government should be greatly reduced.
Instead, people like you vent your outrage, demand special deals for media-savvy personalities, and argue endlessly that if we just elect the right Leader, everything will be better. And that's why I despise people like you: you pretend to be on the side of liberty and freedom, and at the same time, people like you are primarily responsible for the massively increased intrusions of government into our lives.
That has nothing to do with it. Perchlorate just isn't very toxic or very corrosive at high concentrations, right here on earth. Its acute LD50 is roughly the same as table salt.
Yes, I do. As I was saying, perchlorates are water soluble and hygroscopic. That means they stop being dust all by themselves in a normal atmosphere.
That's just Assange's conspiracy theory, not actual fact.
In reality, the US could simply ask the UK to extradite Assange; they wouldn't need to cook up some complicated scheme of having him charged in Sweden. He got charged with rape in Sweden because Sweden has stupid rape laws, he slept around there with the wrong women, and the whole thing irritated a prosecutor. That's all.
There are lots of CIA actions that are "indefensible". But, then, the same can be said for MI5 and BND.
However, I'm not aware of the CIA actually having done anything to Assange in particular.
I have no particular opinion on it either way; this from the BBC, though: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
My point is that it's not inconsistent to believe that what Assange did was useful, while at the same time believing that the US could legitimately extradite him from Sweden for a trial if US prosecutors actually wanted to charge him. In different words, a courageous and useful act of civil disobedience shouldn't result in people being able to claim freedom from legal prosecution.
I've built quite a few structures. Ikea chairs and buildings are a lot of work and take a lot of resources because of the constraints on them: they need to be cheap, easy to ship, and easy to put together with no tools or skills. If you're willing to spend more money on materials and have skilled users, structures can become much lighter and stronger. Conversely, if you need to build structures just from dirt, you can do that too, but it takes more power and equipment.
A Mars habitat would probably start out with ultra-lightweight high tech shelters that are easy to set up (probably inflatable, possibly in caves), and then people would switch to something more like compressed earth blocks for additional structures.
(Sending a lot of equipment up first with unmanned trips is, of course, a good idea. I also think Mars is not such a good target anyway. But I think it is feasible.)
Our bodies evolved to live in warm, humid African climates. Then most of us got a functioning brain and managed to create things like houses, fire, air conditioning, clothes, etc. Now we can live in deserts, on ice sheets, at the top of mountains, and even under water.
Even with current technologies, we could build a rocket to reach Alpha Centauri in 100 years. Things only get better from there.
"Sustaining human life" is relative to available technology. Many of the places people live today couldn't have sustained human life a few centuries ago.
Perchlorate isn't all that toxic, it is water soluble, it's easy to counteract its effects, and the exposure would be limited (since you couldn't go outside without a suit anyway). It's also not very corrosive. http://smt.sandvik.com/en/mate... http://mykin.com/rubber-chemic...
That's with little shielding on Mars. A permanent colony could get equivalent shielding to that on earth by being under about 10-20 ft of water or rock. If you send older astronauts, radiation becomes even less of an issue.
I think neither the moon nor Mars are good destinations; we should be heading for the asteroid belt.
Assange's revelations embarrassed the US government and the US military, not "rich people". And you're right: the purpose of a trial and conviction is to act as a deterrent.
I really don't know whether Assange is guilty of anything under US law, or whether Sweden should have an obligation to extradite people like him to the US, or whether the rape accusations against him are valid or not. What I dislike intensely about Assange and his defenders is that they try to make a special case out of him because they like the particular documents that he leaked. That's wrong.
Neither are doing the right thing and acting illegally. Assange leaking documents was arguably doing the right thing. But he probably acted illegally doing so, and hence the US can reasonably charge him and demand his extradition. It is for a US court of law to decide his guilt.
There are all sorts of ways in which people can "make things uncomfortable for The Powers That Be". Assange has chosen to leak secret documents. I'm glad the information came out. But that doesn't mean that what he did should be without consequences. Furthermore, Assange's activities seem to have been motivated in significant part by vindictiveness and a desire for notoriety and exposure, not altruism, and that makes him less than sympathetic to many people.
So, thanks Julian for the documents you leaked, but you still have to face the legal consequences of what you did and deal with the fact that nobody in their right mind would trust you.
He is Australian. As such, he has no automatic right to enter any other country than Australia.
No, it's not a "front"; it's a country that has an extradition treaty with the US.
If the US has a legal and valid arrest warrant for him, then any country that the US has an extradition treaty with needs to extradite him; it's as simple as that. Where do you see the problem?
Assange is far too prominent to "disappear", nor would there be any point to it. If the Obama administration wants to get their hands on him, it's for the trial and the publicity.
Initially, the way we have always done it: in caves. There are plenty of caves on Mars. The difference in gravity is a red herring.
People can never drive cars, the speed would kill them! People can never fly! People can never...! Cut the Luddite crap.
No, letting people decide what scores to assign to different kinds of moderations doesn't "institutionalize" anything; in fact, it does the opposite: it individualizes it.
Hence my proposal: people should be able to assign their own scores to moderations. E.g., "disagree from a friend = +1", "disagree from anybody else = 0", etc.
You wouldn't believe how much it "stifles debate" when people leave Slashdot. And as someone who has been here nearly since the beginning, I'm getting pretty close to it.
You apparently don't understand what a "kill file" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The "Relationship sphere" is not a kill file.
I'm tired of correcting nutcases and idiots; some people just have nothing worthwhile to contribute and they will never learn.
I'd just like to be able to remove people from my Slashdot experience entirely, and share that choice with others. What we need is kill files.
There could be a "factually wrong" mod and a "disagree with the values" mod.
We could go back to having you decide on your own what the value of different mods should be: you may choose a "0" for disagree, others might choose a "-1".