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NASA's rover Curiosity lands on Mars [W:206]

expansionism and financial gain. We can't move to Mars, and unless it's just brimming with oil and precious metals, we aren't going to be making any profits from it, either.

Of course we can move to Mars. We will some day. Exploring it is the first step.
 
Of course we can move to Mars. We will some day. Exploring it is the first step.

You can believe that if you want to, but you'd be living in a giant dome that'll be plastered by debris, since the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, and the gravity is way to light.
 
You can believe that if you want to, but you'd be living in a giant dome that'll be plastered by debris, since the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, and the gravity is way to light.

So you think humans are never going to spread to other planets? 1 million year from now, you think we'll still just be on this one planet? Basically, you think history has more or less stalled out?
 
So basically, hope for a future that may not exist because we keep spending on frivolous propaganda fodder like this while plummeting even further down a multi-trillion dollar deficit? Awesome. NASA is great, I love NASA and what they've done in the past, but now isn't the time to be spending over two and a half billion dollars to play with a remote control toy.

So your argument is that we are in a multi-trillion potentially catastrophic fiscal situation driven by entitlements, tax reform, and defense spending, and so we should have avoided $365 million a year over the past decade to potentially help extricate ourselves from this situation in the future by opening up new frontiers?

A deficit of a trillion dollars is not meaningfully even scraped by the amount spent on this program. To direct ire at it is to obfuscate and avoid the real issues.
 
expansionism and financial gain. We can't move to Mars, and unless it's just brimming with oil and precious metals, we aren't going to be making any profits from it, either.

Space is brimming with financial opportunities and room for expansion. Once again, many serious proponents of colonization do not propose the large scale settlement of any planetary body in our solar system. They favor orbital facilities for a variety of reasons some of which you mentioned. Also as evidence for financial gain being explored I suggest you look at the nascent Planetary Resources.
 
So your argument is that we are in a multi-trillion potentially catastrophic fiscal situation driven by entitlements, tax reform, and defense spending, and so we should have avoided $365 million a year over the past decade to potentially help extricate ourselves from this situation in the future by opening up new frontiers?

A deficit of a trillion dollars is not meaningfully even scraped by the amount spent on this program. To direct ire at it is to obfuscate and avoid the real issues.

$365 million
$365 million there
$365 million over yonder
_____________________

Mucho Money
 
What was the point of the first of our ancestors to poke their heads out of the valley they evolved in? What was the point of exploring Europe and Asia? What was the point of crossing the Bering Straight to explore the Americas?

They were probably lost, or the tribal witch doctor was insane.
 
The point absolutely still stands, it is a tremendous scientific venture that may yield enormous benefit to us in the future, it is impossible to know directly though there are more than decent avenues of inquiry if we want to examine what these benefits might be, and they have been listed.

And I have pointed out that such benefits are insignificant and dubious. I'm starting to feel like a ****ing parrot here.

Furthermore in line with what others have said the entire enterprise of supporting our space program is a worthwhile endeavor for a variety of reasons. With the logic you are using we should have shutdown Tevatron years ahead of schedule, scale back from ITER, etc. The frontiers of scientific research and technological development have no immediate payback.

You're failing to distinguish between science in general and a specific rover to Mars. I am 100% supportive of particle accelerators and research in quantum physics etc. These actually have potential to reveal enormous knowledge of our understanding of the universe and the nature of reality. In fact, I'm in favor of much greater funding of such endeavors. The Curiosity rover to Mars only seems comparable to the fundamental science being done at CERN to someone who knows very little about either.

Our future is in space not because of a far flung hope to colonize Titan or Mars in a mass scale (though I wish Elon Musk well in trying) it is because we have fantastic amounts of resources in space and an excellent base from which to expand into colonies. The line of approach that scientists, engineers, and space advocates have been pushing for, for decades has been a staged approach starting with a lunar base and the deployment of a mass driver to facilitate the refining of the resources in the lunar regolith for the eventual launching of those materials into orbit at the Lagrangian Points where colonies held in geosynchronous orbit can be assembled and spun. It is from there that solar satellites with microwave radio transmission antennas can be deployed (an engineering concept that has been thoroughly vetted and is currently being explored by EADS and India) for the generation and disbursement of power on a mass scale. From these small beginnings albeit with great financial investment mankind can begin his ascent into the stars and the exploitation of the resources that our solar neighborhood has to offer.

Blah blah blah Lagrangian blah blah blah. This doesn't overcome the simple fact that it is prohibitively expensive (not just in simple financial terms, but in terms of energy) to harvest resources on other planets in our solar system. It's entirely possible that there will come a time in the distant future when this is no longer the case, but it's hardly relevant for discussion at this point.

Regarding our "ascent into the stars"; it's a fantasy. As goldsmith has already admitted and I've pointed out to you, there are insurmountable physical limitations that prohibit the kind of interstellar and intergalactic travel that you're dreaming about.

Bad News: Interstellar Travel May Remain in Science Fiction

There is so much we could do, so much to exploit, and so much that could help speed it along from NPP ships to legislative overhauls.

It's also our destiny.

Oh. Well, if it's our destiny, nevermind, i guess i'm wrong. :roll:
 
So you think humans are never going to spread to other planets?
This isn't Buck Rodgers, just because a planet has a surface doesn't mean human beings can survive on it.

1 million year from now, you think we'll still just be on this one planet?
We might not even exist in a million years. But yes, unless you can think of some other planets we can find that have similar conditions as Earth. Instead of hoping to ditch this planet, we should be looking for ways to un**** the mess we created in the first place.

Basically, you think history has more or less stalled out?
History has absolutely nothing to do with occupying another planet.
 
So your argument is that we are in a multi-trillion potentially catastrophic fiscal situation driven by entitlements, tax reform, and defense spending, and so we should have avoided $365 million a year over the past decade to potentially help extricate ourselves from this situation in the future by opening up new frontiers?

A deficit of a trillion dollars is not meaningfully even scraped by the amount spent on this program. To direct ire at it is to obfuscate and avoid the real issues.

2.6 billion dollars is a lot of money. So is the 150 billion spent on the ISS, as well as the billions in shuttle maintenance, and the billions we'll need to build a new shuttle from scratch. This **** adds up significantly, especially when added to other programs that costs us billions of dollars every fiscal year. Opening up uninhabitable frontiers that have little to no probability of generating revenue at this time is beyond stupid. If you can't see that, then I don't know what else to tell you.
 
This isn't Buck Rodgers, just because a planet has a surface doesn't mean human beings can survive on it.

We might not even exist in a million years. But yes, unless you can think of some other planets we can find that have similar conditions as Earth. Instead of hoping to ditch this planet, we should be looking for ways to un**** the mess we created in the first place.

History has absolutely nothing to do with occupying another planet.

I really don't get where you're coming from on this. It seems self evident to me that in 10,000 years, let alone a million years, we will have capabilities that would make us seem like gods today. Nanotech alone might well solve all the issues you mention and that's not even 100 years away.
 
I really don't get where you're coming from on this. It seems self evident to me that in 10,000 years, let alone a million years, we will have capabilities that would make us seem like gods today. Nanotech alone might well solve all the issues you mention and that's not even 100 years away.

Which still has nothing to do with colonizing another planet.
 
Which still has nothing to do with colonizing another planet.

Huh? You're saying, as I understand it, that we won't colonize Mars because of various technical complications like the lack of atmosphere and whatnot, right? I'm saying we could potentially solve all those technical problems in as little as 100 years, and almost certainly within 1,000.
 
Huh? You're saying, as I understand it, that we won't colonize Mars because of various technical complications like the lack of atmosphere and whatnot, right? I'm saying we could potentially solve all those technical problems in as little as 100 years, and almost certainly within 1,000.

Yeah, we can't change the gravity or atmosphere of an entire planet.
 
Yeah, we can't change the gravity or atmosphere of an entire planet.

The gravity there is high enough to sustain life. In fact, it seems that it won't even be that hard on the body to live in zero gravity. People have done it for years on end and the only side effects they've had have been pretty minor.

The atmosphere, either we can terraform the planet or we can wear suits and live in shelters.

Neither of those is a serious impediment on the thousands of year time scale.
 
The gravity there is high enough to sustain life. In fact, it seems that it won't even be that hard on the body to live in zero gravity. People have done it for years on end and the only side effects they've had have been pretty minor.

The atmosphere, either we can terraform the planet or we can wear suits and live in shelters.

Neither of those is a serious impediment on the thousands of year time scale.

The atmospheric pressure of Mars is about 600 Pascals. Earth's is 101,000, that's more than a significant difference. Extended periods of time in zero gravity do cause physical harm to the human body, especially the heart and lungs. As long as you get back to the atmospheric pressure and gravity of Earth, you'll be alright. Living in that low density your whole life will make your whole life a lot shorter. The temperature also ranges from 1º F to -225º F. You would freeze to death before winter even began, which also means that water and food crops are out of the question. Water is also very unstable on Mars due to the low density. It immediately turns to vapor and with the human body ranging from 50-65% water, what do you think is going to happen? Mars is completely uninhabitable, no scientific breakthrough will ever change that. Your only hope would be to live on a man-made structure, which could never possibly be a permanent solution.
 
The atmospheric pressure of Mars is about 600 Pascals. Earth's is 101,000, that's more than a significant difference. Extended periods of time in zero gravity do cause physical harm to the human body, especially the heart and lungs. As long as you get back to the atmospheric pressure and gravity of Earth, you'll be alright. Living in that low density your whole life will make your whole life a lot shorter. The temperature also ranges from 1º F to -225º F. You would freeze to death before winter even began, which also means that water and food crops are out of the question. Water is also very unstable on Mars due to the low density. It immediately turns to vapor and with the human body ranging from 50-65% water, what do you think is going to happen? Mars is completely uninhabitable, no scientific breakthrough will ever change that. Your only hope would be to live on a man-made structure, which could never possibly be a permanent solution.

You just aren't thinking big enough. For example Mars has way more than enough of all the elements required to make an atmosphere in it's soil. Nanomachines or even normal machines to extract it and convert it into atmosphere could certainly be done. Also, there are lots of plans out there for redirecting ice asteroids that contain useful elements into Mar's atmosphere where they would burn up in the atmosphere and help bolster it up. As the atmosphere thickens, the temperatures would go up. That process would be manageable with greenhouse gasses. With the right mix, you could make it earth temperature.

There are two problems I am aware of with living in zero gravity. First, you lose bone density and muscle mass, so when you return to earth, that can be rough. Those problems can be remedied today to some extent with vigorous exercise and in the future with medications or nanomachines or who knows what else. Second, there are problems with people's eyes that they don't quite understand yet. People's vision gets worse the longer they stay on the space station. But, whatever that is, I'm sure it is solvable.

The bigger problem is the solar radiation. Earth's magnetic field buffers us against it, but Mars' is much weaker. That one we don't know how to solve yet. Until we did, people would need to live primarily underground, or in shielded areas. Or at least be near enough to one at all times that they could get there during solar storms. But, like all engineering problems, I'm sure that is solvable eventually. We could genetically engineer ourselves to be more tolerant of the radiation, we could figure out how to spin up Mars' own magnetic sphere, we could build some kind of field of our own, we could come up with medical treatments that make it a non issue... Who knows.

Anyways, what you're doing seems to me no different than somebody 1,000 years ago saying quite confidently that we could never fly because we're heavier than air. To somebody from just 1,000 years ago the people of today would appear to be gods with capabilities that simply defied any possible explanation. And science is not going at a constant pace, it is speeding up. It is inevitable that the people of 1,000 years from now will be able to do things far, far, beyond anything that seems possible today, and all the problems we've discussed so far already seem possible to solve in the foreseeable future. When you try to think about what we'll be capable of doing in 10,000 years, it is impossible to even imagine, but certainly simple hurdles like a thin atmosphere won't be an issue.

But, even if you think science is basically just going to peter out in 20 years or so, by then we'll already have the scientific capability to live underground on Mars, and certainly people would eventually go ahead and do that. Why not?
 
2.6 billion dollars is a lot of money. So is the 150 billion spent on the ISS, as well as the billions in shuttle maintenance, and the billions we'll need to build a new shuttle from scratch. This **** adds up significantly, especially when added to other programs that costs us billions of dollars every fiscal year. Opening up uninhabitable frontiers that have little to no probability of generating revenue at this time is beyond stupid. If you can't see that, then I don't know what else to tell you.

The ISS was a stupid program and most proponents of space colonization and many within NASA vigorously fought for better options. The only way we will reduce the cost of space exploration aside from the development of new launch vehicles is the creation of orbital, lunar, and lagrangian infrastructure that will facilitate the on site development of critical materials like fuel. Hence Planetary Resources focus on creating a refueling and water electrolysis facility to sell fuel and massively reduce launch costs and allowing the continual refueling of ships that are stationed in orbit. We also do not need to build a new shuttle from scratch, and we will not be building a shuttle. Man rating a dragon capsule can likely be done relatively cheaply, and if we reduced our strictures and concerns could probably do a manned mission within this year. SLS is stupid, so I'll preempt you there.

These frontiers are not uninhabitable, they have great probability of generating revenue, and $2.6 billion over 8-10 years is not a lot of money given the federal budget.
 
You just aren't thinking big enough. For example Mars has way more than enough of all the elements required to make an atmosphere in it's soil. Nanomachines or even normal machines to extract it and convert it into atmosphere could certainly be done. Also, there are lots of plans out there for redirecting ice asteroids that contain useful elements into Mar's atmosphere where they would burn up in the atmosphere and help bolster it up. As the atmosphere thickens, the temperatures would go up. That process would be manageable with greenhouse gasses. With the right mix, you could make it earth temperature.

There are two problems I am aware of with living in zero gravity. First, you lose bone density and muscle mass, so when you return to earth, that can be rough. Those problems can be remedied today to some extent with vigorous exercise and in the future with medications or nanomachines or who knows what else. Second, there are problems with people's eyes that they don't quite understand yet. People's vision gets worse the longer they stay on the space station. But, whatever that is, I'm sure it is solvable.

The bigger problem is the solar radiation. Earth's magnetic field buffers us against it, but Mars' is much weaker. That one we don't know how to solve yet. Until we did, people would need to live primarily underground, or in shielded areas. Or at least be near enough to one at all times that they could get there during solar storms. But, like all engineering problems, I'm sure that is solvable eventually. We could genetically engineer ourselves to be more tolerant of the radiation, we could figure out how to spin up Mars' own magnetic sphere, we could build some kind of field of our own, we could come up with medical treatments that make it a non issue... Who knows.

Anyways, what you're doing seems to me no different than somebody 1,000 years ago saying quite confidently that we could never fly because we're heavier than air. To somebody from just 1,000 years ago the people of today would appear to be gods with capabilities that simply defied any possible explanation. And science is not going at a constant pace, it is speeding up. It is inevitable that the people of 1,000 years from now will be able to do things far, far, beyond anything that seems possible today, and all the problems we've discussed so far already seem possible to solve in the foreseeable future. When you try to think about what we'll be capable of doing in 10,000 years, it is impossible to even imagine, but certainly simple hurdles like a thin atmosphere won't be an issue.

But, even if you think science is basically just going to peter out in 20 years or so, by then we'll already have the scientific capability to live underground on Mars, and certainly people would eventually go ahead and do that. Why not?

I appreciate your vigorous defense and line of thinking, a vein of thought and feeling that I certainly agree with. However do you really think that Mars is a better destination for colonization than the Lagrangian points, with the moon as a base to facilitate that?
 
These frontiers are not uninhabitable, they have great probability of generating revenue, and $2.6 billion over 8-10 years is not a lot of money given the federal budget.

Mars is only habitable if you build an artificial habitat on it, if they can generate revenue, they better start doing it, and the total cost of the space program is outlandish.
 
Mars is only habitable if you build an artificial habitat on it, if they can generate revenue, they better start doing it, and the total cost of the space program is outlandish.

For the third time I do not wish to colonize Mars. I do however see great value in missions to Mars.
 
The ISS was a stupid program and most proponents of space colonization and many within NASA vigorously fought for better options. The only way we will reduce the cost of space exploration aside from the development of new launch vehicles is the creation of orbital, lunar, and lagrangian infrastructure that will facilitate the on site development of critical materials like fuel. Hence Planetary Resources focus on creating a refueling and water electrolysis facility to sell fuel and massively reduce launch costs and allowing the continual refueling of ships that are stationed in orbit. We also do not need to build a new shuttle from scratch, and we will not be building a shuttle. Man rating a dragon capsule can likely be done relatively cheaply, and if we reduced our strictures and concerns could probably do a manned mission within this year. SLS is stupid, so I'll preempt you there.

These frontiers are not uninhabitable, they have great probability of generating revenue, and $2.6 billion over 8-10 years is not a lot of money given the federal budget.

$2.6 billion is how much it costs to put 2,000 lbs on Mars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory

The Apollo Lunar Lander weighed 32,399 lb, Apollo command module weighed 67,000 lbs, both combined will get humans about 1/100th of the way to mars there before running out of water/food/oxygen in zero-G while their bones waste away.

You can spend the entire US Gross Domestic Product and you still won't get a human to Mars. Come back from NeverNever land.
 
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$2.6 billion is how much it costs to put 2,000 lbs on Mars. Mars Science Laboratory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Apollo Lunar Lander weighed 32,399 lb, Apollo command module weighed 67,000 lbs, both combined will get humans about 1/100th of the way to mars there before running out of water/food/oxygen in zero-G while their bones waste away.

You can spend the entire US Gross Domestic Product and you still won't get a human to Mars. Come back from NeverNever land.

You do understand how a weight to cost ratio from different programs and time periods makes zero sense in this conversation, let alone talking about sending a human to Mars. Right?
 
Mars is only habitable if you build an artificial habitat on it, if they can generate revenue, they better start doing it, and the total cost of the space program is outlandish.

The main value of space programs, in the past, has been in spin-off technologies that have found commercial application on Earth. The money spent on the space program should be commensurate with affordability. The next projects for expentures for space can be selected from the various options for orbiting, lunar or planetary stations, etc. and can be assessed with the technology available at the time of the next budgeting decision process.

It is a political decision as to how much governments spend for space exploration, compared to how much governments spend taking care of people on Earth. Ideally, eventually space will become profitable, and investment capital will be available for commercial ventures in space.

How many tourists will buy tickets to the Moon or Mars?


//
 
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