New Mars Forums

Dicktice is in august company when he points out the urgency of getting off-planet as an insurance policy against large asteroid extinction events which could finish off the human race.
    I came across a news item a few weeks ago in which John Young, veteran astronaut of two Gemini missions, two Apollo missions, and two Shuttle missions, spoke about this very topic.
    He said it is a matter of urgency that we establish human colonies in space at the earliest opportunity. He included catastrophic volcanism and asteroid impacts as reasons for his views. Volcanism is responsible for at least as many extinctions as impact damage.

    When someone like John Young tells you something serious, I for one think it's probably wise to listen carefully.

This may be "a bit of a running joke" to you Adrian, but it's life and death to us!!
                                  :angry:

    Let this be a warning to you, Dicktice. You can see what's happened to Adrian because he refuses to wear a metal helmet ... he's fallen prey to the NASA mind-control rays and been drawn to the Dark Side!!

    Be alert, be careful ... 'they' want your mind!    :0

Good for Nigeria!   

    Improving communications means improving education and the free dissemination of ideas ... and knowledge is power.
    The more we know of what's going on, the less chance of being misled and used by unscrupulous groups or individuals.
    This is a very promising development for the Nigerian people and I'm very happy for them.

    More good news I spotted on TV this morning: The Nigerian leadership has decided to block the Islamic regions of the country from carrying out the executions by stoning of the women convicted of sex-outside-marriage.

    Thank God for that!   

    And it's about bloody time!!    :angry:

Josh writes:-

    You're quite right, of course, Josh. The system we have, as regards unfair dismissal, was introduced by the ALP (Australian Labor Party) in order to protect workers from unreasonable bosses. And there ARE some unreasonable bosses out there, for sure! In particular, it was designed to give employees a good measure of job security and therefore cut down on stress levels for key bread-winners whose families depend on them. It sounds like a noble idea on paper ... as so many socialist ideas do.
    As it stands, though, it isn't working. The number of permanent full-time jobs in Australia is falling each year and I actually heard an ALP speaker on TV, addressing a meeting of ALP hierarchy, bemoaning this fact and asking why it should be so. It really seemed that he didn't know the reason for it!! Employers, faced with the prospect of taking on people they can effectively never fire, no matter how lazy or dishonest they may turn out to be, have changed their mode of employment. They now tend to hire people on very tightly worded legal contracts for periods of maybe 6 or 12 months at a time. At the end of the contract, the employment is technically terminated, but a new contract can be negotiated at the discretion of both parties. It's the only way the employer can be sure of getting rid of unsuitable people.
    What has this done for job security? Naturally and obviously, it's made things much worse for the employees in many cases. For instance, what bank or lending agency wants to give you a 20 year mortgage on a house if you only have guaranteed work for 6 months? The levels of uncertainty have risen, not declined, and the relationship between boss and worker has been reduced to cold distrust - with the spectre of lawyers floating in the background. Lawyers for unfair dismissal cases and lawyers for contracts to avoid the law cases!!
    It seems to me the lawyers, as always, are the only ones who manage to win every time! And they're gradually weaseling their way into every move we make and every word we speak, and, in the long run, it always ends up detrimental to the smooth running of society.

    As well as the ALP, we have minor political parties called the Australian Democrats and the Greens, both of which have a marked leaning to the left. If they all vote as one, the incumbent Liberal/National coalition hasn't the numbers to get any legislation passed in parliament.
    The Lib/Nats can see the enormous problems being created by this unfair dismissal thing and have made several attempts to repeal it. Unfortunately, the ALP, Greens, and Democrats see this legislation as one of their 'sacred cows' and have blocked all the Lib/Nats' efforts.

    The horror stories about employers being fleeced by unscrupulous employees and lawyers has made many small business owners think twice about taking on staff. I've spoken to a few who've had opportunities to expand their enterprises and employ more people, but they've decided against it - preferring not to take the risk. Many small businesses will only expand until no more family members are available to employ. Beyond that, forget it ... it's not worth the aggravation.

    My personal belief is that an employer should have the right to hire and fire at will. Sure, you'll get bosses who stink! But they won't retain their best employees.
    And if workers want job security, the best way is to make themselves indispensable to the boss.
    I was fortunate to have (mostly! ) very fine people working for me and I just loved 'em!! I paid them more than I had to and used to take them all out for cocktails and Italian 5 or 6 times a year. (One of them could really put away those cocktails when she let her hair down, too!!    ). In my opinion, if you can't run your workplace as a kind of extended family, with mutual respect and a little give-and-take, maybe you should consider doing something else!  ???
    The great majority of people, me included, respond infinitely better to a carrot than a stick!
                                                         

Byron writes:-
QUOTE: Shaun, one thing I'd like to ask you, if you don't mind...

What is the deal with the extremely restrictive immigration quotas Down Under? With all that room you have down there, surely the gracious people of Australia could easily allow much higher levels of immigration...imagine what kind of economic powerhouse Australia would be if it had a 100 million people. At the very least, can't the government at least allow open immigration from other English-speaking countries such as the U.S.?

Believe it or not, there are many Americans (like me    ) who would *love* to live in a place where you don't have to worry about getting sick, you get 4+ weeks of minimum vacation, where labor unions reign supreme and bosses are a hated species (at least that's what I saw during my visit in the 80's...has things changed since then?), and the populace places a greater emphasis on spending time with family and having a good time rather than working all the time just to make that extra buck. Another thing that inspires me about Australia is their forward-looking stance towards the future...aussies must be some of the most optimistic people on the planet..  UNQUOTE.

    I honestly don't know where to start!    How do I summarise the nature of Australians, their attitude to work and leisure, and their immigration policy ... and in less than, say, 10,000 words!!

    The immigration thing has been blown out of proportion, I think. Most Australians are comfortable with a controlled immigration policy, and fluency in English is not a requirement as far as I know. In fact, such a requirement would probably be viewed as a form of discrimination - hence the unlikelihood of allowing open immigration, selectively, from English-speaking countries.
    What you've been seeing on T.V. is a crack-down on illegal immigrants jumping the queue and paying large sums of money to people smugglers in Indonesia to be transported in unseaworthy boats to Australia's shores. We don't even know what proportion of these people end up dead when their decrepit boats sink in the shark-infested waters north of here!
    We also have the devil of a time working out where these people are from. They discard their passports and pretend to be asylum seekers and refugees. One guy claimed to be escaping political persecution in Iraq, but was found to be a relatively wealthy Pakistani merchant!
    Aside from dissuading organised crime syndicates in Indonesia from continuing in the often extortionate and murderous people smuggling business, Australians want to send a clear message that regulated immigration is fine, but illegal queue-jumping isn't. Besides, in the present international climate, having hordes of unidentified people arriving indiscriminately and surreptitiously in your country is NOT something most of us want!
    It worries me that sensationalist news media and politically motivated organisations like Amnesty International, and even the U.N.(! ), are evidently giving overseas readers and viewers an exaggerated and erroneous idea of Australia's motives in this. I believe my fellow countrymen and country women are still the same "give 'em a fair go" Aussies you know and love, Byron ... nothing's changed in that regard! 

    Australia is a very big place. Of that there is no doubt. We are 80% the size of the U.S.A., with less than 7% of the population. This sounds like we could easily accommodate many times our present population of 19 million ... so, why don't we just open the doors and let everybody in?!
    The problem is water. Excluding Antarctica, Australia is easily the driest continent on Earth and has barren hot deserts covering the great majority of its land area. Her carrying capacity has been variously judged, by people who claim to know these things, as anywhere from 10 million to 50 million. (I haven't heard any serious suggestions that 100 million is even remotely sustainable.)
    As you can see, some scientists are of the opinion that we're already approaching twice our sustainable population level! And when you look at our forests - 2/3rds cleared since 1788, our massive salinity problem on vast tracts of our farmland, and the current threat to the fish populations at some of our reefs, it becomes hard to argue with them. You have to bear in mind that Australia is also a very ancient land mass. Some of the oldest rocks on Earth have been found here. As a result, most of the soils are old and much of the nutrient has been leached out by erosion over literally billions of years. In some areas, the topsoil is only 20cms thick!
    Despite our size and our small population, we currently have twice the drinkable water per capita that the U.S.A. has. If we increased our numbers to the 100 million people suggested, we'd have only 40% of the drinking water available to each U.S. citizen. As it is, we often have water restrictions in the drier summers. I dread to think how we'd manage with so many more thirsty people to cope with!! (Sheesh! We might even have to close down the breweries!! .... ^Shudder!^      )

    The trade unionism you mentioned has been rolled back somewhat in recent years. When you were here, Bob Hawke was probably the Prime Minister. He was the former leader of the A.C.T.U. (the Australian Council of Trade Unions) and was the leader of the left-wing Australian Labor Party. Many of the A.L.P. members were, and to a lesser extent still are, former members of the Australian Communist Party.
    The vast social security 'safety net' implemented at enormous cost by the Hawke government, rapidly became a 'feather bed' for many Australians, many of whom became permanent welfare cases. Eventually, in fact, in some families with grown-up children, nobody had worked for a living for many many years ... life was just too easy!!
    This was all very fine, except if you were one of the taxpayers bankrolling the whole thing through one of the most onerous income tax systems in the developed world at the time. In the end, the electorate got sick of the situation and gave the present conservative government a mandate to dismantle some of the 'safety net', which they have achieved mixed success with.
    There is still an "Unfair Dismissal" law which has effectively eliminated the right of an employer to fire an employee. I fell foul of this law myself. .... Yes, Byron, I was one of the 'hated species' of bosses you referred to!! At one stage, I employed 7 people - three full-time and four part-time. I had a marvellous relationship with all but one of these employees, who made my life extremely difficult. In any six week period, she was supposed to work a total of 15 days (2.5 days per week). In one particular six-week period, she showed up randomly for a total of only 4 days, claiming to be sick most of the time. We established that, in fact, she was attending beauty school in another town on the days she was supposed to be working for me.
    After 6 written warnings explaining how she was playing havoc with our small-business work roster, and disrupting the lives of the other employees whom we were forced to ask to cover for her, I had to dismiss her. She sued for unfair dismissal! The court decided I owed her $242 for pay I had withheld and that I had dismissed her unfairly(!! ), though she was found accountable for most of the blame. Nobody really won except the lawyers because we both had legal costs to bear. But the point is it cost me $9,000 to dismiss an employee who richly deserved to be dismissed. All of my other employees were disgusted at what I'd been put through and expressed quite touching sympathy.
    A T.V. program some years ago showed how other employees were taking their employers to the cleaners using the same legislation. Some of the employers were being forced to pay over $20,000 in compensation and required by law to offer the 'wronged' employee their job back!! One employee was video taped stealing cash from the register. She was shown the tape and dismissed. She sued for wrongful dismissal ... AND WON!!  Why? The boss hadn't given her at least three written warnings not to steal from the till!
    Everything I have told you here is the truth, though I hardly believe it myself.

    I could tell you many such stories about the wonders of left-wing politics as applied to the real world, but I suspect you've had more than enough of me for now!
    I've seen socialism in action in Britain and Australia. It's a fine concept, as I've said elsewhere, but the truth is it just doesn't work in practice.
    I understand your disillusionment with the excesses of capitalism, Byron, but if you're looking for a cheer-leader for the great, egalitarian, socialist state, you picked the wrong man for the job.  ???  Sorry!

P.S. Thankyou for the compliment about Australian people. As
       a whole, we're certainly an enthusiastic and forward
       looking bunch. And although many of our left-leaning
       citizens give America one helluva time in the newspaper
       letters pages, the majority of us feel a great affinity for
       our Yankee cousins ... God bless 'em all!!   

Sounds like an impossible question to ask about an era so far ahead in time.
    The world today seems so uncertain, it's hard to figure out the state we'll be in by Christmas this year! Never mind 2492!!
                                       

    I imagine individual human longevity will be a factor by then. If everybody's living to see their 500th birthday, and having a dozen kids in the meantime, we'll run into the worst effects of a geometric progression as regards population numbers ... and soon, too!!
    I haven't done any mathematics with this but I do know that an unfettered geometric progression could fill the entire solar system with human flesh in very short order!

    Some sort of control will probably be necessary. But, by that, I don't mean some sort of government control ... just common sense self-control.
                                       

What an extraordinarily informative and helpful post!!

    Many thanks, Robert, for taking the time and trouble to come back to me on this. You've managed to cram a lot of facts into a very digestible and understandable precis, and I read the whole thing without a single headache coming on! 

    You may or may not know from other posts I've submitted, that I love a good conspiracy theory. And you've given me an absolute beauty!! 
    When there's just so much money and so many jobs at stake, you have to wonder at a series of 'coincidences' such as you've outlined above.

    As you stated:-

    Remarkably convenient!

I shouldn't really be posting here because I find the lengthy descriptions of huge numbers of different rockets with mysterious acronyms give me headaches!
    I feel the term 'EELV' is probably a key factor in all this and I keep meaning to do a google search one day to find out what it means! The LV bit must be launch vehicle ... but the EE ... Hmmm.
    Easily Elevated?
    Extremely Energetic?
    Enormously Expensive?

    Anyhow, that's not why I'm here. I just came across what is either a very cynical evaluation of America's space program or a painfully accurate description of same!

    If you've already read this article, I apologise for bringing up old news. But, if you haven't, you may find it interesting (read depressing! ).
                                     

This is getting off topic, I know, but ...

    Speaking of cars. I remember stories about building engines out of ceramic, which has a very low coefficient of expansion.
    They can be run at temperatures of about 500 deg.C without a cooling system at all, thus improving combustion efficiency, reducing pollution from incompletely burnt fuel, and reducing fuel consumption considerably.
    I can't remember all the details, but I think they run without bottom-end lubricant, too.
    Ceramic engines are so much cheaper than iron or alloy engines that replacing a worn one should be like getting a new set of Goodyears!!

    I don't know what happened to the ceramic car engine. It sounded like a good idea to me when I heard it.

    Anyway, I guess I'm partially agreeing with Josh that technology can probably bring about some major energy savings. And it mightn't necessarily mean making any sacrifices of convenience or economic well-being, either.   

P.S. They think there may be circulation of water from Europa's ocean up through cracks in the ice to where it can receive at least some sunlight for any microbes it may contain.
       They visualise possible colonies of living material in the cracks near the surface.

    Thought I'd better try to drag this thread back on topic!
                         

First, let me say, Josh, that I take your point about PR department image releases.
    I think you're right that there is no solution to the mental attitude of the dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy buff ... we just can't win against someone who is convinced everyone is lying to him/her.
    But maybe the department I suggested could at least cater to the rest of us! Most of us are prepared to accept that image processing can lead to artifacts which might be deceiving, and wouldn't jump to all sorts of irrational conclusions.
    The 'I saw it first' syndrome would probably be harder to find a way around, though.

    Incidentally,can I ask you about this part of your post?:-

     I seem to remember seeing a vague grainy image once, of what they described as a waterspout. I can imagine Tripp McCann's eyes rolling in his head as I tell you I had a lot of trouble convincing myself that it really was a waterspout!! From memory, there were complaints from the people who believed it to be a waterspout, that mainstream science was largely ignoring what was an important discovery.
    Can you direct me to any websites with further images of these alleged eruptions of Martian water? I'd really love to get a better look at them.

Hi Mark S!
    In retrospect, I should apologise for taking liberties and using my perception of your views to back my argument!! You could have taken exception to my doing that, but I was relieved to see you took it in the spirit in which it was meant.    I understand your position with Noel Gorelick, vis-a-vis the 'blockies' affair ... in theory at least, his word can hardly be accepted as neutral when he's one of the protagonists in the situation!
    And I agree with you that TEM are in trouble with this 'city under the sand' assertion. Tripp seems to think the blockies (good word, that! ) are simply the result of Laney's ignorance and arrogance. For what it's worth, my present opinion is that the detail is too realistic in the magnified images to be a result of inappropriate processing. Somebody has probably done some 'artwork' to create the effect! .... Or ... maybe there is a city under the sand!!      But TEM's recent deafening silence about it might be telling us which is true!

Thanks, Phobos, for seconding my nomination.
    Unfortunately, most of the executive positions in my team seem to have been filled.
    Would you settle for Executive in Charge of Metal-Helmet Polishing? An important position when you consider we'll be right there at NASA headquarters, where the mind-altering emanations are strongest!!
                                       :0

Phobos writes:-

    This is a wide-open discussion, Phobos, and your opinion is always more than welcome in my book. 
    And I couldn't agree more with your sentiments on this. NASA should just present the data and stand back ... no monkey business, thankyou, whatever the provocation.
    If I were a PR guy at NASA, presented with the kind of assertions being made by the pro-artificiality brigade, I would be up front and open about it, and as transparently neutral as possible. I would be saying things like: "Yes, the Face mesa does look eerily face-like from more angles than you might expect of a natural object. Yes, there are surprisingly long straight sections at right angles to other surprisingly long straight sections. Yes, the left side does look vaguely humanoid and the right side could be interpreted as looking leonine. But out of all the mesas on Mars, of all shapes and sizes, it is perfectly possible for nature to produce a shape with these attributes. In other words, it does NOT have to be artificial. The prevailing consensus of opinion is that we are dealing with a natural object which happens to have triggered our well-recognised tendency to see order in chaos. Nobody here at NASA is getting too excited about this so-called Face yet, but if any interesting new information about it comes to light, we will be delighted to discuss it further."
    Such an approach is not only honest and open, it is the best way to disarm the nutcases out there whose paranoia is matched only by their stupidity.

Josh writes:-

    We all understand that perfection in any situation is rarely, if ever, obtainable. I'm sure most of us don't expect such standards from NASA, operating a complex machine, as they are, millions of kilometres away in a hostile environment.
    But can't we expect an image adjusted to look as much like a human's-eye-view as possible, as though a human were there aboard the MGS? And NOT an image made to look as indistinct and washed-out as possible!

Josh goes on to say:-

    But there must be somebody who cares what the public thinks about NASA or they wouldn't release any PR images at all, would they?
    And if such people exist at NASA, why are they allowing the release of such badly degraded images as part of that PR? And why claim a MOLA image of the Face proves it has no interesting human-like features, when the MOLA is known to be entirely incapable of resolving the features in question?

    At the very least, this is gross incompetence and would be an obvious PR disaster for a commercial company listed on the stock market! The credibility of the company would be questioned and the value of its shares would probably drop.

    If I were a 'higher up' at NASA, I'd be introducing some guidelines and control of standards among these freewheeling scientists who are playing fast-and-loose with the reputation of such an important organisation! Wouldn't you?

    Cover me in 'Top Secret' labels and throw me to the conspiracy freaks if you will, but it looks like an orchestrated and deliberate case of disinformation to me! Probably for reasons of frustration as I indicated in my last post here.
    Can anyone tell me why I'm wrong about this?   ???