You are not logged in.
Hello shaun, thanks for that. Yes, I've been busy in the personal life and started a new job in Nigeria. Very busy.
Also, the internet access here is limited (and usually broken) and with 30 or more guys looking to use 3 terminals, one can't surf at will.
I also do not wish to minimize the concerns, but cannot stress enough that if we try to reduce the risks below what we see in daily life, we'll never get anything done.
Or, heaven forbid, one can accept greater than 0% risk and just get the bloody job done. Hmmmmm, isn't that how the last 10,000 years of human exploration was done?
Many of us work in isolated areas with minimal medical capabilities. Often for months at a time. Yes, there is usually an evacuation option (albeit with timelines of days to weeks) that can be called upon. People do die. We still go to work.
Why re-invent the risk-management wheel?
Another concept is a tall chimney type structure reaching the colder air, above, letting it sink below
Just a quick technical note. The air will not sink. Subsiding (sinking) air warms faster than the normal atmospheric lapse rate. 3 degrees per thousand feet vs 2. Air from 10,000 feet, for instance, would normally heat up by 30 degrees while coming down. It is a result of the pressure changes.
Finally, someone's back on topic.
Realistically, building underwater habitats, even at a highly reduced gravity, will be exceedingly difficult under hundreds of meters of ice and water, let alone kilometers.
If it lacks life, though, i see a beautiful place to seed with our own terrestrial undersea vent species. Give them a new place to thrive.
I think the intent is more Olympics than Survivor, with a touch of the Discovery Channel.
It would never pay the whole cost but the right idea is to find a lot of revenue sources that, combined, pay the bills.
Josh,
I believe from your original reply that we actually agree. It is my contention that terraformation of Mars will not be a re-creation of Earth by us, rather it will be the Martians adapting their environment to them as they adapt to the environment. It will still be a unique environment but it will be unlike what it is now.
Auqakah talks about the immoral damage that would be inflicted on the planet Mars as a result of teraformation. I have to wonder if he is out there opposing every new tract of farmland or hydroelectric dam or any planet altering project on earth?
There is also a question of what exactly terraformation means. In my mind the terraformation that is likely to take place will be undertaken by the new colonists of Mars who are trying to make their home easier for their children and crops to survive in. Simply by being there, man will alter the nature of Mars as the myriad of lifeforms that live on our bodies escape our closed environments and attempt to colonize the empty landscape. If it is proven that extant Martian life exists then they will have to compete with each other to survive.
Environments have changed for millenia on Earth and while lately man has been the culprit, continental shift and tenacious individuals have done it as well. Life seeks to create life. We can either pursue this or choose to end all attempts at exploration outside of our own planet to prevent us from ever impinging on the pristine universe. A dismal choice to my eye.
Nitrogen doesn't stop the burning process, reduced partial pressure of oxygen does. If for no other reason than mission mass the absolute minimum atmosheric pressure should be maintained in the spacecraft and hab. Using a low pressure 100% oxygen system would reduce the complexity of equipment to store and process the atmosheric components and again, reduce mission mass. Additional gases should only be included for physiological requirement or to enhance other mission objectives. I do not know what these would be. That is for the mission planners and the guys who write the cheques.
If we really want to see a cost effective mission, then we need to start simplifying at all levels and reducing the total mission mass to something in line with what is commercially available in the near term.
The only significance to this forum that I see in this research is the fact that although the planet was warmed, it continues to regress to a frozen state.
This indicates that there is a mechanism not currently understood that provides the cooling feedback once the planet is warmed.
Survive and attempt escape, no matter how protracted.
Encourage my fellow to help, try to prevent suicide to a point. Not to the point where I am risking my own murder.
I vote for children.
The scenario you have proposed leads me to expect to be on this place for a very long time. Those who wish to accept this and make this place their home have the right to do so. I could not in good conscience consign my fellows to a lingering life without children or a future. If the group is sufficiently enlightened to assess the island resources and abide by a democratic vote then I would accept that they are mature enough to acknowledge the risks of childbirth and accept them if they wish to have children.
Auqakah, to say that a colonized Mars would be abandoned as soon as better worlds are available stands in spite of history. Throughout the expansion of man new territories have been discovered and colonized. Theses settlers did not all abandon their new homes when something better came along, many of them stayed on. Some examples that come to mind are the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, Siberia. A colonized Mars would simply become over time one of the stepping stones that led the way out to new worlds.
A MSR is not only about a search for life. A good sample of Martin soil woul help define some of the surface chemistry and allow better planning for what items an initial manned mission would need. In the NASA context it is still a reasonable idea.
It will slow things down. I agree that we should get on with it but that isn't reason a NASA option.
This is a similar idea to that proposed by Marshall Savage in his book 'The Millenial Project'.
He proposed using transparent overhead covers for naturl depressions, specificaly small craters, and using water as the ballast to counteract the upward air pressure. The idea itself is an elegant design solution but gets a little held up in the search for adequate water. A good source of water would help the problem. I'm not sure if other problems with the design have been discovered, some of his ideas have met with much less than successful practice.
I got my copy of that book out. It is "The Fifth Miracle: the search for the origin of life" by Paul Davies.
The premise of the chapter I was talking about is that, by virtue of the research that followed the ALH86001 announcements (hope I got that right), it has been established that there is no inherent obtacle to planetary cross-polination. The mechanism of planetary bombardment moving rocks between Mars and Earth is well enough understood that it can be reasoned that bacteria and other microbial life would be capable of surviving the trip. Whether they have or not is really moot as far as his argument is concerned. The fact that it is possible is enough.
With regards to the above arguments: knocking over anthills and extinction of species appear to be different scales to me. Generally people react very emotionally to the subject of extinction, but only insofar as it relates to macroscopic organisms and those that do us no harm. Unseen and harmful/repulsive life we are quite happy to eliminate.
Man's domination of the environment is just the latest in a long line of examples of new species being so well adapted they dominate the environment. With luck we will reach a state of equilibrium before we eliminate the same species we require to survive.
There was an article about this on one of the science news pages and a thread on this forum. A search through the history should locate it.
I'll throw in a couple points:
Microbial life has absolutely no requirement for oxygen on Earth. Individual species may require it but a very large and varied group of life now classified as a seperate Kingdom (not sure precisely the correct level of branching), the Archaea, use quite a variety of chemistries in their lives.
Reading the book "The 5th Miracle" there is a large effort put into tying Mars into the search for the origin of life. The author puts forth a good argument based on the current state of general scientific knowledge that Mars has never been biologically isolated from Earth. This means that life should exist there if it iable to and the odds of it being a distinct type of life are very slim.
Its worth the read.
I'll reply directly to what you posted Nova.
The assertion that the human drive to explore is less of a biological function than any other function seems to smack of a religious bent. Human history has a long, very much pre-Cold War, history of a drive to expand. Look at the extent of the human population fom the humble beginnings on the African continent. A most impressive example is the Inuit and their ingeneous adaptations to a most hostile enviroment. This is PRECISELY the same drive that has populated all the continents of the Earth with all manner of related beasts, plants, etc. As we have expanded we have adapted, that is a biological and natural function.
For the human group to see the world becoming full and want to expand beyond it is just as natural as the nomads who crossed the land bridge into North America because there was open space to fill.
The environtal ethics you speak of seem like a movement to prosecute me for murder because I killed the mosquito that was attempting to feed on my blood rather than let it finish. Or perhaps we should imprison all the lions for eating and ruthlessly impinging their will on the gazelle? Get over it!
The terraformation of Mars will not, in my opinion be a creation of Lifeboat Earth, or even a mock earth. It will be an attempt to open up new land to human habitation. Many people will attempt to create a unique and independant eosystem on the planet to ease this process.
After Mars we will move out and attempt to do the same on any planet or moon (Europa?) that has the necessary ingredient for life, any kind of life. And each of these new worlds will develop a unique and valuable ecosystem.
We will do what all life does, replicate the DNA and spread it as far as we can, the root function of all life.
As near as I can tell, the only intrinsic value in a martian ecology is that which we can learn from it. And if we fail to discover it and study it we learn nothing.
Every act in our lives impacts on other organisms and the same people who speak of the intrinsic value of the trees and rocks and beetles will still spray insecticides in their houses and build their houses and drive their cars.
My only responsibility is to my children and their children and so on to provide and maintain for them a place to live and grow.
Seems simple. Terraformation, if it is possible, will begin with the first microbe placed into an environment where it can survive and reproduce.
Short of sterilizing the area around any colony on a fanatical basis, bugs will get out. If the planet is capable of sustaining life, it will.
You won't be fighting factories and referendums, you will be fighting a hundred new-age Johnny Appleseeds. If I ever make it up there, I will be one of them. Struggling to give my children and grandchildren a new home and a most precious gift. Land that will be theirs, not a loaner from some impersonal political institution.
If you are going to bring that much paper (heavy) then just bring the books.
A paperless NASA seems like quite the oxymoron!! :-)
The way to reduce mission mass is to completely rethink our ideas of what we need vs want, and to place ourselves in the new environment conceptually as we do it.
Does anyone know how to find data how much CNN etc. have paid for rights to news items in the past. For instance the Concorde video?
Just a thought, regarding living in .38G vs 1.0g vs 0.0g.
To my knowledge a person who loses 50 or 75 lbs of extra weight does not suffer a reduced bone density due to the reduced stress on their skeleton.
I believe that these mice may show a reduced bone density in the subsequent generations but otherwise they will be healthy. Just like the future settlers of Mars wil be healthy with consideation of the environment they will be living in.
We'll see...
Some interesting bits in this. I do remember reading about the minimum carrying capacity with regards to genetic diversity in a population. Interestingly enough, in that report the numbers had been drastically reduced in comparison to the then conventional wisdom.
In your above post you alluded to the fact that a Martian population will be facing survival pressures much different than here on Earth. This is NOT a bad thing. Any population stays healthy this way. As those people best suited tot he environment succeed they will be more able to have the children they want and so it goes.
With reference to the idea that the 1 to 2 year seperation between children is a concious decison, I disagree. That's just about how long it takes to get pregnant again, quite simple. And if you plan to have a limited number of children there are advantages both to seperating them and having them close together. Population growth in an envionment like Mars would be controlled by available living space, hence the push to "terraform". The need to create livable space will be powerful. This doesn't necessarily mean Earth-like space, it just needs to be sufficiently better to allow for growth.
And about the idea that thousands of years from now the human race will be laughing at the Martians, I disagree. I also think this misses the point.
Explorers go to places like this to see something no-one else has, to be the first, to be remembered, sometimes even to help their fellow man.
Settlers will go make a home for themselves. They may be escaping persecution, overcrowding, poverty, disease or they may simply be looking for a place to grow and become. I myself see the frontier on Mars as a place to go to be able to work and create and expand and give something to my children that seems to exist less and less where I am now, opportunity. Opportunity to be able to be happy working the land and raising a family and supporting my neighbours. Believe it or not, but this no longer exists anywhere I've been on Earth. Someone will tax the land, legislate your home, demand that you produce cash that they can take a piece of.
This will never be a place where the masses of Earth can escape to, anymore than North and South America is populated purely by immigrants from Europe and indigenous races. This will just be another part of man's growth and maturing, as a people. With any luck it will have the effect of bringing us together and moving us forward, but it isn't the point.
Just as observation from my viewpoint.
I don't realy see Mars as a place where we can recreate Earth. The life that develops on Mars will be Martian, whether or not their ancestors came from Earth. The very nature of where they are will demand this. We won't do this alone, Mars and evolution will help a lot.
The key is to help create an environment whereexisting lifeforms can exist and grow long enough to start adapting, and then let them go.
gotta run