New Mars Forums

If someone truly believes that no one has landed on the moon, then I don't know that they can ever be convinced.  I suppose they might be convinced if they themselves were to go to the moon, but it could all be an elaborate simulator, don't you know.

I remember Disneyland used to have a ride that was supposed to be you taking off from Earth and landing on Mars.  I really believed we had flown to Mars as a kid (my parents convinced me otherwise, and I realized they must be right).  Alas, we didn't really land on Mars..  and I was just a kid.  Surely adults would be far harder to fool. 

Regardless of whether the space shuttle blows up zero more times or blows up a million more times, the US, and any other government, has to know that it would cancel its manned space program at its own peril.  Someone somewhere will have the guts to continually fly people into space, as safely as possible, yes, but regardless of just how safe it can be made, and those that continue to do so will be the ones who gain more benefits than those that don't.

If there is indeed another shuttle accident and NASA does indeed cancel manned flights altogether (forever?  I really can't see it happening), then the US will have lost a huge opportunity to learn and discover huge things about the universe in which we live.

The shuttles are of course more dangerous than 747s (go figure!) but they are not anywhere near the danger level necessary to prevent people from trying.

You seem to be saying that since occasionally people die we should just ditch the entire program altogether and sit on our hands here on Earth for the rest of our days.  That, frankly, is an insane viewpoint, tantamount to saying that we should never have left our caves or that we should all just hole ourselves up in our houses and never leave, because hey, you might get shot, or hit by a meteor, or you might get skin cancer in 80 years.  Hide on Earth if you want, but it would be a huge mistake for any sizeable amount of people to take your viewpoint.

Maybe I'm pointing out the obvious, but what 747s do is inherently far less dangerous than what the space shuttles do.  Surely you realize this?

There's no air in space, for one.  When a nuclear bomb explodes, it superheats the air, which spreads out and burns things.  I imagine that in space a nuclear bomb would unleash mounds of radiation, which you probably wouldn't want bouncing into you, but I don't think there would be much else besides a bright flash of light.  I'm not sure what would happen to the bomb casing itself..  Would it simply remain intact?  What force would exist to break it apart?  Oh yeah, and if the bomb casing remained intact, I guess you wouldn't see any light after all...

Even if manned missions to Mars do prove to be amazingly dangerous (which I doubt), as long as people are willing to go, what's the problem?  If the politicians (administrators, whoever) really think it's important, they can only let single people go up, or have the entire family sign waivers with giant letters that every news camera can pick up that say 'WE KNOW JIM MAY DIE' blah blah blah etc etc etc.

It's not like astronauts are forced into space, or that they don't realize it's more than a little dangerous..  Sweet Jesus above, if the fact that astronauts' missions are less safe than staying on the ground and watching 'Desperate Housewives' really becomes such an issue that space missions are utterly cancelled, we're doomed.

Let's hope Huygens didn't reach for the secret too soon (it reached for the moon).  PARTS I-VII AND PARTS VII-XI and of course the secret 'lost' PART MCII

If Phobos is an asteroid, why does it have the grooves?  The only way such features could form that I can think of is by layering of deposits..  if it were to fly through some sort of 'scouring' field (tiny bits of rock) it seems like it would look sandblasted, not covered in parallel grooves.

If you go to the Cassini Imaging page at http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/]here you will see some images of Titan..  it looks like a cloudy hazy thing to me.

The rocks are bluish, too, in a way that looks unnatural to me..  I'm not sure the sky is really that blue, but it certainly doesn't look very red. 

once we discover proof of life on Mars, everything will change!

oh wait, no it won't, people will just adapt the new facts to their preexisting beliefs, just like they always have since the beginning of time..

Placing punctuation within quotations is madness.  The quotation itself didn't originally contain the punctuation (probably).  Whoever came up with that rule needs to burn long, burn long in the hot place.  Editors only know how to complain, not how to ENJOY.  I'LL SEE YOU DOWN BELOW, YOU SANCTIMONIOUS MONKEYS.   :band: