New Mars Forums

Soph,

I am totally with you on the NTR thing.  I just think the public would say something like, "Linch the nuke lovers!!!".  Or at least it would be a hard sell.  The FAA would probably hold us up for years if we did it privately.  I assume your talking about using the NTRs from the Earth's surface.  I bet firing them up in LEO (for an interplanetary mission) wouldn't be that much of a problem, though.

Dicktice,

I like the idea about launching everything you can into LEO and leaving it all there.  It is pathetic how we just throw away all these huge (expensive) rockets after just one use.

I've never thought much about designing fuel tanks with rooms built into them.  Has there been much research about that.

Oh, that comment about Mars Direct spacecraft being assembled in LEO is way off.  The whole point of Mars Direct is to avoid on orbit assembly.

One thing just came to mind about using powered decent.  By the time powered decent vehicles finally get approval from congress and finally get designed and built there will be better heat resistant materials (and computer guidance) out there that might make powered decent less important or even obsolete.  Just playing Devil's advocate.  :angry:

OK dicktice and soph,

You both worry about tiles, heat shields, or spray material being to heavy to launch.  What about all that propellant needed for a powered landing?  Dicktice has been talking about refueling at the ISS.  Where does the fuel come from?  Is it shipped in from an ice rich asteroid?  Is it launched with an expendable heavy lift launch vehicle?  It seems to me that shipping extra fuel into orbit will be much more costly than burning up a heat shield.

I'm no engineer so this idea is probably full of holes, but here goes.

Let's build a spaceplane with a moderate heat shield and load it with a moderate amount of fuel.  Instead of using a direct entry it could skip along the upper atmosphere slowly shedding some of its speed while only moderately heating its heat shield and not burning it away.  It could maintain a high altitude by slowly pitching back until it neared a stall.  I would guess that this would take several orbits to accomplish.  At that point (hopefully after shedding much of its velocity) the engines would kick in and burn for a much shorter time.  Then the reentry would happen just like dicktice described.

I don't know much about hypersonic upper-atmospheric flight, but it seems to me that aerodynamics would still work up there.  OK...anyone with half a brain can now chew up my plan and spit it back in my face.  I'll wear the shades to protect my eyes from the chewed up shrapnel.

I agree completely with you, soph.

I think I can safely assume that all governments have a a lot of drag.  They tend to slow down the economy.  Of course much of what governments do benefits society - I don't dispute that.  I would like to discuss ways of streamlining government.  I, of course, have an American point of view.  Let me know if your country differs from my examples.

The first thing that I can think of is the tax code.  Huge volumes of tax laws are added to it every year.  Even accountants don't know all the laws.  I don't know how many accountants work in America right off hand, but the accounting classes here at college sure are full.  Business accountants actually help businesses and are useful to the economy, so I don't have a problem with them.  It's the tax accountants that are a drag on the economy.
   Most people I know pay an acountant to do their taxes.  (That's kinda like an extra tax, isn't it?)  I'm sure many could argue that accountants provide a very useful service - I agree.  They just don't need to.  They are simply a link between govt. and individuals, a translator if you will, because the govt. has made the tax code too confusing for individuals to handle on their own.  (Of course, you can file on your own, but accountants find the loopholes that you might miss.)  Engineers, retailers, inventors, doctors, manufactures, etc. all have jobs that actually contribute to the economy.  They are involved in the market.  Tax accountants just aren't.

I propose a simple tax code.  Libertarians want a flat tax (Russia uses one now).  I know some in here like the progressive tax.  Either way is fine with me as long as it is simple.  Put the entire tax code on a postcard.  This would put tax accountants into productive parts of the economy.

Here's a sample progressive tax code:
    Gross income          tax
    under 18,000          no tax  (don't tax the impoverished)
    18,001 - 50,000      15%
    50,001 - 150,000     25%
  150,001 - 1,000,000   35%
       over 1,000,000     40%

That's it - no exemptions, breaks, no loopholes, and most importantly no accountants to pay.  (I made this tax code up as I typed so the numbers could be adjusted to fit society better.)  You could just fill out the post card and mail in your payment.

No accountants on Mars, please.  What else could we streamline.

Let's not talk about the military, OK. 

All right Ad Astra, you want to talk about the war?  Here goes.

Your arguments are:
1.  American/World security,
2.  Freedom for the Iraqi people.

How in the world has Iraq ever threatened American security?  They don't have ICBMs or Nuclear Weapons.  They have never attacked the United States before.  They do not have good relations with Osama Bin Laden.  Hussein wants to stay in power in Iraq, and he knows that any post Sept. 11th terrorist attack on the U.S. would bring swift and terrible retribution.  I have yet to see any chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction come out of Iraq. (Gas masks and fertilizer are NOT chemical weapons.)

2.  Before Daddy Bush's "Operation Desert Storm" (excuse me while I gag...) Iraq was a developed nation.  The women went to college, owned businesses, etc.  Before the sanctions of the last 12 years the Iraqi people had food, medicine, water, jobs, an economy, life.  So, they had a corrupt leader.  Who doesn't?  Show me one political leader who says he isn't corrupt and I'll show you a liar.  I don't think Sadaam is a good leader but his people didn't have it that bad before the U.S. stepped in.

I could list a lot of facts but I have to go to a peace rally right now.

"Violence begets Violence," John Lennon.

$74 Billion is the first actual appropriation of war funds.  I'm sure there will be a lot more, but let's see how this could have been better spent:

There are about 3 million homeless people in America.  If the govt. were to buy them all a mobile home for $10,000 and give them and extra $10,000 to give them a little boost it would only cost $60 billion.  We could then of course give the remaining $14 billion to the rich and continue to tax the middle class to death. :;):

We could start a Mars program with a budget of $2 Billion per year.  After 10 years and $20 billion of development we would be ready to a start Mars Direct exploration program.  That would leave us with $54 billion or 27 years or 12-13 missions.  That gives each mission over $4 billion.  This would lay the groundwork and infrastructure for private ventures in the future.

What would you do with $74 billion?

I agree that drugs and other technological advances are a great benefit to society.  But, abuses are all to common.  Their short term effects seem to be positive, but what are the long term effects?

For example:  The side effects of vaccines have been studdied for the short term but no long term studies have ever...EVER been done.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

As far as I know there have been no long term studies on Genetically Engineered foods.

Here's one that I do know about:  Infant formula isn't supposed to kill babies, right?  In a wealthy society it doesn't seem to, but in developing nations it kills them by the thousands.  This technology is abused by big businesses.  They aggresively market formula to people who are too poor to continue buying enough of it and whose water is likely to be unsafe to drink.  All the while these babies would have been perfectly healthy had their mothers not been tricked into not breastfeeding.

Technology is wonderful, but when abused it causes much more harm than good.

I just attended a La Leche League conference with my wife.  I attended a session about raising children.  They had studied a few famous and infamous people in history.  There were some notable common problems with the infamous ones.  There was one overiding common influence in the famous ones.

Hitler, Ted Bundy, and Sadaam Hussein all had violent, autoritarian, abusive fathers.  One thing that really struck me, though, was what they did to animals.  They abused and killed animals in front of their children to intimidate them.

Gandhi, and Mother Teresa on the other hand had mothers who loved and treated their children well and with respect.  They never spanked them or verbally abused them.

Oprah, and Ted Turner started out with abusive families but eventually found mentors that filled the role of the good mothers mentioned above.

Mars could benefit from some loving mothers and fathers that respect life.

One more thing...

What else burns in CO2?

About getting rid of waste plant material:

Mammals are the least efficient animals to do it.  They use most of the material to keep up their body temperature.  Though, I would suggest a few chickens and the like just for the variety of food.

     (This would really help to segregate the classes.  Meat would be very expensive.  The lower classes could rise up in rebellion in the "Meat War of 2116".  Their new constitution would include meat as an inalienable human right.) :laugh:

Whoa...was that out loud?
Anyway,

I know of a couple highly efficient ways to use the plant waste.  I think Zubrin wrote about these.

Tilapia fish:  They live in small enclosed tanks and turn about 70% (I think) of the waste plant material fed to them into meat.

Mushrooms:  They also take up little space and don't need sunlight.  I think they also turn about 70% of waste plant material into into edible protein.

Here here Josh!
And, thank you for staying on topic (sort of).

One of the neatest things about Mars is that it is a clean slate.  We will be able to cut things back to the bare minimum and maximize efficiency.

I am somewhat of a monotheistic, naturalistic, peace luv'n, tree hugg'n (ouch splinter), neo-hippie, so I do suspect that everything in the environment helps the human race as a whole.  Yes, even mosquitos have a purpose - albeit unknown to me.  So, I see the idea behind Biosphere 2.  Also, people generally like a little bit of asthetics.

But, as for the first settlements, they can get by on the bare minimum for a few years.  It'll put hair on their chests...arrrgh!