Manned Mars mission poll

[ModZero]

4 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

Nothing is a "proven" benefit until it's actually been done.

That's utterly untrue. Most of the time people actually do have some evidence the thing they're trying will be useful — and the bigger the thing is, the more reason they need before they try. While things people do "for fun" may seem an exception, they're not — fun is a benefit, and yes, sometimes the evidence turns out wrong.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

By that logic, nobody should ever go out to socialize with friends,

There's so much evidence for wide-ranging benefits of socializing with others that I think you must be kidding.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

or apply to a better job, or attend college- because none of those are PROVEN benefits, for that particular person, before they happen...

Aaaaah, I get it. You don't know what evidence or "proven" means outside of some relatively narrow parts of mathematics.

No, in all those cases people have strong evidence that what they are going to attempt has a good chance of delivering good results. That it sometimes doesn't isn't enough to invalidate the proof, because we're not talking the Pythagoras theorem.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

There are however many extremely valuable SPECULATIVE benefits that we can be almost completely certain of.  Any colony on Mars will eventually become self-sustaining (it may take a couple hundred years, but it WILL hapoen).  

No. Too few people, for example, the friends thing you mention is actually the reason why it wouldn't work on small scale. On large scale, we know how much an individual impact outstrips their land use on Earth in countries with great soils. So a Mars colony has zero chance of being big and not a famine.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

And when it does, Earth will no longer need to send anything to Mars (that doesn't mean it shouldn't- commerce is generally beneficial to all) and in return will receive one extremely important product that is likely to be the only thing Mars ever exports...

KNOWLEDGE.

It already does that in the best way it can: robots. We should send more robots there, by the way.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

For a few hundred Billion dollars or less, if done efficiently, Earth should be able to set up an entire new self-sustaining civilization that will eventually produce more scientific breakthroughs than the entire United Ststes and Europe combined (Martians will HAVE TO- life will be hard on Mars, even after 2 centuries of colonization- and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics will be the ONLY ways to make it easier.  Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention)  Right now, the US spends $31 Billion annually on the NIH and $7 Billion annually on the NSF.  Mars could probably be colonized for less than $300 Billion with SpaceX at the helm, and will eventually (600 or so years down the line and 400-500 years after self-sufficiency) produce just as much science as all the scientists in the USA and Europe combined every year with no additional.  Do the math.

You first. Those are fantasies, and comparing health services to monorails is insulting. We actually know why those are useful. Meanwhile you're here apparently counting science in kilograms.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

A global crisis of apathy.  Americans, in particular, have become dangerously myopic and focused only on living a comfortable life.  Going to Mars could change that, and inspire MILLIONS to become scientists, engineers, or entrepreneurs...

Actually they seem mostly focused on white supremacy, but that's a detail. Sorry, but what are people supposed to look for? Honorable death from radiation sickness? Whenever people decided they need something "more" than that, a continent underwent a genocide. There is nothing good in that colonial attitude.

Also, "enterpreneurs" should be illegal.

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

If Mars experiences a famine (and at some point it will- so will Earth.  Famines are an inevitability given a long enough stretch of time...) it won't harm Earth in any major way.

I guess after the rest of your post it doesn't seem particularly surprising you'd expect Earth to just sit there and eat popcorn while Mars starves.

[Green Baron]

21 minutes ago, ModZero said:

I guess after the rest of your post it doesn't seem particularly surprising you'd expect Earth to just sit there and eat popcorn while Mars starves.

In principle the whole discussion is futile imo because a Mars colony isn't something that can or will be done in the foreseeable future.

I explicitly don't want to side with anyone, but actually a lot of people do sit and eat popcorn while a lot of others starve ...

[DDE]

5 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

And there are plenty of more cost-effective ways of maintaining a reasonable military deterrent without having all the (expensive!) fanciest new toys anyways.  Maintaining a large Guard/Reserve force, for instance (that is why many countries mandate 1-2 years of military service from military-aged-males, with a mych longer period of mandatory participation in an active or inactive Reserve force after that...) and having lots of small, localized Guard/Reserve posts so those reservists don't have to change where they live to fulfill their service obligation, and can live wherever the best jobs are... (interestingly the US military has been CLOSING Guard/Reserve bases- which should make the world *very* anxious, economically and militarily, as it means our generals are moving us towards a more offensive and less cost-effective military footing...)

It might work for a tiny, landlocked country; not for a thassalocracy like the United States. If the US gives up its 11-carrier fleet, its global network of military bases, and the force projection capability both of these afford, it would be effectively finished as a global power in general and a global economic power in particular.

The United States CANNOT AFFORD being on a defensive footing; in order to retain its current standing, it must be able to conventionally annihilate anyone, anywhere and at any time. Hence the fascination with Prompt Global Strike and Hot Eagle, hence the - possibly misplaced - emphasis on carriers, hence the countless military bases encircling every even remotely potential adversary.

Edited September 23, 2017 by DDE

[DAL59]

Please stay on topic.  

Also, this isn't about whether we should go to Mars, but guessing whether NASA or Spacex will get their first and by when.  

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Please stay on topic.  

Also, this isn't about whether we should go to Mars, but guessing whether NASA or Spacex will get their first and by when.  

That is a bit of the problem.  NASA has more money, but can only budget one year at a time.  Spacex has much less, but is controlled by a CEO that wants to go to Mars and isn't going to let go of the company (IPO) before that.  Should a president really budget for Mars, there is always the danger of the next one killing the plan (so far each one has made half-hearted and unfunded space plans, only to have the whole thing start over).

I suspect that the cost will go down to levels that Spacex can afford to do it before the schedule goes down to close to four/eight years (to launch).

There's always the chance that China or even India might decide to get there first.  They seem more capable of long term plans.

[Col. Kernel]

 

On 9/23/2017 at 4:29 AM, Northstar1989 said:

All great reasons to colonize Mars.  Sadly, because of the low gravity, lack of atmosphere, month-long day-night cycle, and scarcity of H2O (unlike Mars, the Moon can NEVER be terraformed), the Moon is an extremely poor candidate for colonization.

Mars vs. the Moon are like Iceland vs. Svalbard as candidates for Norse (Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish) colonization.  Svalbard is closer, but Iceland had a MUCH more promising climate, and thus developed FAR more rapidly...

The day-night cycle of the Moon alone is enough to make almost any colony location except on the poles non-viable. 14 days of night is simply NOT survivable with any technology we have today (except nuclear reactors- and those are... controversial to put on the Moon).  A Martian Day, on the other hand, is only 40 minutes longer than our own...

Colonizing the moon would be for practice, practicality (much lower risk to the colonists for the reasons I cited), and for scientific returns.

Once we have mastered the technologies and techniques to run a self sustaining base (aka colony) on the moon, then doing on Mars becomes a LOT more realistic.  Unlike your Norse comparison, an initial base will be 100% dependent on resources from Earth.

As for your concerns with power, thorium salt reactors are five 9s safe and no larger than a shipping container.

Any lunar colony should be sub surface anyway since there's no atmosphere to burn up incoming meteorites.

[tater]

Colonization requires knowing that people can live, and reproduce at the target location. The moon is almost certainly a non-starter in that respect. Mars is still a complete unknown, as we have exactly zero data on long term exposure to 0.38g. Our two data points are 1g, and ~0g.

 

[Nibb31]

20 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Please stay on topic.  

Also, this isn't about whether we should go to Mars, but guessing whether NASA or Spacex will get their first and by when.  

We've already explained why that question is a non-starter.

SpaceX can't do it without somebody paying for it.

NASA can't do it without political support.

When one of those is no longer true, then there will be factual basis to answer your question, instead of baseless speculation.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Nibb31

[Col. Kernel]

18 hours ago, tater said:

Colonization requires knowing that people can live, and reproduce at the target location. The moon is almost certainly a non-starter in that respect. Mars is still a complete unknown, as we have exactly zero data on long term exposure to 0.38g. Our two data points are 1g, and ~0g.

 

If it makes you feel better let's say "establish a permanent, self sufficient manned presence" on the moon then.

My point being that when it comes to establishing a self sustaining habitat, we have never been successful.  Every one of those established on Earth has failed.  Resources have been sneaked in, and people have been sneaked out.  Put one on the moon and we'll have to figure out what it is that we've been doing wrong without cheating.  When materiel or personnel are brought in or out, everyone will know about it.  But it's still close enough (a day and a half) that materiel or personnel could be exchanged in an emergency without excessive risk to the people involved.

Jumping straight to a Mars colony puts the personnel there at undue risk simply because of the distance involved.

[tater]

@Col. Kernel, couldn't agree more.

 

[DDE]

6 hours ago, Col. Kernel said:

Resources have been sneaked in, and people have been sneaked out.

You don't need to go to the moon to compensate for crappy controls. The reason the Biosphere 2 failed spectacularly wasn't because it was on Earth, but because it was a multilateral, barely scientific project with a lot of hippy green religiosity thrown in, a project eventually led by Steve Bannon of all people. Compare and contrast with the incremental approach used in the BIOS series; no fancy biomes, just lots of algae and plants, with the 1972-1973 experiment at least claimed to have achieved 100% air and water and 80% food self-sufficiency.

[Col. Kernel]

44 minutes ago, DDE said:

You don't need to go to the moon to compensate for crappy controls. The reason the Biosphere 2 failed spectacularly wasn't because it was on Earth, but because it was a multilateral, barely scientific project with a lot of hippy green religiosity thrown in, a project eventually led by Steve Bannon of all people. Compare and contrast with the incremental approach used in the BIOS series; no fancy biomes, just lots of algae and plants, with the 1972-1973 experiment at least claimed to have achieved 100% air and water and 80% food self-sufficiency.

It's true, you don't have to go to the moon, but there are advantages for doing so.

1)  Accountability.  As I said, you aren't sneaking jack across a 240,000 mile vacuum.

2) The Lunar environment is much harsher than the Martian one.

3)  There's science to be done.  There's some cool stuff that can be done on the moon that can't even be dreamed about on Earth.  The thought of a radio telescope on the far side comes to mind.

And there's always profit in science.

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

self-sufficiency.

With ISRU, perfect self-sufficiency is not needed.  Mars has plenty of non-liquid water, like icecaps, large underground glaciers, and near-constant 100% humidity.      

The moon, on the other hand, has very little water, except at the poles.  The much larger Martian gravity than lunar gravity also might be important.    

Though low gravity can be mitigated via "tilted donut" cities.

 

[WinkAllKerb'']

not speaking of the travel from here to there concern and  specific problems, but well , once there the moon interaction on bio being on earth keep me a little dubitative over time, adaption might take a few generation ... may be, may be not

Edited September 25, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[tater]

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

With ISRU, perfect self-sufficiency is not needed.  Mars has plenty of non-liquid water, like icecaps, large underground glaciers, and near-constant 100% humidity.      

Self-sufficiency simply means that the outpost/colony doesn't require any goods from Earth. Ie: the crew would live out natural lives minus any resupply. 

Do you mean perfect recovery or recycling, instead?

[Northstar1989]

On 9/23/2017 at 9:02 AM, ModZero said:

Also, "enterpreneurs" should be illegal.

That comment, when taken literally (ignoring the quotes) sums up the entire spirit of your post.

No, just so much no.  Science on Earth coats land, food, and various other resources to sustain.  When Mars is self-sufficienct, it will be able to feed and house its own scientists- which means, for all perpetuity, humanity will be able to support a larger scientist population.

Colonizing Mars is a one-time cost, and once it's done it's done- for no additional cost from Earth.  Meanwhile, humanity on Earth won't be as to develop forever- and certainly not without destroying the ecosystem.

Eventually we are going to hit a hard population-cap (my knowledge of Bioligy leads me to guesstimate somewhere between 12 and 24 billion people, depending on how much of the environment we are willing to sacrifice).  At that point, colonizing Mars and the Moon will be the ONLY way to increase the humssn population sooner.  We might as well get a head-start on that, since we will reach Earth's population-limit long before Mars does.

And Mars, unlike the Americas, has no native population of sentient lifeforms we need to worry about commuting genocide against.

[Nibb31]

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?

Edited September 27, 2017 by Nibb31

[WinkAllKerb'']

may be the best is to eradicate all poor, mid poor people on earth, destroy ai and automat and let only the mid rich, very rich people do what's missing

of course they prolly gonna argue that poor poeple does nothing essentially usefull, yup garbage collect, farming etc. and that they can maintain there way of life without it

 

... are they even serious sometime ... or just dumb to a point of contemplating themselves in the mirror like snow white sorceress ?

/sarcasm irony & food for ...

Edited September 27, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''
deliberate writing style, don' forget a layer before report, the link to report is in my sig, just in case ...

[Northstar1989]

On 9/23/2017 at 11:02 AM, DDE said:

It might work for a tiny, landlocked country; not for a thassalocracy like the United States. If the US gives up its 11-carrier fleet, its global network of military bases, and the force projection capability both of these afford, it would be effectively finished as a global power in general and a global economic power in particular.

The United States CANNOT AFFORD being on a defensive footing; in order to retain its current standing, it must be able to conventionally annihilate anyone, anywhere and at any time. Hence the fascination with Prompt Global Strike and Hot Eagle, hence the - possibly misplaced - emphasis on carriers, hence the countless military bases encircling every even remotely potential adversary.

The United States doesn't have to give up most of its force-projection capability, just its obsession with having the most advanced weapons out there.  I.E. let our rate of weapons-development slow to the point other nations catch up (weapons-development has LONG passed the point of cost-effectiveness in the manner the USA does it.  We would be better off restructuring our defense-industry to cut out as much fat as possible and control costs- even if doing so slows research down significantly...) and build a larger fleet of less sophisticated aircraft optimized for cost-effectiveness rather than having the most absolutely dominant capabilities out there.  Letting the carrier-fleet age from 11 cutting-edge carriers to maybe 14 much less advanced and more cost-effective ones only as capable as 8 newer designs.  Reduce the emphasis on dominance and having the absolute best weapons and increase the emphasis on cost-effectiveness.

Cutting-edge weapons cost a LOT more to develop than than they do to build, maintain, and slightly upgrade over time.  Most of the "acquisitions" costs of new aircraft actually go to pay back their R&D costs andbthe costs of initially tooling the factories and figuring out how to build them.

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.

In the end, this would require a tradeoff of quality for quantity as our weapons systems started to lose their edge over our rivals- but it's the ONLY way the US can hope to survive economically in the 21st century.  The cost of the U.S. military budget is ENORMOUS, and slowly bankrupting the country.  Just imagine all the economic development we could stimulate if we cut the military budget in half, and invested all the money in Science, Healthcare, Education, and colonizing Mars, for instance...

The only OTHER option to avoid the inevitible complete and total economic collapse would be for the U.S. to start annexing other countries without significantly increasing its military budget, to divide up its costs over a larger GDP.  Nobody else could really stop us, except by a nuclear strike (which is why such annexations would have to go nowhere near other nuclear powers).  But I don't think that would go over too well with the international community, or the populace back at home...

 

[ModZero]

26 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

That comment, when taken literally (ignoring the quotes) sums up the entire spirit of your post.

It should be taken literally. I consider what people like Elon Musk and the entire silicon valley venture capital crowd "enterpreneurs", in quotes. It's a pyramid scheme.

26 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

When Mars is self-sufficienct,

...when pigs fly.

28 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Eventually we are going to hit a hard population-cap (my knowledge of Bioligy leads me to guesstimate somewhere between 12 and 24 billion people, depending on how much of the environment we are willing to sacrifice).

My knowledge of biology leads me to a guestimate of  your knowledge of biology to be about nil. That's fine, this is a "science, spaceflight, and pretending it's not politics" subforum on a vidya game forum, but, uh, you know that we're actually unlikely to "hit the cap"? We're going to slow down our breeding before that. Also, sending a few people to Mars helps nothing.

30 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

At that point, colonizing Mars and the Moon will be the ONLY way to increase the humssn population sooner.  

Why would we want to increase the population further? This is not a game with a score depending on how much you BREEEEEEEED. Even if it _was_ (which is isn't) the capability of the solar system outside of earth to sustain human life is minuscule (you need fertile soil, you know? And a bunch of other things, but fertile soil. That means volcanoes, btw. No, really, you literally need volcanoes for sustainable fertile soil). But, that's irrelevant, because no, we don't need to increase human population into infinity. We don't even need to "preserve the species" at all cost. There is no high authority that somehow forces us to do that, and sacrifice the happiness of the actually living to do that.

In fact, both those ideas — the "species preservation" and "increasing the population" are repulsive, and elevating them above all others is what's at the very core of some of the worst things that happened in the 20th century. Let's not do that again, shall we?

[WinkAllKerb'']

5 minutes ago, ModZero said:

in fact, both those ideas — the "species preservation" and "increasing the population" are repulsive, and elevating them above all others is what's at the very core of some of the worst things that happened in the 20th century. Let's not do that again, shall we?

true there a is a strong paradox , between darwin "law of the strongfull or more able to do this or that @ delta t & @ lamba environnemental condition" and the "noah ark gardener metaphor"

it's sort of: "wrath everithing just because meee i m the best" or "be wise and balance at best with all i can interact and perceive assuming your own perception is limited"

Edited September 27, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[Northstar1989]

On 9/25/2017 at 6:42 AM, Col. Kernel said:

My point being that when it comes to establishing a self sustaining habitat, we have never been successful.  Every one of those established on Earth has failed.

If you're referring to the Bio-Dome experiments, the later more advanced one (Biosphere 2) failed because an oil company backed investment firm wanted to make some kind of weird point about Global Warming or something. I never really understood what point they wanted to prove- but they DID mis-manage the projects in attempting to do so, because they understood zilch about Biology.

Steve Bannon, interestingly, was the man the oil-backed investment firm sent in to manage the project once they took it over.  There's no solid proof he tried to sabotage it, but 2 scientists certainly believed so firmly enough to BREAK THE GLASS and ruin the whole experiment...

 

P.S. NOT a conspiracy-theory.  VICE News even did a special (on TV) and a written article on it:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkjn87/the-strange-history-of-steve-bannon-and-the-biosphere-2-experiment

Edited September 27, 2017 by Northstar1989

[ModZero]

9 minutes ago, WinkAllKerb'' said:

true there a is a strong paradox , between darwin "law of the strongfull or more able to do this or that @ delta t & @ lamba environnemental condition" and the "noah ark gardener metaphor"

Just because something is "law of nature" doesn't mean it's an ethical guideline, or a true "law". It's easy to figure out if you use evolution as an example — evolution is a "law of nature" (however imperfect that expression is), but if someone told you they want to "help the evolution", you'd probably back away slowly, and start running as soon as you turned the corner.

[WinkAllKerb'']

you may like this anime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kado:_The_Right_Answer

most of it's story line is around that, good caracters, nice plot devellopment, not much episode, so a well made sum up sort off imo

Edited September 27, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[Northstar1989]

35 minutes ago, ModZero said:

My knowledge of biology leads me to a guestimate of  your knowledge of biology to be about nil. 

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.

My estimate was based partly in part on estimates by other biologists when technology was less advanced.  Most estimated the planet could only sustain 10 billion people.

Since we're already at 7 billion with no signs of the majority of humanity being on the edge of starvation (and most famines in the developing world being due to lack of access to modern agricultural technology and electricity, rather than any hard limits of the land), rapidly rising death-rates (in fact even in the midst of those famines, they generally aren't so severe that the population doesn't continue to rise), or any of the other telltale signs if a population hitting its carrying-capacity, I decided those estimates were probably a little too conservative.

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

Edited September 27, 2017 by Northstar1989