Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: AKKuya on November 22, 2021, 10:09:47 PM
-
Eventually, humans will be making the trip to the 4th Rock from the Sun. Rock, a Red Rock to be accurate, is the best word to use. Roughly, 54 million miles from Earth when both lined up from the Sun. Using the simple forward pass of football, we launch a space craft when Mars is behind us and time it to intercept the planet when Mars catches up taking from 6 to 9 months journey.
There are two camps at NASA.
Camp 1 : Traditional
Train the best and brightest of 25 - 45 years of age. They are spending a minimum of 1 year on the surface plus the transit time and back taking a possible 2 more years combined.
Pros -
A) Physically fit. They will have the exercise equipment to keep working the muscles in microgravity for the transit trips. On surface of Mars with close to Earth gravity, fitness equipment will rebuild what was missing during trip to Mars and preparing them for trip back home.
B) Base Camp. Proposed site will be placed near hills with caves for added protection (dust storms and solar radiation). Access to water (craters or snow cap) possible. Return vehicle already waiting or landing craft doubles for launch pad and separate launch vehicle.
C) Self Sustainability. This has been thoroughly designed, built and tested. Reclamation, oxygen production, water production, foos production, etc...)
Cons -
A) Exposure to radiation during both trips and on the surface could give the crew a high risk of cancer.
B) Dust storms unexpectedly destroying habitat.
C) Marsquake destroying habitat.
D) Olympus Mons breathing life, destroying habitat.
E) Releasing dormant bacteria and or viruses from excavation, killing the crew.
5) Annoying any Martian neighbors, destroying the habitat and coming to Earth to finish the job.
They have no problem signing up for this. They know that everything in space and on Mars is doing one thing. Kill them. I salute them for their bravery. Wish I was going with them.
Camp 2 : Old fart Brigade
Knowing there might be the possibility of a one-way mission, NASA sends a crew 50 years of age and older. Ultimate top spot on a person's bucket list.
Pros -
If they survive the trip and landing, no resources for return trip, they can be the builders of a permanent colony using all the above-mentioned capabilities of traditional crew. This will allow for more missions with same type of crew to further strengthen the habitat and utilities for the first traditional type of crew to make a colony with families.
Cons - It might take 20+ of these missions to get to families.
Let's see what the private sector comes up with for colonizing Mars.
-
Option 3: ignore mars and go straight to mining the asteroid belt.
-
Yes elite dangerous
-
Eventually, humans will be making the trip to the 4th Rock from the Sun. Rock, a Red Rock to be accurate, is the best word to use. Roughly, 54 million miles from Earth when both lined up from the Sun. Using the simple forward pass of football, we launch a space craft when Mars is behind us and time it to intercept the planet when Mars catches up taking from 6 to 9 months journey.
There are two camps at NASA.
Camp 1 : Traditional
Train the best and brightest of 25 - 45 years of age. They are spending a minimum of 1 year on the surface plus the transit time and back taking a possible 2 more years combined.
Pros -
A) Physically fit. They will have the exercise equipment to keep working the muscles in microgravity for the transit trips. On surface of Mars with close to Earth gravity, fitness equipment will rebuild what was missing during trip to Mars and preparing them for trip back home.
B) Base Camp. Proposed site will be placed near hills with caves for added protection (dust storms and solar radiation). Access to water (craters or snow cap) possible. Return vehicle already waiting or landing craft doubles for launch pad and separate launch vehicle.
C) Self Sustainability. This has been thoroughly designed, built and tested. Reclamation, oxygen production, water production, foos production, etc...)
Cons -
A) Exposure to radiation during both trips and on the surface could give the crew a high risk of cancer.
B) Dust storms unexpectedly destroying habitat.
C) Marsquake destroying habitat.
D) Olympus Mons breathing life, destroying habitat.
E) Releasing dormant bacteria and or viruses from excavation, killing the crew.
5) Annoying any Martian neighbors, destroying the habitat and coming to Earth to finish the job.
They have no problem signing up for this. They know that everything in space and on Mars is doing one thing. Kill them. I salute them for their bravery. Wish I was going with them.
Camp 2 : Old fart Brigade
Knowing there might be the possibility of a one-way mission, NASA sends a crew 50 years of age and older. Ultimate top spot on a person's bucket list.
Pros -
If they survive the trip and landing, no resources for return trip, they can be the builders of a permanent colony using all the above-mentioned capabilities of traditional crew. This will allow for more missions with same type of crew to further strengthen the habitat and utilities for the first traditional type of crew to make a colony with families.
Cons - It might take 20+ of these missions to get to families.
Let's see what the private sector comes up with for colonizing Mars.
The most interesting thing is that NASA is quietly starting to question the "why" aspect of sending people to Mars. The latest long term observations of human behavior during even a "quick" trip to Mars are very disconcerting. Human behavior being what it is, we tend to become more and more independent the further we are from perceived authority. The latest experiments in long term mission isolation have shown that that independent streak tends to start becoming manifest within 6 months of "leaving" Earth (in the experiments, "astronauts" simulated going to Mars by isolating in a contained environment serving as a ship, then in a habitat in a remote location here to simulate Mars), and grows exponentially with the distance and perceived impact of actions.
These experiments are showing that even highly trained astronauts start to move away from rigid mission details, and even start to simply ignore mission control, making independent decisions based on their own desires, disregarding the rest of the crew and mission parameters.
-
Option 3: ignore mars and go straight to mining the asteroid belt.
I don't disagree, but it won't happen for a very long time when there just aren't any rare earth metals left here. A single small asteroid, mined, would decimate the world's economy by suddenly devaluing multiple precious metals.
-
I don't disagree, but it won't happen for a very long time when there just aren't any rare earth metals left here. A single small asteroid, mined, would decimate the world's economy by suddenly devaluing multiple precious metals.
I'm not sure the impact would be so great once you factor in the costs needed to undertake such a plan. It would require an incredible amount of infrastructure that simply does not exist, nor could it exist in any short/medium term timeframe.
-
Mars is geologically dead, no volcanos, mars quakes, magnetosphere, ect. The moon would make much better sense, much lower gravity, hence making it a great jumping off point for stellar exploration, and it’s a hell of a lot closer.
-
You do realize that when all of this gets going it will be for the super rich not the rest of us
Earth will become a penal colony
Eagler
-
Mars is geologically dead, no volcanos, mars quakes, magnetosphere, ect. The moon would make much better sense, much lower gravity, hence making it a great jumping off point for stellar exploration, and it’s a hell of a lot closer.
Yeah, but Matt Damon has already been there and figured out all the hard stuff.
-
You do realize that when all of this gets going it will be for the super rich not the rest of us
Earth will become a penal colony
Eagler
Nah I think The Expanse has it right. The elite will stay on Earth and the off world colonies will be more working class. At least until a colony surpasses Earth in comfort and prosperity which could be a century or more.
It'll look a lot like European expansion into North America, first explorers then small outposts dedicated to mining resources then settlers supported by the outposts to build up the infrastructure.
Mars is geologically dead, no volcanos, mars quakes, magnetosphere, ect. The moon would make much better sense, much lower gravity, hence making it a great jumping off point for stellar exploration, and it’s a hell of a lot closer.
Completely agree. The moon is a much better place to test out a permanent colony. Where help is a couple days away, not 6 months or more. Going to Mars should be a quick visit and return trip at this point, we don't quite have the tech and knowledge for a permanent colony there. And a disaster of a first colony would discourage future attempts.
-
snip: The elite will stay on Earth and ...
Yep.
Why would anyone with a yacht, a private airplane and multiple residences move to a primitive colony? Rarely happened in the early European settlement of other continents.
As for long-term colonies on Mars, Charles Wohlforth and Amanda R Hendrix make a compelling argument for skipping Mars and going to Titan with its Nitrogen Methane(?) atmosphere and water ice surface. Both require faster transport than currently available but its coming fast.
Edit: Beyond Earth
-
I'm not sure the impact would be so great once you factor in the costs needed to undertake such a plan. It would require an incredible amount of infrastructure that simply does not exist, nor could it exist in any short/medium term timeframe.
There's some interesting research in this area. Caltech/NASA came up with a plan to mine a known, understood asteroid that is the size of a football field and is purely platinum. (I can forward the paper if you want.) They came up with 1.0 billion USD to get there and extract the platinum with existing technology. Fair market value at the time of mining would be about 50.0 billion USD. Again, this could be undertaken, effectively, in the very near term. Basically they came up with sending un-crewed craft out to it, slowly changing the orbit and bringing it into Earth orbit, where it could be mined effectively.
The problem is, the current world market for platinum is 7,770,000 ounces (485,625 lbs) per year. Bringing that single small asteroid back would effectively crash the market for platinum by suddenly injecting about 10-15 million pounds into circulation. If you simply mined it constantly for lower yield (to string along the price), the operating costs would skyrocket, as well as having a host of orbital issues to attend to. They came to the conclusion that it wouldn't pay off in either case.
So there you go. If the world market changes..... well then that does change the calculus. If some technology that we don't have a handle on comes to the foreground.... that's when you'll see the first attempts.
-
People will NOT get to Mars they are too busy bleaching their bum holes and getting their eye brows sculptured….fact
And the women are more concerned about polar bears and lines on their faces….fact
What a fantastic modern age we live in.
I would write ten paragraphs about said demise of Western culture but the lines above cover the topic.
-
Technology is rapidly expanding especially on computer software and integration with hardware. That ensures advanced safety protocols with multiple backups. After all, going into space has one underlying truth. Space wants to kill you.
The human race is still using the primitive method of Goddard rocket technology. As the above-mentioned statement, very advanced Goddard rockets.
Until there is a breakthrough in creating unlimited energy that can be housed within an engine tied to a controllable propulsion system, we're in the same category as the first sailing vessels travelling from Europe to the New World.
Atomic energy was the first real direction forward to escaping rocket engines that placed a lot of fuel into a tank then ignite for release out of one end. Financially, nuclear powered engines would be cheaper in the long run after the advancements in learned applications of technology. That didn't happen.
The two most powerful forces that we can observe in the universe is gravity and electro-magnetism. That would be the best approach concept of merging the two together. Each one feeding off each other at the same time both repelling each other in a stable environment. Gravity is density. EM is metallic. Polarity will be the key.
The discovery of a new super element that can be fused with other elements and metal properties. This core can be charged with electricity powered by a super engine source attracting more core particles growing to a larger physical state. These particles become packed tightly at the atomic level creating a super dense core. Polarity keeps the core moving between negative and positive states. That kinetic energy is fed back into the engine and propulsion systems.
In layman's terms, this might be the best approach. Let the scientists figure out the details. Or, the rest of the community here.
-
I have been there. Not impressed.
-
I am not personally a big fan of the idea of a manned mission to Mars in the near future. Maybe 50 years from now.
We can send tons of research robots for the same cost.
For the cost of a one time quickie manned visit to Mars, we could instead pay for a full-time, permanent Moon facility that could house 100 scientists.
$0.02.
-
I'm not sure the impact would be so great once you factor in the costs needed to undertake such a plan. It would require an incredible amount of infrastructure that simply does not exist, nor could it exist in any short/medium term timeframe.
This is exactly the reason why humanity is doomed. We believe that humans need to pay other humans for humanity to achieve things. Invented currency, backboned on an illusory system of irreparable debt that doesn't really even exist, that apparently there is 'not enough of' for the human race to achieve certain goals.
There is no cost to going to Mars or out into space. Either we use our resources to get there or we don't. Cost doesn't exist.
-
I have been there. Not impressed.
You didn't coordinate with the Martian Bikini Team.
-
I traveled to Mars using Google Earth :old:
-
This is exactly the reason why humanity is doomed. We believe that humans need to pay other humans for humanity to achieve things. Invented currency, backboned on an illusory system of irreparable debt that doesn't really even exist, that apparently there is 'not enough of' for the human race to achieve certain goals.
There is no cost to going to Mars or out into space. Either we use our resources to get there or we don't. Cost doesn't exist.
Exactly, I'll just sit here with a cold beverage and enjoy the extinction.
-
There is no cost to going to Mars or out into space. Either we use our resources to get there or we don't. Cost doesn't exist.
Nothing is going to happen if it doesn't make a few very very rich
It never has
Eagler
-
I think the only real benefit on colonizing Mars is learning the extraterrestrial colony process. We can't really terraform Mars because the atmosphere will still slowly be carried away as it has been. Mining the asteroid belt would be a little easier with a station around Mars, but landing there will still lead to the expense of another launch. Mars would not even give the human much more survivability, because colonists will always depend on Earth supplies.
-
Earth will become a penal colony
Become? Heh. :huh
-
This is exactly the reason why humanity is doomed.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
-
I am not personally a big fan of the idea of a manned mission to Mars in the near future. Maybe 50 years from now.
We can send tons of research robots for the same cost.
For the cost of a one time quickie manned visit to Mars, we could instead pay for a full-time, permanent Moon facility that could house 100 scientists.
$0.02.
A human presence on Mars might have the cost of "tons" of robots, but the results would be orders of magnitude greater in a shorter period of time. For instance - a few years ago, a robot digging in the ground uncovered what appeared to be ice (likely water ice, but the probe could not determine this) an inch or two below the surface. It took some pictures, and the next day the substance was gone, most likely sublimated. The robot was not equipped to gather the sample nor analyze it if it had. To this day we don't know exactly what it was that the probe found. A human explorer would have picked up that ice, put it in a sample bag, and analyzed it at length later. A human could have dug deeper using such advanced tools as a shovel, or even a stick (well, a pole - you aren't likely to find a stick laying around on the surface of Mars) to determine the extent of the deposit and gather more samples.
Humans are infinitely more adaptable than robots for exploration of such an environment. They can change their priorities based on observation, carry out a nearly infinite number of different tasks using only a rather simple set of tools, and make observations and conduct tests on one or more samples that no practical selection of robotic probes can, because the human can create and run tests in a fixed laboratory rather than running a set of prepared tests made years before a couple hundred million miles away.
Mike
-
A human presence on Mars might have the cost of "tons" of robots, but the results would be orders of magnitude greater in a shorter period of time.
Yeah, I get all that. And that's fine, as far as it goes. I wouldn't necessarily call it a publicity stunt. Though that kind of thing made more sense when we were competing with the USSR for hearts and minds and prestige. But it will be unbelievably expensive and has possibly and unacceptably high risk of death for the explorers. It's just too far for anything like our current technology. Isn't it like a 2 year mission? Given the kinds of safety testing and system redundancy we generally demand for our space program (especially after Challenger, etc.), there are just too many things that can go wrong that far away over that amount of time. When you are dealing with humans there is very low risk tolerance.
Believe me I want manned exploration and colonization of every rock in this system. Except Europa. Attempt no landing there...
In my opinion, if you really want to get serious about becoming a spacefaring civilization, you first concentrate on building the infrastructure to really drive things at scale. For the same cost, I bet we could get a permanent, full size space station capable enough to essentially be a shipyard in orbit for building larger interstellar ships; with enough left over for a permanent manned moon base.
Instead of one flashy Hail Mary mission to Mars, I'd rather set up permanent camp out in space instead of just visiting. That's much more feasible to set up locally first in our orbital space and nearest planetoid.
Unless gov money is unlimited, then do both. ;)
But if Elon decides to spend his own cash to send himself, hey, rock on.