New Mars Forums

The future for our red planet..what will it be?

An Empire or a nation can only get so big and it can only expand or fight battles on so many fronts. Take the USSR, its ideas may have been Ok to some, but it was filled with power hungry people and corruption, the Soviet Empire got too large and too greedy and was doomed to failure. The same might be said for the British who wanted to install a common trade and rulership across the globe, the British were in Europe, the Scottish were ruled by the Kingdom of England, they had Pakistan, HongKong, they got much wealth, minerals and taxes from these places but lost because they could not control it.

The same could be said for some of the Chinese Emperor or dynasty, the Chinese that made an effort in the past to go into Vietnam and install their own form of ideas, building and government. Only to see Vietnam fight back and push China out again. Even a great nation like American can fail if they go too far, trying to push and control other areas like in Somalia, Vietnam, the bay of pigs...and the great Romans another failure of the past expansions. No matter what nation or what Empire sees to rule Mars the task might be too difficult. If a single nation tries to enforce its form of leadership or push its way of democracy it could fail. That is why Mars should not be the burden of any one Company, Agency, one Empire or Country.

The work and costs in the colinizations of mars should be shared between different companies or various countries, after it is settled and there are people working there it should be given fair choice in its own politics will be a massive task, the workers there might choose a political or even turn into a  mars worshiper chanting nuts, but once we have people in mars bases and camps, living and going about their daily life, it will be them that decide their own future not us. Yes Mars will have an unbreakable link with Earth but after sometime the workers there will want to decide their own future and policy, for it is them who will be making risks, living and working.

Robotic builders, mechanised diggers, our little construction workers will be busy working away on our planet build up the martian village, so that NASa can put a manned Mars mission
into action.

NASA and the ESA have been looking at robotics based on animals like spider - bots and mechanized ants for some time now. It is such a good thing to invest in, plus there will be great returns and spin-offs in our own home industries. Imgine how something like this could improve constructions or fast motor-engine making in the US. It is something that NASA must back, plus having robotics construct a base is good, it will greatly reduce the risks for a manned mission

its tricks, but good picture nonetheless

The Russian Cosmonaut suit designs were so good that even people from America, China and Europe started to change their later designs to match those of the old Russia space suit.
Trying to build a suit for the Apollo moon programme was very hard, lower gravity, rock terrain strong heat and deep cold temperatures, no air, soft dusty lunar soil.
MArs will be hard, but the design for a Martian suit will be easier than the designs of those that went into outspace, the moon and spacestation repairs.

Mars is the red planet, time to change the flag

Mars future soviet state LOL

HAHA! 

Such a crazy film

[http://www.tvtome.com/images/people/17/1/76-11512.jpg]http://www.tvtome.com/images/people/17/1/76-11512.jpg

inspired of course by a very good writing by Philip k Dick

I hope they can do it, competition is good for creativity and inventions

Let us hope we can put people on mars someday soon

who is going to climb olympus?

mounties will go there first

Mars local time!
yes great idea

I wonder which would be easier to do, a calendar for venus, the moon or mars?

There are many great systems of calendar used by old peoples of ancient races. Should we try and balance our system of weeks and months to that of Earth or should we use something completly different?
Time is very important and time keeping on mars will be very important indeed.

the mayas had a good system for the days

all civilisations knew the importance of tracking the seasons and hours

Maya, Arabic, Celtic runics, Indian, Saxon , Norse, Chinese, Greek, Egyptian all had very good systems.

the pyramids were used to correspond to the movements of the stars in space and time?

this one from China

another great calendar by old peoples

Maya were almost professional at tracking time

The martian day: This is very simple, the mars day is 24 hrs 37 mins and 23 seconds

The Mars year or its sydonic period, is 779.9 days, so its orbital period is 686.5 days ( almost 687 E days ), an earth year is 365 days 5hrs 49 mins, is it better to base the MARS year on a sydonic based period, or base it in mars local time, maybe not?

Muslims, Gregorians, Chinese, Jewish, Dominicans, Celts, Egyptians, Roman, Christians , Inca, Greek all understood the importance of the month concept and the lunar cycle became part of this calender. The old Greek calendar had a year of 354 days, and because of the 11 and a quater days needed to match the solar year they added another 90 days each year. A very good system but not the best, would it work on Mars?..I think not. The Greeks had to change their calander afterwards because of problems.
The Jewish calendar is another ancient one, it is based on the moons, and has months of 29 and 30 days alternately. A veadar or inclinations of extra months are introduced and a month intercalated every 3rd year. The Jews veadar is introduced every 3rd, 6th, 8th 11th, 14th and 17th and 19th in the 20 year cycle. The Jewish calander is much more complicated than I have described, it is very good, but it is not an effective instrument for time measuring.
The Original Roman calendar came from old Latin texts. It comprised of 10 months and 304 days, some 5 months having 31 days and 4-months had 30 days and 1 month had 29. It was good but it also had to see great change.
The Calendar of Rome got lots of complaints and protests lodged because the calendar dates were so out of step with natural events and seasons. Julius Ceasar wanted to make radical changes.

Now we see how important the moon was for the tracking of time and the earth monthly cycle. Should we use the moons of mars to establish the martian lunar clock?

Or is this idea just loony?
The moon Phobos is a very small moon, it lies about 9000 Km away, and has a period of just 0.319 days. Phobos viewed by a Rover appears to go backward to rise in the west and sets in the east 5 and a half hours after. I don't think phobos would be good for a martian month.

Deimos is much better, it is the outermost moon so it appears slower in the sky. The moon is locked in synchronous rotations with mars. The satellites orbits with a period of 1.26 days while mars has a period of about 1.03 days. As a result Deimos looks almost still like in the sky from the point of view of a Spirit probe. It moves west about 10 degree in a period of 6 hrs. Deimos is a good moon with a sidereal period of 1.262 earthdays, 30 h 18 m. ( earth times ), but with the day where should we place our AM or our PM? The peoples of mars or the Martians should have their own words for days,  and years.  Maybe we shoudl use the Martian-sol for a Martian day based on NASA use during the Pathfinder, Viking, Spirit missions, No?
What will we call the weeks, what should we call the months, what about a leap-years?
The Sydonic based idea might be easier, but maybe much harder for the people living on mars. Bad time keeping, errors in trade, travel, suddenly mutiny and revolt. The Martian sidereal day is 40 minutes longer than the Earth sydonic day of 23h 56 m 4 s.,  and to describe it more 24 h 39 m 35 s = 88,775 sec. An initial simple way of coordinating Mars and Earth time is to set the clocks back 2 hours every three ' days, but this might be hell for the poor worker living on mars, working in the mines, trying to build solar pannels and now having to change time zones every few days. Is this fair? Should we try to fit Mars time into Earth time? Will mars time of 88,775.2 seconds be even? Dividing Mars time by 24 gives us 3699.97, maybe this is a bad idea?

Is this the night sky view from mars?

Now some more talk about how people measure time on Earth in the past, so we can get more ideas!!

The ancient people living in Egypt had a system of measuring time that was based on the solar year. The Baylonians used a system of 12 months. Sometimes major corrections had to be made in the past.
A person might say sorry its not 1742 October 15th ...the true date is the 2nd of September 1741..what??
Before Muhammad the Moslem Arabs had a luni solar calendar, using lunar months with corrections, not unlike the Jewish system. In a 30 yr cycle the calendar had final moth of 29days in 19 of these years,
and 30 in the other 11. This was a good calendar but not the greatest system.

Mars has seasonal changes, Shouldn't we also include season in our Mars Calander??
?

The Chinese had an ancient, prehistoric calendar, it was made 2350 BC. Astronomers determined the equinoxes, they tried to reconcile the 354days of a lunar year with the 365 days of an astronomical year. The calendar was very complex with stems, branches and other spirals were attached. Because of business and trade the Chinese adopted the western calendar, the gregorian time was used and the Chinese calander was strictly forbidden by the Chinese government.

When Caesar became Pontifex Maximus he changed the older roman calendar to a newer one. He kept adding and subtracting days into the year until it became correct with astronomical advice, a year  of 365 days beacme a year of 445 days and so it was anmed the year of confusion. He gave each year 365 and a forth days, almost accurate but not perfect....

Now here is a problem, what about festivals...Christmas, the Chinese NewYears, Thanksgiving, Halloween...how do we settle these days?
Well we can fix this by comparing the Earth based and Martian Calendars, explorers and settlers can celebrate special days, whether civil or ceremonial, at the same time as they are being observed on the home planet of Earth.

The natural Martian year is almost double the lenght of that on earth, maybe we should have 24 martian-months instead of twelve, and each mars season should have 6 martian-months?

What is a martian month called, what should we name it? Name it after the planets, moons, people or constellations?

Synchronization of time is important. One way to keep the mars time clock correct is to keep mars in sync with nature simply by beginning each new calendar year on the day of the vernal equinox like some of the old races on earth tried to do. But we doing this we might be dropping time and hours each year in order to keep in sync, how will the martians stick it?

What do we name monday? What is Sunday called on mars? Should we call them after features or stars in the mars sky? Maybe give them old earth names.... Lunae-day, Terraday, Waterday, Thorsday ...Olympusday, Solarday..?
Any ideas?

Time is very important for martian commerce, missions, launches and trade. What should we call an hour on mars, should it be named after one of its moons? We might also experiment with decimalized time units. If we decimilise a Mars-day or mars sol this gives us ...say  1O Mars hours lenght and each Martian hour has 100 Mars mins. Better than using 60, what about seconds, maybe we can change their units also?
Can we change a mars second, deterime to fix it to another fixed value to equal  Martian second as 1.03 Earth seconds, or is this a bad idea? Mars clocks and watches would look just like earth ones but would they be the same? Maybe its better for a Martian day, alarm clocks.
But what about E-trade, business and other time keeping. The brave new spacemen and women and martian colonists will find it more useful to express the order of events in their lives in local terms, so we need a good system.

What should we do with any extra time left over in our mars calander...Maybe allow the people of mars to get drunk and party after such a long 24 and half hour days...extra party time  !!??

The Next Mars oppostion is 2005 November 7...

I will be giove you 50 dollar to the person that makes a very good Mars calendar,
for the next future people of mars!!??

Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to keep change in his space suit

How did the hero Arnie buy mars drinks and space stuff....
with
real printed martian money from the film Total-recall, poor douglas quaid

here's a 50 and an eight ball

The Cohaagen company

but other systems should have money aswell

On a more serious note, mars money may not need the old gold reserves. Instead of having gold banks, mars money could be backed up with its mines and other projects, and resources,
mars may have many resources iron ores, bauxites , complex silicates, minerals and so forth, legal tender will be important for the people, mars should have a strong economic policy a type of monetarism contoling its checks its bill and money supply and keeping it in line with the ammount of goods, chemicals or minerals mars is able to produce. Or next problems to solve will be mars macroeconomics, its relative values and the quantity theory of martian money.

another coin, this one from the future or the past?

( which notes & coins are real? Which were once used as money for exchange, and which are fake? )

yes, its a great planet.
The chance of any human like creature living in mars are a millions to one - H G wells

the idea of a space-station orbiting mars is a very good idea.