New Mars Forums

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered a planet circling at just the right distance from another star, making for comfortable temperatures and supporting an environment for liquid water and possible life, scientists announced Monday.
Orbiting a star much like the sun, the planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth and has a year lasting about 290 days. But researchers need to know its mass, density and composition before declaring the planet Earth-like.

In this field, number 2 is the all important number, because we count one, two, infinity. As soon as we find a different, separate example of life somewhere else, we are going to know it's ubiquitous throughout the universe.

What about the possibility of going directly from  aerobake to glider?

You mean slowing to near-zero relative to Mars before reaching the atmosphere? The fuel bill would be enormous.

[b]Yes, that's what I was getting at.  It would be enormous but would it be a price worth paying in terms of reduced complexity and increased safety?  There must be some mass saving on heat shield and parachute paraphenalia. 

I would want orbital refuelling and possibly not just orbital refuelling - maybe also midway (or maybe Mars orbit) refuelling and on Mars refuelling.

Also, I wouldn't want the fuel for orbital refuelling to come from earth. I'd want that to come from the Moon. If we are confident of establishing a human ISRU mission on Mars, we would also be able to put in place a lunar base with lunar fuel production.

Further I would favour LEO assembly of maybe two or three parts.

If you put all that together, then I think you may be back to manageable proportions.

Unless Israel treats Arabs like decent human beings l who can't be bought off with paltry offerings they will never find peace.

The thing is I'm not sure peace is strategically interesting for Israel. As a country with little population an a strong military, and with few if any friends on the region, it is entirely understandable that they are so agressive.

After all, a continued peace would mean their economic asimilitation by their more popoulus and resource-rich arabic neighbours. Destroying their infrastructure periodically, as cruel as it sounds, is their best long-shot plan. Not that it isn't cruel, or wrong, it's just economically sound. Israel cannot continue to be a democratic jew state if it accepts an islamic majority of citizens...

Rune. Economics is another name for the driving force of the universe.

Why should it accept an islamic majority of citizens anymore than we should accept a hispanic majority of illegal aliens from Mexico?
The problem is you can have either an islamic country or a democracy, not both. Muslims have a bad habit of imposing their will, religion, and customs on all minorities, they give muslims special status, special rights that others don't have, and woe to the fellow that insults Islam, or tries to convert a Muslim to a different religion, because the barbaric practise of head-chopping, stoning, or whiplashing may be employed to punish those transgressors. I think people in a more liberal Israel may have some qualms about letting in hordes of Muslims who will vote to change laws with their majority status and trample on many of their hard won freedoms of free speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of religion, seperation of church and state, and equality between men and women under the law. Muslims tend to be very pious, and their religion tells them that the supream law is derived from the will of Allah and the Koran and that anyone who opposes them is an infidel. I think its perfectly understandable that Israelis wouldn't want hordes of Muslims migrating to or "returning" to their country. One of the reasons they talk about ceding the West Bank and Gaza is so there will be places to put all the aggreived Muslims so they can live in their seperate societies that won't interfere with the democracy of Israel. So far though all Muslims know how to do is take, and there is no give in them. Israel may eventually grow tied of being missiled from Gaza and may simply choose to expel the entire population there when they feel they've had enough. Wouldn't you after all? Even Europe has found it Muslim populations difficult to live with, how can they expect Israel to do something they would not?

Rune. Just how neccesary is gravity?

We know that people progressively deteriorate without any gravity, whether 1/6 g or 1/3 is enough we don't know.

For an entire civilization yes, but for a colony definitely not.

The Moon has gravity, radiation shielding is not significantly harder than Mars, temperature variations at the Poles are manageable (just under the surface is almost optimal), day length can be easily handled artificially, there are unlimited quantities of O, plenty of Al, Fe, Si, Mg and Ca. There's H in the regolith too in small but extractable quantities. ISRU will take care of most of the DV and there's no comparison between transit times, Mars is 60 times further away. The Moon wins hands down for establishing the first off world colony.

The system is designed to take as much as possible from as few voters as possible. Imagine paying for other services on that basis .. "excuse me Sir how much do you earn? ok, that will cost you much much more then"

Poor people in the US pay no taxes at all and even get tax benefits! Half the US population pay less than 3% of the taxes, is that fair? So why has that happened, because they have voted for a party that promises them that.

How much of the national wealth only exists because of those 5%? China has 5 times the population of the US, so why isn't it 5 times wealthier?