New Mars Forums

The last I read they haven't found planets around Alpha Centauri yet but not to long ago I read this article claiming that it might be possible for life to develop there even though its a multiple star system.  The author was debating against the claim that it would be impossible for an Earth-like planet to exist in something like a binary star system, so I hope if they do find some planets there they'll be Earth-like.  As for the probe, even if we did successfully send one on a hundred year trip, I wonder if people on Earth would still be interested in it once it started beaming back the data.  It wouldn't surprise me if some politician decided to cut the funding that maintains the program 20 years before the probe arrives or whatever. 

It's a big jump going from only being able to detect massive Jupiter sized planets to ones with only a few Earth masses.  I'm no optics expert, but I wonder if we could get enough resolving power to image details on these planets if we were to space these telescopes very distant from each other, say a fleet of telescopes that are seperated by millions of kilometers in space?

I've overcome my fear of genetic engineering on a scale that could alter people's intelligence, etc, but I think we have to be careful that we don't jump in and introduce blunders into our genetic line that become difficult to fix because so many people/generations have developed X defect before it's discovered.  Accidently creating genetic diseases might become a possibility.  After all you might create a group of carriers who decide to have non-genetically altered children who could suffer from an unseen side-effect of the parent's genetic engineering.  Anyow, I'm willing to bet genetic engineering will be acceptable on Mars because it would be a way of accelerating our evolution and survivability in an environment completely not meant for us.

I think this will become a big problem if genetic engineering can totally deliver to you a custom made baby.  People have no shortage of vanity and they'd be willing to pay big bucks to have children that are the smartest, most athletic, etc. But on the other hand they can't brag that such children really came of their own blood lines so that kind of argument might put people's vanity in check.  In any case, I find the possibility of having a future filled with legions of genetically engineered cookie-cutter people depressing.  It'll be boring if there's no stupid people around or if everyone has similiar personalities.

I'm a proponent of the idea that many types of governments will develop on Mars.  I think we could see everything from Libertarian to Marxist governments develop there and in my opinion that's great, freedom of choice, live under the government you want.  I just find it ironic though how all of these people say that Mars belongs to everyone then in the same breath declare that all of Mars will should placed under X type of world governance.  If Mars turns into one Giant North Korea or Cuba, I sure as hell won't be going there.  Anyhow there's nothing evil about allowing people the economic freedom to start up their own enterprises and trade as they please.  And I also don't buy into the argument that because Mars is so inhospitable that it will require that everyone be placed under totalitarian dictatorship that does everything from force abortions on women in the name of population control to suppressing free speech for the good of the state (all of which have been advocated on this board! )  If that's how Mars develops, no one will have to worry about population control because I doubt if you'll find many people there in the first place!

I wish we had the technology to view some of these extra-solar planets directly.  The more I read about all of these discoveries the more amicable I become to the thought of other life existing out there.  Even though most of these planets we've detected so far are Jupiter sized, I bet once we fine tune our technology we'll being seeing evidence of a lot more Earth sized planets as well.  Maybe the OWL telescope will help in detecting smaller planets and perhaps image some of the Jupiter sized ones directly.

People who go to Mars won't need a set of rituals to keep them united.  The very nature of the hostile environment itself and its distance from Earth will be more than enough to
bond the community together.  Martians will need special survival skills and training, at least early on, but I don't think we need to brainwash them with cultish rituals.  They'll automatically develop their own culture as time goes on.

I think that's the first time I've heard someone claim that the Moon couldn't have been colonized without going to Mars first.  Hey man are you taking resumes?  Need a hotshot mining engineer to crawl down those caves on Deimos and set off some charges?

And I don't think even that is often enough time!  I bet all of the moon hoax nuts out there will take it as proof positive that Aldrin never went to the Moon because he refused to swear on the Bible.  No doubt the nut that provoked Aldrin will make a pretty penny off the publicity when he starts selling videotapes that claim the encounter as "proof" that we never went to the moon.  Since when does making people swear to anything constitute proof anyway?  We know of all the liars in court who freely swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth with their hands firmly planted on the good book. I think Aldrin saw this guy for what he was, a charlatan that was out to make a buck and on top of that, one that was willing to exploit Aldrin's religious beliefs in the process.  If I was Aldrin I would have punched the idiot's lights out to.

I don't quite envision how this works.  Are they going to "jack up" the building as they construct it so that the first floor they build ends up being the highest floor when it's done?  I think what's really screwing me up is how you said everything is going to be built beneath the enclosed area.  What exactly is the enclosed area?  Is it the exterior frames that are braced together and then filled in?  Please elaborate.

Cindy, how can that "moon" be an Apollo rocket booster when we clearly never went to the Moon?  I suspect this is another NASA hoax to throw us off the track of their dastardly deeds.  Remember to wear the metal hat and keep those evil NASA brain washing waves at bay!

I think another reason why the US isn't likely to go the Manhattan Project route with nano-technology is because there's no pressing military threat demanding that such a course be taken.  I think at the moment the gov't is more concerned with things like missile defense and detecting the whereabouts of terrorists.  I know nano-tech could be used in those applications but there are easier ways in the short term of achieving those goals.

I agree 100%.  Like Carl Sagan said, any species that fails to reach for the stars is doomed to extinction and I don't think a lot of radical environmentalists really grasp that concept.  I sometimes wonder if there have been e.t. civilizations that collapsed and became extinct because they also had these anti-technology "environmentalist" types who eventually convinced the masses to forgo spaceflight and stop developing better sources of energy or whatever.   God knows if we stay Earthbound in five billion years it's going to be over for us and all other life on Earth should we manage to even survive that long.  The Sun turning into a red giant will be an ecological catastrophe if there ever was one, so why not strive to spread life throughout the galaxy and the universe as long as we can do it without harming ecological systems that we might come across as we travel the stars?

I think people who are skilled at preparing food and growing it will be virtual gods on Mars.  I remember reading about how people who stay for long periods in Anartica develop a fanatical interest in food.  They go crazy over obscene little details that people normally don't think about.   And I wouldn't want to subsist on three years of freeze dried food either.  I think agricultural experiments should play a significant role in missions to Mars because nothing will boost morale like biting into a fresh, juicy, vine-ripened tomato after living for a year on freeze dried rations.

I agree that if anybody's likely to develop something like an "assembler" it would be Japan.  But I think we put too much emphasis on the idea that government has to develop everything.  It'll probably be some high-tech upstart company that develops such technology.  Considering the profitable uses nano-technology could be put to I doubt if you'd have a hard time finding investors.