Mars eh?

[whatchamacallit]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-15-2004/headlines---the-martian-chronicles

More bush redux?

[Aramchek]

1. more hater redux?

[whatchamacallit]

8. Ask a question, get called a hater. Seems fair...

[protocol rv]

13. You Americans are getting very tense

Relax. If you keep going this way, you will have a civil war, you will nuke each other, and the rest of the world will have to live with the consequences, nuclear winter, and lots of American refugees trying to come over, all of them covered with sores and glowing in the dark...

[Aramchek]

20. Call Obama Bush and you get what you deserve

[Divine Discontent]

2. "spatial entrepreneurs set such a wonderful example for the young of our country" - B*sh

you're just making me more glad he's GONE! lol... at least the adults are in charge now of these programs. Was there NOTHING B*sh couldn't screw up or make odd?

[SidDithers]

3. Unrec redux...nt

Sid

[whatchamacallit]

16. Ah, the mighty unrec-sword

is drawn from its tiny sheath.:rofl:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. They could save money by going to Arizona. Same landscape, just as few votes.

[WeDidIt]

5. From a strategic standpoint, Mars is better for our efforts than the moon

There are more resources on Mars, especially water. Water is the key.

Expending our efforts and resources on going to Mars now will put us decades further towards leaving this solar system than going back to the moon ever could.

[sailor65]

7. The moon is necessary in order to develop protocols

for reaching and surviving on mars. That is inescapable.

[WeDidIt]

14. Nope, already developed those with Skylab, Mir, and the ISS. n/t

[sailor65]

30. Not even close....

those are contained, short-term environments. Not any kind of substitute.

[protocol rv]

10. There's a lot of water on earth

Why would anybody want to go to Mars to drink water?

[dorkulon]

6. I really don't see the point of sending people to Mars.

We've had the rovers there for years, and it doesn't look very interesting. It seems like a silly thing to do just for the T-shirt.

Let's send robots to Io, or something like that.

[protocol rv]

11. It's good circus. But I believe the President said "Mars orbit", right?

Maybe President Obama is just giving the masses a view of a loaf of bread, and promising a little circus, but he didn't say he would land people on Mars, did he? I'm not in the USA, and I don't watch your news that closely.

[dorkulon]

15. Both, actually.

"By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

[protocol rv]

17. I see, so he wants to land humans on Mars after the mid-30's

Sounds safe enough to say it. I would focus more on building robots for space exploration. But maybe they can also work on some sort of nuclear energy powered engine so they can move very large payloads very fast to Mars and beyond. What do you think? Maybe a plutonium generator coupled to super magnets launching ions?

[dorkulon]

18. There are 2 theoretically sound propulsions systems

that have been proposed; one involves pulsed nuclear explosions and has been around since the '40s, but has been hampered by nuke restrictions (can't test it above ground or take off from earth) and I read something recently involving antihydrogen, but I'm not clear if that's just as a fuel for the nuclear explosions or what. At any rate, it would be very fast. Unfortunately, it would still take about a century to make it to the nearest star--a vast improvement over any conventional means, which would take tens of thousands of years.

The only problem is, what do we really need to do on Mars? It doesn't seem like much of a place, really. Aside from the novelty of "Hey, we're on Mars!" that is. I fear that we're not going to find much of real use in our own solar system, except maybe on a couple of moons around Jupiter and Saturn.

And you're right; it sure is an easy promise to make, Mars by 2035.

EDIT: I've also just been informed of improvements to Ion drive that can make it to Mars in 40 days: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7014067

[protocol rv]

19. Reviewing your comment

i can't discuss who I am or what I do for security reasons, but I can point out it's possible to use a plutonium reactor to generate electricity and use the electricity to power super conducting magnets (cooled with liquid gases such as hydrogen) to drive ions at high speed. This would be in a sense similar to a particle accelerator, but without the collisions taking place. This isn't really science fiction, but there's a lot of detail and fine print to work on before we can put a large one in space. And there's a safety issue regarding the launching of a plutonium reactor - if the launch vehicle fails the reactor will burn and could drop a lot of plutonium all over the place.

I don't think the end use would be to send people to Mars, but the US government could deceive them and then use it to launch large probes to Jovian satellites, Titan, and so on. The large probes would of course include robotic landers. Sending people to space is mostly circus. It has really hurt the industry. The decision to build the Space Shuttle was really really stupid. So was the decision to build the International Space Station.

Think of these decisions as a cousin to the Chinese Emperor's decision to stop Chinese fleets from exploring due East of China to focus on having prettier pottery. The US decision to be spending so much money and effort on those manned projects has really hurt, because other nations hitched their wagons to this mis-direction, as a result the human race as a whole has abandoned other much more productive research and development paths.

[dorkulon]

21. Very interesting.

And I'm in total agreement that the whole space cowboy thing has set us back a lot. It's amazing how much our need to service our own egos interferes with making wise decisions on what is really very serious business. We should be doing whatever yields the most useful information, and floating around in a box drinking Tang ain't it.

:toast:

[Cleobulus]

41. Uhm, you seem to be describing either an ion engine, or more likely a high specific impulse...

plasma engine, the only thing that puzzles me is your insistence that it needs plutonium. Uhm, solar power would be enough to transfer to any orbit out to Mars, and with some new solar array technology, maybe even out to Jupiter.

[Liberal In Texas]

9. Maybe this time it won't be all talk like it was from *. n/t

[Rage Inc.]

12. I still don't know what "redux" even means!

It's one of those words I refuse to look up! Sarah Palin defines it as "cloned mallards," and that's good enough for me! (belch)

[Blue-Jay]

22. I, too, am opposed to scientific advances.

:thumbsup:

[immoderate]

24. There would be no penicillin without the manned space program.

Everything in science came from putting people on the moon. :)

--imm

[Confusious]

26. I think he was talking to you.

We don’t have children based on financial returns. It costs a lot of money to raise them, and they often do not “pay off.” We don’t go out to dinner or to movies or amusement parks for financial returns. We just enjoy doing those things. Financially, they harm us.

The real reason to send people into space makes sense only if you have a sense of wonder, get a thrill from trying to accomplish difficult, untried things. If you are energized by discovery. In other words: if you are human.

Yeah, some humans—especially “bean counters”—will never understand the appeal of space travel. I pity them; they miss out on so much.

Von Braun

[dionysus]

23. bush comparison FAIL

[and-justice-for-all]

25. manned space exploration is very important...

It is unreasonable to think that we, as a species and with our population problem, that we can remain here forever.

by 2050 there will be 100 billion people on Earth, I do not think that the planet can continue to handle our ever growing population and our 'contributions' to the environment.

[whatchamacallit]

27. How 'bout we enact some sane eco-friendly policies and adopt some better lifestyle choices instead?

Just a thought...

[and-justice-for-all]

28. yes, and we still need manned space exploration...nt

[Cleobulus]

42. Because they won't make a difference? We don't have the resources on Earth...

to continue our current level of consumption for very long, much less allowing it to grow. Eco-friendly would be to find other places WITHOUT ecosystems to destroy to harvest resources from.

[immoderate]

29. How are you going to transport 100 billion people?

And to where?

There is a difference between science and science fiction.

--imm

[protocol rv]

32. I believe this is "large scale science fiction"

Ranks with "Ringworld", "Encounter with Rama", and "Starship" :-)

[immoderate]

33. Eep! I've read all of those!

Been a long time though.

--imm

[and-justice-for-all]

36. LOL, no one is suggesting moving 100 million people...

duh!

[immoderate]

38. Yeah, but someone is suggesting moving a lot of them.

Of course, that's if you want it to have any effect on the population of earth. :shrug: Your plan doesn't seem very well hashed out. "Hey guys! This earth is pretty crowded. Let's go colonize space!"

So how many people are you going to put up in space and who's going to pay for it? Duh, indeed! :)

--imm

[protocol rv]

31. Interesting statistic

I never heard the 100 billion figure by 2050. How did you arrive at this number? I'm also curious, do you think it would be feasible to build spaceships to transfer a few tens of billions of human beings to another planet? I'd love to exchange estimates of the amount of aluminum and plastic it would take to ship 10 billion human beings to geostationary earth orbit, never mind to another planet.

[immoderate]

34. They never do the math.

I have a friend who is a "futurist." He has a vision of Rama type cylinders out in space. I always question the numbers. Where does the excess heat go? Where does the material come from? What is our return after we shoot our resources up the gravity well?

--imm

[Cleobulus]

39. I'll answer these questions...

Hmm, for the first one, a RADIATOR, I'm sure you heard of those right, old tech, could be water cooled, or using some other fluid, but still practical.

The material would be mined out of asteroids that are outside Earth's gravity well, on low delta-v orbits, or orbiting Earth itself after a successful capture. Earth crossing and NEOs are ideal.

Hmm, after this is done, the material question is reversed, for Earth will become a net importer of resources from space.

[and-justice-for-all]

37. "transfer a few tens of billions of human beings"

that is not at all what is being suggested.

[Cleobulus]

40. Dude, Earth's population will approximately double by 2050, not go up to 100 billion...

divide that by 10, more or less.

[Warren DeMontague]

35. There are certainly things we could send to Mars that would be cheaper than actual, real people.