New Mars Forums

I like the idea of a Mars Society keychain.  I usually shy away from things like bumperstickers, but not keychains.  I think a MS keychain would go well with the NASA keychain I already have. And I agree about Adrian's logos, they're simple but highly effective.  The current MS logo feels cluttered, it's trying to show too much and not everyone is hip to the idea of terraforming anyway so I think that "blue sky" portion should go.  Something along the lines of those New Mars crescents would make a good logo for the Mars Society I think.

Wow.  Are they going to translate what you say into Japanese or is it an English language station?  Or maybe you already know Japanese.   I took Japanese in college but I've probably already forgotten nine-tenths of it.

Yeah, you can probably count me an official space elevator nut.   It would provide enormous benefits to spaceflight.  Not only would it be vastly cheaper than putting payloads into orbit using old fashioned methods, it can also throw payloads on trajectories to the Moon, Mars, etc.  You'd only need to take enough fuel to make minor trajectory corrections and landings.  Personally, I'd have no problem with dropping practically everything and working full blast on a space elevator.  I think space elevators will be way more likely to open space to the masses than heavy lift rockets. 

If Highlift System's concept for a space elevator is valid, the only component we're missing is a strong enough tether, a target which isn't too far off.  Right now they've been able to make carbon nano-tube doped materials that have a strength over 1/4 of the that needed for a space elevator.  It's only a matter of time before they get the strenght that's needed.  And also the counterweight in geosync orbit would have to be about 700 tons, so you'd only need a handful of launches with existing boosters to get it up there.  Brad Edwards thinks he can get the elevator up there in less than 20 years.  His ideas seem solidly founded in physics with no miracle technologies needed and his resume points to him being anything other than a crackpot, so I think there's at least a fair chance he'll be able to pull it off.  I certainly hope so.

Ah cynics.  Gotta love 'em.  Well I better get back to mining some asteroids and breeding like a rabbit.

Do you know when the last Russian rocket failure occured?  I can't recall any in the 1990's or later, at least ones that blew up before delivering their cargo. 

Actually that rocket that blew up has a very good track record of taking people into space.  It's just a freak thing that happened.  I have no idea what made it blow up.

I think NASA is half-way serious about sending people to Mars, but I'm not sure they'll do it before we're all fossils in a museum exhibit somewhere.  Like Josh (the other Josh ) mentioned, if NASA doesn't send someone to Mars maybe in a few decades a non-governmental organization could scrape together the resources for a mission if launch technologies like the s.e. become a reality (and I think such people would likely strive to establish a base on Mars rather than doing one time shots.)  I guess time will tell.

I wouldn't take anybody because they'd probably start to annoy me with their bitching about how bad it is on Mars and blame me for talking them into it.  I'd rather just go with people who have some sense of what their getting themselves into.  Anyhow it's interesting that Shaun and Cindy would take fellow family members.  I read an interview with a cosmonaut who said that families would make better spacefarers than just throwing a bunch of random people together.  I don't really remember his reasoning though.  It was an old article at the National Geographic website (might still be in the archives somewhere.)  Actually I take back what I said about taking nobody.  I'll take Shaun, I forgot how much he likes accordian music and it's always nice to have a captive audience.

I don't think governments would really be encouraged much by a prize since their way of doing things is to inflate the cost about 2-3000 times what it could have been. ???   If we can get a space elevator built, I think there's a slight possibility that a non-profit organization might be able to rack up enough funds to send a few people to Mars.  It just depends on how advanced our technology becomes in the next few decades if they do get an s.e. built.

It appears Shaun stumbled onto a new gremlin.  There appears to be a major malfunction in the "Face on Mars, Hard evidence wanted, please" thread.  I posted four messages but none of them appeared. Maybe all those NASA moles hacked into the forum to hide the truth. *puts on metal hat*

I don't really buy into those types of doomsday scenarios either.  Hydrogen supplemented by nuclear could easily take the place of fossil fuels for our energy needs and they'd be far more environmentally friendly.  And in addition many countries could be totally self-sufficient in their power production using hydrogen.  You wouldn't have to import it like we do oil.  So that should solve a lot of political problems in itself.

Never seen Dark City.  I'm gonna have to check that one out.

I bet there's a lot of Japanese animation that features Mars.  I can't recall any that revolved around Mars (even though I've seen a lot of space ones), but then again I used to watch them when I was taking Japanese in college, so I probably misunderstood what was going on most of the time anyway.   I love the anime names.  Neon Genesis Evangelion is my favorite title even though I have no idea what the hell it means. Sounds cool though.

Any ideas for achieving the "ecological plateau?"  I hope authoritarianism isn't the only solution.  Putting a heavily authoritarian power structure in place could backfire horribly.  The ecocide that has been committed in China and the former Soviet Union are testaments to that.  I think some of the best methods for reducing the population and keeping human dignity and democracy intact is to encourage people to have small families (demonstrating this point on TV and in movies could have a powerful affect over time) and to also update medical technology and access to it in countries with high infant mortality rates (which is one reason some countries tend to have very large families) and to give women equal rights and educational and professional opportunities.  That last one I believe is the most important as countries that have both high medical technology and recognition of women's rights tend to have the least population growth.  Of course we should also switch to more environmentally friendly sources of energy, etc.   The last thing I want to see is some policy where we kidnap pregnant women who don't have "birthing certificates" and force them to have abortions or do mandatory sterilizations or some other use of direct force.  That's akin to legalizing rape in my opinion.