New Mars Forums

CC, when one's point is so eloquently and succinctly argued by another party, how can one complain?
                                             

    Your input is always appreciated, old sport! Thankyou for taking the time to respond to Dicktice on my behalf and I hope it answers his queries.

Capsules will be quicker, cheaper and safer to develop and use.
    They'll be fine until the first space elevator is constructed in 2015!
                                       

Clark:-

    I tend to take a more optimistic line. I believe Mars Direct, with perhaps a few very minor modifications, is eminently doable within ten to fifteen years. Costs needn't be great and the infrastructure of a long-term human presence on Mars automatically accompanies the program.
                                                       

In response to Euler's point, might it be practicable to specify certain attributes a 'candidate' must possess?
    For example, a certain educational level might be mandatory or, conversely, certain occupations such as film star, sporting hero, or TV personality could be ruled out.
    My first instinct was to allow only people who would be at least 45 years old at the beginning of their tenure and no more than 80 at the termination of tenure. This stems from my impression that life experience is beneficial in decision-making processes, and has the advantage of eliminating the great majority of active sports stars and pop idols. However, there are probably numerous reasons why these criteria shouldn't be applied ... who knows, maybe Britney Spears would make a great dictatorial oligarch!!
                                                         

    Bill's question: 'Who guards the guardians' is an eternally relevant point, to which I have no response except to ask whether anyone else here can suggest a straightforward safety mechanism to prevent our 7-year council becoming more permanent?
                                             ???

    CC, you obviously expect your dictator to have made more than a few unpopular decisions if you think it necessary to get him out of the country when his 'reign' is through!!
                                                 

Byron:-

    Such cynicism in one so young!   

    You're a good man, Byron. Too good to let your idealism be dragged down by the few mongrels you've had the misfortune to meet. If you allow that to happen, the people I call the 'negative quantities' of this world have won. And they can never really win, unless you let them, because what they're climbing over you to gain, what they're selling their souls for, isn't worth having.
    At the risk of sounding kitsch, there's an excerpt from 'Desiderata' I rather like: "Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism."
    This translates into the common-or-garden version I prefer: "Don't let the bastards wear you down!"
    Seriously, Byron, there are millions and millions of very good people out there.
                                             

Byron:-

    A 'cold and barren place', eh?
    Hmmm ... I hope you ain't a thinkin' 'bout where I'm a thinkin' ... !!
                                                  

We are indeed a formidable species as far as aggression is concerned and I would tend to worry more for the safety of ET than for our own - at least on that score!
    But then again, we may not be in a position to even imagine the kinds of technology available to some species out there. Try to visualise an army of Assyrians, confident that their latest swords, made of iron, were the last word in technology, coming face to face with a battalion of today's infantry. The Assyrians would be completely routed by technology only two and a half millenia ahead of their own.
    Now visualise us facing technology millions of years in advance of ours. It would be like Star Wars versus a troop of chimpanzees!
                                           

Dicktice:-

    Ha ha !!   :laugh:
    Guilty as charged, your honour!
    But Dick, you can be quite sure your frustration with my limitations is no greater than mine!!
                                                   

I think it's possible to give some idea of how we come by our beliefs and attitudes, without necessarily wearing your heart on your sleeve. (No offence, Cindy. I understand what you're saying.)
    I started out thinking the basics of socialism are the only way to go: From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need. What could be more equitable and civilised? In highschool I was a decidedly left-wing socialist and even bought the 'Socialist Worker' newsletter one of my school friends used to sell.
    As life went on, it occurred to me that people were usually very keen to take 'according to their need' but considerably more reluctant to give 'according to their ability'!

    I was brought up thinking there is a right way to treat people, that manners are extremely important, and that self-discipline is absolutely pivotal to self-esteem and, as a consequence, to 'happiness'. I confess to being something of a perfectionist, not always easy for my long-suffering wife to put up with! In many ways, this is a character flaw (one of several, no doubt) but it can be put to good use occasionally when a job needs doing well.
   But people like me, with an ingrained, almost genetic, sense of duty (it's not saintliness, I just can't seem to help it), are at a great disadvantage in a socialist system. This is probably especially true in today's atmosphere of 'personal freedom', 'if it feels good do it', 'don't take any crap from anyone', 'stand up for your rights', and 'take whatever you can get, you deserve it'!

    It dawned on me fairly early in the piece that, under socialism, there is an unerring tendency for fewer and fewer people to end up doing more and more of the real work, while more and more people regard more and more handouts as their God-given right. Politicians see this burgeoning 'handout mentality' as a means to 'buy' votes and compete with one another to promise ever greater largesse with tax-payers money. Eventually and inevitably, you end up with a massive government welfare structure, which starts out as a safety net but rapidly expands into a feather bed for the terminally indolent!

    I still see socialism as the ideal global political system, if only it could be made to work.
    However, nobody could be more disappointed than I am to report that it doesn't work because, unfortunately, a large self-serving segment of society just won't allow it to work.
    The only way to organise things seems to be to make society a meritocracy, whereby there is some kind of spur to make people contribute. In other words, if you work hard you gain the benefits of that work but if you don't work you suffer adverse consequences in some way. In today's world of 'all rights but no responsibilities', that is a treasonous suggestion, I know, and I can hear the blades being sharpened already!
                                           

    Almost perversely, I admit, I've come to associate socialism with all that's wrong with society. To me, it encourages sloth, selfishness and self-indulgence in the populace, and a cynical, 'pander-to-the-lowest-common-denominator' attitude in politicians.
    And this isn't armchair philosophy either. I've worked long and hard under a socialist system here in Australia, between 1983 and 1996, I've paid the big tax bills, wrestled with the endless government legislation just to employ people, and seen the profligate waste of public money. At one stage, the federal government was donating $10,000 per annum to the Lesbian Surfers' Club on the Gold Coast! (I've nothing whatsoever against lesbian surfers, but for God's sake ... !! )

    By the same token, I fully understand that big business is just as much in need of careful and strict control. The greed and self-interest in humanity is certainly not confined to the small end of town! Far from it. For example, here in Australia the four big banks are in collusion, no longer constrained by competition, and are totally out of control. The local petroleum companies also indulge in price-setting and manipulation of the market. A good dose of government intervention there would certainly be useful.

    The bottom line is that, in some sense, most people have to be driven. Regrettably, the 'socialist man', who gets out of bed each morning anxious to improve the lot of his neighbours by working hard for the common good, has yet to evolve.

    Your turn, Cobra!
                                           

He probably wanted to say it ... but all those big words!!!
                                          :laugh:

Hi Enyo!
    I'm not sure what data you're referring to.
    What I'm talking about is a graph produced from the actual results of the Viking Labeled Release experiment (LR), performed on Mars.
    There is no 'sudden spike of activity with just as sudden a drop' in the graph, unless I'm mistaking what you mean.

    For a look at the graph I refer to, see this site.
    As well as the kind of curve which would be expected if there were living microbes in the Martian soil, a Dr. Joseph Miller, circadian biologist and neuroscientist from Texas Tech University, was surprised to see oscillations in the curve. He noted that these oscillations had a period of one Martian Sol and speculated that they might represent circadian rhythms of the putative microbes.
    However, since the article I've linked is some years old now, and since no startling news has been announced confirming the circadian rhythm hypothesis, I assume the hypothesis was never substantiated.

    Nevertheless, the simplest explanation for the LR results, in my view, is still that living microbes in the Martian regolith responded to the LR nutrient solution by metabolising.
    This and other lines of evidence lead me to the conclusion that there is life on Mars. I'm almost positive about it but can't prove a thing!!
                                         

Welcome to New Mars, Chat!

    I don't pretend to be a particle physicist by any stretch of the imagination but there are one or two aspects of photons that I've learned over the years.

    Photons are, by definition, travelling at the speed of light for the medium they occupy at any given moment. This is always true. There is no contradiction regarding the need to supply limitless energy to accelerate them up to light speed because they are deemed to have zero-rest-mass. There's no problem with photons gaining infinite mass at the speed of light because they're massless to begin with. In addition, when a photon is brought into existence by some physical process, it is created already travelling at light speed.

    And the reason a photon can travel across the known universe without 'breaking down' is because it is a fundamental particle. Unless it interacts with something else, it is essentially immortal.
    There's not much that can go wrong with a photon. It's not made up of smaller 'bits', so you can't break it apart. It's been found that the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency. Out in the almost endless depths of intergalactic space, there's nothing much to interfere with a photon and change its frequency. As long as nothing does interfere, the frequency stays the same and so, therefore, does the photon's energy ... indefinitely.

    So, while matter as we understand it (i.e. according to the Standard Model) has mass and is therefore subject to the constraints of Special Relativity, photons are a whole different ball game.

    I hope that helped!           

[P.S. Welcome to the TFTC ... the 'Two Fingered Typist
        Club'!!      ]

Cindy, I'm not qualified to answer your questions with any authority.
    As regards the penetration of Islam into Africa, I can only assume that it came via the arabs in Super-Saharan African countries like Egypt (as you suggested), Algeria, Morocco and Libya. Remember, also, that arab slavers plied their trade southward into the Indian Ocean for centuries, with Zanzibar one of their chief ports.
    There's an interesting scenario for you: Arabs stealing human beings for slaves and, at the same time, bequeathing their religion to the very people they were violating!

    As for South-East Asia, I have no idea why Islam has proven so popular in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, unless arab traders were again instrumental in its propagation.
    Apparently Islam is the fastest growing religion on Earth. Yet again, I don't know why.
                                         ???