Manned Mars mission poll

[Northstar1989]

Carrying Capacity

Mathematicians love to argue this question, but they don't really seem to understand the concept of Carrying Capacity- it is not a matter of the maximum population an ecosystem can COMFORTABLY accommodate- it is a matter of the maximum population an environment can sustain, period.  Keeping that caveat in mind, HowStuffWorks gives a decent introduction to the concept for the non-scientist:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-carrying-capacity.htm

The strict definition of Carrying Capacity would say as many as 40 Billion people might be the number- but based on my knowledge of Virology, I suspect infectious diseases will limit the human population well below that point... (hence my estimate of 12-24 billion)

[Northstar1989]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

What's the point of increasing human population if it means that the we have to live miserably or emigrate to an even more hostile environment? Wouldn't it be smarter to gradually reduce human population through birth control so that a higher proportion can live more comfortably with less resources?

Nobody said anything about living miserably.  We just have to learn to.live with LESS than we do now.  Americans in particular are MASSIVELY inefficient with resources.  The United States needs to:

- Embrace public transportation.  Particularly rail-based transit such as subways, commuter rail, and streetcars.  In practice this means taxing the heck out of cars such that automobile owners actually have to pay for the road construction and maintenance budgets without burdening commuters who take the train/streetcar with any of the expenses.  Also, ride-sharing and carpooling.

- Relax zoning restrictions on building height and mixed-use residential/commercial development, with the goal of creating more compact, walkable communities.  Goes along with the whole mass transit thing- denser cities and town with less fossil fuel and land usage.

- Implement pollution and Carbon Taxes.  Force polluters to pay for the damage they cause and you'll end up with a lot less of it.

- Abandon the concept of grass lawns and switch to edible landscaping.  Embracing gardening will help put wasted suburban space to good use and reduce people's ecological footprint.  Also, bicycling to work anyone?

- Invest BIG money in sustainable materials, such as the recent research at RPI's business park into using fungal mycelia as a building material...  (Also, have you heard of their groundbreaking anti-reflective coating research for solar panels?  Guess where I spent the first year of my college education before transferring to an even better school?)

 

All this, and some research into solar power satellites (basically Microwave Beamed Power down TO EARTH instead of to spacecraft trying to get to orbit and beyond...), optical rectennas, and improved genetically-engineered crops and humanity don't be living in misery even with 12 Billion people (and maybe 1 billion in the United Statea)- just with substantially more careful resource utilization than we have now...

 

The things that really make life worth living- art, culture, science; they have VERY small material inputs.  A world of 12 billion people need not be misery- with the right socioeconomic systems it could be a utopia, with the large population actually ENABLING happiness rather than detracting from it...

Similarly on Mars, population will be a valuable resource if used properly, not a detriment.  More people means more Einsteins (with good public education at least).

 

Also, if you didn't guess, I'm an Extrovert.  I like crowds (most of the time).  People don't bother me by sheer virtue of numbers.

Edited September 27, 2017 by Northstar1989

[WinkAllKerb'']

might depend if you're daily work is to swim in full of mercure rivers or selling candy in disneyland ... prolly that i guess ... garbage work is boring, whatever garbage may refer too

anyway daily "stuff & work" and wich degree brought you there, prolly not harass everyone mind the same way ... and anyone remain free to be more concerned with one or another aspect

imho life as time goes is the best degree you'll ever be able to get, and no one will give it to you, this need to be granted all alone, but well some people like that someone recognize them with a degree while some other totally don't care, most young kid don't have any degree but you know "truth often come from the kids mouth"

degree are something that should be take with caution ^^ they not always worth that much overall, not allways but sometime

Edited September 27, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[ModZero]

3 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

That's insulting, and based on nothing but your disliking what I have to say.  *I* am a published biologist with a graduate degree, like most biologists intimately familiar with ideas like "Carrying Capacity" and ecological niches.

Well, that's too bad, because I would expect that biologists would be acquainted with ideas such as "non sequitur," and "not guesstimating nonsense about things that aren't really biology on public forums." But maybe math schools are just better at this, though I'd note other biologists I read seem to get it.

3 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

Most estimated the planet could only sustain 10 billion people.

If you said that _first_ then I might even believe that biology thing, though tbh, next to claims that colonizing the solar system would substantially change that number makes me doubt it anyway. Not that it matters at all

3 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

Your credentials to argue Biology with a Biologist are, what, exactly?

I have access to the Internet, a degree in claiming I have degrees, knowledge of the difference between biology, ecology and economics, a short temper and a button to shut out the replies.

EDIT: this reminds me of the time when several geologists from the Polish PAN decided to make a public statement that "they're geologists and they know about earth and there's no global warming."

Edited September 27, 2017 by ModZero

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

Nobody said anything about living miserably.  We just have to learn to.live with LESS than we do now.  Americans in particular are MASSIVELY inefficient with resources.  The United States needs to:

- Embrace public transportation.  Particularly rail-based transit such as subways, commuter rail, and streetcars.  In practice this means taxing the heck out of cars such that automobile owners actually have to pay for the road construction and maintenance budgets without burdening commuters who take the train/streetcar with any of the expenses.  Also, ride-sharing and carpooling.

- Relax zoning restrictions on building height and mixed-use residential/commercial development, with the goal of creating more compact, walkable communities.  Goes along with the whole mass transit thing- denser cities and town with less fossil fuel and land usage.

- Implement pollution and Carbon Taxes.  Force polluters to pay for the damage they cause and you'll end up with a lot less of it.

- Abandon the concept of grass lawns and switch to edible landscaping.  Embracing gardening will help put wasted suburban space to good use and reduce people's ecological footprint.  Also, bicycling to work anyone?

- Invest BIG money in sustainable materials, such as the recent research at RPI's business park into using fungal mycelia as a building material...  (Also, have you heard of their groundbreaking anti-reflective coating research for solar panels?  Guess where I spent the first year of my college education before transferring to an even better school?)

All this, and some research into solar power satellites (basically Microwave Beamed Power down TO EARTH instead of to spacecraft trying to get to orbit and beyond...), optical rectennas, and improved genetically-engineered crops and humanity don't be living in misery even with 12 Billion people (and maybe 1 billion in the United Statea)- just with substantially more careful resource utilization than we have now...

The things that really make life worth living- art, culture, science; they have VERY small material inputs.  A world of 12 billion people need not be misery- with the right socioeconomic systems it could be a utopia, with the large population actually ENABLING happiness rather than detracting from it...

Similarly on Mars, population will be a valuable resource if used properly, not a detriment.  More people means more Einsteins (with good public education at least).

Also, if you didn't guess, I'm an Extrovert.  I like crowds (most of the time).  People don't bother me by sheer virtue of numbers.

Mass Transit and the United States is pretty complicated.  I'm not at all convinced that moving the amount of vehicles needed for proper mass transit is remotely efficient, especially considering how much reserve capacity you need.  An unmanned uber/lyft prius/leaf is almost certainly going to be more efficient especially considering inperfections of planning 20 years ahead of time.

"The things that make life worth living..." this is a topic for another board and one I could easily fill.  Suffice it to say that "imaginary property" [IP] makes up a huge amount of the modern economy and simply breaks all the laws of supply and demand.  It isn't an exaggeration to say that IP has shown capitalism to be obsolescent.

Edible landscaping is unlikely to go over well in the US.  Simply trying to stop areas from using legal pressure to force lawns on homeowners in places completely unsuitable for such things (Southern California and Arizona for a start) would be a good place to start.

I'm not sure there really are many restrictions on height (although I will rant about my state [Maryland, which borders Washington DC] requiring about half the land set aside for homes built on one acre [4000 sq. meters] of land.  This is effectively a massive mansion subsidy).  There is a hard limit in Washington DC, but considering I've stood at the top of the Sears tower [no idea the current name] and looked *way* down on what was a massive steeple in Victorian times, I don't expect anyone to allow the same to be done to Federal buildings.  Those who need fancy buildings near DC can [and do] build in Arlington, Bethesda, and Silver Spring.

Invest big money in sustainable materials.  While I'm sure some of this money will create some tech that will escape out of the lab, I like to claim that there is no greater R&D project for sustainable energy than the billions [trillions?] being spent on mobile phones and other tech.  Build a better battery and Apple, Samsung, and Google will be at your door bearing gifts.

[tater]

 

[NSEP]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

 

Looks pretty cool. A mix between 60s Sci-Fi rockets and the ITS, also has a nice military kinda look to it!

But those are just the looks, are there more details about this thing?

Thanks for sharing @tater!

[tater]

They have an orbital/transit concept as well, then 3 people make sorties to the surface for a couple weeks at a time. It's a hydrolox SSTO (Mars). Dunno how the deep cryos hold for so long... maybe they can ISRU on martian moons.

Edited September 27, 2017 by tater

[_Augustus_]

2 hours ago, tater said:

 

Gee, the EDL procedure doesn't sound like that of the ITS at all.........

[tater]

13 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

Gee, the EDL procedure doesn't sound like that of the ITS at all.........

There are 2 options. Direct entry from the trans-Mars orbit (ITS), or entry from Mars orbit (this architecture). This is pretty different from ITS.

For the actual landing, where the craft is heavy, it's propulsive, period. The NASA DRA has been possibly biconic since before ITS was a gleam in Musk's eye, ITS copied NASA, not the other way around.

1990s DRM:

 

Edited September 27, 2017 by tater

[Nibb31]

47 minutes ago, _Augustus_ said:

Gee, the EDL procedure doesn't sound like that of the ITS at all.........

Actually, it looks exactly like ITS. The ITS videos of last year didn't really show the reentry or the flip manoeuver, but they are pretty much inevitable with that configuration.

[tater]

1 minute ago, Nibb31 said:

Actually, it looks exactly like ITS. The ITS videos of last year didn't really show the reentry or the flip manoeuver, but they are pretty much inevitable with that configuration.

He was being sarcastic.

[DDE]

On ‎27‎.‎09‎.‎2017 at 1:56 PM, Northstar1989 said:

If, for instance, instead of making the next-generation fighter we're already working on to replace the Joint Strike Fighter a limited-run deal where we just made a couple hundred (or less) and then stop, we declared it the last major fighter design we develop for the next 50 years and just kept the assembly-lines for making it open indefinitely, focusing on automation and figuring out ways to make it cheaper rather than moving on to the next new thing, we could bring down the cost of aircraft by a LOT.  Similarly, if we cut back on R&D speed for new ships, and just focused on making more of each design for longer, we could anortize R&D costs over more ships- and make each one effectively cheaper.

The military nerd would retaliate that your attempts at overwhelming mass-production would put you into an inferior position because of how much their latest toys are superior, either in an all-out fight or at achieving local numerical superiority. Heck, you've got Russian MIC people - because they constantly use their jargon in mainstream publications - claim 2-5-fold increases in aggregate fighting ability from upgrade packages. Say, we take the fifty-year timeframe and jet fighters. The F-4 hadn't flown in 1957. We're talking an absolutely overwhelming, qualitative advantage for whoever sticks to a high tempo of system replacement.

[Northstar1989]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

The military nerd would retaliate that your attempts at overwhelming mass-production would put you into an inferior position because of how much their latest toys are superior, either in an all-out fight or at achieving local numerical superiority. Heck, you've got Russian MIC people - because they constantly use their jargon in mainstream publications - claim 2-5-fold increases in aggregate fighting ability from upgrade packages. Say, we take the fifty-year timeframe and jet fighters. The F-4 hadn't flown in 1957. We're talking an absolutely overwhelming, qualitative advantage for whoever sticks to a high tempo of system replacement.

Haven't you ever heard of diminishing returns?  There simply aren't nearly as many ways left a fighter design CAN improve vs. in 1967.

50 years ago would be 1967, NOT 1957- and only 5 years prior to the first flight of the F-16 (it was already in development by then).  Compare the F-16 and Joint Strike Fighter (50 years apart) vs. The F-16 and a fighter from 1917.  The improvement is MUCH less noticeable from F-16 to F-35, and that's with a MUCH greater fraction of the US GDP dedicated to fighter plane R&D between 1967 and 2017 than between 1917 and 1967...  Similarly the improvement from F-22/F-35 to whatever we have in 50 years will be EVEN LESS noticeable.

45-50 year development cycles are *just right* to replace current designs just as they are becoming obsolete (and the F-16 is NOT obsolete even today...)

Edited September 29, 2017 by Northstar1989

[DAL59]

On 9/27/2017 at 2:51 PM, tater said:

This is actually quite different then the ITS.  The ITS, once fueled, can independently land on Mars, refuel, and return without any prepositioned equipment.   

Also, fighter jets have little to do with the topic.  

[tater]

2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

This is actually quite different then the ITS.  The ITS, once fueled, can independently land on Mars, refuel, and return without any prepositioned equipment.   

That was explicitly in reference to the EDL. Direct entry to Mars, biconic vehicle, and landing. That's pretty much exactly the same as BFR (LockMart's solution being the only other way, to attain orbit first).

[DDE]

15 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

(and the F-16 is NOT obsolete even today...)

In a peer-level conflict? Citation very much needed!

Unfortunately, diminishing returns do not bluntly apply here. In fact, even minute improvements in raw performance seem to produce exponential increases in performance... and then you have the whole unmanned killer robots issue, and their extreme advantages justifying another round of fighter development in the extremely near future.

The F-22 and the F-35 seem to be aberrant cases, exemplifying shifting requirements, and can't be used as a representative example.

[DAL59]

An practical auxiliary use of a Mars rocket.   

 

Also, this is a discussion about manned missions to Mars, not fighter jet development.  

[ModZero]

Ahahaha the fast changing city names included Zurich. Yeah, Zurich will totally allow low-flying ICBMs full of people.

[Nibb31]

Yeah, I wonder how you land on an off shore barge in London, Paris or Berlin.

[ModZero]

19 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Yeah, I wonder how you land on an off shore barge in London, Paris or Berlin.

Well, London is viable, for certain values of "viable" — you'd have to fly over populated areas in both directions, and the trip to the barge would be a bit on the long side compared to the hopeful things. Oh, and find people willing to spend hilarious amount of money to regularly commute from NYC to London in less than 2h.

I'm sure any noise regulations won't be much of a problem. I mean, Concorde was such a roaring success.

[tater]

I saw Concorde not just in NYC, but one day I heard really loud (not supersonic) jet noise, and looked up to see Concorde on final into Kathmandu (where I happened to be). There was some sort of "round the world" trip with Concorde, apparently.

[DDE]

@ModZero "Like Concorde, but even noisier!"

[DAL59]

And ten times faster.

Presumably, the rocket could be further out from land, and connected via...hyperloop.  

This could also have military applications.  

[Nibb31]

Assuming hyperloop is technically and economically feasible, which is far from a given.