78stonewobble

To be honest I'm allways saddened when "economic" interests take precedence over things like human rights. -..-

I think that the SLS, will probably be the "best" rocket to see light of day in a loooong time. By best I mean highly efficient at putting it's designed payload mass in orbit and any competitors will take multiple launches to do the same. That I'm relatively sure of... What I am unsure of is whether it'll be used enough... Or maybe rather whether it'll become so expensive that it will not get used much. I also think that if there isn't room in the budget for the SLS, then there isn't alot of room for subsiding commercial heavy lift development either. Or for missions for those vehicles. ... I might also be completely mistaken and the SLS will turn out to be a complete lemon. However, if it does turn out to be a good, efficient heavy launch vehicle and it's just the budget getting in the way of sensible production or missions for it. For the love of god... open up to teaming up with ESA (or anyone else) or even some production by Airbus (or anywhere else)... Anything to get others into help paying for it, so we don't loose it, the way we did the saturn V and it's capabilities for yet another 40 effin years. PS: God no ... at shuttle updates... There's no need, room, argument or money for them unless we need to return something large to earth and how often do we really need that? PPS: Also we don't have the Saturn V anywhere...

Just a little addition... Experiments to determine the properties of ie. hydrogen (or water) under similar pressures and temperatures. Basically smashing stuff together to create those pressures.

If you can put a spacestation there, then you can also hit it with something big enough to make it go poof.

A little side question here... It's been quite a few years since I've seen 2001. Those "dock's" (more so than docking ports) are they also in a vacuum or? Because there is people moving around in side areas and I couldn't quite see if there's supposed to be glass in front. Or is the whole thing using a big ass plasma window or similar thing?

I'd say go with the ocean trenches at in a subduction zone. Seems to me to be the safest place free from any large scale human interaction. 2nd option would be a geologically stable desert something buried in rocks.

I'm not prepared to give up meat anymore than most everyone else in the industrialised world is prepared to give up having kids or their own life. Because it uses x amount of ressources more, that could let an even bigger amount of humans in the third world survive. No, beyond a certain point. I just don't care much, just like everyone else.

As far as I've been able to read up on it the biggest risk to quick decompression would be damage to the lungs and airways. Supposedy it might not be possible to exhale quickly enough to avoid it. Beyond that... wouldn't the only real difference in survival length between drowning and vacuum be, that in drowning you might have access to some air in your lungs yet, in vacuum (or atleast an explosive decompression) you would allmost instantly be down to the oxygen thats in your blood allready. And if you're at that point whether it's by drowning or vacuum... then you won't survive long.

Well obviously 1 launch is needed per falcon 9 heavy payload to orbit... But I think the ISS adequately demonstrated that it is possible to assemble in space. There's no way in hell mars one is gonna be able to afford it, but it's technically possible.

It's a decision all right. Whether it's the right one or a good one... Well, we might never know, since that estimation is dependent on the data available, but sure... let's call it a good decision, sounds better than "I might as well have flipped a coin". EDIT: If you want to go. It's pretty much universally a bad decision to not go. Unless going involves something you cannot accept. I want to go, but I don't know if it's ie. safe enough. -> I'm not gonna dedicate ressources to find out if it's safe enough. -> So I won't ever go, because I'll never know if it's safe enough.

Well, you don't necessarily have to send anything to mars in one go. It's quite possible to assemble a bigger craft in orbit. Any part can then be the size of ie. the falcon heavy's payload to LEO and you can then make it allmost arbitrarily big.

I haven't argued the process. I have argued against decision making based on woefully incomplete data or too early in the process. Like: Argument in favor of unmanned exploration of mars versus manned because it is "low risk". Because we don't have a complete picture yet of the risks involved in a manned mars mission with a given craft and mission profile, nor do we have a future unmanned mission, but of equivalent technological capability to compaire it with. It is guesswork, sometimes educated, sometimes not, but guesswork nonetheless until we're further along in the process. Needless to say risk assessment doesn't allways get it right before production starts or it's not awarded a high enough priority untill something happens. Ie. O rings on the SRB's of the shuttle, the foam insulation or the seawalls around nuclear powerplants (funnily enough they got it right at another nuclear powerplant). EDIT: Also, working on something does not, inherently describe ones skill at something. Ie. theres alot of professional soccerplayers. Not all of them are wins the championship. Nor does anyone ever say: "I'm okay with a mediocre to poor surgeon operating on me."

You're missing the point. The fact that you can identify some of the risks involved early, but not quantify them is tantamount to making decisions based on guess work and not even educated guesses.

You cannot identify all risks or with any degree of accuracy calculate the risks from powerpoint presentations of paperprojects. Ie. what is the risk of cancers for an astronaut flying to mars? Well that depends on how much radiation he's exposed to. Which is dependent on how much time is spent to fly there. Which is dependent on the type of propulsion. Also dependent on the makeup of the vehicle thats going to take him there. We don't know what vehicle we want to use (because we haven't decided yet), or the type of propulsion (because we haven't decided yet) and thus we don't know how long it's gonna take to get there and thus we cannot, with any reasonably degree, calculate the risk. Again... I say it's like trying to calculate the safety of a car thats nothing more than a concept drawing and a 100 things might be changed before it's going into production. And car safety is judged on production models (or their equivalent) afaik.

Are they really that less likely to fail? I think about 2/3rds of the unmanned missions to mars have failed. Compaired this the execution of the apolloprogram which had a, in it's objective of landing on the moon, 1/7 failure rate. Which would seem to suggest that the effort to human rate the hardware combined with human flexibility during a mission increases the likelyhood of success quite a bit. Even if it's more expensive and adds a risk to human lives, which is semi irrelevant, if the people going are prepared to to take risks of a certain size.

Personally I like the condom idea, but that would save alot of lives though, due to the prevention of STD spread. Sidenote to the rest: Except that if you're a resident in an industrialised nation you are allready participating in a mass murder, just by living as you do. Judged by your actions so to speak.

It's mentioned in a nasa series "when we left the earth". One of the astronauts mention that he believed there was a 1/3 chance the mission would go completely successfull. In another scene one of the wives of the astronauts mention how gene crantz (spelling?) assures her by saying he thinks there's a good 50/50 chance of them coming home. Not objective evaluations offcourse, but perceived risk... In any case... I still think talking about risk to human lives is irrelevant this early in a debate about a manned trip to mars. We have no idea how the mission would work out yet, other than plans. Little to no technology demonstration hardware have been built and so on. Might as well be talking auto safety "stars" on a concept car that only exists as drawings and a claymodel.

Hmmm... just where did that post say that it launched rockets? Or that it guaranteed anything to work? Or that we should "scattershot"? In any case none of it had anything to do with the point the post was making. Which was that "low risk" seems a bit of overvalued argument, in the overall debate, since humans can be quite prepared to accept somewhat high risks for things they believe in. Heck, look far enough and you'll find humans accepting a 100 percent risk of death for something. Apollo astronauts sometimes guestimated their own chance as 1/3 or 50/50 and still went.

I'd imagine a highcalory diet would definately do that to you. But seems reasonably enough that you wouldn't need the same high energy intake in space for the vast majority of things.

Agreed in that we are doing very little. Though I'd also point the finger at shifting priorities from different administrations... A lack of focus so to speak. As a little side-note... I've allways found the "low risk" argument somewhat overrated. As far as I know most astronauts and potential volunteers are prepared to take risks.

Though offcourse some weeds are allways better hidden. ... Sorry, couldn't help that one. EDIT: Oh interesting link there! Thanks for that.

I agree, but I think we could do alot more to get there, if we wanted to. And I think that most of us want to get to mars, we're just disagreeing on how much should be spent on it. Maybe it would be prudent to do some planning as to see what the minimum cost would be to get there in a reasonable timeframe and then to think hard about whether we can't... internationally... sacrifice to make it happen in that reasonable timeframe. A no rush project of sorts, but still a firm commitment to slowly start laying the ground work to get the required technologies done. As a european I wouldn't want the entire economical responsibility to lie on ie. nasa and the US taxpayer, if it could be a partnership where ESA takes part. With options for participation from other nations.

Personally I'd like there to be incentives to use a variety of science gathering missions. Both surface and orbital. Getting to the surface should give science. Returning samples should give quite a bit of science. But I'd like for ie. satelite mapping and orbital stations to give science too. How it should all be balanced is a bigger question. Maybe different pools of science for all the categories? Combined with tweaking cost of the techtree.

Hmm, the only place I know of that flywheels are used to provide power is in a supercomputer (not all, just one I heard off). Apparently conventional backup systems are not able to proved enough power quickly enough to continue running the thing. They still have backup systems, that take over in a power outtage, but thats after a shutdown and reboot, giving the emergency power enough time to kick in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(supercomputer)#Hardware Offcourse... Weight and room isn't as much of an issue in such a place compaired to a space vehicle.

Which would be relevant, if I had said we should ship people out when just a rocket is ready. I didn't. I meant that with adequate allocation of ressources, we could research, develop and implement the necessary technologies to go to mars and stay there. How long it would take is hard to guess and again very dependent on how much money and personel thrown at the problem. The apollo program and manhattan project are examples of what you can do with "crash programmes".