New Mars Forums

Thumbs on the article.  I love these crazy ideas that border on the insane. 

Yeah that's it!  Explorers, haven't seen that film in a very very long time, can barely remember the plot.  I don't remember the part about flying through a hill but I do remember them flying inside of a bubble to take them to the alien mothership.  I've gotta go to the video rental store and see if they have that movie.  LOL, love the part about the grubs. 

Do you run that SETI@Home program?  On their website they show what that signal would look like in the screensaver.  I used to watch the screensaver in anticipation of that momentous arc that would suddenly appear out of nowhere on my humble pc and usher in a new age of enlightenment for all humanity.   I think though that our equipment is too limited at the moment to really pick up "alien chatter" that it isn't meant for the cosmic community.  Our radio telescopes would barely be able to pick up Earth's typical transmissions from 50 light years out and not much further (I'm talking powerlevels, not just because we've only been broadcasting for less than a century.)  I get a feeling that once we're able to significantly improve our transmitter/reciever technology we'll be able to catch a lot of signals we couldn't before hand.  I don't think the problem is so much that the universe is quiet, it's just that our ears are in some serious need of hearing aids.

I hope they find something promising when they revisit those signals.   The last laugh might be on Cindy when we pick love notes from across the galaxy.  It would be mind blowingly awesome to pick up a signal of alien origin.  For some reason I've all of a sudden remembered this campy movie about these three teenagers that pick up an alien signal and build their own ship to follow it.  Can't remember the title right off, but the aliens don't exactly turn out to be profound beings.

So goes the the immortal words of Eugene the genius. :laugh:

Those are some truly disturbing viewpoints your relatives have and I have to admit that members of my own blood line share similiar views.  People seem to take everything in their lives for granted, their refrigerators, the medications they take, the electricity that powers the lights they read by, etc.  We wouldn't have any of these things if it wasn't for pure basic research that didn't have immediate payoffs.  Scientific research is especially important to undertake in this day and age since the only way we can support a huge population on Earth is through technology.  There's no going back to the forest to live off the land for most of humanity.  Nature simply couldn't support it.  Ultimately, I think science and technological developments are in the same vein as creating art in the sense that they are a means of expressing our intellectual abilities.  People have no problem supporting the arts but they seem to shrug when it comes to building something like a super collider that could enhance our understanding of the universe many times and lead to technological spinoffs down the line that would make our lives much more productive and enjoyable.  People can be so shortsighted. 

From everything I read, NASA is suffering something of a brain drain as many of its senior science and engineering personnel retire.  Students nowadays would rather work in other areas than spaceflight and it's showing.  So I'm not sure I buy the "dime a dozen" analogy.  And to be quite honest, I think it should be our goal to make space a "dime a dozen" place and not some exclusive playground for elitist astronauts.  Ad Astra was right, we should be working to make space open to the masses, otherwise I see little point in continuing manned space missions.  I'm more excited over the possibilities of space tourism than I am about that over-priced and under utilized lemon called the ISS.

I mean it, considering your intense interest in philosophy and the copious volumes you read and your reflection on them, It wouldn't surprise me a bit if you had at least a Master's degree level knowledge in Enlightenment Era philosophy.  Most of the people in college anyway probably don't explore their particular subjects any further than what they're presented with in their courses unless they get teaching jobs.  To switch gears, I have to say though that Malsherbes would get my vote.  Anybody who kicks censorship laws in the pants has my approval.

I'm ashamed to say it, but I've never actually read anything by Arthur C. Clark.  I'm thinking of picking up his space elevator novel because I'm such an SE nut.

For the time being I can't see a prize inducing anyone to try for Mars.  There's still too much expensive R&D on life support, human health, etc. to be done concerning manned Mars flights.  Also, unlike the X-Prize competition where competitors who lose can still make money on their rockets by selling rides to tourists, I see no way that a team that loses the Mars bid could hope to regain the vast amounts of money they would lose.  I don't think you'll find very many ultra-rich tourists willing to take a year or more out of their lives for a flight to Mars.  I could be wrong of course, but I just don't see a Mars prize being an effective route to go right now, perhaps in the future though.

Do we really want to launch nuclear powered rockets from the ground?  I used to be a big supporter of the idea but I've been having second thoughts lately.  Even though there's no doubt a nuclear rocket could be cheaper, more efficient, and all around better than a chemical based rocket,  I just haven't been sold on the safety issue yet.  At the very least if we do use nuclear rockets to launch from Earth, we should launch them away from major population centers, perhaps build a platform out in the ocean for the task.  I do support unequivocally though the use of nuclear power reactors in space even though I think, as Josh Cryer mentioned, we'd be better off trying to develop more efficient non-nuclear power sources.  Since I believe that private interests will be the ones to make spaceflight possible in a big way, and since they likely won't be allowed to use a lot of nuclear options, I think we might be better off trying to develop better solar cells and other non-nuclear power sources.

Yeah, Mishima basically hijacked a building and cried over a loud speaker for the Japanese not to destroy their heritage and then he committed seppuku in the Samurai tradition.  He considered the old aristocratic traditions under the Emperor to be the golden age of Japan and thought Japan was going down hill after Japan was occupied.  He touched on this in his novel "Decay of the Angel."  Have you read "Sailor" by any chance?  A lot of people don't like it but it just spoke to me. I have a lot of pet theories about the book but I don't want to spoil it if you haven't read it.

You could probably wipe the floor with most philosophy Ph.D.s out there.  What is "Malesherbes" about?  That term is totally new to me.  What kind of philosophy?

I hope some new theory doesn't come along and trash the current thinking about the composition of the polar caps.  We should send a rover there capable of taking cores to verify that the caps are mostly water.  I'm thinking the best place for a first colony on Mars might be at the poles simply because there would be easy access to water there.  Producing oxygen and drinking water would be no problem as well as fuel.   It might also be a good place to look for life or fossils deep underground.

I finished re-reading The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima recently.  It just gets better everytime, my favorite novel by far.  Ecrasez, you might enjoy reading "Villette" by one of the Brontes.  When I took a Victorian Literature class in college as an elective I was expecting to have a borefest, but those novels were actually quite good.  My favorite Victorian novel is "Jude the Obscure."  That book apparently made for a lot of toasty bonfires during the Victorian age.  Has anyone been reading any non-fiction lately?  I have to admit I mostly read non-fiction now, I'm in the middle of "The Gulag Archipelago" written by a guy with unpronounable name and everytime I finish reading a section it makes want to get on my knees and kiss the free dirt beneath my feet.    :;):

That was an impressive pic of a Martian cyclone.  It looks like a hurricane that's taking up about half the planet.  Considering how thin the Martian air is, I wonder if standing in that thing would be like standing in a strong breeze on Earth, just with a lot of sand flying by.  Flying kites on Mars might become an interesting past time.  Put on the helmet and take the kite out.  The thinner air might not support such an activity on a regular basis but maybe the lesser gravity would equal things out?