Why You Should Be More Interested In Mars Than the Olympics 409
New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler:
"Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?"
Oh for the love of.. (Score:5, Interesting)
There’s insanely amazing stuff happening every day. Marvels of human achievement and technology all around us. And for each, there is usually a group of people around it who:
a) lives and breaths the stuff
b) can’t fathom why everyone else doesn’t feel the same way
It doesn’t work like this. Even if you could some how identify the one absolute “top of the pile” thing that everyone should be focusing on, it’s completely impractical for everyone to do so. It’s the same reason we can’t have every scientist in the world working on say, cancer research. You need some of them to be trying to figure out how to get rid of wrinkles.
Some people don’t care about space. A lot of people don’t care about space. Arguing that they should care about space because it’s a more “worthy” thing to care about than whatever they do care about is just ridiculous.
As to trying to frame the story so it’s more in-line with the stuff they are interested in... even more ridiculous. You can’t trick someone into caring about technology by turning it into a human interest story.
Well... (Score:0, Interesting)
I don't give a fuck about mars.
But i give even less of a fuck about the olympics this year. The entire thing is one giant commercial moneygrab anymore.
And everyone involved manages to fuckup their part too.
I'm more interested in how london is a police state under martial law because of the olympics... that's some messed up stuff right there.
Re:Not exclusive... (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, the Olympics is a story about people achieving, the rover landing is about humanity achieving. Both are worthy to watching. I mean the Olympics is not like the Kardashians, WWE, or any of the other mindless drivel on TV. Not only that but they are not a case of one or the other. The landing will be at 1:31 am which is 5:31 am UTC so unless they the Olympics have events at 5 am you will not have to miss anything but some sleep.
In other words STUPID WASTE OF TIME FOR A SLASHDOT STORY. Maybe it would be better to spend time watching the Olympics and the rover landing than posting or reading junk like this.
Re:sexy sports stars (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah that explains why the rules for beach volleyball require men to wear speedo's (don't know the non-Australian term for this kind of swimwear :-) )
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm more interested in how london is a police state under martial law because of the olympics.
Oh please, London was a police state before the Olymipics.
Re:Also because (Score:5, Interesting)
Please explain the value then. People from seperate countries do things together all the time.
What is different about the Olympics is that people do peaceful things. Unlike some of the other scenarios where people from some of these countries come together.
The Olympics are separated from other international athletic competitions in two primary ways: 1) they're the most commercialized, corrupt, money-driven competition with the greatest focus on advertising and 2) they have a propaganda tradition mostly based on Hitler's contributions to the games. Both of those points are despicable.
Re:Yea but (Score:5, Interesting)
I stopped reading at "unaltered". If you think anyone in the Olympics is "unaltered", you don't understand competitive sports. Having been a fitness professional for well over a decade, I can tell you there are at least 40 different types of performance enhancing drugs (including certain types of steroids) that can not be tested for. Being trained how to fool a lie detector test is also very easy.
Personally, I don't get it. Olypmics doesn't actually test anything other than how obsessive someone can be about one particular thing their entire lives. They contribute nothing to society other than entertaining those with nothing else better to do than to watch others do things most of them could never do in their wildest dreams. Science contributes to our society, Olympics don't.
Caring about science (Score:5, Interesting)
Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?
Actually, I think the possibility of discovering life on other planets is exactly what drives a disappointingly large percentage of the population to *not* care about science. Might mess with their whole world view and all that. Some of them haven't fully accepted the round-earth-orbiting-the-sun thing, life eveloving on other planets would just lead to apoplexy.
Re:Mars (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine you're going to need some fairly fit people to survive a trip to Mars without their bodies failing.
Actually no. That's why this Mars crap is not interesting to me.
If they did it right it would be interesting to me. Example of doing space stuff right: work on building a space station with artificial gravity[1], better radiation shielding.
Once we have that technology working in practical ways it removes the main obstacles to long term human space travel and inhabitation. It would no longer matter so much that it takes months to get to some place in the solar system.
Next step would be tests on space-based mining, factories and farms[2]. These can be done concurrently.
Then space colonies, and self-sustaining space colonies.
In contrast much of the human space travel stuff NASA is working on appears to be mostly dead end stuff. You are not going to have a viable human colony using that tech (drugs to slow wasting and bone loss etc). It can come in handy for specific cases, but it's pretty stupid to waste time, resources and money on this sort of stuff at our current tech stage. All that NASA talk about going to Mars is stupid at this stage too- Mars is a gravity well. Only do it later when the space colonies are rich and thriving (from mining the asteroids and trade).
[1] Example option for a small station is using tethers and a counterweight.
[2] Fish farms could be one of the many good farm options. Sunlight + CO2 + nitrogen+iron for algae.The fish (e.g. tilapia) eat the algae, the humans eat the fish. I suspect fish farms could be fine in low-g regions of a space station/colony (water oxygenation could be a problem in zero-g regions, but maybe the fish and their food might be able do fine in an air-water foam). It'll cost a lot to get that much water up into space, but we should later be able to get lots of water from asteroids and similar. So initial ones would be small scale test farms which should cost less to set up.
Farms on the Moon might be worth considering - but there are many unknowns - lunar soil is very very different from earth soil. Might have to stick to hydroponics till we figure more out.
Re:Also because (Score:5, Interesting)
The metric used is the number of Decayed Missing or Filled Teeth in 12 Year Olds.
England has a mean DMFT of 0.7, and
USA has a mean DMFT of 1.19,
that is the average American 12 Year Old has worse teeth than the average English 12 Year Old.
Further, NHS dentistry fees: [www.nhs.uk]
£17.50 ($28) for an examination
£48 ($75) for simple procedure, such as root canal work, or removing teeth
£209 ($329) for anything else, such as crowns or dentures
Consider yourself shown up.
Re:sexy sports stars (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonesene, it's largely driven by fashion. Being anorexic, which many girls aspire to, is not healthy. Marilyn Monroe was somewhat chunky by modern standards. Go back a few centuries and fat chicks were teh hotness.
Re:People should (Score:5, Interesting)
Since your parent was talking about sports beyond those in school, I really have to wonder about the veracity about your claim. Will less professional stadiums really lead to less fitness in the overall population?
Looking to Europe, they don't have have more stadiums, they have things on the local level, more (free) clubs and to add to that, more consistent sidewalks/bicycle_paths/mass_transit and less of a car culture.
So I have to call bullshit on this claim. Sports for kids are good. But the real money going towards ego-stroking pro-sports so the fans can sit in their chairs and gawk at other people doing things isn't helping anything.