New Mars Forums

I believe it's a question of fundamental importance.  I often think it's a miracle that we still have any presence in space at all considering, as Anansi pointed out, that politicians tend to be megalomaniacs who can't think in time spans that stretch beyond their own career and won't likely support ventures that won't give them "political capital."  And space flight doesn't tend to bring a lot of pork that people visibly see or experience like education or highways.  I don't think we can wait around forever either.  Since it's a tendency of governments to increase their powers rather than decrease them we could very easily find ourselves in a situation where governments won't allow mass migrations to Mars.  So I don't think we can sit around forever either, but at the same time, we don't have any economical ways of getting to Mars en masse.  We're more or less forced to sit around hoping things improve while there's still time. 
       Anyways, if we send people to Mars we should do it with the idea of colonization and a continued presence.  If the politicians only want to have a flags and footprints mission so they can gain clout for the next election I have no interest in going to Mars.  Hopefully spaceflight technology improves to the point that it gets cheap enough that we won't have to rely on government funding at all.

I'm not familiar with the "Trans-Life" project.  From the name I take it's somekind of program aimed at seeding life at other places off of Earth?  Well it's encouraging to see that maybe there's half-decent experiments going on in the ISS.

I remember reading about one architect, whose name completely escapes me, that advocated an architectural system called arcology that was basically a pre-planned city that could pack a very high density population comfortably into a relatively small area.  I thought his ideas were somewhat crazy, but now that I think about it, his ideas might make perfect sense for Martian architecture.  He had a lot of very tall buildings with unique designs and transportation systems.  I have to find that book so I can elaborate further.   
       How tall could you build a skyscraper on Mars before it ends up in outer space?  Where does the Martian atmosphere end and space begin?

The static electricity from such storms might damage electronic equipment as well, but considering that I have yet to hear about Earth based dust storms causing similiar problems I wonder if there's really much of a danger.

They've been successes under sterile conditions, but how will those systems fare when an attacking country launches volleys of dummy missiles that make picking out the real missile in time or shooting them all down a problem not to mention other problems with more advanced decoys.  Terrorists are probably more likely to resort to things like suitcase bombs and other more easily handled weapons than continental ballistic missiles.  I concede you have a point about fanatics overpowering a government's control of its own missiles, but that seems like a relatively remote possibility.  Pakistan is probably the only country where a possibility exists for such a scenario, but they seem able to defend themselves from terrorist usurpers.  I see no problem with local theater missile defenses like the Patriot system, but I don't think we need to spend 75-200 billion dollars on a questionable system.  Anyways, the MAD philosophy so far seems to be working with India and Pakistan since they have yet to launch missiles at each other.

Money and power.  Probably the only reason more nukes haven't been launched is because the people who are willing to send others to die for some petty and personal cause know that if they launch nukes, they themselves will most likely be fried or ostracised internationally.  I pretty much agree with Ayn Rand that governments don't have rights to force it citizens to fight and die for whatever cause.  If a war is truly worth fighting you'll probably have no problem finding volunteers, and if you don't find enough people willing to defend the country at its most critical time it's probably a sign that country isn't worth fighting for in the first place.

Perhaps I deserve to be chained to a wall and whipped until my flesh falls off for saying it, but does anyone here find the Drake equation a bit on the useless side?  It seems so wide open that it makes sense of anything and I don't know how you could ever reliably estimate half of the variables.  The Drake Equation seems more like a teaser than anything scientifically useful.   As a side note, I'm not bashing Dr. Drake, he was definately a great scientist, I'm just not sure I find the Drake Equation to be all it's cracked up to be.

Oh man, I would have just packed up the scope in winter weather and dragged it indoors immediately when done.  It never would have occured to me to allow it to acclimate slowly to temperature.   I think by collimate they mean to adjust the mirror so it properly reflects light to the right places.  I saw a laser collimater once so I assume it means to align the mirror or something along those lines.  I've suddenly gained a few more points of confidence though knowing you haven't had to do anything to the mirror.  I'd just end up making the scope useless, I just know it.

haha, I could see how that could happen.  I can see how someone might just for an instant think they're looking at the moon, but to argue for half an hour that your looking at the moon when there's no moon in the sky!  Reminds me of one guy I know in particular.  You'll tell him a joke meant for a four year old and it takes him like 10 minutes to get it but I think even he could be convinced he wasn't looking at the moon!

Challenging questions.  The most apt reason for not interfering with with e.t. life is that we are not a part of that eco-system in any way.  On Earth we are native lifeforms and have as much right as any other lifeform here to struggle for survival, but to actually fly to another planet and then terraform it so completely that native life can't exist there seems to defeat the notion that we should give life a chance to evolve to its own conditions on other planets.  Of course my argument is easy to shoot down, and I only half-believe it myself.

What are your opinions on the Star Wars missile defense initiative?  I almost died of shock when I read that it when its all done and paid for it could cost upwards of 200 billion smackers.  It seems like a tragic waste of money to me.  Imagine what could be done with that much money to open up the space frontier and all of its economic benefits that could help all of humanity.  This whole Star Wars things always reminds me of an over complicated Ruberg device with all of its various lasers, airplanes, and satellites anyway.  It seems possible that any country intent on launching a missile attack could outsmart the system by launching volleys of dummy missiles or decoys to overload the system.  I don't think we really need to spend all that money on a system that's of uncertain use and may be easily outsmarted anyway.

I've been wanting to know exactly what kinds of things you could see with a certain power.  So I take it a 4.5" isn't really what you want if viewing deep sky objects is your thing?  I have to say though, I want to see the phases of Venus.    I hear with an 8" scope you can actually see Pluto as a very faint point of light, so I imagine that might be a better scope to invest in for observing things like nebulas, etc.  Ack, I had no idea either that it was bad to view the moon directly through the scope.  You've scared me from even using my binoculars to look at the moon with, thanks for the warning though before I buy a scope and burn holes in my eyes .  Anyways, do you ever have to "collimate" the mirror in your scope?  I've read that's something you have to do but I don't know what the procedure is.

I think Brad needs to take his medication. 

I have no idea how you'd do that, but if you were using the volatiles on both planets to move them into different orbits you'd likely have nothing left on the planet to make it worth colonizing in the first place.  That would be one hell of a space tug though.

It's great to see all of these space projects that are being planned and run by private organizations like the Mars and Planetary Society.  It sends the message that space isn't as inaccessible as a lot of people like to think it is.  I hope after the current X-prize is won a new one is offered that ups the ante to actually launching ships into orbit.  If that can be accomplished without government help I think Mars will suddenly loom a lot closer on the horizon.