New Mars Forums

Some of your story there could be applied to a future Earth... 8)

Also, how long has mankind (in his present form) actually been on the Earth? After you answer that, ask yourself this: How long have say...sharks, been on the Earth?

Explain how we progressed so rapidly and took control of the entire planet in such a short time and you win the Nobel Prize in Science. Unless you believe that Erich von Daniken already gave us the answer a while back. 

The first Martian colony will almost certainly be built UNDERGROUND. There are many reasons, but the biggest is the payload factor. Building underground solves a lot of material problems, at least initially. Later, we will move to the surface... 8)

Another problem is radiation and solar flares. For an excellent rendition of what REALLY happens to someone reletively unprotected who gets hit by a proton event, see the old book 'Space' by James Michener. Now, Michener was no scientist. But, he did his research before writing a book.

In the book, there is an Apollo mission after the last real one. Two astronauts out in their rover are hit by a 'proton event.'  It takes them twenty minutes to get back to their LEM. By the time they reach it, one of them has passed out in the doorway. The other drags him inside and they attempt a quick liftoff. Before the LEM gets a thousand feet off the ground, the other astronaut passes out cold and the LEM crashes. Both their dosimeters are saturated. The astronaut up in the command module is protected a bit better by orbiting the moon, and because of the heat shield. He eventually gets home, but takes a good dose.

The moral here is a simple reality. The thin atmosphere just doesn't provide enough protection. Our guys will have to take a chance on our first visit to Mars, since they will likely be exploring on the surface. After that, it's underground...at least for a few years, and near a water ice source.  Remember the payload. Those domes...will they go to Mars in pieces, after several heavy-lift launches, or be built from indigenous materials? Either possibility is difficult and expensive. Cheaper and easier to manage is establish a first base underground. Then...your payloads can be for other, more important items. Payload and Fuel are the gods of Mars exploration.  8)

Or the old N-1 heavy lift rocket...the Russians would likely have beaten us to the moon using their LOK system (smaller system like Apollo with 2 crew and one-person lander) if the N-1 hadn't kept blowing up.

There are a few places on Earth where life is practically non-existent on the surface. One is probably the Atacamba (sic) Desert in Chile. Even there, you could dig down and probably hunt up a few microbes.

Rovers have a very slim chance of actually discovering life on Mars, since they only cover a limited area and can't really go underground.

There is very likely some life remaining on the Red Planet, but it's going to be underground. Two places come to mind:

1) Water occasionally wells to the surface on Mars. NASA pictures show it. Recent upwellings, not ancient ones. Look below the source of the upwellings.

2) Below the surface in caves where water still remains.

One general principle about 'life' in any form: If it ever existed, it is difficult to eliminate completely and totally. Assuming there was once life on Mars, to say that conditions have completely eliminated all remaining life is very unlikely. Life in itself is extremely adaptable, once it gains a foothold, and likely impossible to totally eradicate.

One way to look at it is this:

Imagine for a moment that tomorrow morning conditions on Earth changed to the exact conditions on Mars today. Of course...this would be the immediate end to civilization.  However, in a hundred years, could you say with any certainty that ALL life, right down to the last microbe, would be destroyed? It is much more likely that SOME limited forms of life would somehow survive. This could be the case on Mars, since it is apparent that conditions favoring life were somewhat more favorable in the past.  8)

Won't work...sorry.
It comes down to cost per pound to retrieve these metals and return them to Earth. The cost would be staggering, since sending even a single pound of payload to or from Mars is extremely high. We need better reasons to establish regular bus service to Mars...say colonization.

You want to get metals for use on Earth? See this story:

'Parameter Error,' one of the stories in the sci-fi anthology 'Dimensions.'
You can find it at Adventure Books of Seattle. Miners work for years to attach a low-thrust (and very large) engine to an asteroid and move it into Earth orbit for mining purposes. Surprising results.  8)

The closest to this one I know is the story "A Smaller Step," from the anthology 'Dimensions' from Adventure Books of Seattle.

However, the story takes place on the moon, not Mars. Two cosmonauts arrive under much secrecy at the new lunar station recently built by NASA. They ask two American astronauts to drive them out forty miles from the station.
At first, the astronauts balk, saying it is too far to risk, but a letter (basically orders) from the White House that the cosmonauts carry give them no choice.

After a dangerous drive across the lunar landscape, the cosmonauts tell the Americans they will go over a certain ridge alone, and that they need no assistance.

What they find on the other side is the key to the story, and a very surprising ending!
You can see this book at www.lulu.com/adventurebooks

Adventure Books is releasing 'The 13th Day of Christmas,' this spring. It's the Mars mission novel based on research obtained through JPL and other sources.

To celebrate the release of the novel, we created a very special bit of Mars, a poster two feet wide and three feet long, containing nine of the best images from the Red Planet, with captions. Total image file is about 200mb and resoluted to 300dpi. We call it the Ultimate Mars Poster. It can set off an entire room. No thumbtacks...buy a frame.

I am not going to insert any links because this isn't some cheap effort to generate a sale. We just figured you may want to see it. To locate it, go to AB and search out the link... 8)

This entire thread reminds me of a quote from Esquire magazine last spring:

'There ARE no REALLY good films about actually GOING to Mars.'

The only one that wasn't a loser in one way or another was Robinson Crusoe on Mars. And thank God they killed Adam West off in the beginning and made the OTHER guy Robinson Crusoe, or it probably would've been another Mars Movie loser as well.

One good line from the movie is when he is standing on the edge of a cliff and yells out:  'Hey, Mr. Echo!   Go to hell!" 
Bringing in the alien slave guy 'Friday' was a nice touch, and so was having him rescued in the end... 8)

By the way, as long as I have you here I want to announce that my newest sci-fi action/adventure book is now available in paperback!  (free plug)

I tried to avoid the usual cliches in 'Say Goodbye To The Sun.'
www.lulu.com/adventurebooks

If you really want to research global warming effectively, then search out through the National Geographic Society. They've been studying it around the world for twenty-five years. In one of their issues (can't remember exactly which one, but it was in the last twelve months) they dedicated half the mag that month to the subject.

One of the things most scientists did not catch on to about global warming was that as the warming increased, the rate that the globe is actually warming has increased exponentially.
You can visualize it as a small circle, slowly expanding. As the circle grows, the rate of growth also continues to increase. The Geo was the first to realize this fact.

Forget about the numbers for a moment. Consider this...In the area where you personally live, have you begun to notice dramatic changes in the climate? I have. I live in the Seattle area, and I have been here since 1966.  The summers are hotter, the winters warmer and wetter and shorter. Last year, my wife and I observed geese heading NORTH three days before Christmas.

The actual rate of warming is increasing each year. Clear back in 1992, the Geographic announced that in the approximately 150 years that reliable weather records have been kept, eight out of the ten hottest years on record, worldwide, had come since 1980. Remember, this was back in 1992. Scientists mostly dismissed this as baloney, but they aren't laughing now...

It's not about thirty, forty, fifty years. Serious changes are occuring now, and the storms will increase next year, and the year after. The ice caps will melt.

Large areas of permafrost in Siberia and Canada are turning to mush in summer.
Glaciers are retreating everywhere at alarming rates.
Three years ago, a team of scientists at the North Pole checked their GPS three times to make sure they were actually AT the pole. Why?  They saw a one-acre patch of open water, which disappeared by the next day. They took video, it appeared on the PBS.

It just goes on...it is not going to get better.
I wish I had better news, but I don't. I think the Geographic is correct. They have been studying the Earth for over a hundred years, and have tons of research to back up their claims. They are not gov't funded.

Robert M. Blevins www.freewebs.com/adventurebooks

Be afraid...be very afraid.

Had to drop the poster from the site for awhile...
Lot of downloads, though.
It will be returning in July. Preview pic still available onsite.

If you have doubts about whether a spinning motion could simulate gravity, you should ask Neil Armstrong about what happened when his thruster controls got stuck open while on the Gemini 8 flight...

Oh, yeah...we have gravity now.

The cool he demonstrated under pressure during this very dangerous incident was a factor in NASA's decision to make him mission commander on Apollo 11.

Some of the posts on this thread are assuming we don't have the tech yet to reach the Red Planet. This is simply not true. One possible DRM uses either the Magnum rocket or the Delta, in the Apollo-type scenario. We have those now, and using a crew of three, with a smaller hab, it is possilble to boost our Mars vehicles into orbit, rendezvous/dock, and head for Mars.
Three basic vehicles are needed. 1) The Mars Entry Vehicle (combo-type, like the LEM possibly)  2) Crew hab 3) ERV capsule for the reentry on the return to Earth. The crew will need some type of cargo module dropped to the surface near their landing site, before they go to Mars.

One reason why some people at NASA want to go the Apollo route is because it is similar in some ways to the actual Apollo, and they had good luck with that system.

I am not a rocket scientist, however. All my research comes from NASA, Eurospace, and organizations such as the Mars Society. I get the idea some of the folks on this forum are more informed than I.

I wrote a book about a first mission to Mars. It's called 'The 13th Day Of Christmas.' Should be available this Christmas, (why not, right?) but it's a drama/adventure with hard science mixed in, not a strictly hard-science-this-is-absolutely-the-only-way book...

This book came about because I read an article in a 2004 issue of Esquire that said: 'there are no good books about actually going to Mars...'

Forget the Moon-Mars thing.