New Mars Forums

All together now "Happy Birthday to you...."

Russia and China also have vast reserves of coal and they aren't shying away from building nuclear power plants.  And I disagree about there not being an irrational fear of nuclear power in the USA, just look at the history surrounding nuclear powerplants and their treatment in the media.  Anyhow you can only cut back on your energy usage so much, and when you do it to an extreme degree your going to be depriving yourself of the power you need to drive industry, transportation, etc.  And the economy will go to hell as a result.  We do need to create more efficient technology but I don't agree with these people who think we can just instantly cut back our energy usage 20% or more.  Heck, during the Great Depression there was less than a 10% decrease in energy usage to give some example.  I think instead of cutting back drastically and stagnating we should be giving a LOT more funding to developing alternative power sources.  I'd rather scrap SDI and put the money instead into this type of research.  Some physicists think we could have nuclear fusion commercially viable by 2015 if they could get serious funding.  Of course that's self serving but they do have a point about how you can't expect improvements in energy production if there isn't enough funding allocated.

NASA is going to send a list of names to Mars on it's next rover mission.  So if you want your name riding around Mars on a little robot that someone told me is ugly and looks like the junkyard dog of robots (personally I think it's kinda cute ) you can sign on here

Wow, I was just going to mention handing the job to Shaun before I read your message.  First it's farming on Mars and now it's agreeing that Shaun should be given the reigns over the pr department.  Hmm, maybe there's some interdimensional psychic thing going on here or our metal helmets are transmitting on the same wavelengths.  I'll consult the cards and see.

Yep, brings truth to the phrase that one person's junk is another's treasure.  I have to admit myself that on those rare occassions when I visit a landfill I have to resist the temptation to go digging around for stuff.

Even though I believe we should actively work to preserve the environment I've dissociated myself from most mainstream environmental groups because it seem they're merely using their environmental agenda to drive their political visions which are often anti-human and totalitarian.  It's a natural function for life to find new niches in which to thrive, and humanity moving out into space to increase its chances of survival and acquistion of resources is no exception.  Hell, the universe is going to die anyway so we might as well get out there and see what's going on.  Anyway, I better say that I don't advocate colonizing planets that show an abundance of life, but I just don't buy the argument that a dead rock orbiting an old star should recieve the same "don't touch" status.

Forgive me for butting in here, but I find it disturbing to think that NASA could be playing the deception game with these conspiracy theorists.  I think the best action would be for NASA to just report what data they recieve and just ignore the conspiracy nuts.  If you find yourself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" type situation, the best action is sometimes to simply ignore it.  And I think that's what NASA should do about these people, just pretend they're not there.  Of course you can't always ignore a situation but I think it could work in the case being discussed.

Whenever I think of professions that will be most needed and perhaps most common on Mars, farming is the first thing that comes to mind.  Personally, I wouldn't mind being a Martian farmer.  Go out and harvest/nurture crops by day and write essays and shortstories for the Martian Chronicles by  night/spare time.  If we have a settlement on Mars there has to be a publication called "The Martian Chronicles."  It just wouldn't be Mars without it.  Whether it's paper or electronic I'll leave to others.

I hope those photos come back in color!  As long as we get the data back from the lander the rest of the probe can go crashing into Saturn and I'd still consider it a success.  It'll be especially breath taking if we can see a shot with Saturn hanging in the sky.  You might be right about the light level being too low though.  I think Earth receives something like a 1000 watts of power per m^2 of solar energy and Saturn is only around 15 watts per m^2.  Don't quote those, but if memory serves its something like that so light would be way dimmer.

Sounds good to me.  The faster people get out into space to stay the less likely control freak governments on Earth will be able to keep us pigeonholed on this planet.

I agree with you that's it's strange to give your best computing technology to a country that literally hates your guts and it totally ideologically opposed to you.  That kind of technology only helps them to develop better nuclear weapons among other things which they could use against you.  But if thisarticle is correct, the Chinese were already designing manned spacecraft in 1978 and even had ambitions to build a Skylab type spacestation back then but quit for economic reasons.

We seem to think that Mars will only have one flag.  I'm not convinced yet that Mars will necessarily be a single nation.  But in any case flags are usually very abstract things with symbology that reflects some aspect that a culture finds important.  I.E. the fifty stars on the US Flag stands for unity of the states, the sickle and hammer on the USSR flag represents the idea that the nation belongs to the workers.  I imagine the Martians will continue the tradition and design their flags using symbology that reflects values they find important whether it involves Earth or not.  To us we think they should find Earth important because we gave rise to their civilization, but they could find that concept arrogant and instead honor the unique contributions they themselves made to their civilization when it comes to designing the flag.

I read about a possible way of determining information about Europa's ocean without having to actually drill.  You could just use a sensitive microphone called a geophone to listen for signs of an ocean.  I think I'm most looking forward to the Cassini-Huygens probe that's going to launch a lander onto Titan.  In many ways I think Titan is the most fascinating location in the Solar System.  Not only might it have liquid lakes of various chemicals, but it's atmosphere might be pressurized just right for humans.  All you'd need is something to keep the cold and chemicals from eating you alive.  I'm personally looking forward to seeing photos of Titan's sky, surface,  and hopefully a few lakes to boot.

That would be Shaun's department.  His winning Mars haiku might still be buried in the threads under "Meta Mars" somewhere if you haven't seen it.  There's a lot of other good ones in there to.  Hey, I think all writers have had to endure their fair share of cyber tomatoes so just grab a wad of smashed tomatoes and throw 'em back at the bastards.