New Mars Forums

I really have no idea when the best time to start operations like mining would be, but I'm a supporter of the idea that a fairly small colony might be able to manufacture some of the goods its needs with microfactories that process raw materials.  If we can find deposits of useful materials that don't require us to dig down far or crush billions of tons of rock to get a handful of X element, we could probably mine rather efficiently with small-scale but powerful equipment.  I'm thinking of posting pictures of some of the small scale equipment that exists now that could be used on Mars with modifications.   And to all the skeptics out there, I'm not saying we can build huge cities like this, but we might be able to produce the materials we need for small concrete buildings, spare parts, or whatever.

Damn, that's a big chunk of uranium.  I wish people would start to entertain the idea of switching to a hydrogen power base that would use a *small* number of nuclear power plants to extract the hydrogen we need.  Of course big oil lobbies and environmentalists will both cry bloody murder at such a thought, but I believe it's a solution to our energy and environmental problems.  It's better than turning the clock back to the stone age at least like many of the hardcore "environmentalists" want us to. 

Impressive theory!  I wonder how else you could test it.  If we could take cores of Martian regolith and look for tell tale signs of magnetic reversals (I believe they do this on Earth somehow by checking the polarity and alignment of certain minerals) maybe we could ascertain how long ago Mars had a magnetic field.  If it had one fairly recently, then your fission idea might be an explanation for why it "died" so recently.  Of course I'm no geologist so everything I just wrote might be total crap, but it might work.

I usually log into the forums through the New Mars site since I like to see if any new articles are up.

I agree 1000%.  This is why I have such a hard time with the concept of the "philosopher king."  I haven't read Voltair's take on the situation, but Plato basically believed the philosopher king had an inherent right to force his rule on the society at large since s/he was considered to know what is best for society even if the peons disagreed with it.  Considering that Plato believed in the use of censorship and other shady uses of information to best inculcate the will of the state into the citizenry, I think he basically defended the notion that the enlightened rulers had a right to be beasts of sorts in that they deserved the power to ramrod their policies into effect.  And I think anybody who would willingly give up their right to freely express their thought and political will to a "philosopher king" so s/he may do as they see fit is the worst kind of beast.  Plato thought democracy was abhorent, even though he does give it a scant defense here and there for mere reasons of illustration.  Well, I could go on and on but I'll shut up before the server runs out of space.

This is the type of "terraforming" that I think will become standard on Mars at least for a very long time.  It's just easier to build massive structures that give you plenty of habitable space than to terraform an entire planet.  There are extremophile bacteria that might be up to the CO2 task you spoke of.  If there's bacteria on Earth that can survive boiling temperatures and thrive in millions of rads of radiation, I don't think you'll have a problem.  I know I've read articles that claimed certain types of bacteria could live in Martian conditions provided they had water (which we could provide for them), but I can't remember where they are right off the top of my head.  I'll get back to this. 

Nothing a little soils engineering can't take care of.  Anyway, don't get the idea Martian soil is totally unsuitable for plants. It does contain a lot of the inorganic nutrients they need like sulfur, potassium, etc .  We'll just have to treat it first.  #4's idea of recycling organic matter into the soil will work fine if we just take the fertilizer, etc,  we need for our first batch of crops and then recycle organic wastes back into the soil from there.

After reading Plato's other political ideas, I've come to one conclusion:  philosopher kings be damned. 

Yeah, next thing you know those children and dreamers'll be thinking they can build heavier than air flying machines and take flights of fancy to the moon! *gasp*.  If all the people in the world were hardcore cynics like Novamarsolla we'd never have left the cave!  I can just see him discussing the absurdities of attaching little sharpened rocks to the end of a flying stick to get more meat!  Anyways, children are very open and curious about things.  Good qualities in my opinions, even though some of us are just brats!!

Mars isn't a living being.  It couldn't careless what happens to it anymore than a rock cares whether you kick it or not.  It's just an aggregate of materials that swirled together 4.5 billion years ago that may host a microbe or two.

Guk say "aye, we stay here till we all dead"

Go Cindy!  It's often the dreamers who moves things forward.  If you read the writings of most of the early rocket pioneers like Goddard, etc, they clearly had visions of travelling to Mars and beyond before even before jet engines were invented.  And I guess Arthur C. Clark was a happless dreamer when he envisioned communication satellites in 1948!  And you certainly would find no shortage of people even in the 50's and 60's who said a manned moon mission could never happen.  I think our friend here epitomizes the common smug shortsightedness that seems to be catching on in our culture.

Greets Pat.  I don't think you have to prove to anyone that you were defending your opinions in a legitimate way.  After all there's a big difference between smearing people and merely disagreeing with them.  I think our new member here can't quite comprehend that fact. 

I second that.  Nothing will kill an idea faster than forcing people to adhere to it.  If you try to force people to be interested in Mars, you can rest assured that just the opposite will happen.  And anyhow if I were to go to Mars I'd rather go with people who are going of their own free will and not because they've been programmed with ritualistic Martian mumbo-jumbo down through the ages.

Last I read, the Translife experiment wasn't due to launch until around 2005.

I'm thinking if we came across a really big asteroid and we had some time to work we might be able to construct a giant pusher-plate in orbit to attach to the asteroid.  After we attached the plate we could use nuclear charges to propel the asteroid into a different orbit. We'd basically turn the asteroid into a giant Orion type spacecraft.  The technology to pull such a thing off shouldn't be to hard to conjure considering that we've been designing nuclear explosives for fifty years.  Of course we'd have to cross our fingers and hope we don't blow the thing apart and cause a horrendous rain of death to fall onto the planet.

Intelligent life probably could take on any form as long as the prerequisite materials and conditions required for life were present.  Earth might be the only place in the Solar System where intelligent life could develop (can't rule out Europa just yet though, who knows what we'll find there) but considering the trillions of stars that exist throughout the universe I just don't see us being alone, especially with all of these discoveries of extrasolar planets pouring in.