New Mars Forums

Hi lazer technicion!
   To avoid unnecessary repetition, you might like to go to Acheron Labs, go into Life Support Systems, and check out "We need a brainstorming session!" and "Domed habitats ...". There has been quite a bit of interesting discussion about this very subject already.
   But there's always room for more input! The more the merrier!
                                             

I agree with Mark S that Mars Direct takes a lot of beating.
   I don't know what it is with the space community, but there seems to be resistance to just accepting Dr. Zubrin's plan as being the best.  O.K. ... Modify it a little if better technology becomes available. But it's essentially a simple plan with built-in redundancy for safety, and it allows for a continuing and expanding presence on Mars. Plus, it's relatively cheap and requires little extension of currently available hardware.
   Why is it that otherwise sensible and practical people like the Russians (at least as far as space is concerned) seem bent on rehashing Mars plans which have already been found wanting?
   Even NASA had to take Mars Direct and 'fiddle' with it!
   It's like everybody is determined that they won't use MD because they don't want Bob Zubrin to get the credit for coming up with such an elegant plan while they, with all their resources,  have spent 30 years producing nothing practical at all!
   Does anybody else get the same kind of feeling about this?
                                         ???

I've read through as much of this exchange as I can and I've decided that Clark and Cindy are unlikely to reach agreement.
   Try this on for size: Recently a middle-aged male decided to have sexual intercourse with an 18 month old baby girl. The injuries were such that the little girl died an agonising death. The pain that the parents of that baby girl felt when they learned what had happened is impossible to imagine. The torture that will go on in their minds for the rest of their lives can only be equated with the suffering of the damned.
   The man's decision to do what he did was intrinsically bad, the agony of the baby girl was intrinsically bad, the suffering of the parents is also intrinsically bad ..... BAD, BAD, BAD !!!
   Clark can contrive sophisticated arguments until he turns blue, but if he cannot see that no sentient creature with the ability to feel pain could construe this nightmare event as anything but BAD, then I guess I'll never understand what makes him tick.
   If that makes me unsophisticated, then thanks very much, but I'd rather stay that way!
                                           

Sorry about Callisto's radiation environment. I know Europa is a no-go area and, when Phobos seemed so certain that Callisto was also dangerous, I didn't bother to check.
   It doesn't matter much, though. You still haven't addressed the problems of radiation exposure in transit and the psychological difficulties of confinement for 4-plus years.
   It's a big enough worry with the 6 month trip to Mars ... and that's with the prospect of a very Earth-like planet to look forward to, with hills and  old river valleys and the occasional cloud in the occasionally-blue sky!
   I think we'll have to leave manned trips to the gas giants until Ron Koczor at NASA gives the Podkletnov Gravity Drive a man-rating!! Might be quite soon now!
                                     

"Australia could have been another America save for the fact that it lacked economic opportunity based on raw commodities ... ", notes Clark. Sounds like such a dismal failure on Australia's part, doesn't it?!   

   Perhaps surprisingly, Australia is not as bereft of resources as a cursory reading of Clark's post might lead you to believe. In fact Australia:-

1. Is the world's third largest iron-ore producer.
2. Provides 30% of the world's output of bauxite and 1/5 of
    the world's alumina supply.
3. Has for many years been one of the world's largest
    producers of lead and zinc
4. Has enormous deposits of both black and brown coal -
    estimated black coal deposits of 600 billion tons.
5. Has large reserves of uranium. But the 'greenies' have
    successfully stifled production for ideological reasons.
6. Though its oil and natural gas production is currently
    declining, has potentially very large oil and gas deposits
    which have yet to be developed.
7. Exports wheat, wool (around half the world's supply), sugar,
    lamb, beef and veal, and some of the world's best wine 

   Australia may not be the economic equal of America, but she hasn't done badly when you consider that her population is currently 19 million .... about where America's was in 1845.

   In other respects, Australians wouldn't want to live in "another America". Her infant mortality rate (per thousand live births) is 5.3 while America's is 7.1 . And the average Australian can expect to live nearly two years longer than the average American (78.9 years versus 77.1)
   Australia has far less violent crime, a warmer climate, the Great Barrier Reef, and seemingly endless and often deserted surf beaches. Many Australians count these as valuable "commodities"!
   I am Australian and I live in Australia. My job has meant talking at some length with literally tens of thousands of my fellow Australians. And, you know, I've honestly never met even one who wanted to go and live in America!
   Not that I've got anything against the good ol' U.S. of A.! Quite the reverse .... I'm an admirer of American get-up-and-go and I'd kill for an American space budget here!!
   But I know Clark is critical of "oversimplified models" and I felt duty-bound to help him avoid falling into the trap of using them himself.
                                           

I think RobS is correct to recommend using Phobos and Deimos as staging posts.
   I know it looks like a detour, and I'm not here to advocate fooling around .... I want to get to Mars at least as much as the next person. But what RobS is trying to point out is that our biggest problem is fuel. We know there's fuel here on Earth and we know we can make it easily enough on Mars. In fact, we can probably even make it from purported water ice at the lunar poles. But the problem with all these 'gas stations' is they lie at the bottom of gravity wells of various depths.
   The beauty of the Martian moons is that they have no significant gravity and yet they almost certainly have volatiles we can make rocket fuel out of. This means we can fly up and down from the surface of Mars to orbit and back again indefinitely, without ever having to worry about carting fuel from Earth or engaging in dangerous aerobraking in the Martian atmosphere. And, as RobS said, getting from LEO to Phobos or Deimos is relatively undemanding of fuel in the first place!
   In view of these facts, the moons of Mars are really a gift of nature! They can make return trips to Mars very much easier and cheaper. We'd be crazy to pass up such an opportunity!
   Incidentally ... a warm welcome to you from me too, Bruckner!
                                           

So, if 5 is good for group dynamics, how did the muslims come to the conclusion after centuries of trial and error that the ideal number of wives in a harem is 4?
                                    :0

I believe the larger O'Neill colonies were in fact enormous cylinders with radii of maybe 5 kilometres and lengths of 20 kilometres and more.
   They were to be made of raw material from the moon and/or the asteroids and rotated about their long axis to create artificial gravity on the inside surface. There were to be several metres of soil on the inside surface in order to grow crops and trees and some of the pictures I've seen even showed rivers flowing along the length of the colony! Some were big enough to have cloud formation and possibly rainfall, but on a clear day, you could look up and see the tops of the buildings and the trees and streams 10 kilometres away on the other side of the cylinder!! Long sections of the cylinder wall, at intervals around its circumference, were to be transparent and a mirror system would bring sunlight to the interior. Enormous blinds would block out the sun to simulate night.
   There were supposedly many advantages to living in an O'Neill colony which made it preferable to living on a planetary surface. I can't remember now what they were .... total climate control was probably one ... safety from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis etc. were probably some of the others.
   As for me, I'm not so sure. I think I'd miss the grandeur of nature you get on a proper planet; the mountains, the oceans, the icebergs, the deserts ... the storms ...
   Nahh!! Give me Earth or Mars every time!
                                       

Hi oker56!
   Your political ideas are so beautifully simple and idealistic and I wish they could work. Actually I'm surprised Josh and Clark haven't eaten you for breakfast on this one!
   The most obvious problem with your system is determining who is "competent", as you put it. Most people who vote for one type of political party will be happy to inform you that the other party or parties are incompetent! In a simplified form, that's WHY we have to have voting. There's almost never unanimous agreement as to who's competent and who isn't!!
   The other fly in the ointment is that not everyone has the best interests of all the people at heart. Even if you identify someone as competent, you can't be sure s/he isn't sly, dishonest and self-serving .... and extremely competent at gathering more and more power into his or her own hands! Sad to say, but not everyone is pure of heart like you and me, oker56!
   Wherever there are people, there's politics. And politics is the dirtiest game in town because it's run by people. I think it was Mark Twain who said: "The last person in the world you should ever vote for, is someone who puts himself up for election."!
   As for your ideas about money, I'm afraid greed will forever blight your good intentions. You and I might be able to place the wealth and safety of the colony above our own desire for self-enrichment, but there will always be others at the mercy of their baser instincts. Some of them even end up as politicians!!
                                         

Putting all frivolity aside for a moment. Ron Koczor's time is almost up.
   Later this month we should be getting a report on the Podkletnov gravity-control device ... and I, for one, am good and ready for it!!
                                   

Andy Kerr suggests that if we're the only intelligent life in the universe, and we die out, then the universe will have existed for nothing. ".... what a waste of a Universe."
   Let's not forget that beetles are not normally regarded as intelligent and yet there are about 300,000 species of them. There is only one species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. This led one of the great philosophers (whose name regrettably escapes me) to conclude that "God is inordinately fond of beetles".
   Perhaps God's only concern is that beetles should survive. Maybe the demise of the human species would not be of the slightest consequence to Her. And the universe, full of the creatures God loves best, would carry on happily many billions of years after Homo Sapiens Sapiens is no more than a vague memory!
   In any event, the average species lasts from 4 to 10 million years, less than 1% of the time interval between now and when Earth becomes uninhabitable. Whatever life forms may be witness to the boiling of Earth's oceans, none will be anything like what we would describe today as human.
   Let's not worry about all that. Let's just go to Mars because, whatever else God may have intended when She made us, She obviously meant us to be curious. And that may be the only area in which we haven't let Her down ...... at least so far!!
                                           

I think that if Richard Hoagland's hypotheses are ever proven correct, and so far definitive proof is a long way off, he will go down in history as one of the most far-sighted individuals who ever lived.
   NASA probably already credits Hoagland .... for his outstanding audacity!!
   Not for much else at this stage, I suspect. And this petition will have no effect on that situation at all, PsychicCrab.
   The claims in the petition are outrageously premature anyway, so I'll have to take a raincheck on signing it. Sorry!
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