New Mars Forums

I see from the article that SpaceDev is publicly traded... may be some value there at .99 a share.  I wonder how much their future business relies on (aerospace maverick) Rutan's success?

How in the heck can you burn plexiglas in a rocket engine and have it be "environmentally safe?"  I don't think I'd want to breathe that exhaust.

I wonder if this kind of thing isn't a manifestation of social demographic changes.  Statistically (& mentally) we're older as a society... therefore less brash & ballsy.  Maybe we really no longer have what it takes to do something like Mars.  Just look at Americans' obsession with safety-- you see it in all kinds of commercials, in the number of lawsuits that take place, in OSHA going bananas with workplace regulations... Everybody knows that as people get older they get more cautious.

Is America too calcified to take on anything new & daring?  The moon.  We just love our sequels.  It's Hollywood writ large-- "Apollo II:  The Underachieving."  Coming soon?

I think Mr. Simberg may indeed be somewhat ego-driven.  If you check out his website you'll see he rants and raves on any number of different topics & he seems pretty disparaging toward any idea that is the least bit liberal (how else do you think he got the gig w/ Fox's website?).  And I do remember now seeing his reaction to (Mars Maverick!) Bob Zubrin's senate testimony awhile back, how he was harping on how he thought Dr. Z was overly self-referential in the summary written for the Mars Society website.  Whatever.  I still agree w/ some of Simberg's views (not on Zubrin & the Mars Society!) and find it useful to see what Fox is feeding Joe Sixpack about space policy.

While this topic has spun off on a somewhat wild tangent, I feel compelled to offer my .02 worth.

While I too am concerned about Christian fundamentalism infecting our government (all the way up to W) I am pretty skeptical of it being pervasive enough to control policy at such levels as NASA sub-programs.  I don't think these folks are pervasive and even if they were they'd have bigger fish to fry than a few microbes on Mars.  (Certain extremists from other fundamentalist religions come to mind.) Religion is about owning human souls-- assuming such things exist-- and controlling the actions of human minds & bodies here on Earth.  I have a hard time believing that any fundamentalist ideologues would give a rat's ass about the possibility of finding a few microbial fossils on Mars.

Even if you assume there is an ideological conspiracy going on, it will be more concerned with money (another instrument of power) than with exobiological speculation.  Which brings us back-- kind of-- to the point:  NASA's dragging things out IMO for reasons of money, not because somebody high up in the gov't is concerned about extraterrestrial life (which, if found on Mars, may not even really be extraterrestrial!) undermining huge sectors of human religion.  In any case religious types will surely be able to spin their response to any such findings so that their ideologies aren't threatened.

If religion controlled space policy we would not be in space at all except to maintain military superiority and provide for economic endeavors.  If these folks were in real control of the NASA purse strings they would've squelched pure science-related missions long ago like they tried to do w/ Galileo & Copernicus.  Micromanaging things at the mission level just doesn't seem likely--  because these 'conspirators' aren't there (probably) or, if they are, because it's below their consideration.

I sure hope nobody's up at night losing sleep over this.

speaking of all these upcoming events (i'm also drooling in anticipation of saturn by the way) does anybody know of where there's a comprehensive calendar of upcoming (& projected) space exploration events for 2004?  it's going to be a really big year for space exploration & i've already forgotten a bunch of what's supposed to happen (mars, X prize, the comet rendezvous, saturn, planetary society's solar sail, the list goes on).

and does anybody know where there might be any live TV coverage of Mars Express/Beagle on Christmas day?  i'll be staying up late for that on christmas eve...  they're calling for possible first signal acquisition from beagle at 05:15 GMT on Christmas.

space... the gift that keeps on giving.

see the 'kennedy speach' thread for a heap of discussion on this.

once again the corporate cheerleaders are hyping the business approach to space pioneering.  i just don't buy it.  (pardon the pun.)  while i'm all for folks like "aerospace marverick" burt rutan doing their thing, i wouldn't trust a corporation with my life in space any further than i could sprout wings and fly there.  i thought hartmann summed it up pretty well:

and another thing.  why is burt rutan ALWAYS referred to as "aerospace maverick" in the media?  it's almost like the appellation is self-styled and he has decreed that he must be referred to in this way whenever his name is mentioned.  it's just plain weird how this phrase gets parroted.  every outlet i ever see that mentions him calls him a "maverick." 

so i think Dr. Zubrin should henceforth be mentioned in the media as "Mars maverick Robert Zubrin."

link for ya

...talks about what may have happened to venus's water.  basically it implies venus' proximity to the sun indirectly (read article for details) led to UV dissociation of H from O in the upper venutian atmosphere; the H escaped to space.  there seemed to be a little uncertainty as to what happened to the O.  there're even a couple of sentences about the possibility that life arose on the early venus.

you could further this conjecture and imagine that the reason mars was able to keep as much water as it has was because of its distance from the sun-- the water froze out before it was lost via UV dissociation.  something future terraformers will probably want to keep in mind.

so i guess the answer to your question is that all the interior planets had plenty of water early on, but lost it or kept it depending on their unique circumstances.

hope this helps

well, now that i think about it, the current environment there would require some pretty drastic changes to the genome... i guess the easiest thing would be to alter the metabolic side of things to deal with the cold.  but the atmosphere (constituents & pressure) would be hard to 'gene' for.  and people probably would not want to change at such a basic level.  but, a thousand years in the future, who knows what might be possible.  (and i'm convinced it would take  at least this long to get the terraforming ball rolling.)  biotech is much more established and progressing much more quickly.

but i'm inclined to retract that somewhat glib statement about bioengineering. mech tech, at least at this point (spacesuits, domes, etc.), is much more reliable and less invasive than a biotechnical solution would be.

as for terraforming, all this talk about moving asteroids like marbles... much easier said than done.  the expense will be enormous and the payoff too distant.  i just can't see big-scheme terraforming like this happening until far in the future.  i'm thinking any efforts in the near term will involve 'polluting' the atmosphere-- intentionally or not-- but this will probably result in a much slower rate of change.  (we do seem to be doing a pretty good job of it here on earth though.)

maybe a hybrid approach will develop; adjusting the genome a bit in order to meet the terraforming efforts part way.

all pretty keen observations there... i agree that corporations will have little interest in mars, at least early on.  their pursuit of profit doesn't tolerate long-term considerations very well.  at the most they will be hell-bent on resource extraction (and even this is a long shot i think, considering how expensive it is to get anything to/from mars).  and, considering how little the corporate world cares about the terran environment, they certainly won't be concerned about the martian one either way.

one thing that was a big factor in KSR's vision, though, was the fact that they had space elevators both at mars and at earth.  if this became a reality it could drastically change corporate interest in mars, as it would make interplanetary commerce much more economical.

and i think you're right about the colonists' priorities.  it seems to me that terraforming would only be a big priority once the local population/economy/gov't reaches a critical mass.  thus it could take hundreds, if not thousands, of years before they even get started on intentional terraforming.  in fact i actually think it more likely that the colonists will modify themselves (genetically) to suit the environment rather than the other way around.  cheaper, quicker.  and this would definitely have VERY interesting implications for the red vs. green issue.  i've always been curious as to why KSR totally ignored this possibility.  he seemed to be going somewhere with the idea when he introduced that kid who could control his body temperature, but that plot string didn't go anywhere.

on the other hand, as a result of low corporate interest, the colonists will not have to worry about any 'power grabs' for quite some time as well.  it all boils down to money:  until mars can start producing material goods that earthbound entities care about, i think they will be relatively unregulated.  this should give them time to prepare themselves for earthly meddling.  i have a hunch the martians will be more forward-thinking than earthlings and will be able to anticipate what will be needed to safeguard their freedoms.

unfortunately i will almost surely never live to see any of this play out, but it is interesting to speculate.

after just having read the "zubrin's vile ideology" thread, i was wondering if there's any kind of uber-archive that contains the best threads so far in the forum?  seems like a good idea for newbies like me who are confronted with the mindboggling mass of previous discourse.  i've seen other forums that do this (Guerrilla News Network is one) and thought it might work for this one.  i guess it would depend on how much time the folks who maintain NM have.

just an idea.

you know, wouldn't it be more in bush's interest to wait until february after all the mars missions have landed to make some grand announcement like this?  one of the lead stories on space.com today has the white house denying that any new proclamations on space policy are imminent.  while the wright bros.' anniversary is good, waiting until public interest in mars (or in space at least) has been piqued by the rovers is better.  maybe this is what they're waiting for.  plus it gives them a little more time to hammer out details.