People on Mars in 30 Years? 412
lucabrasi999 writes "Yahoo is running a Reuters story in which Arthur Thompson, the head of the NASA 'rover' missions, says that people could be landing on Mars in the next twenty or thirty years. If that is true, I estimate that within 50 years, Mars will need women."
About time. (Score:5, Funny)
Screw Mars! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Screw Mars! (Score:3, Funny)
Notgonnahappen (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Notgonnahappen (Score:3, Funny)
Women on Mars? (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean.... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot Needs Women (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? Some Slashdotters have been waiting longer than that.
My own highly original prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My own highly original prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My own highly original prediction (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My own highly original prediction (Score:4, Funny)
Men on Mars (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Men on Mars (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Men on Mars (Score:5, Insightful)
Four words... (Score:5, Funny)
Not Bloody Likely (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, Notgonnahappen. 8(
Re:Not Bloody Likely (Score:5, Insightful)
So, why haven't we done it yet? The short-circuited race to the moon and the space shuttle? an anti-imperialistic self-loathing? This is a starker choice than guns vs. butter; it's a bon-bons versus houses kind of thing. It looks like we've got a hillbilly mentality: when it's raining, we can't work on the roof and when it's not raining, the roof doesn't leak.
Re:Not Bloody Likely (Score:5, Insightful)
A better use of the energy required to evacuate the Earth would be to simply keep it in orbit and move there. If Earth's particular location is bad, strap on some engines and you can move our "Super Platform (or better yet a couple of them)" somewhere else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Bloody Likely (Score:3, Insightful)
Earth after a global-extinction level asteroid hit is still a more habitable place than Mars right now.
If you're really afraid of an asteroid wiping out humanity, then build a dozen self-sustaining Vaults [mikesrpgcenter.com]. The'd be done in 3 years, at a fraction of the cost of "terraforming" Mars.
Re:Not Bloody Likely (Score:3, Insightful)
You sure don't.
Google for Biosphere II. It's tougher than one might think.
Yes, it's very hard. But however tough it may be, terraforming Mars is 10,000 times tougher.
PS. The Biosphere project is irrelevant. It depends on solar energy, which is something that a Mars base would have, but that would be lacking for the 2 years following a major asteroid strike on earth. (That's the whole reasoning behind global extinction events- dust blocks sunlight) An earth-b
Re:Not Bloody Likely (Score:4, Interesting)
If you aren't prepared to deal with the kind of decision-making that such population reduction would entail - up to and including selecting people to be part of the population reduction - go away and live on an island. You aren't helping, and you are getting in the way.
The only resources worth expending at this point are towards getting more resources - and last time I looked, the moon, Mars, asteroids and everywhere else in space is where they are. Not under your pillow. Nowhere that can be found by "reuse, reduce recycle".
Problem is... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problem is... (Score:5, Funny)
Listen buddy, if you want to talk about the War in Iraq, then go over to the "politics" section.
Those estimates don't seem too unrealistic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Those estimates don't seem too unrealistic... (Score:5, Insightful)
That statement is just as true as it was 30 years ago.
Re:Those estimates don't seem too unrealistic... (Score:3, Funny)
>
> That statement is just as true as it was 30 years ago. Well, of course it is. Because we're powering the Martian colony with nuclear fusion!
with a slight change (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing physical, technological or financial (yes, it won't break the bank if done smart) stopping us from visiting and settling Mars.
The roadblocks are politics and motivation. Shit, we could be on Mars in 15 years if we really wanted to.
Re:Those estimates don't seem too unrealistic... (Score:4, Funny)
And we'll get there in our flying cars.
Detail left out (Score:5, Informative)
Asked how long it could be before astronauts land on Mars, Arthur Thompson, mission manager for MER surface operations, told Reuters in an interview in Lima, "My best guess is 20 to 30 years, if that becomes our primary priority."
If it is primary priority. Which I doubt it will be. And depending on who is our next president might affect how much funding NASA gets.
Re:Detail left out (Score:5, Insightful)
People forget how much we need to support programs like this in order to advance mankind. I mean, look at all the innovation that came about during the times leading up to putting a man on the Moon. Its challenges like this that push the brightest minds of the world towards something other than who can build the best weapon.
Re:Detail left out (Score:2)
True, but it is failures like the Genesis crash that stick in the public's mind and make people cry out to cut NASA funding.
Re:Detail left out (Score:5, Interesting)
And 1,000 US soldiers and 10,000 Iraqis still alive.
Think about it.
must...resist...urge...to....troll... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but how does Halliburton make money off of us sending people to Mars?
The Human Costs (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this is off topic, but I cannot stand when people make such arguments as the one you just made.
The war in Iraq was not a dichotomy in which we got to war and Iraqi civilians die or we don't and Iraqi civilians live. It was a choice between going to war and risking the lives of thousands of Iraqis or not and leaving 25 million to the whims of Saddam. Even the most conservative estimates had Saddam killing tens of thousands of Iraqis every year. Amnesty International estimated 24,000 dead Iraqis every year from a combination of Saddam Hussein and crippling sanctions.
So, we could go to Mars and leave 25 million people in abject tyranny at the hands of a crazed madman with ambitions to become the next Saladin, or we could remove that dictator and give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom and save far more lives than were lost.
This sort of simplistic dichotomy on the war is exceptionally disgusting, akin to Holocaust denial. I've met Iraqis who have suffered under Saddam Hussein, and they will all tell you that as bad as Iraq is now, the horror of living under Saddam's totalitarianism was far worse.
Besides, who knows - in 30 years we could be launching Mars missions from the Baghdad Cosmodrome thanks to an Iraqi scientist who beforehand would have been working on designs for dirty bombs or chemical munitions.
Re:The Human Costs (Score:4, Insightful)
Amnesty International also estimated about 500,000 iraq children dead from international sanctions, a figure that Rice said it was "worth it". So, instead of removing the sanctions, I guess the right solution is to start bombing the country. Funny how at the start of the war no one was talking about saving Iraqis, but only about making America safe from WMDs.
Re:The Human Costs (Score:4, Insightful)
Hummm. Aren't you going a bit far with that one?
After all, if you just try, you can see his point: he is giving the US perspective.
Bush, and most supports of the war, did not go because of the Amnesty International reports that you mention. If you think that then please do a little reading of recent history or foreign policy. For example read about the obstacles that people like Gore had to overcome to get action in Yugoslavia.
The fact that Iraqi's were being tortured was relevant to the Iraqi's themselves, to a few bleeding heart liberals in the US and around the world, to Christopher Hitchens, and maybe a bit to Tony Blair. But it was irrelevant to the US supporters of the war until after their other motivations fell apart.
If you have $100 billion to spend on good deeds, you could easily save 1000's of times more people without invading a country.
Re:The Human Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Amnesty International assessed no such thing as a "saddam and sanctions" count. Amnesty did assess that the *sanctions* killed about 1 1/2 million people, of which about 500,000 were children. However, the US continually called this number way too high when we were supporting the sanctions - do you suddenly believe it?
Furthermore, the hospitals are *still* devastated, some even worse due to postwar looting. The water system is still in shambles. There's more military waste scattering the country. Consequently, people are still dying like they were before.
2) "Even the most conservative estimates had Saddam killing tens of thousands of Iraqis every year". Completely wrong - and, has been demonstrated thusfar. The mass graves found in Iraq contain 3-4 thousand bodies. The largest of them - over thousand bodies - was from the shia uprising. Most of the other graves were either from the shia uprising or the Iran-Iraq war. Some bodies did show signs of summary execution, but it's nothing near like what you described.
Are we just not finding the graves? Doubtful. We're not only locating them from local testimony, but by doing satellite spectral analysis of the soil. Disturbed soil exposes gypsum, so you can see where people have dug.
Most of the inflated counts were arrived at due to including the people killed and missing during the Iran-Iraq war - a war which, might I add, the US supported.
> at the hands of a crazed madman
Please, by all means, demonstrate that he is a "crazed madman". Offer us your diagnosis. Meanwhile, please diagnose Islam Karimov and the other brutal dictators who we're not simply ignoring, but actually supporting. Karimov's security services put to shame the sort of generic middle-eastern torture centers that we found in Iraq; his actually *boiled people to death* (the bodies have been autopsied).
> or we could remove that dictator and give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom
Yeah, they're really grateful, aren't they? Perhaps I should put you in touch with a few Iraqis, and let them tell you how truly grateful they are. I'll have to warn you, one of them was just carjacked a few weeks ago, another had a cousin's husband kidnapped and ransomed earlier this year, and another had a good friend of his almost killed by US forces while reporting about a US convoy for the Guardian (everyone who took shelter from the helicopters that returned in the place that he sheltered were all killed - an al-Arabiya journalist, a man trying to save his kid brother, etc) - so they may not take too kindly to your rosy assessments.
> I've met Iraqis who have suffered under Saddam Hussein
Imagine, expats supporting regime change in their parent country! No way! I guess Costa Rica should overthrow the US government, because when I was down there, all the expat Americans I knew hated Bush and wanted him kicked out.
BTW, when was the last time that you talked to them, and do they have family over there right now?
> in 30 years we could be launching Mars missions from the Baghdad Cosmodrome
Yes - people who daily get to see their countrymen fragged, are going to welcome us with open arms. Sure.
> who beforehand would have been working on designs for dirty bombs or chemical munitions
Yeah! That's it, nations build "dirty bombs". Ok, you just proudly displayed your ignorance there. And as for the chemical munitions - where are these vast stockpiles that Saddam had the country teeming with? The whole zero scientists working on them would do a great job building zero rockets.
You know, in the middle ages, when people set out to find a witch, they usually found one.
Re:Detail left out (Score:5, Interesting)
If not created solely for warfare, many of our technological advances (metalugry, steel, plastic, computers, the internet, jet aviation, canned food) were promoted and mass produced to support a war effort.
Re:Detail left out (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt that. Even with Bush's desire for NASA funding congress shot it down [chron.com]. So even a president in the same party as the majority of congress isn't going to have his way on this. The current consensus of the American people is that space is a waste and they want more tax dollars thrown at ghetto waste and trailer trash in the hopes that it makes for a brighter future... As if.
Until Joe Taxpayer accepts that money is not the solution to every social ill I doubt we will have a serious tax-payer funded space program. Which will be never by my calendar.
Space exploration IS a waste of time and money (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither is it reasonable to suggest that a colony on Mars would be good "insurance" against a global catastrophe, as one loony did above. We are so far away from being able to build a self-supporting colony on Mars that it's laughable.
Nearly all of the money that NASA has spent on "human exploration" programs since the 1970's has been wasted. Some of the research on the effects of micro-gravity on human physiology are worthwhile, and need to be done IF long-term manned space missions are going to be considered. Unfortunately, the USSR (and later Russian) government was doing essentially the same research at the same time, for orders of magnitude less money.
The choice isn't necessarily between space research and social programs, although I'd argue that investing in affordable higher education for all qualified students would do much more to advance the state of human knowledge than a mission to Mars ever would.
The choice is between spending billions of dollars on keeping "astronauts" in space for PR reasons, rather than focussing NASA on basic research into the "hard problems" of space exploration.
NASA needs to focus more on basic research into self-contained environmental systems, better telerobotics/telepresence, more-sophisticated onboard intelligence for robotic spacecraft & rovers, automated materials processing, etc. All these things are prerequisites to getting people "out there" for a period of time where they might actually be able to accomplish something useful.
If they dropped support for the International Space Station and just de-orbited it into the sea, they could USE the money they saved on maintaining that albatross, and on re-fitting the Shuttle fleet, to increase basic research activity by several orders of magnitude.
There's nothing that would be accomplished by sending humans to Mars that couldn't be achieved more simply and vastly cheaper by a flotilla of robots.
-Mark
Re:Detail left out (Score:2)
Really? Have you seen the lunkheaded opinions of the people on the street as of late? I'm not going to get into politics but let's face facts, we have serious logic flaws and even once you prove your point most people turn their back on a known truth because it's too troublesome for them to consider.
I mean, who knows, maybe there are plenty of people who believe in spa
Don't rule it out, though (Score:2)
I agree it's unlikely, but it's not absolutely impossible. Nobody here seems to be considering the P.R. aspect of manned spaceflight.
It's very useful to US foreign policy to be well-regarded by the rest of the planet. For most of the late 20th Century, its role as "leader" in the Cold War helped maintain goodwill in Western Europe and parts of Asia. You can argue about whether that goodwill was deserved, but that's really beside the point. It's gone.
The US (by which I mean its government and policies, n
Mars needs men! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mars needs men! (Score:2)
...nobody will be able to read the story about the mission to Mars.
Women are people too (Score:2)
people could be landing on Mars in the next twenty or thirty years. If that is true, I estimate that within 50 years, Mars will need women.
Maybe Mars could find some women before 50 years amongst that pool of "people".
Re:Women are people too (Score:2)
If you're a girl: You go on with your bad self! We'll teach these guys some manners one of these days.
Will Cheney live long enough? (Score:2, Funny)
Fuck Mars (Score:2, Funny)
As do most
Are there any women even READING this stuff, let alone posting?
Re:Fuck Mars (Score:2)
Uh, yes...
Fuck. Now I have to go look through yet another discussion to find stuff to blow my mod points on... *grumble*
Re:**** Mars (Score:5, Funny)
Yes we read this stuff. You should really mind your manners if you want a woman, love.
You might try pretending to be offended by the way women are being spoken of. We're suckers for that kind of stuff.
Re:**** Mars (Score:3, Funny)
A guy...
Re:**** Mars (Score:2)
Re:**** Mars (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fuck Mars (Score:4, Funny)
>
> *I* need women.
>
> As do most
I don't know about you, but I don't need women badly enough to fuck a clump of rust at -50F. Major shrink factor there, bud.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Now it 40 years later, and it will by in less than 30 years. Hell, by 2100, it will be only 50 years if we keep up with leaders like these.
Re:Sad (Score:2)
hopefully there will be amazing leaps in lighting (Score:2)
You estimates are very optimistic (Score:3, Funny)
NASA Deep Space Monitoring Station (Score:2, Funny)
Manager: Oh. My. God. Lets see it!
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.
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All: URRGH! GOATSE!
Contingency plans? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and don't forget to hide little closets all over the facility. Who knows when hidden closets large enough for a full sized human will come in handy?
The way the election is going (Score:5, Insightful)
Childhood Dreams... (Score:3, Insightful)
doom 3.. yay ! (Score:2)
Screw Mars.... (Score:2)
Re:Screw Mars.... (Score:2)
in our lifetime... (Score:2)
Just don't name any of the onboard computers HAL...
CB$#@)(*&^
nothing of that magnitude has happened for us, spa (Score:2, Interesting)
YOU want it during YOUR lifetime? I'd like to see us not have dropped the ball completely, during MY lifetime, which is about half-over. Hopes for middle-class-afordable orbital a
Mars's needs (Score:2)
Mars will need women.
Not to mention, more specifically, mars will need lesbians [imdb.com].
Re:Mars's needs (Score:2)
Marvin (Score:2, Funny)
Where's Duck Dodgers when you need him?!
Well, I don't think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder... (Score:2)
I for one, welcome our new alien overlords!
No (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, if we can make a "business case" for it. Otherwise people will say "what do we need that for?" and go back to their reality shows and home improvement projects.
Some people would say this is a stagnant society. The phrase "unwiped ass" is a better description of a society obsessed with suburban paradise at the expense of every last shred of dignity and wisdom.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
All the time, provided there are no artificial limits placed on it.
The forced economic classes that it creates can only be called dignifying to the rich and the quickly shrinking remnants of the middle class.
Wasn't always that way. There actually used to be a middle class back when people had careers instead of temp jobs. Almost anyone who put in a day's work could earn an honest wage and afford a home. Now, the median pric
35 Years Ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Until we have some political will, or an oscenely rich private explorer (Bill here's a hint: do something cool with all that booty you've plundered from the hard-of-thinking PeeCee users over they years) to start the process, I'll remain skeptical.
PRIORITY SCHEDULING (Score:2)
Slashdot needs women.
...and let's not forget the lawyers (Score:2, Funny)
It's not that hard, people. (Score:2, Insightful)
NOW THAT'S INTERESTING (Score:2)
THIRTY!
Wow.
Do you suppose she was America's first faux MILF?
Mars by 1980. Right. (Score:2)
This is as bad as fusion power, which has been twenty years away since 1955 or so. Worse, actually; the fusion people are making some progress.
20 years.... unless we invite Russia to help (Score:5, Insightful)
And why? Among other reasons, one of the biggest in terms of setbacks has been relying on Russia for technology, manpower, and funding. This is not a let's-bash-Russia troll, I think this points to directly to serious project management issues at NASA, and if we can't get a sealed stable environment orbiting our planet, how do we expect to pack a crew into a ship and send it 36 million miles away and be anything other than an extraterrestrial coffin?
I love space exploration, I want people on Mars, I want habitats on the moon, I want shuttles flying weekly between the ISS and MoonPod 1, but it's never gonna happen if NASA can't get its act together enough to do something as obvious and QA process basic as asking "Gee, Yakov, I've never seen an oxygen system like this before, do we have the specs on that?"
Granted, in space just about every system is critical, but I'd put O2 scrubbers pretty damn high on my list of priorities, why wasn't it on theirs?
We need to do this thing smart, and to do that we've got to do it incrementally. Speaking as a software engineer for complex automated systems, if you skip design phases you're guaranteed to have problems down the line. So let's not skip phases, let's fix the shuttle fleet, to fix the space station and get it on track. Let's go back to the moon and run some long term sorties, build a moon base, shuttle between base and station. We need real world (moon) experience with extraterrestrial habitation before we pick 6 of our country's finest minds to asphyxiate in the cold black of interplanetary space.
Mars Direct (Score:3, Interesting)
Get out there and pester your Congresscritters on this. Mars in 1/3 of this time is acheivable if enough people press for it!
Nuclear Propulsion (Score:3, Informative)
This is not new. NASA tested Nuke engines [wikipedia.org] in the 60's. If we are serious about going to Mars, we have to start building nuke engines.
NASA needs Compeition! (Score:5, Insightful)
Great idea (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Livestock (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Because all three can live off of stuff we can't, and are small enough to fit inside a habitat. We eat animals because they're machines that turn grass into meat. (Why we feed cows grain is beyond me, but that's a story for another time.) Goats can eat corn stalks and carrot leaves and other such produce waste. They can also be milked, which solves the 'dairy group' problem.
Now we just need to breed a goat that doesn't grow to a very large size, but has a good amount of meat and makes a lot of milk.
Re:NASA's timeline (Score:3, Insightful)
The X-Prize was created in 1996. 8 years later, the private space industry has managed to fly human beings with an astonishing 5% of the kinetic energy required just to get into earth orbit. Projecting from that, I'd say you're estimate is a tad optimistic.
Re:NASA's timeline (Score:2)
Getting to Mars will not have the limitations of the X-prize. After all, every cent of an X-prize team needs to be private. Do you think if Tide and Miller beer spends millions on getting their name on a little race car they'd not spend millions to be one of the winning teams to first enter space without government funding? If there was corporate funding of the x-prize my guess is that the only reason a craft wouldn't have made it 5 years ago is because they need to design b
Re:NASA's timeline (Score:2)
While I do agree that making a profit is a major corporate concern it's not the only one. Bragging rights alone may be worth the cost. Not to mention tourism and mining. The planet may also be prime for certain types of manufacturing. Mars will take time to research before we get this far but someone will study it and this will lead to manned space flights. While the rovers did a great job it's simply not conclusive enough. Hum
Re:NASA's timeline (Score:5, Insightful)
No we can't. Invention requires long-term thinking. Business doesn't think long-term any more and hasn't since the 60s. Missions to Mars are out of the question until we can think and plan beyond next week's paycheck.
Re:NASA's timeline (Score:2)
Simpson's quote: (Score:2)
Re:People still on earth in 30 years? (Score:5, Funny)
Will we still need telephone sanitizers in thirty years?
Re:We'll be there in 4 (Score:2)
Some nerd's only chance (Score:2, Funny)
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
Re:a lot of good it will do (Score:5, Interesting)
However, humans are quite versatile. Our life expectancy might be shot down to the 40's, but we'd still be able to find food if there was any such thing left to be found. Unlike many animals, we can eat both meat and plants, and we're not really hindered like many species by regional boundries or climates.
Short of world-wide universal extinction of all bugs, plants, and animals, I think we'll survive as a species. There would be regions where growing things would still be possible, and small groups of people would re-start society from the ground up. There's a fair amount of evidence that such world-wide catastrophies occured in the past (such as the supposed "atlantean distruction"), resulting in many deaths, but still people survived, formed new cultures, and 'progressed' to where we are now. They kept parts of their culture and beliefs - not necessarily in the same state that they were originally - and formed the cultures of our ancestors.
I could see it all happening again. The western world could go to war with the east, and annihilate the large power centers of the world. The butterfly effect would take out all the other societies, wars would errupt, and disease and famine would strike. Enterprising individuals would store up goods, go into what is left of the wilderness and survive, while the lesser, weaker humans would simply try to perpetuate their futile existence and die.
I don't imagine it would take much more than 150 years for the whole process to play out from current society to a fractured group of cultures that have formed their own identity and only have a fleeting rememberance of the previous world, taking things and twisting them into legends and religions.
Re:We need flying cars! (Score:3, Informative)
For your information, stability and poor power/weight is the START of problems. And they haven't been solved. A stable aircraft is very fuel inefficient and slow. A fas