New Mars Forums

1.  The wizard was gandalf-he was a friend of the ents who came back.

2. Yes, that was the evil wizard, gandalf broke his spell, defeating him at that point.

3. They went another way, to the south, which is warmer.  mordor is evil-hence the storminess.  Its also got a volcano at the middle, mount doom, which is where frodo and sam are heading.

you know, just because we cant see across that big body of water, the earth is flat.

youre forgetting one thing: math is profoundly against you.  life has evolved many times on this planet alone.  if you want to believe that we are the center of the universe, i wont stop you.  because what youre saying is no different.

actually, trillions of stars does dictate the existence of an ET.  there is no possible way that we are the only planet that has habitable conditions.  i defy you to explain to me how this exact point in the universe is the only point that can produce coniditions that melt ice, forming water.  your argument is ludicrous, at best.

Oh jeez, saying solar is reliable 24/7/365 is a joke.  In New York, for example, theres bad weather, lets say, once a week.  It is very rare to get strong sunlight, or temperatures above 90 degrees.  Are you going to tell me that Im going to get 100% efficiency out of my solar plant all the time?  No.

It takes 3.2 kg of uranium to generate 1,000 MW.  if we use things like breeder reactors and modern designs, there is virtually no waste except for a few fission fragments, which are contained very well.  When I say safe, I mean chances of an accident that have a real chance of threatening lives, which hasnt happened yet (Chernobyl was a result of bad safety procedures by the Soviets, not the reactor itself). 

I agree, the management of the nuclear industry needs to change.  They dont communicate with people, and there is no feeling of good faith.  We need nuclear officials who talk to the public and show them that they are working for the people's safety.

i think that adds a lot of unncecessary complexity to the mission, which we dont want.  if they want to stay, then we can leave them on the surface, and just send more supplies with a booster launch. 

now, we could send part of the ship, maybe the tether, as an orbiting satellite, which would not destroy the mission if it was damaged.  the satellite could be unlatched in orbit, perhaps during aerobraking, and the ship could touch down without it. 

i dont see why we cant inspect rocks on the surface, to send them to orbit seems like a bit of a waste of time, fuel, and power. 

i wonder if we have options to send return vehicles based on nuclear propulsion-with a lot less fuel than chemical propulsion ships.  we could bring a lot more back, and faster.  then your power from say, your nuclear reactor, could be directed to higher level lab activities, or digging for water.

LOTR 2 is quite possibly the best movie ive ever seen.

i liked the wrath of khan for sci-fi.  william shattner is one of the biggest over-actors ever-but he is amazing at it...i love it.

i agree that voyager was crap.  deep space nine had some good moments, but overall it was lukewarm.  Overall TNG was the best.  LaForge is probably my favorite character.

i meant at its deepest-at the trenches.  i had thought it reaches 4-5 miles at some point.

but now clicking on the links themselves on the main forum to the most recent posts takes you to the last page.  to go to the last page, just click the page number next to the topic 

i really like the new upgrade.  its really cool.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-general-03a.html

Apparently, we're way off on the ages of regions of mars.  We also don't know how volcanically active.  The new findings show that its either very active or everything's shut down.

Hah!  That is the proof!  In any mathematical formula, I defy you to find any other existence that occurs where there is only a 1 out of a few trillion possibilities.  Its simply not possible!  It is not a weak argument.  This is almost irrefutable proof in itself.

We are bombarded with all kinds of radiation and meteorites-this isnt a utopia either.  no, no.  you are so off the truth its ridiculous.  We dont know enough about the universe to say what "most" of the conditions are, and from what ive read, theyre not all that hostile.

The problem is the political tradeoff.  If a republican is in office, you tend to get more pro-nuclear, pro-space government, however, worse fiscal policies, bad environmental policy, imposition of church into state, liberty encroachments, and so on.

With democrats, you get basically the opposite.  So i'm torn, I want space, but I want my country to be in reasonable shape to get there.

well, this is on the getting back home topic:

if we launched a nuclear propulsion (say ion) ship, couldnt we use the same drive to get us back home?  As you said, leaving the engines and other components in orbit, just reattach an ascent vehicle to the other section, and blast back the other way.

okay, so we use a surface reactor, but we dont use it in flight.  Sounds good, we just ship it, inactive the whole way so everything is separate and safe.

Next, how about we use a separate, smaller plant in flight, which stays in orbit with the part of the ship we leave in orbit, as we discussed?  This would provide a decent bit of power for recreation and lab activites, and would allow quite a bit more options.  we could, of course, combine this with exterior solar panels, but any extra bit of energy is nice.

so, we have a surface reactor that provides power.  we could also explore other power options, to augment this initial reactor, to make it last longer, and to allow quicker expansion.  The longer we have to put off sending another reactor, the better.  Cost will be of the essence.

We could also have Earth send out a plant every five or ten years in exchange for, say, research data, or materials.