Buzz Aldrin Blazing a Trail to Mars 25
techmaven writes: "In an exclusive, two-part article,
Special Report: Buzz Aldrin Blazing a Trail to Mars and Buzz Aldrin's Mars Vision: There and Back Again, the legendary astronaut, whose footprints still dot the windless surface of the moon, describes his vision of the next step in space exploration. Cruise ships to Mars, but not with shuffleboard or bad lounge entertainers ..."
Re:Sounds like a boring ride (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:2)
No bad lounge entertainers?!!!!!!! (Score:1)
Goddamnit! I want to listen to Wayne Newton for the entire trip to Mars! And to Tom Jones on the way back!
Why must everyone ruin my dreams?
Questions About Cyclers, Nukes, Probes and Geeks (Score:3, Insightful)
Speculation About Cyclers, Nukes, Probes and Geeks (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, it's speculation, whaddaya want?
Re:Speculation About Cyclers, Nukes, Probes and Ge (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, and we could have had this meme hit public consciousness on the 30th anniversary of the moon landings, but some doofus decided to Darwin himself out of the gene pool by flying his plane in conditions he wasn't trained for, and the media completely forgot about anything else for the rest of the month.
Along those lines, allow me to draft an open letter/rant to celebrities in showbiz and politics:
I hereby request that for the 33rd anniversary of the lunar landings, that all celebrities and politicians kindly take one day off from slashing your wives' throats, letting your drunk chauffeurs drive you home, running into trees while playing football, skiing into trees, flying in dense fog, playing golf in thunderstorms, or standing on tops of hills in copper bathtubs raising lightning rods to the skies screaming "ALL GODS ARE BASTARDS!", or whatever else it is that celebrities do to attract attention.
Just one fscking day.
Thanks to a society that preferred celebrities like you, I'll never see ultra-mega-huge-baseline interferometric data from the worlds around other stars. Thanks to you, I'll never see pictures of what's under the ice of Europa. Thanks to you, I know I'll never see anyone, let alone me, set foot on Mars. Thanks to you, I know I'll never see goddamn low earth orbit, let alone explore another world.
The dinosaurs went extinct because their walnut-sized brains weren't enough to permit them to develop a space program. From where I sit, I see the odds of being wiped out by asteroid impact as far greater than the odds of seeing any significant manned space exploration in my lifetime. Maybe it'll serve us right.
The saddest thing is that I'm part of that transitional generation that did have hope of exploring the solar system in our lifetime. I grew up believing that happiness was looking at Earth in my rear-view mirror, and the realization that we traded it for a world of "punch the monkey" banner ads is a hell of a comedown.
Rant mode off. Thanks for reading.
Re:Speculation About Cyclers, Nukes, Probes and Ge (Score:1)
I know what you mean though. It's depressing to think about all the things we can't do because of the lack of technology. But just think of the oportunity we do have: To study physics before everything is known. You could be the first one to nail down a solid set of equations describing everything. Now that would be nice.
Some good ideas there. (Score:1)
Of course, the satement about once you go there, you keep going there is one that makes a good point. There's no point in going, in spending all the capital just to do it once, you keep going and keep learning. Who knows where you might end up.
Re:Some good ideas there. (Score:1)
What problem is this supposed to solve? (Score:2)
Now, if Aldrin was talking about cyclers made from small asteroids he'd be talking about enough size to embed a large centrifuge inside a shielded volume. But that's not what he's talking about (probably because the people in government are thinking about asteroids as weapons of planetary destruction, and at that scale they're right).
Re:Radiation (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest radiation hazard comes not in the form of cosmic rays but gamma and x-rays from large solar flares. The prompt does from a solar flare could exceed 100 rem total, which would kill a crew in a cycler such as Aldrin seems to advocate.
As for the muscular degeneration problem, there isn't one. Yes, in microgravity astronauts experience muscule and bone loss. However, there is a lot of things that can be done to slow this process, without resorting to centrifuges to simulate gravity (which is probably the easiest solution...). Soviet cosmonauts who spent between 6 and 18 months in orbit have shown rapid recovery from the effects of microgravity exposure.
The greatest problem facing a manned mission to Mars seems to be public apathy and lack of focus at NASA. This is why heroic figures like Buzz Aldrin are getting involved, to bring the discussion to the public view, and motivate the appointed officals who oversee the manned space program.
Re:Radiation (Score:1)
Leaving aside the issue of shielding the crew, it's a cycler. It'll come back.
What were the odds of a sailing ship making it from Spain to the New World in 1492 BC?
(Better yet, what were the odds of a grass boat making it halfway across the Pacific in 10,000 BC?)
But people did it. People took the risk back then. Sure, some came for the gold and furs and population of pagans to convert, but they also wanted a chance to expand/explore stuff. Whatever their reasons, they took risks that by modern standards would be madness.
If there were a 10% chance of being fried to a crisp, and a 90% chance of setting foot on Mars and helping set up or grow a colony, (if the crew gets fried en route, no need to waste a pricy lander, just send the cycler, with lander, back to Earth and pick up a new crew!) you'd still have thousands of volunteers.
It's better odds than the New World's settlers had. It's incredibly better odds than those faced by the Polynesians. I'd fly tomorrow. Who's with me?
Re:Radiation (Score:1)
It is of course possible to shield against this, but you're no longer talking about a mission that'll come in under $100 billion.
Re:What problem is this supposed to solve? (Score:2)
That creates another problem (Score:2)
Thing is, for a cycler that's doing its orbital corrections with something like a solar sail, I don't see why you can't have ten tons per square meter. It would let crews ride the cyclers indefinitely, instead of being limited to one or two spins in a lifetime.
Re:What problem is this supposed to solve? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What problem is this supposed to solve? (Score:1)
He wrote a novel on this concept (Score:1)
It's called Encounter with Tiber [amazon.com]. It deals with a failed alien colonization of earth in prehistoric time due to their plant dying off. Present day - humans use the alien technology to try and locate these aliens - not a bad book
My Grandpa used to say strange things too (Score:1)
The man is a visionary (Score:3, Insightful)
What is nuts, is spending over 2 TRILLION dollars on bombs and warplanes. That much money could easily fund a space colony, and move humanity's constructive technology to the level of its destructive technology.
One thing that bugs me about how people understand space is they think of it as enormous distances of emptiness speckled by dots of dust. This view is ignorant and limited. Though by earth standards the distances between the planets is astonomical, the idea is rendered meaningless by the astronomical speeds reached. Spaceships could travel between the planets in shorter times than ships cross the ocean with engines designed for it. Thinking of the planets and asteroids as lifeless dustballs is also off the mark; do you think of a field as a lifeless patch of dirt? Probably so. But, with vision, those lifeless dustballs could be turned into power and food generating plants that could power the earth and solve world hunger. All it takes is imagination and ingenuity.