A New World... A Better World?

[Prince Lightning Da Cute 616]

 

no thnks gooby I lieks mah air.

 

And there'd still be hunams littering the landscape.

God I hate hunams.

 

Off-world projects/colonies will NEVER make profit.

Shipping costs plus the fact that it's a separate planet "few" miles away makes it impossible to extract anything useful out of there in the long term.

"No, thanks, I'd rather keep what I have sown, not give it to those greedy bastards back at earth."

And no-one is making those investments for short term.

 

Dream on, but it's impossible until someone makes a FTL or a super-efficient re-usable engine capable of planetary landings repeatedly.

 

The difference between Class 0.1 and a Class 1 culture.

 

Besides, who wants to get eaten by voracious hibernating Martian super-lizard analogues anyway.

 

You still continue to amaze me by being serious. It funny at the same time, I agree.

[Comet Tail 808]

You really are nerdy, you know that? And you have a really bad way of assuming I don't know stuff.

 

 

Knowledge is a wonderful thing, and I don't hesitate to share. Let's just say some opinions are formulated off of incorrect facts, which are just popular misconceptions. I don't blame you, it's just space is my fancy and so I've read up over the years to the point where I have above that average understanding.

 

I really have no way of knowing how much you know, so I usually assume less than more, so I err on the side of caution, so to speak. If I say something you already know, no harm done, just a little review. But if I go on assuming you know something that you don't, then everyone's worse off.

 

/sarcasm.

It was direct comparison to the futility of the whole task.

 

There is no reason to visit regularly.

There is no profit generating resources on Mars that Earth does not have.

There is no sense in importing already existing materials millions of miles away.

Profit margin is negative.

 

Why would you ship people there and back using huge amounts of money when you can make tidy profit without the huge risk factor on Earth?

Going to Mars is not a virtue or a bonus point, it should be done only if there is a very good, profitable reason to do so.

 

So now you're making business decisions for SpaceX, based on your vastly superior technical and economic expertise?

 

Seriously. Tickets. You pay for tickets. That's where profit comes from. Why is it so hard to understand that?

 

It would also be possible to subsidize the colony federally until it's self-sustaining.

 

Your vaunted Falcon 9 goes to orbit, not Mars.

Nor does it return from Mars surface.

I think there is a huge disjoint in design and capability.

I wasn't talking about sending an F9 to Mars, I was talking about SpaceX's engineering track record.

 

Iron oxide in the dust is not easily processable to usable Iron in bulk without massive support system of machinery, made of variety of different materials besides Iron. (process involves acids, IRCC. Those would need to be shipped.)

Machine shops require lubrication for starters. I don't see anyone lubricating with Iron Oxide.

That must be shipped from earth.

Iron is ONE material. Even the most basic system requires countless rare materials and precision factories to make.

Once again, saying things you don't know. You can't know that unless you actually know what chemicals/acids are required. And even if Mars doesn't have them, which it probably doesn't, all you need is the elemental basics, and with some energy input you can make different chemical compounds.

 

One example of this is ISRU as proposed by Robert Zubrin. LOX/CH4, neither of which exist on Mars, can be produced with some electrical power (from a small nuclear reactor similar in scale to the Curiosity rover) and other things that do exist on Mars, i.e, the gasses in it's atmosphere. Add a very small amount of Hydrogen brought from Earth, and you can make CH4. the Liquid Oxygen (LOX) doesn't require anything brought from Earth, though, except of course for the ISRU unit and power source.

 

Point is, even if the needed compounds don't exist on Mars, lots of in-depth study and research might reveal it's possible to produce everything necessary on Mars.

 

Or, you could just get Iron from a different source entirely. There might even be iron ore just sitting a few feet below the sand. One brilliant example is that some areas have localized magnetic fields; i.e, vast iron deposits, making it very likely there's a rich abundance of Iron Ore!

 

Isn't that exciting?

 

But, we need missions, first, to learn these kinds of things. Rovers can do a lot, but I doubt they could do what you'd want before planning a colony, humans can do so, so, soooo much more. In days they could accomplish what the entire rover programs have done in years, according, even to people in the rover programs. You'd want to send manned missions first, and prospect sites for large future colonies.

 

That might just be what the first SpaceX passengers do. Hard to say what they're planning, really.

 

Shuttles were Orbit only. Not deep space. There is a disjoint in design ideology.

Not at all. For safety, systems were designed triple-redundant. That's the track record. It's applicable to interplanetary missions, or the engineers could raise the standards if they see it necessary, but that's an engineering decision that neither of us are qualified to make. My point was that it's much safer than you're making it out to be.

 

All those are subject to wear and tear.

Sooner or later the minimal support manufacturing capacity of the "colony" will not be able to keep up.

Everything wears, and in high dust conditions like on Mars, that wear is excessive to anything exposed.

And if you plan to do anything on Mars besides live in a hole, it's exposed.

 

Wow. Wonderful argument against the MER's surviving for more than 8 years when they were built to last 90 days.

 

Stuff will wear. It can be replaced with steel produced on Mars. The engineering of it all isn't as exotic as you think. It's fairly straightforward. Gather iron, refine it, shape it in a machine shop, and you have a replacement part. Of course, I'm talking decades in the future. Near-term missions would need backups and replacements from Earth, made cheap courtesy of SpaceX Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV).

 

Designing a spacecraft out of steel would be extremely difficult, but it's not quiet as bad a material as it's made out to be. We use some really advanced alloys now, but in the early space race the first spacecraft to put Americans into orbit, the Atlas-Gemini, used a type of steel propellant tanks.

 

But you wouldn't design the spacecraft out of steel. Some places you do need more advanced materials, which you could replace from Earth on very rare occasion, costing only a few kg of space among tens of tons in one of the many shipments going back and forth, all affordable, paid by tickets and affordable by SpaceX RLV.

 

But, when it comes to the more common and stuff you'd really have to replace, like surface habitat life support systems, those can easily be made out of steel. Possibly even alloys, though to be honest I don't know what other materials exist on Mars, but I seriously doubt it's barren. There's no reason it would be any less geologically rich than Earth.

 

The issue with the moon is almost nonexistant water, and no atmosphere for making CH4/LOX propellant. But in terms of other solids, the moon is actually rich. Naturally occurring lava tubes give lots of access to heavier elements, and the surface is literally covered in aluminum, along with pockets of other richer elements. The Apollo astronauts even stumbled upon something like clay!

 

Yes, corners would be cut. With a rough hand.

Because there is always a Departo Munitorium Scribe counting the costs somewhere when it comes to huge undertakings.

When you're working from tools and machines on-hand, I have to ask, what costs?

 

But, for the initial mission and establishment of the colony, we'd do that from Earth, and historically, we haven't cut corners, and I don't see why we'd suddenly start when things got really serious. What I mentioned about the Falcon 9 earlier was about how we don't cut corners, and the safety standards are actually going up.

 

Risk over nothing.

Nothing to gain, no profit, no great sense of success breathing the same air from stressed out air filters working 18 hour work days to stay alive.

Over the fact that it's freaking Mars and Mars is apparently superior to Earth "because Mars".

 

Sounds a little like life in the New World, yet people still came, and the world is a better place because of it, and arguably mankind is still free because of it. How the hay can you say nothing to gain without refuting my arguments about the value of space exploration and colonization? You're simply ignoring those points.

 

Wear and tear.

They still failed, and those panels were designed to power a few meters long rover optimized to use it's power to the maximum while very slowly doing it's poking around and taking pictures.

Humans have the basic biological needs that are not optimized.

Lights take a huge amount of power. Humans need lights to stay sane.

Machinery takes even more power.

 

The amount of power is irrelevant; you'd just build the solar arrays bigger. My point was that sand didn't ruin them in weeks like you said it would, and sand didn't even ruin them in a sandstorm. IMO, though, nuclear power is a better option, since it can remain in operation day and night in all weather for years and years. Technologies like robonaut will make servicing it much safer.

 

130 tons on orbit is different from 130 tons in Mars surface.

There is a disjoint in design ideology.

25 tons won't freaking cut it.

You must build additional housing.

250 tonnes minimum, whether its the equipment to mine them or the housing itself.

 

Once again, you're pulling random numbers out of the air. 250 tons. Can I see a breakdown of that mass estimate?

 

And why in Sweet Apple Acres would you even consider dropping 250 tons on Mars under a single heatshield? You drop one habitat structure at a time, one ERV at a time, each would be in about that mass range, 25-32 or so tons.

 

As for raw materials, equipment, etc, you can drop that in any increments.

 

And, for the record, 130 tons on orbit is roughly 50 tons to Trans-Martian Injection (TMI), assuming LOX/LH2 engines at 451 seconds specific impulse. That would be roughly 40-45 tons of payload.

 

You do realize that moon landings were a act of propaganda, do you?

US popped in and popped out and flaunted it around like a flayed chicken in the face of ruskies to make it sure they understood US had ICBMs.

US did not stay there, for a reason, I might add.

Because it could not be done nor there was any reason to do so, no strategic or tactical advantages.

 

Ah, ever the analyst. No human emotion, just pure, cold logic. "no tactical or strategic advantages", sounds like a mix of Klingon and Vulcan thinking.

 

Humans are emotional beings. Everything we do is for an emotional purpose. Emotions are the means by which we value anything. Life is only worth living because of them, the word "worth" only has meaning because of emotion.

 

But, the technical term for this is "quality of life". So in that respect, the Space Race drastically improved the quality of life of the United States, and for a few precious moments, the entire world. Were you there? I wish I had been. But for a few precious moments, when Niel stepped on the moon, almost the entire world watched. The Earth was just a little blue ball in the sky, and they watched. For when that happened, there was no "us" and "them", but we watched in wonder as our species, and as life, took it's first steps on an alien world.

 

There was a similar sort of amazement at Shuttle Launches. It's not something you can possibly understand unless you're there, but it's just awe-inspiring, this amazing triumph of human inginuity, a harmony of the very best and noble part of mankind and an amazing triumph.

 

Mock my words, maybe to you it's nothing, and mankind should only do things for cold, logical, economic reasons, and "quality of life" means spending the least amount of money possible or something, and maybe it's because you've lost faith in humanity and hate our species, maybe because you've focused on the bad so much and completely overlook, then mock, the good that there is.

 

But this very thinking and ideology is the enemy of mankind and a bane of human happiness. "Quality of life" has meaning, resources exist to be spent, and the people need something to hope for, which is mankind's future, and they need to believe that we can, and should, grow and improve as a species and a world. Going to new worlds is just part of what it is to be human, humans explore, humans become more than what they used to be. We take our past and we build on it, establishing new branches of human civilization, and spreading that beautiful seed of life with the cosmos.

 

Maybe you hate mankind, maybe you don't believe in the good in the world, and maybe "improvement", to you, means not spending resources improving quality of life, uniting mankind together, and being human. But for goodness' sakes, your cynicism and animosity towards hope is something you can keep to yourself!

 

If you have a serious engineering concern about it's possibility, then do some research first to see how it's being addressed. If you see it's a real concern, then you can come at it from a precise technical angle that can be addressed. But that's very different from what I've been reading. There are some exceptions, like "How do we extract iron from the Martian soil?". But what I've been reading isn't "How can we do this?", it's "This is stupid, hopeless, impossible!", which is the attitude of a quitter and someone with no bright future ahead.

 

The attitude of a problem-solver, of an engineer, is "Here's the issue, let's work on how to resolve it" rather than "this is impossible! I don't understand how to do it, so it's impossible and we shouldn't even try!", the latter is a failing attitude that will undermine success of any kind, and is part of that ideology and thinking that is a bane to human achievement and happiness, and should be quickly replaced with something more hopeful and optimistic. Nothing was ever accomplished by quitting. You hear that so much because it's very true.

 

Nope, Mars colony will be just that if it's launched in say, ten years.

You can't get enough shit there to upkeep it.

Things will start to get run down instantly. Everything will fail, and it cannot be maintained from Mars.

Mars colony would need a constant supply of more and more high end Materials and end products.

One failed flight and it will be all over.

Things will fail, and before things can be replaced on-Mars, they'll have to be shipped from Earth. But once again, we don't make statements of "failure is imminent". There's a legitimate concern: problem: "things will break down over time"

 

Analysis/research: Launch windows to Mars open about every 2 years, 26 months for the lowest-energy trajectory, to be exact. If we take advantage of both opposition (do a Venus flyby to change course) and conjunction-class trajectories, we can add more launch windows. Though, this probably isn't worth the advantage, as it only reduces the 26-months by a few months.

 

Solution: The equipment needs only to last 26 months until the next resupply shipment can arrive. In case of failure, backups should be available (through lots of fancy mathematics, they can calculate the probability of system failures, so you can knowingly reduce chances of failure down per time to tiny amounts, such as 2% chance of failure in 2 years. Now, add a backup system on top of that, and you're very safe. Add two backup systems, as is the norm, and you're handy-dandy).

 

Concern: what if a flight fails?

 

Solution: More backups, of course. An example of this; in the "Mars Direct" mission architecture, in the first launch opportunity, a surface habitat (hab) and Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) are launched to Mars, unmanned.

 

The second launch is the manned one, with another ERV and Hab. If one ERV is to fail in one way or another, despite it's triple-redundant systems and other safety features, then the other ERV can be used to return. It's not wasted, either, because if it's not used as a backup, it will be used with the next mission, anyways, so there's always one extra ERV.

 

50 years ago? Possibly, not to stay certainly.

I have yet to see that spacecraft that get's to Mars and back now that we are on it.

Pics or DNE.

"It hasn't been done before" is an odd argument to make. What's funny is to see people who are so liberal, and even use the word "conservative" in a very negative manner, suddenly become extremely conservative when it comes to manned spaceflight.

 

I hardly see how that's an argument against it, though. We know how to do it, interplanetary trajectories aren't exactly something new. We've even had some interplanetary probes fly to other worlds and swing back to Earth.

 

If you include unmanned spacecraft, a number of probes (I think one or both of the Voyagers were among them) actually have flown out to other planets (though I think they use Venus), then flew back by Earth.

 

The purpose is to do with their interplanetary trajectory and various rather advanced things that I don't even fully understand, but doing flybys around planets (the more massive the better) can save propellant, and allow the spacecraft to go more places, not to mention give scientists a chance to check the satellite's equipment.

 

Mars carries no value to the human race as is.

There is nothing in Mars that cannot be harvested or found on Earth.

All it offers is more living space. AFTER it has been terraformed.

And that is a whole another tree to pick.

 

Rushing to waste resources on un-sustainable colony off-planet is folly and a dis-service to the humanity.

Advancement cannot be attained by wasting resources off-planet.

We need everything we have to make this one work before we can rush out.

 

But that's just the thing; by "rushing out", we'll better learn to deal with limited resources. A fine example is hydrogen fuel cells. As of now, they're not catching on. But what happens when they become a necessity on Mars? They're more widely produced, and much more appealing, setting the stage for cars that don't use gasoline. A similar example would be aircraft after WWII. The reason airlines were able to come about so quickly was because we already had all the factories and mass production of aircraft because of WWII. In a similar sense, Mars can serve as our "WWII", leading to advances and higher standards, (especially in resource conservation!) here on Earth.

 

Fusion power is another example. We've been terribly lacking and slow, to the point of being a disservice to humanity, in our development of fusion technology. Mars could use fusion, very much. As such, martians will drive and drastically push forward fusion research, which will have revolutionary effects back on Earth.

 

Even if you can refute those specific examples, the general idea still stands. It pushes technology, teaches us how to use resources better, and most of all creates that new and independent branch of human civilization, growing, rather than staying locked up in a tiny arena where we eventually get overcrowded and fight.

 

...Of war-breeding self-loathing racists dis-unified breeders bent on conquest?

That sounds bad for everyone else.

Like I said earlier, maybe you view mankind that way, but I choose to believe in, and hope for the best of mankind. If mankind were truly evil destroyers, then we could not have created any technology or civilization that exists today, but I think our achievements stand as an unconquerable testimony to the good of mankind, our destructive nature has not destroyed our creative nature, we have things that we've created, civilization, technology, art, literature, and the fact that they stand is proof that they're stronger than our destructive side.

 

We're by no means perfect, but I think there's more good in the world than bad, and overall the story of mankind is an epic struggle of our noble nature conquering our savage beast-like tendencies, and our noble nature, so far, has been on top, as long as there's civilization, art and technology to prove it.

 

And just look at how far we've come. We've defeated mainstream racism, hate, sexism, etc. Generally, people who are hateful, racist, and/or sexist are frowned upon, and our laws reflect that. Of course, it still exists, like cockroaches, hiding under rockets and in corners, but out in the open almost everyone agrees it's evil. We're improving, and I don't think there's any reason we should stop.

 

MLP:FiM is an example of how we understand where we want to go. And we're headed in the right direction. All we need is the hope and willpower to keep going, and to never give up.

 

That's the biggest thing I think space exploration will give mankind. Seeing our species go out among the stars and physically grow, and overcome extreme challenges through our teamwork and inguinity, by working together as a species, and conquering our challenges as a species, together, brothers and sisters of sentience, that is something I believe will inspire a lot of people that there is hope for our species, and when they feel and believe that hope because of it's witness, our triumphs, it will push us forward.

 

We area nothing here. Deal with it.

We are, and always will be irrelevant.

Having a interstellar civilization will only ensure that we will, at some point, blow up a considerate part of our galaxy.

One life form cannot master universe, no matter how much it bangs it's head against the wall.

It can only make it more shittier to other possible sentience out there.

All there is and ever will be is heat-death.

 

And why would it be too late?

There are no time lines here. There is no scoring board or hand of "god" to tell us we must do this before alloted timeframe or it's spanking.

We have millions of years until Sol goes ugly.

 

No doubt we will get to Mars and somepoint, but I seriously doubt it any one will maintain a colony there in my lifetime.

And if they try, I hope there is someone banging against it just as much.

 

-Written under the influence of Homeworld Soundtrack.

 

[i love those soundtracks! And the game. I even worked on a mod and am considering picking it up again, upon summer break. I'm Eagle1_Division, here's my mod.]

 

As Robert Zubrin wrote, ever-increasing population in a confined area leads to us disliking our fellow man and viewing every human being as an enemy to us. That's what I'm seeing here. This sort of pessimism, cynicism, animosity towards hope and hatred of mankind is the very thing me and other Space Enthusiasts hope to overcome with monumental achievements.

 

Irrelevant? Nothing? Would you call friendship and the mane 6 nothing and irrelevant? We are purpose to the universe. It can only know love, harmony, creativity, inginuity, hard work, it can only know those things through our presence. Those are things that no infinite amount of hydrogen gas, stars, and dust will ever amount to. The capturing of a planet into a star's orbit will never invoke the same meaningfulness and significance as a group hug of loving friends.

 

 

That's the side of humanity I want to carry on. It exists, it's there, and whatever evil there is in our world is completely invalidated by even the smallest bit of it. Freedom, human dignity, brotherly kindness, these things foster that good side of mankind and they can only exist if those malthusian ideas of competition are done away with. Humans are emotional beings, it's not enough to argue and reason it away, you have to really make people feel and believe that they're false. We've taken the first steps into the space age already, we've looked back on Earth as a small marble, and now we view it that way; limited. We're currently confined to that limited world. And now, unless we break open our boundries and make travel to outer space, farther and farther, unless we make that happen, then people will think in the malthusian kill-or-be-killed way. The only way to convince the world that malthus was wrong, is by eradicating that boundry of Earth's surface, and making our existence one that is unbound, with hopeful prospects of infinite growth into the future.

 

Shows like Terra Nova and other popular depictions of a "dying world", as Jake Sully called it in Avatar, are terrible warning signs that people are starting to think in a Malthusian way that is the enemy of the loving nobility of mankind as depicted above.

 

When is it "too late"? It's almost too late now. It's almost too late because there are so many people caught in the same mindset that you are, that mankind is irreparably evil, that we can't overcome our weaknesses and become better, that our bright future needs to wait to some unknown time in the future.

 

That's when it's too late. But I, personally, will never give up on mankind, because as much evil and darkness as there is, it is completely destroyed by even the smallest light, and like Sodom and Gomorrah, which God would not destroy for the sake of only a single righteous person, whatever evil there is in the world is rendered totally invalid by any good. For that reason, mankind is worthy to survive and spread to the stars.

 

And doing so will only foster an environment where that light can shine ever brighter.

 

Is it economic, cold, logical, strategic? No. It's emotional. Because humans are emotional, and everything we do is because of some emotion. If we don't spread out, then Malthusian ideas will kill any kindness, love, or harmony our world has. There are people who think Earth can't handle 9 billion people, and some who even want nuclear destruction of our species now. which would also mean death to the good side of mankind shown above, all the love and harmony of mankind. These Malthusian ideas must be stopped. And they only way to convince the world of their falsehood is to make it obvious that our resources and prospects are unlimited by breaking free of our lush but limited cradle, Earth.

Edited April 21, 2012 by EASA - Matt

[Key Gear 6,662]

These Malthusian ideas must be stopped. And they only way to convince the world of their falsehood is to make it obvious that our resources and prospects are unlimited by breaking free of our lush but limited cradle, Earth.

That entire post was one of the most inspirational things that I have read in a long time. Thank you for taking the time to write this and for communicating your thoughts so clearly.

 

If I wasn't so tired right now, then I would try to contribute to this wonderful discussion, but i didn't want to call it a night without first saying how awesome that post was. I don't normally post reaction images in serious discussions, but I thought this one applied for your post.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2012 by Scootacool

[Comet Tail 808]

That entire post was one of the most inspirational things that I have read in a long time. Thank you for taking the time to write this and for communicating your thoughts so clearly.

 

If I wasn't so tired right now, then I would try to contribute to this wonderful discussion, but i didn't want to call it a night without first saying how awesome that post was. I don't normally post reaction images in serious discussions, but I thought this one applied for your post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, I don't even know how to adequately say thanks to that. I guess I can start by saying thanks. I think the world needs a little more inspiration, one of the best things would be if that message of inspiration could get out there. Honestly, that's the number one reason I want to see a manned Mars mission sometime soon. It just sends a message of hope that society needs. Not in some person running for president or whatever, but hope in the future as a whole.

 

Lol, yep, you need a telescope to observe astronomically large objects, like my posts.

Edited April 21, 2012 by EASA - Matt

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

 

There goes your credibility Mr. Scientists man.

A pony.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing, and I don't hesitate to share. Let's just say some opinions are formulated off of incorrect facts, which are just popular misconceptions. I don't blame you, it's just space is my fancy and so I've read up over the years to the point where I have above that average understanding.

 

Right.

You read a book. Good for you.

I have indubitably read more of books.

So now you're making business decisions for SpaceX, based on your vastly superior technical and economic expertise?

 

Seriously. Tickets. You pay for tickets. That's where profit comes from. Why is it so hard to understand that?

 

It would also be possible to subsidize the colony federally until it's self-sustaining.

 

I question their business decision as sound if the truly are planning manned missions to Mars. Yes.

 

There is only limited amount of people with money to pay for such a thing. Even less of those actually can dedicate travel time to that trip as it is going MIA for all that time.

There are no tourist attractions there. There is a very limited incentive to leave earth for extended period of time.

Manned missions to Mars just because are not constructive in any sense.

As I previously stated, fringe market.

 

That Senator is going to look you funnily, ask you why, hear your response and have you removed from the premises.

US will not subsidise wild goose hunts or Tourists traps. They are fighting a war. (Always.)

I wasn't talking about sending an F9 to Mars, I was talking about SpaceX's engineering track record.

 

That is entirely fictional when it comes to Mars missions.

Once again, saying things you don't know. You can't know that unless you actually know what chemicals/acids are required. And even if Mars doesn't have them, which it probably doesn't, all you need is the elemental basics, and with some energy input you can make different chemical compounds.

 

A+ (Or whatever the highest is that you use there somewhere to measure school progress) in my Physics says I should know.

(Cannot be arsed to check.)

Some? Huge freaking truckloads of MW/h's.

One example of this is ISRU as proposed by Robert Zubrin. LOX/CH4, neither of which exist on Mars, can be produced with some electrical power (from a small nuclear reactor similar in scale to the Curiosity rover) and other things that do exist on Mars, i.e, the gasses in it's atmosphere. Add a very small amount of Hydrogen brought from Earth, and you can make CH4. the Liquid Oxygen (LOX) doesn't require anything brought from Earth, though, except of course for the ISRU unit and power source.

 

Proposed, I.E. Imaginary.

Does Not Exist.

Point is, even if the needed compounds don't exist on Mars, lots of in-depth study and research might reveal it's possible to produce everything necessary on Mars.

 

Might, I.E. Imaginary until proven otherwise.

DNE.

Or, you could just get Iron from a different source entirely. There might even be iron ore just sitting a few feet below the sand. One brilliant example is that some areas have localized magnetic fields; i.e, vast iron deposits, making it very likely there's a rich abundance of Iron Ore!

 

Isn't that exciting?

 

Might, possibly, maybe, totally man.

DNE until proven.

But, we need missions, first, to learn these kinds of things. Rovers can do a lot, but I doubt they could do what you'd want before planning a colony, humans can do so, so, soooo much more. In days they could accomplish what the entire rover programs have done in years, according, even to people in the rover programs. You'd want to send manned missions first, and prospect sites for large future colonies.

 

That might just be what the first SpaceX passengers do. Hard to say what they're planning, really.

 

Imaginary concept is as good as air.

Not at all. For safety, systems were designed triple-redundant. That's the track record. It's applicable to interplanetary missions, or the engineers could raise the standards if they see it necessary, but that's an engineering decision that neither of us are qualified to make. My point was that it's much safer than you're making it out to be.

 

And one failure will kill the whole prospect as un-imaginable sums are lost.

Stuff will wear. It can be replaced with steel produced on Mars. The engineering of it all isn't as exotic as you think. It's fairly straightforward. Gather iron, refine it, shape it in a machine shop, and you have a replacement part. Of course, I'm talking decades in the future. Near-term missions would need backups and replacements from Earth, made cheap courtesy of SpaceX Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV).

 

That rocket is a blink in some engineers eye.

I wan't a real, solid application to call it plausible.

Designing a spacecraft out of steel would be extremely difficult, but it's not quiet as bad a material as it's made out to be. We use some really advanced alloys now, but in the early space race the first spacecraft to put Americans into orbit, the Atlas-Gemini, used a type of steel propellant tanks.

 

But you wouldn't design the spacecraft out of steel. Some places you do need more advanced materials, which you could replace from Earth on very rare occasion, costing only a few kg of space among tens of tons in one of the many shipments going back and forth, all affordable, paid by tickets and affordable by SpaceX RLV.

 

They use superior material cause they are *gasp* superior.

 

Imaginary rocket Mr. Scientist Man.

But, when it comes to the more common and stuff you'd really have to replace, like surface habitat life support systems, those can easily be made out of steel. Possibly even alloys, though to be honest I don't know what other materials exist on Mars, but I seriously doubt it's barren. There's no reason it would be any less geologically rich than Earth.

 

As I recall, heavier material are closer to sun as solar system is formed. (covelance disk? Whatever.)

That would make it less rich by default.

The issue with the moon is almost nonexistant water, and no atmosphere for making CH4/LOX propellant. But in terms of other solids, the moon is actually rich. Naturally occurring lava tubes give lots of access to heavier elements, and the surface is literally covered in aluminum, along with pockets of other richer elements. The Apollo astronauts even stumbled upon something like clay!

 

Moon? What.

Mars. Stay on topic.

When you're working from tools and machines on-hand, I have to ask, what costs?

 

Tools that require tools to make the tools to do anything.

It's a high-tech place, that colony.

Simple wrench only carries you so far.

Let's imagine a solar panel gets cracked, and you have wrench, screwdriver and hammer.

There is no way to fix it without high-tech tools.

High-tech tools MUST be transported to the planet from Earth, Mars cannot simply have that amount of technological base to replace them with 7000 colonists.

Designing, manufacturing and transport costs.

Those costs.

 

There is no on-site with Mars during the establishment that will take years.

Sounds a little like life in the New World, yet people still came, and the world is a better place because of it, and arguably mankind is still free because of it. How the hay can you say nothing to gain without refuting my arguments about the value of space exploration and colonization? You're simply ignoring those points.

 

There is nothing of innate value in space, it's empty, with worlds that either need to be terraformed or completely ignored light years apart.

Current technological base in earth does not allow colonization rendering every single world out there a pointless endeavour.

The amount of power is irrelevant; you'd just build the solar arrays bigger. My point was that sand didn't ruin them in weeks like you said it would, and sand didn't even ruin them in a sandstorm. IMO, though, nuclear power is a better option, since it can remain in operation day and night in all weather for years and years. Technologies like robonaut will make servicing it much safer.

 

Build out of what with what tools?

Hauling a nuclear reactor to Mars is a huge effort. Maybe even a separate mission.

Even then, it would be a small one. Certainly not allowing for much expansion.

Once again, you're pulling random numbers out of the air. 250 tons. Can I see a breakdown of that mass estimate?

 

And why in Sweet Apple Acres would you even consider dropping 250 tons on Mars under a single heatshield? You drop one habitat structure at a time, one ERV at a time, each would be in about that mass range, 25-32 or so tons.

 

As for raw materials, equipment, etc, you can drop that in any increments.

 

And, for the record, 130 tons on orbit is roughly 50 tons to Trans-Martian Injection (TMI), assuming LOX/LH2 engines at 451 seconds specific impulse. That would be roughly 40-45 tons of payload.

 

I guesstimated on average building equipment required to build a tenement.

About 300 tonnes, half away because miniaturization.

1/3 more for replacements and consumables and materials.

Ah, ever the analyst. No human emotion, just pure, cold logic. "no tactical or strategic advantages", sounds like a mix of Klingon and Vulcan thinking.

 

We are Geth.

Humans are emotional beings. Everything we do is for an emotional purpose. Emotions are the means by which we value anything. Life is only worth living because of them, the word "worth" only has meaning because of emotion.

 

Ever heard of "Scientific Theory"?

It's a wonderful tool designed to remove human fallacies from decision making.

There is a reason high risk operations like war time missions do not allow for emotion.

Emotions cause failures.

But, the technical term for this is "quality of life". So in that respect, the Space Race drastically improved the quality of life of the United States, and for a few precious moments, the entire world. Were you there? I wish I had been. But for a few precious moments, when Niel stepped on the moon, almost the entire world watched. The Earth was just a little blue ball in the sky, and they watched. For when that happened, there was no "us" and "them", but we watched in wonder as our species, and as life, took it's first steps on an alien world.

 

We barely stepped out of gravity well for one egomaniac aiming to curbstomp other part of species with fallos symbols.

There was a similar sort of amazement at Shuttle Launches. It's not something you can possibly understand unless you're there, but it's just awe-inspiring, this amazing triumph of human inginuity, a harmony of the very best and noble part of mankind and an amazing triumph.

 

I saw one.

Awe-inspiring in it's utter stupidity to waste resources.

Even more grin causing as I later learned it very likely carried forth one of the KeyHole satellites.

Tools of war to orbit in a cacophony of cheering fellow man.

Marvellous indeed.

Mock my words, maybe to you it's nothing, and mankind should only do things for cold, logical, economic reasons, and "quality of life" means spending the least amount of money possible or something, and maybe it's because you've lost faith in humanity and hate our species, maybe because you've focused on the bad so much and completely overlook, then mock, the good that there is.

 

There is no "good" or "evil". Those are labels our ancestors placed on things to make others more subservient.

I place on you, Mr. Scientist man, a challenge:

Find me a subatomic particle labelled "good".

Then you can continue calling things "Good" and "Evil".

Until then, cease and desist.

Maybe you hate mankind, maybe you don't believe in the good in the world, and maybe "improvement", to you, means not spending resources improving quality of life, uniting mankind together, and being human. But for goodness' sakes, your cynicism and animosity towards hope is something you can keep to yourself!

 

Look above.

The attitude of a problem-solver, of an engineer, is "Here's the issue, let's work on how to resolve it" rather than "this is impossible! I don't understand how to do it, so it's impossible and we shouldn't even try!", the latter is a failing attitude that will undermine success of any kind, and is part of that ideology and thinking that is a bane to human achievement and happiness, and should be quickly replaced with something more hopeful and optimistic. Nothing was ever accomplished by quitting. You hear that so much because it's very true.

 

All you presented was a problem, you never solved it.

I oppose the idea and I find even more holes here as I go on.

You have not solved a single issue I have presented to you.

All you have are "maybe's" and "it's possible that" OR "well, this dude said that".

That's not a very helpful attitude, is it?

I expect solutions to call this anything besides a dream.

Things will fail, and before things can be replaced on-Mars, they'll have to be shipped from Earth. But once again, we don't make statements of "failure is imminent". There's a legitimate concern: problem: "things will break down over time"

 

As I have said from the start.

Analysis/research: Launch windows to Mars open about every 2 years, 26 months for the lowest-energy trajectory, to be exact. If we take advantage of both opposition (do a Venus flyby to change course) and conjunction-class trajectories, we can add more launch windows. Though, this probably isn't worth the advantage, as it only reduces the 26-months by a few months.

 

One bad launch day weather and its all over.

Equator has temperamental weather.

Solution: The equipment needs only to last 26 months until the next resupply shipment can arrive. In case of failure, backups should be available (through lots of fancy mathematics, they can calculate the probability of system failures, so you can knowingly reduce chances of failure down per time to tiny amounts, such as 2% chance of failure in 2 years. Now, add a backup system on top of that, and you're very safe. Add two backup systems, as is the norm, and you're handy-dandy).

 

Murphy's law.

Concern: what if a flight fails?

 

Solution: More backups, of course. An example of this; in the "Mars Direct" mission architecture, in the first launch opportunity, a surface habitat (hab) and Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) are launched to Mars, unmanned.

 

Imaginary vessels made from dreams of having a governmental subsidy?

The second launch is the manned one, with another ERV and Hab. If one ERV is to fail in one way or another, despite it's triple-redundant systems and other safety features, then the other ERV can be used to return. It's not wasted, either, because if it's not used as a backup, it will be used with the next mission, anyways, so there's always one extra ERV.

 

Loadsaemone you has.

Why not solve third world hunger problems with that sum?

Because Mars.

Apparently.

But that's just the thing; by "rushing out", we'll better learn to deal with limited resources. A fine example is hydrogen fuel cells. As of now, they're not catching on. But what happens when they become a necessity on Mars? They're more widely produced, and much more appealing, setting the stage for cars that don't use gasoline. A similar example would be aircraft after WWII. The reason airlines were able to come about so quickly was because we already had all the factories and mass production of aircraft because of WWII. In a similar sense, Mars can serve as our "WWII", leading to advances and higher standards, (especially in resource conservation!) here on Earth.

 

I'd rather have the 3rd big one.

Could use spending all this pent up aggression everyone seems to have.

Fusion power is another example. We've been terribly lacking and slow, to the point of being a disservice to humanity, in our development of fusion technology. Mars could use fusion, very much. As such, martians will drive and drastically push forward fusion research, which will have revolutionary effects back on Earth.

 

Fusion.

Imaginary concept right now.

Keep building those castles.

Even if you can refute those specific examples, the general idea still stands. It pushes technology, teaches us how to use resources better, and most of all creates that new and independent branch of human civilization, growing, rather than staying locked up in a tiny arena where we eventually get overcrowded and fight.

 

That is being done right now.

There are resource starved areas on the planet that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, finding solutions to these problems by the very most basic research method ever.

Like I said earlier, maybe you view mankind that way, but I choose to believe in, and hope for the best of mankind. If mankind were truly evil destroyers, then we could not have created any technology or civilization that exists today, but I think our achievements stand as an unconquerable testimony to the good of mankind, our destructive nature has not destroyed our creative nature, we have things that we've created, civilization, technology, art, literature, and the fact that they stand is proof that they're stronger than our destructive side.

 

We are destructive. Our history is a line of wars.

Our creative urges are expanded by conflict.

Civilization is cause No.1 of wars.

Technology was created to improve upon those destructive urges.

Art was telling of your greatest deeds on the path of hunter.

We're by no means perfect, but I think there's more good in the world than bad, and overall the story of mankind is an epic struggle of our noble nature conquering our savage beast-like tendencies, and our noble nature, so far, has been on top, as long as there's civilization, art and technology to prove it.

 

We are humans and we have no equal because we are destructive apex species.

All those words like "noble nature" "good" "bad" and "epic struggle of our noble nature conquering our savage beast-like tendencies" are not innate features of universe around us, they are concepts that we use to rationalize word around us.

Nothing more. Just imaginary concepts we made up.

Humanity is and always remains a animal.

Art, Technology and Civilization prove nothing as they are not part of us.

We created them to make us comfortable, to understand the world around us against the darkness.

And just look at how far we've come. We've defeated mainstream racism, hate, sexism, etc. Generally, people who are hateful, racist, and/or sexist are frowned upon, and our laws reflect that. Of course, it still exists, like cockroaches, hiding under rockets and in corners, but out in the open almost everyone agrees it's evil. We're improving, and I don't think there's any reason we should stop.

 

Imaginary concept, that "evil" as I keep saying.

Improvement? Complexity. Not the same thing.

MLP:FiM is an example of how we understand where we want to go. And we're headed in the right direction. All we need is the hope and willpower to keep going, and to never give up.

 

Ponies? Now you dropped it.

That's the biggest thing I think space exploration will give mankind. Seeing our species go out among the stars and physically grow, and overcome extreme challenges through our teamwork and inguinity, by working together as a species, and conquering our challenges as a species, together, brothers and sisters of sentience, that is something I believe will inspire a lot of people that there is hope for our species, and when they feel and believe that hope because of it's witness, our triumphs, it will push us forward.

 

There need not be any carrot, we are animals, we do what we were evolved to do.

As Robert Zubrin wrote, ever-increasing population in a confined area leads to us disliking our fellow man and viewing every human being as an enemy to us. That's what I'm seeing here. This sort of pessimism, cynicism, animosity towards hope and hatred of mankind is the very thing me and other Space Enthusiasts hope to overcome with monumental achievements.

 

Irrelevant? Nothing? Would you call friendship and the mane 6 nothing and irrelevant? We are purpose to the universe. It can only know love, harmony, creativity, inginuity, hard work, it can only know those things through our presence. Those are things that no infinite amount of hydrogen gas, stars, and dust will ever amount to. The capturing of a planet into a star's orbit will never invoke the same meaningfulness and significance as a group hug of loving friends.

 

Irrelevant.

Humanity is a mote of dust in infinite sea of stars.

Emotions carry no value to the universe, it will never take note of them or bow to them.

Electrical synapses in your brain and hormone imbalances in your blood circulation system are not notable in any sense of the word.

They will never alter gravity or light of speed.

When is it "too late"? It's almost too late now. It's almost too late because there are so many people caught in the same mindset that you are, that mankind is irreparably evil, that we can't overcome our weaknesses and become better, that our bright future needs to wait to some unknown time in the future.

 

I do not consider "Evil" a real concept in any sense.

There are only individuals and individual choices.

 

Generalizations kill baby rabbits.

~

Then you REALLY side stepped the idea of Mars-to-Earth conversation with random religious flavored stuff (even more than I already replied to.) so I did not bother answering.

~

[Evilshy 5,089]

Let me just say that this thread has elevated EASA to one of my favorite posters. I may not agree with everything you've said, but you sure know how to explain things in a simple way.

 

I'm really more on Libertina's side on this one, at least right now. As far as I know, we don't have any rockets nearly efficient enough to make earth to mars travel practical (or as practical as space travel can be). A mars colony would be one of the coolest things ever, but at this point, it just wouldn't work.

Also, it would require the cooperation of many nations, and I can't see that level of cooperation happening in the near future.

 

Although, Libertina, it would do a lot for your credibility if you were less of an ass about it :/

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

Although, Libertina, it would do a lot for your credibility if you were less of an ass about it :/

 

I'm not trying to prove anything, nor do I consider everyone to be made of easily breakable materials waiting to melt into mewling pile of screaming about trolls.

English is not my native language and I miss the finesse that native speakers and actually educated personae have.

 

Blunt is better than endlessly dragging on about stuff anyway since there is the ever looming "off-topic" hanging over my shoulder waiting to moderate my replies into nothing.

 

:/ to you too.

[Comet Tail 808]

...

 

 

Really, just about all of those were either outright mocking me, or simply saying "it hasn't been done before", which I wouldn't even consider an argument worthy of a reply (engineering, and especially aerospace, is all about doing new things). I don't know if you realize this, but everything is an imaginary concept before it becomes reality. Engineering is the art of turning that into a reality using our knowledge of science. Saying it's imaginary can't even be said to be an argument at all.

 

 

But I will hit on a few points;

 

...evil" and "good" are just conceptualizations...

 

If you truly believe this, then you can't complain about the U.S. and "wars". Personally, I think we need to be move involved internationally because there really are evil people out there, and we're the only thing standing in-between Iraq and Taliban rule which is terribly abusive of even the most basic human rights. For any single bad thing U.S. soldiers have done, I can show you ten videos of soldiers walking along and chilling or kindly playing around with local children, talking, just generally being people who are acting as police in a place where there's extremely powerful mafias known as terrorist organizations. I think 9/11 and the subway bombings have revealed clearly enough that terrorists are the bad guys. And, historically, the only places that have faired well after a war with us are places we've occupied: look at Japan and Germany, where we stayed, compared to South Vietnam and Cuba, where we left. It's this same anti-war sentiment that led the British ambassador to allow Germany to take Poland circa 1939, who was then treated as a hero for keeping Britain out of war.

 

 

But, on-topic, let's pretend that that over-simplified niave idea is true, and America is a super-evil world bully who abuses smaller countries. If "evil" and "good" are relative, then why does it matter? Why can't we have some fun and live the Nazi dream of powerful empire? I don't care that not everyone agrees in every case of right and wrong; not everyone agrees that the moon landings happened, but that doesn't mean that the moon landings are relative, it just means some people are wrong. In that same way, we may not all agree on every specific case of right and wrong, but that is only because of correct and incorrect understandings and different perspectives on the situation. If we thought of the situation in the same way, with the correct understanding of the situation, then we would agree on right and wrong.

 

 

Throw in the two almost contradictory ideas of "Justice" and "Mercy", and you'll see why there's so much discord as to what people think is right and wrong. I defy you to show that wrong, and come up with any situation where anyone would disagree about what's good and evil, if we had the same understanding of the situation.

 

 

Your notion that they must be physical entities interacting in 4-dimensional (or 11, as per string theory) timespace is terribly close-minded, and will prevent you from ever really understanding the universe. It's a serious issue, today people completely overlook the true nature of reality and our existence because of our advanced understanding of how material acts in timespace, which is all that science is limited to.

 

 

Have you ever heard of Plato's cave? You can study how those shadows move all you want (to spell the analogy out for you; matter's interactions in timespace is the nature of how the "shadows" move), but it will reveal nothing about the true nature of existence, or of anything that's not on that cave wall, such as Qualia, and try as hard as you may, you'll never bridge the mind-body gap, simply because material interactions, no matter how vastly complex, should only produce a computer that produces output when given input, but should never, ever, produce sentience. We only know sentience exists because we're sentient. We would never discover it through the scientific process if we weren't. This shows that science utterly fails at understanding the very most important aspect of reality that there is: sentience, and more importantly, it shows that all of material interactions in timespace are just, as I said, shadows moving on the walls of Plato's cave. We don't see "good" and "evil" as physical particles, but they are something that humans always have and always will sense, making them just as real as the material whose interactions you praise as the only thing in the universe, because the existence of that material, also, is only known through our senses.

 

 

 

You have not solved a single issue I have presented to you.

All you have are "maybe's" and "it's possible that" OR "well, this dude said that".

That's not a very helpful attitude, is it?

I expect solutions to call this anything besides a dream.

 

First, I have said how we can approach the issues and work on them. Actually solving them is the work of real aerospace engineers, geologists, chemists, etc. What I have said, is that they're not show-stoppers, they're just another engineering problem that is common to any engineering project, and have been common to many space missions in the past (such as reliability).

 

 

"This dude said that" - have you ever worked in a technical field? I haven't - but I can tell you this much - you only know anything because of what other people have said. It's called research.

 

 

And then that last line is just the "it hasn't been done yet" statement once again. You're correct, in that every solution has admitted that we haven't gone to Mars before - it's only an idea, right now, or a dream, as you put it. You want technical details?

 

 

Here's some technical details, baby.

And here's the executive summary, less than 100 pages.

If you want technical details of a better plan, try

"The Case For Mars", which outlines Dr. Zubrin's "Mars Direct" mission architecture.

 

And that's just two of the many mission architectures that are out there. MRDM v5 is one of the worst, actually, IMO, I just linked it because I know there's a big pdf of it easily accessible from google.

 

 

Murphy's law.

 

A joke, literally. When it comes to something more advanced like aerospace, mathematics and engineering can actually be used to predict the percent chance of a failure in a period of time. It's a proven method, and it works. An example is the Space Shuttle's main engines. Over the 135-mission shuttle program, they've followed the percent chance of failure to a "T", I think there's been two pad aborts, one ATO abort (engine failed more than halfway through ascent, abort to a lower than planned orbit: Abort to Orbit, ATO), and during refurbishment they found a crack in a turbopump once. They predicted how often failures would occur, and they were right. We do the same for a Mars mission, and plan it to be safe and have adequate backup and repairs for when those do happen.

 

 

I guesstimated on average building

 

 

And your guesstimations were just about as horribly off as an uneducated guesstimation. I respect the average person, but you can hardly use numbers for an argument when you're really just pulling random numbers out of the air. Use figures actually from aerospace. We aren't building out of wood, concrete, bricks, or whatever, here. 7 people can live nicely in a 20-ton habitat module equipped for a 2-year mission. There's actually simulations of this, the "Mars Desert Research Station".

 

And, like I said, the issue with landing more than 20-tons on Mars is landing more than 20 tons under one heatshield, drop the payloads in ~20-ton packages and you don't have a problem. Not that dropping more than 20 tons is even really a problem, since there's even approaches for getting around those problems.

 

Technical details, about that problem:

 

 

Mass is directly proportional to volume, but aerodynamic drag is proportional to the area facing oncoming air. When you make an object bigger, the mass goes up by the third power of the radius, and the area goes up by the square of the radius. This means more mass, and more weight, per amount of drag. That means the force of gravity becomes stronger than the force of drag. Drag increases by the square of the velocity, though, so no matter how heavy, every object will reach a terminal velocity and stop accelerating.

The terminal velocity over Mars for objects in the 20+ ton mass range, is above mach 2.5. That's a problem, because parachutes have issues opening above mach 2.5. You might use rockets, but that means firing the rocket down, and because of Mars' atmosphere, you'd fly into your own exhaust, which causes huge stability issues at high mach numbers and might even destroy the spacecraft.

 

Possible solutions

1 - the best and simplest, is canted thrust. This means you angle two or more rockets down but at an angle away from straight down, so you don't fly through the exhaust stream. A very simple and doable solution that requires no new technology.

 

2 - Ballutes, a different kind of parachute that can open at high mach numbers. However, it would take some more research to fully understand how they work at those mach numbers. Some early promising wind-tunnel tests have shown small ballutes can work well up to about mach 7. But larger-scale free-flight tests will be needed to make sure that it works with large ballutes, too.

 

 

 

As I recall, heavier material are closer to sun as solar system is formed. (covelance disk? Whatever.)

That would make it less rich by default.

 

Mars isn't nearly far out enough for that to have a significant effect on it's composition. Iron-rich bodies (asteroids and even a dwarf planet, Ceres) exist out to the Asteroid belt and beyond. Even Jupiter has iron-rich moons. And the freaking color of the planet proves it's just washed in Iron, literally. The magnetic fields prove without a doubt that it's rich with iron in non-dust form. Well, either iron, cobalt, nickel, or rare-earth metals, but by far the most likely with a high degree of certainty, is iron.

 

There is nothing of innate value in space, it's empty, with worlds that either need to be terraformed or completely ignored light years apart.

Current technological base in earth does not allow colonization rendering every single world out there a pointless endeavour.

 

I don't mean to be rude... But... Q.E.D.

Official site.

 

If you think current technologies are too far behind, well, I'm afraid it's not the technology that's too far behind, it's your lack of understanding of the technology, to be quiet frank. The world changes. Time for a JFK quote:

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

 

In the last decade we've seen some huge revolutions in the field of aerospace as private companies have come in, and, for the first time ever, the main purpose of a serious aerospace group is to reduce the costs of spaceflight, and so far, they've met staggering success.

 

Don't believe me? Read about it, and some of the companies, too, like Bigelow official page), Virgin Galactic (official page), or my personal favorite, SpaceX, and try their official page, complete with their launch manifest, most of which is part of NASA's COTS program.

 

This isn't some sort of sci fi fantasy, crazy dream, or wackos, these are successful businesses complete with contracts, and all on-schedule, having completed actual landmark goals, actually flown into space, recovered capsules from orbit, and in the next week SpaceX will be delivering cargo to the ISS, at 1/4th the next lowest prices ever achieved. The kind of progress we can expect to see in the next decades are comparable to the Space Race in the 60's.

 

 

 

...We are humans and we have no equal because we are destructive apex species...

[...]

...Art, Technology and Civilization prove nothing as they are not part of us.

 

How can you call us a destructive species, when the very computer that you use, the internet you use to comminucate with that computer, screams "creation", and not "destruction"? If we were destructive, then why have we built so much? If our destructiveness was greater than our creativity and nobility, then why do we always strive to be better, and why do our creations still stand against our destructive nature?

 

And how the hay can you call art, technology, and civilization "not a part of us"?!

Don't you realize that art is all about expression of the individual, and so it is, quiet literally, an image, or a representation, of the human being that created it, or some idea that they have? And our ideas and thoughts are a major, huge part of who we are.

 

Art is nothing but our ideas, and there is nothing that humans do that wasn't an idea at one point in time, so art is as much a part of the human race as anything ever can be.

 

Many of mankind's failings comes from uncontrolled emotions, but art is a representation of the true being behind that lack of control, so it is, in fact, more true to what humans are than many of our failings.

 

Technology is our minds' attempts to fill our minds with the beauty of the elegant universe, if you know any real phycists, you'll know they do it because of the sheer beauty of the universe, it drives them to want to understand and probe it's depths more and more, and simply because knowledge in itself is a noble thing. In fact, it could be said knowledge is one of the three great "goods" (If all evil comes from ignorance, selfishness, or weakness (lack of self control), then knowledge must be the opposite of evil), one of the most noble things mankind can do.

 

If people devote their entire professional lives, and some, their entire lives, and some even losing their lives for, and in pursuit of, understanding the universe, science and technology, then how in the world can you say that it's not part of mankind?

 

 

And civilization? The sum total of everything that every human being ever does? If what every human spends every moment of their life doing, isn't part of mankind, then what the hay is???

 

Irrelevant.

Humanity is a mote of dust in infinite sea of stars.

Emotions carry no value to the universe, it will never take note of them or bow to them.

Electrical synapses in your brain and hormone imbalances in your blood circulation system are not notable in any sense of the word.

They will never alter gravity or light of speed.

 

Irrelevant according to who? Nobody. Exactly my point. Your point is irrelevant because the only being that humanity is irrelevant to is nobody. There is not a known sapient being in the universe, to whom mankind is irrelevant. There is not a sentient creature in the universe, to whom emotions are irrelevant.

 

The irrelevancy of meaning is irrelevant because meaning is irrelevant to nothing that is sentient, thus capable of holding any meaning.

 

Saying meaning and emotion are irrelevant is like saying that color is colorless, by definition, color is not colorless, and by definition, meaning and emotion are not irrelevant.

 

The speed of light is irrelevant. Gravity is irrelevant. Meaning and emotions are the ultimate "relevant" thing, they are the only source of the very concept of "irrelevant", and there is nothing in the universe, more "relevant", than sentience.

 

In fact, the speed of light, stars, space, the universe, everything in the universe and the universe itself, are all completely and totally irrelevant, except for how they effect the interactions in-between sentient beings. As the father of psychology, William James said: "Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world."

 

In other words, the world isn't planet Earth, the moon, the sun, stars, stellar clusters, galaxies, the universe, the world is you and those who you interact with. Unless, of course, you want to argue with William James, who is essentially the father of modern psychology, and is to psychology what Albert Einstein was to physics.

 

-

 

But, on a more serious and personal note, if you seriously believe and feel that all of human emotion and existence are meaningless, which I think I'm even picking up by the tone of your posts (unless that's just translation) and horrible pessimism, then you seriously need to see a psychiatrist more than anything else, because thinking everything is meaningless and the world is horrible isn't a logical point of view, it's a serious problem with quality of life.

 

Let me just say that this thread has elevated EASA to one of my favorite posters. I may not agree with everything you've said, but you sure know how to explain things in a simple way.

 

I'm really more on Libertina's side on this one, at least right now. As far as I know, we don't have any rockets nearly efficient enough to make earth to mars travel practical (or as practical as space travel can be). A mars colony would be one of the coolest things ever, but at this point, it just wouldn't work.

Also, it would require the cooperation of many nations, and I can't see that level of cooperation happening in the near future.

 

Although, Libertina, it would do a lot for your credibility if you were less of an ass about it :/

 

I admit we're not quiet at the point of building a self-sustaining colony, but I'm here to more or less say we're at the point where we can start, and we certainly have enough technology to send people there who can afford the ticket, granted it will be a decade or a few before prices fall into that $500k range. Point is, a colony is something we can expect to see in a lifetime. Don't underestimate what a lifetime is. In a few decades we went from piston-powered aircraft to landing on the Moon, and in the previous decades we went from horses in the streets, to the very first mass-produced automobiles, to jet fighters.

 

Space travel has always been a dream more optimistic in hope than in realization, really because of the costs. But in the last few years, the costs have plummeted a, literally, unprecedented amount, and promise to only keep dropping even more.

 

But, the huge obsticale that's really prevented space from "taking off", is purpose. There are lots of space advocates, who share my vision of a better future for mankind, simply love the technology, or simply the thrill of a real adventure that's part of who we are, lost in our controlled and ordered modern day. But point is, there's been a push, and it's kept the Space Shuttles flying, but it hasn't done much, it's been an uphill battle for every advance because it costs money to go into space. That's why all those science-fiction dreams haven't come true.

 

But, now, that's changing. With the prices dropping, and things like asteroids with super-rare materials more valuable that platinum, and rich in other valuable materials, and not to mention people who would pay tickets to go, it will no longer cost money to go into space, because that cost is going to go down enough, that mining those resources, and people buying those tickets, can generate a net profit. In other words;

Going into space makes money.

 

Economics runs on that. It may sound greedy, but almost everything happens because it makes money (but it's not quiet as bad as it sounds, after all, we need a paycheck to buy food, and money is just a measure of how much we've given society what it wants/needs), and when going to space makes money, it's going to happen like crazy, just like when they first learned that airliners could generate profit.

Edited April 23, 2012 by EASA - Matt