New Mars Forums

Am I the only one that reads the articles?

Two women, co-founders of a social internet site expressly targeted for women, with the idea of creating an online forum and resource for women, using venture capital, to ostensibly raise awareness of their company and mission, as well as demonstrate that being a successful entrepreneur does not belong solely to the realm of men, and that there are no limits to what women can reach for, not even the stars.

I find it offensive and ignorant that any one would question the legitimacy of this on the grounds that there is suffering in the world. I find it particularly out of place here; where the underlying rationale of this forum is to one day colonize Mars. In the “Human missions” sub-group no less.

These women are no less inspiring than that poor Nigerian girl who shares a book with her class mates and was lucky enough to be chosen to get a zero-g flight. However, there are millions of people who are just as inspiring, but not as lucky, who will not get the same chance.

The two women who are buying their ticket didn’t get ‘lucky’. They pursued an opportunity, and they demonstrate that there are few if any barriers for women who choose to pursue a goal.

How this is lost on the parent of this entire thread is beyond me.

But I digress. Obviously the two women are selfish. Anyone who pursues a goal or a dream is selfish, you can’t help but be. We don’t pursue dreams for others; we pursue them for ourselves- that’s kind of the whole point.

Those who chase after their dreams are role-models, those that achieve them are inspirational.

But whatever, what do I know.

Ha.  I gave up on ever getting approved to join.  Glad to be here.  Hopefully I can contribute something?

Fuel cells reguire a certain amount of platinum group metals and it is one of there most limiting factors both in making and cost.

Not to mention a lot of pollution reduction equipment relies again on Pgms so if we could find a source (especially since Pgms are getting harder and harder to find) and can get it back to Earth within a reasonable price then that is a financial reason to be in space and will lead to other better things.

Typically, just when irreconcialable limitations appear to spoil our fuelcell dreams, we have  the prospect of the "non-polluting sugar-based fuelcell" to give us hope. It's on Google--and it's sweet!

SPACEX'S POSITIVE 'SPIN'

While hitting the height of 180 miles (289 kilometers) is an achievement it does fall short but still Musk has declared the end of the rocket's test phase.

Fixing the issue with the slushing will make use of that unique technical assistance that Nasa and SpaceX have agreed upon.

Some interesting comments follow the article.

When somebody from Armadillo gets killed, I imagine that the whole insane-utter-impractical-garage-tinker-project thing will abruptly end

Overall system reliability of the Falcon prototype is not looking good at this point, but we're looking at a series of successively refined prototypes.  Observed performance of this system should still be varying on a curve at this point.  What we saw is what we should expect to see in this type of testing program - still failure, but failing after progressively better and better performance.  And it's what SpaceX has said they expect for the past four years.  The real death knoll of SpaceX will be to have precisely the same thing go wrong twice, with no corresponding improvement in performance.

RickSmith,

I question the wisdom of any deep ice sheet melting over any short period of time.

At a constant 10c 24/7/365 it would take a hundred years to melt to the ground of Greenland.  ...

Hi Nickname,
John Creighton asked if all the sun's energy was concentrated on Greenland how long would it take to melt.  Usually I don't answer other people's homework / do calculations for them but I was curious and so I worked it out.

1.2 weeks to melt that much ice.  A much, much more approximate value of 5.75 years to warm unrealistically cold ice to 0 so it is ready to melt.

Of course I KNOW that not all the sun's energy is going to Greenland.  However, I was surprised how low those numbers actually were.

You quote 100 years to melt G.'s ice cap at 10c.  I would be interested in seeing your calculations.  The advantage, of course, of me showing all calculations and where I get my data is that trivial to double check me.  Peer review & questioning assumptions is the essence of good science.

People will take what you say more seriously if you show your calculations / sources.

Warm regards, Rick.

I think compared to the amount of time it takes for the Global climate to change, practical controlled fusion should occur "soon". If we achieve controlled fusion in the next 100 years, that should be soon enough to halt and reverse global warming, if humanity's output of carbon dioxide is what's causing it.

I think though that many Canadians might come to regret it if ever we succeeded in reversing global warming. The Little Ice Age that started in the Middle ages, might have been the beginnings of a real ice age, that out CO2 emmisions put a stop too. Canada might not be a pleasant place to live if the glaciers started advancing again. If not for the little ice age, we might all be speaking Norse at this time. The Viking colony in Greenland failed because of this little Ice Age.

Oh by the way, I voted that it is a problem for the great grand kids. I'd rather be spending the money finding a substitute for middle east oil. My solution might include a tariff on imported oil with a possible exception made for Canada, rather than a gasoline taxe at the pump. I see no reason why we should be punishing domestic producers of oil when they help make us less dependent on Middle East Oil. I think Canada has behaved rather well compared to other countries such as Mexico, it has not nationalized all its oil assets or created a National Oil company which it favors, it has allowed competion and free markets to govern the extraction of oil from its territory, Mexico has not. Another source of gasoline is coal. Carbon sequestration, can take care of the CO2 emmisions problem, gasoline, Diesel, and even motor oil can by synthesized from a base stock of coal. People are overly concerned with the CO2 problem, I have to ask, would they rather we'd clear cut the forests so we can grow corn for the production of ethenol, I wonder which is more harmful to the environment? If we mine for coal, most of the forests can remain as they are, and if there is a green house effect from this, it is a slow sort of thing. Coal is a temporary stop gap until we develop practical cleaner forms of energy such as Fusion or Solar Power, as these energy sources are not yet ready for prime time, Coal will do for now. The News Media has put too much alarm in the Global Warming phenominon, I think they hyped it up because they want immediate government response and they want us to act without thinking. Raising taxes has serious economic consequences, and governments will tend to waste the extra revenue the get from this mostly, they don't have the economic instinct to maximize their returns on spending. An Asteroid is a different matter, if it is on a collision course with Earth, we know then what has to be done, but the Earth's climate is a complex phenominon, their are many variables and predicting where is going to be is not as easy as prediction the location of an asteroid sometime in the future.

In some ways we can use the greenhouse scare to promote space and the use of materials found to improve life down here on the Earth. We have always needed a source of PGMs and this can only be found extraterrestial.