On to Mars 418
Russ Paielli writes "The always brilliant Charles Krauthammer has written a great article in The Weekly Standard on why we should forget the space station and head for the moon and Mars. But space funding will have to be increased. The recently lost Mars Polar Lander cost $165 million, which seems like a lot--until you realize that the movie Waterworld cost more." Update: 01/30 11:38 by E : Link became broken, now it's fixed. Enjoy.
Manned vs. Unmanned (Score:1)
Success has been EXTREMELY POOR for Mars missions in the last two decades (farther back, if you want to count the numerous Soviet failures) A lot of this is directly attributable to the nature of unmanned missions.
What we need to do is QUICKLY establish a lunar base. We have the means to make this a trivial affair, in terms of raw budget and technology. As someone stated above, the He3 alone is worth the effort. New technologies like Foaming Aluminum would allow us to create low-mass interplanetary vehicles, and between the Shuttle and the Delta Clipper, mankind should have no problems dealing with "the gravity well" of Earth.
It is imperative that we take the concept of "living in space" to the next level, beyond token orbital platforms supported 100% from Earth-based supplies. Once Lunar settlement is established (much like the settlement of Antarctica) we can tackle the thorny problem of true interplanetary travel.
Re:It's logical to go to space (Score:1)
Humanity has done OK here for the past 50000 years I think the Earth has a few more good years in her.
"or else we'll end up like the dinosaurs."
We should be so lucky as to last for as long as the dinosaurs did. Plus humans are pretty adaptable. We're probably a tad smarter than the dinosaurs were. Although intelligence hasn't yet been proven to be a survival trait.
Reading all the posts on
Re:COSTED? (Score:1)
By the way, you spelled embarassed wrong.
Don't correct people's mistakes if you yourself are not flawless. Furthermore, don't insult people for looking stupid if you look even more stupid.
Re:It's logical to go to space (Score:1)
But for the record, the earth has PLENTY of food for everyone. It is not a lack of resources, but a lack priorities that leaves millions of kids hungry. The wheat (barley) it takes to make the beer the world drinks for one month, would literally feed the worlds hungry for the same month. We would just rather drink and forget them, than help them. And that is a fact.
Now, as for the space travel, I think it should be a priority as well, but not at the expense of life on earth. Granted WaterWorld cost more TO MAKE, but the bulk of that was returned in ticket sales. Unless they are going to sell tickets to mars, then the polar lander cost signifigantly more!
Yes, but (Score:1)
I'm not saying we should take 15000 people and blast them into orbit right now, but instead start doing something about a moonbase. Organize things. Start planning. Start thinking, making ideas, internationally. Getting everyone together and splitting the costs.
Moon is so close, and it offers quite good possibilities to practise things to come in the field of space colonization. Mars is sexy, yes, but so is Moon and it's much closer.
It's logical to go to space (Score:2)
Amen to that. Maybe those people who scream "We should feed everyone here! But it's not my job!" can put the things into perspective. In order to survive, we must go to space, or else we'll end up like the dinosaurs. The huge chunk of rock is out there.
Thus the logical places to go would be: first a manned station on Earth orbit, then a self-supporting station on the Moon and then finally a base on Mars.
sad commentary on science (Score:2)
I think we could do (and have done) a lot of good science with interplanetary probes. They are relatively cost effective, plus there is no risk of losing lives.
Supporting humans is expensive. Reusable craft (not the shuttle) may reduce this cost, but I still think that unmanned flights are an economical way to study the universe and collect useful scientific data.
-K
Feasibility (Score:4)
Benefits of station & moon (Score:4)
Microgravity/Freefall. This is useful, makes interesting things such as growing crystals and studying the possible effects of a prolonged space voyage possible.
Moonbase:
Gravity. Its easier to work with some gravity.
Raw Materials. Hopefully there'll be sufficent amounts of raw material to make building craft on the moon viable. This could reduce launch costs greatly.
The trouble is, I dont think that the shuttle is capable of landing on the moon. In AC Clark's stories he mentioned shuttle-type rockets to get into orbit, then simple, non-atmosphereic shielded ships to go from an orbital station to the moon.
IMO we need both.
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:2)
Re:What it is good for? (Score:2)
Not very many, for not very long. And, when the money is gone, you still have hungry people. At least with the space probes, you have investments in knowledge (including the knowledge of how to engineer the probe) which you can re-use later.
How many schools can be build with this money?
33? (Assuming $5 million per school). And, while you would have more schools, there doesn't seem to be the politcal will to repair the ones we have, or pay the teachers more (which is arguably more important anyway). So, I think this qualifies as a strawman.
Would the Polar Lander have had any affect of the daily problems on earth hadn't it get lost?
It's impossible to know for certain, but more knowledge is never bad. Because of the Venus probes, we know more about atmospheric dynamics than we did, which gives us better weather prediction. And the program to put a man on the moon kickstarted developments in technology that we're still seeing today, including the Internet and the computer you're reading this message on.
All from money that, at the time, you'd say was 'wasted'.
...phil
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:3)
Bangladesh - Smaller than Wisconson in the US. 127,000,000 people living on a flood plain. Fertility rate 2.85 children
India - 1/3 the size of the US. 1 billion people. Fertility rate 3.18 children
Thats just two examples of wild population expansion without any responsability.
It's not America or Europes fault that alot of the starving peoples in the Third World have dangerous ideas about family size due to religion.
Here's the article: (Score:2)
Agreed (Score:2)
Sit In It And Rotate (Score:2)
Need a war first (Score:5)
That's also why, contrary to what the article says, it isn't at all surprising that people lost interest, once having beaten the Sovjets to the moon. It has indeed cost huge amounts of money and not all people are fascinated by science fiction.
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:2)
If you haven't noticed, we're vastly overpopulated as it is. Lowering the growth rate via starvation and/or birth control does much more for our long-term viability than does feeding the hungry while they continue to screw like rabbits.
Colonization of otherwise unused planets makes more sense to me - keep up with peoples' breeding habits, and yet maintain a halfway decent standard of living. What's the point of not starving to death if it means eating bean curry in a 6'x 3'x 3' 'cube'?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:It's logical to go to space (Score:2)
...
Yes, I understand that computer technology seems to advance much faster, for what reason I don't know. But things have changed since the original moon landings. First, they were 'one shot' trips - now we have the shuttle, which can be reused (and as such costs less). If someone develops a decent shuttle-like transport without some of its drawbacks, we'll be another step closer. It'll be somewhat slow, but I'm confident that we'll at the very least begin colonizing the moon before I'm dead (note: I'm 21).
We're already building an international space station. Considering that half the cost is in getting into orbit in the first place, once we're there things become far cheaper (you can take off and land without having to overcome that pesky gravity).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:I can't believe this (Score:2)
If these starving people would quit having fucking kids, this problem would more or less go away within 100 years or so. If you can't afford to feed yourself, you have no business having children so that they can starve as well.
If we keep 'feeding the world', the world will continue overpopulating itself into extinction. How about the alternative? Instead of focusing on the numbers, focus on the quality of life. Throwing money at third world countries is just covering up the problem, it just trains people to accept handouts.
Instead, why don't we improve our technologies in such a way that they are shared with the world? Promote things like birth control (telling the catholic church to piss off, if you must), show better ways to make use of land, etc. People are responsible for their own station in life, and simply giving them everything doesn't do a damn thing to teach them that.
A good space program could, eventually, bring great technological advancements to the world. Even in the limited 15 or so years we were serious about space, many things came about. Look at the computer on your desk - do you realize that its ancestors played a large part in the space program (and were often developed for that very purpose)? How about 'space age' materials, which can be used in creating cheaper shelter for the homeless? How about improvements in military tech (perhaps keeping you out of shackles)?
And what about Tang?
In the end, we could colonize and terraform other planets, providing room for the world to expand - which it's going to do whether we like it or not given enough time. Do you want everyone to have a decent quality of life, or would you rather everyone be forced to live happily sleeping in cubes, reading labels from cans of bean curd (struggling with a flashlight, no doubt due to the amount of smog in the atmosphere blocking out the sun)?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Space travel won't solve overpopulation. (Score:2)
On the other hand, I think your premise is flawed some what. Obviously space exploration isn't the only thing we should be working on (birth control in particular makes sense to me), but it doesn't need to be the only thing.
Also, if we can get a significant portion of the population up, their children will be born in space - not on earth - to begin with.
I'm looking at this from the point of view that it may take 1000 years to truly accomplish, but I don't think 'never' is a very good answer. It could very well begin with a little tourism, resource hunting, etc (and really, overpopulation is an issue of resources, not so much filling up space).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:It's logical to go to space (Score:2)
Still, this kind of underlines the need for a clear strategy for space travel, with little red tape. I have a feeling if a commercial entity or gongomerate were to be controlling things, more effort would be made to make things efficient.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Get off your high horse! (rant) (Score:2)
Might we dream of a world where everyone in the Asian continent has 1.5 cars, and they use their nuclear capacity to keep fuel prices down too 4c a gallon.
What country or race you are from, there is nothing productive in blaming other people. What we as a species must recognize is that we all live in this sandpile, and we all need to take responsibility for it.
Interest in Technology? (Score:2)
fundamental than whether we should spin circles around the earth, or move on
to other planets. Especially over here, in The Netherlands, technology has slowly
become a "bad word". Everything seems to be possible to the majority of the
people, so why make all the fuss about it? I can take a small plastic device from
my pocket, punch in a number of buttons and talk to someone who is on the other
side of the world. I can disclose information by switching on my computer and
click a few times with a mouse. How hard can going to space be? Naturally, not
expensive enough to worry about.....
It is exactly this attittude that is rather dangerous in my opinion. Every new step
takes more effort, and if we are not willing to put the effort in that, we will lag behind
in our progress. The main reason behind this lack of interest, and as a result of that, lack
of investments, is the fact that people are loosing interest in technological developments.
Still, there are a ways to get people interested in technology. I am not old enough to know
the feeling that I might have gotten when we heard the first mysterious
beep-beep-beep from the Russian Spoetnik satellite. Still, a few years ago, a similar
satellite was launched into orbit by amateur radio operators. It made the exact same
beep-beep-beep sound as the original, and I could almost imagine how people must
have felt.
The space shuttle SAREX experiment is an experiment in which the space shuttle crew
tries to communicate with schools by using amateur radio (sarex = shuttle amateur radio
experiment). MIR has had a wireless transceiver on board that can be used to communicate
with terrestial HAMs since almost the beginning. Within the HAM community, the thrill of
experimenting with technology is very much alive. Unfortunately, at least in Europe, amateur
radio seems to be loosing ground.
So, what does this mean? Start young. Get people involved with technological experiments
that are somewhat spectacular. In my physics classes, the most exiting this that we got to
do was boil a glass of water, or put some lenses in parallel. If that is the level you teach to
young people, it is not strange that they do not care. Invest more in good and enjoyable education,
and the results will pay off!
Link to the article itself. (Score:5)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/magazine
Re:The reason is poverty! (Score:2)
Lea
Re:Nanotubes to orbit... (Score:2)
Lea
Re:Space travel won't solve overpopulation. (Score:2)
By the way, this doesn't mean I don't support space exploration, including manned exploration. I'm just trying to clarify which arguments are valid ones.
A book to read . . . (Score:2)
A thoroughly inspirational read.
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:2)
And what precisely do you suppose you'll be doing on Mars then? I rather suspect you'll be eating something rather worse than bean curry (recycled turds) in a 6' x 3' x 3' cubicle inside a habitat dome.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Moon landing was a fluke due to cold war (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:So what's the problem? (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:I can't believe this (Score:2)
I'm all for space exploration, and I don't advocate spending all our surplus on food shipments. But you've no reason to criticize them for having children. Poor people need to ensure they will have surviving children to take care of them when they are old. It's a basic matter of survival, they have no other option.
And it's not their fault they're poor. They've been shafted up the ass for centuries by selfish ignorant assfuckers like YOU.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:What it is good for? (Score:2)
But there are fantastic quantities of raw hydrocarbons on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Also, nearer to home, quite a lot in the asteroid belt. But these should be used for plastics and for food. I think we've burnt quite enough crap in the Earth's atmosphere already.
You didn't really make it clear what you think is the prerequisite before we should exploit the resources of the solar system. Maybe you think we should just use up what we have here first - so that by the time we look up from what we are doing, we no longer even have the resources to get into space any more. Geez. Why not just bury your head in the sand. If we listened to people like you we'd still be stuck with stone knives and bearskins (figure that reference out if you're old enough
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem! (Score:2)
You, for example, proudly display a total ignorance of the world beyond your own back yard:
I can't help it that some people aren't able/willing to survive in today's world. That's not my fault. I can manage to feed, clothe, and house myself; why can't they?
Actually it is precisely your fault because the high-consumption lifestyle you boast that you enjoy would be impossible were it not for the fact that Europe and America have been screwing the developing countries for centuries, specifically by artificially depressing the price of third world exports (mainly raw materials). Because of this selfish exploitation, the third world countries have been continually denied the right to participate in the benefits of a booming world economy. Their populations starve because we have seen to it that they do so. They are poor so that we can have enough stuff to throw half of it away.
And for the rest of the 90+% of us who aren't complete losers,
Actually the vast majority of the world's population lives in conditions of extreme poverty. You talk like as if it's a tiny minority. Do you ever bother to think before you speak?
Even other animals only work to ensure their own/their children's survival. Altruism is unheard-of, and for good reason
Absolute bullshit. This isn't biology, it's ideology. It's National Socialism in fact. Where do you get off spouting crap like that? Examples of seemingly altruistic behaviour in the animal kingdom are commonplace, where the beneficiaries are not direct descendants of the individual making the sacrifice. These are well-documented, go and read Richard Dawkins. If you can't read books, here's a very simple and common example: in many species (including chimps), members will give off a loud warning cry (called an alarm call) if a potential threat or predator comes into the territory - thereby putting themselves at increased risk of detection by the predator.
altruistic species are "selected against" as the euphemism goes.
You made this up. The statement doesn't even make sense. What altruistic species? What is an altruistic species anyway? How could a whole species be altruistic? At the water hole: "After you" "No, after you" "No, I insist".
Give me a break. Examples of altruistic behaviour are present in many species. But no species is exclusively altrustic. Duh!
unlike lesser animals, I as a human can concern myself with issues other than food and other survival issues. This is a luxury humans have that other species do not.
It's a luxury that you have because of an accident of birth. Lucky you, born in one of the richest nations in the world. You can concern yourself with issues other than bare survival because you never had to struggle for your own survival. But most of the world's 5 billion humans do face that struggle every day.
It's what intelligence is all about.
There are other traits that mark us as human. Traits like compassion, generosity etc. Well, some of us anyway. You obviously don't qualify.
Onward and upward, folks, and all are welcome to come along; but I will not carry others.
Fine. Then don't expect us to carry you when it becomes your turn to suffer. Oh, how I long for that day.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:The reason is poverty! (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem! (Score:2)
You are trying to shift the argument towards the better off. Considering the subject matter and the plight of the victims this is nothing less than a crime against humanity.
When I said poverty I was talking about real poverty. Not about relative poverty, and not about relative purchasing power. I was most certainly not talking about "most Europeans and Americans". I was not talking about people with US$3000. Most people in the developing countries don't have anywhere near that amount of money.
For example, according to 1995 statistics [geocities.com] (the most recent I have to hand)...65% - near as dammit two-thirds - of the worlds population lives in countries where the average annual income is less than US$1000. Lets focus this a little more sharply, shall we? 54% of the world's population - more than half - live in countries where the average annual income is less than US$500. This comprises 36 countries with a combined population of almost 3 billion souls. And the average annual income of this three billion is just US$380. That's just over a dollar a day.
You are clearly talking out of your ass. You can't manage more than a hand-to-mouth existence on that sum, in any country. And remember that the poorest of these are considerably worse off even than that.
They are welcome to industrialize. Of course, industrialization works best under a stable government, something most of the world has never seen fit to provide for itself.
This puts me in mind of Marie Antionette's famous social remedy: "Let them eat cake". "Let them industrialize" you say. With what? It takes money to fund the building of factories, an adequate transportation and communications infrastructure etc. Those that were able to industrialize with the available outside help have already done so. (The others can't attract sufficient aid because they don't have anything the West wants that the West isn't already taking).
But for those who have industrialized, guess where the bulk of the profits goes? Let me give you a clue. It doesn't go to the country hosting the industry.
And before you try to argue that this is impossible, think back 200-250 years to industrialization in Europe. Where did the foreign aid come from?
It's obvious that you don't know the answer to this question or you wouldn't have mentioned it. European industrialization was funded by the surplus already present in the booming European economies. Now where did that surplus come from? It came from overseas "trade" which was in fact almost universally, the centuries-long robbing of raw materials from less developed countries in Africa, India, the Far East, and latterly the Americas and Australasia. Not to mention kidnapped slave labour from the West coast of Africa. The biggest employer in Great Britain for two hundred years was the East India Company, whose sole purpose was the transfer of wealth from the Asian subcontinent to England.
This has been basic high-school geography in most civilised countries for decades now. Did you even go to school?
What industrial nation's universities trained the Europeans? Hmmm...nobody!!! They did it on their own. Not because they are better human beings but because they decided to stop the bullshit and do something useful.
You talk as if the Europeans were doing the rest of the world a favour by robbing them, enslaving them etc. The remark about universities is a red herring. At the time of the agrarian and industrial revolutions, there were no practical subjects being taught in universities. In fact there was very little formal science involved in the development of the key technologies. It was trial-and-error engineering performed by enthusiasts, funded by rich aristocratic sponsors.
I'd also remind you that the industrial revolution could only take place in countries which already had adequate transportation infrastructure (roads, an overseas shipping network), abundant cheap access to a wide range of raw materials and established overseas markets. But most of these things came from the exploitation of less developed countries.
Without funding there can be no progress. How can you develop an industry if you have no access to transportation, lack most of the raw materials, the world's markets are protected by colonial powers with large armies and navies to enforce their dominance, and you are too busy anyway trying to scrape a living off the land you tenant, while you are forced to pay 75% of what you can make to your white landlord?
What did we do after we'd secured our head start, then? Did we share? Did we hand back what we'd taken? Did we hell. We colonized those countries and governed them ourselves. Any blame for their lack of progress up to the middle of the 20th century therefore lies squarely with the colonial powers. The countries of the third world were denied even the opportunity to take control of their own destiny until they began demanding their freedom after the second world war.
Yes, the foundations came from the Greeks, Arabs, and Chinese (among others). But everyone started on equal footing - after all, somewhere, sometime there had to be a first set of humans, all others descended from them. So anyone anywhere can make the same decision.
Maybe we did all start on an equal footing but that soon changed when Europeans decided to take what they wanted from other less greedy countries by force.
But they'd rather fight each other over a few square kilometers of worthless desert somewhere (no specific reference intended).
When resources are limited, societies fight amongst themselves for dominion over what little there is. This is not a feature of skin colour or climate. It is a feature of being poor.
You completely astound me. Not only with the profundity of your ignorance, but with the amazing stupidity it must take to make such sweeping and critical statements without any knowledge of the subject whatever. I only hope this exchange will serve as a lesson to those of similar education who have so far prudently remained silent.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (Score:2)
The Van Allen belts aren't even the problem. The spacefarers will receive much more during the journey during and after the trans-orbit injection and during an extended stay on Mars, since the planet has no appreciable magnetic field to protect them. The greatest risk of all comes from solar flares. Any female voyagers will need to have their ovaries removed and frozen before leaving if they expect to bear children afterwards.
B. Why do you think a nuclear powered craft would be any less tested then a chemical one? Noone said anything about expecting people to fly on unproved technology.
C. Do you know that nuclear rocket engines have already been tested? In the mid 60s several nuclear thermal rocket engines were tested in Nevada. One of them had a thrust of around 250,000 lbs, even.
I presumed we were discussing an accelerated program. In that context the introduction of a new design of man-rated nuclear gas plasma rocket is lunacy.
You should know that my worry isn't about being near something nuclear. They'll most likely need to have some fission generators with them anyway, to provide electrical power to the craft's systems and during their stay on the Martian surface. My fears are to do with the vulnerability of the radiation shielding around the engines, and the risk of an explosion. Spacecraft engines are high energy devices. Even a small explosion could damage the shielding enough to fry the crew. With chemical engines, a small explosion that didn't destroy the craft outright needn't be fatal (the Apollo 13 crew survived). Retrieving the crew from a disabled craft is an entirely separate problem.
Now, assuming we're all talking about nuclear fission:
I think one of the most helpful things we could all do for mankind is to start on an extensive nuclear technology public education project. We need to teach people that nuclear energy is really the key to our future.
We'd only need to teach that to people if it were true. Which it isn't.
It can be done safely, and is already far cleaner than any other alternatives.
The evidence says otherwise, regardless of all the grandstanding by the nuclear companies. It's only clean if you can make the waste vanish. Sticking it in underground containers isn't good enough, some of our underground waste dumps are breaking up already. And what about decommissioning? How many nuclear reactors out of all those built in the last half century do you know that have been safely decommissioned without serious environmental impact?
Some of these waste products remain highly dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. There is no place to deposit them on Earth that is known to be a safe and stable environment for that length of time. And you can't rely upon continual maintenance of waste dump facilitites because during a quarter of a million years there will very likely be periods when we dont have the money - or even the technology - to do that work.
Our future is nuclear, and it's about time we started pounding it into the public's collective mind.
Says you. I and millions of others happen to disagree. Not in my back yard, mate - and I won't allow you to pawn my children's future. The ideas you are espousing are dangerous idiocy IMHO.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem! (Score:2)
I'll grant you that the Japanese have a very dynamic society, but the picture you paint of their rise to fortune is not entirely accurate.
Japan was always well prepared for war; they had a long history of it and had built up and honed their war machine for a long time. Their militarism meant that despite lacking their own raw materials this was never really a problem. They just took what they wanted from their neighbours, eg, the Chinese (who are still wary of them). In World War II they took advantage of Germany's strength to leverage their own relatively small contribution. And after WWII, Japan's rise to economic superpower status would never have happened had they not received an enormous influx of cash from the West. So it's not really a good example of a poor country making their own way. They weren't poor to start with and they didn't make their own way, they had substantial help from outside.
Oh, so let's make this about racism now
I can't help the facts. White Europeans dominated and exploited non-white Africans and Asians for centuries. They are still doing it even though it's no longer necessary for whites to settle in those countries now that we have international banking and sufficient local influence to be able to fight wars and start revolutions by proxy, and topple governments by remote control.
I suspect maybe your mother never told you that Life Is Not Fair and that if you get screwed, screw back, try again, and don't bitch.
Actually my mother never told me that but I did learn it for myself. It seems more than likely that this is the fundamental difference between us. You were raised to accept the world as a bad place, while I wasn't. As far as I'm concerned it shouldn't be and it doesn't have to be. It's only people like you that keep it that way. The point of civilization is precisely to make things fair, not to make it easier to shit on people just to satisfy your own greed.
Europeans were Imperialist bastards. The world's a tough place, moreso for some than others. Deal with it.
The knowledge that our ancestors wronged the less fortunate is not a moral justification for continuing the tradition!
You deliberately ignored the facts about poverty and the historical reasons for it because they don't justify or support your attitude. But when cornered about it you abandon your refutation of the facts and resort to maliciously snarling: "The world's evil! Deal with it!"
Aha - Got you!
Perhaps I was too hasty when I called you uneducated; it's not necessary to explain your attitude so as long as your motives are rotten enough. Now *I* don't believe in Satan, but your attitude is so convincingly extreme in its inhumanity that I can't help picturing you with horns, a pointed tail and glowing red eyes. If Hammer still made horror films you'd have a fine movie career ahead of you. Get thee behind me.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:On to Spanish Harlem! (Score:2)
I only introduced it in order to refute someone else's implication that the poorest have incomes of about US$3000 in absolute US dollar value terms. So the figures from that study I summarized did at least serve their purpose.
Even so, it's not too much of a stretch to realize that the sort of money we're talking about is only going to cover expenses for very basic food clothing and shelter, for people on those average incomes or above. The poorest of the poor in those countries (and almost everybody in the countries at the bottom of the table) will lead truly wretched lives, and millions of them each year suffer a horrible death of starvation and disease. I can live with the knowledge that this is happening, God forgive me. But even I won't stand by while someone is spreading the obvious falsehoods that it just isn't happening at all, or that these people somehow deserve this awful fate.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:The reason is poverty! (Score:3)
People for whom bare survival is a continual struggle cannot afford the luxury of treating children as little princes and princesses. In those communities, children are a precious resource. They are more hands to work on the rich man's land, or to go begging on the streets of the city. Sons will grow up to provide for the family when you are too sick or too old to go on. Daughters will grow up to be a source of dowry payments. I don't want to say how else they might be used to contribute. But that is how it is when you have no money, no food, no hope and no future.
Because children are so vital to this way of living it is mandatory to produce enough babies so that some will survive to adulthood. When the risk of infant mortality is so high this necessitates a high birth rate.
As the original poster had it, so it is. If one wants to end overpopulation one must end poverty.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:There is an economic reason to go to Mars (Score:2)
You seem rather confident of that.
If you wanted cheap O2 and H2 in LEO, mine Phobos, use a comet or release the volatiles at the Lunar poles with a solar mirror. The gravity well of Mars is far too strong to bother visiting when you have the Moon and tons 'o other chunks of matter floating about which require far less energy to reach.
Those ideas all seem pretty far-fetched. For one thing, comets don't stay put. And what's this about a solar mirror? There hasn't even been any water proven on the moon and really, it looks pretty darn dry. Whereas Mars isn't at all. Mining phobos is practically the same as mining Mars - you'd have a permanent colony on Mars anyway.
No, I really don't think you've made your point.
Wouldn't you rather see your space-tax bucks spent on something more useful than a one-shot trip to Mars that will require a decade (or more) to prepare for?
You were reading with your eyes closed. We're talking about colonizing Mars. And this would make me a whole lot happier than a lot of other things my tax bucks are spent on.
There is an economic reason to go to Mars (Score:3)
What I'm saying is - you could actually make money being a Martian, shipping fuel, and oxigen, say, to Earth orbit. Too expensive to produce such stuff on Mars? No - how to explain this - you've got a whole planet worth of resources at your disposal, you only have to worry about costs of production and transportation, the resources are bascially free until your population increases. And, as a Martian, you don't worry if those costs are high - everything costs more on Mars
Space travel won't solve overpopulation. (Score:2)
I'm afraid that this will never be practical. Even with the best possible ships, it takes a vast amount of energy to climb out of a gravity well (like Earth's), or to move from one radius to another within one (e.g. the Sun's). If there is an overpopulation problem to begin with (birth rate staying above death rate), then people will breed faster than you can move them off of the planet.
Further, there is only so much real estate in the solar system to move _to_. If exponential population growth cannot be avoided, then we will fill up all available space no matter how many planets we colonize. Build O'Neal colonies or Ringworlds? Same problem. Wait a bit longer.
Empyrical evidence suggests that as quality of life goes up, birth rate goes down, which in turn suggests that a stable population can exist without draconian social engineering, but I don't have the background to argue for or against this. See other posts in this thread for citations. A stable population is the only real way to avoid overpopulation in the long term.
Re:Space travel won't solve overpopulation. (Score:2)
Oh, I'm most certainly in favour of space exploration and colonization - I just don't think that it will help overpopulation, which is what the original poster was proposing.
Also, if we can get a significant portion of the population up, their children will be born in space - not on earth - to begin with.
I'm looking at this from the point of view that it may take 1000 years to truly accomplish, but I don't think 'never' is a very good answer.
More people being born in space will not cause fewer people to be born on earth. If it helps, rephrase my statement as, "is it _possible_ to evacuate Earth, if Earth's birth rate substantially exceeds its death rate?".
The rate at which you remove people from the planet must be greater than the rate at which the population of the planet is increasing for the answer to be "yes". This can happen; there are just constraints on the rate of population increase for which evacuation is still possible.
Hmm. Trying back-of-the-envelope calculations:
- Assume doubling time of about 50 years, exponential population growth.
- Assume current population of 6.0e9.
- Ergo population t seconds from now is about 6.0e9 * exp(t / 2.0e9).
- Ergo rate of change of population now is about 3 new people per second.
Best possible spacecraft is almost all cargo, and all energy goes into overcoming cargo's GPE. Escape energy from Earth's surface is about 6.0e7 J/kg. Assume 100 kg/person, including carry-on baggage. Power required for our perfect space ships for rate of evacuation to balance population growth: 6 GW.
Ok, maybe attainable, if there are several *large* spaceports devoted to this purpose.
Now, chemical rockets. Assume that the best possible reuseable chemical rocket imparts 10% of its energy used to its cargo. This gives 60 GW. A very large industrial infrastructure supporting the spaceports, producing vast amounts of fuel.
Actual costs will be at least an order of magnitude higher, due to manufacturing/repair costs, additional infrastructure, etc., but this might be do-able. If we start evacuating now, and devote all of our efforts to doing so. And have somewhere immediately ready to evacuate to.
From the equations, you can see how it becomes much, much easier if the rate of population growth is reduced. Reduction to no net growth has the handy side effect of eliminating the problem.
Re:It's logical to go to space (Score:2)
Are the "children" willing to pay for it? Or are they too busy watching TV?
People have forgotten the enormous resources that were put into the space program in the 1960s, both in money and engineering talent. Richard Nixon, the Congress, and the public killed NASA's funding in the 1970s. The result was that many thousands of aerospace engineers (and others) ended up driving cabs or collecting unemployment compensation. Congress took that money, the money from cutting the Defense Department budget, and money they didn't have and spent it on increasing Social Security benefits to levels that made the voters happy and guaranteed the future insolvency of Social Security. Everyone cheered.
Re:We need to Privatize NASA (Score:2)
No, that isn't the way it works.
Let's say you want to launch a satellite on a Delta II ELV (expendable launch vehicle). You negotiate a contract with Boeing and pay them 60 million dollars. Boeing gives some of that money to the USAF and NASA to pay for their use of government facilities. NASA does not make a profit from the launch.
Re:It's logical to go to space (Score:2)
Congress listens to people who vote.
Take a look at the Census Bureau report [census.gov] on voting in the 1996 election. Less than one-third (32.4%) of 18-24 year olds voted. The majority of the baby boomers voted. Two-thirds (67.0%) of the 65 year old and over group voted.
You can whine about the demographics of the Congress, but if you don't get up off your ass, register and vote, you will never have any political power.
Probably going to be off topic ;) (Score:2)
I for one AM bored (Score:2)
I believe that space exploration requires the same sucess as earth exploration did. We must find inhabitable and/or life bearing worlds. Science fiction shows often have an uncanny ability to portend the future. Often technological gadgets that appeared in old sci-fi shows appear in modern day life. I believe sci-fi shows tap the social unconcious and portray our natural desires or fears for the future. Take then a look at some of the most popular space oriented sci-fi shows: Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, Lost in Space, Babylon 5, etc. They all have atleast one thing in common, they all explore life bearing and human inhabitable planets from time to time.
I believe that we are in a phase now where we need to concentrate on the next great technological breakthroughs of space travel. We need to find how to get farther faster for cheaper. The moon, mars they are boring, uninhabitable (at least by man unassisted) planets. We need to reach farther into our solar system if not into other solar systems to find more life sustaining planets like our own.
Believe me, once we have a good class M planet (planet like Earth for non Trekkies) that we can send tens or hundreds or thousands of people to colonize, the public will get very much interested in space excploration again. We're just tired of landing on and seeing pictures of gigantic barren rocks whirling around the sun.
Just my $0.02
Re:Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (Score:2)
Re:Benefits of station & moon (Score:2)
Aye, it can't land on the moon. Or atleast, if it tried, it'd make a big mess. And even if it did manage to land perfectly intact. It wouldn't be leaving in a hurry.
The least expensive (in the long run) method of earth-moon travel would be a craft designed to go from earth to orbit, and then another craft designed to go from earths orbit to the moon. Its a whole different ball game landing on the moon.
One thing that would be interesting would be an "elevator" to orbit. We recently discovered a material that was light enough, but strong enough to do such a thing. However the problem would be finding enough resources to build the damn thing.
---
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:2)
People seem to forget that Canada and the US used to have similar birth rates, back before we stablized. It wasn't until people stopped living/working to survive, and started living to entertain themselves that birthrates dropped. As soon as you get people with disposable income, they'll find something else to do for entertainment. (It's the people who are dissatisfied or have no money that have lots of kids.)
If you'll look at the population of Canada and the US, you'll notice that it's dropping right now. We're actually going backwards in some areas.
Incidentally, this is a very cold way of looking at it; these people in other countries are no different than you and me. The only difference is that they were born into bondage, while we were born with the silver spoon in our mouths. To compare them so easily to rabbits is reminiscient of our past mistakes when dealing with other cultures and "population control."
See, the English have done a lot of damage in this area; look at Africa, where segregation was instituted that only recently people are starting to fix. Look at Canada and the US, where we're only now starting to help the natives of these lands reclaim some of their birthrights. And then there's India, Kuwait, etc., where we REALLY screwed up.
True, you and I might not be English. I'm personally half Irish, half Polish. I COME from an oppressed background. However, I have been educated to have an English mind, and I have to learn from those who taught me's mistakes. My background makes no difference; my education does.
Besides, you think that offloading part of the world's population will help..!? Come on! Okay, so we get rid of a certain bit now.. but a few years down the road, we'll have to do it again.. and again.. and again...
Now what happens if those people we offloaded decide that they're going to have lots of kids too? A hundred years from now, we're back at square one as the moon is completely colonized. So we start spreading out further, and further..
The cycle doesn't end; we have to nip this problem in the bud.
James
--
http://chat.carleton.ca/~jhelfert
Out of the Real World (Score:5)
- Fund a trip to the Moon out of pocket. (He who pays gets a window seat).
- Invite six twenty-somethings of diverse lifestyles, races, and sexual orientations to join the crew.
- Film and web-cam everything.
- Earn even more gazillions marketing this thing.
- Use the profits to fund "Out of the Real World II" -- the trip to Mars.
billg are you listening? This would do wonders for your PR.Re:First we need a good launcher... (Score:2)
What we really need is a hybrid space-plane, or a craft that can fly in 'air mode' while it's in the air, then switch on the rockets when it gets high enough.
The problem with this approach is that you don't really gain much. A normal booster is only within the lower atmosphere (where there is enough oxygen to possibly help with combustion) for maybe it's first minute of flight. After that there isn't enough atmosphere to make any real difference. But you still have to carry along either extra airbreathing engines, or air intakes and a dual mode engine (which usually makes a crappy rocket).
The second problem, of course, is that dual mode engines generally perform badly... Jet engines and rocket engines can be optimized for decent efficiency. A dual mode (any of the various types) generally makes a crappy jet/rocket combination.
The real problem with corrent booster technology is that it is still simply based on ICBMs... Cost isn't a concern with ICBMs. So when you take one and turn it into a launch vehicle you end up with a non-optimized design.
Look at the Titans: they all run on UDMH and Hydrazine, great for an ICBM because it's storable, horrible for a booster because they're both terribly toxic. Add excessive tank stretching and restructuring to handle solid boosters and you end up with one of the most expensive boosters in history: the Titan IV. Add to that a company trying to save money at every turn (ie LockMart) and you end up with the last few Titan IV "lanuches"....
Now look at the Atlas... It burns RP-1 and LOX, far more benign propellants, and far cheaper then UDMH and Hydrazine to boot. The problem here is that Atlas was the US's very first ICBM. This thing started development in the 50s. It is truly the oldest US booster flying. It really is an elegant design, with the balloon tanks and booster/sustainer engines. Yet the modern varients haven't incorporated hardly any new technology. All Atlas IIs are bascally 1950s ICBMs. The real bummer is that, instead of building on 40 years of experience, Boeing has decided, with the Atlas III and IV, to throw everything away and start over. Atlas III and IV will not use balloon tanks, nor will they use the 1.5 stage design.
Cheap access to space does not require revolutionary launch systems. You don't need SSTO, nor do you really need RLVs... All you need is someone to sit down and design a new booster, from scratch, with economy as it's main point. And you have to do with by looking at other older boosters. One of the reasons the shuttle is so horrible is that the people designing it didn't look around at the problems of existing designs. They just assumed they could build a better system from a purely theoretical basis.
As always in this stupid industry it all comes down to political will and money. Find a way to fund commerical development of a new booster and we'll be well on our way to cheap access to space...
Re:On to Spanish Harlem! (Score:5)
$165,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for a decade. These kids will not eat lunch otherwise.
Well if we're going to throw out numbers...
$1,300,000,000 = one Stealth Bomber that we never use or probably even really need (or just the one that crashed).
$1,300,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for over 75 years.
Which is more important to YOU? Really now, if people are going to start bitching about Government spending, I hardly think NASA is the place to start.
They'll just declare independance (Score:2)
But Waterworld actually made money (Score:2)
And in any event, it's a nonsequitur since Waterworld was a privately funded for-profit venture whereas the trip to Mars would likely be a publicly funded for-science venture.
Re:sad commentary on science (Score:2)
Perhaps i'm insane but i've always thought that the eventual goal of space exploration was to expand the boundries of humanity beyond our little hunk of rock. While von Neumann may have felt that replicating space robots would be the best way to explore, it doesn't do a Thing for the people back home. No resources garnished from other planets, no interaction with any possible alien cultures, not even a relief to overpopulation on the home world.
Just imagine if when we finally decide we're ready to explore another solar system, we send a probe to land on a planet: it finds something amazing. Be it living intelligent aliens, the ruins of a city, even just living macro-scale alien life or even just some amazing geological phenomenon. What do we do about it? Nothing. It'd take years just to get the pictures and any other data the lander collects back to earth, years to construct another probe to explore the new phenomenon (whatever it may be) on the planet, more years to send it to the planet, and then years for the data to come back again.
So you say: "Sure, but that's a whole other solar system. I'm just talking about mars. Hell, we can See mars from here." But if we just probe the hell out of our solar system, will we be ready when the technology emerges to let us visit another? Or will we still be using shuttle-level life support with horrible living conditions on the years-long flight there and back?
Probes are great, like i said, and they should be used as much as feasible.. but don't knock humanity out of the equation altogether. Send enough probes to determine the basics and then send in the humans. It's not scientific, but I for one don't want to die knowing that in my lifetime we could have gone, but instead we sent our toys.
Dreamweaver
Re:sad commentary on science (Score:2)
Not just maybe. If it's political funding you're after (leaving aside unmanned commercial
probes) one of the pols, in a moment of uncharacteristic honesty, said, "No bucks withhout
Buck Rogers." I liked the "war" comment earlier (where are moderator points when I need
them?) and think it takes a lot to get support for the idea politically. If commercial firms can
find a way to profit in space (I still think honeymoon suites are the first human use we'll see
in orbit) then it will happen, safely and efficiently. IMO.
JMR
Moon landing was a fluke due to cold war (Score:3)
I tell you three times: the lunar landing was a military act in the third phase of the 20th Century War. After the second phase (fighting National Socialism) both the US and USSR were aware of the potential of using missiles to lob the new nuclear weapons, but the captured V-2 missiles weren't close to being able to lob nukes across intercontinental distances. Both countries dragged their feet, but one Soviet scientist did manage to get enough resources to launch Sputnik. The Soviet leadership didn't think much of it... until it saw the shockwave it sent through the free and third worlds. The *next* day the stunning superiority of Soviet science was the lead story on Pravda.
N.B., a lot of revisionist history says that everyone was shocked at the idea of a man-made moon, just like everyone was shocked when Columbus "proved" the world was round. Both are lies. People were deeply disturbed because if you can launch something into orbit, you have the ability to put the missile down anywhere below that orbit. The only questions were the weight of the payload and the accuracy of the targeting.
Over the next few years the Soviets had a long run of public triumphs. First dog in man in space _and_ orbit. First woman in space. The first man-made object to land on the moon was designed to shatter and spread little hammer-and-sickles across the surface. (The Soviets also had failures, but they were quietly airbrushed out of the picture.) The Americans had a series of widely seen failures. The Soviets were relentless in using this clear evidence of the superiority of the Soviet system to bring neutral countries into their fold. The US had to do something, but the rules of the "cold war" limited the options.
*That* is why JFK announced a manned lunar program. It was arrogance writ large, and a tremendous gamble, but if successful it would eliminate the growing perception that the west couldn't handle modern science. Nobody in power cared about science - but they *did* care about ICBMs and the newly developed thermonuclear weapons. If the Soviets have Q-bombs (whatever follows "H-") and ICBMs, and the US doesn't, the 20th Century War would be over.
So JFK got an incredible level of funding for the Apollo missions (a trick Reagan later repeated with an overt military buildup, but by then the world had already soiled its pants over Cuban missiles), why the Soviets had their own manned lunar program -- and buried it once it was clear the US would beat them -- and why the US lost official interest so soon afterwards.
Unfortunately, this means that many arguments for going to Mars make a fatal assumption - in many important ways we haven't been to the moon yet! The grand total of time spent on the lunar surface is still measured in days, as is the total time spent by humans outside of LEO. To use this as "proof" that Mars is the next goal is ludicrous.
Before we even begin to think about heading to Mars, we need to have lunar experience, not just LEO experience, that lasts at least as long as the first Mars missions. Preferably several times as long. We need to have experience with people having major medical emergencies in space. (Even healthy young adults have a significant risk of a major medical event during a two-year mission.) Then, and only then, can we make an informed decision about what we need for a Mars mission.
Re:If you really care (Score:2)
IMAX movie (Score:3)
I read somewhere that the most popular IMAX movies generally gross a lot more than the hollywood films do, and that many of them (the Antartic one, I think) do better than even blockbusters like Titanic did.
So why not privately fund a mission (manned or unmanned) into deep space and make an Imax movie about it. I mean, imagine the visuals of a space probe who's purpose it is to bring back visually stunning footage, who would not want to see it?
I realize that such a mission would probably not get as much done scientifically as the NASA missions do, but at least it is something. But, if you ask me, it seems like a much more viable way to commericially fund space travel than space tourism.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Want to go to Mars? Lets go. (Score:2)
Ok, lets go do it. Who's with me?
No, really. We have two choices: we can eithor sit on our asses and wait for someone else do do it, or we can just go and do it.
We'd have to get a group of dedicated people together, and we'd have to spend a lot of time and effort on the project, but there's absolutely nothing stopping a small group of Slashdotters from going to Mars.
The only thing is that we'd have to be willing to put in the time and effort to do the thing.
Anyone who's actually interested, say so. We can set up an initial meeting as soon as we have four or five people interested.
Warning: If you're not willing to quit your job, sell your house, and teach yourself advanced physics, don't even bother replying.
Re:Feasibility (Score:2)
That alone is the biggest reason people have not gone to Mars (on a manned flight). It's a death sentece, until we can get out of the atmosphere w/o a high-powered launch.
Re:I can't believe this (Score:3)
The truth is science is the best investment a government can make. Ultimatly, it is more importent then the poor, the military, and the various corperate / individual subsidies which eat 70% of our budget. Why? It changes who we are.
Technology is also the solution to the thirdworlds problems because it forces the governments to support skilled labor (computers, etc.) which creates a middle class who are sympathetic to the poor. It also forces the countries well-to-do to send their children to the US for education where they become sympathetic to the poor.
Jeff
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:2)
The problem that causes starvation is not lack money. It is politics. Politics both in the countries that have food, and also in the countries that don't.
Haven't seen this link here yet, so ... (Score:2)
Nobody has yet mentioned the Artemis Society International's [asi.org] project for establishing a privately-funded colony on the moon. The Artemis Project was mentioned in an article by rocket scientist Gregory Bennett in the January 1995 issue of the Analog SF magazine. It has since grown into a fairly sizeable undertaking which looks like it might have a real chance to reach the moon within their proposed schedule. Check out their web site, join their mailing list, even send them money. It's worth a look.
Who paid for it (Score:2)
The point is moot (Score:2)
Which is beside the point, because the Scuttle cannot get anywhere near the Moon. It has enough OMS (Orbital Maneuvering System) fuel to get up to about 400 miles altitude with a minimal payload. This requires, IIRC, about 200 m/sec of delta-V. Going from LEO to lunar transfer orbit requires about a 2 mile/second kick; that's 3200 meters/sec, or about sixteen times the punch of the OMS packs. Forget braking to lunar orbit, landing, or taking off again; you're never going to get more than a few hundred miles from home in one of those things.
Scuttle is also about a billion bucks per launch, so it's a mighty expensive way to get anything to anywhere. Mostly it's a self-perpetuating program, going on the momentum of the political pull of the vendors. In other words, pork. To get anywhere, we need another vehicle with radically different characteristics. Since that vehicle would replace Scuttle and leave its well-connected vendors out in the cold, we're stuck.
--
Re:Feasibility (Score:2)
--
Cerulean is very unimpressive. (Score:2)
If these guys were serious, they would have pictures showing details like sample panels being tested under the heat loads expected during re-entry. All they have is some moderately well-drawn art and a few equations. I'd not cite them again in support of the assertion that private parties will go to space; you're just giving people cause to dismiss the entire idea, Rotary Rocket included.
--
Need a Love of Freedom First (Score:2)
The only way, I'd say, to mobilize public support needed for 'going outer space' the old-fashioned, exploring way, is when there's another war or semi-war were 'we' need to get 'there' before 'they' do (whoever and where-ever).
That's the politicians' view of Americans and it is biased. Americans are pioneers, not politicians [geocities.com].
Side note: If you look back in the Congressional Record, you'll find a lot more support for NASA funding from the Congress than was coming from the Executive during the post Apollo 11 era. This is something that rarely gets mentioned, but it does say something about what "the people" wanted vs what "the government" wanted.
That, not the spinning off romance, was the reason for the Apollo Project in the first place
You're right that government, as pointed out in my congressional testimony, pursued the Apollo project for those reasons.
However, you're dead wrong that pursuing frontiers is merely "spinning off romance". For many Americans, perhaps even most of the first generation immigrants, coming to the American frontier was a matter of life and death. [geocities.com]
Re:There is an economic reason to go to Mars (Score:2)
Re:Not so cheap (Score:3)
Re:Feasibility (Score:3)
A concerted effort could get us there, and that is the point of the article - a concerted effort would be a good thing. It would be interesting to see what sort of new designs they'd come up with, since all of NASA's big machines were built with old technology.
The reason we explore . . (Score:2)
The MPL gave us no telemetry upon entering the Mars atmosphere, and the reasons for it's lack of comunication (what we have here, is a failure to comunicate. name that movie?) is still not known at this time.
The good news is, we can still gain the education and learn what happened to the lander by sending another to see what there is to see. As mentioned in the article, " The cost of the Mars Polar Lander was $165 million. In an $8 trillion economy, that is a laughable sum."
Futurists speek of nanotech making it possible to send hundreds of tiny "nano-bots" out to explore other planets. Because they are so affordable, half can fail, and the rest will finish the mission. This prediction is dead on, but what if we could do that today?
What if the economic conditions changed enough to make this approach feasable? Instead of making the bots smaller, the economy grew enough to make the full size bot more affordable. $8 trillion is a lot of money for this country, and we could spend it on learning more about what went wrong.
_________________________
False Dichotomy (Score:4)
$165,000,000 = free lunch programs for all of the needy kids in the NYC region for a decade. These kids will not eat lunch otherwise.
Which is more important to you? What does that say about your priorities and your humanitarianism?
Since when do we not have the resources to do both? It's not like this is an either-or proposition. "but what about the needy children?" We can feed them _and_ go to mars!
--
Re:The reason is poverty! (Score:3)
As well, I do suggest that it is irresponsible to bring a child into a situation you can't handle. If you're impoverished, then I think it wrong to bring a child into a situation that it can only make worse.
I'm not saying there aren't instances that mark the exception to the rule, and I'm not stating that it should be illegal... But if you're having a hard time making your ends meet, adding more ends isn't the way to take care of it.
As far as If you don't want over population, end poverty! statement goes. Bullshit. There's no way to make me believe that because they are poor, they are somehow less responsible for how many kids they have to feed. The reverse of that statement, "If you don't want poverty, end over population" while not accurate, is more true than yours. By reducing population, you are likely to create a more even distribution of wealth. This is not always the case, so I won't argue for it, but it is more right a statement than you made in your post.
communications (Score:2)
-lou
A Modest Proposal Re:Not so cheap (Score:2)
Re:Out of the Real World (Score:2)
More recent news suggests that comet Swift-Tuttle will probably miss us in 2126. All we have to worry about is a heavy meteor shower. As Dr. Duncan Steel observed in the Sources and Acknowlegements to Hammer of God by Arthur C Clarke, "How do you fancy a hundred Tunguskas in a day?"
Besides that, goverment aid doesn't solve social problems. It never has, it never will - but goverment aid might save the human race, and as many plants and animal species as we can take with us.
In the 20th century, we've had two biggish impacts on the Earth - both hit in distant regions of the Soviet Union. We also had a near miss - so close the asteroid burned through the upper atmosphere long enough for a guy on a fishing trip to film it. Both the impacts weren't that bad - only slightly bigger than the Hiroshima blast. That's nothing compared to what it could have been, and what it soon will be if we don't get our act together. We know about Swift-Tuttle, and we're keeping an eye on it. But how many more asteroids and comets are there out there that we don't know about?
Re:I can (Score:2)
How many juntas have you seen where the common person revolted? Not lately. It's the military or other wealthy people.
Question for you: Do you feed the "starving multitudes?" How often in one week do you volunteer? or how much money do you give?
Just curious.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This signature contains text from the worlds funniest signature.
not quite. (Score:2)
Lest I seem too pessimistic, let me say this: I think going to, say, Mars is a worthy goal. I haven't thought that much about establishing an outpost there (which has all sorts of other issues associated with it), but that would be pretty neat too. :-) BUT you are shooting yourself in the foot by telling people it's an easy problem -- eventually, they might believe you. I think all the issues I mentioned above will be solved. (There is promising research in short-duration centrifuges, and some less-promising but still cool work in tether-based large centrifuges. But all of these have a lot of testing to go through before they'll be ready to rock.) But it'll be a while, and people should know that.
Re:not quite. (Score:2)
The tether approach has been thought about at great length and if we decide to go with a full-time centrifuge, that's certainly the way to do it. I wish I could direct you to a good page on why even this is not ready for prime time, but I can't. Briefly, I seem to recall that the problems with any large-scale centrifuge are that people just tend to be screwed up by the Coriolis effects -- I remember watching a great video of someone trying to throw a ball around in a centrifuge, and you'd be surprised how messed up they were. (To be fair: a lot of people think that you would eventually adjust to these effects.) Would that it were as easy as the scenes in 2001. The only thing a tether system saves you is the additional weight you would otherwise have to be propelling in order to get the centrifuge effect. (Ie, it's a lot easier to lift a couple pods and a tether than it is to lift a giant ring.) More promising, IMHO, are short-term personal centrifuges -- it's looking as though you don't need anything like 24-hour exposure to gravity to prevent most of the ill effects of microgravity.
As for the radiation: I actually don't recall Zubrin's argument here, so maybe I'm giving him less credit than he deserves. But the real killers in space are the massive particles down in that lower right hand side of the periodic table -- these are the ones I was referring to earlier when I said that we don't have particularly effective shielding. Also: background exposure levels are not that high, true, but as you talk about multiple-year missions, the chance of getting an anomalous exposure (ie, from a solar flare) becomes unacceptably high.
There are plenty of people who believe these risks are acceptable. After all, they argue, these guys are astronauts! They're used to risks. But I don't think we'll do it (aka, I don't think NASA or any other responsible agency will fund it) until we can deal with these things much better than we do now.
Every few years it's another plan.... (Score:3)
A few years later, I remember reading about a sister craft to the shuttle that will allow landing on different planets and large supply transfers. The plans were canceled when the 5 other shuttles were canceled.
Back in '85 I remember reading about a new craft that was the size of a VW bug. It was to fit in the shuttle and transfer supplies and people to the moon. Looking at the X-37, I can see that this might have been feesible.
Currently we are planning for a Space Station. Which has been redesigned and reviewed about every 6 months since 1985. Problems with this plan spring anew like water through a sock.
As the article states, we need a goal. And require the government to back that goal without grandstanding.
I belive that a country that can set priorities, like Australia or Japan, will create a colony on the moon. And the US culimination will be a few token flags painted on the side of their spacecraft.
My hope is that the X-Prize will pull commercial interest onto the moon.
NASA won't do it, but people can. (Score:5)
There is no technical reason that we could not establish permanent bases on the moon, Mars, or on an asteroid. The fact that we could send manned missions to the moon with less than 10 years lead time (from the idea being first proposed) suggests that we can develop the technology.
It is unlikely that NASA would be able to execute such a mission. Unfortunately, the space agency is no longer the can do group it was in the 1960's. Instead, it has grown into another Bureaucratic monster, more concerned with maintaining its funding that searching out new, expansive goals.
We can expect privately funded space launch services such as Rotary Rocket [rotaryrocket.com] or Cerulean Freight Forwarding Company [nvinet.com] within the next five years. With these and other companies providing access to low earth orbit, there will be a ten fold decrease in the cost off access to space. This will allow more activity in space, which in turn will encourage more launchers to provide access. It is quite likely that Space Vacations will be available for the affluent inside the next ten years, with costs as low as $100,000 per person for a two week stay in a space.
There are groups who want to move permanently into space. Eventually, we will be going to the moon [asi.org], Mars [marssociety.org], the Asteroids [permanent.com], and elsewhere [islandone.org]. If you are interested in promoting space, I recommend that you join one or more of these organizations.
The real cost of the mars mission (Score:2)
What's really going to bake your noodle later on is would you have still broken it if I hadn't said anything? -(Oracle) The Matrix
A Bugg
Closed systems / Open systems - Skymining (Score:2)
One - while it makes sense to protect space resources of surpassing beauty, such as the rings of Saturn, mining asteroids for minerals isn't perturbing a biosystem, nor destroying anything of beauty. There is no defensible argument against it.
Two - the exploitation of space resources is the best environmental policy we could pursue. Would you rather crush an asteroid or strip-mine an old growth forest? Every activity on the planet has an impact on the biosphere - it must be treated as a closed system.
By using space resources we open the system - we bring energy and resources in from outside. The analogy I like to use is this - trying to help the environment without using space resources is like trying to lift a chair you are standing on. It would be possibly only if you have a skyhook to lift you up.
Skymining - the only practical way to maintain an industrial society!
What we need is a Highway to mars. (Score:2)
I don't think so (Score:3)
You Linux nutzoids are WAAAAY to eager to spend my money on frivolous junk. Who wants to go to Mars? ME??? No way... I'm happy owning one planet thank you very much. I'll leave Mars to Linus, or whoever, let them Open Source THAT! Maybe then they'll leave me alone... Sheesh
The Mars Petition (Score:2)
Re:What it is good for? (Score:2)
There's nothing on Mars to bring back to Earth, no. You won't make much physical cash from Mars. Mars has a wealth of possibilities, and unlimited potential. It holds a record of planet formation, of weather patterns, of extra-terrestrial life, geography and geology and asteroidal activity. It has minerals, metals and every element required by humans in excess. It has water, enough to have formed an entire ocean. It has space, enough for millions of humans, animals and plants. It could become a new home for humanity, a cutting-edge scientific outpost, a utopia or a dystopia. Mars is whatever we want it, and make it, to be.
Settlers going to Mars are going to be faced with the harshest environment humans have been exposed to. They'll be under an enormous amount of pressure and stress to think up solutions to problems, and I think we'll probably see quite a few scientific inventions coming out of Mars.
In response to another of your points, no, life would have gone on on Earth if the MPL hadn't crashed. But for your information, some of the first real evidence we had for the existence of global warming came from data gathered by probes sent to Venus. Those probes showed a runaway greenhouse effect, and helped convince a lot of people that global warming wasn't a fiction.
Re:I can (Score:2)
Please do not try to use emotional blackmail on me, or twist my words by saying that I'd like to see people have their photos taken on other planets.
If we went your way, we'd drop everything we are doing now - particle physics, astronomy, nanotech, medical research - *everything* - to go and feed the poor. Would you rather know the fundamentals of physics than feed a starving person?
Let me take it further. Why don't you sell your car, or your computer, to go and feed the starving? It's easy to preach morals, but harder to enact them.
Of course I feel for the starving and the homeless. But if we concentrated on solving all the problems we have now, we would get nowhere at all. We will always have problems.
Do you realise the political impossibility of 'giving' billions of dollars of aid to third-world countries? You can't just hand it to a million starving people, it has to go through the government. You can't just give the starving people food, because that money is going to run out.
You can't just give them money to start farms or buy fertiliser, because, by and large, they already *have* enough food, they're just not getting it. The problems of the starving and the homeless cannot be solved solely through money.
Re:sad commentary on science (Score:3)
When you realise that it's dozens if not hundreds of times slower than a human, then you'll be able to put things into perspective.
This also goes for the Mars probes - we can only do so much science when we've got minutes of lag between communications and robots that can't even move at walking pace.
Think about the loss of the MPL, most likely because it landed in the wrong spot. Humans could have avoided that - hell, Neil Armstrong avoided it on the Moon.
Certainly unmanned flights are economical - NASA's new strategy has proved that, but sooner or later we're going to reach the bounds of what can economically be done without humans.
Re:I can (Score:3)
We spend 20 or 30 billion, if not more, on aid to third-world countries every year. Do you see conditions improving? No.
People say that we should spend money on getting rid of the homeless, curing cancer, building more hospitals, and all the rest. I've always replied that any amount of money will not make these problems go away, and certainly not the relatively small amounts used to explore and colonise Mars. Yes, we shouldn't ignore the problems we have now, but it's just not practical and it's not possible for us to make sure that conditions are perfect at home before venturing outside.
The problems of the third world, the disease, wars, famine, global warming and terrorism are not caused by lack of money. They are caused by human 'nature'. I certainly don't want to say that we shouldn't do anything about them because, at heart, we are all scumbags (which we aren't. At least, most of us aren't). But we can only find the answer to these problems within ourselves, not within our wallets.
And your implication that a mission to Mars would be merely 'Flag and footprints', like the Apollo missions, is woefully uninformed and out of date.
Re:There is an economic reason to go to Mars (Score:2)
A permanently inhabited space station in LEO.
A permanently inhabited space station at one of the Lagrange points.
A permanently inhabited space station in Lunar Orbit.
A permanently inhabited Moon base to support Mars operations.
and... the Mars mission itself. So, at then end of the whole dog-and-pony show, we would be left with more than a few pretty pictures of astronauts on Mars -- the human race would have a complete space-based infrastructure which could be used to construct whatever step you wanted to pursue next.
The 1989 study was a 'mission statement' outlining what the next step into space would be for the space agency and the human race. Nastily enough, it considered what the whole enterprise would actually cost.
If the authors were dishonest about the dollar figures, they'd probably have received more positive press. ANYONE can say they have the solution to colonizing space ("just give me $100 Million, and I'll build you the spiffiest darned rocket y'all've ever seen!") the trick is actually backing it up with real-world technology.
Using stuff which hasn't been invented yet as core infrastructure in your reference plan doesn't count. That's not engineering, it's arm-waving.
If you really care (Score:5)
NASA's, ESA's, CSA's, NASDA's, etc. budget has been slashed to ribbons over the past decade and albatrosses like Space Station are just going to keep making the situation worse. If you Really Care(tm) about seeing space technology move forward (ie: if you're sick of the 1970s Space Shuttle dog-and-pony show and "Faster, Better, Cheaper - Work Smarter Not Harder" stuff) and would prefer to see something more useful than a foreign aid package parceled up as a "science project" be the result of decades of brilliant engineers' work, then write your government representative and let THEM know.
Writing isn't the only thing you can do (and by writing, I mean a physical piece of paper with ink or toner, placed into one of those foolish envelope things and given to the postal service of your choice -- a disk full of 2k e-mails doesn't quite have the same impact when furiously waved about in Congress). You can also:
Visit schools and give a classroom presentation on technology (it can be exclusively about space technology, if you'd like -- you probably know more about it than the teachers). Why not call the principal of your local high / public / middle school and ask for a half-hour of lecture time? I was surprised, when I first asked, at how happy they were to have an outside visitor stop by to tell the kids a bit about the 'real world', and not have it involve drugs or 'anger management'. I was also shocked when bright 17 year olds were asking me if there were already human bases on Mars! Keep in mind: in just a few years, these are the people who will vote in your next rep.
Ask to visit your local member of parliament, congressman, senator, etc. in person. It sounds like a long-shot, but they're often open to the idea of taking a half-hour to speak with 'regular folk' when they have the time, and if you're not ranting about saving the spotted Albanian tree-toad or asking for cash, they're surprisingly open to hearing about your world-view. Why not take an afternoon to have a pleasant chat with a politician about the practical applications of space technology and the means by which it will help the nation and (in some cases) their district? Try to tone down the 'human destiny in space' schtick though - most people will just think you're a loon.
Suggest that others do the same! Suggest to them that instead of watching another episode of Star Trek, they can spend the hour crafting a letter to their government representative and make a step towards seeing the fiction become real. If we each do that (maybe even once every few months), a few billion bucks might find themselves tossed into a useful program.
Remember folks: More and more of us weren't even born when N. Armstrong set foot on the Moon. Let's do something to ensure we're not all dead before it happens again.
Re:sad commentary on science (Score:2)
The only really viable way for unmanned robots to do any sort of intelligent exploring is what we did with Sojourner on Mars -- remote control. This sort of approach will work for Mars, the Moon, and perhaps Venus and Mercury. Beyond that, lag just increases amazingly. There are also more problems with loss of communication -- besides Pluto, outer-Solar-system probes will be landing on moons that have planets to obscure communication for days at a time.