New Mars Forums

What's the best movie that features Mars?  I think I'd have to vote for Total Recall.  I think in the future it's possible we could find ourselves in a situation where we can't easily trust our memories or sense of reality.

I've seen it or I wouldn't have brought it up.  Some "rare-Earth" advocates sometimes make the argument that a civilization won't have a desire to spread into space if there's no easily reachable target for them to look to, and they use the Moon as an example. 

Your arguments kind of kills the panspermia theory that defends the notion that life was likely deposited on Earth from an extraterrestrial source.  Personally, it just seems more likely that Earth life first became life on Earth, but I could be wrong.  After all it is a little fishy why some bacteria have developed the ability to thrive in environments bombarded with ungodly amounts of radiation unless they had to survive unprotected in space somehow.  So I guess it's fairly probably life could have arose on this planet either natively or not.

Your idea sounds similiar to the aimstar engine that would use very small amounts of anti-matter to ignite a fusion reaction in a fusion rocket.  With the recent developments in trapping anti-matter (if those discoveries are genuine) concepts like ICAN which would use very very small amounts of antimatter as an aid in propulsion might not be that far off.

We've got people on TV competing in the stone age on tropical islands while the Russians will soon have people competing to ride into space and spend a week on the ISS.  Here's a quote from the CNN  article:

"MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Russia's biggest television station announced Tuesday it was teaming up with the country's space agency to create a reality show that will be literally out of this world.

The show will follow contestants as they go through the rigorous training required for cosmonauts, and the winner will spend a week on the Russian segment of the International Space Station, said Channel 1, also known as ORT.
"

Would you watch a TV show like this?  I would.

So if an asteroid hits Earth and wipes out all life, that is natural correct?  If an intelligent species directs an asteroid to Earth and wipes all life, that's unnatural right?  What makes us unnatural?  Our ability to reason and to will the extinction of something whereas a "natural" extinction is caused by some random event that had no intelligence behind it?  I'm not defending our bad stewardship of the planet, I'm just curious why you think extinction caused by homo sapiens is unnatural while extinctions caused by other factors are natural.

I hope your planning to leave the site up indefinately and keep adding new additions to it even after the competition is over.  It was a brilliant idea that seems to be taking off.

Actually I think some other news outlets mentioned Adrian also when he made that animation of Mars.  At least I think that's the same Adrian that tends to this board.

Well, the axe might get turned over to your debating nemesis but he'll have to pull it out of his head first.

Hey go for it!  Hopefully he won't start babbling about Eskimos on Pluto.   If he does I'll loan you my axe.

Once someone wins the sub-orbital X-prize I wonder if they plan to offer one for the first private manned orbital flight.  XCor might be in the running for such a prize if they offer it.  And if Highlift Systems can get their elevator built in 15 years (lets be optimistic! ) I wonder if that would qualify as an entrant.  Anyways, is the Canadian Arrow the one using the modified V-2 engines?

The other day when I was strolling among the truly gigantic trees up in Sequoia National Park I couldn't help but think about how gorgeous Mars would be covered with such huge trees.  I was thinking about how we could construct whole cities up in them like the Ewoks in Star Wars do but I won't get into that.

Most of the big craters on the Moon (and probably Mars to) are very ancient.  The probability of a big one coming down and smacking a space colony is probably about the same as Earth, not impossible, but nothing that we should let scare us from building lunar and Martian establishments.  Anyways, if micro-meteorites are all we have to worry about those are easily stopped by good shielding.  RobS's observation of the lack of smaller craters on Mars seemed encouraging but I wonder if such craters could have been filled in or eroded away fairly quickly.  In any case the Martian surface doesn't appear to be inundated with small craters which means it probably hasn't had much recent history of small meteorites smacking into its surface since it would still take a long time to fill in the craters or erode them away with Mar's thin atmosphere.

Oh man, just imagine if someone found out that Martian microbes could halt the aging process!  You'd find no shortage of people clamoring for missions to Mars especially if we needed to find the places where the microbes like to hang out.  You'd need a staffed Martian research base to find out things like that.  And yes I know you could grow them but you'd still need to go back since we know nothing of Martian biology and thus could end up damaging our stock of microbes.

Yes to both.

I never considered Armadillo aerospace a serious contender for the trophy until now.  Romero seems optimistic that he can pull off the flight by 2004 but I'd still bet that either Starchaser or Da Vinci win the Xprize in 2003.  I think Romero needs to speed up the schedule a bit if he's serious about winning.

I think XCor is wise to go the route their going with non-toxic fuels.  That Armadillo stunt used peroxide based fuels, which are very toxic and corrosive.  There were plenty of German jet pilots in WWII who could attest to that fact.  Nothing will kill a venture faster than environmental problems, which can become expensive and thus make you uncompetitive.