New Mars Forums

Yeah!  Make him jump through a hoop!  And he should have a big millstone... one on each foot!      And manacles, and a straight jacket, and a burning hemp rope to suspend him over SpaceShip One's nozzle during a death defying act escape!  Brilliant!   :twisted:

Or, alternately...  NASA can simply accept that Burt Rutan is no more ready to have the entire space program on his shoulders than anybody else, offer him the same chances NASA offers anybody else with a small business, and see what he can do with it (same as anybody else). 

How boring!    

No, you're right.  We have to make it hard on him.  Get some dramatic potential going over at Scaled Composites!   :twisted:

I believe that standard procedure for US governmental purchasing is to favor bids by US companies over equivalent bids by international firms.  International bidders only get the award if they can clearly beat out any US company's offer.

However, a contest situation doesn't necessarily need purchasing department approval for everything that moves.  No bids! 

This plan could both spur research AND do an end run around stifling governmental regulations.  Who says those folks at NASA aren't geniuses!   8)

They saw the ship go down in the ravine, Terry thought.  Just great.

Suddenly, the airship cabin was alive with waving arms, pointing fingers, and other portions of excited earther tourists visible around the gondola seats. 

“Did you see that!”

“Oh my God!  Was that one of ours?”

“What happened?”

“They crashed!  They crashed!”

“Crap!  I spilled my drink!”

“That’s gotta hurt!”

“I can’t see!”

“Is everybody okay?”

“Argh!  Your arm!”

“Sorry!”

“Oh, they’re dead.”

Someone let loose a squeaky little scream, and everybody began unbuckling at once to get up and move across the cabin.  The tiny airship Marvin creaked and shifted on its landing gear under the strain of rubbernecking.

“It’s all right!  We’re all right!  Everybody please remain calm and return to your seats!  Return to your seats!”  Terry called to his passengers, pointing in the traditional “Sit down and let the pilot fly!” posture. 

“We should go help!” came the inevitable voice from the rear of the cabin.  It was the little one, Dennis, the guy who never seemed able to keep all his feet on the floor at the same time.  He reminded Terry of his mother-in-law’s chihuahua.  Of course, he’d be the one to want to mount a rescue mission with only a dozen (purely terran tenderfoot, barely even seen a spacesuit) Mars Society members.

Another passenger quickly seconded the motion.  Terry thought about the prospect of climbing down a cliff into a burning wreck with this bunch, and didn’t want any part of it.  There was probably nothing there that anybody wanted to see, but he refrained from pointing that out.  “We’re going to call Olympus and get them to send out a rescue team.” 

Dennis looked disappointed, and so did everybody else.  Five minutes earlier, the passengers had been antsy and bored.  Their day’s outing – complete with the “space suits” and “moon buggies” suitable for typical tourists - had been cut short by a sudden storm blowing in from their north.  The coming front was probably full of fierce drafts and thermals.  The wind was already threatening to blow the Marvin over with heavy gusts as it sat on the ground, and Terry was very eager to get them all home as soon as possible.   He was also a little angry.  That was no spring dust devil out there – this storm had to have been building for days, and now his budding little flying business was going to be grounded for weeks with no warning.  As usual, he blamed the weather guys at Tharsis control. 

It never occurred to him that there had been no warning to give.

Brian leaned over from the co-pilot’s chair.  “Terry,” he whispered.  “I can’t raise Olympus or any of the relays.”

More fun.  “Well, the antenna’s busted or something,” Terry said in a low voice, his brow furrowing with concern as he checked the ship’s status.  Unusual equipment failures just before a major sandstorm were never good, even if you were just about to crank up the engines and fly home.  In fact, that’s when they were usually the worst.

“Diagnostic says we’re still receiving, but I can’t get the beacon.”

“It’s gotta be us,”  Terry told him.  Floating kilometers high on tethered aerostats, the Tharsis beacons were far beyond the reach of any mere duststorm.   “Try another channel.”

Brian began diligently adjusted the frequency from one standard channel to the next.  Shortly thereafter, Terry felt a puff of breath on his elbow. 

He turned to look, and found himself staring at the head of his eldest passenger, a short little old lady named Ms. Reece, as she peered past his arm to peruse the Marvin’s glass cockpit from the bridge door.  The most elderly person he’d ever seen in a pressure suit, Ms. Reece probably had the record for oldest person in space sewn up before Bob Zubrin toddled up the stands with his walker to watch the first Mars launch. 

“Ms. Reece, please, buckle yourself back in.  We’ll be leaving soon.”  Hopefully to return to port, he thought.  The winds were picking up.  At this rate, they’d soon be beyond the Marvin’s ability to navigate them.

“Young man,” she began, and Terry’s shields instantly went up.  At forty years old, he hadn’t been referred to as a young man since leaving Earth half a decade ago.  “I trust you realize that we are the closest vessel to this crash site.  By your tracking, we are only ten kilometers away.  As such, we have an obligation to provide assistance if we can.  It’s only fair.” 

“We are attempting to raise a rescue party,” Terry responded, his lips getting tighter.  “We will notify you of any developments.  Now, please sit down.”

“Any luck?” she inquired immediately, before he could even blink.

“Ms. Reece,” Terry answered.  “We will notify you of any developments.”

“Hold it!” Brian said, raising his hand to appeal for quiet.  Unlike Terry’s previous effort, enough of the passengers had become focused on what was happening on the bridge that this time the call for silence actually worked.  “I’ve got something on the radio!”

For a moment, the only sound was the Marvin’s lightly built hull creaking in the wind.  Then Terry heard the static broken transmission.      …

ooh!  ooh!  Two good points! 

Bill's first:

A sound tactic.  Health care workers have repeatedly found that the best place to start educating people about medical topics is to educate the mothers of a community, because that tactic spreads information to the most people per class session (mothers, fathers, and children all at once).

If we decide to focus our efforts on all Islam instead of those who stand against us, educating their women would be the best place to start.

There's just one problem with all that:

Who the hell are we to bring Islam into the 21st century?!   

This course would preclude any future chance to unite with Islamic peoples against a common enemy.  (Just a guess, but I'll bet terrorism has edged out lightning as a cause of death in Iraq this year.  Here in the States, it also put lighting to shame with a brief spike in activity during September of 2001... )  It's a waste of effort as well.  Every muslim on the planet is not out to get us (yet  :? ). 

And it also ignores a fundamentalist truth about ourselves (pun intended). Here's Cindy's point:

I'll never forget the day I first heard the words, "Israel is God's chosen people, so I'll support them no matter what they do," in a sunday school class, and it wasn't the last.  You might be amazed at how prevalent this sentiment is among evangelical christians here in the United States.  There's also a very prevalent conviction among these groups that, because of the USA's unique position in history (most affluent, most powerful, etc.), the United States has been uniquely chosen by God for some purpose - and consequently is subject to divine judgement if we fail.  Muslims aren't widely appreciated, either.

Evangelical christians make up about 30% of the US population, and can claim nearly 35% of the voters.  Those numbers keep getting bigger every year.  People make a big deal about President Bush being one of them, but the fact is that no sitting US president consistently ignores the wishes of one third of the nation.  Dubya will be gone in a few years, but we won't soon be free of politicised religion. 

Evangelical does not automatically mean these people are fundamentalists, dispensationalists or fanatics, but these movements are shot through with all three.  The number of people subscribing to these three '-isms' is increasing right along with the number of evangelical voters.  That doesn't bode well for promoting cooperation with Islam. 

In fact, if the current trend of politically active fundamentalist fanaticism in the US continues far enough, we could eventually see religious terrorism answered with religious warfare by the United States, and see that supported by the majority of Americans. 

We still have a few decades before they can be open about their motives, though.

Seriously, even though the subject is still only theoretical, there is very little reason to suppose that this isn't a true statement.  HOWEVER...

It's a long, long way from being able to do this with a few subatomic particles and being able to do it with an entire spacecraft. 

You may wish to hold off on christening your starship until CERN yields some hard data on what's required to scale up this effect.

Sounds like a good idea.  You get right to work on that, Stormrage.   

Such things happen.  However, there is no evidence that they hapened in this instance.  I think they got their man.

Now you're talking! 

I know we've all been holding out for that special tropical garden spot on Mars.  But, with the construction of a suitable road (the crater walls are probably not steep enough to require a tunnel), something like this polar crater could be the next best thing.

It would be good news for the Raelians.

First off, cool picture!   8)

Now, if I wanted that ice...

The biggest deposit is at the bottom of a three hundred meter dropoff with what looks like a very uneven bottom (notice the steep lip around the ice and the offcenter pile of rock on one end?).  So, getting down there is going to be risky.  Solution: Send in the probes!  A small rover equipped with a rudimentary seismograph could find a nice spot that is both flat enough and solid enough to land on and set up shop.

If I couldn't do that, then please note that this photograph doesn't show just one ice deposit.  There are several small deposits all around the rim of the crater.  If Endurance crater is any indication, an off-center impact crater is likely to have a layer of deeply broken rock around its upper rim, and this will hold both dust and ice in the gaps between the boulders.  That ice can be extracted, and the broken rock and tailings can be discarded right into the crater. 

If I couldn't do that either, given the probable structure of the crater rim there is still bound to be extractable ice in it.  Subliming that ice will bring water vapor up through those cracks in the rock.  I would heat the surrounding soil and try to collect the gas as it came out.  This can be done with a power source or by brushing off the top layers of dust and letting the sun do the work for you.  It might even already be occuring quite naturally.  We could easily find the first gas wells on Mars just sitting there waiting to be capped off. 

The caption says that the ice is still there because the sun angle doesn't reach to the bottom of the crater, but that's consistent with neither the fact that there are ice deposits all over the top of the crater where the sun shines every day of the year, nor the fact that we can actually see the bottom of the crater quite clearly.  I wouldn't put much stock in that explanation, except to say that the sun at 70 degrees north latitude might not give enough heat to mine the ice, particularly in the very bottom of the crater. 

All three methods require mining equipment, but not all methods require the same equipment.  There's bound to be a cost effective method to go after at least one of those ice deposits.

There's a darn good case for that. 

It's been suggested that the majority of the intertribal genetic mixing in human history has come about either as a direct result of battle/warfare or during periods where warring groups were crowded together in the same geographic region.  That leads some researchers to postulate that warfare serves a biological function:  It's how humans avoid inbreeding.

It's more complicated in practice of course.  Warfare is only what brings the groups into contact.  Defection to the other tribe is the actual mechanism of intermixing. 

For example, when two troops of wild primates (baboons, chimps, gorillas, etc.) come into contact with each other in the wild, a great deal of hostility and even some fighting is typically observed among the adults.  The younger primates are a whole different story, though.  They can be observed excitedly dashing about, climbing trees to see, sneaking in closer, and generally excitedly trying to satisfy their curiosity about the other troop.  (*GASP*  Other Monkeys!   :shock: )  Frequently, and completely regardless of any fighting, a young member of one troop will cross over and go with the other.   Ta-dah!  The screen fades to black, and genetic intermixing occurs.  8)

It's about the same with humans as it is with monkeys.   :? 

Our problem is, we've socialized the warfare rather than the intermixing.  We focus on the incidental conflicts and neglect the other, equally important biological imperatives going on in the background.

Where's the fun in that?