Diche Bach

@PB666 You know, most high-impact pubs require a SHORT abstract. Can you condense the point into say 150 or 200 words?

I would enjoy a discussion along the lines of "what would an ideal techno-evolutionary trajectory for space stations and off-earth ISRUs look like." I kind of hoped my "Prospecting the Solar System" thread would morph to include those sorts of discussions, but it never took off. I could be completely off-base to imagine that "extensibility" would be a warranted design consideration for a gravity-simulated space station design. But I suspect it should be possible. Observe the one imagined in 2001: Space Odyssey. The central hub is serving as the rotational axis for TWO rings (one of which is clearly still under construction). Thus: as long as your central hub can be extended in at least one direction, the prospect of extending the station with another ring would seem tenable.

Cannot argue with that. It is hard to imagine what benefits human presence on Mars would afford, other than science. From my perspective, the number one reason to aspire to get human beings to Mars is to explore caves. Apart from far more remote locales (moons of the outer planets) those would seem to be the best possible candidates for environments which harbor living exobiology. With underground water, and shielding from radiation, I seems reasonable that some sort of prokaryotic life might have survived in the Martian underworld. I don't know if robots which could explore caves are even a remote possibility in the next 100 years: I tend to suspect not. Better plan for long-term human habitation of outer space: 1. Getting a working "permanent" space station going, and one where provisions for agriculture and artificial gravity are a priority, AND with a design that can be extensible indefinitely, i.e., serve as the core of a true space port. 2. Get hold of a useful comet or asteroid and manipulate it so that it can be efficiently harvested for resources to use in industrial endeavours near Earth and/or on Earth. A trickle of rare metals from a mining operation on an asteroid towed into Moon orbit (or something along those lines) could probably pay for itself many times over AND provide materials for springboarding additional orbital/lunar facilities development and research into better tech.

It is inevitable that more people are going to die out there. It is an incomprehensibly harsh, unforgiving environment. My point is: plans which err on the side of accepting a higher rate of fatality risk are not only ethically questionable, but practically self-destructive. We all saw how damaging the Challenger and Columbia disasters were to the public perception of manned space flight. Do it as safely as possible or don't bother. Let the robots take the hard knocks. We will get there eventually; maybe/probably not in the lifetimes of us older folks, but possibly within the lifetimes of some of you younger folks. Being in a rush to get there, and taking risk-magnifying shortcuts might seem promising but if anything it is likely to cause more long-term delay in manned space flight and more harm to the movement overall.

DAMMIT! This was supposed to have become commonplace ~16 years ago!

Right. In other words, it is careful work. And even so, in 10 years it might be determined to have been largely false in its conclusions. It seems to me, in a field were experimentation is largely impossible, this inherent handicap in knowing is critical, and yet few seem willing to acknowledge it. I had a few paleo- and archy profs who made it one of their primary points and some of them were incredibly prolific . . . in small change journals whose contributions were also small and integral to larger syntheses. The folks who try to make big splashes in the natures and the sciences too often seem to be more concerned with the splash than with the long-term value.

But how does "demonstrating" private moon landings actually advance the field? I suggest an alternate contest for Google to back: develop a full business plan for a private-owned, semi-autonomous space station with agriculture and at least some artificial gravity (which can house X number of astronauts for Y number of days and with Z months of self-sufficiency, etc., etc.) and most importantly: a design which is extensible and can thus provide the initial core of an eventual space port that truly is 95% self-sufficient, can serve as a way station on the way to the moon, and provides an artificial living/working environment for a sufficiently large crew/passengers that it can actually function as the initial outpost in humanities ascent to spacefaring species status . . . As far as I can tell, a private-firm landing a spacecraft on the moon does NOTHING to address the real problem of how do we get the space rush GOING in the first place. For that, we need a space station where people can stay in relative health and comfort for months or years at a time and with sufficient on site resource reclamation and growth that it can go for months or years without a resupply mission from the surface. We lack that to this day and until we have that, we are severely handicapped n all of our manned space flight aspirations, as far as I can tell. The other completely separate objective I could see as taking precedence over a seemingly useless private landing of a spacecraft on the moon would be an actual plan for how to prospect an optimum asteroid/comet, grab it and put it close enough to the Earth-moon locale that it is useful as a resource base for either lunar or orbital enterprises.

No argument on that, but the question remains: what should come FIRST, what should come SECOND, third, fourth and so on? Apparently google thinks that commercial enterprises landing spacecraft on the surface of the moon should come FIRST. I'm asking WHY? Why should landing space craft on the moon be pushed to the front of the line in front of commercial ventures to start putting together a space station? Obviously the initial part of that structure WILL come from Earth, though admittedly long-term some non-trivial proportion of the thing may come from off-earth resources. You see, this is why I'm not a "space nerd," I'm way too skeptical and pragmatic. I'm asking a simple question and you'd think I was a heretic or something!?

An actual permanent space station where off-Earth agriculture, and human health studies could be mastered is the most obvious; but I suspect there are a lot of others too. What else is more important, isn't exactly an answer. It is an evasion. Simple question: why promote commercial moon landing? If there is no answer that is fine, I'm just asking is all. ADDIT: exploration of technologies for generating artificial gravity environments in orbit would be another one that strikes me as being more important.

What is the point of getting to the moon? I skimmed the article linked in the OP, but there is no clear statement of why Google would want to promote people sending more junk to the surface of the moon? Aren't there a lot more important things to be promoting that are appropriate intermediary steps toward humanity ascending to a spacefaring species? Oh sure, a moon base would seem to be an appropriate intermediate goal, and obviously "getting to the moon" a necessary part of that, but isn't promoting private industries landing a craft on the moon a bit like putting the cart before the horse?

Main problem about paleo- studies of any sort is that some people want to believe too much, and are not happy not being sure enough. Such people are natural headline hogs and they produce far more heat than light. It is the main reason I chose NOT to go down that path and instead focus on living humans (albeit with an evolutionary focus). At any given time, a non-trivial proportion of what we "think" to be true about the ancient past is likely to be wrong. Even exceptionally "conventional" well-founded, long-standing empirical generalizations can be and have been debunked. Take home being: never be too sure about something you cannot replicate in an experimental context, much less something about which you know based on indirect inferences of things which took place long before your species even existed. At all times, now and forever, a non-trivial proportion of what we would like to know about the ancient past will be completely unknowable. If everyone could accept that, paleo- studies of any sort would be a far less disagreeable topic.

I would think one would want all human habitation modules under at least two meters of regolith? 1. Figure out good prospective sites for human outposts using remote sensing 2. Send robots to check those sites in detail 3. Send more robots to double check the short list of candidate sites 4. Determine a primary and secondary (and tertiary?) site for preparation. 5. Send robots to prepare the primary/secondary/tertiary sites A. Excavate all top soil down to a safe depth for the entire work area, and sequester said poisonous top soil off to the side somewhere B. Drill verticle shafts down 3 meters and using blasting to open these up to 2meter diameter (maybe 2.5m or 3m diameter?) C. Build foundations and frames for airtight structures to enclose each opening D. Build any other support structures that will be expedient to have at the moment of astronaut arrival (base plates for solar arrays? various other ISRU modules??, storage for items that do not need to be kept safe from poisonous compounds and radiation? Fuel conversion?) 6. Drill a water well and make any other provisions necessary to afford the generation of breathable air 7. Deliver preliminary supplies, building materials, tools, and emergency redundancy materials to the site. -=-=-=- From my non-engineers perspective, seems like those are the necessary prerequisite steps which need to be completed before one can consider it "Time" to "Go To Mars." This way, when the astronauts arrive, they can set up their tents with the expectation that: as long as they work 18 hour days for a few weeks, they MIGHT be able to have safe underground structures built within a few months. Of course, none of that really takes into consideration the possible debilitating effects of the trip to Mars, nor the possible degenerative effects of the gravity nor the ethical/practical rationality of incurring the inherent psychological/physiological stresses of people adapting to living on such an inhospitable hell hole for questionable reasons. With those issues in mind, I'd say it is more reasonable to forestall considerations of the "Time" to "Go To Mars" until our robotics, and budgetary constraints include: -=-=-=-= 8. Some financial reason that suggests that people enduring life on Mars might generate sufficient profit to at least cover part of its costs. Not saying the scientific/adventure reasons are not (in principle) reason enough. But people cannot eat principles, and principles do not generate multi-trillion dollar long-term budgets. 9. Robotic teams that have finished building 75% complete fully hermetic, air-filled, clean, underground base complete with a two year reserve of clean water, multiple redundant air-scrubbing mechanisms and an ample reservoir of breathable air, a fully stocked medical facility, recreational provisions, and a farm that has already been through 3 sow to harvest cycles by its robotic caretakers and with the products properly stowed away in refrigerated safety and comprising something like one-years worth of reserve food. BTW: given the obvious constraints and requirements involved, what crops are currently thought to be the best prospects for the small range of options that will be used to feed such astronauts? Cabbage and beans? Certainly not rice or potaos!?

What was it that you posted up there? Looks like either a report from an academic/research group simulating part of a Mars expedition under controlled conditions else fiction?

No link?

Isn't it a bit rash to rush from "observed change in sex ratio of green sea turtles" to "victim of climate change?" Granted it probably is temperature mediating the observation, but why is a change in temperature necessarily a sign of "climate change?" Doesn't climate change "routinely," and pretty much always has? The term itself seems to rely on a fanciful notion that there has EVER been a time in Earth's history when climate was "stable," which as far as I can tell has happened never.

I am universally opposed to crime, even as a form of protest. If one is engaging in "crime" as a form of protest, then really what one is seeking is a state of war, and sometimes wars are justified, but warlike crime (e.g., IRA bombings, or whatever) are NEVER justified. With that said, there is one instance in which microtransactions or other forms of publisher/IP owner "interference" in consumer experience do verge toward "tyranny" (well at least as far as "rip off" is toward "tyranny" . . .): when a piece of software is sold in state X, and lacks interfering or costly features like DRM, microstransactions, etc., and which consumers purchased with the expectation that such features were absent, but which is "updated" at a later time to state "X + Y" and now INCLUDE such interfering features as DRM, microtransactions, etc.. Here of course I'm referring to Bethesda's "Creation Club," and in that instance, I refuse most adamantly to update my version of the .exe they sold me to a form that includes Creation Club. KSP's steam library allows users to install various versions of the software depending on which one they prefer, and Fallout 4 (and probably Skyrim) do not and this is inexcusably manipulative, rude, and probably criminal. People have been sharing copies of the "pre-CC" .exe and while it technically counts as "piracy," I must say, in this very special instance, I cannot blame them for helping others to circumvent Bethesda/Zenimax'es bad business practices, nor can I criticize the actions. I wont' say I SANCTION it, but I also do not condemn it to the same absolute degree I otherwise condemn piracy.

I get a lot of viewing pleasure out of YTs "suggestions" algorithms. True, a fair bit of <<click, watch, watch . . . 30 seconds later click away>> too, and of course I empathize with the travails of YT content creators in their "demonetization" woes (the most paradoxical of which I've seen being a recent video by Tim Pool in which he puzzles of the fact that his "Icelandic appendix vermicularis Museum" video was human-eyes confirmed for monetization, whereas his "Interview with former Icelandic PM and wikileaks member" was human confirmed for DE-monetization . . .). YT is far from perfect, but overall, I appreciate the robotic assistance it affords to further my webcrastination viewing free and often interesting stuff!

The main highlights I gathered from finally finishing it: 1. The lead scientist, Dr. Vasavada: when asked what surprised him most from the five years, he said (to paraphrase) the overwhelming amount of evidence for abundant, long-persisting surface water during the Hesperian. We're talking, scores of meters deep lakes that persisted for 10s of millions of years, possibly longer. 2. Organic compounds are well-preserved in many of the samples they have extracted from rocks that are billions of years old. He seemed to feel this was quite promising for future studies to explore the presence of ancient (now extinct likely) microbial life. 3. Related to #2, the climate on Mars seems to have stayed both wet and warm for a surprisingly long time, possibly long enough that microbial life could have evolved. 4. Someone asked about the perchlorates in the soil and he acknowledged they are a problem. But referred back to a point he made in reference to the 15 or so drill samples they have collected: in many cases (not all) they found that the degree of oxidation (and I suppose perchlorate levels) was much lower in the immediate sub-surface than in the surface rock/sediments. Thus, he suggested that simply mining sub-surface rock could be a solution to the poison soil when/if astronauts are trying to harvest soil for agriculture at some point in the future. I keep a picture of Curiosity as my desktop on my PC and it trickles me a steady stream of wonder/marvel at human ingenuity and intrepidness. I think it must be one of the pinnacles of human achievement that this machine has been methodically doing our bidding on that far away inhospitable world, giving us close up insights onto the worlds long and mysterious history. Some of us may disagree on the specifics of how humans will continue to engage with Mars, with some of us being more skeptical of the utility or promise of sending humans there AT ALL, much less at any time in the next few decades; and others apparently convinced that there will be thriving colonies there within that time frame. But if there is one thing we can all agree on, perhaps it is just the pure wonder of Mars, as one nearby example of the mysterious universe in which we find ourselves as we awaken from our evolutionary history and move forward into our human future.

I keep coming back to this one and watching a bit more every now and then. Bit slow, but very detailed.

Is the fact it is the first confirmed interstellar object to be observed passing through the solar system also an exaggeration? Based on what I have read, its shape IS irregular, and since you seem to think differently, why don't you provide citations, eh!? In fact, since you are having fun spoiling all of our fantasies, why don't you just back up all your cold shower comments. Omuga Muga is SPECIAL I tell you! SPECIAL! See!? Its "wrapped in a strange organic coat!" . . . seriously though, you're probably correct. Nothing but a rock. However, the fact it will NEVER be observable closely means that humanities imagination will be free to run wild for a very long time.

Except for having an overall shape that is more cigar-like than any asteroid ever recorded, and also spinning at a rate considerably faster than most asteroids . . . and oh yeah, it isn't orbiting the sun, and its trucking rather rapidly . . . and its reddish . . . but otherwise, just your typical asteroid!

@Green Baron: I hope you are correct and these things have actually been whizzing through for eons and we just didn't realize it.

I'm not an engineer, so I cannot answer the technicalities of how we do it. I am a behavioral/biological scientist and I can tell you: "we" as a species really need to appreciate the missed opportunity here. Even if that thing is a completely unremarkable hunk of rock, the details which might be gleaned from it based on an up close observation might well spark revolutions in multiple fields of science. But we will likely never know. We can recognize that we are behooved for our own sake to be properly prepared in case another one is detected and do our best both to detect it earlier, and if possible intercept it, maybe even capture it?

What PB666 said is pretty good . . . pretty thorough . . . all seems accurate. The only things I would add are: make sure to get enough sleep; add an appropriate resistance training regimen to that cardio routine (Paleolithic heros and heroines were more like decathletes, or icosathletes not bicyclists or runners); stay hydrated; avoid prolonged sun exposure without covering (or at minimum sun screen); and eat high fiber foods and especially those with los of choline (e.g., cauliflower); spend a year living in the wilderness with as minimal "artificial" support as possible.

We have been sending vessels into space for what? 60 some odd years. We anticipated that something like this was a possibility and yet, how prepared were we to (a) detect it in the first place or (b) respond quickly in order to maximize learning? Not very prepared it seems. I hope this lesson sinks in for enough of us that we stop messing around and get our act together.