New Mars Forums

Hi RobS !!
                 Just a couple of small points I'd like to throw into the discussion:
                  I note you mentioned that a lunar space elevator need only be built out to the "neutral point" between Earth and the Moon (Lagrange 1). I assume you mean that the centre of gravity of the elevator would reside at Lagrange 1; i.e. that the cable and/or some form of counterweight would extend beyond L1 towards Earth( ? ). I know, I know ... I'm nit-picking again! Still, it might be important as this discussion progresses.
                  Secondly, and I may be wrong about this, I seem to remember that if you draw an imaginary line from the centre of Earth to the centre of the Moon, then as the Moon revolves about Earth, that line does not always intersect the surface of the Moon at the same point. In other words, the Moon as seen from Earth, appears to shimmy from side to side; revealing first a little more of its surface to the west, and then a little more to the east. My point is simply to ask whether this 'shimmy' relative to Earth (and hence relative to L1), is likely to cause any destructive build up of resonance in the elevator cable; a kind of slow-motion whiplash effect?
                 And one more thing: I agree with you that from a conservation of momentum viewpoint, the rotating tether idea is about as elegant as they come! But I have strong reservations about its practicality because of the degree of accuracy involved. It would have to be like an exquisitely choreographed aerial ballet, with supremely precise measurements in all three spatial dimensions, and also in time.
                 I may be accused of being overly obsessive and pessimistic about all this, but I am genuinely interested in the details of this proposed lunar elevator. As an overview, though, since the Moon has no atmosphere, surely the electromagnetic railgun is the better solution at the lunar end, and an elevator at this end?
                                           :0

Is there anything wrong with the GRS boom? Am I right in thinking that I read somewhere about a problem with its deployment?                       :0

It's probably impossible to answer your questions about Martian oceans, Michael.
   Unlike our knowledge, from direct evidence, that Earth has had oceans of liquid water for at least 3.5 billion years, and probably as long as 4 billion years, we still don't know for certain that Mars ever had liquid water on its surface at all!
   The evidence is definitely there, but the "White Mars" brigade (led by the Australian, Nick Hoffman) keep telling us that all those channels could as easily be due to CO2 activity as H2O activity. Personally, I'm in the H2O camp! But that's just my opinion; for what it's worth.
   Even assuming that Mars had lots of water in its early days, was it almost always in the form of ice-sheets, occasionally melted by localised vulcanism? Maybe. What if we assume that somehow Mars was warm enough for the water to exist as a liquid, was there enough of it to form a northern ocean? Possibly.
   If we assume the erstwhile existence of Oceanus Borealis, can we be sure of its volume and, hence, what area of the planet it covered. Probably not. (For a start, Martian topography during the era of the purported ocean may have been significantly different .... such a pity we didn't have a MOLA in orbit around Mars a couple of billion years ago! ) And even if we could be absolutely sure how much water was there in the beginning, we have no reliable knowledge as to how much remains today.
   As you can see, we have way too many unknowns in our equations to be certain of anything about oceans on Mars. Of course, they can't hang you for speculating! So I can put my 2 cents worth in and say that, to my way of thinking, it seems unlikely that any Martian ocean ever covered more than about 40% of the surface.
   But until we get more facts, your guess is as good as mine!
                                   

Does anyone know what Odyssey is up to these days? There was an initial rush of information and now ... nothing!
   Didn't they promise to release stuff pretty much as it happens? (I know there have been pictures released, but they're only at resolutions somewhere between Viking and MGS. What purpose does a backward step in visual resolution serve anyhow? )
   I don't know about you, but I'm more than ready for some more interesting data!           ???

I've seen a number of grainy photos of Lunar scenes and Martian scenes which Richard Hoagland and company present as "astounding evidence" of artificial constructions. Even with the greatest of open-mindedness (something difficult to maintain in conjunction with the obligatory scepticism we owe to ourselves), I could see absolutely no hint of anything other than natural features!
   Close-ups of the so-called "city" which lies close to The Face, have revealed nothing which could be realistically described as artificial, and yet the positioning of the "pyramids", which constitute the "city", had been put forward as a plan based on the mathematics of triangles, squares, pentagons, and the transcendental numbers e and pi. The fact that the artificiality of these pyramids is now totally discounted by all but the most zealous believers, should have sounded the death-knell of the Cydonia hypothesis. Yet, the Enterprise Mission carries on regardless.
   With most of its main features demolished, the whole Cydonia thing should just fade away; and maybe it soon will.
   But that damned Face still keeps pulling me back for one more look! I know, I know ..... it has to be just another mesa. Still, there is something so artificial-looking about it that I can't quite get the doubts out of my mind. It's probably just the last vestiges of the hypnotic hold the old "romantic" Mars has had on the human psyche for so long, and the lure of the myth of ancient Martian civilisations.
   What would it take to break the spell? I don't know. What I do know is it's not up to NASA to prove that every rock on Mars is a natural feature! And how could they, without going there and examining it up close? And proving it IS artificial would take a full-blown expedition too. So, I suppose for the forseeable future I'll simply put it in the "too hard tray" and forget about it. But maybe now and then I'll pick it up, roll it over in my mind, and wonder about it .... just because it feels so good!
   Anybody else feel the same way?         

The sun is constantly spewing out a stream of charged particles called the solar wind. In effect, this constitutes an electric current; weak though it is due to the attenuation of spreading out over huge volumes of space. Nevertheless it is a current and is accompanied, inevitably, by the magnetic field always associated with a current.
   I'm going out on a speculative limb here and fully expect to be shot down by a physicist, but how do we know Bill's interplanetary passengers won't be wafted through the solar system by some ingenious use of this magnetic field? (I'm sure I've read something about such a scheme somewhere, so I don't claim any originality at all in this! ) And what if the enormous power of Bill's fusion engines are used in conjunction with advanced superconductors to create colossal currents and monstrous magnetic fields which can interact with the solar wind to produce thrust? This may be a way to get away from the old "propellant tossed out the back of the craft" type set-up and avoid the fuel/payload ratio difficulty.
   The actual mechanism of Bill's propulsion system is not vitally important in terms of its details, as long as it's based on fundamentally sound principles; which is what I think he just said in his last post. But, of course, he wants it to be as realistic as possible to add plausibility to the storyline.
   I hope at least some of this is relevant to the discussion! Any comebacks on it?
                                       

Alexander's appeal for fewer goals for NASA seems like a good idea to me; and it sits well with Michael's idea of concentrating on a first-class RLV. Michael is right on the money when he says making LEO flights 10 times cheaper is fundamental to the future success of all kinds of space projects.
   I can sense the frustration you both feel at the endless dithering and time-wasting of the NASA administration. I'm sure we all feel it. Sometimes, in my darker moments, I put on my conspiracy investigator's hat and start thinking they can only have done it deliberately! In today's dollars, if you add up how much money NASA has had to play with in the
30 years since Eugene Cernan left the the last footprint on the moon, they must have spent nearly 400 billion dollars! Dr. Zubrin claims he can establish a permanent outpost on Mars for less than 10% of that!!
   Sometimes I feel like yelling down the phone to NASA: "What the #### are you guys doing there all day!!" The whole working life-times of talented scientists are slipping by while NASA debates and prevaricates. What a waste.
   I agree with Michael and Alexander 100%; it's high time for somebody to pick a goal and stick with it and achieve it in the designated time-frame! If Michael's idea of a cutting-edge SSTO launch vehicle is going to speed up everything else, then let's do it and stop talking about it!
   There! .... I feel better now.
                                             

Hi Disland!
                  You're the only other person I've ever heard of who knows "The Spaceships of Ezekiel" by Josef Blumrich! I thought I was the only one who bought the book!!
                   I have no qualms about mentioning books with unconventional themes, as long as they are not written by obvious wild-eyed lunatics and as long as the science they are based on is at least self-consistent. Of course, it also helps if I express no opinions as to the ultimate plausibility of the book in question and ask nobody else to place any credence in it either!
                   I have a background in applied science and am eternally grateful to the people who have taught me to think clearly and rationally about evidence presented to me. There are many crazy books out there, written by cranks, which are taken seriously by people without the training to analyse critically what they are reading. That leads to all manner of lunacy; from believing in fairies to planning your day around your newspaper horoscope! As Carl Sagan would say: We owe it to ourselves to be sceptical, or else we'll all be believing in hobgoblins and we'll be back burning innocent women as witches! Although I didn't agree with everything he said, I very much admired his clarity of thought and enjoyed his books enormously.
               I fear I may have inadvertently caused confusion about the nuclear-powered food-producer; this device is the central feature of "The Manna Machine", not "The Spaceships of Ezekiel". The book about the manna machine has the following identification code: ISBN 0 586 04743 3  and was published by Granada Publishing Limited.
              I note your comment about having to make sacrifices if you want to be an astronaut. I agree! I'll eat algae steaks until they're coming out of my ears if that's what it takes to get a ticket to Mars!!       

As close as you can tell from what you believe to be the facts, Michael, would you say Earth's age is:-

(a) Less than ~6000 years.
(b) From ~6000 to ~10,000 years.
? From ~10,000 to ~100 million years.
(d) From ~100 million to ~4 billion years.
(e) ~4.6 billion years.
                                                 :0

This is an interesting topic at a number of different levels. One of the levels sprang to mind as I read about the microbes in water tanks!
   I don't expect anyone to take this seriously, but there were two books published in the seventies about the Israelites of the Old Testament: One was called "The Spaceships of Ezekiel" by Josef Blumrich (a former NASA engineer), and the other was called "The Manna Machine" by George Sassoon and Rodney Dale. Each book theorised that Jehovah, the god of the Old Testament, was in fact an alien who, for some reason, kept the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years as part of some kind of genetic isolation experiment. This alien "god", Jehovah, used nuclear technology not greatly surpassing that available to us today; which seems to be a flaw in the argument since it probably limits the number of places in the galaxy he could have originated from!
   Anyway, the manna machine is described as essentially a small nuclear reactor which feeds electricity to powerful lights in the centre of a vat full of some kind of algal broth. The specially engineered algae grow at a furious pace, producing huge quantities of a nutritious substance which the jews have always known as manna. Thus, Jehovah fed his chosen people in the barren desert for decades. The book goes on to describe how many of the very esoteric and difficult passages in the jewish bible are, in fact, garbled instructions to the priests on how to operate and periodically clean (every seven days) the "miraculous" food machine.
   However you take this story, it makes for entertaining and thought-provoking reading. (As does J. Blumrich's book).
   But the point, of course, is how this concept might apply to early Martian outposts where food production may be a problem; at least in the initial stages. The idea of a self-contained, pre-tested, and guaranteed-reliable food production unit may be very reassuring for early settlers on a desolate world.
   If you remember your Sunday school lessons, though, you will recall that the Israelites tired of manna after a while and pleaded for a change of diet! Maybe there's a limit to how many ways you can prepare and cook algae-based nutrient and still make it appetising!
   I think I'd start to miss fruit, vegetables, and bacon and eggs after a while, myself!!
   Any thoughts on this?                     

Another brief question, Alexander. I note you class the Magnum booster as better than the Saturn V. From memory, the big Saturn could put 150 tons into LEO, while the Magnum can't manage even 100 tons.
   Presumably your comparison is based on $$$ per ton rather than sheer tonnage, right?             :0

Hi RobS!  I just want to ask a question about lunar ice.
   I've noticed that a lot of people talk about water ice at the lunar poles with some conviction. Are we absolutely sure there is water ice there? I mean is it a fact?
   I suspect I've missed one or two important announcements about this because I thought lunar ice was a theory with some supporting evidence; but not enough evidence to send astronauts after the water, or for entrepreneurs to get excited about it ( ? ).
   I stand ready and willing to be persuaded on this!
(PS I've phoned the NSA about you, Phobos; there's nowhere you can hide! I suggest you turn yourself in.)