New Mars Forums

Several reasons:

• Mars likely did not have a warm-wet environment for long enough for complex life, such as an ice worm, to develop

• Cells require liquid water to function.  On Mars, this means massive amounts of salt that would necessarily inhibit the enzymes and vital biological functions of a cell, not even to mention a more complex, megamulticellular organism

• Metabolize Ferrous Oxide--- excuse me?

• If life could survive in this kind of environment, one would naturally expect it to propagate planetwide in a very visible manner through evolution.  This is especially true if megamulticellular organisms can survive, because monocellular organisms are much hardier.  We have never discovered any evidence that this is the case, therefore it is unlikely that this is a locale that supports life

• Mars' water deposits are probably both highly acidic and strong oxidizers, both of which present significant threats and impediments to the survival of life forms within

• If there were multicellular organisms on Mars, there would be all sorts of other kinds of organisms.  The presence of organisms necessarily implies high levels (not the ppb range that may or may not have even been detected) of Methane.  Because methane is certainly lower than .01 ppm planetwide (in fact, Curiosity results have just come out putting a lower bound to atmospheric composition around 2 ppb, which is to say that they haven't detected any at all), there are presumably not lifeforms.

Impossible?  No.  Likely or even reasonable?  Not so much.  That's why this is perfect fodder for science fiction.

I have been reading many of the news releases and have found that many of the thoughts are very simular to many that the various forums that I have visited have had posted on them including this one.

Mars One foundation inks deals with Lockheed, Surrey

A privately funded unmanned Mars mission will launch in 2018, officials with the non-profit Mars One foundation announced Tuesday. The mission will include an orbiting communications relay station, a lander equipped with a robotic arm, water generating gear, experimental thin-film solar panels and student experiments. The lander will be based on the design of the 2007 Phoenix Mars lander that Lockheed Martin developed for NASA. Lansdorp said the Lockheed Martin contract was valued at slightly more than $250,000 while the Surrey agreement came to about $60,000. He would not disclose internal projections for the mission's eventual cost other than to tell reporters he expected it to be less than NASA's next Mars lander, the $425 million Phoenix-derived Insight mission scheduled for launch in 2016.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1312/11 … lander.jpg

With any private group wanting to get a mission to go to mars it is quite a feat to get enough funds to make it happen and it will take those that are more than just rich to make one happen.

I wonder if any cube sats are planned by others to catch a piggyback ride on this nission. as it would lower the cost for all to get to mars....

Louis two recent posts, suggesting Research, Entertainment, Advertising, and National Interests as sources of money, and it all makes sense to me.

I also see that he mentions timing being favorable to this.

I would add that this plan also has the following favorable aspect:
-Some scientists and others have a phobia about contaminating Mars with Earth organisms.
-Louis said that he thought that in a few decades human presence is a likely possibility.

-But if robotic probes do not confirm the existance of life on Mars (But still do not rule it out), it will be likely that the temptation for doing science on the ground will be so much greater than the impulse to prevent the spread of Earth organisms, that the scientific community will tilt towards favoring people on Mars for research.

Get the ice water ready, and have a sense of humor if you can.   
“In my opinion”: Outer space, which means anything not Earth, offers the following things I will mention, and of course other things I do not mention or am not aware of.
1)    Bulk raw materials/Energy.
2)    Potential habitats for humans.
3)    Space time induced communication lags (Extremely significant).
In it’s infancy a Mars community will want from the “Developed World” (Earth), whatever it can get at a good price. 
Unless you choose to intentionally go the Greenland route, which is a bit of a warning.  A small group of highly specialized Vikings of a small subset of the whole Nordic population, finds a few locations in Greenland where they can do marginal farming, due to a temporary favorable shift in the planets climate.  They are specialized, under the thumb of a ear-mouth entity .
Although the sea offers very significant resources for food, and the Inuit have a significant other technology, these people are farmers, and as the Inuit have strange ways, the ear-mouth entity inhibits any inclination that the local population has to adopt a different survival method.  In other words they remain specialized, and do not generalize, and are non adaptive.
The climate deteriorates, travel to Europe becomes  non-profitable due to sea ice conditions.  They consume their stock of wood, which was poor in the first place.  It appears that they did make attempts at some point to travel to mainland North America at some point, perhaps for wood.
A few very bad years for farming, and they all starved to death (Apparently).
Had they adopted Inuit technology, and also maintained a sea faring technology, and also had a greater genetic and cultural diversity, they might have had better odds to leave more than a memory of their existence .  But they specialized, and that branch passed into history, with the possibility that a few of them might have gotten back to Iceland.
Mars would ship bulk raw materials to Earth most likely if it shipped any material goods.   

Actually, I think the real deal would be the Asteroids next door selling raw materials to Mars and Earth, and Mars and Earth selling manufactured goods to them.

Mars would likely for some time like to participate in created goods from other locations in the solar system, of a better quality, because with variances in population and local materials and energy conditions, some items could be better produced at certain locations.  Much as exists in our current world economy.

Mars offers a chance for a habitat.  It also offers space time induced communication lags, perhaps allowing for greater individuality.
Maintaining our balance between being a top predator or prey is very important to me.
In my opinion: With the birth of civilizations, it was possible to generate human sub-populations which specialize in directing the activities of masses of humans.  This is valuable for focus and efficiency, but also due to specialization, such a population eventually looses generalist insight, and sinks to the base motivations of a top predator.  The efficiency by direction is valuable as long as the general population is allowed greater right of individual action, but the top predator population loosing awareness capability eventually resorts to competition with other powerful entities for control of all things, the results being unfavorable to the continuation of adaptability.  That culture becomes more vulnerable to bad outcome from a new challenge to it.
The forms of human intelligence are manifested in individual realms supported by individual brains.
Verbalization and other forms of communication allow Hierarchy and Networks, and produce hive minds.  The only reason that we don’t do everything with crowds of people verbalizing is that it is slow, much slower than the pudding in my head can think.  But it has broader resources, as in library.  But a hive network is open to an infection from top predators, with limited awareness and base desires.
The good news is that with the time lags that space time provides, communities in space at a distance from each other can be insulated from such predation, because verbal and other hive communications will be slowed down even further, and the pudding in our individual heads can be used for better purposes then to satisfy silly agenda’s which result from the situation which I have described above.

Therefore I am pleased with your notion of an implied population on the Moon, and a settlement of Mars.  Some populations insulated from Earth Hive activities will result.  A network of populations with time lags in their communications with each other will help to balance the situation so that creativity (Child thoughts) may be birthed, (Creativity, Invention), and the whole structure will not be co-opted to provide satisfaction of base desires for a subset that specializes in communication and the manipulation of populations.

Your  Earth/Moon/Mars plan is an excellent one, but Cycling spaceships with time lags added to that could be even better.
I do not require you to agree that any of this is true, but rather simply wanted to express how I see things, my opinion.

I read tons of scenario's how to get to Mars,

I dreamed for years to go myself, one way or another,

I got old all of a sudden and realised it won't happen in my lifetime. So I buried the dream and got on with my life.

... And two days ago I had a chat with someone from another continent, and then with another young man from yet another continent. They were adamant they will get there one day.

... And I realised there are now young people among us who want to go and -for the first time in history- have a reason to believe it will actually be possible. (Musk's plans)

They were both people like you and me, saving all but every penny to get a ticket, studying hard to have a relevant experience/diploma.

It blew my mind.

So I started reading the comment section of articles on Mars plans (not on places like space.com etc, that's too positively biased)

And sure, a lot of people laugh it away, say we have to solve problems on Earth first yadda yadda yadda.

But there seems to be quite a bit of buzz from people saying it inspires them, people thinking it's cool etc

It helps a lot that Musk is being portrayed as the super cool glamour superhero....

Of course, it's not a given Musk will succeed, but I'm sensing there is now a real change in how people think about going to Mars, it's not 100% crazy anymore, only, say 70%.

Or am I seeing things?

I mean, I never ever heard a hemi-demi-semi believable plan to go to Mars from any of the big Spaceorgs when I was young, Musk's plans are barely more tangible, but there is a sense he really really is going to do it or die trying (and since he's somewhat of a superhero, he won't die )

I'm just guessing that a glass made of basaltic material will be a hard,  opaque product somewhat similar to natural volcanic glass here on Earth.  There would be a variety of uses for such a product,  ranging from tools and dishes to building material. 

There is a definite need for a transparency material.  As far as I know,  that is silica glass.  There is silica sand on Mars,  just "not everywhere" in concentrations that would be useful.  The places where it is,  should be identified.  That's where you put your transparency factory. 

Ultimately,  surface transport by truck or train will be the most practical,  but until that infrastructure exists,  you will have to fly in order to transport people and product.  The air is too thin for airplanes,  but suborbital rocket flight would work.  So,  the same landing craft that put people on Mars could be used for this,  if (and only if) they were designed from the outset to be reused with a long service life.  You just displace some propellant weight with more payload weight for suborbital flight (that is,  provided your craft was designed with the extra volume to contain the extra payload).

You will not get that kind of service out of something with a 5% structural inert weight fraction. 

GW

Spacenut's link to the older thread is indeed interesting.  Glass-as-a-substitute-for-cement in a "concrete".  Hmmmm.   Has anyone ever actually made such a material?

What about means to concentrate surface calcium sources into the 10+% range so that glass-as-we-know-it becomes feasible on Mars in those locations where SiO2 is available?  I'm looking for clear glass panels for habitats and greenhouses. 

GW