New Mars Forums

The dusty plasma idea looked pretty interesting, I just wonder about the layers of complexity it would add.   In solving problems associated w/ the dust confinement, they kept adding more equipment.  And what kind of funding is it getting, how far along is it?  I don't see anything on the net later than 2002.  It appears the dust has to be ionized in order to be deployed... so what happens to it after being bombarded by the charged particles of the solar wind?  How much of the dust would become neutralized and no longer controllable?  The potential additional payoff by using reflective properties of the dust is certainly huge though.

One drawback for the magnetospheric idea (dusty or not) seems to be limited payload size.  I wonder how well such a system would scale up to payloads a couple of orders of magnitude larger than 100kg?  Is there a point where increasing the size of the fields wouldn't be able to provide enough acceleration for the increasing ship mass.

I was a little overzealous w/ that interstellar statement.  Depends on what kind of speed you could build up before passing the heliopause... getting up to 50 km/s, according to the m2p2 calculations, was based on an acceleration period of only 3 months.  What if you could accelerate all the way to the heliopause?  100 km/s still takes roughly 10kY to Alpha Centauri.  So not great for long distances.

I did read somewhere that it could be used to 'tack' against the solar wind but couldn't re-find the place I read it.  So I don't think maneuverability is a huge issue.

Don't see much discussion of overall spending comaprisons here...

I found some links that may be of interest:

I like http://www.federalbudget.com/]this one-- a nice illustration of comparitive budget sizes, AND it explicitly compares the money we spend on debt interest to the money NASA spends.

For a liberal slant, there's http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm]this.

And a http://mwhodges.home.att.net/fed_budget … nservative  take on it (there's a pie chart 2/3 way down the page).

Finally, I found this  http://www.sniggle.net/Experiment/index … commentary to be enlightening.

In keeping with the question implied in the thread title, my personal view is that the portion of defense money that is wasted (that is, the money that is basically pork and corporate subsidy, money lost due to 'cost-plus' contracts, no-bid contracts, etc., money that 'lubricates the process',) could have colonized Mars by now without compromising national security.  I'd like to see some money taken from defense spending and given to NASA.  It will give NASA a little breathing room and make the DoD more lean & efficient & less of the pig trough full of subsidies.  Or at least encourage these big defense contractors to diversify a little more toward space exploration.

You'll recall that Zubrin points out in "Entering Space" that it was the pro-war contingent of the Nixon administration that intentionally killed the Apollo program and relegated NASA to a much smaller budgetary teat in order to free up money for more buildup in Vietnam.  Worth it?  In hindsight, I'd have to give a resounding "NO."

OK, deagleninja wanted justification, so I'll throw this out:  The money we spent on our nuclear arsenal has prevented a major world war from happening for the past ~60 years.  I tend to believe this, I just wonder if we really needed as big an arsenal as we bought.

First time in 2 mo. I've been able to sit and read an entire thread...  I've been surprised at how level-headed (for the most part) this discussion is.  Another sign of an above-average forum.

In relation to some of the earlier posts about Islamic culture vs. Judeo-Christian, has anyone here read Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt"?  As an armchair historian I found it an interesting & entertaining read.  It deals with a lot of the culture comparison issues earlier in this thread using the alternate-history mechanism.

Also:  Lately the Sierra Club has been in turmoil due to its upcoming board elections being 'held hostage' by 'anti-immigration interests.'  The implication is that there is a right-wing conspiracy to undermine the Club's ideals (environmental preservation/conservation) by getting conservative, anti-immigration candidates elected.  Since most of the Club's membership base is somewhat ideologically liberal, they are frantically sending out notices about the upcoming election, urging people to vote and fend off the 'takeover' attempt.  The ironic thing is that most environmentalists, while tending to be lefties, realize that unchecked growth (as exemplified by, say, unchecked immigration) is bad for the environment, but have a hard time reconciling this notion with the racist stigma attached to most anti-immigration types.  (Not to mention the fact that conservative board members, once elected, may undermine the overall mission of the Club.)  I tend to see the current turmoil at the Sierra Club as a microcosmic manifestation of the larger immigration issue.  Serious issue, needs to be addressed, but we need to make sure we address it for the right reasons (not racism).

While I agree that Western Civ as originally evolved is a great thing, I think it has been decaying non-trivially from the inside for some time now.  Threats to this culture from without put aside, I sometimes wonder if it is really worth preserving here on Earth, much less seeding space with.  We have drifted so far from the original tenets of exploration, reasoned inquiry and self-actualization toward crass materialism, gluttony and celebrity-worship.  Cultures/societies evolve just like organisms.  Unworthy ones (worthy in the sense of being able to survive in their ambient environment) will die out &/or be supplanted/destroyed by more robust ones.  History shows this.  If our civilization & cultural values are strong they will survive via immigrants voluntarily adopting them.  If not they will give way to more robust culture imported by immigrants.

I'm not a PC apologist, but at least some of the misery in the undeveloped world stems from our plundering their resources to maintain our standard of living.  We should keep this in mind when formulating our immigration policies.  I think that stopping immigration, if possible, is not going to be the panacea that some seem to think.  Yes, there are serious problems related to immigration that will surely sink Gennaro's "ship" if not dealt with in a realistic, objective manner... People's lives are going to have to be ruined & some are going to die before things get any better.  But I view the immigration issue as a facet of the broader problem of overpopulation, which ultimately will affect us all.  A shortage of resources is going to trump the cultural issue if it hasn't already.  If we don't deal with this soon, at the global level, Nature will handle it for us in a very noncompassionate and painful manner.

Better yet, get the seismometers in place and do some active sensing with intentionally-generated seismic waves (using explosives or 'thumpers').  This would allow good subsurface mapping, which would aid in the search for water (among other things).

:laugh:  :laugh:  He ties in other threads AND converts the religious at NM to the cause of Mars Direct.

'Thou shalt not be distracted in the spreading of the human seed beyond Earth by the Moon, that which contains and embodies all evil that I expunged from the Earth.'

Or to paraphrase David Bowman:  "All these worlds are yours, except Luna.  Attempt no landings there unless you want to waste large amounts of time and money."

Religion will find its way to Mars one way or another.  I would like to see an attempt at an atheistic society but I think it would be impossible.  I have a feeling that people in general have a genetic predisposition toward religion.  And I agree with Aetius and others that the authoritarianism that would be required for 'religious cleansing' of new Martians would be monstrous.  (Just look at the Soviet Union and communist China.)  And Clark makes a good point about the 'why' vs. 'how' thing.  (I might add, however, that I personally get thru life fine without the 'why' being supplied to me... but of course I can speak only for myself.  If I were feeling more mischievous I might prod somebody to explain how religion really provides the 'why'.)

Your ideal case, Thalassa, could only be created because the first generation of humans there (if I remember the plot correctly) was spawned artificially by a robot ship upon arrival.  So they were somewhat free of the biases and superstitions of parents/grandparents etc.  Even then, though, I wonder if the Thalassan society would have developed religion(s) on its own.  Maybe not, since the information given the individuals as part of their education was based on science and religious ideas were weeded out (they were, right?  it's been a long time since I read it).  If you take the viewpoint that religion is a vestige of human prehistory, a holdover from the days before science existed to explain the unknown, maybe the Thalassans could leapfrog over this period of 'investigative naivete' using their pre-stored information from Earth that explains natural phenomena scientifically.

I hope this analysis isn't seen as dismissive by any religious folks here, I just wanted to develop a viewpoint from outside the religious perspective.

Lovell just wants to go back because he never got to walk on the moon  .  I met him a few years ago and he seemed like a nice enough guy.  Just needs to look a little further out in his astronautical ambitions.

I'm with Shaun, luna's kind of a waste of time/resources.  As the Mars Society 'steering committee' mentions, the moon should only be visited by hardware that has ALREADY been engineered for Mars capability-- and preferably has already been to Mars.

And I bet there won't be plans for any trips to the lunar poles, water or not.

we can do it without another JFK.  if the details of the plan can be hammered out s.t. the plan can gather enough momentum over the next few years, this may be enough to keep things rolling.  at this point i think it's going to hinge on the implementation... avoiding contractor greed, cost overruns, etc.

of course, the whole thing could easily be sunk by an anti-JFK... a reverse-visionary who cans the whole thing on ideological terms.  but i prefer not to think about that too much.

yes.  my interest in space exploration stems more from feelings for humanity as a whole than from nationalism.  but i do think that americans will have good things to offer the new frontier, if we ever get off our asses and go.

what do you think prompted the lunar aspect of W.'s space initiative?  there is nothing better to motivate the typical american than the prospect of competition.  as such i'm behind the chinese (and whoever else will do something to get the US gov't to sit up and take notice) all the way.

The discovery of a Wal-Mart there.

My own flaky, oddball viewpoint, for what it's worth:

I'm putting my money on panspermia, especially as put forth in "Entering Space."  I think the Galaxy is old enough that life has developed elsewhere previous to Earth, in microbial form at least, and that there has been time for this life to seed the rest of the Galaxy-- via launching from meteor impacts if not by outright intelligence-directed dissemination.  It's my hunch (and what else do we have to go on here, really?) that we are descended from these microbes.

An interesting question is whether life has developed more than once and whether or not independently-developed life would be able to compete with the panspermic microbes raining down onto its home planet from space.

For this reason I have a lot of interest in investigating comets (and Mars), as I think they will help provide insight into the panspermia question.

BTW, my definition of complex life does not require sentience, just advancement past the microbial stage.

The galaxy is incredibly huge, and incredibly old, and we are utter newcomers (modern humans are only ~100,000 years old, vs. a galaxy that is on the order of 10 billion years old).  I would be really surprised if sentient life has not arisen several times already.  (This does not necessarily mean that it exists currently anywhere other than Earth, but I have a hunch that it does.)

Humanity may be unique, but it isn't alone.  The only real question in my mind is how long sentient life lasts-- does it keep evolving into greater intelligence, or does it regress or die out over time?

It will increase/change the nature of missions in general, but not necessarily crewed missions.

Any life found there will almost surely be microbial.  The average American will not grasp the significance of these microbes and will not see the discovery as a reason to push for crewed missions.  (They will likely see it as a reason NOT to have crewed missions for fear of interplanetary contamination.)  Note, this is only my personal analysis.  I hope my fellow Americans have more intelligence than I'm willing to give them credit for.

Part of me hopes life is not found; then Mars will be ours to do with as we please.  But I think life will be found there if we look in the right places... esp. if there's liquid water there somewhere-- like underground.