First SpaceX Missions To Mars: 'Dangerous and Probably People Will Die' (arstechnica.com) 412
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As we get close to the end of September, when Elon Musk has promised to lay bare his plans for colonizing Mars at an international space conference, it seems like the ambitious founder of SpaceX can hardly contain his excitement. In an interview with The Washington Post, Musk gushed, "I'm so tempted to talk more about the details of it. But I have to restrain myself." SpaceX fandom has speculated for years about details of Musk's ideas, which include the Mars Colonial Transporter concept. The Transporter likely consists of a large first stage rocket and an upper stage spacecraft meant to deliver hundreds of people to the surface of Mars during the late 2020s and 2030s. Unlike NASA, which relies on public money and is therefore risk averse when it comes to "loss of crew" requirements for human missions into space, SpaceX appears to be willing to take some risks with the unprecedented exploration to Mars. Those first explorers would understand the perils, just as the pioneers who explored the New World or the poles of Earth did. "Hopefully there's enough people who are like that who are willing to go build the foundation, at great risk, for a Martian city," Musk told Washington Post. "It's dangerous and probably people will die -- and they'll know that." Eventually it will be safe to go to Mars, Musk said, and living there will be comfortable. But this is many years into the future, he acknowledged.
I would ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go.
At the very least, death or not, it would be interesting. Earth is getting boring.
Re:I would ... (Score:5, Funny)
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First post from Mars would probably end up being a GNAA troll. Which would be kind of awesome I guess.
OK, but (Score:2)
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Go.
At the very least, death or not, it would be interesting. Earth is getting boring.
There was another program that had that wrapped up all nice and neat, included fast food and hookers on the moon, building larger craft in 1/3 earth gravity, He3 used as a much better fuel. But they screwed it all up in '63 over a quick theft of 4-6 million in north Tahoe on a repeat crime originally involving an underground river plug beneath Virginia City, NV and a pretty screwed up definition of Freemason. If it ever happens it will be the Russky's that do it, we have to buy our heavy lift rockets from
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If any part of Musk's plan involves indenturement, or stakeholder value increase, and does not come out upfront say that the one and only purpose is colonization, for the sake of colonization, it needs to be treated with revulsion and derision.
The former is how you secure slaves in space based manufacturing.
Why would anyone want space slaves for manufacturing when they could use industrial equipment and manufacturing robots that are far cheaper than having to supply expensive food/water/air/medical/misc to maintain slaves? There just isn't any advantage to slavery anymore, and especially not when you get into space.
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Slaves are capable of making decisions on unexpected events as they occur rather than ten minutes to an hour after they occur.
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bwahahaha.
I mean. Have you not paid attention to the suicide nets in Foxconn's factory city?
What else do you call it, when you are told to meet (or exceed) quota, or you wont be getting a resupply pod?
Who is going to sue? In what jurisdiction? Can Tim Cook be held legally liable for the conditions in China?
Dont be naive. Slavery is very much alive and well.
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Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Indenturement was the defacto way for "ordinary" people to secure passage to "the new world" in the days of sailing ships.
Given the absurd cost per kilogram of weight to put something into orbit, you either need a very deep set of pockets of a very idealist patron, or you need a business plan that seeks to "extract value" at every point in the mission's planning. It is much cheaper to produce more humans in space than it is to ship them off the ground, and m
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who said anything about star trek? I sure didnt.
I was instead looking at the historical parallels with european colonization of north and south america. There are resources that can be effectively processed on mars, iron being one of them. Sending the refining and smelting equipment there, then the people to operate it, would go a very long way to establishing space based manufacture.
Why attempt to establish space based manufacture?
I remind you, sending goods back to Earth is not a strict necessity. Money i
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Quick, back of the envelope calculations suggest that you get more like four times the mass to Mars escape speed for a rocket capable of reaching Earth escape speed.
And this ignores the relative advantage of Mars' two ready-made space stations (Phobos and Deimos) for micro-G manufacturing, launching, etc.
IOW, I agree with you in the main. The only real question (in the long run) is whether the
Re:I would ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This may come as a bit of a shock to you, but I have worked (and now, am actively working) in aerospace manufacturing.
Smelting is energy intensive, that I will give you. The cold as a witch's tit surface conditions will present additional obstacles. On the flipside, the lack of free oxygen in the atmosphere will be very beneficial to producing quality metal stock materials.
To me, the ovious road to success looks like this:
Big reusable heavy transport ship is constructed in Lunar orbit, uses water gel as rad sheilding. It has limited permanent crew, and is on a permanent transfer orbit itinerary. It carries material mined on the moon, and later, humans sourced from earth, to martian orbit.
Prefab command and control centers are established on either phobos of demos. Limited human crews are stationed there, and resupplied regularly by the heavy transport. These stations make use of the asteroid bodies as radiation sheilding for their limited crews, and make use of the short turnaround time for communication with the martian surface. They control remote drone construction robots on the martian surface, dropped there by the heavy transport.
This is how the martian habitats are constructed and covered in dirt. No humans with shovels. That's absurd.
Once the initial habitat construction is completed, limited human crews are established, and supplied by the heavy transport. Minimal light fabrication (nothing more complicated than a small manual milling machine, or a shopclass size smelter) equipment gets dropped for fault tolerance. Construction of heavier facilities for heavy industrial applications occurs.
Once the raw structures are in place, heavy industry payloads are dropped and installed.
THEN heavy industry and permanent self-sufficiency can be discussed.
And no, idiot. The likening to Indian call centers is an analogy. It would have more in common with a Foxconn factory city, except the product is sent into space cheaply, not sent to earth.
But feel free to criticize things you dont understand, bask in your own delusions of gandure, plug your ears, and pretend that people wanting to accomplish such a goal are "space nutters", and other just idiocy. You have already demonstrated that you cant even be bothered to read other people's posts before replying with idiocy to them. The proof is in the pudding on that one.
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" How are you going to build that rocket on Mars to "loft 3x as much mass"?"
Got news for you. Mars is 1 order of magnitude smaller than Earth in mass, and the gravity is correspondingly lower. You could lift 3x payload off Mars for relatively the same fuel cost as 1X payload on Earth
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If we humans cannot seem to foresee a future without robots and AI taking over our jobs and lives, I have no fucking idea how the hell you assume we meat-sacks should or would be the ones colonizing jack-shit in the future. Mining for metals? Electronics fabrication ala Foxconn? That's not exactly some insane complexity beyond programming machines to go do within the next decade or two, on-planet or off.
We looked to discover the New World a few hundred years ago, and the reasons were far more justified t
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Of course, that's absurd. But high throughput nuclear powered Martian bobcats, hey, those are a dime a dozen.
Everything you wrote is like this, as if TRL is some sort of irrelevant factor, rather than being the most critical, expensive, and slow aspect of space mission development.
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Earth Mass: 5.98 x 10^24 kg
Mars Mass: 6.42 x 10^23 kg
ONE ORDER OF MAGNITUDE, AS NOTED BY EXPONENT.
Do you even basic fucking math, son?
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What he's calling ridiculous is indeed the concept of any profitable space-based manufacture any time soon. Any colonists are going to be spending most of their time doing their best to, quite simply, not die. Nextmost they'll be spending their time collecting scientific data, which is by far the most "valuable" thing they could produce, given that interplanetary missions to collect such data run from the upper tens of millions to the lower billions. Lastly, from a risk-reward benefit you present an absu
Re:I would ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess the one for Mars for today would read:
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I doubt the initial ones would have any provision for safe return.
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And if I have to be remembered at all, it should not be as "the idiot who thought that Musk would put him on Mars for free".
"Probably"? (Score:4, Informative)
Nice understatement there fella.
This isn't like the moon... which is at least theoretically close enough that it is at least technologically feasible to orchestrate a rescue mission to bring people home if things go awry, if such provisions are at least planned for... certainly getting people back to earth safely (or sending more supples up) before they starve to death if food supplies were suddenly lost, for example. Mars is, to put it quite bluntly, a fucking ONE WAY TRIP.
Until we have the technology to get to mars in a matter of only a few days or less, I predict that every manned mission to mars that we attempt will have a 100% fatality rate. It is suicide to go there... plain and simple.
Re:"Probably"? (Score:5, Funny)
I want to live long enough to see us do fly-bys over the surface of mars, scaring the locals and then having a radio show written about us.
once that happens, I can die a happy man.
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So do I, to be perfectly honest.
But I can plainly see that where we are now, technologically.... we are just not there yet. Those considering this need to completely rethink propulsion and come up with a plan for getting people not only there, but home.... safely and expediently, in time scales measured in hours or a few days at most... not weeks, and certainly not months. Otherwise, any rocket we send them up in may as well be their tomb.
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Those considering this need to completely rethink propulsion and come up with a plan for getting people not only there, but home.... safely and expediently, in time scales measured in hours or a few days at most... not weeks, and certainly not months. Otherwise, any rocket we send them up in may as well be their tomb.
Why? Why do you think that colonists want to return to place they left? And why do you think that Earth is necessarily a better tomb for every single person than Mars would be?
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People will remember Musk and the leader of the expedition, that's about it.
Whom do you remember from the colonization of America? Who laid the first road? Who built the first house?
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Google isn't so interesting in remembering dead people. There's little money in their data. Despite repeated tries, it remains really, really hard to sell something to decomposing corpses that aren't still able to switch TV channels and reach into the chips bag.
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This isn't like the moon... which is at least theoretically close enough that it is at least technologically feasible to orchestrate a rescue mission to bring people home if things go awry
No, actually, it isn't.
I read a little bit of obscure history awhile ago. While in the Apollo 11 LEM, one of astronauts accidentally broke the switch they would use to turn on the ascent engine. Fortunately, Buzz was able to cram a pen in there and launch off of the Moon. But Nixon already had his speech prepared--the two astronauts would have died on the Moon and there wasn't a damn thing NASA could have done for them.
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I did explicitly say give the caveat that a second mission would have to be prepared for. My point is that it is technologically possible to implement.
If something happened on mars, it wouldn't matter how prepared we were here, we wouldn't be able to get any assistance to them remotely expediently enough.
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Incredibly unlikely for a long list of reasons, but what is likely given time is having several things going there per year. You need food next week? Here's a shipment sent last year that's arriving next week.
NASA, unlike Musk PR (or whatever is really happening), is doing things the right way by carefully building the pieces of the puzzle over time - eg. experiments growing food at the south pole and all the hundreds of li
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Check your source (Score:2)
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Probably true, but if that manned mission lasts a couple decades or more, I wouldn't really call it suicide, more of a permanent change of address. (not that I would expect early missions to actually be that successful)
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Until we have the technology to get to mars in a matter of only a few days or less, I predict that every manned mission to mars that we attempt will have a 100% fatality rate. It is suicide to go there... plain and simple.
Or we can simply bring more stuff. We already have demonstrated that we can live in space for months without resupply.
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No it doesn't. Of the approximately 107 billion humans who have ever lived, 7.4 billion of them are still alive, giving a fatality rate of only about 93.1%.
Radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
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I guess: on mars, build your home below ground. when travelling to mars (and/or back): hope that there is no storm coming your way :)
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http://www.marsicehouse.com/ [marsicehouse.com]
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Only the people near the walls of the ship will be badly exposed - those nearer the interior will be much better shielded.
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Easy. They die of something else.
Crash landing into the planet. Vacuum leak. Psychotic crew members. Any number of fatal problems might get you before the radiation does.
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He hasn't explained how he will avoid radiation overdoses. Or how he'll do what NASA doesn't know how to do (land such a large vehicle). Or how the colony's ongoing costs will be paid for. Or... well, he hasn't explained much of anything really.
Not that such lack of explanations has prevented the fanboys from declaring the mission a success in advance.
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The Falcon 9's first stage weight is estimated to be about 25 tons when empty [spaceflight101.com]. That's the stage that returns to Earth (or sea) and lands.
The space shuttle weighed about 82.5 tons when empty. Mars' gravity is about 38% that of Earths. 82.5 tons * 38% = weight equivalent to about 31 tons. So aside from inertia, the practice Space X has been getting landing the Falcon 9 translates almost exactly into landing a space shuttle-si
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You dont land the heavy transporter. That is silly.
The transport does transfer orbit maneouvers between mars and earth. It never enters atmosphere, and ideally, would never have experienced being at the bottom of a steep gravity well. If you dont mind long schedules, it could theoretically fall between lagranian points for very little fuel.
What it has:
Thick rad shielding (take your pick, but water is ideal.)
Heavy cargo capacity
Nuclear power
Possibly small fabrication suite
Big ass engines
simulated gravity cre
Re:Radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
It's almost impossible to die of space radiation overdose. The galactic cosmic rays can't kill you via a radiation overdose, they're dose rate is much, MUCH too low.
The only thing with a high enough dose rate is solar particle event. And, in fact, there are very few that are strong enough to kill you (but note, there are winter or thunderstorms that can easily kill you if you're unprotected on Earth). One has occurred, however, in August of 1972, with a dose of about 1 Sievert, but it'd only be that high if your only shielding was a thin space suit ( here's a source for that [bioedonline.org]). If you were inside a capsule or on the surface of Mars (shielded by the yes-still-significant Martian atmosphere), you'd be totally fine. Even 1 Sv not really enough to kill you. You need about 2 Sv to really be in danger of immediate radiation overdose and death. But you could vomit in your spacesuit and suffocate. However, these events are not instantaneous, you'd have a warning and the events occur over a period of an hour or several hours, so you have enough time to get inside or behind a rock or something.
No, it's nearly impossible to die from acute natural radiation overdose in space.
You'll survive the trip. The worry is about an increase in occurrence of cancer when you get back. However, in any case, the risk of cancer from living in space is less than being a smoker. Although, given the huge deal we make about the space radiation issue, you wouldn't know it. You'd think you'd die instantly or something, which just isn't true.
As far as how to deal with it, well Mars' surface has a much lower radiation dose from GCRs and especially solar flares. You're half shielded by the planet itself and secondarily by an average of around 40 grams per square centimeter of CO2 mass, maybe more at lower altitudes. Additionally, just massive amounts of rock or dirt work great. And water is more effective per unit mass.
On the way to Mars, your best bet is to shorten the trip to 90-100 days as Musk suggests, and perhaps use your supplies (water, food, maybe propellant) to shield you from solar particle events. That'd reduce your transit dose to a manageable amount. And you can also use drugs like Amifostine to avoid some of the radiation effects, especially the effects of acute radiation (we're unsure if Amifostine helps for chronic radiation). But once on the surface of Mars, it's possible to reduce the dosage to arbitrarily low levels.
But again, these are long-term health effects, perhaps like you'd see in any kind of hazardous environment. But you'll be able to perform the mission just fine.
Re:Radiation (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many solutions proposed for dealing with the radiation. That isn't a useful question (by itself.)
You should be asking instead: Has Musk announced how he will provide sufficient sheilding while maintaining a workable delta-v, and mission cost projection?
For example, Musk could decide on an inner and outer hull design with a nice empty space between, into which polyvinylacrylate (those crystals inside diapers) powder and liquid water is introduced. The powder absorbs all the water, turns it into a thick gel that cannot flow well, and thus will mostly stay put if the tank depressurizes. That means micrometeorites and the like are not a problem, and the high hydrogen density of the gel and low dispersion means that harmful cosmic rays cant penetrate deeply, and irradiated water wont migrate throug h the gel all that quickly.
That means that once put into service, the sheilding can continue to used basically forever as long as the ship is in service and good quarantine is in effect.
The downside? water is heavy as fuck. The fuel to move it around is heavy as fuck. The ship will take for fucking ever to reach mars, and will cost a fortune to fuel and launch.
The issue isnt stopping the radiation. It's doing so efficiently without killing yourself financially that is the kicker.
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It a situation where you have to first ask why are you going to Mars and is it going to happen a lot.
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Once you're on the surface of Mars, the solution is easy: just go another several feet under the surface.
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Not advisable. High energy particle interaction will make the water radioactive over time. That's what is so good about the gel-- it doesnt flow well, and has low dispersion. The radioactive water will stay near the outer hull. That water's one and only use is as sheilding.
Besides, there seems to be plenting of bound hydrogen and oxygen on mars, and brine water appears to be a seasonal feature at equitorial latitudes just below the surface. Water on mars is not a significant hurdle.
Radiation exposure on the
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Considering that seasonal brine flows have been seen large enough to displace TONS of martial soil from the MRO, yes-- Yes I do.
Also, when considering the ground penetrating radar scans showing shallow subsurface water ice.
There is a lot of water on Mars.
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Clearly you are just an argumentative idiot that cant be bothered to actually educate himself.
I can cure ignorance, but not stupid. If you cant figure out how you can collect seasonally flowing liquid water, I dont even know where to begin.
In short, you are an idiot, and you should feel bad. But dont let that little fact disuade you like any of the others I have upset your sensibilities with. By all means, demonstrate your idiocy some more with yet more ill-founded aspersions. Please, I enjoy the entertainm
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The water is freely flowing down the slope.
So, a sandpoint and some black PVC pipe will be sufficient. It would require a purpose built robot to do the deed, but once driven, could extract hundreds of gallons of very salty water per martian day.
This is hardly difficult problem solving. Hell, you could use a freaking bucket brigade if you did it fast enough.
The major problems will be freezing of the water in the storage tank, due to it being colder than a witch's tit, even in full sun, in summer. It will ne
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Water isn't a significant hurdle when compared to other hurdles. Water for the trip is a bigger problem than water on the surface.
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Pure water will not accumulate radioactivity. With one exception, there is no reaction with hydrogen or oxygen to make a long term radioactive nucleus. 16O+n->17O (stable). 17O+n->18O (stable). Very rare 18O+n-> 19O, half-life 26s. 16O+p->17F, half-life 65s. Etc.
The only exception is 2H+n -> 3H (tritium, half-life 12.3 years) but the cross section for this is very small, and H2 (deuterium) has very low concentration (0.01%) in ordinary water.
So leave your irradiated pure water for half an hou
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The issue is the metal of the hull itself, and the acrylate plastic the gel is comprised of.
Both will be sources of nastier, longer lived radioisotopes.
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High energy particle interaction will make the water radioactive over time.
So what? It won't be a serious problem over a human lifetime, especially compared to the high energy particle interaction with the crew.
NASA is risk averse? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:NASA is risk averse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't think that those people selected to go will have to sign a few documents and undergo a few mental evaluations to make sure they really understand that they will most likely die on the mission?
I would imagine that the direct relatives of the crew will have to sign something similar for the member to be eligible.
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That's not the problem - it's whether or not those documents and processes will stand the scrutiny of a court of law. It's whether or not they will withstand the scrutiny of whoever ends up granting the launch license. (Which is something of a grey area right now, the current process isn't set up to handle 'n
First SpaceX Missions To Mars: 'Dangerous and Prob (Score:2)
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Ultimately, the answer is simply this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Everything else is just a justification, true ones of course, but never the primary reason.
Some people get it, some people don't. I happen to be one of the people who do, and that's okay. It sounds like you happen to be one of the people who don't, and that's okay too.
Re:First SpaceX Missions To Mars: 'Dangerous and P (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just reading a book on the Vikings this afternoon and happened to read the chapters on the settlement of Iceland and Greenland and thinking about space exploration.
Compared to even Norway, Iceland was a lot like Mars. Totally hostile climate, vast stretches of it totally unsuitable for human habitation. Extremely long voyage to get there in an environment -- the North Sea -- that's sure death if anything goes wrong.
Many died trying anyway, and not just all at once. It took several attempts by people who knew that previous ones had failed, fatally, to establish permanent settlements. And the ones that did fail failed for the same reasons Mars is risky -- we bring the wrong stuff and not enough of the right stuff, the climate is hostile, it's far away so you can't easily go back, and sometimes your fellow colonists turn on you and you slaughter each other *and then* die of starvation.
In many ways, at least as far as we know, the one thing we don't have to worry about on Mars is having to fight our way through hostile natives. Not only did previous migrants face long voyages to uncertain destinations, there was also the likelihood they would have to go to war with whoever they ran into -- hey, let's embark on a trip that's likely fatal simply in the conveyance we have available, to a place we might not have the knowledge or stuff to survive in, and let's do it to steal stuff from people who will fight us to the death to stop us.
Yet humans have been doing it for millennia, despite the risks and the repeated failures. It's part of what makes us human. If that wasn't part of our humanity, we'd still be eating mangoes and dipping sticks into anthills on the edge of the forest and the savanna.
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a lot like Mars
Not remotely close. In the worst of conditions in Iceland, I could walk around for minutes totally naked in the worst conditions, go back inside, dink some hot cocoa and be ready to do it again in a few hours. Mars, you'll be unconscious in 12 seconds if you space suit springs a leak and dead in 4 minutes. Iceland wait a few hours until the storm goes away, put on a heavy coat and spend a day out ice fishing. Mars, pour some hot water onto you freeze dried lasagna while looking out the window.
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Mars, you'll be unconscious in 12 seconds if you space suit springs a leak and dead in 4 minutes. You are likely not even unconscious after 4 minutes. Why would you? A normal person without any training easy holds the breath 90 to 120 seconds. And after exhaling and not being able to inhale you don't drop unconcious imediatly, why would you? If you prepare for it like a diver, you easy can live in complete vacuum, naked for minutes. You would probably bleed throuh nose and ears etc ...
Why would you? Because in a vacuum your respiratory and circulatory system work in reverse. Your blood delivers partly oxygenated hemoglobin to your lungs, where the zero partial pressure of oxygen there strips it out and you exhale the oxygen.
Your skepticism on this is bizarre since this is a very well studied and understood situation that, believe it or not, is very important here on Earth. You see decompression of aircraft at high altitude [wikipedia.org] is the same thing and happens accidentally with some regularity [wikipedia.org].
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I guess you are talking about Greenland that was named that way for marketing purposes.
No it was not.
It was discovered during the medival warm period. The south part of Greenland was like today, probably even greener and warmer. You could grow potatoes there and grain, as we do in our times due to AGW *again*
However you are right, Icelands at that time (and today) are not particular cold due to the gulf stream. However large areas are desert like.
perfect candidates (Score:5, Funny)
Can we please send the members of congress on the first flight?! I mean come on, what's the worse that could happen?... and please include details. ;)
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It blows up on the launchpad?
Wait, my apologies, you asked for the worst case scenario, not the best.....
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They meet an alien race and manage to convince them we're a danger to the universe.
doomed (Score:2)
If they go like this, they are doomed.8
Errr (Score:2)
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Getting congress to agree to spend any significant money on an actual Mars program is a long shot anyway. If it weren't for fear of the Soviets gaining supremacy in space, there probably would
Being rich must be good (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you can send people to probable death so they can build the foundation for realizing your safe and comfortable dreams.
If people can die (Score:2)
Worked for Shackleton (Score:2)
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Alas, this appears to be apocryphal. http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi... [snopes.com]
I'd be more impressed Mr Musk (Score:4, Insightful)
....if you started with something like Biosphere 2.
We can't manage a self-sustaining environment that doesn't require CONSTANT maintenance on Earth. To suggest that we'll somehow 'muddle through' doing it 100 million miles away is folly.
"Some people will die" sure, that hasn't caused humans to flinch from trying hard things. And yes, doing hard things costs lives in many cases.
But it's truly a shitty, sociopathic narcissist that is willing to throw away lives to no good end.
Good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally someone is going to push us off this rock.
We stopped space exploration in the 1970s and never really returned. It's about time to start doing amazing things again.
Yes- people are going to die. And those who take the risk will understand the possible sacrifice for pushing our species forward.
Thank you in advance.
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We stopped space exploration in the 1970s
No, we stopped manned space exploration, when we realised a probe could do so much more for far less cost and risk. The Apollo program existed purely for national propaganda.
Long Term View (Score:3)
Expect a first phase consisting of several supply rockets with prefabs, equipment and tools. Expect a degree of heavy duty robotics to help with fabrication. Expect a *lot* of solar panels, plus of course Tesla battery packs... Most of this SpaceX could do today, with the exception maybe the heavy robotics that might be needed. Maybe we could use Waldo's instead.
The real challenge, as you point out, will be if we want to return. Ideally we would need Mars to provide the fuel for that, but we would still need to lift all the processing equipment there in order to prepare it.
But let's be honest: so far Musk has shown a *much* better rate of learning than any nation-state space program. Who would you bet on to get there first?
Robert Heinlein story (Score:4, Interesting)
In one of his stories - and I can't remember which - Heinlein discussed an engineer project whose budget was complete with an estimate of the number of people who would be killed in its achievement. His project manager comments that this item isn't included in the public budget, for political reasons! This realistic assessment of the tendency for death to occur was very thought provoking; we SHOULD be honest about risk - instead terrorism is treated as disproportionately terrible, whilst antibiotic resistance, which is vastly more seriously, is labelled as potentially dangerous as terrorism to get people's attention.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/heal... [bbc.co.uk]
Sometimes the fact that 'if voting could change things, it wouldn't be allowed', should be taken as a comfort.
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I am not sure that this fits neatly with the goal of colonization...
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Mars: Robots don't work on Mars
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Where are you gong to get that much lead?
Send it from Earth.
But won't that take a big rocket. Or at least a lot of smaller rockets?
Yes, that's the engineering part
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The radiation and differences in gravity would wreak havoc on humans [...]
The radiation, I can agree with. Differences in gravity?
Don't get me wrong, Zero G isn't good for you. But we really have no clue what one-third G will do. Unfortunately, NASA budget cuts left the Centrifuge Accommodations Module [wikipedia.org] sitting on Earth, which we could have used to figure out the effects of less/more G over long durations.
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We do, it's called test tube babies. We haven't yet modified them extensively yet (unless you count illegal Chinese experiments) but that's mostly due to ethics, not capacity.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not ready... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think of tens maybe hundreds of countries offering up their best and their brightest for a global national collaboration on a project that may span several generations but promises a lot.
Hundreds of countries? There are only ~180 countries total and the lion's share of them are third world shitholes that can barely clothe, water, and feed their people. When dysentery is still a day to day concern in your country I doubt space exploration is a huge priority. There are only a few dozen countries that can make a meaningful contribution to space exploration. If you consider the EU to be a single country then the number shrinks considerably and we're probably talking about counting them all on two hands. Even in the best of times such international projects tend to be top heavy and inefficient; the ISS has managed to cost many times more than Apollo did, despite relying on existing technology and reaching the same LEO frontier we've been exploring since the 1950s.
Depressed yet? I haven't even touched on geopolitics. The Western World and countries with similar value systems (EU, USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and a few others) can probably be counted on to work together, but if you toss China and Russia (or even India) into the mix the relationship status quickly changes to "It's complicated."
it sucks that this is the case but such is life. So, what do we do? Do we wait for the utopian Star Trek future, where all the problems here on Earth have been figured out, or do we accept that we live in the real world and push forward as best we can? My vote is for the second option.
Re: (Score:2)
One is technically feasible, one ain't.
It's left to the student to find out which is which.
Re:The price of greed and ambition (Score:4, Interesting)
Would that require some form of conscription or force-against-wishes type of arrangement? I ask because I wonder if you would be happy or happier if everyone attempting a trip to Mars was completely and undeniably a volunteer? Would that make a difference given your concern?
Or do you believe that even volunteers would be attempting the trip due to some kind of false hope or duplicitous misdirection? Just trying to better understand your underlying concern...