The engineering solution to the psychology problem is to put some mutually agreeable and compatible people in the capsule and launch it. People are mission critical component and a good engineer doesn't fight the properties of his materials.
The ironic thing is that people aren't a mission critical component after all. There really isn't any reason for them to be aboard.
I see it differently, and I think the test subject do too: If you're the first crew to Mars, you know every second that what you're doing is fucking important, and that you have a special privilege and responsibility,
It might be helpful if you were to demonstrate *why* it would be important. This reasoning seems entirely subjective, and like all subjective reasoning, subject to change. If the astronaut/cosmonaut were to get halfway there and suddenly realise they didn't , after all, really think it was important to go, that would be pretty disruptive.
Not quite. IMHO the bulk of their argument is that
* 1. Statistical evidence suggests that driving without a helmet IS safer than with one,
Itself a rather hard argument to counter, because, like the oft-quoted statistics which allegedly prove the earth has been cooling since the 1980s, the source and detail of these statistics never appear, and therefore the myth lives on.
. A helmet merely moves the weakest point from the skull to the neck. Like ski boots moved the weakest point from the ankle to the knee. Now everybody returns from their skiing holidays with a broken knee instead of broken ankle.
But as a moment of consideration will demonstrate, skull -> neck is not the same equation as ankle -> knee. The kind of impact that would give a helmeted rider a neck injury would cause skull occlusion on a non-helmeted rider. The skull is brittle, and what flexibility it has is a liability - any flexing (or shock absorbing) by the skull will cause bruising or tearing of the meningis or brain matter. The neck, though fragile, is still more flexible, and neck muscle injury, though painful, is better than brain damage. Even so, better to wear a neck brace than not.
* 3. A driver without a helmet is more aware of the danger, and he can get a kick out of lower speeds, so he drives more slowly and more attentive. This lowers the fatality of an accidents just as much as a helmet.
This argument falsely equates a sense of heightened safety with complacency. One does not follow the other. A helmet makes you feel safer because you are. Complacency, which can, and does happen to anyone regardless of the gear they wear, is a mindset problem - lack of concentration and focus on the task at hand being another. Many riders use the act of putting on the helmet as an opportunity to move the mind into the riding context. Setting aside your concerns about work or home and anticipating the ride ahead is a far better way to eliminate the mindset issue than deliberately making yourself less safe.
Lets face it, if FTL travel isn't possible, the human race is doomed.
No it isn't.
Or to put it another way - the absence of FTL travel makes no difference to whether or not the human race is doomed.
Therefore, having the attitude that it is impossible is not useful to anyone. I know that as a scientific mind, you're supposed to follow logic and precedence. But if you plan to make a groundbreaking discovery, you pretty much have to chase what's believed to be impossible.
On the same basis then, we can validly expect to find unicorns. After all, we imagine they exist through stories and myth - the same basis for reality as FTL travel.
If there's any limitation to the scientific mind, it's that it dismisses the far out there, which is (sometimes) the next step forward.
Perhaps different people value things differently. What will you do in your entire life that will have any value at all to society? Nothing is the answer.
Oddly you begin by making an appeal for me to respect the subjective values of others, but then presume to make judgements about the objective worth of my life.
How about this, "What exactly would you die for and why can you value that more than other people value science?"
Non sequitur - We aren't talking about people who value science. We are talking about people who would set aside science for to focus on sending humans to mars - a scientifically unjustifiable exercise.
People on Slashdot throwing around the word "denialist" is starting to annoy me now though. What, was heretic too strong of a word for you?
I suspect that the name calling really began with the deniers. It seems that those who deny the science of CO2 forced climate change tend to denigrate people who don't as extremists, tree huggers, etc, as if acceptance of the issue we face were a subjective, faith based decision. And I use the term 'denier', without meaning it to be at all derogatory. When confronted with really bad news, eg. life threatening cancer, a certain proportion of the human population will respond with denial. It's a perfectly normal reaction - but one based on emotion, and not an objective assessment of the situation. This is why the term denier (or 'denialist') is appropriate, but terms like sceptic/heretic are not accurate. The latter terms invoke imagery of someone who does not accept a prevailing but untested belief, someone supposedly more objective than those who do.
Personally if they believe the Earth is flat then there's no reason for me to talk to them, their mind is made up. Scientific reasoning will never reach them. Lately Slashdot commenters, for whatever reason, have moved away from scientific reasoning onto name calling and petty bickering though
But it is impossible to achieve a quality scientific dialogue, for one, none (or very few) of us are experts, but all of us should, and do, feel strong emotions about this subject. For two, the opposing platforms are like this:
Proponents of AGW Climate Change: "CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases keep the earth warm. Adding more greenhouse gases will make the earth warmer." Deniers of AGW Climate Change: "Yes - CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Yes - Greenhouse gases keep the earth warm. Adding more greenhouse gases will not, however, make the earth warmer. We can't explain why, but our reasoning is perfectly logical and scientific."
Scientific dialogue between the two sides will continue to be impossible until the Deniers can elucidate the reasons why CO2 we add to the atmosphere would behave differently to the CO2 that was there before.
Why? Why not send the first astronauts on 1-way trips? Of course it would be a suicide mission, but i'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers. Rather than spend the resources to bring them back, use the same resources to send enough supplies that the astronaut is able to live on the surface of Mars for several years.
Undoubtedly there would be plenty of volunteers from amongst the suicidal and those who are deluded as to the glory of space travel. The difficulty of course, is that the first group behaves unpredictably at the best of times, and the second group would experience a form of enlightment part way through the exercise. Then they would regret their choice to die for a cause that is essentially without meaning - they are on Mars to do a machines job. Whilst on Mars, they will be kept alive for a short time, by machines.
This leaves us with three possible outcomes: 1. We send a depressed perosn who thinks their life is worth nothing. Result: The public is treated to the spectacle of a person dying who, had they been given proper treatment by professionals, would have lived a long and meaningful life on earth, and who, had they been "in their right mind" would never have chosen to go.
2. We send a person (the Idealogue), who is deluded by a fantasy of the glory of space travel and the future of human space travel. The realities overcome the delusion and the Idealogue regrets the decision. Result: The public is treated to the spectacle of a person stuck on Mars who wants to return but cannot, wants to live, but cannot.
3. We send the Idealogue and the realities fail to overcome the delusion. Result: The public is treated to a spectacle much like videos of Palestinian suicide bombers - footage of the dying person spouting idealogies that we cannot relate to, that do not match reality as we understand it.
Any of those outcomes would result in (understandable) outrage and most likely bring an end to the era of human space travel. A gruesome book end to Gargarins success.
My biggest issue with the global warming debate, is that it's not a debate.
Indeed it isn't, but not for the reasons you are describing- rather that amongst the worlds leaders, politicians, kings of industry etc, there is wide scale (almost universal) acceptance that the current climate change is due to the dumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The reason they are not acting is not due to arguments over the cause of the problem, but because they would much rather that someone else step up to pay the tab.
The burden of proof is just huge ("yeah, right, like we'll believe you _this time_"), and that cannot be ignored by deriding the ones that point out flaws.
You are right about the burden of proof, but wrong about where it lies. CO2 is a greenhouse gas - if you put it into the atmosphere, we would in the absence of any other data expect that it will have a warming effect. Therefore the burden of proof is on those who claim otherwise, to demonstrate why it would have either a negative effect, or even more counter-intuitively, no effect whatsoever.
In all other scientific theories, if a prediction is proven wrong it requires updating or invalidating the theory. When it comes to global warming it is never anything but "the denialists reading it wrong".
You can't first claim "this is probably the last year you can ski here". Then, after several years of record snow fall, change it to "this is extreme weather, just like we said global warming would lead to!" and expect that to convince anybody that disagrees with the theory.
This "the world is flat", "no it isn't" bickering is what makes me not give a damn. Come back when this is no longer a religion and I'll reconsider.
The rule for species survival is simple: adapt or die.
Yep - simple rule, and it applies to us as well. And compared to other species, our adaptation is simple and very easy. Yet we don't seem to be able to accept the necessity, let alone commence the process. Does our own apparent inability to adapt mean that our extinction should be treated with the aplomb with which you dismiss the amphibians, the coral reefs, the oceanic plankton?
There are historical events of much greater scale and effect than this global climate change will be.
Probably not. This extinction event is shaping up to be unprecedented. I'm wondering actually how you arguments will fit with the conversations we will have with our kids about all those animals in kids books that we killed off. I suppose we could burn all our copies of Finding Nemo.
A species that can't adapt to a minor change in environment was probably doomed to extinction anyways regardless of Man's contribution to global climate change.
I guess in the same way, it doesn't matter if I run over an old man in the street, because I couldn't be bothered steering. He would have died anyway, right?
No Democrats/Republicans, no stock market, no poverty, no orwellian wars on drugs.... Sounds like paradise
Then why not move to Botswana? It might be poor, but the average Setswana leaves a luxurious life comparative to someone on Mars - you can go outside, you can have children, you can eat fresh food, you aren't going to die a painful death from radiation poisoning (ok, you might, but it isn't a certainty, unlike Mars) if for some reason you can't get along with another person, you don't have to. You can contribute to society, instead of being a drain on it's resources.
A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle.
You've inadvertently demonstrated the stupidity of your own argument there. If the point is to "travel faster" and vehicles travel faster then humans, why not send a vehicle? And if we have the vehicle, what's the human for? After all, it's not the 1960s. Vehicles don't need humans to steer them.
And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments.
Rubbish. The fact of the matter is, we would get better quality results form observing mars from orbit then from a human on the ground. Any human observation/probing/experiments on Mars will be entirely reliant on instruments to do the measuring, cameras to record, etc. If we are sending the instruments anyway, what do we need the human there for? After all, it's not the 1960s. Instruments no longer require us to be physically present to read them.
And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.
So - what? S+O demonstrates clearly that we can engineer well enough to reliably meet the mission objectives - Huygens demonstrates that with a backup system, we can gather results of enormous value even in the event of partial failure.
So while human exploration of Mars may be expensive, it is probably much cheaper when comparing results.
Experience says otherwise. Human activities in space have been expensive boondoggles of little or no scientific value. Robotic missions in space - Galileo, Hubble, Spirit+Opportunity, Voyagers, Cassini/Huygens, beautiful and exciting discoveries that push the boundaries of our experience. Hardly a days passes where one of these missions doesn't give us pause. It's irrational to think we need to physically go ourselves. It's not the 1960s anymore.
Maybe they do have something to hide. What of it? It is not illegal nor morally wrong in any way to exercise your right to choose who knows certain details about you, and who does not. I choose who gets to view my genitalia. That doesn't imply in any way that there is something wrong with my genitalia. It's just that the choice is mine - those who want see that detail can either earn my trust, or put forward a really convincing argument. Most importantly I don't have to justify hiding certain details about myself to anyone, they have to justify knowing that detail to me.
McCain may or may not be be that bad, but it remains to be seen. I saw a documentary about McCain early in the campaign. The film crew had footage of him at a rally and he said: If I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I am going to get Osama Bin Laden
To prove that this delusional diatribe was not merely a slip of the tongue: More footage of McCain at another rally, saying exactly the same thing. Word for word.
So the options are, he is deliberately misleading the people he wants to vote for him, or he is a delusional lunatic who really thinks that he stands a chance of capturing Osama Bin Laden, and worse that capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden will make the US safer.
This guy try shouldn't be trusted with the mower at a bowling green, let alone any public office.
The point is, it's hard for us to figure out what forms of tool use are acceptable and which are not. A cosmonaut using a pick axe - acceptable. A remote docking arm - acceptable. Astronauts/Cosmonauts travelling to Mars will need to take some kind of medi robot for complex operations to fragile human bodies that will be beyond the skill of the crew. That's acceptable.
But taking a robot with an arm, with a pick attached (or similiar)? Not acceptable, apparently. Humans have to do the manual, tedious work.
I find the rules that define 'real' exploration done by humans from 'fake' exploration done by humans aided by robots to be confusing and contradictory. A human on the surface of Mars activates a self guided robot - real exploration.
A human on the surface of Mars calls a guy in Nasa who then activates a self guided robot - real exploration. A guy in Nasa activates a self guided robot without the call - not real exploration.
These contradictions suggest to me that the push to return to human based space expeditions is driven by ideology, not logic or science.
To have a successful landing of this sort on Mars is brilliant, and continues to build hope that there might be a manned mission there in my lifetime, I can only hope. If anything, it confirms what we have known for a while now - the era of human space exploration is over. Expect to see a return to horse drawn buggies and gas lighting at about the same time we return to sending humans into space to.. explore.
Ever since I read the Mars Trilogy (red, green, blue) I have really hoped that it could come true in some way like those books show. Those are works of fiction. When I was a kid I loved the hobbit - I still do. But I don't expect to be captured by wood elves just because some guy wrote about it.
sure america isn't perfect, but it's legal to beat your wife if she "dishonors" you in iran. which society do you think is more moral? I hear that in Florida it's legal to shoot someone dead if you feel threatened by them. Sounds one for one to me on the morality front.
Why is this modded as Troll? Are we supposed to guess which continent? If so, I would have guessed Australia. Surely the point of a summary is to include the pertinent information?
Then where the hell is my flying car, Well, the broad answer is that modernism failed to deliver on it's promises. Hence the reason we moved on to post-modernism. But feel free to carry on believing.
and why do 80% of my countrymen still believe in bronze-age myths? Sorry, but I fail to see why your belief is more impressive then the beliefs of these country(men). Modernists believe that FTL drives will be invented someday because (a) that's what they WANT to believe and (b) in their minds they make this idea rational. Seems to me that this is the same as making a quick sacrifice to Vishnu(*) or burning feathers on a sacred fire.
(*) Had trouble working out what bronze age religion is so prevalent among males in your country. Hinduism may not be right, since it has female adherents, nor even shamanism, but never mind.
Why would robots need water? I notice that the earlier missions to Mars (Spirit/Opportunity/etc) didn't need to stop off for supplies - why would future missions?
I notice that your whole argument is predicated on the notion that the temperature (meaning the global average, year on year) has not risen. Actually, from my understanding, the entire decade, or past ten years, is where my point rests. This last ten years have not been as warm as the ten previous years and it is expected to be even less with the effects of LA Nina. Well, no - because you are asserting that the observed global warming and the reasons given for it is actually a conspiracy. To do so, you will need to counter the evidence given for those reasons AND provide an alternate explanation for the warming trend, covering the period over which that trend has been observed. You cannot arbitrarily pick a period within that timeframe (eg a second, a month, a decade) on the basis that by ignoring the bulk of the data, a single data point matches whatever spurious conclusion you are trying to prove. That is deceptive, and transparently so.
Haven't you heard, global warming stopped. Now it is called climate change to keep the funding going. I notice that your whole argument is predicated on the notion that the temperature (meaning the global average, year on year) has not risen.
But temps haven't risen in the last 10 years or so from what what I have been told. from what what I have been told. Have temperatures risen, or haven't they?
Seems like a fairly critical point - yet it also seems like you are being deliberately vague about your sources.
I can't see why those particular religions would be concerned by the discovery of alien lifeforms - after they all centre around our own relationship with God and don't really focus upon the relationship God has with other, non-sentient life forms - nor indeed other hypothetical sentient forms of life. I imagine the discovery of alien life forms could well be troubling for atheists though.
Of course there is more to the issue that you fail to mention. Humans are extremely flexible and robots... aren't. Robots can be shutdown when not needed, and re-energised without negative effect. They can use any number of power sources, operate efficiently at widely varying temperatures, gravity and external pressures. Their components can be shielded against radiation.
Meanwhile, humans can operate only in a very narrow range of temperatures, pressures and gravity. They cannot withstand sustained bursts of radiation (say from a gas or ice giant). They require constant, attentive maintenance, and a constant and prodigious quantity of fuel even when there is nothing for them to do. They quickly get bored with any sustained, repetitive task. Comparing human flexibility to that of machines is like saying trees are flexible and animals aren't. Machines are so flexible comparative to us (in the flesh) that it would be embarrassing were it not for the fact that machines are tools just like hammers and saws, tools designed to better our output in certain tasks, such as driving in nails, sawing wood, welding cars, wrapping chocolate bars, gathering data on distant planetary bodies.
Humans can make repairs on station... robots can't. Etc... Etc... If humans break down, there is a degree of self repair - but if that is exceeded (say, broken leg, internal bleeding, appendicitis etc etc), then they are no longer functional and indeed will die without specific and very specialised repair. In addition, the level of redundancy in humans is fixed and can't be increased, and humans aren't expendable. Once they are dead, they stay dead, no matter what you do. In contrast, robots are relatively simple, break down much less often, are easier to repair when they do (even for a complete failure) , return immediately to service after repair, and if it all goes pear shaped, they are expendable.
Then there is the issue of working speed - what it has taken three years for Spirit to accomplish would have taken a human geologist a mere three days. Frankly, this is a nonsensical argument. Of course Spirit doesn't go very fast. It doesn't go fast because the ability to go fast isn't important. If the ability to go fast becomes important in the future we can design a robot that does it's job faster than a human can do it, for much less than the cost of sending a human to another planetary body.
The era of human based space exploration has been and gone. Like all technology of a bygone era, it's remembered by many with fondness and sentimentality. Like all outdated technology, it has proponents who point to one thing or another that it does well, and then claim that modern technology is a step backwards. And now we have the car analogy. When cars first emerged, there were many who claimed that horse drawn transport was superior. They highlighted the advantages of horse drawn transport over cars. For example, a horse can graze beside the road. A car cannot. A horse goes slower - less dangerous for pedestrians. Yet cars won over horse drawn transport - because the comparative advantages of cars were so great, the advantages of horse drawn transport looked insignificant. The same applies for robots (new) versus human (old) with regard to space exploration.
Humans move faster than [previously deployed robotic explorers]. If speed was important, we can deploy robots that go faster than humans can. But speed is not important, so we won't
Human beings can make decisions, robots can't. Again - the point of exploration is to gather data. There is no need for snap decisions, because there is no hurry. If there were a hurry, we would send a probe with more instruments which gathers data quicker.
So I understand that you are sentimental. I get sentimental about old stuff too - I love old warplanes. But space exploration isn't a town parade or air show.
Rubbish. Atheism = no belief in God. No belief in i.e. no knowledge of God = agnosticism (no knowledge) "I don't know if there is a God or Gods"
Belief there is no God/Gods = atheism (no God) "There is no God"
Note that the atheist also reject the Buddhist concept of karma, even though karma isn't God, and buddhists don't have a deity (at least, one branch of Buddhism). Atheists also claim their beliefs are rational on the basis that God (and karma) are not observed - hence my statement.
Any rational person would believe that unobservable things can exist, given the limitations of our observation capabilities. I never made the claim that atheism is rational.
Atheists just don't prefer to attribute the unobservable to God. But here's the kicker. Neither does anybody else (if by unobservable you really meant 'not understood').
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The engineering solution to the psychology problem is to put some mutually agreeable and compatible people in the capsule and launch it. People are mission critical component and a good engineer doesn't fight the properties of his materials.
The ironic thing is that people aren't a mission critical component after all. There really isn't any reason for them to be aboard.
I see it differently, and I think the test subject do too: If you're the first crew to Mars, you know every second that what you're doing is fucking important, and that you have a special privilege and responsibility,
It might be helpful if you were to demonstrate *why* it would be important. This reasoning seems entirely subjective, and like all subjective reasoning, subject to change. If the astronaut/cosmonaut were to get halfway there and suddenly realise they didn't , after all, really think it was important to go, that would be pretty disruptive.
Not quite. IMHO the bulk of their argument is that * 1. Statistical evidence suggests that driving without a helmet IS safer than with one,
Itself a rather hard argument to counter, because, like the oft-quoted statistics which allegedly prove the earth has been cooling since the 1980s, the source and detail of these statistics never appear, and therefore the myth lives on.
. A helmet merely moves the weakest point from the skull to the neck. Like ski boots moved the weakest point from the ankle to the knee. Now everybody returns from their skiing holidays with a broken knee instead of broken ankle.
But as a moment of consideration will demonstrate, skull -> neck is not the same equation as ankle -> knee. The kind of impact that would give a helmeted rider a neck injury would cause skull occlusion on a non-helmeted rider. The skull is brittle, and what flexibility it has is a liability - any flexing (or shock absorbing) by the skull will cause bruising or tearing of the meningis or brain matter. The neck, though fragile, is still more flexible, and neck muscle injury, though painful, is better than brain damage. Even so, better to wear a neck brace than not.
* 3. A driver without a helmet is more aware of the danger, and he can get a kick out of lower speeds, so he drives more slowly and more attentive. This lowers the fatality of an accidents just as much as a helmet.
This argument falsely equates a sense of heightened safety with complacency. One does not follow the other. A helmet makes you feel safer because you are. Complacency, which can, and does happen to anyone regardless of the gear they wear, is a mindset problem - lack of concentration and focus on the task at hand being another. Many riders use the act of putting on the helmet as an opportunity to move the mind into the riding context. Setting aside your concerns about work or home and anticipating the ride ahead is a far better way to eliminate the mindset issue than deliberately making yourself less safe.
Lets face it, if FTL travel isn't possible, the human race is doomed.
No it isn't.
Or to put it another way - the absence of FTL travel makes no difference to whether or not the human race is doomed.
Therefore, having the attitude that it is impossible is not useful to anyone. I know that as a scientific mind, you're supposed to follow logic and precedence. But if you plan to make a groundbreaking discovery, you pretty much have to chase what's believed to be impossible.
On the same basis then, we can validly expect to find unicorns. After all, we imagine they exist through stories and myth - the same basis for reality as FTL travel.
If there's any limitation to the scientific mind, it's that it dismisses the far out there, which is (sometimes) the next step forward.
Let us also pursue alchemy. Why limit our minds?
Perhaps different people value things differently. What will you do in your entire life that will have any value at all to society? Nothing is the answer.
Oddly you begin by making an appeal for me to respect the subjective values of others, but then presume to make judgements about the objective worth of my life.
How about this, "What exactly would you die for and why can you value that more than other people value science?"
Non sequitur - We aren't talking about people who value science. We are talking about people who would set aside science for to focus on sending humans to mars - a scientifically unjustifiable exercise.
People on Slashdot throwing around the word "denialist" is starting to annoy me now though. What, was heretic too strong of a word for you?
I suspect that the name calling really began with the deniers. It seems that those who deny the science of CO2 forced climate change tend to denigrate people who don't as extremists, tree huggers, etc, as if acceptance of the issue we face were a subjective, faith based decision.
And I use the term 'denier', without meaning it to be at all derogatory. When confronted with really bad news, eg. life threatening cancer, a certain proportion of the human population will respond with denial. It's a perfectly normal reaction - but one based on emotion, and not an objective assessment of the situation. This is why the term denier (or 'denialist') is appropriate, but terms like sceptic/heretic are not accurate. The latter terms invoke imagery of someone who does not accept a prevailing but untested belief, someone supposedly more objective than those who do.
Personally if they believe the Earth is flat then there's no reason for me to talk to them, their mind is made up. Scientific reasoning will never reach them. Lately Slashdot commenters, for whatever reason, have moved away from scientific reasoning onto name calling and petty bickering though
But it is impossible to achieve a quality scientific dialogue, for one, none (or very few) of us are experts, but all of us should, and do, feel strong emotions about this subject. For two, the opposing platforms are like this:
Proponents of AGW Climate Change: "CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases keep the earth warm. Adding more greenhouse gases will make the earth warmer."
Deniers of AGW Climate Change: "Yes - CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Yes - Greenhouse gases keep the earth warm. Adding more greenhouse gases will not, however, make the earth warmer. We can't explain why, but our reasoning is perfectly logical and scientific."
Scientific dialogue between the two sides will continue to be impossible until the Deniers can elucidate the reasons why CO2 we add to the atmosphere would behave differently to the CO2 that was there before.
Why? Why not send the first astronauts on 1-way trips? Of course it would be a suicide mission, but i'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers. Rather than spend the resources to bring them back, use the same resources to send enough supplies that the astronaut is able to live on the surface of Mars for several years.
Undoubtedly there would be plenty of volunteers from amongst the suicidal and those who are deluded as to the glory of space travel. The difficulty of course, is that the first group behaves unpredictably at the best of times, and the second group would experience a form of enlightment part way through the exercise. Then they would regret their choice to die for a cause that is essentially without meaning - they are on Mars to do a machines job. Whilst on Mars, they will be kept alive for a short time, by machines.
This leaves us with three possible outcomes:
1. We send a depressed perosn who thinks their life is worth nothing. Result: The public is treated to the spectacle of a person dying who, had they been given proper treatment by professionals, would have lived a long and meaningful life on earth, and who, had they been "in their right mind" would never have chosen to go.
2. We send a person (the Idealogue), who is deluded by a fantasy of the glory of space travel and the future of human space travel. The realities overcome the delusion and the Idealogue regrets the decision. Result: The public is treated to the spectacle of a person stuck on Mars who wants to return but cannot, wants to live, but cannot.
3. We send the Idealogue and the realities fail to overcome the delusion. Result: The public is treated to a spectacle much like videos of Palestinian suicide bombers - footage of the dying person spouting idealogies that we cannot relate to, that do not match reality as we understand it.
Any of those outcomes would result in (understandable) outrage and most likely bring an end to the era of human space travel. A gruesome book end to Gargarins success.
My biggest issue with the global warming debate, is that it's not a debate.
Indeed it isn't, but not for the reasons you are describing- rather that amongst the worlds leaders, politicians, kings of industry etc, there is wide scale (almost universal) acceptance that the current climate change is due to the dumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The reason they are not acting is not due to arguments over the cause of the problem, but because they would much rather that someone else step up to pay the tab.
The burden of proof is just huge ("yeah, right, like we'll believe you _this time_"), and that cannot be ignored by deriding the ones that point out flaws.
You are right about the burden of proof, but wrong about where it lies. CO2 is a greenhouse gas - if you put it into the atmosphere, we would in the absence of any other data expect that it will have a warming effect. Therefore the burden of proof is on those who claim otherwise, to demonstrate why it would have either a negative effect, or even more counter-intuitively, no effect whatsoever. In all other scientific theories, if a prediction is proven wrong it requires updating or invalidating the theory. When it comes to global warming it is never anything but "the denialists reading it wrong". You can't first claim "this is probably the last year you can ski here". Then, after several years of record snow fall, change it to "this is extreme weather, just like we said global warming would lead to!" and expect that to convince anybody that disagrees with the theory. This "the world is flat", "no it isn't" bickering is what makes me not give a damn. Come back when this is no longer a religion and I'll reconsider.
The rule for species survival is simple: adapt or die.
Yep - simple rule, and it applies to us as well. And compared to other species, our adaptation is simple and very easy. Yet we don't seem to be able to accept the necessity, let alone commence the process. Does our own apparent inability to adapt mean that our extinction should be treated with the aplomb with which you dismiss the amphibians, the coral reefs, the oceanic plankton?
There are historical events of much greater scale and effect than this global climate change will be.
Probably not. This extinction event is shaping up to be unprecedented. I'm wondering actually how you arguments will fit with the conversations we will have with our kids about all those animals in kids books that we killed off. I suppose we could burn all our copies of Finding Nemo.
A species that can't adapt to a minor change in environment was probably doomed to extinction anyways regardless of Man's contribution to global climate change.
I guess in the same way, it doesn't matter if I run over an old man in the street, because I couldn't be bothered steering. He would have died anyway, right?
No Democrats/Republicans, no stock market, no poverty, no orwellian wars on drugs.... Sounds like paradise
Then why not move to Botswana? It might be poor, but the average Setswana leaves a luxurious life comparative to someone on Mars - you can go outside, you can have children, you can eat fresh food, you aren't going to die a painful death from radiation poisoning (ok, you might, but it isn't a certainty, unlike Mars) if for some reason you can't get along with another person, you don't have to. You can contribute to society, instead of being a drain on it's resources.
A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle.
You've inadvertently demonstrated the stupidity of your own argument there. If the point is to "travel faster" and vehicles travel faster then humans, why not send a vehicle? And if we have the vehicle, what's the human for? After all, it's not the 1960s. Vehicles don't need humans to steer them.
And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments.
Rubbish. The fact of the matter is, we would get better quality results form observing mars from orbit then from a human on the ground. Any human observation/probing/experiments on Mars will be entirely reliant on instruments to do the measuring, cameras to record, etc. If we are sending the instruments anyway, what do we need the human there for? After all, it's not the 1960s. Instruments no longer require us to be physically present to read them.
And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.
So - what? S+O demonstrates clearly that we can engineer well enough to reliably meet the mission objectives - Huygens demonstrates that with a backup system, we can gather results of enormous value even in the event of partial failure.
So while human exploration of Mars may be expensive, it is probably much cheaper when comparing results.
Experience says otherwise. Human activities in space have been expensive boondoggles of little or no scientific value. Robotic missions in space - Galileo, Hubble, Spirit+Opportunity, Voyagers, Cassini/Huygens, beautiful and exciting discoveries that push the boundaries of our experience. Hardly a days passes where one of these missions doesn't give us pause. It's irrational to think we need to physically go ourselves. It's not the 1960s anymore.
Maybe they do have something to hide. What of it? It is not illegal nor morally wrong in any way to exercise your right to choose who knows certain details about you, and who does not. I choose who gets to view my genitalia. That doesn't imply in any way that there is something wrong with my genitalia. It's just that the choice is mine - those who want see that detail can either earn my trust, or put forward a really convincing argument. Most importantly I don't have to justify hiding certain details about myself to anyone, they have to justify knowing that detail to me.
If I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I am going to get Osama Bin Laden
To prove that this delusional diatribe was not merely a slip of the tongue: More footage of McCain at another rally, saying exactly the same thing. Word for word.
So the options are, he is deliberately misleading the people he wants to vote for him, or he is a delusional lunatic who really thinks that he stands a chance of capturing Osama Bin Laden, and worse that capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden will make the US safer. This guy try shouldn't be trusted with the mower at a bowling green, let alone any public office.
But taking a robot with an arm, with a pick attached (or similiar)? Not acceptable, apparently. Humans have to do the manual, tedious work.
I find the rules that define 'real' exploration done by humans from 'fake' exploration done by humans aided by robots to be confusing and contradictory. A human on the surface of Mars activates a self guided robot - real exploration. A human on the surface of Mars calls a guy in Nasa who then activates a self guided robot - real exploration. A guy in Nasa activates a self guided robot without the call - not real exploration.
These contradictions suggest to me that the push to return to human based space expeditions is driven by ideology, not logic or science.
Why is this modded as Troll? Are we supposed to guess which continent? If so, I would have guessed Australia. Surely the point of a summary is to include the pertinent information?
(a) that's what they WANT to believe and
(b) in their minds they make this idea rational.
Seems to me that this is the same as making a quick sacrifice to Vishnu(*) or burning feathers on a sacred fire.
(*) Had trouble working out what bronze age religion is so prevalent among males in your country. Hinduism may not be right, since it has female adherents, nor even shamanism, but never mind.
Why would robots need water? I notice that the earlier missions to Mars (Spirit/Opportunity/etc) didn't need to stop off for supplies - why would future missions?
Seems like a fairly critical point - yet it also seems like you are being deliberately vague about your sources.
I can't see why those particular religions would be concerned by the discovery of alien lifeforms - after they all centre around our own relationship with God and don't really focus upon the relationship God has with other, non-sentient life forms - nor indeed other hypothetical sentient forms of life. I imagine the discovery of alien life forms could well be troubling for atheists though.
Humans can make repairs on station... robots can't. Etc... Etc... If humans break down, there is a degree of self repair - but if that is exceeded (say, broken leg, internal bleeding, appendicitis etc etc), then they are no longer functional and indeed will die without specific and very specialised repair. In addition, the level of redundancy in humans is fixed and can't be increased, and humans aren't expendable. Once they are dead, they stay dead, no matter what you do. In contrast, robots are relatively simple, break down much less often, are easier to repair when they do (even for a complete failure) , return immediately to service after repair, and if it all goes pear shaped, they are expendable. Then there is the issue of working speed - what it has taken three years for Spirit to accomplish would have taken a human geologist a mere three days. Frankly, this is a nonsensical argument. Of course Spirit doesn't go very fast. It doesn't go fast because the ability to go fast isn't important. If the ability to go fast becomes important in the future we can design a robot that does it's job faster than a human can do it, for much less than the cost of sending a human to another planetary body.Meanwhile, humans can operate only in a very narrow range of temperatures, pressures and gravity. They cannot withstand sustained bursts of radiation (say from a gas or ice giant). They require constant, attentive maintenance, and a constant and prodigious quantity of fuel even when there is nothing for them to do. They quickly get bored with any sustained, repetitive task.
Comparing human flexibility to that of machines is like saying trees are flexible and animals aren't. Machines are so flexible comparative to us (in the flesh) that it would be embarrassing were it not for the fact that machines are tools just like hammers and saws, tools designed to better our output in certain tasks, such as driving in nails, sawing wood, welding cars, wrapping chocolate bars, gathering data on distant planetary bodies.
So I understand that you are sentimental. I get sentimental about old stuff too - I love old warplanes. But space exploration isn't a town parade or air show.
Belief there is no God/Gods = atheism (no God) "There is no God"
Note that the atheist also reject the Buddhist concept of karma, even though karma isn't God, and buddhists don't have a deity (at least, one branch of Buddhism). Atheists also claim their beliefs are rational on the basis that God (and karma) are not observed - hence my statement. Any rational person would believe that unobservable things can exist, given the limitations of our observation capabilities. I never made the claim that atheism is rational. Atheists just don't prefer to attribute the unobservable to God. But here's the kicker. Neither does anybody else (if by unobservable you really meant 'not understood').