New Mars Forums

I like their ideas for a Mars mission.  Unfortunately it makes too much sense.  It's a little ironic that the shuttle  completely wastes what would make the best modules for a space station.

People who advocate a manned Mars mission need to be more persuasive as to why we should go.  People aren't going to think it's a bright idea to blow $500 billion to go to another planet just because it's there.  Mars proponents need to invent practical reasons and lay-off the idealistic 'it's to spread the horizons of mankind' type of rhetoric.  Tell people why it's so pressing that we work toward this goal right now.

I'm not sure right now is really the best time to start pushing for a manned Mars mission considering all of the environmental and energy problems we're having.  I'd rather just invade the planet with a barrage of robotic vehicles and do R&D on better robotics and AI or maybe wait until non-government organizations (or another country) can cough up the cash for their own mission.  Might have to wait until the year 2200 but patience is a virtue.

I'm surprised they don't intend to land a rover since stationary landers are so 70s (I'm assuming when they say "lander" they mean a stationary craft.)  It's great news though, Mercury gets a lot of neglect when it comes to space missions.

There's a lot of promising research into using technologies like hydrogen fuel cells to power vehicles.  Hydrogen has gotten a bad rap as a dangerous substance.  You might visit this site for an overview of the Hindenburg, or better yet, read Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet by Peter Hoffmann.  It's one of the better books out there that covers both the benefits and problems of using hydrogen.

Your assuming that the only thing we will want to do in space is extract resources.  People will want to go into space for many reasons for everything from tourism to medical treatment to creating autonomous communities.  You seem to be implying there is some zero-sum aspect to space exploration, that economies can't grow and get richer, that we must necessarily choose between space or something else.  I just don't see it that way, economies, particularly capitalist ones, aren't zero-sum games, they can expand and increase wealth that could be put to work in other areas of endeavour.

Space colonization has the possibility of advancing just the type of technology that would enable sustainable living that more impoverished countries could benefit from.  Such colonization also has the potential of improving the lot of our resources.  Someone has to pioneer the way. If private companies and organizations are willing to spend the R&D dollars to develop the needed technologies for living in space I say more power to 'em.  Someone has to lead the way and I have a suspicion that if we leave it up to government we'll still never have left LEO by the year 2100.  Anyhow, governments could tax the corporations that engage in commercial space activities and divert those tax funds to helping the poor and what not.  In any case, I can think of a lot of other endeavours that suck up way more resources than private space organizations like the Artemis and Mars Societies do.  Try cutting the military budget for instance and funneling that money into more productive uses, or do something to solve the political problems in many nations that are the true cause of their misery.

Shaun if you get a kick out of high ISP motors that could be built with current technology, you should check out this very politically incorrect, 1,000,000 ISP beast.  It's kinda like your garden variety ion engine overdosing on crack.  I decided to paste in a segment of the article below.  If you already know about this just ignore.

"Fission-fragment propulsion involves permitting the energetic fragments produced in the nuclear fission process to directly escape from the reactor; thus, the fission fragments, moving with a velocity of several percent of the speed of light, are the propellant working fluid. Because these fragments are heavily ionized, they can be directed by magnetic fields to produce thrust for propulsion. Specific impulse in excess of 1 million lbf-s/lbm is possible."

I find after you've read Shakespeare for awhile you naturally start to pick up on the language.  I'd suggest you pick up a version of Shakespeare's plays that have good footnotes that define some of his more esoteric words and phrases to help you get through it.  I think Richard the III is the easiest play to read, you might start with that one just to warm up.  It's a marvelous piece of propaganda.   

Thanks for copying over the article.  If the star is being artificially manipulated what type of benefit would you get from making it more ovoid or spin faster?

I got spammed twice by Anne with the same message.  Sounds like the oldest scam in the book to boot.

If you wanted to build something like that it seems you'd probably want to build the tube on top of an extremely high tower to reduce the need to pump out so much air.  I think it could ultimately be cheap since it's a lot cheaper to lift something using electricity rather than propellants.  According to the book Mining the Sky by John Lewis, it would cost about $40 for the electricity to lift a 165 pound person to orbit if you could utilize raw electricity for the task and not use propellants (this doesn't include things like the price of the ship, upkeep, etc.)

This idea seems safer and easier than using a "full time" cycler.  I never really thought of a ship that hangs around in orbit waiting to take crews back and forth as a cycler but it fits the bill.  Ideally these ships should be as big and luxurious as we can reasonably make them since they can be reused and repaired and won't have to be lifted off the surface of a planet each time we want to use it.  If we want to make colonizing Mars a reality the tuna can approach doesn't seem very appealing.