A human will first walk on Mars ...
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He will walk there, (Score:2)
and then he will die there.
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No, they saved him, despite him not being a "real" scientist.
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It won't happen until Cowboy Neal says it's okay for a man to walk on the moon. How was that not an option???
Re:He will walk there, (Score:5, Insightful)
Most humans walking on Earth so far have died there. Unless you think immortality is coming shortly on Earth, I don't think "he will die there" is much of a disincentive to go to Mars.
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A human will first walk on Mars (Score:2)
Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Interesting)
Before a human walks on Mars, there ought to be some humans born in Antarctica [wikipedia.org] — an environment much more welcoming to our species than the red planet.
Yeah, it is only a continent, not a planet, but it is so much easier to get to and live on, that there really is no excuse to go to Mars, until Antarctica (as well as Siberia, Australian Outback, Sahara and other deserts, American Midwest, Canadian woods) are settled to a population density exceeding 1 finger per square mile.
Mars is fascinating, but any attempts to spend tax-dollars on going there under the pretext of "humanity running out of room" must be rejected as mere pretence.
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Before a human walks on Mars, there ought to be some humans born in Antarctica [wikipedia.org] — an environment much more welcoming to our species than the red planet.
Yeah, it is only a continent, not a planet, but it is so much easier to get to and live on, that there really is no excuse to go to Mars, until Antarctica (as well as Siberia, Australian Outback, Sahara and other deserts, American Midwest, Canadian woods) are settled to a population density exceeding 1 finger per square mile.
Mars is fascinating, but any attempts to spend tax-dollars on going there under the pretext of "humanity running out of room" must be rejected as mere pretence.
The pretense is that a single Extinction Level Event could wipe out our species. In order for our species to survive, we need to colonize off planet.
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Yeah? Is such an event more or less probable than encountering a unicorn?
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's more probable. Unless you consider a rhino to count as a unicorn, in which case it's less probable.
I mean, there was that asteroid that is coming pretty damn close to earth that no one notices until it was less than a year away from impact (or would have been less than a year away if it's trajectory was slightly different).
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's more probable. Unless you consider a rhino to count as a unicorn, in which case it's less probable.
I mean, there was that asteroid that is coming pretty damn close to earth that no one notices until it was less than a year away from impact (or would have been less than a year away if it's trajectory was slightly different).
A single probabilistic event, rogue asteroid collision for argument's sake, is not on the order of likely.
Conversely, when you consider every possible event capable of reverting us back to the Stone Age, including many by technology's own hand, it is a bit more ominous.
Think of it like this: Off-planet settlement is akin to insurance. Everyone has insurance. It's individual risk diluted amongst the multitudes... except in this case, it protects the genetic line.
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Everyone does not have insurance. By and large, insurance is limited to prosperous people; people on the edge of starvation have better things to do with their resources. There are three types of people who buy insurance: those forced to (usually by law), cowards, and those out to defraud insurance providers.
Off-planet settlement is closer to hedging a bet than to insurance.
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That doesn't mean the average person is logical or intuitive.
Survivors hedge their bets. That's all.
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Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the difference between having one point of failure and having two.
It isn't actually. For one thing, post apocalyptic Earth is more hospitable than Mars. Mars is roughly as hospitable as living in the vacuum of space. You need a space suit to go outside, radiation shielding, the gravity is too low for long term survivability. In the event an asteroid strikes the Earth, you'd be better off in Earth than on Mars.
There is no way of spinning it such that it doesn't leave the species with a higher survival chance, no matter how hard you try.
Let's see. Humans can't survive long term on Mars under any realistic scenario. Neither can Martians escape to earth, the low gravity will degrade their bodies to the extent that they will not survive on Earth. In the meantime, the terrible living conditions, the unavoidable health effects, the lack of any realistic career prospects, no agriculture, industry or services mean that Mars will never attract a large number of people. Most people like to be able to go for a walk, or a holiday, sit under a tree, eat fresh fruit (rather than slime) - any of the things that are impossible living in a sealed container on an airless rock. The upshot is, the Mars "colony" will be dependant on the Earth in perpetuity. This places additional strain on the Earth's limited resources, producing a small (but not inconsiderable) risk to the survival of our species, which is apparently "a thing" that we should be concerned about.
In the event an asteroid stirkes the earth (highly unlikely) to the extent that massive climate change occurs, the Earthlings will do the most logical thing, and put all their efforts into adjusting to their new environs, which (though maybe not as nice as the old environs) is still far better than life on Mars. The Martians will be abandoned and probably die out.
I don't see any scenario in which a Mars colony serves as an advantage - mostly because Mars is a terrible place where no sane person would want to live long term. Also, I don't feel any obligation towards ensuring 'the survival' of the species (and I'm not alone in this). Especially if that survival means a few dozen instances of the human race eking out a desperate existence underground on Mars, never seeing the stars and waiting for the inevitable event the wipes them out. If we go, we should go with some dignity.
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In the event an asteroid stirkes the earth (highly unlikely) to the extent that massive climate change occurs, the Earthlings will do the most logical thing, and put all their efforts into adjusting to their new environs, which (though maybe not as nice as the old environs) is still far better than life on Mars.
It's believed that the moon is a part of Earth knocked into space from a collision. A collision of that magnitude would not just cause climate change, but would make life as we know it impossible for a while. Perhaps some creations like a space-ship like building (as in sealed and independent) set deep into a mountain might survive the impact, but without warning of the impact, it's unlikely people would volunteer to live there 24/7 just in case.
Neither can Martians escape to earth, the low gravity will degrade their bodies to the extent that they will not survive on Earth.
I quite disagree with that. The evidence is that someone bor
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Total reading comprehension failure. I said an ELE was more likely than meeting a unicorn, cause duh. Unless you went with the mythical origins of the unicorn, which was a distorted story about a rhino. If a rhino counts as a unicorn, I think it's more likely I'll see a unicorn in my life than experience an ELE.
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Interesting)
An extinction level event has a 100% probability in the next two billion years if we don't leave the planet. And there's a high probability that something will come along before then.
Leaving the planet is absolutely necessary for the species to survive into the indefinite future. There is no doubt. That "unicorn" is at the very far horizon, and it is barely visible, but it is real and it is coming right at us slowly, but inexorably. And that's only the one big enough for us to see even from here.
Now, if what you mean is that we have plenty of time to slowly figure it out, that's hard to say. I'm not a person who usually subscribes to doomsday scenarios about resource exhaustion and nuclear annihilation, but if I was working to provide the most likely future for the human race, I'd start with colonization preparations as soon as we had the capability to get to work on it. If we allow rampant industrialization and use of energy sources to be consumed by other priorities, we may find that when we get around to going to Mars, that we failed to reserve adequate resources to actually do it. I'm not saying that it will happen after 10, 20 or 100 years even, but as much as I think we tend to sensationalize that kind of threat, it is true that there are limits out there that we can hit if we start consuming in an exponential manner.
And just as likely, we end up having a significant setback in civilization like a nuclear war or just the slower disintegration of advanced civilization by a string of small disasters and unrest and we no longer can. Personally, I rate our chance of having a nuclear war in the next millennium as being nearly 100%. And I am being very conservative with that estimate. It could happen as soon as 20 years from now.
In any case, there is always someone who will say that it can wait until tomorrow. All I can say to that is, "if not now, then when?"
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I strongly suspect this is the moment in time most intelligent species are lost in the race to survive the great filter.
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And just as likely, we end up having a significant setback in civilization like a nuclear war or just the slower disintegration of advanced civilization by a string of small disasters and unrest and we no longer can. Personally, I rate our chance of having a nuclear war in the next millennium as being nearly 100%. And I am being very conservative with that estimate. It could happen as soon as 20 years from now.
An all out nuclear war would very likely not spare a mars colony. If you really want to protect humanity from itself then you need to launch generational ships every few years in opposite directions out of reach of the rest of the crazy humans. Once we get independently owned/operated starships like "Firefly" then we are probably safe from self destruction. Unfortunately, this also allows a rebirth of people "outside the law" like slave traders and pirates.
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Personally, I rate our chance of having a nuclear war in the next millennium as being nearly 100%.
That's a phenomenally stupid estimate. Why hasn't humanity already experienced nuclear exchanges, in an earlier time, where nationalism and autocracy still propelled our civilization?
And I am being very conservative with that estimate.
No, its a preposterous estimation.
It could happen as soon as 20 years from now.
The US is not swapping nuclear strikes with Russia or China, and vice versa. No political system has produced any central leadership in the nuclear age that crazy. Those left aren't nuclear weapons powers (excepting Israel). There is no military or political strategy where nuclear exchanges
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Why hasn't humanity already experienced nuclear exchanges, in an earlier time, where nationalism and autocracy still propelled our civilization?
You're forgetting the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can bet if the Germans had had nukes, they would have used them too. The only thing that stopped the exchange from being two-sided was that nobody else had them.
ISIS will not be able to make nukes anytime in anyone's lifetime.
With the money they're sitting on ... why build when you can buy? You don't even have to take delivery - just have it drop-shipped to your target.
Humanity is more likely to successfully place a man on Mars in 20 years
Considering that NASA currently hopes to send humans to land on Mars in 2035 at the earliest, any slippage kills the "in 20 years" scenario.
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Current nuclear capable countries outside of NATO, Russia, and China are: Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and India. South Africa had a program, but has since shut it down. Iran has a current program which may or may not lead to a weapon.
Certain generals in Pakistan have already sold nuclear technology to North Korea, and North Korea is not a state that I would bet against offering nuclear technology for sale themselves.
Iran may or may not be sincere about just wanting nuclear power, but you can't believe
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Hmm. 0.005% chance of a nuclear war in any particular year leads to a 99.3% chance of one in the next 1000 years.
The same chance of a war leads to a 33% chance of one in 80 years.
In other words, OP's estimate could be entirely
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That's a phenomenally stupid estimate. Why hasn't humanity already experienced nuclear exchanges, in an earlier time, where nationalism and autocracy still propelled our civilization?
That one's easy to answer: back in those days, the people who had nuclear weapons (which were the USSR, plus the allies US, UK, and France) were all secular societies not controlled by religious wackos.
These days, you have Pakistan (with tons of Muslims) with nuclear weapons, and Iran (with even crazier Muslims) possibly trying
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Independently owned/operated ships like "Firefly" cannot carry civilization. Furthermore, if you had actually watched the show, you'd know that Firefly was NOT a starship. A starship is a ship that can travel between star systems; Firefly could only travel at sublight speeds within a single star system; the show's entire premise was that FTL tech did not exist, and that humans had somehow traveled (presumably on generation ships) to a different star system that "luckily" had hundreds of terraformable plan
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Of course there was no explanation why the outer worlds weren't all frozen wastelands
The show is set in a multi-star cluster along the lines of the 12 Colonies in the Galactica series.
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A girl once broke up with me because I didn't have a concrete five year plan.
You have a two billion year plan for the entire human race. I should introduce you two.
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An extinction level event has a 100% probability in the next two billion years if we don't leave the planet.
Who is this "we" you talk about? What excursions we do now will be as relevant to our descendants two billion years down the road as what excursions the eukaryotes did two billion years ago is to us.
Two billion years is enough time for our descendants to develop as much as we did from Homo Erectus days until now, four million times over. And that's assuming it's all back-to-back and no parallel evolution.
Even if you said a thousand years and not two billion, it would still be too long term. Evolution doe
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Evolution and development does not require us to ever leave the planet. And you'll note that in that amount of time, no species has ever left this planet other than what we have managed to do. We might be completely different in two billion years or even 1,000 years, but if we never leave, we're toast, whatever we are.
While I understand that two billion years is an absurdly long point in the future, the point to be made is that we know it is coming. There is no "if" about it. The Earth is going to be en
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I fully understand that we could face a similar situation, but the cyclic nature of such extinctions is not proven, so I didn't refer to the possibility. I wanted to draw a line where 100% was 100% with a deadline. That is not to discount the reality that something is much more likely to happen in the far nearer term.
For instance, if the extinctions were caused by perturbations of the orbits of things like comets or other objects by us passing close to another star, it is likely we will face similar scena
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Evolution of our species beyond recognition is inevitable well before then. Homo sapiens have only been around for a few hundred thousand years and you are worried about hundreds of millions of years from now?
Given the time frames, I'm pretty content to let whatever species is the closest descendant of homo sapiens figure it out in a few hundred million years. They may be far better suited biologically to interstellar travel.
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An extinction level event has a 100% probability in the next two billion years if we don't leave the planet. And there's a high probability that something will come along before then.
Well unless we find a way to reverse entropy or the universe implodes - which also sounds bad - an extinction level event called the heat death of the universe will wipe us out eventually. Even on Mars, other stars or even other galaxies. For millions of years we've been monkeys, a hundred thousand years humans and they weren't wiped out so the odds of a total extinction event - meaning not even humans in deep bunkers survive while 99.999% die - in the next thousand years seems highly unlikely. We would sur
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rubbish.
Even if we only harvest 1/10,000 of available solar energy, it will be enough for human energy needs.
I'm assuming that grid-scale energy storage and efficient long distance transmission are solvable problems.
Or if we dig down a couple of miles and harness the geothermal energy, Bob's your uncle.
Or if we increase wind power to closer to its potential,
Or if we deploy significant ocean wave power generation,
or if we develop practical fusion reactors,
or if we develop thorium or other advanced efficient nuclear fission reactors that can re-use nuclear waste
or if as is likely we do all of the above to near their feasible potential,
then we'll only need fossil oil for petrochemicals (e.g. plastic).
We don't even really lack the technological know-how to do these things at this point. We just lack political and economic will to make the transition.
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:4, Insightful)
Geothermal and hydroelectric energy aren't the panacea they were once thought to be, because large-scale use of either raises the risks of earthquakes. Just ask Iceland about its huge geothermal energy plant near Reykjavik, or ask China about earthquakes near the Three Gorges Dam. Smaller dams (say, up to approximately the size of Hoover Dam, or maybe even Aswan) don't seem to present much of a problem, but flooding an area the size of New Jersey increasingly seems like a really, really bad idea.
The fact is, nuclear power is the best and greenest sustainable source of power available to us today and for the foreseeable future. Most of its waste problems could be solved with breeder reactors (which act kind of like incinerators, and allow you to take large volumes of moderately-radioactive waste and transform it into much smaller volumes of intensely-radioactive waste).
Solar isn't viable for states like Florida. Sure, we have seemingly endless sun... but statistically, any given city in Florida is likely to have a major hurricane at least two or three times per century. And glass is notoriously hard to make hurricane-proof (impact-resistant glass provide *safety*, but if anything, it *increases* the likelihood of expensive repairs because it's even MORE expensive to replace if an impact shatters it). Thirty years ago, solar water heaters were literally ALL OVER THE PLACE in South Florida, especially in areas where pools were common. Thanks to Andrew, Charley, and Wilma, they're now practically nonexistent. And even IF you could harden them enough to convince any homeowners insurance policy to cover rooftop solar arrays, they STILL can't produce enough power to run a typical 3 to 5 ton central air conditioner for a single-family home, let alone the air conditioners required by a skyscraper.
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What a stupid comment. You sound like someone who's either never been to New Jersey, or has only been to Newark or Camden. That's like saying that all of Texas is just like Austin, or all of Louisiana is just like the French Quarter in New Orleans, or all of Florida is just like Tallahassee.
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if we only harvest 1/10,000 of available solar energy, it will be enough for human energy needs.
Or if we increase wind power to closer to its potential,
Agreed [ucsd.edu]. However there is the energy trap to overcome. An attitude of "finding solutions is no problem let's have fun and not worry about it" is not conducing to avoiding it.
Or if we dig down a couple of miles and harness the geothermal energy, Bob's your uncle.
Nope [ucsd.edu].
Or if we deploy significant ocean wave power generation,
Nope [ucsd.edu].
or if we develop practical fusion reactors,
Maybe [ucsd.edu] but but there's two pretty big ifs: that it's actually possible to attain a usable energy return on energy invested; and that we find a way to do it before our current ressources run out.
or if we develop thorium or other advanced efficient nuclear fission reactors that can re-use nuclear waste
Maybe [ucsd.edu], assuming these pan out.
or if as is likely we do all of the above to near their feasible potential,
Yep. That would work on account of solar photoelectric being sufficient on its own. See the summary matrix for reference [ucsd.edu].
then we'll only need fossil oil for petrochemicals (e.g. plastic).
We could also reserve biofuels for that purpose (or equivalent renewable agricultural resources). I did not check to see if we'd have sufficient resources though.
We don't even really lack the technological know-how to do these things at this point.
We have no proven technology for ocean wave power generation, breeder reactors, fusion. Fortunately there are other solutions that are deployable now.
We just lack political and economic will to make the transition.
And unless economics is on our side, getting all the nations of earth to leave fossil fuels into the ground will be very hard, probably barely easier than achieving "peace on earth". Then by the time we are forced to find other solutions because fossil fuels run out we're likely to not have sufficient resources to make the transition [ucsd.edu].
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The bad news is that human extinction would be certain in a much shorter timespan than 2 billion years. Try 300 million years; all sorts of disastrous cosmic events have occurred within that time period.
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The pretense is that a single Extinction Level Event could wipe out our species. In order for our species to survive, we need to colonize off planet.
If, like most educated people, you subscribe to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, that's not really a problem.
And if not, colonising the bottom of the ocean, or 10km underground is infinitely more plausible than Mars. Anything bad enough to utterly destroy the Earths crust will probably take Mars with it too.
Philosophically, the extinction of the human race doesn't matter so much as the extinction of elephants, as nobody will be left to care. Tree in a forest and all that.
BTW, the ques
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Anything bad enough to utterly destroy the Earths crust will probably take Mars with it too.
To don't have to destroy the planet itself in order to kill (almost) all life on it. I always thought it preposterous when people would say that the US had enough nukes to blow up the world 7 times; what they really meant was we had enough nukes to effect the entire surface of the earth seven times.
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what they really meant was we had enough nukes to effect the entire surface of the earth seven times.
By creating forest fires? With 30,000 warheads peak, and a 6km destruction radius, you are talking on the order of 2 million sq.km.
Thats a lot, but a tiny fraction of the earth. And the "nuclear winter" fear now appears to have been greatly exaggerated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Anyway, the point is that its more sensible to shelter under the ocean, or deep underground than fantasise about a self-sustaining mars colony.
Remember the Fermi Paradox. When the alien machines who picked up our transmissi
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:4, Insightful)
An outpost on Mars will last at most a few decades after earth dies because there will always a few things that can not be manufactured on Mars that are needed for survival. Even if it is just the rubber for the airlock seals there will always be something critical to survival that is not manufactured on Mars.
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What extinction level event?
Nuclear war couldn't destroy human life. That has been debunked.
An gamma-ray burst couldn't either.
A huge asteroid would mess up our day but couldn't destroy us.
So I ask you, what extinction level event?
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:4, Informative)
The moon wasn't created by an asteroid impact. It was created by a planet-planet impact (actually Earth and Theia weren't strictly planets because neither had cleared their orbits back then, but they definitely weren't asteroids). There simply aren't any asteroids large enough to seriously damage human life that will impact us in the next million years at least. A million years is a really long time.
95% of potentially hazardous asteroids have been mapped and as we continue to map more of them we'll have detailed information about their trajectories and we'll be able to know centuries in advance if they are going to hit us.
And it's hard to imagine a scenario where even an asteroid as big as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs would _totally_ destroy human life. Shrews and crocodiles survived it. We're at least as smart as good at survival as crocodiles, I'd think.
The idea that we need to 'urgently get off this rock' to 'save the species' from 'asteroid impact' is pure sci fi fantasy, nothing more. It's embarrassing that people as 'smart' as, say, Elon Musk would parrot that line.
> The sun going nova, as all suns do.
The sun isn't going to 'go nova.' Novas require binary star systems which are solar system is not. Nor is it going to go supernova - it doesn't have enough mass.
The sun will expand into a red giant and that will presumably destroy life on Earth, but that's going to take five billion years. Do you understand how long that is? As far as we are concerned, for all practical purposes five billion years is an infinite amount of time.
So I ask you yet again: What extinction level event?
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Well, if some of my descendants are on Mars, then a single ELE won't wipe out all my descendants.
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:5, Informative)
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How long does it take to build up an atmosphere?
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Its not about producing and (in perpetuity) maintaining a Martian atmosphere.
Its about putting out enough global warming particles into the Martian atmosphere to generate a self sustaining climactic warming effect. This would then be enough to permit humans to operate without space suits. (They would probably still need oxygen tanks and severe climate clothing.) This may also allow some form of vegetation to develop.
Scientists have speculated that this could be done by setting off nukes at the Martian p
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We need to give up on this colonization stuff and just start working on a ship that will take over the mind of a passing alien, make him relive a few decades of a lifetime of one of our people within a couple hours, and leave him with a small flute.
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Before a human walks on Mars, there ought to be some humans born in Antarctica
Even if we ignore that people have been born on that continent, what was the point of the assertion? What makes giving birth in Antarctica a necessary precondition for a trip to Mars?
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Before a human walks on Mars, there ought to be some humans born in Antarctica
Even if we ignore that people have been born on that continent, what was the point of the assertion? What makes giving birth in Antarctica a necessary precondition for a trip to Mars?
Bringing life to bear under the most severe living conditions, if I don't miss my guess...
if degree of difficulty is your aim though,
why not birth and life 20,000 leagues under the sea?
So, you are recommending... (Score:4, Informative)
So, you are recommending to settle populations in Antarctica, endangering the sensitive ecosystems. Pure genius. Hey, I know, let's destroy everything on the planet. If we manage to make it worse than Mars, then we get to do some space traveling! Woohoo!
No "humanity running out of room" is not the reason we would like to get men (or ladies of course) to Mars. As for my tax dollars, yes, I'd rather they go there than where they are going now. But it won't probably be tax dollars that take us to Mars.
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Would you rather we endanger the quiet solitude of the unspoiled expanses of yet another planet — after messing up our own? Is that, what you are saying? Huh?.. Huh?!.. Didn't think so...
That's good — as long as financing the endeavour is not compulsory, I'm all for it. I may even participate — because, as I said, I too find it fascinating. Not because "humanit
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Would you rather we endanger the quiet solitude of the unspoiled expanses of yet another planet — after messing up our own? Is that, what you are saying? Huh?.. Huh?!.. Didn't think so...
What the hell are you talking about? I said overpopulation is not the reason to spend our money on research & exploration. We are debating about sending the first man on Mars and you are talking about moving significant population there. And even so, you equate spoiling a living ecosystem with colonizing a lifeless planet. Ok, "lifeless" up to debate, but that's my whole point - WE FIRST HAVE TO GO THERE AND FIND OUT.
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I'm mocking your idiocy. (How insensitive of me.) I challenge you to explain, why the "fragile ecosystem" of Antarctica is any more precious than unspoiled expanses of Mars — with (potentially) much more fragile eco-systems of its own.
There is a "fragile ecosystem" in my backyard — but I plant tomatoes there nonetheless. Even if we designate 50% of Antarctica as a nature reserve, we'll still have enough room for a couple billion people living with the populat
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Moving to any new place involves destroying the local ecosystem. The Antarctic ecosystem? Who cares?!?! Are you going to suggest exterminating humans to maintain orangutan habitats? (Its simpler to just randomly sterilizing some of them.) What about African habitats? Or just subsidize the cities in your nation that the African locals would need to move to?
Re:Before a human walks on Mars... (Score:4, Interesting)
Can't reach out into the rest of the galaxy without getting to Mars first. Also space colonies, moon colonies and, asteroid colonies, even flying permanent habitation Arcs to explore the rest of the galaxy. So more space for the cheetos crowd to breed in intoxicated boredom, not so much. A better future for those who reach out for it, that makes a lot more sense. Worrying about whether or not completely tastesless and useless poseurs can pose about with their resources wasting and pointless pollution generating bling not so much a focus. So keeping the economy turning on space development rather than useless shit for the rich and greedy, is a much sounder investment in our shared resources.
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So keeping the economy turning on space development rather than useless shit for the rich and greedy, is a much sounder investment in our shared resources.
I kind of like that argument, not that I think it will sway anyone, but it does strike me that the current economic environment (or at least the stage-managed debate about it) is structured around an argument which is based around the dichotomy of haves vs. have nots, of which both sides can make more or less reasonable claims and which seems to have no s
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Can't reach out into the rest of the galaxy without getting to Mars first.
Can't get to Mars without establishing a permanent presense on the Moon first, but I diverge..
There really isn't any point in talking about leaving our own solar system until we can develop propulsion systems that don't involve anything more complicated than throwing reaction mass out the back end of the vehicle. We aren't going to get to a decent fraction of C otherwise, and without that we're really not going anywhere. Even with the stuff of science fiction novels, like Bussard ramjets, it'd still take d
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Yeah, it is only a continent, not a planet, but it is so much easier to get to and live on, that there really is no excuse to go to Mars, until Antarctica (as well as Siberia, Australian Outback, Sahara and other deserts, American Midwest, Canadian woods) are settled to a population density exceeding 1 finger per square mile.
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, stu
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Before a human walks on Mars, there ought to be some humans born in Antarctica — an environment much more welcoming to our species than the red planet. .
Meet Emilio Marcos Palma [momtastic.com], born January 7, 1978.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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We will do it when we damn well feel like doing it.
Up to this point it is just a bunch of hypothesizing and science fair activities. Plus I hear that movie was pretty good.
Just need a government job programs called "To Mars or bust!"
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I imagine Queen Isabella had much the same conversation with Christopher Columbus. "What are you wasting my money going all the way over the sea, when the population density of Spain is so low?" she said. "Set yourself up a little homestead in Malaga, and don't come bothering me until you've literally run out of room."
Oh wait, she didn't. Because she appreciated the value of discovery.
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Before a human walks on Mars, there ought to be some humans born in Antarctica [wikipedia.org] — an environment much more welcoming to our species than the red planet.
There already have been humans born in Antarctica [wikipedia.org]. Both Chile and Argentina operate year round settlements in Antarctica. The Chilean settlement, Villa Las Estrellas [wikipedia.org], has the status of a town, with a primary school, bank,church, hospital and post office. The settlement of Antarctica is already starting, although in a very small scale.
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"Canadian woods"? Are you kidding? It is where the woods end, north of the tree line, that things start to get challenging. I have woods in my backyard and there is wifi access there. Nothing challenging about it!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I think you'd find that ironically, much of America's food actually COMES from areas that are technically desert (at least, food that's "out of season"). And most of it ends up as far away as Florida & New York.
Arizona farms notwithstanding, the above example mostly illustrates the growing irrelevance of local agriculture in the more urban parts of the US. Case in point: agriculture of any kind barely even exists anymore in South Florida. Oh... there are a few token nurseries growing things like palm tr
Do you mind if I smoke? (Score:2)
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2050-2065+ (Score:3, Interesting)
SpaceX is the only player that is making rapid progress from a high level of capability, but their progress is not nearly as rapid as Elon Musk had planned, it's more like half as rapid (which is still very impressive). If you extrapolate this into the future you get a date in the 2050-2080 range for the first Mars landing, assuming they will find funding.
Based on that, I guess the first person to walk on Mars is not born yet, but that many of us will still be alive to watch the live stream. By then, progress in radio technology should easily make it possible to stream at least one video stream (say at least 1 Mbps) from the lander to a relay satellite to Earth, as the lander travels all the way down the atmosphere, especially considering that the lander will be large enough to hold a significant power source and a fairly big antenna.
By the way, I wonder how they would power the lander during the stay on the surface. IIRC it would last for about 30 days in a short visit scenario, so we're talking quite a bit of energy, probably a couple of MWh worth just to power the life support systems.
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it's more like half as rapid
Your math is off a bit. Elon has said he expects to land the first humans on Mars in 10 to 12 years, or 2025~27. So if you double that, you'd get a window around 2035~39.
I voted on "before 2035" because I think SpaceX is likely to pull it off in that time frame. But of course, none of us really knows, because we don't know what they're working on behind the scenes, or how far along they are. There have been hints and rumors that they have some amazing projects in the pipeline, and that some of these will be
Come on China, you can DO it! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's time to show off your military and manufacturing might, guys! Get this done by 2040, and show the world what a real 21st century world superpower looks like.
When there is a good reason for him too ? (Score:2)
That's the missing choice.
It's nearly 50 years since mankind went to the moon, We aren't back there yet and while we have good reasons for going back, there is nothing compelling yet. Sending a man to mars to not bother again for a 50 to a hundred years afterward seems really pointless.
Missing option? (Score:2)
And where, pray tell, is the "It's already fucking happene" option? Seriously, the odds that the TR-3B doesn't actually exist are slim to none.
Learn to walk before you run... (Score:2)
At the moment, we can't even make a self sustaining closed ecology on Earth. When we can, we have a hope of making this work. Not before.
When we can create a self sustaining environment at an L5 point, I'll start taking the possibility of Mars seriously.
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You don't think trying to create an ecology on Mars (even without terraforming, building some kind of self-sustaining "biodome" there) would teach us valuable lessons that could help us here on Earth?
Why does one have to come before the other? Working on both problems in parallel can provide scientific boons shared across both.
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You don't think trying to create an ecology on Mars (even without terraforming, building some kind of self-sustaining "biodome" there) would teach us valuable lessons that could help us here on Earth?
Why does one have to come before the other? Working on both problems in parallel can provide scientific boons shared across both.
I think he's saying that if we can't create one here, then there is no chance in hell of being able to create on there where things will be orders of magnitude harder and no chance for any fixes in a reasonable time. Saying otherwise would be like saying "We can't get a ship into orbit, so we're going to go straight to the moon."
missing option (Score:2)
How about 40,000 BC? What if we came from Mars?
Live in a box before we go to Mars... (Score:2)
Before we send people to Mars we need to develop and test systems that will allow people to live totally isolated in a self-contained box (like a spaceship/Mars Habitat would be) here on Earth. There is no point sending people on a two year mission to Mars if there is a decent chance that one of them will go nuts from being locked up in a tin can and become violent 18 months into the trip.
context (Score:2)
The interval between the Wright Flyer and Apollo 11 was 66 years.
Another 66 years after that will be 2035.
2095 with Luck (Score:2)
Cowboy Neal walked on mars. (Score:2)
I was there man. It was fucking beautiful.
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Rovers cost less (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering the small cost of a rover vs a human we could have many more rovers doing much more science for less money.
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How sad, you imagine people can't live a full rewarding life here while at the same time supporting space program.
"this science crap" as you put it is the very thing that has extended human life, improved health and nutrition, created wealth including yours, and gives man a rational basis for understanding the world and universe.
I already have wife, kids, friends, coworkers who are great to be on team.....and I enjoy and follow science.
Don't project your failure at life on anyone else.
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Why are you on /.?
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