Perhaps I'm not explaining the tradeoffs I perceive well. We should put our humans-in-space research toward interstellar ships similar to the original Orion project (early 60's), for reasons given in nearby replies.
I'm not convinced going to Mars is the best way to get such research and experience. We need more experience with spin-based gravity ships and NON-chemical propulsion. Doing a slightly-bigger Apollo-to-Mars is not in that direction.
I tend to agree, and that's why I said "if we make it that far" near the end.
However, we don't need near-light-speed (near c) ability to colonize extra-solar planets. The ships can be multi-generational and use something like the original Orion project's propulsion to get roughly 5% of c. We perhaps have the technology even now if we spent enough. FTL is merely a bonus.
The key unknown here is whether AI *or* extra-solar travel ability (EST) will move faster. Existing AI is still a far cry from human-like general intelligence (HLGI). Whether HLGI is 20 years away or 20,000 is hard to say. Our current AI is still lame in most regards. (It's just fast & big-ass databases & statistical processing that makes it seem "smart" sometimes. High-level goals and abstract thinking still elude it.) We don't know how hard the problem really is. Evolution had a lot of time to optimize brains.
If EST progresses faster than HLGI, then we may be okay. EST is just about possible now, just very very expensive. HLGI is not possible EVEN if we had $100 trillion to try to build one instance (excluding "base" R&D). In that sense, EST looks like it may be feasible first. But past pace is no guarantee of future pace.
WW3 would essentially turn Earth into Mars. If we have self-sustained-colony technology on Mars, we'd have it on Earth also.
And an epidemic is very unlikely to wipe out every human. The only chance of that I see is an engineered pathogen, and the builders of that would probably find a way to get it to Mars also if wiping out everyone is their goal (or it may accidentally end up there in a shipment). If it's deadly enough to wipe out 100% of Earth humans, chances are it would end up contaminating Mars also along the way.
And as I mentioned elsewhere, the risk of asteroids etc. are quite low compared to human-induced risk. The Earth-as-Mars rule above also applies to asteroid crashes.
I'm pretty sure our biggest risks are human-based. The frequency of natural mega-disasters is roughly about once per 50 million years. Yet Cold War mistakes almost triggered a nuke winter multiple times in the past 60 or so years. Humans are still stupid, with ever bigger weapons. The ability of small groups to cause big destruction is on an upward trend.
And a global drought is unlikely to wipe out every human (unless it's part of some other problem).
Our biggest risk is us.
A Mars colony will improve our odds slightly, but interstellar colonization is the only real solution (potentially). We have to spread ourselves far and wide to avoid being hunted to extinction by mega-evil empires (of humans or their bots).
Our future is probably akin to Battlestar Galactica, if we make it that far, even.
No, because the technologies for Earth-to-Mars travel versus interstellar travel are too different to have significant cross-usage. For example, a multi-generational interstellar ship will probably have to rotate (portions) to provide gravity to the inhabitants and thus the zero-gravity survival issues of a Mars trip are mostly moot.
I agree there are some lessons that are usable from a Mars mission, but it's spending a heck of a lot for marginal trickle. If we could have both, great, but given an either/or choice, I'd rather spend it on bots and get science and new vistas NOW.
if we don't get off this orb, we are destined for extinction.
What ever dooms us on Earth would likely also doom us on Mars. For example, if a mad invader wanted to take over everything, he/she would come to take Mars also. If run-away AI takes over, it will also likely infect Mars colonies.
I suppose certain mistakes like LHC producing run-away black-holes, or one-off suicidal acts are less likely to spread to Mars, but Mars is so close that most human-created maladies would also put it at risk.
An interstellar or extra-solar colony or ship would have a better chance. Just don't tell The Borg where you are going because they'll probably be able to move faster than us.
Whaddya mean? It's currently the fastest growing OS, if you count Android & clones. QWERTY-Syndrome (compatibility & familiarity) prevented it from taking on Windows.
The "space race" situation with the Soviets was a relatively rare alignment of forces. I don't think a pissing match with the Chinese carries nearly as much weight.
By the time Voyager II went by it was less of a deal.
Same with Apollo 12 and up. (Aside from 13, but that's not good PR.)
I think you are greatly overestimating how fascinating science is to the general population.
Pics of Io spewing or Mars sunsets fascinate because they are visually interesting & exotic. People go to the Grand Canyon because it's visually stunning & interesting, NOT to meet people.
I agree that adding people into the mix makes it much more interesting to the general public, but also far more expensive and risky.
And, finding plant life on a distant Earth-like planet would arguably stir the imagination more than doing Apollo again on a "red moon".
Since this could hurt Google's direct line of business, Google should buy PostgreSql, and pump scaling money and promotion into it to eat into Oracle's sales.
In practice, it is. The current political climate will not fund both well.
One advantage of human spaceflight is that you get science on human biology.
That's incremental knowledge and we don't have to go to Mars to get most of the same thing.
There is no robotic exploration mission you could possibly design that would gather even a fraction of a percent of the attention that a manned mission to Mars would get
When Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter in 1979, the news-stand publication covers were full of images of the swirling red spot, the pizza-like Io, and its spewing volcanoes. I saw those pics all over the place. An ocean/lake sunset on Titan via a boat-probe could have a similar effect. Or discovering the spectrum of plant life around a distant planet; it would ignite the public's imagination.
On a side note, another problem with Mars is that we don't know the biological contamination risk in either direction. Infecting/seeding either one with the others' life is very difficult to avoid.
Odd how certain people & parties are against fundamental (basic) research UNLESS it's spent by the military. It's often so fundamental that any resulting applications often have just as many civilian/commercial uses such that it may not matter which gov't entity sponsors it.
Well, at least we got The Internet and integrated circuits out of such. (The military was a heavy customer of early IC, sparking faster improvement, even though they were not involved in the invention itself.)
Let China blow a wad of money* on it. I'd rather see our money spent on an unmanned Titan boat probe, an unmanned Europa submarine, and an extra-solar (alien) planet atmosphere spectragraph "artificial eclipsing" telescope.
Approx 10% of the cost, but 5x the science, 30% of the same Wow factor (more if plant life found), and a failure would be only 3% as embarrassing as a dead Marsnaut. A friggen bargain to both Ferengi's and Vulcans: logic and greed favor the bots.
If I see one more article about STEM and young women I am gonna scream like a little girl. Coding is a high-risk career. It may pay relatively well out of college, but beyond that it is NOT a better choice than any other career. Burnout, agism, offshoring, wrist injuries, long hours, investment bubbles, etc. etc. etc. make it a risky career choice. At its best it's a stepping stone into something better, but so are a lot of other fields.
If we snooped them, they probably snooped us. Somewhere there may be a recording of the moment the ill-fated invasion of Iraq was decided:
Dick: Now that the Taliban are gone, lets smash Saddam!
Colin: What if something goes wrong? Iraq is far more populated than Afghanistan.
W: Don't worry, Colie, we whacked the Taliban real good.
Colin: Actually, we don't know where the Taliban went. Intel didn't find enough bodies to account for most. They may be hiding in caves and hills.
Dick: You worry too much. They are gone for now; let the next prez worry about them coming back out.
Colin: I don't want to foul my legacy with a war gone wrong.
W: Don't worry, Colie, Dickie is an expert on blaming it on the Dems in the off case shit comes back later. Look, I almost choked on a pretzel the other day; life is short; go for the ball now!
Dick: Amen! My mechanical heart could clack up any day, and you eat a lot of fries yourself, Tubbie.
Colin: Alright, I did have a bad feeling about this, but maybe it's just those damned fries, eh?
I've seen no evidence that anybody intentionally reused and erased the space footage. More likely somebody saw them laying around and just grabbed and reused without asking or checking -- a lazy shortcut to getting their job done.
[Sig] Recession: Your neighbor's out of a job. Depression: You're out of a job. Recovery: 0bama's out of a job.
O saved our caboose from a Hoover-like 25% unemployment rate. The extent of the financial side of the crash was similar to 1929's. The gop's alt plan was rather Hoover-like and would probably have relived history instead of learned from it if given a chance.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I'm not explaining the tradeoffs I perceive well. We should put our humans-in-space research toward interstellar ships similar to the original Orion project (early 60's), for reasons given in nearby replies.
I'm not convinced going to Mars is the best way to get such research and experience. We need more experience with spin-based gravity ships and NON-chemical propulsion. Doing a slightly-bigger Apollo-to-Mars is not in that direction.
I tend to agree, and that's why I said "if we make it that far" near the end.
However, we don't need near-light-speed (near c) ability to colonize extra-solar planets. The ships can be multi-generational and use something like the original Orion project's propulsion to get roughly 5% of c. We perhaps have the technology even now if we spent enough. FTL is merely a bonus.
The key unknown here is whether AI *or* extra-solar travel ability (EST) will move faster. Existing AI is still a far cry from human-like general intelligence (HLGI). Whether HLGI is 20 years away or 20,000 is hard to say. Our current AI is still lame in most regards. (It's just fast & big-ass databases & statistical processing that makes it seem "smart" sometimes. High-level goals and abstract thinking still elude it.) We don't know how hard the problem really is. Evolution had a lot of time to optimize brains.
If EST progresses faster than HLGI, then we may be okay. EST is just about possible now, just very very expensive. HLGI is not possible EVEN if we had $100 trillion to try to build one instance (excluding "base" R&D). In that sense, EST looks like it may be feasible first. But past pace is no guarantee of future pace.
Interesting to speculate about...
WW3 would essentially turn Earth into Mars. If we have self-sustained-colony technology on Mars, we'd have it on Earth also.
And an epidemic is very unlikely to wipe out every human. The only chance of that I see is an engineered pathogen, and the builders of that would probably find a way to get it to Mars also if wiping out everyone is their goal (or it may accidentally end up there in a shipment). If it's deadly enough to wipe out 100% of Earth humans, chances are it would end up contaminating Mars also along the way.
And as I mentioned elsewhere, the risk of asteroids etc. are quite low compared to human-induced risk. The Earth-as-Mars rule above also applies to asteroid crashes.
I'm pretty sure our biggest risks are human-based. The frequency of natural mega-disasters is roughly about once per 50 million years. Yet Cold War mistakes almost triggered a nuke winter multiple times in the past 60 or so years. Humans are still stupid, with ever bigger weapons. The ability of small groups to cause big destruction is on an upward trend.
And a global drought is unlikely to wipe out every human (unless it's part of some other problem).
Our biggest risk is us.
A Mars colony will improve our odds slightly, but interstellar colonization is the only real solution (potentially). We have to spread ourselves far and wide to avoid being hunted to extinction by mega-evil empires (of humans or their bots).
Our future is probably akin to Battlestar Galactica, if we make it that far, even.
No, because the technologies for Earth-to-Mars travel versus interstellar travel are too different to have significant cross-usage. For example, a multi-generational interstellar ship will probably have to rotate (portions) to provide gravity to the inhabitants and thus the zero-gravity survival issues of a Mars trip are mostly moot.
I agree there are some lessons that are usable from a Mars mission, but it's spending a heck of a lot for marginal trickle. If we could have both, great, but given an either/or choice, I'd rather spend it on bots and get science and new vistas NOW.
What ever dooms us on Earth would likely also doom us on Mars. For example, if a mad invader wanted to take over everything, he/she would come to take Mars also. If run-away AI takes over, it will also likely infect Mars colonies.
I suppose certain mistakes like LHC producing run-away black-holes, or one-off suicidal acts are less likely to spread to Mars, but Mars is so close that most human-created maladies would also put it at risk.
An interstellar or extra-solar colony or ship would have a better chance. Just don't tell The Borg where you are going because they'll probably be able to move faster than us.
http://cdn4.everyjoe.com/wp-co...
Whaddya mean? It's currently the fastest growing OS, if you count Android & clones. QWERTY-Syndrome (compatibility & familiarity) prevented it from taking on Windows.
Like Unix people did with Multics?
The "space race" situation with the Soviets was a relatively rare alignment of forces. I don't think a pissing match with the Chinese carries nearly as much weight.
Same with Apollo 12 and up. (Aside from 13, but that's not good PR.)
Pics of Io spewing or Mars sunsets fascinate because they are visually interesting & exotic. People go to the Grand Canyon because it's visually stunning & interesting, NOT to meet people.
I agree that adding people into the mix makes it much more interesting to the general public, but also far more expensive and risky.
And, finding plant life on a distant Earth-like planet would arguably stir the imagination more than doing Apollo again on a "red moon".
Since this could hurt Google's direct line of business, Google should buy PostgreSql, and pump scaling money and promotion into it to eat into Oracle's sales.
The Joker(s) runs the company. Whaddya expect?
I'm waiting for the Google Elevator
Oh, they will be complicated after you make them in MS-Office.
In practice, it is. The current political climate will not fund both well.
That's incremental knowledge and we don't have to go to Mars to get most of the same thing.
When Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter in 1979, the news-stand publication covers were full of images of the swirling red spot, the pizza-like Io, and its spewing volcanoes. I saw those pics all over the place. An ocean/lake sunset on Titan via a boat-probe could have a similar effect. Or discovering the spectrum of plant life around a distant planet; it would ignite the public's imagination.
On a side note, another problem with Mars is that we don't know the biological contamination risk in either direction. Infecting/seeding either one with the others' life is very difficult to avoid.
Ah, the sweet nostalgia of BSOD on my smartphone.
Propellers ARE anti-gravity devices, just noisy fuel-thirsty air-requiring debris-tossing anti-gravity devices.
(It occurred to me that's also how my wife describes me, minus the anti-grav part.)
Odd how certain people & parties are against fundamental (basic) research UNLESS it's spent by the military. It's often so fundamental that any resulting applications often have just as many civilian/commercial uses such that it may not matter which gov't entity sponsors it.
Well, at least we got The Internet and integrated circuits out of such. (The military was a heavy customer of early IC, sparking faster improvement, even though they were not involved in the invention itself.)
Let China blow a wad of money* on it. I'd rather see our money spent on an unmanned Titan boat probe, an unmanned Europa submarine, and an extra-solar (alien) planet atmosphere spectragraph "artificial eclipsing" telescope.
Approx 10% of the cost, but 5x the science, 30% of the same Wow factor (more if plant life found), and a failure would be only 3% as embarrassing as a dead Marsnaut. A friggen bargain to both Ferengi's and Vulcans: logic and greed favor the bots.
* That they get from lopsided "trade" with us
If I see one more article about STEM and young women I am gonna scream like a little girl. Coding is a high-risk career. It may pay relatively well out of college, but beyond that it is NOT a better choice than any other career. Burnout, agism, offshoring, wrist injuries, long hours, investment bubbles, etc. etc. etc. make it a risky career choice. At its best it's a stepping stone into something better, but so are a lot of other fields.
If we snooped them, they probably snooped us. Somewhere there may be a recording of the moment the ill-fated invasion of Iraq was decided:
Dick: Now that the Taliban are gone, lets smash Saddam!
Colin: What if something goes wrong? Iraq is far more populated than Afghanistan.
W: Don't worry, Colie, we whacked the Taliban real good.
Colin: Actually, we don't know where the Taliban went. Intel didn't find enough bodies to account for most. They may be hiding in caves and hills.
Dick: You worry too much. They are gone for now; let the next prez worry about them coming back out.
Colin: I don't want to foul my legacy with a war gone wrong.
W: Don't worry, Colie, Dickie is an expert on blaming it on the Dems in the off case shit comes back later. Look, I almost choked on a pretzel the other day; life is short; go for the ball now!
Dick: Amen! My mechanical heart could clack up any day, and you eat a lot of fries yourself, Tubbie.
Colin: Alright, I did have a bad feeling about this, but maybe it's just those damned fries, eh?
Dick, W, & Colin: "Onward Christian Soldiers!..."
I've seen no evidence that anybody intentionally reused and erased the space footage. More likely somebody saw them laying around and just grabbed and reused without asking or checking -- a lazy shortcut to getting their job done.
O saved our caboose from a Hoover-like 25% unemployment rate. The extent of the financial side of the crash was similar to 1929's. The gop's alt plan was rather Hoover-like and would probably have relived history instead of learned from it if given a chance.
If I were God, I'd F with NASA and really make Pluto be a bunch of blocks. Everything they'd publish would be assumed an Onion article by the public.
Their fakery budget has really gone downhill since the Apollo/Kubrick days