Mars Mission Back In the Cards After Budget Cuts 146
ananyo writes "NASA has said it will re-design its Mars exploration program, and that the new architecture would include input — and money — from the human program as well as the space technology division. Orlando Figueroa, the former deputy director for space and technology at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is to head up a seven or eight person committee, and to start developing mission concepts in the next month. One of those concepts would be a possible $700 million mission launching in 2018. The news offers a grain of comfort to a community still reeling from massive cuts to the Mars program."
700 million? (Score:5, Interesting)
A single shuttle launch costs that much, in today's dollars.
Seriously, guys?
I Think Mission Goals Affect Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
A single shuttle launch costs that much, in today's dollars.
Seriously, guys?
I interpreted that as "the concept" referring to the Mars mission. So, yeah, I could see how $700 million would be a bit much to go into orbit, do some science lab experiments and land ... but when you're planning for Mars (especially manned which is what I thought they were talking about) I can understand a vast increase to your budget.
Re:700 million? (Score:5, Informative)
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You only budgeted $60,000 for a used car?
A single Bugatti Veyron is $2.4 million, in today's dollars.
Seriously, guys?
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Kind of like your typing?
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Please don't feed the trolls.
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Couldn't help myself with the ironic juxtaposition there.
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I find it very hard to believe that anyone is going to Mars (and presumably back) on the price of a single Shuttle launch. Private industry is generally more efficient, but not THAT much more efficient.
Give it a rest (Score:4, Interesting)
Until we have an established moon base, we shouldn't even attempt Mars.
Consider:
So just shine an orange light on the moon and call it Mars.
The moon is better anyway
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I completely disagree.
Mars has the natural resources to be self-sustaining- the moon would always need regular supplies from earth. Mars has over a third the surface gravity of earth - this is pretty significant compared to the moon. It means getting to the surface requires different techniques. The fact that Mars HAS an atmosphere is significant. Mars has WATER. There is more commercially available that would be usefull on Mars than the moon.
Mars and the moon are very different and require different a
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Oh- and a permenent moonbase would cost more because it would require frequent supply trips. Marsbase wouldn't necessarily.
Re:Give it a rest (Score:5, Interesting)
The big problem with learning how to run a planetary base at Mars is the minimum 6 month trip if something goes wrong.
The moon is two days away and doesn't have a return window only at certain parts of the planetary orbits.
So either abandoning it for safety reasons, medivac, or sending up emergency supplies/repair parts, etc is much quicker on the moon.
But, this argument has been gone through many times. Most often with needlessly heated rhetoric on both sides.
Though I'm more for a return to the moon, the answer that I'd be delighted with is: Do either of them, but actually DO IT.
Don't make grand political statements, and then stretch out the program with anemic funding and mismanagement until it gets shut down. We've all seen that way too many times.
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I agree with the "DO IT" statement.
Personally, I think Mars offers way more than the moon- but if we go back to the moon it would be a good thing (it just wouldn't necessarily help us much if the end goal were Mars).
Also, fully understand the concept that going to mars, at least initially- probably means you're there for the long haul. It would take a special person to sign up for such a trip- but I have no doubt NASA would get no shortage of qualified volunteers. Certainly- understanding from a medical s
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Yes, but if you accept the fact that rescue missions will be impossible anyway, then it's a non-issue. Pretty much every astronaut who has ever gone up has accepted that fact. Even the astronauts on the ISS, in LEO have no realistic chance of rescue if something goes wrong and their escape Soyuz craft is unusable for some reason. No-one has a rescue rocket standing by to save them. Unless there happened to be a resupply mission coinciding with the disaster, they'd have to be able to wait months for rescue.
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Six months to anywhere is too far. Practical colonisation of space requires that the round trip journey take no more than a day.
The *Mayflower* left England on September 6, 1620 and reached Massachusetts Bay on November 11, 1620. Rounding to the nearest day, the journey took 66 days. Actually, *two* ships started this voyage on August 5, but were forced to turn back. A second aborted attempt was made later that month. Only the third trip was "successful", with the colonists packed onto a single, tiny cargo ship.
It was another 130 days before the colonists were able to live on land, which if added to the 66 day voyage coincidentally
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Practical colonisation of space requires that the round trip journey take no more than a day.
Six months is longer than a day, but not that much longer. It's also worth noting that the New World was colonized by the Old World in ships that often took months to cross the Atlantic.
For Mars this means a ship capable of constant acceleration at about 100g. Direct the effort to designing a ship with that specification first and the barriers to cheap space travel will disappear.
To the contrary, you just created a new barrier to cheap space travel, a ship with a ridiculously high acceleration rate. Not only do you need to figure out propulsion which can drive a spacecraft at such acceleration rates, you also need to figure out how to transport humans indefinitely at such accelerations rates which ma
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Ok, I'l bite. Why would mars be self-sustaining?
You say Mars has 1/3 the gravity of earth, the moon as 1/6th so that's half. Not a huge difference once you're considering gravity.
The moon as water as well. With that, you're back into the situation where the moon is better.
At either location an air leak is catastrophic. It will take a very long time to recover from an air leak on mars, and what you replace it with will be mostly carbon dioxide which will need to be converted to oxegen by plants. Speaking of
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Mars has a wide variety of minerals necessary that the moon doesn't. It has water- (so oxygen) and all the elements required to support life.
You could "manufacture" oxygen from water. It would be easier to produce greenhouses on mars- with all the necessary key ingredients to grow certain crops available- this wouldn't be the case on the moon- supplies would need to be shipped up to the moon.
It would be a hostile environment- but it would be much easier to adapt to Mars on a one-way mission than moon- the
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Hell no. Mars has the ingredients to make your own food. Mars has the ingredients to make your own rocket fuel. Mars has the ingredients to make your own rockets. Mars has an amazing geological history. Mars has weather. Mars has ice caps. Mars tells us something about Earth's past. Going to Mars would be a new achievement.
The moon is unbelievably boring, and has nothing worthwhile to offer.
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The moon is unbelievably boring, and has nothing worthwhile to offer.
Except that the Moon has a lot of valuable material and close proximity to the most valuable real estate in the Solar System. Also, without an atmosphere, a smaller gravity well, and that close proximity, it's a lot easier to move materials to Earth and Earth orbit from the Moon than anywhere other than near Earth asteroids.
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You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. To make a round trip to the Moon, you need to burn fuel to get there, burn fuel to slow down and land, burn fuel to launch back. You don't need to
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No, you cannot 'just aerobrake' on Mars. The atmosphere is way way too thin. They can't even land a decent size probe with aerobraking, let along a human carrying vehicle.
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That's odd, every spacecraft mission to Mars has had a heat shield and a parachute. Are they just for show?
Mars missions use heat shields and parachutes to slow the spacecraft down from 5,000 m/s to 100 m/s. You do need airbags, retrorockets, or whatever to slow down the last 2% to a stop, but 98% of the job is done by the atmosphere.
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The US track record for aerobraking on Mars (counting both landers and orbiters which used it to lower their apoapse) is 10 successes, 1 failure (Mars Polar Lander). I'm not counting several spacecraft which performed, I guess you'd call it accidental aerobraking. The US track record for aerobraking human spacecraft on Earth is 161 successes and 1 failure.
As for bouncing, quit it with the straw men. Nobody's talking about an airbag landing for humans: "aerobrak
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You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. To make a round trip to the Moon, you need to burn fuel to get there, burn fuel to slow down and land, burn fuel to launch back. You don't need to burn fuel to land on Earth, because you can use atmospheric drag to slow down.
Sure, that's true. So what? I'm speaking specifically of moving things from the Moon to Earth or Earth orbit. That's why I didn't even hint at the relative difficulty of landing stuff on the Moon.
If you get extra clever, you can make rocket fuel out of Mars's atmosphere, saving even more fuel, with even stronger exponential leverage. You can't do that on the Moon, unless you use a rocket whose exhaust is sand. (Seriously, it's been considered.)
You mean like a LOX/Aluminum hybrid motor? Can't disagree there. Not great ISP, but it doesn't need to be. It's worth noting that escape velocity on the Moon is so low that even some modern rifles can achieve escape velocity. There's a lot of launch systems and launch infrastructure, such as magnetic rail launch, s
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I think we have different goals. I'm interested in exploration: you're trying to find a planet that pays cash money. So you care only about planet -> earth fuel costs, whereas I'm interested in round trips. I agree that the Moon is a bit cheaper on your terms -- but only if you can make a successful aluminum+oxygen rocket without sandblasting your rocket nozzle into scrap metal.
But I'd argue that even if your goal is only rare mineral mining, Mars may come out ahead. On Earth, the average crustal abu
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you're trying to find a planet that pays cash money.
The more appropriate phase is "better return on investment". It doesn't have to pay "cash money", it can pay in knowledge or human security, anything which we value enough to sacrifice our own resources and effort for.
So you care only about planet -> earth fuel costs, whereas I'm interested in round trips. I agree that the Moon is a bit cheaper on your terms -- but only if you can make a successful aluminum+oxygen rocket without sandblasting your rocket nozzle into scrap metal.
That sandblasted nozzle need only work once. I'd be more worried about coking (build up of solid aluminum oxide around the nozzle) which could obstruct the nozzle and cause boom.
But I'd argue that even if your goal is only rare mineral mining, Mars may come out ahead. On Earth, the average crustal abundance of these metals is way too low to mine profitably: you have to find areas where they've been concentrated into ore deposits. This typically happens when you've got groundwater interacting with geothermal heat. Mars has had a lot of that kind of thing: the Moon has not. Hell, you might even be able to do placer mining on Mars's river valleys.
Some of the biggest Earth deposits are formed and concentrated through volcanic or asteroid impact mechanisms (Bushv [wikipedia.org]
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To make a round trip to the Moon, you need to burn fuel to get there, burn fuel to slow down and land, burn fuel to launch back.
The real value of the Moon is mining its resources for use in space stations (primarily for smelting steel and glass), which means you only have to lift materials with 1/6 the fuel than would be required from Earth, and you only need to transport it to the nearest Lagrange point between the Earth and Moon, which is a mere 60,000 km from the Moon. From a Lagrange space station (with spacecraft production facilities), missions to Mars become much more economical.
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If you're after bulk metal, you don't care about travel time, you care about trip *energy*. The asteroid belt is energetically "closer" to Earth orbit than the surface of the moon. Plus, some asteroids have iron in metallic form that doesn't need smelting -- saving you even more energy.
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asteroid belt mining might be more energy efficient, but I can see us mining the moon beforehand as an inefficient but practically simpler first step.
Life (Score:2)
The Moon doesn't have it, never did.
Mars might've had it, still might.
Eventually, it will (probably?) be easier to terraform Mars than the Moon. Then Mars will truly be a place we can LIVE ON (you know, without space helmets and everything).
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What, are you crazy?
The gravity on the moon is half what it is on Mars. Mars has an atmosphere suitable for aerobraking and that actually provides a fair amount of radiation protection. It also may allow for lighter than air survey craft. The atmosphere also protects against micrometeorites, unlike the total vacuum of the moon. The atmosphere can also be processed to make methane and oxygen. Mars has a lot more water than the moon. It also has significant amounts of percholarates. The day is only fractional
Re:Give it a rest (Score:5, Informative)
The figure you've quoted seems to be from around as high as you can go. The other end of the scale is around earth normal or even a bit higher
Wait wait wait....what?
The max pressure on Mars is (according to wikipedia):
1,155 pascals (0.1675 psi) in the depths of Hellas Planitia
The average pressure at sea level on Earth is:
101.3 kilopascals (14.69 psi)
So Earth's average pressure at sea level is 87x that of the max on Mars...heck, at the top of Mount Everest, the pressure is about 4.90 psi, which is still 29x that of the max on Mars.
You need a pressure suit. Full stop.
One way Mars mission (Score:4, Interesting)
One way I've read several times to cut the cost of a human Mars mission is to make it a one-way mission.
Take away the expectation of returning- you save a bunch of costs associated with returning. Naturally- not everyone would want a one-way ticket to mars but there are lots of people who would.
Naturally, the technicality is you have to find some way to make them able to live there long term. Mars has lots of natural resources and tecnically could be self-supporting- but this could be complicated.
Those first people who go would have the mission of making the planet ready for the next wave of scientists. I think we should set our sites on a one way mission rather than bite off more than we can chew with our first mission to mars.
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Well, it seems likely that Martian colonists can supply their own water and breathing air on Mars. Oxygen can be extracted straight from the trace amounts in the atmosphere or broken down from CO2, or extracted from perchlorates. Water can be extracted directly from the ground in many places. If they can do that, they can get by on less than a ton of dried supplies per year. A lifetime of supplies for one astronaut still make up a lot of weight (a Saturn V could only get about 40 tons of supplies to Mars),
Maybe better to read first, comment second (Score:5, Informative)
Here;
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/pss/ [usra.edu]
you can read the report from the Plantary Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council, to the Science Committee.
It'd be awesome if /. posters read any of this before posting snide/uninformed/trolly comments about NASA, Obama, Space-X, budgets, etc.
The blog Future Planetary Exploration rounds up reporting on this subject;
http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2012/02/ruckus.html [blogspot.com]
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Posting without reading the article, or having anything to contribute other than ill-informed opinion is a slashdot tradition.
plenty of locations for half-billion$ rovers (Score:3)
Finally build a Mark I plantary probe (Score:5, Interesting)
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Maybe, eventually, we'll have a sensor suite that can answer every question about a planet and it's time for mass production, but now we are still short of what the full list of user requirements would be.
That threshold was passed in the 60s for the Apollo program which in the mid 60s demonstrated effective use of multiple probes of the same type to explore the Moon in preparation for a manned landing (basically, 5 orbiters, 9 impactor missions, and 7 landers). What was differ
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These missions are also technology demonstrators, meant to advance the state of the art. Using the same design several times doesn't provide the same technological advancement as building upon previous work and enhancing it.
If you look at the Mars missions, each subsequent rover design sent was larger and more capable, and sent back much better science.
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These missions are also technology demonstrators, meant to advance the state of the art. Using the same design several times doesn't provide the same technological advancement as building upon previous work and enhancing it.
That's nice when the technology is subsequently used. Such is the case with some of the MSL technology, particularly the entry and landing systems which have been used in some form over several lander/rover missions. That technology probably will get reused in a sample return mission as well.
It's not so nice when the technology isn't reused, (which is more of a problem on the less effective manned side, such as every Shuttle replacement to date). I've run across a lot of old NASA technology that someone
spacenuttery tag? really? (Score:3)
What's not here: the outer planets (Score:5, Interesting)
What's not mentioned in the article is that the plan is to save Mars exploration by gutting outer planets research. If you wanted to know more about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Europa, Io, Titan, Enceladus, Triton, the Kuiper belt, or anything else, forget it. Because of the long travel time, scrapping the projects currently being planned may mean you won't hear anything new about those places for decades.
Mars mission will have an impact on eyesight tech (Score:4, Interesting)
A recent discovery of long term space exploration is that being in low gravity for too long literally folds parts of your eye. Causing astronauts who spend too much time up in space to have permanent vision changes that leave them very far-sighted and required to wear reading glasses. Just six months in low gravity was enough for major changes in vision.
Imagine a missions to Mars that takes six months just one way? These astronauts would be blind under our current understanding of how space travel affects sight by the time that they came back.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/20/nation/la-na-blind-nasa-astronaut-20110921 [latimes.com]
"What we are seeing is flattening of the globe, swelling of the optic nerve, a far-sighted shift, and choroidal folds," said Dr. C. Robert Gibson, one of authors of the study published in the October 2011 issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. "We think it is intracranial pressure related, but we're not sure; it could also be due to an increase in pressure along the optic nerve itself or some kind of localized change to the back of the eyeball."
The study identified new risks for those who live in space for at least six months. Blurred vision was the primary issue reported by the seven astronaut test subjects.
"After a few weeks aboard the [station]," said Astronaut Bob Thirsk, a Canadian Space Agency physician who spent six months as a member of the Expedition 20 and 21 crews in 2007, "I noticed that my visual acuity had changed. My distant vision was not too bad, but I found that it was more difficult to read procedures. I also had trouble manually focusing cameras, so I would ask a crewmate to verify my focus setting on critical experiments."
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Astronaut_Vision.html [nasa.gov]
The way I see it is that there are two options. The first one is we only send replicants to Mars or more unmanned flights. The other is that NASA gets some awesome new understanding of vision loss or develops technology to overcome vision loss. Either way this would be quite the benefit for society if NASA can develop some new things to combat vision loss.
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Mars has 37% the gravity of earth- this may be enough to prevent these problems. As for the 6 month trip- cosmonauts have spent over a year in space before without going blind so your comment:
Imagine a missions to Mars that takes six months just one way? These astronauts would be blind under our current understanding of how space travel affects sight by the time that they came back.
Is... an exaggeration. They may have limited vision damage- yes. As well as other medical conditions both known and unknown.
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...or they use artificial (ie rotational) gravity to sidestep the problem entirely.
Corporate Sponsors (Score:2, Interesting)
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Don't corporations already do enough damage on this planet ?
SpaceX red Dragon (Score:2)
Oddly, we might even be able to put the Mars
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They're too busy pretending they know more about this than the people at NASA, who are actually planning the mission.
No, they're too busy PROVING they know more about this than the people IN CONGRESS, who are actually FUND the mission.
FTFY.
Re:Get over it, geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really difficult to put into words just how wrong you are. I realize you're probably just a drive by troll, but on the off chance you're really of that opinion I have to at least attempt to provide a counter point to your myopia.
Understanding the universe, stretching humanities legs, literally, out among the planets in our solar system and beyond represents a life and death pursuit for the human species. Eventually, Earth is going to be in existential peril, and if all our eggs are still in this basket over issues as petty and meaningless as politics, economics, or national pride, then we are well and truly, cosmically, fucked.
It's not possible to start this processes too early. We could detect a rogue asteroid or comet tomorrow that will end life on Earth. On a long enough time line this WILL happen. It's happened before, it'll happen again. When it does, your descendants will be thankful that we took a minute amount of money away from the budget for bombs, sugar water, and pornography, to put those first apes in tin cans and got them to Mars and back.
This is all presupposing you subscribe to the radical notion that a universe with humanity in it is in some way better than one without. As a human, I work from that assumption as a given. You may not, but even if that's so it's not too much to ask that you at least stand out of the way of those who do look that far into the future and can see the dangers and the possibilities that your small mind cannot.
We're talking about pennies here. Pennies now, so that humanity will still exist in one, ten, or a hundred centuries. There is no more important goal than space exploration, manned space exploration, and establishing a permanent human presence in space and on other words.
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On top of that, the extreme challenges we need to meet while doing this sort of thing pushes us further in science with new technologies developed to meet those challenges. How many things do we take for granted today because of problems met by the space flights of yesteryear? Imagine if everyone thought this sort of thing was pointless back then. Where would we be now?
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We could detect a rogue asteroid or comet tomorrow that will end life on Earth. On a long enough time line this WILL happen. It's happened before, it'll happen again. When it does, your descendants will be thankful that we took a minute amount of money away from the budget for bombs, sugar water, and pornography, to put those first apes in tin cans and got them to Mars and back.
This is all presupposing you subscribe to the radical notion that a universe with humanity in it is in some way better than one wit
Re:Get over it, geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
Understanding the universe, stretching humanities legs, literally, out among the planets in our solar system and beyond represents a life and death pursuit for the human species. Earth is going to be in existential peril, and if all our eggs are still in this basket over issues as petty and meaningless as politics, economics, or national pride, then we are well and truly, cosmically, fucked.
Soon, you'll die. Sometime soon, I will die. Sometime later our entire race (regardless of how you define it) will cease to exist as well. Perhaps they will evolve beyond what we might recognise as human. Perhaps some disaster will wipe them out. Perhaps they will last, in some form, until the universe dies. In any case, we, as individuals and as a species are irrevocably mortal and I, for one, welcome that - I welcome our deathly overlord. One day we'll be gone and all that will be left is our achievements and successes - and our failures. I am perfectly content to leave a legacy of good deeds and live my life with integrity, even if no-one ever acknowledges that.
It's not possible to start this processes too early. We could detect a rogue asteroid or comet tomorrow that will end life on Earth. On a long enough time line this WILL happen. It's happened before, it'll happen again.
Notably, when it happened before, the Earth was left far more habitable than Mars is now. Were an asteroid to strike the Earth, you would be better off on the Earth than on Mars. For example, on Mars, the radiation is so bad, that to survive for any length of time, you need to live underground. The gravity is wrong, so much so, that within a generation, Martians would not survive on Earth, were they to travel there. So if we lost the Earth,with it's 7 billion inhabitants, we would be stuck on Mars. Forever. Living like termites underground, never able to go to the surface and look, with our unprotected eyes, on the stars. And when the Earth recovers, with it's benison of life once again covering it's surface, we will be gone - either staring back at earth, helpless with rage, or mercifully extinct.
Alternatively of course we could build those underground cities here on Earth, saving millions, if not billions, in the event of an asteroid strike, as opposed to the thousands that could - briefly - survive on Mars. If life on Earth is difficult afterward, then as a planet it is far easier to geo engineer than Mars, what with the handy features that have sustained life through multiple asteroid strikes before. To propose a plan which would save thousands, and rejecting a plan that saves millions (if not billions) amounts to proposing genocide on a scale never before comprehended.
When it does, your descendants will be thankful that we took a minute amount of money away from the budget for bombs, sugar water, and pornography, to put those first apes in tin cans and got them to Mars and back.
Not, they won't, and neither will your descendants. Because they won't be there. And neither will the descendants of the vast majority of the human race, with it's diverse cultures, ideals and dreams. Mars is just too small to capture a representative sample of us. Under your plan, your descendants will die, and so will mine.
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Notably, when it happened before, the Earth was left far more habitable than Mars is now. Were an asteroid to strike the Earth, you would be better off on the Earth than on Mars.
Maybe we ought to set up a poll here. Would you rather be living in a city on Mars or suffering through several years of endless winter on Earth?
For example, on Mars, the radiation is so bad, that to survive for any length of time, you need to live underground. The gravity is wrong, so much so, that within a generation, Martians would not survive on Earth, were they to travel there. So if we lost the Earth,with it's 7 billion inhabitants, we would be stuck on Mars. Forever. Living like termites underground, never able to go to the surface and look, with our unprotected eyes, on the stars. And when the Earth recovers, with it's benison of life once again covering it's surface, we will be gone - either staring back at earth, helpless with rage, or mercifully extinct.
Heh, a serious case of sour grapes.
There's always choice C, doing cool things on a planet where people have never lived before and creating the future of humanity, all the while thankful that someone on Earth had the foresight and hope for the future to create a new home on Mars.
As to never returning to Earth? There's a saying in the US, "You can't go home ag
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Would you rather be living in a city on Mars or suffering through several years of endless winter on Earth?
"Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about -87 [degrees] C (-125 [degrees] F) during the polar winters to highs of up to -5 [degrees] C (23 [degrees] F) in summers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Climate [wikipedia.org]
I vote that several years of winter on Earth is much better than an eternity of winter on Mars.
creating the future of humanity
If your economy is spread over a considerable portion of the Solar System, then it's much less an issue, if one region suffers a large disaster
The problem is you're
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"Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about -87 [degrees] C (-125 [degrees] F) during the polar winters to highs of up to -5 [degrees] C (23 [degrees] F) in summers."
Funny, according to my calculations, it's 21 C (70 F) in that Martian city. Unless someone leaves the thermostat a bit high.
creating the future of humanity
...or creating new revenue streams for megalomaniac corporations to take advantage of (similar to the "unobtanium" mining subplot of James Cameron's recent film "Avatar").
Proof by crap movie? Your logic is unassailable!
Space will be the final (war) frontier, and newer, more devastating weapons will be developed to wreak havoc on it, and the eventual self-destruction of humanity would not only be possible, but probable, even over the vast distances of the solar system.
I personally think it will be all over for us long before we get to interplanetary warfare, but miracles can happen.
I think a simpler solution here would be for you to grow some balls.
Sure I can imagine some war scenarios that, let's say, destroy the entire galaxy or worse. But it makes sense to spend time on worrying about things that are likely to be a problem than things that aren't.
The great distances of the Solar System don't magically creat
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Funny, according to my calculations, it's 21 C (70 F) in that Martian city. Unless someone leaves the thermostat a bit high.
yeah, until someone shoots a hole in the outer skin
Proof by crap movie?
it wasn't proof by any means. it was merely illustration. if you deny that corporations would behave like that, you are an ignorant fool.
I think a simpler solution here would be for you to grow some balls.
What has "balls" got to do with anything here?
The great distances of the Solar System don't magically create more destructive weapons
no, but they don't magically create self-sustainable space stations either, so the time it takes for colonization of the solar system is plenty for development of such weapons
People don't automatically destroy each other just because bad space movies are made.
no, they do it because its in their nature to. movies merely illustrate that nature
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yeah, until someone shoots a hole in the outer skin
I guess they better not do that then. And if someone does do it anyway, then throw a patch on it. You still are looking at a lot less suck than someone having to deal with the fallout from a collapse of Earth civilization.
it wasn't proof by any means. it was merely illustration. if you deny that corporations would behave like that, you are an ignorant fool.
Ok, "illustration" by crap movie. Your argument doesn't get any stronger. And do you know why corporations don't act like they do in Avatar? Because there are consequences for their actions such as getting thrown into jail or losing assets. Keep the consequences and Avatar doesn't happen.
What has "balls" got to do with anything here?
I
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You still are looking at a lot less suck than someone having to deal with the fallout from a collapse of Earth civilization
i disagree, but whatever (i would actually love to live on a Mars base if I had the opportunity, but I think it would be much riskier than anything we might face on Earth)
Your argument doesn't get any stronger.
you're right. illustrating or clarifying my argument doesn't change it at all. it was strong enough to begin with.
And do you know why corporations don't act like they do in Avatar? Because there are consequences for their actions such as getting thrown into jail or losing assets.
you keep telling yourself that, ignorant fool.
If things don't go the way you want them to go, then you claim something bad will happen.
i'm simply offering a different point of view to yours. just because you don't like it doesn't mean i lack anything that you have. at least i'm not living in fantasy land and ca
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i disagree, but whatever (i would actually love to live on a Mars base if I had the opportunity, but I think it would be much riskier than anything we might face on Earth)
Earlier in the thread, we discussed scenarios where the levels of risk were reversed. Bad times on Earth can indeed be riskier (and a lot more unpleasant) than good times on Mars.
And risk is not a good indication of quality of life. Too little risk can be just as bad as too much.
And do you know why corporations don't act like they do in Avatar? Because there are consequences for their actions such as getting thrown into jail or losing assets.
you keep telling yourself that, ignorant fool.
Nah, I'll let the real world do the talking on that matter. Human greed and conflict of interest is a solved problem. Society just has to deploy the solution as it has done in the developed world. Movies like Avatar are based on
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Bad times on Earth can indeed be riskier (and a lot more unpleasant) than good times on Mars.
duh! it would be more relevant to compare good times on both Earth and Mars, and bad times on both Earth and Mars. of course good times on Mars are going to be more pleasant than bad times on Earth, otherwise they wouldn't be considered bad times.
Too little risk can be just as bad as too much.
if you like a bit of risk, there are much cheaper ways to satisfy it on Earth
Human greed and conflict of interest is a solved problem
you don't get out much do you? i would seriously doubt that even you could be stupid enough to believe such nonsense. just switch on the news or google "greed" and "conflict of interest
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duh! it would be more relevant to compare good times on both Earth and Mars, and bad times on both Earth and Mars. of course good times on Mars are going to be more pleasant than bad times on Earth, otherwise they wouldn't be considered bad times.
My take is that they'll be roughly comparable.
Human greed and conflict of interest is a solved problem
you don't get out much do you? i would seriously doubt that even you could be stupid enough to believe such nonsense. just switch on the news or google "greed" and "conflict of interest" and "let the real world do the talking".
Maybe we should just continue this discussion when you've figured out how to eliminate greed and conflict of interest. I'll just point out that regulation and the rule of law is a good enough solution.
civilization has to worsen the negative parts of humanity
google "war", "religious extremism", "organized crime", "corporate greed", "political corruption", "rape", etc, etc, etc. there are plenty of examples of the negative aspects of humanity having been demonstrated devastatingly clearly.
So what? The question isn't whether there are negative aspects, but whether the negative aspects are worse because of civilization. It's worth noting that many of those aren't specific to civilization, here they would be: rape, war, religious extremism, and politic
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maybe we should just continue this discussion when you've figured out how to eliminate greed and conflict of interest
impossible because its human nature
I'll just point out that regulation and the rule of law is a good enough solution
haven't you heard of the golden rule? it is of course "he who has the gold, makes the rules". regulation and laws only govern you and me. corporations can afford more expensive lawyers than governments, and multinational corporations can simply work around them (tax havens are a simple example)
whether the negative aspects are worse because of civilization
we're getting a little off-topic here, but civilization exacerbates negative aspects of human nature because of increased interaction which is enabled by urbanization and communic
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maybe we should just continue this discussion when you've figured out how to eliminate greed and conflict of interest
impossible because its human nature
Then we're in the realm of good enough solutions.
I'll just point out that regulation and the rule of law is a good enough solution
haven't you heard of the golden rule? it is of course "he who has the gold, makes the rules". regulation and laws only govern you and me. corporations can afford more expensive lawyers than governments, and multinational corporations can simply work around them (tax havens are a simple example)
And yet, it works. Reality trumps a catchy saying.
we're getting a little off-topic here, but civilization exacerbates negative aspects of human nature because of increased interaction which is enabled by urbanization and communication (amongst others). ok maybe rape isn't civilization-specific, but all the rest are (including war, religious extremism, and political corruption). if you're going to be picky, substitute rape with genocide, which is also civilization-specific.
I'll just point out that it doesn't.
Commercial space activities already happen.
ok, but I thought we were talking about manned activities. SpaceX isn't commercial yet. it is a long way from breaking even let alone making a profit.
SpaceX is for profit. Makes it commercial no matter who its customers are. And there's an interesting claim [cnet.com] from its CEO:
Since 2007, SpaceX has been profitable every year "despite dramatic employee growth and major infrastructure and operations investments. We have over 40 flights on manifest representing over $3 billion in revenues."
As to manned versus unmanned commercial space activities, those are just a line in the sand and there's no obstruction keeping that line from being crossed. Currently, it's just Russia's tourists to the ISS and the test pilots from SpaceShipOne. When the m
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laws and regulations work to control you and me, but they don't control the corporations, which were the original subject of this part of the argument
Doesn't hold anywhere in the world. The last corporation unconstrained by regulation was the Free Congo State, more than a century ago. The presence of rent-seeking doesn't imply absence of regulation.
i know, but my point was that they haven't yet made a profit, and that they will go belly up before then
Well, given that that they are making a profit, what's the point of you asserting that they don't?
cheap, reliable, regular access (fully-reusable SSTO) will be the enabler. till then, we're stuck with test pilots and millionaires in flying washing machines. at the moment, everyone's got ideas, but nobody can get to the marketplace
What's the point of writing this? "Till then" is just a few years away. Then you'll have to comeup with a new "till then".
they didn't get any value out of the IP that they paid for
Aside from the host of stuff I already mentioned which justify the cost, sure they didn't p
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Maybe we ought to set up a poll here. Would you rather be living in a city on Mars or suffering through several years of endless winter on Earth?
Of course. Because popularity trumps logic and fact every time. In any case, most people would choose cold over airlessness and being bathed in deadly radiation until you die an agonising, humiliating death shortly thereafter. Or alternatively, most people would choose cold over cowering like worms underground, never to lift our eyes to the heavens again. We are not so craven as a species that we do not recognise that there are fates that are worse than death.
There's always choice C, doing cool things on a planet where people have never lived before and creating the future of humanity,
Perhaps on Xenu - or some other fantasy world o
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Of course. Because popularity trumps logic and fact every time. In any case, most people would choose cold over airlessness and being bathed in deadly radiation until you die an agonising, humiliating death shortly thereafter. Or alternatively, most people would choose cold over cowering like worms underground, never to lift our eyes to the heavens again. We are not so craven as a species that we do not recognise that there are fates that are worse than death.
Uh huh. This is a question of popularity. Would people rather die horribly than have a comfortable life on Mars? I think you'll find you're in a vanishingly small minority on this.
Perhaps on Xenu - or some other fantasy world of your choosing. However, the rest of us are living in the real world. In the real world, we can easily see that living out a pathetic half life in an airtight, underground bunker isn't "cool". If it was, we would already be doing it.
The poverty of your imagination is remarkable. You don't have a clue, yet you can tell us all how it's going to be. For your information, we do already do it.
We live in buildings, often rather airtight, not under the stars and fresh air. There's not a real difference between living in a building on Earth and living in a buildin
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I reject the notion that we are, as a species, mortal. More accurately, I don't accept that the twilight of Mankind must occur.
That's fascinating. For myself, I reject the notion of having to pay for ice cream, and the notion that Santa Claus is not real. That my rejection of those notions changes actual reality is another subject entirely.
Though individuals must die, the human super-organism, as humanity can be likened to, absolutely can transcend death indefinitely if we are careful, plan ahead, and master ourselves.
There is no human super-organism - it's as real as Gaia, or Chakras - entirely a figment of the imagination.
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There are so many problems here on earth that are so much more important than space travel, and this will never change.
When 15% of a supposedly first world country like the US is living below the poverty line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States), $700 million will always be better spent on domestic issues than on a political space stunt disguised in the name of science.
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That's not really a question that can be answered, but nor does it need to be. Humans, all self-replicating life, wants to survive, both as individuals and collectively. And maybe the fact that we can even ask that question shows that there's something special about us. As far as we can tell we're the only matter in the universe that's self-aware. We have this ability to understand the world we've found ourselves in, and if the universe is finite as it appears to be then there is an end-state to understandi
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Humans, all self-replicating life, wants to survive, both as individuals and collectively.
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There are perfectly good, rational long term reasons for humans to colonize Mars, such as not keeping all our eggs on one planet etc. But yeah, there is the right way to do it (low cost missions,building an unmanned base, private industry involvement, initially through competitions and grants, later through land deeds, leading to space tourism that may decades from now become economical) and the wrong way (throwing billions at NASA to send first human on Mars for reasons of bogus science and national presti
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$120 million in retirement and disability benefits to federal employees who have died
$30 million to help Pakistani Mango farmers
$550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union
$10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan
$764,825 to examine how college students use mobile devices for social networking.
$113,227 for a video game preservation center in New York
$765,828 to subsidize a “pancakes for yuppi
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$175,587 for a study on the link between cocaine and the mating habits of quail
$765,828 to subsidize a “pancakes for yuppies” program in Washington, D.C.
Hey, where can I get some of those pancakes?
The coked-out mating quails are using them like a papasan chair. No thanks.
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Hey the rocket would be powered by green renewable solar power! (except for the launch but that's a minor detail to Prius owners)
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You can power a rocket launch with green renewable solar power. Just plug a solar power plant into a gas extraction/processing plant that sucks in air and produces liquid oxygen and methane. Then you use the liquid oxygen and methane to fuel your rocket.
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Not that I think President Obama has been doing a particularly good job or that he's kept his campaign promises or anything like that, but I'm still astounded at the depths partisans will sink to in order to malign him. I mean, sticker shock at the pump is pretty harsh at the moment, but calling them "Obama levels" is disingenuous since they were this high, and higher, before he became President. It's sort of like when people blame the financial crisis on him and you're left sort of scratching your head. Yo
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Yeah, but some of the things that the President pretty much has absolute authority to do, as head of the armed forces, which he promised to do, he hasn't done.
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Umm - oil requires fossils... Fossils come from dead animals. Just sayin' ...
Actually, oil comes from dead plants.
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trillions of dollars are spent on useless wars
The likes of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Textron, BAE Systems, Steyer, Thales, Mauser, and hundreds of other arms manufacturers who also contribute to election campaigns in various countries, as well as their suppliers, contractors, and key shareholders, would all disagree with you.
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Well, monetarily it is. We currently spend over 100% of federal revenue on social programs and retired civil servents - far, far more than the defense budget. NASA's budget is just a rounding error - there's no financial purpose to cutting it, it's just a political statement.
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All of which wouldn't be so bad if we were living within our means, but we're not - we're spending like drunken sailors, and sadly even setting defense and NASA to 0 doesn't fix our spending addiction.
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Actually a good portion of it is going to the stockholders of insurance companies.
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If you know of an insurance company sending lots of money to its stockholders, please share. Typically they underperform in the long run (unless you consider Berkshire Hathaway an isurance company), though they do tend to weather recessions well for obvious psychological reasons.
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