That beastie in Alien, the one that was supposed to scare the bejeebers out of you as some sort of paragon of mindless violence; it's just a variant of creatures that are commonplace right here. A little bigger than most perhaps.
The face-hugger thing wouldn't raise a compound eyebrow in the caterpillar world. They face that sort of parasitism every day. And killing things and eating them as fast as you can whether they are still alive or not is standard. You only bother killing them if their wriggling might be a problem.
Somewhat off topic. Sorry 'bout that. It is pretty easy to gather the data that show that Mars would be a very demanding place to live. Some folk like to say it's all crazy talk. I reckon it is useful to turn the question around and ask it this way; apart from Earth, where would be the easiest place for long term habitation? Assume we are talking about something that might be done in our lifetimes.
The Moon would come second simply due to its proximity to earth but the low gravity would mean we wouldn't really be talking about long term. Most other places are so hostile that building a rotating space station with serious levels of radiation protection is probably more practical.
So, if we are talking about colonising anywhere of the planet, I think it has to be Mars. There really aren't any other contenders. All you have to do is work out a sustainable logic for doing it. To me it's a no brainer. The last few hundred thousand years of our evolution have hard-wired us to be tempted by the benefits of exploration. We are an invasive species and it has paid off handsomely. Having filled the available space down here we can continue to expand up there.
But, if you want a practical, terrestrial pay-off for the investment then consider this. The folks on Earth need to cease being hunter-gathers completely and create a sustainable ecology. One excellent way to accelerate the development of technology to facilitate this is to create a crucible in which there is essentially no other option but to use all resources very wisely and to recycle damn near everything. Bases or colonies on the Moon and Mars would be perfect places for this to happen. They would be artificially created pockets of geographical isolation such as very often lead to bursts of innovation, evolution and creativity. There would be risk. It focuses the mind wonderfully. There are many who would love to be given the chance to take that risk. *waves hand... damn... too old*
Modern journalists are taught that they must always balance their pieces. That there are always two sides. That sounds fine and is fine if the matters they are dealing with are of no consequence. The problem with it is that they tend to equate the two sides even when they are not of equal merit. Sometimes this is because they cannot or will not take the time to become knowledgeable enough about the matter to evaluate the data they have. They find an expert, get some information. Then they say, I need a balancing opinion, and find another source to provide it. Then they find the most "entertaining" way of presenting what they have and give both sources equal weight. But what if one source was an intelligent, dedicated researcher who has spent many years becoming an expert and the other was not...
I can't speak for other Mac users but my experience has been such as to induce a certain vehemence in supporting the platform. I have used Macs, PCs and many other micro-computers since they each became available. Despite its shortcomings it was clear that Apple had had a fundamentally good idea from the moment the Lisa and Mac appeared. CP/M and DOS immediately seemed dated. If you were a Mac user though, the DOS crowd spent years telling you it was a worthless idea... right up until Windows appeared. Overnight the story changed to; it's no big deal, Windows is just the same as a Mac now. But it was not just the same. In fact most of the people saying this had only a very superficial knowledge of the differences. "They both have windows..."
These days I have (almost) given up discussing the matter. Life is too short. It is the nature of people that they do not like to think that they have made an incorrect or ill-judged decision. They will "invest" their own sense of worth in the decisions they have made. It is human nature but it is not science. As it has been most tellingly put: It is difficult to reason people out of something they were not reasoned into. Most PC users today were taught on PCs at school. They use them at work. They never even got to make that "decision" to use a PC. They know many of the idiosyncrasies of the machine. They are comfortable. They do not wish to hear that they have wasted serious quantities of time doing things that could have been avoided had they used a different system. Better to let them discover it in their own time... possibly by watching over your shoulder. Then their disappointment at realizing they have wasted much time may be mitigated by their pleasure at realizing that they have improved their position by their own efforts. In a cynical age, enthusiasm disturbs people. They are suspicious of it. To display it can have quite the opposite effect to that intended.
Enough. More than enough.... It's just... ranting is so much fun.
The robots are great but there are good reasons why people need to go. Some thoughts: - People are vastly more versatile than robots and so much more, and much more relevant, research can be done in far less time. (See Steve Squyres description of the group of geologists vs the Mars Rovers.) - People are going to go in the future. Why should they have all the fun? - Eventually we will want to establish sustainable occupation of earth. If we can learn how to do this in spacecraft we will likely find technologies that have terrestrial applications. This is the crucible technique and it a successful strategy for rapid progress. - Mars is a very difficult place to survive. The Moon is even harder except that it is so close to earth - relatively. However, both Mars and the Moon are vastly easier to colonise than anywhere else. Especially space itself. If we go to Mars (via the Moon if necessary) we will be taking the easiest possible route into the rest of the solar system. This is our "backyard". We should make ourselves comfortable here. - Our species developed its current behaviour patterns during the period we were colonising this planet. Consequently we are hard-wired to explore. It has been a very fruitful adaptation. Those who explored were usually rewarded with fresh game and less competition. They bred more successfuly. There is reason to believe we should not fight this instinct now. There are threats to our current habitat. - Such endeavours are considered inspirational by many and they have a profound beneficial effect on people's perspective. It has a unifying effect on the world.
We don't have iTMS as the record companies will not agree on a deal with Apple - and iPod sales have followed the same growth curve as they have everywhere else. I don't think the record companies could sustain that argument. (Most people here fill their iPods with music they've ripped off their CD's, which is against Australian law but none of the record companies have tried exercising yheir legal rights - yet.)
This is strong stuff from an AC. It also seems self-contradictory. You suggest that incremental development is the way to go rather than "clean sheet". Isn't that what is being suggested? They are going to take tested components of the current stack and re-engineer tham to avoid the existing flaws. Griffin's qualifications and expertise fall right into this area. For that matter Zubrin also has relevant background. What are your credentials that you should be so scathing? Constructive criticism is the way to go. What would you do? How would you get us to Mars Safe Simple and Soon? I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about but you seem so angry at the current players that it obscures your argument. Show us the way. Tell us who you are.
If you read the new information referred to in earlier posts you will see that your simple blockade would have resulted in many more deaths than the atom bombs did. Your sensitivity does you credit but is not useful in dealing with the dilemmas involvied in choosing between strategies leading to varying numbers of deaths on a huge scale. Try and put youself in the place of the people who had all the information now revealed and had to make the decisions and who had to take the responsibility for the deaths of their own citizens. In that context your stance is a luxury they did not have.
IANA physicist but I understand that the rising water will accelerate with enough force to allow power generation. There is an ecological issue about creating artificial nutrient blooms but it may not be substantial and in any case will show itself pretty quickly. I prefer I like the same idea applied to air - plus it works in inland areas. Tested in Spain and planned for inland Australia are very large chimney structures that should produce large amounts of power very cleanly. The advantage of the air towers is that thermals occur naturally everywhere everyday so the ecological implications of harnessing the movement of the heated air would be very small. The aesthetic implications are a matter of taste but I like the idea.
So it has water cooling... so what?.. and "lying out his ass" is a bit strong. Jobs will have said that because IBM told him that they hoped to get there. They, and Intel, found the next step in development of their cpu's harder than they anticipated.
I'm a Mars nut and have been for many years. It got a lot worse after reading Zubrin's The Case For Mars which convinced me it will not cost a trillion dollars but could be done inside the current NASA budget.
The most frequent argument against going to Mars seems to me to be that it costs too much and doesn't fix problems on Earth. Supporters usually mention the technology spin-offs but this doesn't really address the concerns of the fix-Earth-first brigade.
For 10 biillion or so people to live happily on Earth we are going to have to improve our resource utilisation and recycliing technologies. These technologies will be critical for the success of a Mars base and the necessity of being super-efficient on Mars will lead to breakthroughs that can be used on Earth. It would be a crucible for pushing the state of the art in recycling.
We're starting to wander off-topic I guess but this always "gets" me.
There's no need to study weightlessness if we work out the fairly straightforward engineering involved in rotating our cruise vehicles. If we spin them up fast enough to simulate Mars gravity then the crew are pre-adapted to their working environment.
This idea is explored to the Robert Zubrin book "Mars Direct" and in other places. You let out a very strong cable from the cruise module. It has a weight at the end of it. This could be something like the nuclear power supply and its shield but there are many possibilities. Spin it up and centripetal forces create artificial gravity in the cruise vehicle. At the pivot point you have your antenna poiting toward Earth... this is engineering shit.. they love this sort of problem.:-)
Presto. No need to worry about all sorts of biological problems stemming from weightlessness
... and another thing. While it is important that the crew for a Mars mission should be carefully chosen with an emphasis on temperament, some people seem to be wondering whether the stress involved in such a trip will be more than the human mind can stand. I'd say there's a lot of precedent to suggest that it can. Many of the voyages of discovery involved more fear and privation than would be involved in a trip to Mars.
Back on-topic; go to http://www.marssociety.org/news/2004/0202.asp for a strong argument for keeping Hubble.
Don't let Slashdot get to you. You just have to learn how to pull the levers. Ignore everything below say, level 4, and you'll find most of the crud slips away. After a while it becomes strangely addictive.:-)
I've downloaded the software and the first data set and it is very exciting. It all works beautifully and will only get better as more data comes through. You have done a wonderful job and Mars geeks like myself are very grateful to you for sharing it.
Note: Getting the data from Hungary was much faster than the Texas link... I'm in Australia. So, it pays to shop around.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up!
Maybe they just haven't looked closely enough.
That beastie in Alien, the one that was supposed to scare the bejeebers out of you as some sort of paragon of mindless violence; it's just a variant of creatures that are commonplace right here. A little bigger than most perhaps.
The face-hugger thing wouldn't raise a compound eyebrow in the caterpillar world. They face that sort of parasitism every day. And killing things and eating them as fast as you can whether they are still alive or not is standard. You only bother killing them if their wriggling might be a problem.
Somewhat off topic. Sorry 'bout that.
... too old*
It is pretty easy to gather the data that show that Mars would be a very demanding place to live. Some folk like to say it's all crazy talk. I reckon it is useful to turn the question around and ask it this way; apart from Earth, where would be the easiest place for long term habitation? Assume we are talking about something that might be done in our lifetimes.
The Moon would come second simply due to its proximity to earth but the low gravity would mean we wouldn't really be talking about long term. Most other places are so hostile that building a rotating space station with serious levels of radiation protection is probably more practical.
So, if we are talking about colonising anywhere of the planet, I think it has to be Mars. There really aren't any other contenders. All you have to do is work out a sustainable logic for doing it. To me it's a no brainer. The last few hundred thousand years of our evolution have hard-wired us to be tempted by the benefits of exploration. We are an invasive species and it has paid off handsomely. Having filled the available space down here we can continue to expand up there.
But, if you want a practical, terrestrial pay-off for the investment then consider this. The folks on Earth need to cease being hunter-gathers completely and create a sustainable ecology. One excellent way to accelerate the development of technology to facilitate this is to create a crucible in which there is essentially no other option but to use all resources very wisely and to recycle damn near everything. Bases or colonies on the Moon and Mars would be perfect places for this to happen. They would be artificially created pockets of geographical isolation such as very often lead to bursts of innovation, evolution and creativity. There would be risk. It focuses the mind wonderfully. There are many who would love to be given the chance to take that risk. *waves hand... damn
Modern journalists are taught that they must always balance their pieces. That there are always two sides. That sounds fine and is fine if the matters they are dealing with are of no consequence. The problem with it is that they tend to equate the two sides even when they are not of equal merit. Sometimes this is because they cannot or will not take the time to become knowledgeable enough about the matter to evaluate the data they have. They find an expert, get some information. Then they say, I need a balancing opinion, and find another source to provide it. Then they find the most "entertaining" way of presenting what they have and give both sources equal weight. But what if one source was an intelligent, dedicated researcher who has spent many years becoming an expert and the other was not...
... It's just... ranting is so much fun.
I can't speak for other Mac users but my experience has been such as to induce a certain vehemence in supporting the platform. I have used Macs, PCs and many other micro-computers since they each became available. Despite its shortcomings it was clear that Apple had had a fundamentally good idea from the moment the Lisa and Mac appeared. CP/M and DOS immediately seemed dated. If you were a Mac user though, the DOS crowd spent years telling you it was a worthless idea... right up until Windows appeared. Overnight the story changed to; it's no big deal, Windows is just the same as a Mac now. But it was not just the same. In fact most of the people saying this had only a very superficial knowledge of the differences. "They both have windows..."
These days I have (almost) given up discussing the matter. Life is too short. It is the nature of people that they do not like to think that they have made an incorrect or ill-judged decision. They will "invest" their own sense of worth in the decisions they have made. It is human nature but it is not science. As it has been most tellingly put: It is difficult to reason people out of something they were not reasoned into. Most PC users today were taught on PCs at school. They use them at work. They never even got to make that "decision" to use a PC. They know many of the idiosyncrasies of the machine. They are comfortable. They do not wish to hear that they have wasted serious quantities of time doing things that could have been avoided had they used a different system. Better to let them discover it in their own time... possibly by watching over your shoulder. Then their disappointment at realizing they have wasted much time may be mitigated by their pleasure at realizing that they have improved their position by their own efforts. In a cynical age, enthusiasm disturbs people. They are suspicious of it. To display it can have quite the opposite effect to that intended.
Enough. More than enough.
The robots are great but there are good reasons why people need to go.
Some thoughts:
- People are vastly more versatile than robots and so much more, and much more relevant, research can be done in far less time. (See Steve Squyres description of the group of geologists vs the Mars Rovers.)
- People are going to go in the future. Why should they have all the fun?
- Eventually we will want to establish sustainable occupation of earth. If we can learn how to do this in spacecraft we will likely find technologies that have terrestrial applications. This is the crucible technique and it a successful strategy for rapid progress.
- Mars is a very difficult place to survive. The Moon is even harder except that it is so close to earth - relatively. However, both Mars and the Moon are vastly easier to colonise than anywhere else. Especially space itself. If we go to Mars (via the Moon if necessary) we will be taking the easiest possible route into the rest of the solar system. This is our "backyard". We should make ourselves comfortable here.
- Our species developed its current behaviour patterns during the period we were colonising this planet. Consequently we are hard-wired to explore. It has been a very fruitful adaptation. Those who explored were usually rewarded with fresh game and less competition. They bred more successfuly. There is reason to believe we should not fight this instinct now. There are threats to our current habitat.
- Such endeavours are considered inspirational by many and they have a profound beneficial effect on people's perspective. It has a unifying effect on the world.
We don't have iTMS as the record companies will not agree on a deal with Apple - and iPod sales have followed the same growth curve as they have everywhere else. I don't think the record companies could sustain that argument.
(Most people here fill their iPods with music they've ripped off their CD's, which is against Australian law but none of the record companies have tried exercising yheir legal rights - yet.)
This is strong stuff from an AC. It also seems self-contradictory. You suggest that incremental development is the way to go rather than "clean sheet". Isn't that what is being suggested? They are going to take tested components of the current stack and re-engineer tham to avoid the existing flaws. Griffin's qualifications and expertise fall right into this area. For that matter Zubrin also has relevant background. What are your credentials that you should be so scathing?
Constructive criticism is the way to go. What would you do? How would you get us to Mars Safe Simple and Soon? I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about but you seem so angry at the current players that it obscures your argument. Show us the way. Tell us who you are.
If you read the new information referred to in earlier posts you will see that your simple blockade would have resulted in many more deaths than the atom bombs did. Your sensitivity does you credit but is not useful in dealing with the dilemmas involvied in choosing between strategies leading to varying numbers of deaths on a huge scale.
Try and put youself in the place of the people who had all the information now revealed and had to make the decisions and who had to take the responsibility for the deaths of their own citizens.
In that context your stance is a luxury they did not have.
IANA physicist but I understand that the rising water will accelerate with enough force to allow power generation. There is an ecological issue about creating artificial nutrient blooms but it may not be substantial and in any case will show itself pretty quickly.
I prefer I like the same idea applied to air - plus it works in inland areas. Tested in Spain and planned for inland Australia are very large chimney structures that should produce large amounts of power very cleanly.
The advantage of the air towers is that thermals occur naturally everywhere everyday so the ecological implications of harnessing the movement of the heated air would be very small.
The aesthetic implications are a matter of taste but I like the idea.
So it has water cooling... so what? .. and "lying out his ass" is a bit strong. Jobs will have said that because IBM told him that they hoped to get there. They, and Intel, found the next step in development of their cpu's harder than they anticipated.
The most frequent argument against going to Mars seems to me to be that it costs too much and doesn't fix problems on Earth. Supporters usually mention the technology spin-offs but this doesn't really address the concerns of the fix-Earth-first brigade.
For 10 biillion or so people to live happily on Earth we are going to have to improve our resource utilisation and recycliing technologies. These technologies will be critical for the success of a Mars base and the necessity of being super-efficient on Mars will lead to breakthroughs that can be used on Earth. It would be a crucible for pushing the state of the art in recycling.
There's no need to study weightlessness if we work out the fairly straightforward engineering involved in rotating our cruise vehicles. If we spin them up fast enough to simulate Mars gravity then the crew are pre-adapted to their working environment.
This idea is explored to the Robert Zubrin book "Mars Direct" and in other places. You let out a very strong cable from the cruise module. It has a weight at the end of it. This could be something like the nuclear power supply and its shield but there are many possibilities. Spin it up and centripetal forces create artificial gravity in the cruise vehicle. At the pivot point you have your antenna poiting toward Earth... this is engineering shit.. they love this sort of problem. :-)
Presto. No need to worry about all sorts of biological problems stemming from weightlessness
Back on-topic; go to http://www.marssociety.org/news/2004/0202.asp for a strong argument for keeping Hubble.
Don't let Slashdot get to you. You just have to learn how to pull the levers. Ignore everything below say, level 4, and you'll find most of the crud slips away. After a while it becomes strangely addictive. :-)
I've downloaded the software and the first data set and it is very exciting. It all works beautifully and will only get better as more data comes through. You have done a wonderful job and Mars geeks like myself are very grateful to you for sharing it.
Note: Getting the data from Hungary was much faster than the Texas link... I'm in Australia. So, it pays to shop around.