Obama wants to go to Mars...

[Jason]

People keep talking about the potential for an asteroid impact as "inevetable" on a long enough time scale and there have been lots of discussions about the ways to deal with such a threat....

Frankly I'd steer one into an earth ORBIT.

Even a relatively small asteroid contains more iron than ALL the metal mined by man in all of history.

And more nickel than is accessable in the crust of the entire planet, not to mention loads of the rare semiconductor metals that are so precious.

And frankly we know so little about the moon and it's resources...

I think we should start strip mining planets where people aren't trying to breath the air and drink the water.

ANYTHING you could want is available "out there" without a hundred and fifteen
environmental groups filing suit to protect some rare species of snail that later
proves to be as common as mosquitos in a swamp

But we gotta get out there!

AD

And.... you know this how? It's an estimate by people who have never actually sampled an asteroid. You are starting to buy in to ideas with no backing just like those you poked at in your last post.

 

[Nhaz]

While I will admit I have read a but load of SF over the years. Its taught me alot about thinking outside the box since thats pretty much what SF is.

One of the possible Long term survival of the human species is actually not on planets at all.

but in the kuniperbelt/oort cloud around the stars. Its estimated in OUR solar system alone there is enough material to use in the kuniper belt to last all of humanity pretty much to the end of time.

And thats without a planet to live on. thats living in the comets out there.


I know our tech isn't quite up to it yet. But I did hear of a new Ion drive that can get people to mars in only a few weeks instead of 2 years. thats a HUGE improvement in travel time.

Thats the type of drive that can open the solar system to humanity. no its not super fast but its a HELL of alot faster then what we currently have.

and ALLAN is right 1 decent asteroid would pretty much provide humanity with almost all heavy industry materials for many many years.

BTW getting it down is easy. You just drop it so it lands in a desert or in shallow water. and Not the whole thing, the small chunks you have mined. Most asteroids you see burning up do so because they are moving far too fast. to can drop a chunk alot slower then that.

 

[Nhaz]

And.... you know this how? It's an estimate by people who have never actually sampled an asteroid. You are starting to buy in to ideas with no backing just like those you poked at in your last post.

I don't normally call people idiots but you sir are one. try reading some science sometime. and not of the fiction variety.

Clue. they have this thing called a Spectrogram. Using reflected light you can determine from the wavelength what the material of a object is. Thats how the hell we know what some of the roids out there are made out of nickle iron.


Oh and the fact they fall to the ground and we pick them up and go oh wow thats just like a lump of iron.

 

[hoosier1104]

You can speak up. You like CBR's so you can't be all bad.

I do not want to start political debate to say the least. I do not agree with some of the things he has put in place and his approach on certain topics. This a science based thread and would like to keep it that way.

 

[Captain Ledd]

Assuming we actually did it already. lol

We went there for what? a few days? 40/50 years ago? We brought back a couple rocks and that was about it for samples.

I still feel Mars is a silly place to go. Eventually we'll get there, but now doesn't seem to be the time.

A research lab on the moon would help us get much closer to the inevitable mission to Mars, and be much easier to do. It'd be alot closer to Mars environment/conditions than anywhere on Earth, and won't take years just to travel to.

It's a good idea, but a little too much right now. Of course, I can only imagine there was alot of similar talk when Kennedy first started spouting out about "going to the moon".

 

[AllanD]

Yeah, enough of them fall from the sky...

and refining metals is one of the dirtiest industial exercises on the planet
do the refining in SPACE where the energy to do so is FREE
(It shines off the sun and without an atmosphere to block it...)

If we don't start we'll never get to it.



AD

 

[Spitfire1975]

I would rather spend the money going to Mars than putting people in line for Health Care.

 

[hoosier1104]

^Well done kind sir. You get a blue and white star for that comment.

 

[AllanD]

I would rather spend the money going to Mars than putting people in line for Health Care.

And the TOTAL cost of going to mars will cost about what sending welfare checks will cost between now and the end of THIS month.


AD

 

[kimcrwbr1]

You are wrong.

You are so wrong that I don't know where to begin.

not a single penny will be spent "on mars"

The money will be spend LEARNING things, and there is absolutely no way of knowing what we will learn.

I can tell you we will learn an awful lot and you have no concept how far reaching those changes will be.


You obviously have no idea how much of your life is "Spin off" from the apollo program, not the least of which is the computer technology you are using to demonstrate the monumental nature of your own ignorance and foolishness.

Frankly the answers to many of our earthly problems lie in space.

It's raining soup and people haven't invented buckets yet!

if you really believe that the conventional (liberal) way of "fixing" problems
will do a goddamned thing except make a FEW people feel good about having "done something" please keep it to yourself.

AD

I am just trying to apply logic to your comment obama wants to build big rockets to go to mars but not a single penny will be spent on mars. We havent been there maybe there is a walmart there that takes Visa.

 

[Nhaz]

mars is cute but seriously theres nothing there. maybe some water. Whoopie do dah.

One of the PRIMARY things a nova and super nova do when they go boom is create a buttload of water. Now this is theory here but considering just how many ice comets circling around there are. Water shouldn't be what we look for in order to visit. It should be almost everywhere anyways.

Also iron is also theory wise should be very common.

Visiting Ceres would probably give us far more interesting and useful information then mars.

besides. leaving Ceres to get back to earth is fairly easy. Leaving Mars... Lots harder to do.

And as much as people like to believe that its possible to maybe one day live on mars. I have serious doubts.

The primary one being. its got no magnetic field. And thats fairly important for survival. For those that don't know this. The earths Magnetic field keeps us alive along with the rest of the life on the surface of the planet. The Suns solar flares would have wiped out all life on the planets surface(deep oceans have enough shielding water to survive) many times over if the magnetic field had not deflected the flares power.

Mars has no magnetic field therefore first flare to come along will kill you and anything else alive without some serious shielding. Like 6 + feet of water or about a foot of lead.

Also it doesn't have enough mass to hold on to enough atmosphere for humans to breath, even if you managed to somehow add one that we could breath to begin with.

The temperature is also rather low. Minus 50 Celsius on good days. Heres a planet that could use some global warming in spades.

 

[AllanD]

I am just trying to apply logic to your comment obama wants to build big rockets to go to mars but not a single penny will be spent on mars. We havent been there maybe there is a walmart there that takes Visa.

Money will be spent on knowledge and hardware here on earth, only the rocket and crew go to mars.

Let me remind you that "Are ya stupid or somethin' ? "
is by definition ALWAYS a rhetorical question.

mars is cute but seriously theres nothing there. maybe some water. Whoopie do dah.

WATER as a source of oxygen is THE thing that man needs to
do almost everything the water here on earth is USELESS to men in space
because it is here on earth at the bottom of an 8mile/sec gravity well

MArs has 1/3 the gravity of earth the Moon has 1/6 the gravity, thus far less
energy will be spent from either place (even considering the greater distances it must be transported) to get the water to where it needs to be to be used.

One of the PRIMARY things a nova and super nova do when they go boom is create a buttload of water. Now this is theory here but considering just how many ice comets circling around there are. Water shouldn't be what we look for in order to visit. It should be almost everywhere anyways.

Water in the form of a comet IF we can move a comet to where we need it...
And frankly there is a comet in a near circular orbit out about the same distance from the
sun as mars is, but we've still got to get that far...

Also iron is also theory wise should be very common.


Visiting Ceres would probably give us far more interesting and useful information then mars.

Ceres is twice the distance

besides. leaving Ceres to get back to earth is fairly easy. Leaving Mars... Lots harder to do.

True, the gravity of ceres is for practical purposes insignificant.

And as much as people like to believe that its possible to maybe one day live on mars. I have serious doubts.


The primary one being. its got no magnetic field. And thats fairly important for survival. For those that don't know this. The earths Magnetic field keeps us alive along with the rest of the life on the surface of the planet. The Suns solar flares would have wiped out all life on the planets surface(deep oceans have enough shielding water to survive) many times over if the magnetic field had not deflected the flares power.

Mars has no magnetic field therefore first flare to come along will kill you and anything else alive without some serious shielding. Like 6 + feet of water or about a foot of lead.

Distance and the fact that Mars is a small target...

Also it doesn't have enough mass to hold on to enough atmosphere for humans to breath, even if you managed to somehow add one that we could breath to begin with.

The shows on History & Discovery and the Movie Red Planet gloss over some major details... like the reasons Mars lost it's atmosphere yeah, it's got no magnetic field, but it's got half as much gravity as it needs, and the easy way to get more gravity is arrainge for some other astronomical body to collide with it at as low a velocity as can be managed.

The temperature is also rather low. Minus 50 Celsius on good days. Heres a planet that could use some global warming in spades.

From Mars Jupiter is visible as a DISC as are the four Galilean moons...
WITHOUT a telescope. That alone (IMO) would be nearly worth the trip.

what it would cost each of us in real terms? about the price of a Movie ticket and
is SURE to be more entertaining than some movies I've paid $9-$12 to see...
(shit, there are some where I'd like to sue to get the 90minutes of my lifeback)

AD

 

[kimcrwbr1]

No it is just my opinion and you have yours this is a public thread and my opinion dont make me stupid nor does yours lets keep it civil. I am just saying in my opinion my money can be spent elsewhere here on earth that will affect our immediate future that is fact driven not fiction. There are alot of unknowns in our back yard like the mating and migration habits of snails for instance you know important things our government cannot answer or won`t tell us.

 

[88_Eddie]

WOW, not only is everyone on this forum a certified Ford mechanic that knows everything about every model ford ever made, but we're all rocket scientists as well, small world. well, i too have a degree in history channel space exploration with a minor in discovery channel space debris plus a masters in national geographic channel astrophysics.

of course osama is talking about going to mars, what else is gonna spend his day doing? you can only play basketball for so many hours and march madness has come and gone before you know it. he's smart though, people start asking, "mr. osama, what are you doing to fix the economy and create jobs?" and he goes, "mars!! we're going to mars one day!" or "wanna see my NCAA bracket?"

sure, let's go to mars, i think it would take a global effort and MAYBE unite us all for a few years (or months), but lets make sure people arent losing there jobs and homes while some overschooled d-bag jumps around on mars

 

[crbnunit]

This will make your head hurt! The last picture...

"Right now, on your computer screen, are approximately 10,000 galaxies.
Each of those galaxies contains anywhere from ten million to one trillion stars.
The average star is roughly a million times the size of Earth.
And yet, with all that junk, the Universe is more than 90 percent empty space.
All of that, in this tiny photo. A photo that took 400 orbits and 800 exposures to take.
And the kicker? The photo covers one thirteen-millionth of the entire night sky."

We HAVE to get out there!