Oh, and another thing. You know what is naively Star-Trekian? This rosey-colored glasses idea that if humanity sits on Earth farting and breeding long enough that it will suddenly become all self-actualized and live at one with nature, in perfect balance.
THAT, is Star-Trekian. That is contrary to all human history and experience. I would not bet my childrens’ childrens’ standard of living or continued existence on the assumption everyone else is going to become self-actualized.
The fact is, while it was once worthwhile, good science and interesting, the time for having the government send humans into space has come and gone. The ISS is stupid and I will celebrate the day it is abandoned. Sending people to Mars is just crazy stupid.
Space tourism - I’m all for that. Great industry, I hope it works out and I’m sure it will given time.
NASA realizes this - that is why they no longer even have the capability to send people to low earth orbit. No concrete plans to get the ability back either.
At the same time I’d love to see NASA’s budget doubled or tripled. I want them sending up new sensors and probes on a weekly basis. I want them to discover everything they can. I want my science. But computers have advanced and the time of sending weak fleshbags along with the computers and robots has come and gone.
HAL, is that you?
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Even if that’s true (I’d argue that it isn’t), probe technology isn’t stagnant- it’s progressing at leaps and bounds. Every year it is getting closer and closer to the physical capabilities and dexterity of a human. Meanwhile, the human inside the suit hasn’t changed much in the last 10,000 years.
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Sure, it’s debatable (obviously I’ve argued that we’d get more data out of a manned mission than these robotic missions), and I’m not disputing that probe technology keeps getting better. They ARE getting better. You will notice, however, that they are also getting more expensive as we are asking them to do more. And that’s going to continue to be the case…if we want these things to get us more data that we could be getting using humans, it’s going to cost an increasing amount.
And I don’t see anything on the horizon that will put any machine on par with what a human, and more importantly a human mind can do any time soon. That’s not to say it won’t happen…but, IMHO, if you COULD get a machine that could do everything a human could (as opposed to a few specialized tasks) do it’s probably going to end up costing you a large fraction of what it would cost you to simply have a human do, and it’s going to take decades before we are at that point.
I don’t see that as something that’s going to happen in the next 10 or even 20 years…maybe not in the next 50. You just can’t send a small, cheap robot out to do what a human could do, and if you send a bunch of large, capable robots out then you are talking costs that start to rival what a manned mission would cost, so that blows the savings part out of the water. To me the choice is low and slow (relatively low costs and it’s going to take decades or longer to get the answers) or high and quick (higher costs but we get relatively quick results). We seem to be in ‘low and slow’ mode, which is better than nothing, but to me it’s not as good as it could be. There is so much out there to explore that I hate to see us dragging this out on Mars for decades and decades more before we go on to, say, increased studying of Europa…not when we COULD just go there and find the answers. We won’t find them all, mind, but we’d get decades worth of data at the current pace in the less than a decade it would take to plan and execute a manned mission to Mars…or maybe two or three.
To me it seems like some folks in this thread are just looking for any excuse to NOT have a manned program. ‘It’s impossible!’…except it’s not. ‘It’s TOO expensive’…except, relative to our overall budget, it’s not. ‘There is nothing humans could do that probes can’t’…except, there are lots of things humans could do that probes can’t. ‘It’s too dangerous!’…What’s ‘too dangerous’? Is it more dangerous than some of the voyages of exploration that our ancestors accomplished? :dubious: To me these are all excuses or simply engineering problems. What I’d REALLY like to know is, why are people so opposed to even the idea of going to Mars? It’s almost like folks have been brainwashed into how impossible it is, despite the fact that serious scientists and engineers have been planning for this for decades. I understand why it’s not politically feasible, especially in the current economy, but I’m not getting the ‘well, it’s not politically viable’ vibe. I’m getting the ‘it’s just impossible and worthless and I don’t want to hear about why that’s wrong’ vibe, to be honest. I’m not talking about Mars colonies or Star Trek here. Nothing I’ve said hasn’t been said by plenty of real scientists and engineers at places like JPL or NASA…folks who have a hell of a lot more cred than I do.
Can any of you nay sayer types just calmly and succinctly explain the deal here? What’s your REAL issue with a manned Mars mission? Is it that you think that if we have a Mars mission there won’t be any bucks for anything else, space exploration wise? I could see THAT, though I think that such a mission might excite public interest in space and space exploration again, which would mean money that would have been spent on robotic missions to Mars perhaps being spent on, say, Europa robotic missions instead. Is it something else? Does anyone here REALLY think it’s impossible??
-XT
This is much too general a statement. Somethings in space are more challenging maybe, but some things are still barnyard simple, too. Growing tomatoes under lights doesn’t require any physics breakthroughs.
More Star Trek (which I love, btw).
Most of what I read states that the earth will be habitable for another half a billion years. 500 million years. While I’m sure your relatives 500,000,000 years from now will appreciate your efforts, I’m not going to worry about it now. I’m guessing the world and technology will be a twinge different then. And I’m not sure landing a man on Mars in ten years, or a thousand when our technology is better is going to change that time line all that much.
And let’s not equate Columbus sailing the Atlantic and “opening up new territories” with landing a man on Mars. There just isn’t any comparison. Every step of the way for our exploration here on earth, both the transit and ultimate destination were hospitable. And that was almost always driven by the almighty dollar (shekel, pound, what have you). So that we are good at.
Are we good at exploring the solar system in manned craft? In our history there have been twelve men who have walked on another planet/moon. Not sure that equates to us being “really good at it.”
We have a winner. It is all about efficient use of the limited money and resources we do have. As I said upthread to simplify - men on Mars costs $100, a Hubble type telescope or other sensor costs $5, a planetary probe costs $1. You have $10 a year.
What is going to give you more science for your buck? Most informed people would argue the mix of probes to different planets, the mix of different sensors will give you so much science.
Really, we already know there isn’t going to be anything crazy to discover on Mars. Even if <only> a manned mission could possibly discover whether there was some kind of bacteria or primitive life there - that is great but it may not happen and if it does it may not affect much. The whole planet is basically just a big ass desert. Not likely to see or do much there. For those exact same kind of reasons no one has returned to the moon.
But look at the science just one Hubble telescope has given us. It boggles the mind.
Chances are a really big asteroid or comet will slam into the Earth and kill a big chunk of all life on earth well before then. I think this is another reason to have a robust space program, and another reason to plant the seeds of human presence on more than just one planet (don’t put all your eggs in one basket).
Pretty much this. Everything I’ve read indicates that a lot more space science & exploration can get done per dollar via robotic probes and telescopes than with human missions. I believe the majority of the scientific establishment is also firmly in this encampment.
Now, a good argument can be made that human missions are more inspirational and are good PR for keeping the space program alive, and that that makes up for the (relative) lack of science.
But I’d much rather send orbiters & probes to Europa, Titan, Ganymede, Io, etc, AND have enough money left over for 10 different space telescopes, than blow everything on one Mars Mission.
I’ve thought about how passionate some people are about going to Mars, and their enthusiasm has led me to think I now know the answer to the OP’s questions.
By spaceship. One way trip. Some day a rich guy, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet type rich, will decide they want to go there and ‘immortalize’ their name. All things considered, will people hundreds of years from now know who Bill Gates was? Probably not. But if Bill Gates was the first person to land on Mars and is still there lying dead in a spaceship - he will be. In the distant future his landing site might be a tourist destination in of itself.
Space tourism will soon be the only way anyone goes to space. And likely a space tourist will be the first to Mars. He or she will have to be pretty wealthy, and even then will almost certainly be able to only afford a one way trip. NASA/democratic governments would never send a 1 way trip - but nothing really stops a private investor from doing so. Maybe it will be a partnership of rich people. He’ll also have to wait until a rocket is around that can launch his ass there - since designing one himself will add substantially to the cost.
But the eternal fame and name recognition for doing this will be something few others could match. Plus I assume the guy will be oldish and just really want to go to Mars, like some of the posters on this thread.
Habitable for life sure, probably. No guarantee it will be habitable for a modern, human civilization. Maybe you’re okay paving over the only planet in the universe we know has life, but I’m not.
Well, I don’t think sending a man to Mars equates to opening up new frontiers either.
I would say for the amount we’ve done, our manned space missions have been overwhelmingly successful.
…and day after the impact, it’d still be a paradise on Earth relative to the surface of Mars. Really, if your goal is survival of the species here, a large asteroid impact is no big deal.
But even still, it’s likely that the residents of Earth in 100,000 years will have the technology to leave the planet and set up shop at Alpha Centauri. In fact, they probably would’ve gotten it sooner had they spent their research budget on things like new energy sources, cutting edge physics, robotics, and propulsion, rather than wasted it all on chemical rockets to send a new boatload of colonists, food, and oxygen to the Mars base every year.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned terrraforming but there are a handful of planets that are reasoanble candidates for terraforming. Mars, Venus and Europa. The problem is none of these planets have a magnetosphere so they cannot retain moisture in their atmosphere, radiation boils it off or blows it away.
So we have to go with domed cities First we build up an atmosphere (for the atmospheric pressure), terraform the atmosphere for climate (Venus is really hot but you can terraform the carbon dioxide away over a long period of time with bactieria or something) and then we build a domed city to hold in breathable atmosphere. You keep expanding the domed city until eventually the entire planet is domed.
At some point we might want to build a moonbase as a launching pad for interplanetary space travel. But thats way in the future when you are ready to start sending people to Venus and Mars.
Space is not likely to result in profitable earthside imports. Unless we find huge deposits of precious metals on the moon, its hard to see how space can pay for itself.
However if we are still around 3 billion years from now, we will have no choice because the Earth will be inside the Earth’s corona. I presume we will have figured out something in the next 3 billion years or died trying.
You mean the Sun’s corona?
Well see, for $2.5 billion so far, we’re going to find out Mars has… rocks and water. That’s a pretty pricey non-revelation. What we’re really doing as far as I’m concerned, is testing out a landing system we’ll be using when we send people.
We’re just being sneaky.
I’m assuming you’re refering to the Curiousity Rover. It has been built with the instruments to meet following objectives:
1.Determine the mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials.
2.Attempt to detect chemical building blocks of life (biosignatures).
3.Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils.
4.Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes.
5.Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.
6.Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons.
But has it a microphone as the Mars Polar Lander that crashed?
No, I think that’s Six.
It’s a reason to develop a robust space program, but that’s a problem of technology, not just throwing enough crap into space and seeing what doesn’t fall down.
And the “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” idiom only makes sense if your “eggs” are exchangeable and expendible. Applied to human lives, it’s rather monstrous.
I don’t understand. I’m saying I want to maximize humanity’s chances of survival. I think having pockets of humanity in different places in the solar system (and ultimately, the rest of the galaxy) maximizes our chances of long term survival.