New Mars Forums

Hope the other probes/landers make it, but we have to keep in mind there's only been a 30% chance of success, to date, IIRC, so... At least *one* should do ok.

*blush* Thanks, though i still think i'm a bit over-enthousiastic.

Not wanting to be a doom-prophet, but the biggest challenge will indeed be in our heads... Are we mentally mature enough to wield these awesome tools... for the 'good cause?'

Will this ever speeding up pace leave the majorrity of humankind dumbfounded, with a very small techno-elite at the steering wheel? a lot of questions that are (almost) nowhere being taken very seriously... Because we are talking 'stupid science fiction'

Be prepared. But how? Time is running out. Already moderately smart people erroneously created a deadly variant of a common virus in a 'normal' lab, proving it is getting easier by the day for 'lunatics' to do the same.... Intentionally. It doesn't take billions or a genius to figure this stuff out. Not anymore.

Non-proliferation accords on proliferation-based technology sounds a bit weird, neh?

(BTW This is the IBM thing i referred to: Smalltimes)

... And we're getting wildly off-topic on this thread (Wel... I am!)

Poll: Americans support low cost return to the moon

Spacedaily

(or is this the wrong thread?)

Jadeheart...  About your thousand years. I tend to think too, with current tech it would take that long. But some time ago i read Kurzweil's book on the 'hyperbolic' speed at wich technology is accelerating, don't remember the title, but... Well, it totallly changed my views. About near-midlle time future. He makes some unbelievably wild predictions... But after reading his reasoning... I have to admit, I'm now totally convinced the future will be all and more than we can possibly imagine, right now. Genetic engineering, computer power.. will change everthing, very, very fast. We're on the brink of something very big, if we survive the next 10-20 years. Only yesterday IBM announced true nanotechnology used for computer memory, thechnology derived from bioengineering... Even Kurzweill's predictions seem to be on the safe side, in hindsight.
(Ramble, ramble...)

Bioengineering will bring us nano-sized computers, automated, self-replicating assemblers... At a speed and scale, almost unimaginable, in the next 10-15 years. I'm reasonably convinced this is *not* science-fiction; there are no 'show-stoppers' to make all this impossible, the theories are sound, the 'tools' to actually implement the ideas are getting better every day. The computer you are working on is more powerful than the fastest multi-million supercomputer that was state-of-the-art, barely 15 years ago. sit back and think about that... Now there are millions of these things in use, everyday... And some of hese are being used to work on things that were "foolish science-fiction" only years ago... I have programs here that let me build molecules, in 3D. Right now seti@home is crunching numbers in the background... I'm working with a program that's free, but widely being used in medical imaging labs, I'm trying to coax it into my studies... (involving image-restoration-examination) And that's only computers... Imagiine the things we don't  know about that well, because we don't use it on a daily base. Like the bio-engineering-molecular studies. 25 years ago, only people in white coats used computers, now virtually everybody does... In less than 25 years we'll be using biotech suff on a regular basis too, and don't wonder about it...
Such technological leaps make us more powerful in controlling materials every year. I saw a 'Micro-raman' in action two days ago, it's a suitcase-sized electron microscope (!!!), basically you can just switch it on and point it to some object, get the data immediatly on a monitor.... Amazing, 10 years ago these were towering devices, you had to do a lot of iffy work to prepare the samples you wanted examined... Now you can hire one to use it wherever you fancy.

These are very powerful tools, speeding up-again our grasp of the material world around us...

When you pause for a second, and realise how fast our 'tools' evolve... Yes, i'm convinced nano-factories are coming, sooner rather than later. and it will change *everything*
Terraformation in a hundred year, cheap space-flight, cheap solar energy, ... life-extending treatments... The scope for long-time planning. The mind staggers. Will we be able to cope?

(Sorry for the wild prophesies, i'm afraid i have a fever... The flu has hit Europe, too.)

I thought that his ideas could at least be a little more specific... Had the feeling i was reading the 'introduction' of a broader vision... Now it's like you can't really argue because you simply do not know wha he means *exactly*

TheSpaceReview

"...your unique style and thought-provoking posts..."

Huh? Most people describe me as a rambling lunatic with a tendency to speculate too wildly   I guess it all depends the way you look at it...

While i was typing the PS about "Green" being possibly two kinds of green, i realized a lot of people will categorize me as a tree hugger. Reality is a bit more complicated. I just wanted to point out that the environment or eco-sphere or whatever you want to call it, ... Can be described by our scientists as a hugely complex thermo-dynamic errr... system.

Arbitrary "let's-see-what-this-button-do" 'applied' chemistry, engineering,  bioengineering... will be very tempting to do on Mars. The place is already a radiation-loaded, superoxide desert, what could be worse? (this will be the general view)
But the bigger the button you push on a machine you do not understand, the more far-reaching consequences... it *could* get worse...

I suggest somebody should do *a lot* more modeling, to get at least a minimum of insight in what will happen once we start terraforming. Maybe via the BOINC system, now underway to completion under Berkeleys wings.

(Hey, maybe an idea for the Society?)

while we're at it... I like the way they do this thing. Virtually no funding, so they can only do 3-4 tests in a row. When testing is done, they go back to the drawingtables, and measurements they got so far... trying to figure out how to improve upon the concept.

Their test-sessions are very intensive, they do 4-5 launches in a week, with the same vehicule(!), because they are adamant a quick turn-around time is essential for future craft, so better start practicing the theory early on. Sweet.

I'll try and find the whitepaper on the RLV, it's quite interesting.

http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/74591/1

Article

One could argue he's to 'blame' for all this :;): :the first one to envision Geostationary sats, and thus world-wide communications as we know it today.

Personally, I think Sir A.C. Clarke is one of world's biggest socio-cultural thinkers... For instance, he described the global disaster of a collapse of the information highway in his second Rama novel, years before the internet was as important as it is now. Only yesterday, a small computer glitch on Nasdaq caused quite some havoc...

Electronic information is becoming more important by the day. The way we handle it in the longer term will be... Well, read the article.

Visited by moderator 2022/02/15

Blue about Red vs Green?

In fact that's a great title...

I guess i'm Red, for i think Mars is so beautiful, to begin with.

But knowing Mankind, once we settle there to stay, all discussions will be moot, there'll be a *race* to terraform, and be sure, we'll s*rew up thing big time...

By the way, all discussions about beauty etc are -sadly- just that, discussions. Mars is economically much more valuable, once terraformed, so it *will* be done. Corporations don't buy beauty- they prefer cash.

*Fast-Forward to future* So i'm red, but i'm not gonna fight the greens, but try to persuade them to be at least marginally sensible in what they do. Throwing nuclear bombs on the poles to melt ice is stupid, dangerous, non-effective, for instance.

And we'll see *a lot* of these crazy plans being concocted, some being actually implemented. Why? Because Mars is empty, most govnments, scientists etc will see nothing more than a big red playground to do some experimenting. Things you can't do on Earth.
All bright and not-so-bright white coated people will be standing in line to do some experimentng, all in the name of the holy word Terraformation.

And there'll be accidents. Company/government/agency (C/g/a) "A" is doing a test with agressive drilling techniques on a place where C/g/a "B" has secretly built an underground lab to do some tests on a controversial new bio-agent...

Results are predictable.

c/g/a "A"in another scenario, is actively ruining efforts made by c/g/a "B" because their long-time visions are  incompatible...

etc... etc...

If no long-term vision is widely accepted and adhered to, Mars will be a chaotic, violent place to live.

But who will write this long-term plan?

JAXA editorial

Been following this for some time, essentially they are doing tests with a subscale engineering model, each new test adds new stuff. (a bit like the American X-stuff things in the 50's, test it till it breaks, repair, then test some more. This way you learn a lot for little cost...) Eventually they want a bigger thing built, but money is a problem. But since all Japanese Space-Agencies merged into JAXA, they've been getting more and more attention.

Nozom's deadline to start the engine has passed. Eerily quiet on the Jaxa site. So we can assume mission-not-accomplished?

Sad news, if true, but of course quite predictable.

Sigh. Japan's space industry once again facing a big setback.