The speed-of-light delay would mean that the guys controlling the avatars would have to be orbiting Mars instead of being on Earth, unless you like having a four to ten minute delay between when your "body" trips over a rock and falls over and when you find out about it.
We need to address hunger, disease, war, and environmental sustainability in Europe before we start sending people to the New World!
In regards to trasmission times earth to mars, that would be problematic for avatar controlled mech suits, but think of all the advantages they could have in terms of agility. Doing more complex lab work with soil samples etc. Rovers are already doing this kind of work but they get stuck, breakdown, etc. With other units around, more ground could be covered and units that go offline could be located and brought in for repairs by other functioning units.
With time delay, still cumbersome, but probably way more efficient in terms of what could be done on ground compared to current rovers.
Theres still a lot to be learned about the planets environment and geology. Sending a settlement now is premature, given the options available.
Still lots to learn here, and fix as you say, before moving on to other worlds.
We havent even been to the deepest parts of our own oceans. In that regard mars seems a tall order.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Also, I think a permanent settlement on Mars is a long way off. The moon on the other hand is a better first step.
There is even less reason to settle on the moon.
Mars has at least an atmosphere and conditions that can on the very very very very very long run be adapted to our needs. And it might have resources to look for.
The moon has litarally nothing of value on it. (Except of course that particular estate I own^^)
I mean what's the point in settling on another planetoid when there is nothing to gain? Investing billions of dollars just because its kind of cool?
Yes, there is. It has a number of useful resources. H3 might become a valuable one in the future and has some immediate applications (like fuel for return shipments), but right now, it has rare earth metals. They're not exactly rare on Earth, but mining them is incredibly destructive to the surrounding ground water and ecosystem, and as a result the market is full of conflict minerals and slavery.
The moon, having none of those things to worry about, makes for cheaper mining, and the fuel requirements for product return leave it still economically viable once systems SpaceX is developing materialize (from Mars almost no metal is worth the expense of shipping back, but from the moon a great many metals are).
Yes, there is. It has a number of useful resources. H3 might become a valuable one in the future and has some immediate applications (like fuel for return shipments), but right now, it has rare earth metals. They're not exactly rare on Earth, but mining them is incredibly destructive to the surrounding ground water and ecosystem, and as a result the market is full of conflict minerals and slavery.
The moon, having none of those things to worry about, makes for cheaper mining, and the fuel requirements for product return leave it still economically viable once systems SpaceX is developing materialize (from Mars almost no metal is worth the expense of shipping back, but from the moon a great many metals are).
Then there is the fact that since the Moon barely has an atmosphere, that any dangerous experiments or manufacturing processes can easily be conducted on the Moon without worrying about environmental concerns. If the Bhopal disaster happened on the Moon, then only the workers in the immediate vicinity of the disaster would have been affected not 500,000 people.
We as a species will need to expand beyond Earth eventually. As someone already pointed out, a single global catastrophe could wipe out all life on Earth, which takes us with it. Moving out into the solar system increases the chances of survival for humanity.
However, the problem with that is self-sustainability. If Earth is destroyed or made uninhabitable and Mars still requires the support of Earth, then it is just a matter of time before the people on Mars die. So it is not a matter of getting humans to Mars and build a colony, but make the Mars Colony not require any help from Earth. I can see a Mars Colony occur by 2050, but a self-sufficient Mars Colony will probably not happen until 2100 or later depending on if it involves terraforming or infrastructure (water reclamation plants, recycling plants, etc).
However, the problem with that is self-sustainability. If Earth is destroyed or made uninhabitable and Mars still requires the support of Earth, then it is just a matter of time before the people on Mars die.
We'd better get cracking on that whole "spreading through the solar system" thing before then, huh? Can't rely on an Ophiuchu Hotline, after all.
Yes, and as you mentioned, this is why NASA has been researching various methods of terraforming. If you watch that documentary Shatner narrated, they explain the overall goal of any colonization of Mars is to make it self sustainable. It simply isn't feasible to build a colony that will require regular shipments of supplies from Earth.
right, we need to get some terraforming process started before we can actually settle.
Not really. Biospheres would work nicely while the rest of the planet undergoes terraforming.
I could consider that part of terraforming, if it was dug mostly underground for protection in case of a breach or a flare that overwhelmed Mars's weak magnetic shield
As long as space agencies can't launch 5 rockets in a row without crashing or exploding, we shouldn't think about ruining another planet.
There's a difference between human-rated and unrated rockets.
The least safe modern man-rated launch system was the STS, with a total failure rate of 1.4%, 0.7% being with an older version. Soyuz has had a total failure rate of 0.8%, with the last several hardware iterations being 0%.
Those systems cost far more than equivalent-lift unrated rockets used for unmanned launches. The overall failure rate in unrated launches is 5%, with some launch systems like America's Titan series getting up to 10%. However, a Titan launch, counting payload, costs one sixth what a human-rated launch with the same payload weight would cost, more than offsetting the cost of lost payloads.
The overall failure rate for space agencies with manned missions in the last 20 years is 0.6% - only one failure, going to NASA. For unmanned launches in the same time, it's around 3% - the lowest its ever been, as the long term average is around 5%. Extending that to every iteration of modern spacecraft series brings it to 0.9% - 3 failures in 305 flights, two of which were with retired hardware iterations.
Of all the spacecraft failures in recent years, two go to Russia (unmanned), one to China (unmanned with no payload), one to NASA (unmanned), and all the rest - over twenty-five - to private corporations (only 4 of which were actual missions).
Of those 3, one did not lose the payload, only a recoverable booster. Two did lose a payload. And the last was SpaceShipTwo, which wasn't technically capable of reaching space like SpaceShipOne did, which wasn't actually human-rated despite being manned, and had been rejected for use by NASA because of Virgin Galactic's horrendously safety record on the ground (owing to a 2007 accident when six employees were unshielded near an engine during a test firing, leading to three deaths and three critical injuries, and the fact that they did not institute safety measures around later test firings as a result until a later nonfatal accident).
Air /food/gravity.......cannot work on needing supplies they got to make their own
Then a ship that can do the same thing
Then we got to go faster than we can now and find a different fuel source to actually go somewhere in a persons lifetime and return
We got a lot of work to do
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Air /food/gravity.......cannot work on needing supplies they got to make their own
Then a ship that can do the same thing
Then we got to go faster than we can now and find a different fuel source to actually go somewhere in a persons lifetime and return
We got a lot of work to do
Personally, I feel that we're technologically already at the stage where we can build a self-sufficient base on the Moon. The problem lies in two things:
Resources.
It takes a boatload of money to launch all the required resources for the construction of such a facility from Earth. Additionally, we're pretty much using the wrong, short-term approach, and mostly considering building it directly from Earth. Bypassing this issue by building self-replicating asteroid refineries and having them ship the finished components to the Moon doesn't let us build a base there, either.
As you might have guessed, this is because even this option would be unlikely to receive adequate funding to be successfully executed. Why? Because, while this approach is definitely cheaper and more sustainable, it would probably be a few years before the mining drones had reached sufficient productivity to feed the construction efforts. This, mind you, is on top of the time it took just to build the 'mother drone', and on top of the time it took for the base to be finished once the parts started trickling in.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Of all the spacecraft failures in recent years, two go to Russia (unmanned), one to China (unmanned with no payload), one to NASA (unmanned), and all the rest - over twenty-five - to private corporations (only 4 of which were actual missions).
Of those 3, one did not lose the payload, only a recoverable booster. Two did lose a payload. And the last was SpaceShipTwo, which wasn't technically capable of reaching space like SpaceShipOne did, which wasn't actually human-rated despite being manned, and had been rejected for use by NASA because of Virgin Galactic's horrendously safety record on the ground (owing to a 2007 accident when six employees were unshielded near an engine during a test firing, leading to three deaths and three critical injuries, and the fact that they did not institute safety measures around later test firings as a result until a later nonfatal accident).
Please note that this all refers to launch-vehicle failures, not total mission failures. The rocket that launched the Mars Polar Lander for example was a success even though the Lander itself failed during its descent to the Martian surface.
This is demonstratably false. We have available resources to take care of every person on this planet. We have the ability to create the infrastructure to transport those resources to every person on this planet. We have the ability, the technology, and the incentive to do this for the betterment of all mankind.
Where are these resources? How long can they possibly last in the face of acceleration in population growth due to the addressing of global hunger, or the provision of (quality) universal healthcare?
To play Q's Advocate, what actions have we accomplished that merits the survival of our species at the cost of the continuing suffering of it elsewhere on the planet?
If you can make it, you've succeeded.
What's with the need to judge humanity?
I hate to say it, but I'm with Sills on this one.
Except for restarting vulcanism on Mars; we're so far removed from being able to (safely) do something like that, that it's not even currently worth discussing. Incidentally, the end of vulcanism on Earth is the real deadline for getting off the planet, and will come far sooner than the Sun will go nova. Assuming we even survive the collision/merger with Andromeda, which is practically around the corner in cosmological terms.
Even if there's still some slight vulcanism ongoing, enough to excite astronomers, that's still nowhere near what would be needed to generate a powerful enough magnetic field.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
Yes I know there is a current plan to go there under Mars One, but really could that plan work?
It's a one way trip, with no return to Earth, that's it your home for life if you go.
But really are we ready to setup a colony on a new world?
But for I add my 2 cents of an idea, lets hear what you guys think. 2024 isn't that far off, the planned launch of the 1st group, with 2 year apart launches after that, I just don't know if this current plan is a good one.
It would be the Oregon trail with ten times as many ways to die! Why not just stay here, watch anime, play video games and eat ice cream? There is nothing in space except for work and a possible sci fi death!
"Call back later, I'm on the vacuum right now!" :rolleyes:
New Lunar Republic
"Where monsters rampage, I'm there to take them down! Where treasure glitters, I'm there to claim it! Where an enemy rises to face me, victory will be mine!" -Lina Inverse
There is no workable plan. The concept of colonizing Mars sounds romantic and wonderful, but at the end of the day it's a blighted dustball of a world that has no worth.
Even something as basic as Mars' gravity makes the idea of colonization absurd.
On the other hand, there's almost no chance you'll fall into a river or die of dysentery...
Falling into a river is not possible unless they get back to Earth, but it is possible to die of dysentry in space. It would require equipment malfunctioning and not sterilizing the water properly or contaminated food. It is supposedly a 7 month journey to Mars and a permanent stay once they reach there so dying of dysentry is an actual risk due to recycling water.
Where are these resources? How long can they possibly last in the face of acceleration in population growth due to the addressing of global hunger, or the provision of (quality) universal healthcare?
Well, they're everywhere. We waste food every day in amounts that could feed the rest of the planet for that entire day and more. We live in a world of plenty. There is enough of life essentials (food, water, shelter, medical care, etc.) to go around the planet. We simply enforce an artificial scarcity for the sake of making money.
More importantly, while we have the resources to take care of every man, woman, and child on a global scale -- we instead divert those resources into counter-productive, or selfish means. While we do physically have the realistic ability to transform the planet, the technology to do it, the manpower to do it... again, it comes down to desire.
We simply do not have the desire to see our entire species prosper and survive. We are too willing to condemn a portion of the globe to suffering for the sake of our own greed.
Population growth is an artificial issue created from a false sense of thinking that this planet is incapable of supporting additional people. It is artificial because we can transform this planet into supporting us, and it is a false sense of thinking because there are those who look at the present and recognize that due to human greed and the human propensity for destruction -- such a problem exists.
But it exists because we want it to exist. It does not need to exist. We want people to suffer. Not we as in the people on this forum, but we as an entire species.
If you can make it, you've succeeded.
It depends on the conditions of "making it" and "success". I do not believe humanity deserves to colonize other planets because it will always be at the cost of continued suffering elsewhere. What is the point of "making it" if others are willingly and knowingly left behind?
How accomplished would we feel if we landed on Mars, but there was still polio, starvation, war, genocide an entire planet away?
It would be a nice short-term, feel-good gesture. But that money could have gone into making the planet we currently live on more habitable, instead of spending way more money on a luxury like colonizing Mars or the moon.
What's with the need to judge humanity?
Nobody else will. Just as I do not speak for humanity, nobody else does either. Therefore, if nobody else is capable of speaking for humanity, then each and every one of us is capable of speaking for humanity.
Every person is capable of judging humanity, because they are part of humanity.
Comments
If the core isn't molten, we got a problem.
In regards to trasmission times earth to mars, that would be problematic for avatar controlled mech suits, but think of all the advantages they could have in terms of agility. Doing more complex lab work with soil samples etc. Rovers are already doing this kind of work but they get stuck, breakdown, etc. With other units around, more ground could be covered and units that go offline could be located and brought in for repairs by other functioning units.
With time delay, still cumbersome, but probably way more efficient in terms of what could be done on ground compared to current rovers.
Theres still a lot to be learned about the planets environment and geology. Sending a settlement now is premature, given the options available.
Still lots to learn here, and fix as you say, before moving on to other worlds.
We havent even been to the deepest parts of our own oceans. In that regard mars seems a tall order.
Sounds like a campaign slogan if I ever heard one.
There is even less reason to settle on the moon.
Mars has at least an atmosphere and conditions that can on the very very very very very long run be adapted to our needs. And it might have resources to look for.
The moon has litarally nothing of value on it. (Except of course that particular estate I own^^)
I mean what's the point in settling on another planetoid when there is nothing to gain? Investing billions of dollars just because its kind of cool?
We agree.... That's a first^^
I don't think that's humanity's call to make.
If the little green men land in my back yard, I'm going to tell them they have the wrong planet and point them to Alpha Centauri.
Yes, there is. It has a number of useful resources. H3 might become a valuable one in the future and has some immediate applications (like fuel for return shipments), but right now, it has rare earth metals. They're not exactly rare on Earth, but mining them is incredibly destructive to the surrounding ground water and ecosystem, and as a result the market is full of conflict minerals and slavery.
The moon, having none of those things to worry about, makes for cheaper mining, and the fuel requirements for product return leave it still economically viable once systems SpaceX is developing materialize (from Mars almost no metal is worth the expense of shipping back, but from the moon a great many metals are).
Then there is the fact that since the Moon barely has an atmosphere, that any dangerous experiments or manufacturing processes can easily be conducted on the Moon without worrying about environmental concerns. If the Bhopal disaster happened on the Moon, then only the workers in the immediate vicinity of the disaster would have been affected not 500,000 people.
However, the problem with that is self-sustainability. If Earth is destroyed or made uninhabitable and Mars still requires the support of Earth, then it is just a matter of time before the people on Mars die. So it is not a matter of getting humans to Mars and build a colony, but make the Mars Colony not require any help from Earth. I can see a Mars Colony occur by 2050, but a self-sufficient Mars Colony will probably not happen until 2100 or later depending on if it involves terraforming or infrastructure (water reclamation plants, recycling plants, etc).
right, we need to get some terraforming process started before we can actually settle.
is it bad that I laughed?
http://youtu.be/TwJaELXadKo which side are you on?
:P
I could consider that part of terraforming, if it was dug mostly underground for protection in case of a breach or a flare that overwhelmed Mars's weak magnetic shield
There's a difference between human-rated and unrated rockets.
The least safe modern man-rated launch system was the STS, with a total failure rate of 1.4%, 0.7% being with an older version. Soyuz has had a total failure rate of 0.8%, with the last several hardware iterations being 0%.
Those systems cost far more than equivalent-lift unrated rockets used for unmanned launches. The overall failure rate in unrated launches is 5%, with some launch systems like America's Titan series getting up to 10%. However, a Titan launch, counting payload, costs one sixth what a human-rated launch with the same payload weight would cost, more than offsetting the cost of lost payloads.
The overall failure rate for space agencies with manned missions in the last 20 years is 0.6% - only one failure, going to NASA. For unmanned launches in the same time, it's around 3% - the lowest its ever been, as the long term average is around 5%. Extending that to every iteration of modern spacecraft series brings it to 0.9% - 3 failures in 305 flights, two of which were with retired hardware iterations.
Of all the spacecraft failures in recent years, two go to Russia (unmanned), one to China (unmanned with no payload), one to NASA (unmanned), and all the rest - over twenty-five - to private corporations (only 4 of which were actual missions).
Of those 3, one did not lose the payload, only a recoverable booster. Two did lose a payload. And the last was SpaceShipTwo, which wasn't technically capable of reaching space like SpaceShipOne did, which wasn't actually human-rated despite being manned, and had been rejected for use by NASA because of Virgin Galactic's horrendously safety record on the ground (owing to a 2007 accident when six employees were unshielded near an engine during a test firing, leading to three deaths and three critical injuries, and the fact that they did not institute safety measures around later test firings as a result until a later nonfatal accident).
Air /food/gravity.......cannot work on needing supplies they got to make their own
Then a ship that can do the same thing
Then we got to go faster than we can now and find a different fuel source to actually go somewhere in a persons lifetime and return
We got a lot of work to do
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Personally, I feel that we're technologically already at the stage where we can build a self-sufficient base on the Moon. The problem lies in two things:
Resources.
It takes a boatload of money to launch all the required resources for the construction of such a facility from Earth. Additionally, we're pretty much using the wrong, short-term approach, and mostly considering building it directly from Earth. Bypassing this issue by building self-replicating asteroid refineries and having them ship the finished components to the Moon doesn't let us build a base there, either.
As you might have guessed, this is because even this option would be unlikely to receive adequate funding to be successfully executed. Why? Because, while this approach is definitely cheaper and more sustainable, it would probably be a few years before the mining drones had reached sufficient productivity to feed the construction efforts. This, mind you, is on top of the time it took just to build the 'mother drone', and on top of the time it took for the base to be finished once the parts started trickling in.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Please note that this all refers to launch-vehicle failures, not total mission failures. The rocket that launched the Mars Polar Lander for example was a success even though the Lander itself failed during its descent to the Martian surface.
Where are these resources? How long can they possibly last in the face of acceleration in population growth due to the addressing of global hunger, or the provision of (quality) universal healthcare?
If you can make it, you've succeeded.
What's with the need to judge humanity?
I hate to say it, but I'm with Sills on this one.
Except for restarting vulcanism on Mars; we're so far removed from being able to (safely) do something like that, that it's not even currently worth discussing. Incidentally, the end of vulcanism on Earth is the real deadline for getting off the planet, and will come far sooner than the Sun will go nova. Assuming we even survive the collision/merger with Andromeda, which is practically around the corner in cosmological terms.
Even if there's still some slight vulcanism ongoing, enough to excite astronomers, that's still nowhere near what would be needed to generate a powerful enough magnetic field.
It would be the Oregon trail with ten times as many ways to die! Why not just stay here, watch anime, play video games and eat ice cream? There is nothing in space except for work and a possible sci fi death!
"Call back later, I'm on the vacuum right now!" :rolleyes:
"Where monsters rampage, I'm there to take them down! Where treasure glitters, I'm there to claim it! Where an enemy rises to face me, victory will be mine!" -Lina Inverse
Even something as basic as Mars' gravity makes the idea of colonization absurd.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Falling into a river is not possible unless they get back to Earth, but it is possible to die of dysentry in space. It would require equipment malfunctioning and not sterilizing the water properly or contaminated food. It is supposedly a 7 month journey to Mars and a permanent stay once they reach there so dying of dysentry is an actual risk due to recycling water.
Well, they're everywhere. We waste food every day in amounts that could feed the rest of the planet for that entire day and more. We live in a world of plenty. There is enough of life essentials (food, water, shelter, medical care, etc.) to go around the planet. We simply enforce an artificial scarcity for the sake of making money.
More importantly, while we have the resources to take care of every man, woman, and child on a global scale -- we instead divert those resources into counter-productive, or selfish means. While we do physically have the realistic ability to transform the planet, the technology to do it, the manpower to do it... again, it comes down to desire.
We simply do not have the desire to see our entire species prosper and survive. We are too willing to condemn a portion of the globe to suffering for the sake of our own greed.
Population growth is an artificial issue created from a false sense of thinking that this planet is incapable of supporting additional people. It is artificial because we can transform this planet into supporting us, and it is a false sense of thinking because there are those who look at the present and recognize that due to human greed and the human propensity for destruction -- such a problem exists.
But it exists because we want it to exist. It does not need to exist. We want people to suffer. Not we as in the people on this forum, but we as an entire species.
It depends on the conditions of "making it" and "success". I do not believe humanity deserves to colonize other planets because it will always be at the cost of continued suffering elsewhere. What is the point of "making it" if others are willingly and knowingly left behind?
How accomplished would we feel if we landed on Mars, but there was still polio, starvation, war, genocide an entire planet away?
It would be a nice short-term, feel-good gesture. But that money could have gone into making the planet we currently live on more habitable, instead of spending way more money on a luxury like colonizing Mars or the moon.
Nobody else will. Just as I do not speak for humanity, nobody else does either. Therefore, if nobody else is capable of speaking for humanity, then each and every one of us is capable of speaking for humanity.
Every person is capable of judging humanity, because they are part of humanity.