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#601 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » New Discoveries *4* - ...Solar System, Deep Space, cont'd » 2004-12-07 08:24:51
How fast can ball lightning move?
The sky looks threatening and there may have been considerable static electricity in the area. My guess is it's some kind of atmospheric electrical phenomenon.
I'm sure there are all sorts of things going on in the atmosphere that we've yet to fathom. Maybe we just caught one of them on camera(?).
??? 
#602 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri - ...anything political goes. » 2004-12-07 08:12:50
CC:-
Tolerance of those who are different doesn't mean that we have to change, tolerance goes both ways and for a free and open society to remain requires its population to accept the basic principles on which it is built. If a segment of society, in this case an unassimilable immigrant population, can't or won't accept that then they have to be moved elsewhere.
Sounds O.K. in principle but there are nearly a million Muslims in Spain, 3 million in Germany, and about 13 million overall in Europe.
If say 10% of them are 'radical' and refuse to fit in, and you attempt to deport them, that's 1.3 million who'll need to be rounded up. Even if you could be sure you've got the right 1.3 million, the rest will probably 'radicalise' in response to your efforts. All brothers in Islam, and all that.
So now you've got all 13 million to deport. But what if their former countries don't want them back?
And what of the chattering classes and other naive and soft-hearted people who may not know an insidious threat when they see one? How long will it take them to draw the inevitable comparisons between your program and Hitler's 'relocation' of European Jews 60 years ago? You'd probably end up fighting off a sizeable army of indigenous Europeans, too, who'll take up arms to put a stop to your 'New Nazism'!
I suppose you could let it ride and just sit and take it, soaking up one Extremist Islamic act of violence after another until ultimately they outbreed you and, in the last democratic elections Europe will see in a long time, vote in mullahs to run the place along Islamic lines.
(Fiji is now run by Indians who were brought in originally as cheap labour by the British colonialists, outbred the local populace, and voted themselves into authority over the original owners. There's already been one violent coup, that I know of, by disgruntled Native Fijians. And that's without the new rulers imposing draconian religious laws, as Muslim authorities in Europe would no doubt do.)
Either way, I'm very concerned that eventually the whole thing could easily descend into large-scale violence. ???
I very much hope some kind of accommodation can be reached before it gets to that stage.
#603 Re: Not So Free Chat » Political Potpourri - ...anything political goes. » 2004-12-06 19:11:45
The recent talk here about the situation with Islam in Europe has been very worrying. It looks as though the vigilantism I predicted many months ago (not an especially prescient performance on my part, of course, because it wasn't that hard to see it coming) has already erupted in places like Holland - with the burning of Islamic schools etc.
I found the following article yesterday in The Australian newspaper and thought it painted a comprehensive and very disturbing picture of the current European thinking on the subject:-
Backlash against tolerance
Charles Bremner
06dec04DAYS before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death, her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to police.
Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific lapidation of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst.
Last week, pop stars and other celebrities joined 2000 people in a march through Marseilles denouncing violence against women, particularly in the immigrant-dominated housing estates.The protest against Islamic obscurantism and the "fundamentalism that imprisons women" was led by a group of Muslim women who call themselves Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive).
The movement, which emerged three years ago to defend Muslim women, is spawning similar groups across Europe, supported by a mainstream opinion that has recently abandoned political correctness and wants to halt the inroads of Islam.
From Norway to Sicily, governments, politicians and the media are laying aside their doctrines of diversity and insisting that Islamism, as the French call the fundamentalist form that pervades the housing estates, is incompatible with Europe's liberal values.
The shift is not just a reaction to exceptional violence such as the Madrid train bombings, or the murder of Theo van Gogh, the anti-Islamic Dutch film-maker, by a Dutch-Moroccan. It stems from a belief that more muscular methods are needed to integrate Europe's 13 million-strong Muslim community and to combat creeds that breed extremists and, ultimately, terrorism.
With mixed results, governments are trying to quell the scourge by co-opting Muslim leaders to promote a moderate European Islam.
In Germany, with its 3 million - mainly Turkish - Muslims, and France, with its 5million of mainly North African descent, television viewers were shocked when local young Muslims approved of van Gogh's murder. "If you insult Islam, you have to pay," was a typical response.
"The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart," said Angela Merkel, leader of Germany's Christian Democrat opposition. "Anyone coming here must respect our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots."
Italy's traditional tolerance towards immigrants has been eroded by fear of Islamism. An Ipsos poll in September showed that 48 per cent of Italians believed that a "clash of civilisations" between Islam and the West was under way and that Islam was "a religion more fanatical than any other".
Similar views can be heard across traditionally tolerant Scandinavia - and no longer just from populist right-wing parties such as Pia Kjaersgaard's People's Party in Denmark.
The Centre-Right Government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen has equipped Denmark with Europe's toughest curbs on immigration, largely aimed at people from Muslim countries.
In Sweden, where anti-Muslim feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been authorised to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the measure comes nowhere near France's new ban on the hijab in all state schools.
In Spain, with a rapidly rising population of nearly a million Muslims, the backlash has been less visible, despite the bombings, but thousands demonstrated in Seville last week against plans to build a mosque in the city centre. The Government has also won approval by sending 500 extra police to monitor preachers and Muslim associations.
Police across the European Union are closely watching prayer meetings in makeshift mosques in cities and housing estates, and media accounts of the jihadist, anti-Western and anti-Semitic doctrines of the imams are fuelling public anger.
In Germany, pressure is growing for sermons to be preached in German rather than Turkish or Arabic. Hidden TV cameras recently broadcast an imam in a Berlin mosque telling worshippers that "Germans can only expect to rot in the fires of hell because they are non-believers".
The debate over the limits to free speech is loudest in France, which now acknowledges the failure of its "republican" approach to integration whereby immigrants were supposed to blend harmoniously into society and not exist in separate communities.
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin is deporting foreign imams who support wife-beating and other uncivilised practices. Last week, the Government moved to ban a Lebanon-based television channel for anti-Semitic broadcasting.
The left wing, which long shunned criticism of Islam as the stock-in-trade of far-Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, now denounces the "totalitarian", anti-feminist, anti-Semitic doctrines of the fundamentalists.
Jacques Julliard, a leading left-wing commentator, said the Left's longstanding tolerance had been used as "an agent for the penetration of Islamic intolerance".
Some on the Left have also taken strong exception to the concept of "Islamophobia", a supposed sin defined by EU anti-racism watchdogs as akin to anti-Semitism.
The French consensus was symbolised by the 80 per cent public support for the head-scarf ban, which started with little trouble in September. While many Muslims felt stigmatised, the Government took comfort from the approval of the ban by a substantial minority of the 10 per cent of the population that is of immigrant origin.
Among them is Fadela Amara, a Muslim town councillor from Clermond Ferrand, who heads the Ni Putes ni Soumises movement.
"The veil is an instrument of oppression that is imposed by the green fascists," she said.
Amara, who led the Marseilles march, advocates an "open Islam, an Islam of French culture a bit Gallic around the edges".
This is also the aim of the state, which two years ago created a national Muslim Council to promote moderate mainstream Islam. The council was set up by Nicolas Sarkozy, the then interior minister, who now heads the UMP, President Jacques Chirac's Centre-Right party.
Sarkozy has just caused a stir by going a stage further, proposing that France's rigorously secular state fund the building of mosques.
Reluctantly, some intellectuals have lately concluded that the model for Europe should be the US. On Tuesday, a writer for French left-wing daily Liberation noted that immigrants in the US threw themselves into "the American dream" and prospered.
"There is no French, Dutch or other European dream," she noted. "You emigrate here to escape poverty and nothing more."
The Times. Copyright The Australian.
It's possible September 11, Bali, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. may be just the beginning, the prelude. The opening scenes in the main performance might be happening now in ordinary suburbs in ordinary towns and cities of the West, where Islamic influence is gradually infiltrating.
As the article says, there's a system in our midst (I say 'our midst' because we're all in this together - Europe, Australia, the U.S.) whose tenets are frequently at odds with the secular freedom and gender equality we cherish. Yet, it's our very tolerance which is allowing this system to spread its influence.
It looks like Europe is just beginning to wake up to the potential threat and remember that 'the price of freedom is eternal vigilance'. Whether or not an attack on freedom is overt, like Hitler's expansionism in the 1930s and 40s, or a much more subtle and gradual internal subversion, the same vigilance is necessary.
When a film maker can be shot and have his throat cut in a public street in Holland, because he dared to ask questions about the treatment of a certain group of women, things have gone badly wrong with multiculturalism and assimilation.
Being open and accepting of different people from different backgrounds is the basis of Western liberal democracy. But if that openess and acceptance draws a trojan horse inside the gates, which threatens the very basis of our liberal system .. what then?
???
#604 Re: Not So Free Chat » Year in Space 2005 Calendar - ...holiday gift idea » 2004-12-06 17:48:35
I don't usually get too excited about calendars but that Year in Space 2005 does look especially good, I agree.
It's only available as a desk calendar, though, which is a pity because some of those photos are good enough to eat! They'd look great in large format up on a wall.
#605 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) - rover » 2004-12-06 08:05:26
Hmmm.
With regard to the chip they're planning to include in the array of instruments on the Mars Surface Laboratory (MSL), the one which detects amino acids, I think there may be a degree of ambiguity as to how specific and definitive the test really is.
According to the article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c … 1.DTL]THIS SITE :-
The device was developed by (Richard) Mathies and Alison Skelley, a graduate student in his lab. Mathies calls it a "microfabricated lab on a chip", ...
Then only last week, during experiments on the Marin Headlands, the entire system, chip and all, underwent its first field test. It detected left-handed amino acids with ease, Skelley said, ...
Earlier in the same article, were the following statements by Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla:-
My great hope is that we'll find some primitive life form there that preceded anything we know on Earth. ...
One major clue would be to detect microscopic traces of unique kinds of amino acids on Mars, Bada said, "because the only way you could possibly get amino acids at all is from biology."
The structure of the twenty amino acids on Earth is like a spiral, with their strands of molecules twisting around each other in a left-handed direction, Bada said. If amino acids twisted the other way, they could not possibly be Earthly molecules.
"If we saw evidence of right-handed amino acids on Mars, they would give us unique proof that Martian life really has existed there - or does exist", he said.
O.K., so apparently amino acids definitely mean life and right-handed amino acids would mean un-Earthly life.
This struck me as being rather curious because I remembered something about amino acids in connection with a meteorite which fell on Australia back in the 1960s. A quick google turned up http://www.panspermia.org/chiral.htm]THIS ARTICLE, and some of the most interesting parts are these:-
(The Title:) AMINO ACID ASYMMETRY IN THE MURCHISON METEORITE.
Most amino acids can exist in either a right-handed or left-handed form. In biology, however, only the left-handed forms are used. The original reason for this anomaly is not known. If life originates from nonliving chemicals there is no convincing reason for one form to be selected and not the other. Amino acids produced nonbiologically would have no obvious reason to accumulate excesses of either form. Now two biochemists at the University of Arizona have reported in Science that they found measurably more left-handed than right-handed versions of certain amino acids in the Murchison meteorite.
Straight away, we seem to have a contradiction here. This second article discusses amino acids produced both biologically and "nonbiologically".
Dr. Bada appears convinced "the only way" to get amino acids is through biology.
The Murchison meteorite is a carbonaceous chondrite. These are generally believed to be remnants of spent comets. There is conclusive evidence that water once flowed through them. This one struck Earth on September 28, 1969, scattering fragments across pastures near Murchison, Victoria, Australia.
If Dr. Bada is correct about amino acids being produced exclusively by biology, then the Murchison meteorite should have been hailed as definitive proof of extraterrestrial life 35 years ago, even before its significant preponderance of laevorotatory amino acids was discovered.
As always, the spectre of terrestrial contamination reared its ugly head and tried to ruin the fun. But this seems to have been eliminated as a possibility:-
However, even before the new work by Cronin and Pizarello was reported, analyses of isotope ratios showed that the excess of left-handed amino acids in the meteorite was not the result of earthly contamination.
The new analysis by Cronin and Pizarello bypasses the contamination problem by testing for amino acids that are extremely rare on Earth — they couldn't be contaminants because they're not otherwise found here.
So, here we have a well-documented case of both left- and right-handed amino acids being found in cometary fragments. And nobody in the mainstream scientific community seems interested in declaring this to be proof of life beyond Earth.
There's even a prominent quote from Dr. Jeffrey Bada in the second article:- "Some unusual amino acids present in the Murchison Meteorite apparently do have small excesses of the L enantiomers...." !! (By 'L enantiomers', he means left-handed amino acids).
So the same guy who's promoting the "lab on a chip" for the MSL, touting the infallibility of amino acids on Mars as incontrovertible proof of past (or even present) life there, can sometimes regard amino acids as simple curiosities in meteorites!
???
The whole thing sounds way too confused for my liking.
With this kind of ambivalence in the scientific community about amino acids, even if we found only right-handed amino acids, or only left-handed amino acids, on Mars, how can we be sure somebody wouldn't put his hand up and say: "Probably just nonbiological material from an old cometary impact."
But .. but .. the material is all of one chirality (handedness)! Back comes the same guy: "Yeah, but the Murchison meteorite had a preponderance of left-handed aminos. Who's to say nonbiological processes can't produce all left- or right-handed aminos, and it's just that we haven't figured out how yet?"
Why aren't they putting an 'active biology' detector on the MSL? This lab-on-a-chip's data, on their own, are probably going to be wide open to interpretation, or misinterpretation, if the above mentioned confusion is anything to go by.
We could end up with a repeat of the Viking stalemate and another multi-decade wait for proof of martian life, if any.
Again I ask, given the controversy over the Viking life search results, and the fact that present-day life on Mars is far from eliminated as a possibility, why is NASA avoiding a comprehensive search for that life with the MSL?
???
#606 Re: Human missions » "Human Factors"-Not Really A Factor? - Overrated I Think. » 2004-12-05 19:18:47
The living space must necessarily be cramped on these early expeditions to Mars, unless you go back to the 'Battlestar Galactica' type of ship(s). If there are genuine concerns, which I don't share by the way, that astronauts will be unable to cope with this kind of confinement, then it's unlikely we'll be going to Mars at all.
In an ideal world, GCNR's "larger HAB modules" would be the best solution but, in the absence of a large increase in the funding we don't even have yet ( 
), it doesn't seem likely that will happen.
6 months in zero-g, of itself, might actually mitigate the crowding problem, as I think Cindy pointed out in past conversations about this, giving us ceilings to 'live' on as well as floors! But I believe we've more or less reached a tentative consensus that some form of rotational 'gravity' will be needed for crew health, so that leaves us with the crowding problem again.
There has been a bit of a scare lately regarding early cataract formation in people who've spent long periods in space. This might be a good time for me to repeat the gist of a post I made earlier this year about cataracts in general, and cataracts in astronauts in particular.
When humans get to about 42 - 47 years of age, their ability to focus on near objects, which has been declining gradually since their teens, reaches the point where it becomes a very real impediment to close work. In the early days of space exploration, it was unusual for astronauts to be more than 40 when sent into space, and they were generally tip-top physical specimens. None of them needed 'near prescription' eyeglasses to accomplish their missions, which was a very good thing when you have to wear a closed helmet a lot of the time.
But what about Alan Shepard, who was 47 when he went to the Moon in 1971? If he and people like Shuttle astronaut Storey Musgrave (flight-listed astronaut at 61! ), were in a tight spot and unable to rely on spectacles, their near vision difficulties could quite conceivably endanger the mission. If you're on an Extra-Vehicular-Activity (EVA) at age 61 and you need to look for tiny holes in the hull of your vessel, for example, you're going to need your reading prescription to do it. But you can't slip your glasses on while wearing a helmet.
Multifocal contact lenses or other contact-lens-based answers to this problem carry their own intrinsic risks, and drying out of the lenses in a low-pressure environment would probably lead to discomfort and compromised visual acuity. Getting an eyelash under a contact lens at just the wrong moment could be disastrous!
When older people have their cataracts removed these days (which involves removing the 'fogged-up' natural crystalline lens we're all born with), they have a plastic lens inserted into the capsule their own natural lens was removed from. Clear distance vision is usually fully restored in this way. But this artificial lens, or 'implant', doesn't change shape like a young natural lens, so again near-vision requires reading glasses.
However, there's a new implant material in development right now, and likely to be available to the general public within 5 years, which is injected as a liquid into the capsule and 'sets' as a soft flexible structure - very much like a natural lens. Preliminary data suggest the new implant will enable the eye to perform at a level normally associated with that of a healthy 30 year-old eye.
I can foresee a time when this implant will replace cataract surgery performed on people in their late 60s and 70s. I believe replacement of the ageing natural lens at about 45 will become standard procedure in the western world, restoring good distance and near vision without the need for eyeglasses - permanently. And, since the implant is an inert polymer, it should remain clear indefinitely - no cataract.
It seems likely to me that such an implant will be impervious to radiation in space. (This will need to be verified, of course.) If the rapid formation of early cataract among Mars crews is as big a problem as some would have us believe, then surgery to insert these implants in all crew members before their departure may become routine practice - especially for those who are 40 or older.
So, in my opinion, gravity will be provided for Mars crews of necessity and the cataract problem will be solved before it ever becomes a problem. (GCNR will no doubt be pleased to hear this as it will relieve at least some of his epic internal struggle with chronic pessimism about the human exploration of Mars! :;): O.K., O.K. ... just kidding around. 
)
The 6-month trip to Mars will be filled with excited anticipation of what's to come and the 6-month return trip will be filled with spectacular memories of the expedition and anticipation of getting home. There's no doubt in my mind such distractions will be more than sufficient to keep boredom at bay.
The 500 days on Mars will be a surreal experience, a physical and intellectual adventure beyond the imagination of most of us left here on Earth. While human beings are capable of the most appalling excesses of greed, stupidity, and violence, we're also capable of heroic levels of cooperation, camaraderie, and self-sacrifice when the good of the group depends on it.
I agree with Dr. Zubrin that of all the 'links in the chain' on any Mars mission, the human factor is likely to be among the strongest, not the weakest.
#607 Re: Life on Mars » (Non-)Official Life on Mars Poll - Does it exist? » 2004-12-04 19:28:26
Good points Graeme and MadGrad.
I hope it's clear from my posts that I'm not some kind of crazy conspiracy theorist, insisting NASA's out to get me!
I'm really just relaying my thoughts and feelings about what I perceive as a peculiar situation regarding NASA's attitude to the 'Life-on-Mars' question and how I've come around to the idea that maybe there's a pattern to it. As I've said:-
I can't be certain that anything is really going on; the evidence is all anecdotal and circumstantial.
But, even though the evidence is all circumstantial, I think the total lack of any NASA bio-probes to Mars in at least 33 years, just on its own, is probably enough circumstantial evidence to get the average jury's attention in a court of law!
Anyhow, there are many ways to look at the Life-on-Mars problem, one of which is being discussed, as we speak, at another thread in this Forum ('Fear mongering and life on Mars').
If there's life on Mars, is it going to upset somebody's fundamentalist religious beliefs? .. The oldest of contests .. Religion v. science
If there's life on Mars, does that constitute a reason to go there or a reason not to? .. The imperialist biologists v. the radical 'greens'.
If life is found on Mars, and if that is deemed a good reason to send astronauts, will big money be diverted away from unmanned exploration to accomplish this? .. The comfortable robotic probe industry (JPL) v. the human exploration enthusiasts.
But if the public can be persuaded (using smoke and mirrors! ) that martian life, if any, is potentially lethal to terrestrial life, then perhaps discovering any such life needn't ruin JPL's income stream. Sending humans would become a political hot potato and Sample Return Missions (SRMs) and Containment Facilities would keep the robotic probe people, and LEO merry-go-round riders and possibly the Lunar Base afficionados too, busy and well-heeled for decades. .. Again, the robotic probe industry v. human space exploration.
With all these vested interests - religious fundamentalists, biologists and geologists, radical greens, robotic exploration advocates, human exploration enthusiasts, etc. - it's possible that all sorts of undercurrents of self-interest and self-promotion are in play. And the politicians, with their pork barrelling and desperation to buy their way back into power at all costs, only add to the complexity!
I believe we need to be vigilant and read between the lines when various parties make statements. We at the Mars Society want the human exploration and colonisation of Mars to proceed as swiftly as possible - that's what this organisation is all about. But of course there are many others out there with opposing philosophies, who will do whatever they can to achieve their ends.
Jeff Bell springs to mind as one such antagonist and the recent nonsensical scare-mongering by ignorant or prejudiced journalists about martian pathogens is a prime example also.
If my 'conspiracy theory' musings achieve nothing else, I hope they will serve to illustrate that there's probably much more going on than meets the eye - even if I don't know exactly what!
:;):
We really need to watch our backs here if we hope to see astronauts on Mars before we all die of old age! :bars:
#608 Re: Life on Mars » Fear mongering and life on Mars » 2004-12-04 07:42:13
Yes, yes, yes!!
Cindy:-
If some folks in the industry really have their knickers in this much of a knot about the issue, why not a compromise of sorts (and no, I don't suppose I'm the first person to propose this; I can't believe someone else here hasn't suggested it somewhere along the line in a different but related thread): Send a manned crew to perform necessary experiments -- "sample return" right there on the Red Planet -- with the understanding that if something truly nasty and potentially seriously inimical to Earth is turned up, they're there for life and will die on Mars. One-way trip. If the on-site "sample return" looks okay and back contamination is not going to be a problem, come on home.
Exactly the point I've been espousing for quite some time.
First of all, the risk of any kind of serious pathogenic organisms existing on Mars is as close to zero as you're going to get outside of an entirely theoretical mathematical world; I would cheerfully go to Mars tomorrow and eat martian dirt - I'm that certain of it!
The first astronauts will be on Mars for 500+ days. In the extremely unlikely event that a lethal bug is lurking in the sand or the sub-surface water, the astronauts WON'T BE BRINGING IT HOME ... BECAUSE THEY'LL BE DEAD!!
500 days is a very generous incubation period. If the astronauts are fit and well at the end of that time, and ready and able to take off and head for home, then there's no problem. And that's exactly what will happen.
No problem!
The Sample Return Mission (SRM) will turn into multiple missions, costing billions for the probes themselves and for elaborate containment facilities back home, not to mention the many years it will cost us, because it's impossible to prove a negative.
What if the first mission landed in a sterile area, just a few hundred metres away from a seething hotbed of killer microbes?
Hmmm. We'd better send an SRM to several different types of terrain in different climatic zones, just to be sure we haven't missed anything nasty.
But wait! What if, despite all this, we miss something important and the first crew lands in one of only a handful of deadly germ pits?!! 
You see? It's totally hopeless.
You either accept the vanishingly small possibility of infection with something exotic and just get on with the landings, or you procrastinate and prevaricate in an endless and futile attempt to reduce the mission's risk profile to zero - which it's never going to be anyway!
My opinion is that SRMs are the ultimate time-wasters if you're talking about biology. There's nothing living on Mars that we don't have here in abundance already - the logic behind that is inescapable if you examine the evidence.
If there is some lingering doubt about the purportedly exotic soil chemistry, and if you think the first crew's lungs will rot because of it, then by all means send one robotic chem-lab and check it out .. IN SITU!
But please, let's not fall prey to this hype and nonsense about Martian Measles ... for crying out loud!!
:realllymad:
#609 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Antimatter - More viable than fusion? » 2004-12-03 20:04:13
For use in the atmosphere, could you use a more conventional explosion initially to create a vacuum in the combustion chamber, followed quickly by a 'machine-gun' succession of antimatter/fusion explosions. The frequency of the detonations might keep the chamber clear of atmospheric gases until orbit is achieved(?).
Just a thought.
#610 Re: Life on Mars » Fear mongering and life on Mars » 2004-12-03 19:56:01
And it'll be just standard terrestrial microbes anyway.
How long will it take before people realise Mars and Earth have been exchanging microbial spores on a regular basis for about 4 billion years? There is no quarantine.
NASA might as well send a Sample Return Mission to Chihuahua before sending astronauts into Mexico.
Please! Just send people to Mars and stop all the procrastination and B.S.
#611 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Antimatter - More viable than fusion? » 2004-12-03 19:05:16
It still sounds to me like a particularly promising line of development. I tend to be more optimistic than some about how long such concepts might take to reach fruition and, considering our prowess at the precision engineering involved in today's nuclear bombs, I don't see any insuperable obstacles to getting this engine up and running sooner rather than later. And the potential payoff is very attractive, which is the greatest spur to swift development.
This idea can give us most of the advantages of Orion, without most of the disadvantages. I'm even wondering whether a scaled-down craft, less than the 400 tons mentioned for the Mars trip, might actually be launched from the ground?
When sober assessments of radioactive pollution from Orion were made, it turned out that a ground launch would add only a relatively insignificant amount of radioactive material to Earth's atmosphere. It was enough, though, as our environment became an ever more important political factor in the calculations, to put a stop to such ideas.
Assuming we can manufacture small, light, reliable antimatter containment systems, could we use this suggested antimatter/fission, or better yet antimatter/fusion, to achieve LEO in an SSTO vehicle?
If the amount of radioactive pollution can be shown to be truly negligible, might we not have an answer to the problem of getting stuff off the ground and into orbit cheaply?
[NOTE: Only affirmative and optimistic replies will be considered by the editor.]
#612 Re: Life on Mars » Fear mongering and life on Mars » 2004-12-03 17:59:19
It's all sheer nonsense, if you ask me.
Far from placing the slightest credence in the hysterical rubbish peddled by these journalists, I personally don't think a Sample Return Mission (SRM) is even necessary or likely to tell us anything the first crewed mission won't clear up within a day of landing.
There's no logic at all in the idea of pathogenic martian bacteria for reasons I've ranted about at New Mars for years. The whole thing's a farce in my opinion. And the SRM (or SRMs, plural, because there'll have to be more than one of these horribly expensive white elephants) is just one more excuse to delay the first human mission for yet a further decade or so!
HOW FRUSTRATING!!! :bars2:
#613 Re: Life on Mars » (Non-)Official Life on Mars Poll - Does it exist? » 2004-12-03 17:29:35
Thanks again, people, for the comebacks.
Cindy:-
My b.s. detector went off.
Yep, handy little devices those b.s. detectors. Mine's had a lot of use over the years!
CC:-
Unless we give Martian microbes the vote, but then we'll have recounts and disenfranchised microbe strains, dead cells voting Democrat, it just isn't worth the headache.
Ha-ha!! :laugh: Very droll. Especially the "dead cells voting Democrat" bit. (Hope Bill's not watching this thread! )
As for your idea, CC, that the 'agenda' is just an "apparent conspiracy", all appearance and no substance, that's an interesting one. Your use of the term "pervasive mindset" and how such a thing creates the illusion of an agenda might be a valid interpretation of the situation, but it might also support my argument just as easily.
If the people in authority, or who hold the purse strings, are all possessed of the same mindset about martian biology, I think that that in itself constitutes a kind of unspoken agenda. Even if there's no actual conspiracy as such, the effect of such a mindset can be just as destructive and it looks to me like it's influenced American science as surely as if it had been a coherent conspiracy.
While I understand your interpretation of the facts, CC - a very cool, unemotional and reasonable-sounding interpretation - I can't help but feel there's a little more to it than that. There must be some kind of communication, however informal, between the people in these positions of authority; if it's not a detailed and well-orchestrated plan, I think it's at least an implicit understanding that there are certain things NASA doesn't bother investigating.
There is one obvious flaw in my argument, and that is: Why were the Viking life experiments allowed to fly in the first place? Where was the conspiracy back in the early seventies, when the Viking landers were in the planning stage?
My only answer to that is to suggest that the political scene must have changed in some way since the mid-seventies. But I don't know enough about any changes in American politics or socio-religious tendencies at that time or since, to be able to explain it. Or maybe a window of enlightened opportunity opened very briefly, permitting Viking to get off the ground, but closed again even before the first data came back.
I don't know exactly what's going on but I'm sure there's something wrong somewhere. I can feel it in my bones and that feeling has seldom let me down in the past.
Cindy:-
"My alarm clock didn't go off. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. I had a flat tire. There was an earthquake -- a terrible flood! It wasn't my fault, I SWEAR TO GOD!!"
Desperate excuses .. Doncha just love it?! :band:
#614 Re: Human missions » Has Dr. Zubrin Addressed Mars Direct Objections? - A few questions? » 2004-12-03 01:12:06
Brilliant!
Go Robert!!! :up:
#615 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Antimatter - More viable than fusion? » 2004-12-02 22:26:25
I wasn't aware of this hybrid antimatter-fission and antimatter-fusion propulsion idea until now. It sounds very promising indeed.
I found information about it on Wikipedia, which says:-
The current antimatter production rate is between 1 and 10 nanograms per year, and this is expected to increase dramatically with new facilities at CERN and Fermilab. With current technology, it is considered possible to attain antimatter for $25 billion per gram ...
Isn't that $25 per nanogram?
And it's supposed to take only a few nanograms to propel a 400 ton spaceship to Mars and back(! ), in only 4 months?!
#616 Re: Human missions » Has Dr. Zubrin Addressed Mars Direct Objections? - A few questions? » 2004-12-02 20:26:04
I agree with Robert and Bill.
Technology is only getting better. There are always solutions to problems and I think we need to shift the focus away from concentrating on the problems and toward concentrating on the solutions.
GCNR is telling us to work up to a standard, not down to a price, which is highly commendable. It's an especially defensible position when human lives are at stake, of course, and its sober logic, with compassionate overtones, sounds just like the oh-so-reasonable, schmaltzy, liberal droning you hear from the progressive social engineers on T.V. ... everything is a zero-sum game and we mustn't take any risks! (Oops, sorry! I think my politics are showing.)
But it doesn't have to be like that. It doesn't have to be a stark choice between trillion-dollar Mars missions and total disregard for safety, which is what GCNR seems to be telling us - with what I'm starting to perceive is the usual, subtle subliminal message that human space exploration is just not going to happen, it's all too hard or too expensive, so forget it! (Is that what you're saying, GCNR? Mars Direct won't work? Space Elevators won't work? Burt Rutan's plans for cheap orbital spacecraft won't work? ... Is there a pattern here or am I imagining things?)
America never used to be like this. All problems had solutions and, God damn it, the yanks were going to find those solutions! If one idea didn't work, they'd toss it out and think of another one.
Robert and Bill seem to think pin-point landings are perfectly possible and doable, and I agree with them. Radiation shielding technology, e.g. Demron, is advancing, and using the mission's water supplies and a radiation storm shelter have all been worked out.
From memory, Alan Shepard knew he stood a one-in-ten chance of dying in the ensuing fifteen minutes when they ignited his rocket engine back in 1961. Before his Apollo 8 flight, Bill Anders rated his chance of dying due to catastrophic mission failure at 1-in-3! Did they worry about that? Nope.
Come on! We're the Mars Society. We're supposed to be telling people how we can start a brand new chapter in human history. We're supposed to be full of optimism and enthusiasm and a can-do attitude. We need to be sending out a positive message here.
A new world is waiting for us. :rant:
[O.K. Rant over! :;): ]
#617 Re: Life on Mars » (Non-)Official Life on Mars Poll - Does it exist? » 2004-12-02 18:18:54
Thanks, guys, for the interest in this subject. It's great to get feedback on something like this because it is potentially a 'conspiracy theory' point of view and third party calibration of one's sanity can be very useful in such matters! :;):
Reading numerous press releases and interviews with scientists from all over the world, for many years, you get a feel for how the Life-on-Mars' question is regarded in different quarters.
My feeling is that Russian and western European scientists are quite open-minded about the possibility of martian life (microbial at least) and seem able to move freely from pro- to con- and back to pro-life positions in accordance with whatever evidence comes their way. In other words, I detect no restraint in their speculation and hypothesising.
With American scientists, on the other hand, there is a very definite difference. The feeling of restraint is almost palpable. I get the impression there are many scientists, inside and outside NASA, who are excited by the prospects for martian life and who would love to go and look for it. At the same time, I can feel the burden of the official standpoint weighing heavily on every statement these people make in public.
There's definitely something going on behind the scenes, in my opinion. There's a much more authoritarian central control of information, attitudes, and what can or can't be said.
CC's take on the matter is logical, in so far as it probably defines the mechanism whereby the restraint I've mentioned is imposed .. money! If you state openly and publicly that you believe there are oases of microbial life on Mars and that you want to devise and launch missions to prove it, you will receive short shrift from those in authority and your funding will mysteriously dry up.
So, funding is the stick used to enforce the plan, the censorship, the agenda .. whatever you want to call it. But it doesn't explain where the agenda comes from, and neither does it explain the nature of that agenda.
Cindy's comment on the religious element in American society may be very relevant to this discussion. If I may come back to Dr. Levin, of Viking fame (infamy?), I've read about him taking his son to an interview at Brown University. Apparently the son, being a chip off the old block, had a mind to study chemistry there.
When the Dean of the Faculty realised he was dealing with those Levins(! ), he's reported to have made the observation that searching for life on Mars was ever a waste of time because the Bible made no mention of life there, so there couldn't be any there!
This isn't the first time I've mentioned this episode but I think it bears repeating.
More recently, the "Magic Carpet" situation at Spirit's landing site gives us another possible insight into the mindset we're discussing. There was much excitement about sending Spirit to examine what looked very much like mud where the airbag was retracted. Dr. Levin said about it: "If it looks like muck, and it puddles like muck, and it tracks like muck -- it must be muck." Spirit never went to look at the intriguing area because, according to mission scientist Des Marais: "We can't go there with the rover. Engineers have an exclusion zone because it's a navigation hazard. That area is too close to the lander, unfortunately." Dr. Chris McKay later complained that interest in the "Magic Carpet" just "went away." And he went on to say it shouldn't have gone away!
I can't be certain that anything is really going on; the evidence is all anecdotal and circumstantial. But I have eyes to see and I have ears to hear and I can see NASA's track record as far as life on Mars is concerned. And I can see American scientists, almost as though they're mindful that they're being watched, choosing their words about martian life with the utmost care.
To my mind, the NASA track record concerning Life-on-Mars, and the search for it, needs explaining.
Something doesn't quite add up. ???
Are you guys still with me on this or am I pushing the envelope a little too hard for your taste?
[Be blunt with me; remember you're dealing with someone who's felt the lash of Bill White's tongue and staggered back into the fray for more! ]
#618 Re: Life on Mars » (Non-)Official Life on Mars Poll - Does it exist? » 2004-12-02 05:43:29
I've no objection at all to sending another Beagle mission to Mars to look for life. In fact, I don't know why America hasn't done so herself.
There were seemingly ambiguous results from the Viking missions nearly thirty years ago, as far as life on Mars is concerned. The Labeled Release Experiment (LRE), devised by Dr. Gilbert Levin, produced results best explained even to this day by martian bacteria but attributed by the Viking establishment to unusual soil chemistry. Despite dozens of attempts, no simple and plausible model for this 'unusual soil chemistry' has been found to explain the results.
Dr. Levin's position was then, and is even more so now, that his LRE detected microbes in the martian regolith.
Even though no reasonable chemical explanation has been found for the Viking results, and even though there has been this increasingly insistent suggestion that life may well exist in the martian soil, and even though the evidence has grown that water can exist in small quantities on frequent occasions on Mars' surface, there has been a stonewall of indifference from the NASA establishment.
Not one NASA mission launched to Mars since 1976 - that's 28 years! - has had any microbiological life-detection device incorporated into it ... not Pathfinder, not Mars Polar Lander, not Spirit, not Opportunity!!
I'm not insisting that Viking definitely found life on Mars. I'm saying there was sufficient ambiguity to cast grave doubts on the 'No Life' verdict. I'm saying the extensive and fruitless search for a chemical model for the results looks tortuously contrived when biology was a simpler explanation.
Occam's Razor has been studiously ignored!
We may never know the real reason why.
Beagle 2's failure was a great disappointment. Nobody would have been happier than me if it had detected martian microbes.
Now it's unlikely we'll see a concerted effort to find life on Mars for many years. There's no firm date for a Beagle 3 launch and apparently even NASA's 2009 'super rover', the Mars Science Laboratory, isn't designed to give a definitive answer to the life question, 33 years after Viking!! Amazing, isn't it?!
I think maybe Europe should do its own thing with this search for martian life. I really don't believe NASA is keen to find it.
???
#619 Re: Human missions » solar power towers on mars - km-high vertical wind tunnel turbo-elec » 2004-12-01 22:24:40
Without wishing to cause any aggravation, GCNR, I confess to having found many of your responses to various suggestions at new Mars more than a little pessimistic, not to say cynical. (Of course, you may defend your positions by saying they're practical and pragmatic, not cynical. And everyone is entitled to his/her opinion.)
However, in this case, I have to say I find your arguments persuasive; I don't think the Enviromission-type solar tower would work well on Mars either.
Your points about the lesser solar energy input on Mars and the difficulties of adapting a device which operates on the free-flow of air are valid objections, in my view. The lesser gravity, producing a lesser vertical pressure gradient in Mars' atmosphere and hence reducing the power and speed of the convection current in the tower, is also a negative factor.
Another point, which we've discussed at length here in the past, is the problem of pouring concrete and getting it to set in martian conditions. No easy task even at or near ground level, never mind hundreds of metres above the ground.
For once, GCNR, I agree with you!
But I suppose I may have overlooked some important details or misunderstood Dicktice's plan, so I'll be interested to see if he comes back with counter-arguments.
I have to admit, I'm a solar tower enthusiast and I'm prepared to be convinced such a thing would work on Mars. But my credulity is stretched somewhat just believing it'll work on Earth!
#620 Re: Not So Free Chat » Apropos of Nothing -3- » 2004-12-01 21:53:22
Hmmm.
Maybe we could sell the pecan pi on eDay.
#621 Re: Not So Free Chat » Apropos of Nothing -3- » 2004-11-30 23:55:13
After 25 years of marriage, she doesn't take me that seriously any more!!
#622 Re: Not So Free Chat » Apropos of Nothing -3- » 2004-11-30 20:35:50
I think I'll probably get divorced or something on 2/7/18.
#623 Re: Terraformation » Terraformers Take Note - ...(unintended consequences) » 2004-11-30 20:12:08
Nice idea, REB.
I wonder, though, whether the periods of warmth in Hellas are too fleeting for any kind of plant to get a hold there(?).
While there are no doubt times when the pressure is 10 millibars and more, and the temperature as high as 15 or 20 deg.C, at night the place freezes solid like everywhere else on Mars.
We'd need plants that can survive -70 deg.C on a routine basis. ???
#624 Re: Terraformation » Terraformers Take Note - ...(unintended consequences) » 2004-11-30 20:06:24
Thanks for the brief lesson in zoology, Earthfirst! :up:
Much appreciated.
Sounds like I can go back to staring at the micro-photos for seashells again. :laugh:
#625 Re: Unmanned probes » Opportunity & Spirit **8** - ...More... » 2004-11-30 08:18:32
Cindy:-
I sometimes try to imagine how quiet it must be on Mars. And can't help wondering .. how far away from their sites one could be and still hear Oppy and Spirit moving about.
That's a very Zen thought, Cindy.
If a Mars Exploration Rover moves in the martian desert and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
Very evocative! That thought had me right there in the thin cold air, watching a MER moving in the distance, and I could just hear the feint distorted sound of scrunching on the sand.
I really enjoyed that new perspective. Thanks, Cindy! :up: