New Mars Forums

Here's by far the worse one yet:

     The Dim Sun Falls Past
     Red Soil Now Black
     Under Deimos Silver Sheen

You have to love all those euphemisms that are thrown around.  It seems whenever you see U.N. peacekeepers patrolling some city they're carrying around machine guns.  I think most governments see the use of force, or the threat of it, as a means of keeping "peace".

Great idea.  The Space version of the million man march could go a long way in showing and gaining support for space research and development.   We could have all kinds of enthusiastic speeches on the Capitol steps outlining the importance and adventure of space exploration.  If that doesn't work, we could just vote Anton in as Tsar.

I don't think there are really that many technical hurldles in the way of getting to Mars in the way of propulsion and life support technology.  I think the only thing we'd really need to do a lot of additional research on would be on adding some kind of artificial gravity and how the trip could affect the human body.  Other than that and money I can't think of any
serious impediments to sending people to Mars.  I hope Canth's opinions about the Chinese spurring on more space development pans out.  The entrance of China into space might be just thing that motivates a manned drive to Mars.

There seems to be a lot of discussion in these forums about
Martians colonists fighting their host countries/corps for independence, and I started to question whether international space law even allows a country to stake out extraterrestrial real estate for itself.  Could the USA, for instance, legally claim some Martian plain to be under the jurisdiction of its laws and prevent non-citizens of the USA from immigrating to such areas under its control?  I think I remember reading somewhere that international law prevents a country from
engaging in such pursuits.  Of course, a nation could just ignore international law and stake out some Martian real estate for itself anyway, if such law actually exists.

I don't see any problems with terraforming Mars if very extensive research is done to find native martian life and the results are negative.  We minus well face the fact that in five billion years, nearly the time it took homo sapiens to evolve, the sun will pretty much kill off all life in the inner solar system anyway.  So I think humans should reach for space even if they've proven to be environmentally irresponsible at times and keep intelligence alive in the universe.

Do you think someone who was born on Mars and spent their entire childhood there would be able to adapt to Earth's gravity should they decide to go to Earth?  I agree that we need more experiments to see how organisms react to lower
gravity, particularly those that were gestated and born in low gravity.

I think a lot of experimentation and testing would need to be done before someone could definately answer how safe an Orion type nuke propulsion scheme is.  I hope someone gets the guts to try something like this out in space despite the cry of over-sensitive environmentalists.

Yeah I think your right AndyM.  I can get a little stupid with blind enthusiasm sometimes.  It wouldn't make sense for that cable to reach clear to LEO.

How long do you think it would take a space elevator to deliver a payload from LEO to the moon?  Anyway I think it's a great idea, you could build a very massive elevator on the moon and this would probably be a cost effective way of keeping a lunar colony supplied.  I really think space elevators will prove to be the next big thing in delivering payloads to orbit.

I wonder how interested the general public would be in a moon race with China.  I hope I'm wrong, but I get the feeling much of the public won't care about a new race to the moon or any manned missions to the moon at all.  I think many people will have the attitude of either "we've already been there so who cares", or they'll just fight tooth and nail to spend the money on "social projects."  I do agree though that if we go back to the moon it should be to set up a
permanent or at least a mission of long duration.  Anyways, I hope China manages to pull off a manned mission to the moon.  Who knows, it could spark new interest in the apathetic.

Do we have the ability to build ships strong enough to constantly withstand the force of exploding nukes?  I haven't really read much on the Orion concept but it seems if your going to be exploding nukes anywhere near a vessel it'd have to be build of some divinely inspired material I've never heard of.   I guess it might be possible to explode the nukes at such a distance that the shockwaves are diluted enough that no structural damage occurs, but if that turns out to be the case it might be safer just to stick with conventional methods.