New Mars Forums

Its hard to model a Martian Colony in Antartica, getthing there is expensive and so is resupply, but I think there could be some payback for it if we allowed for some economic exploitation of Antartica to offset the cost of the colony.

I mean, if we are going to have a model Martian colony in Antartica, what useful activity are we going to have them do there? If the activity is useful to say an Energy company, then that energy company might pay for part of the project if we allowed that energy company to extract some resources from Antartica. If we don't give the colonists something to do in that model colony, what are they going to do with themselves, eat, sleep, and watch television. Has anyone ever tried wearing a spacesuit in Antartica? I see most scientists don't wear such things, they wear artic garb instead, they try to cover every square inch of their skin, they wear goggles gloves and boots along with 6 layers of clothing.

If they had a Mars spacesuit, they should be quite confortable working in the Martian environment. A properly designed Mars spacesuit shouldn't allow the scientists to feel any of the Artic cold, they will never see their breath, they will cycle through the airlock into their habitat and live in a comfortable environment at the proper temperature and at the proper level of humidity. A guy in a Mars suit, should be able to pick up a handful of snow and ice and not feel the cold. I heard that a person in Artic Garb can stay out in the Antartic for up to 3 hours at a time. A person in a Mars suit should be able to stay out there for as long as the power supply lasts. I think one first step for preparing for a Mars mission is to give the Antartic scientists Mars suits to try out, and see how they like them. The Mars suits won't carry their own oxygen supply, but would instead heat the air as it comes through the intake, have a rebreathing system to remove the carbon dioxide from the internal air, and take in additional air from the outside as needed.

That just goes to show you the power of propaganda. Make the victim seem like the aggressor and the aggressor seem like the victim. Do you think the loser in every conflict should always win? Germany was losing World War II, should we feel sorry for Germany because in the final year of the conflict it was out numbered and outgunned by the allies. Hey, they were ganging up on those "poor Germans", hey that's not fair! Maybe the Germans should win instead of lose!

What about the Japanese during World War II? It was just an Island country in the middle of the Pacific in 1945, we mostly sunk their navy and we were bombing their cities, wasn't that unfair that we were picking on a country that was smaller than we were, and wasn't it racist that were we attacking mostly Asians in the Pacific conflict?  :twisted:

That was just a little sarcasm their, I don't really ask questions like that because I believe the Germans and the Japanses were the wronged party in WWII, but I hope I've made a point.

Oh, that's great! All we have to do is launch a nuclear rocket and have an accident spilling radioactive contamination into the atmosphere and suddenly a World Government forms that is democratically elected, all the worlds dictators will fall and popular acclaim will matter and they'll say no more space flights.  :twisted:

If that were only true, then it would be worth the nuclear accident, but its not. the world is not completely run by democratic countries. If we give up on space, their are dictatorships in China, and Russia that would only be glad to conquer space instead of us, using whatever technology is available. If we cede the space race, someone else will win. I'm glad the Chinese have got an astronaut program, not because I want them to beat us to Mars, but because we need them to drive us to pick up our pace or lose the race. Do you think it all depends on the US Congress and who gets elected there? Not anymore, NASA is not the World Space Agency, and I think the rest of the World is no longer going to take a back seat to it, if it slacks off. Our time for fiddling around and going in circles in space is over. If their is an avenue we could try to get into space more cheaply, we should try it. in short, we should think outside the box, that's how scaled composites got into space after all. I think for the last 30 years, NASA has had a bad case of conventionalitis we need ways to get to Mars cheaply. Billion dollar footprints are not acceptable, this is the 21st century, and some people are prepared to remain stuck on this planet for the next 100 years, and I think we need to get off this planet for our own safety. Look at the world today, religious fanatics, terrorism, the spreading of nuclear bomb technology. Seems like Russia and China are no longer interested in preventing nuclear proliferation, so the cat's out of the bag, we might as well build Orion spaceships since more and more countries are going to get nuclear weapons anyway, and the more that have them the more likely they'll be used. So long as nukes threaten our very existance, I think we should try to get some positive use out of them while we still can.

I think it will not matter if we have not used Orion spaceships to spread radioactive contamination in the atmosphere if we then have a nuclear war. I think its only a matter of time, no one's stopping North Korea, no one's stopping Iran, or Venuzualia, no one wants to help the United States in curbing proliferation, because they want to give us a "black eye" by letting a few of our enemies gain nuclear weapons to threaten us with, that of course means more countries will have nukes and nuclear war will be more likely. if we just fiddle and let thing go on as they are, we will all be sorry.

Chemical rockets have not gotten off this planet in signifiant numbers, the have instead made billion dollar foot prints on the Moon, and we need to do more than this, even Stephen Hawking thinks this is so.

I can't help but think of how badly all those investors and stockholders of the Transnational companies got screwed when Mars had its revolution and reordered its whole society and economy to exclude them, they are the ones who paid for the terraforming of Mars, and they got royally screwed. The were the big suckers of the whole Red, Green, Blue trilogy, and its not that their all rich either. I try to put myself in the shoes of a transnat investor, and I keep on coming up with the question of why should I pay for this all if the Martians are simply going to rebel and steal my investments.

As for the misbehavior of the Transnats, we'll every good story needs a villian or obstacle to overcome, and the transnats were it. Terraforming Mars takes a long time and any author of such a trilogy needs a filler to keep the story going while the reader waits for Mars to be terraformed. 200 years is a bit short, but I think projecting society and technology 200 years into the future is very difficult, I don't think it will stay the same as it is today, but what changes will occur in 200 years is also hard to say. Transnats served as the badguys in these books, and I understand the literary need for such. Heck I might have used them myself were I reading the book, but them in Blue Mars, trying to make general conclusions about economics and transnats based on the behavior of some of them was a step too far. I don't think you can say much about economics based on the behavior of fictional transnats. The conclusion I come to is that the Transnats weren't governed or regulated very well by their respective governments, they were allowed to build private armies and fight wars with each other. I think a more realistic solution would be to have stronger national governments with monopolies on military force which is what is in effect to day, rather than to revolutionize the concept of private property and reorder society. In better only to make sufficient changes to solve the problem at hand rather than to reorder the way everyone lived to solve those problems.

I think misbehaving companies don't require sweeping statements on economics in general, only that those misbehaving companies be policed and the offenders punished. A corrupt corporate manager is not an inditement of Capitalism, just an inditement of that company in particular. In the Red, Green, Blue trilogy, the Transnats were simply allowed to get away with too much, and the solution was simply, enforce the law and don't let them get away with flouting it.

I think a better way to do a terraforming story, is to put the main characters at the end of the terraforming process. One way I suggested in another thread is to present an alternate history where Mars was already terraformed and had humans on it. the terraforming was done by aliens in the distant past, and NASA astronauts are presented with the final product of a terraformed Mars. the technology is still reconizable because its todays technology, the society is recognizable because it is today's society and politics, it is only Mars that is different, and the worlds space programs as a result of this different Mars are also different. In NASAs case, the Apollo program was followed by a manned exploration of Mars, when the Mariner spacecraft came back with positive results of very flagrent Mars life on its surface, it is really transplanted and modified Earthlife. now you may ask why did the aliens do this? They didn't do it for the Earthlings, but for themselves, but then some disaster over took them living only the finished product of a terraformed Mars. In this case I do not have centuries to kill and to tell the story. Mars is done, and all that is left to do is for astronauts to explore it.

I saw March of the Penguins on DVD. Seems to me by looking at their breeding habits, they have much in common with another flightless bird, the Dodo. The Penguins like the Dodo lay their eggs on land in an area that is largely devoid of their natural predators, and like the Dodo, they weren't afraid of people. In the "Making of" special feature that came with the movie, they showed the film crew getting up close to the birds and the birds not reacting. The Emperor Penguin basically has to stand there all huddled up through the Antartic winter to keep their eggs warm and their chicks alive. This feature seems vulnerable to environmental changes.

Put on one end of the scale Islamo-facists financed by oil purchases in the middle east blowing people up with their bombs, on the other end of the scale, put the Antartic coastal environment, Penguins, fish, seals etc., vulnerable to potential oil spills. What I'd like most of all is to find a substitute for the Middle East, so we can not go their for our oil, this would require quite a bit of oil exploration, because who really knows whats under those glaciers. The prospect of Arabs or Iranians building bombs and giving them to terrorists to kill westerners who bought their oil and paid for their bomb is incentive to find oil elsewhere if only to deprive terrorists of these resources and sponsorship from oil-producing terrorist countries.

To build a domed colony in Antartica, we need a reason to have large numbers of people their, an economic reason would work best. What else might be in Antartica, Natural Gas for one. Natural gas does not spill like crude oil does, perhaps it would be better to drill for natural gas in Antartica. Energy companies could pay for domed settlements to house their workers and in the process we'll get to test various methods for building domed settlements in hostile environments that could later be applied toward Mars. Anything built on Earth would have to be more robust structurally than on Mars, except that the internal pressure a Martian dome would be required to hold inside would be greater than an Antarctic dome, Some pressurization might be a good idea for Antartica, especially for those high altitude glaciers. A sea level pressure inside would make breathing easier, and a dome is a very efficient structure for keeping out cold. Internal pressure would hold up the dome structure, without which we'd need structural elements to hold it up. One greater problem in Antartica would be wind, the wind force on the dome surface in Antartica would be greater than on Mars. The Dome would contort under the force of the wind that howls outside. The Sun would heat the dome during the summer, during the winter, it might be a good idea to burn off some of the natural gas to heat the interior. A dome could allow for year round operations for gas extraction. A more efficient transportation system would also be required for getting into and out of Antarctica. I hear the scientists at the south pole station are often quite isolated during the winters. We'll need a means for people and equipment to come and go all year round despite the cold temperatures and adverse winter outside.

There don't need to be many! We couldn't send many if we wanted to, but there are always a few, and that's all we need and all we can afford to send to Mars. The reason why we are Suburbanites instead of pilgrims or settlers is because we mostly work for someone else rather than for ourselves as our forebears used to do when they farmed their own land. Because we work for someone else, we must live near the city, and I hate the city, I don't like going near the place, but that unfortunately is where all the money and jobs are, so I'm tied to that damn stinking city as if it were a ball and chain, and the worst of it is, that its so vulnerable to nuclear attack, but because of economic necessity and the stupidity of employers, I've forced to live near their too. If I could live where ever I wanted too, I'd live out in the country, the real country, not this suburbs with million dollar homes that I can't afford.

Likewise, if you exercise them under Earth gravity, they are likely to grow bigger and stronger, people who lift weights have this happen to them. Being subjected to stronger gravity is likely to have the same effect as those Martians lifting weights. The DNA chains are persistant, the mutations required to inalterably adapt to the Martian gravity are going to be slow in coming, and the genes for dealing with Earth gravity are likely to be long in persisting. Muscles may weaken. On the otherhand people living on Mars have rason to utilize their Earth muscles to their full capacity.

The reason they are on Mars is to go out side, to go outside, they need to carry their oxygen and life support system on their back, this is likely to make them weigh at least as much if not more than they did on Earth. If they are going to stay indoors and get weak in the muscles, they might as well not be on Mars in the first place.

Demanding 100% safety all the time is what keeps us on Earth. Do you want to avoid all nuclear accidents, or do you want to get humans off Earth and spread our risks? I think the risk of nuclear accident is over avoided putting us in danger of other risks such as all of us being wiped out by nuclear war and none of us surviving the attack  as we were too busy trying to avoid nuclear accidents in getting off Earth and so we stayed all on one planet, vulnerable.

Do rockets typically launch over populated areas?

You seem to be assuming that  a failed nuclear rocket would always fall in a densely populated area dropping nice solid chunks of concentrated plutonium so as to make the area uninhabitable and forcing its evacuation. the Pacific ocean is not very populated. The Atlantic is even less so. A nuclear launcher can always be rigged sith exploses so any fallout won't come down in a concentrated mass. Instead of banning nuclear launches to avoid nuclear accidents, why not design the nuclear rockets so that accidents are less likely to happen and if accidents happen plan the flight trajectory so that the rockets don't overfly populated areas.

The best strategy is to launch over an ocean and quickly attain orbital velocity and failing to do this on schedule, blow up the rocket so that it lands in unpopulated areas. Shouldn't be hard to do, we have reliable bombs.

The question is, will they infact adapt, is it just environment that determines the amount of muscles or is it genetics? The genes will "want" to make bigger muscles designed for Earth gravity, since such muscles aren't really a disadvantage in dealing with Martian gravity, I don't see those genes disappearing any time soon. It is also not clear that the human body wouldn't adapt if subjected to Earth gravity even if the children were born on Mars. The genes would instruct the body to built a heart and muscles of a certian size regardless of what's needed on Mars. Millions of years of evolution has created bodies designed for Earth, one generation born on Mars is not going to change that.

An upper stage rocket that heats hydrogen as a propellant above the Earth's Atmosphere. So long as the thrust is high enough, it can take the space ship the rest of the way to orbit. It goes like this. You have a lower stage that uses some cheap easy to handle rocket fuel to thrust the Vehicle above the atmosphere and then a nuclear Nerva rocket takes over. The real danger is concentrated radioactives, the higher the nuclear engine is when it first goes on, the more dispersesd the propellent is, and were talking about hydrogen here, even the heavier more radioactive isotopes will tend to stay on top of the atmosphere. I'm interested in any way to make space flight cheaper. if someone just has a knee-jerk reaction that "if its nuclear, it must be bad," that is rather unfortunate and it makes people not consider the possibilities or even try to fix the problems they have with the concept, while currently were are doing worse things to Earth's environment than nuclear rockets would have done. There are many ways a substance can be harmful to the environment, radioactivity is just one of them.

Why space is space. Scaled Composites reached space without reaching orbit. What if we had a chemical booster with a nuclear upper stage? The bottom booster could fall back into the atmosphere and be recovered for later use, just like Space Ship One was. The upper nuclear stage can then reach orbit, but the larger more expensive portion of the launch system could be made reusable. The upper nuke stage is only a problem if it fails and doesn't reach orbit, so if we design it properly, it won't fail most of the time. The reaction mass would be hydrogen with a higher specific impulse. If Iran can have nuclear reactors and the World gives its assent to that, which apparenly does, who can object to nuclear rockety which is much safer than an Iranian fanatic with a nuclear weapon?

There are alot of things that damage the environment alot more than a nuclear rocket would. the exhaust from the Shuttles SRBs is not healthy after all, is the reason that its unhealthy being chemical rather than radioactive all that consequential. I hear that doctors used to prescribe mercury to their patients, they'd swallow some mercury and it would go right down their digestive track, well most of it anyway. Compared to that, I think the rocket exhaust of a nuclear rocket released in space is less dangerous than a spoonful of mercury swallowed by a single patient.

Then I take it your not an American. Well I am, and the Iranians say, "Death to America!" the put American flags on their floors and they walk all over them, and now they say they want nuclear power for "peaceful purposes"? I am an American, if they say, "Death to America," they are effectively saying they want to put me to death, and so that makes it personal because they are threatening me, and Russia wants to help them build a nuclear bomb. I don't think that's paranoid. You blithely say they are lying when they say, "Death to America," and telling the truth when they say they want nuclear power for peaceful purposes, how do you know its not the other way around. I'm sorry, I just can't get along peacefully with someone who wants to kill me, and the Russians want to help them to kill me, so as long as we do that, I don't want my country involved with any collaborative projects with them so they can gain our technologies so they can pass them on the the Iranians and hence make their job of building bombs and long range missile easier. I don't believe in time outs and having tea with our enemies, and so long as the Russian government acts the way it is, it will be our enemy. They make competant engineers, I don't question them on that, but I don't trust their government.

I don't know if the Russians are evil, but they have not stepped up the the plate and seized control of their government. They overthrew communism, only to let another dictator seize control of their government and they did not fight it! This really disillusioned me with the whole detente cycle, I used to believe in it you know.

I wish their could be real peace between our countries, not peace as defined for them, where they have a chance to rearm or attack us in other ways all under the guize of peace and negotiation. Iran is our enemy, has been since its Islamic Revolution in 1979, anyone who is the friend of this Iranian government that wants us dead is not our friend. If the Russians want to change, then that is good, but so far I have not seen this. I think a space race will bring more progress anyway, it worked in the Apollo years. I think its always best to keep one's enemies at arms length rather than close at hand, where they can undermine and sabotage you.