New Mars Forums

Yeah, I get them as well. Could be something to do with the forum software, but beyond that I don't know.

It's an interesting concept, Phobos. I can imagine that with their express consent, the bodies of individuals could be used for medical and agricultural purposes, although those individuals might want to consult their families. However, I don't think that there will ever be a rule for bodies to be 'recycled'.

Firstly, as much as it makes a lot of sense, many people would have religious or moral objections. Secondly, if the colony is in such dire straits as to require mandatory body recycling, that will be the least of their problems. Any colony should have months of supplies and medicine in reserve at any time - in fact, I would say that they should have years of supplies in excess due to their remote and dangerous location.

I wouldn't be against the colony's administration advocating body recycling, but I would be against anything that made it mandatory. Perhaps an anonymous opt-out system would work best.

Another question - if they aren't recycled, where do you put them? Cremation wouldn't be too difficult, I should think, but wouldn't it be cool to be the first person to be buried out on the surface of Mars? (after a long, fruitful life with a natural death, of course  )

Sorry, I was aware of that, it just came out a bit wrong 

As for execution - well, I don't think that you'd need nine months supply of any sedative drug - perhaps a few weeks would be enough to get a crewmember back on his or her feet. But perhaps not. Anyway - even if execution may have its advantages from a utilitarian point of view, I am willing to say that it will never become an option on a manned mission to Mars - not unless someone else's life is in fatal and immediate danger - in which case it really ceases to become an execution in the traditional sense. The politics of execution and the fact that the crewmembers (at least one of whom will be military) would never follow the order through strongly suggests to me that it will not occur.

The thing is, you can't really account for everything. If one crewmember starts rampaging around the ship and smashing stuff up, the mission could well be pretty much over. But the likelihood of that happening is pretty much zero. There's an interesting story to go with this. Apparently once the designers of the Space Shuttle were told to write up a booklet detailing contingencies plans for every possible situation they could think up. And they did pretty well. But in one part, they said:

"Problem: Wings could fall off Shuttle."
"Solution: Design Shuttle so that wings do not fall off."

So that's the thing - you just design the mission so that no-one goes insane. Bit more difficult, but certainly possible.

Bill raises a highly pertinent point in his post, in saying, 'In other words, why is the mission being sent to Mars at all?'

I believe that along with answering this question - which of course may not have any single answer - we must also consider what is needed for a mission to Mars. By this, I mean, what are the absolute basic human requirements for such a mission to work?

If you want to go to the Moon, you don't need any scientists. You really just need a pilot. Ditto for Mars. If all you are planning to go to Mars for is flag and footprings, you might as well just send a pilot. Everything else is secondary.

But returning to Bill's original point, I don't think we can consider every single angle of why a mission is being sent to Mars and all that that entails. We can only consider the most likely scenarios, which might (for example) fall into scientific, expanionist, military or political categories.

And the results are...

Our haiku got second place! Even though there wasn't even suppoed to be a second place prize in the competition, the organiser decided to introduce first, second and third place prizes. This means we get 8000 ad impressions at Kuro5hin to spend as we please, which is equivalent to $24. Not bad at all.

The comments on our haiku were:

The "whispering winds" in the first line will surely resonate with any science fiction reader and, cued by the title, immediately suggest terraforming and the possibility and promise of a fresh planet, empty of activity but tense with the knowlege of a future and a new beginning. This is borne out in the second line which offers a satisfying confirmation. The final line draws together the hope alluded to at the start, and the image of the snow which perhaps is the cold restraint of the current space exploration climate weighing down and freezing these buds of potential.

The ad is imbued with a sense of the conspicuous stillness of a yearning held tightly in check which perfectly captures the small but increasingly vocal efforts of Mars exploration proponents. There is a sense of action held back by stifling beauracracy, a tightly-wound coil ready to spring into action at any moment. Fine work.

Well done Shaun, and everyone at New Mars! I haven't decided what to use the ad impressions on - I think they should be split up so we can use some to point to these forums, some to point to the main index and some for new articles I've got lined up (notably, an interview with Greg Benford). Suggestions welcome.

A new 'Civilization and Culture' forum has been created in the Dorsa Brevia section. I'm also considering creating a general 'Science and Technology' forum in Underhill. I live to serve... 

I attended a talk by NASA astronaut Dr. Bonnie Dunbar here at Cambridge University this evening. I didn't learn anything new, which was hardly surprising since the talk was aimed at the general public. However, I did gain an insight into how NASA handles its PR. The picture NASA presents to the US and international public is that the ISS is still on track, it will be fully completed and the X-38 will be the Crew Rescue Vehicle with seven seats.

Of course, we know that this isn't the case. Right now, NASA only has plans to get to the core-complete stage of the ISS, which will only allow three astronauts to stay there at one time. Furthermore, the X-38 is almost certain cancelled and in fact has been practically dead for perhaps the best part of a year if not more.

Exactly what does NASA intend to do about the ISS? I personally never felt that there was much point spending so much money on a space station when the gains from even remote probes could be much higher. Despite this, I'd either rather they cancel the #### thing now, or commit to completing it.

Just to bump this thread up and say that there are examples of other haiku entries to the competition at this page - they're the top few adverts. As you can see, there's a fair mix of styles.

There's a competition at the Kuro5hin website to create a haiku text advert, and the prize is $60 of free adverts amounting to 20,000 impressions. Needless to say, lots of bright people visit K5 and if we had 20,000 ad impressions for New Mars there, we'd definitely see some action on these forums.

So, all we need to do is to think of a 'strict' haiku that conforms to the 5-7-5 syllable rule and adheres to the tradition of haikus, e.g. seasonal theme, perhaps. It will cost $12 to enter the competition (grumble grumble thieving scumbags) but that will still get us 6000 ad impressions (a discounted rate for the competition) for the haiku - which will have a Mars theme and point to New Mars.

I will put up the money for the competition so all you guys need to do is to send in the haiku submissions by replying to this thread! I will choose a haiku by Wednesday night GMT in time for the close of the entry period on Thursday - so that's 48 hours from now.

My first (inadequate) submission:

Mars, Al Qahira
Waits in anticipation
For a second spring

Hey Shaun, mind if I borrow that detector? I want to show it to the 'Face on Mars' guys... 

I encounter these problems sometimes. I honestly can't say for sure what the problem is. However, I've found that the incomplete loading of pages occurs *far* more often on slower connections (e.g. 56k) than broadband connections. I think part of the problem is that in threads with long posts, the page can be pretty massive and so take a while to load properly.

I don't think the server is the problem - New Mars is hosted on Pair, who have an excellent reputation for industrial-class service. I'll try to look into this a bit more though.

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your introduction, it was interesting reading. Also, thanks for the tip on the profile section - I didn't know that it wasn't working. It turns out that a file was missing, and since then I've replaced it and it's working fine. It's very possible that other previously broken things may be working.

I've started up a new thread to discuss the possibility of new forums.

Josh: 200 CDs worth of info is probably beyond the capability of any Mars Society server to handle    Some kind of general information site would be good - as I've said before, the New Mars system has a few hundred mb of space and bandwidth to spare, so I'm always on the lookout for good projects.