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How Will We Get Off Mars?

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Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#31

Post by the_watcher »

lisper wrote: post #25

This is probably not going to be a very popular position but I'm going to say it anyway: there is no rational reason to bring a human back from Mars. In fact, there are precious few rational reasons to send a human to Mars to begin with. Robot technology has advanced to the point where they can do all the science better than we can. The only reason to send humans to Mars is to colonize, and if we're going to think se…

> there is no rational reason to bring a human back from Mars.

You're right. As the article mentioned though, the public doesn't like the idea of leaving someone on an alien planet, and the public isn't rational.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#32

Post by prodmerc »

madaxe_again wrote: post #22

The whole single-purpose type solution that seems to consistently be proposed here bothers me. I mean, yes, I understand that one has to start somewhere , and that the conditions one would need to meet on other bodies would be radically different - but as an engineer "niche" solutions bother me, and type solutions are almost universally better. I fear that for as long as we un-necessarily bind ourselves to limited an…

yeah, for people who worry about Martian dust/sand not getting on Earth (still can't wrap my head around this one, it's not like it's going to do anything to Earth's ecosystem), I doubt they'd even consider anything other than proven traditional technology...

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#33

Post by versteegen »

lisper wrote: post #25

This is probably not going to be a very popular position but I'm going to say it anyway: there is no rational reason to bring a human back from Mars. In fact, there are precious few rational reasons to send a human to Mars to begin with. Robot technology has advanced to the point where they can do all the science better than we can. The only reason to send humans to Mars is to colonize, and if we're going to think se…

Robot tech might be rapidly improving (and actually by "robots" you seem to mean rolling laboratories like Curiousity rather than truly general purpose robots), but AI is no where near close to capable of replacing a technician/scientist on the ground (or even in orbit). Doing things remotely is massively slow. E.g. commanding a robot to pick up a rock and having to wait 4-24 minutes to find out whether it succeeded. It's going to be a long time before humans are obsolete.

Colonisation is a completely different question/goal to sending humans to Mars.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#34

Post by guard-of-terra »

lisper wrote: post #28
EC1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but colonizing Mars is just straight up cool.

Is it? Why? The truth is that Mars is a pretty miserable place for humans. It's cold. It's dry. It's dusty. I just came back from a trip to northern Canada, and it was a pretty bleak, desolate place, but it's a tropical paradise compared to Mars. So what makes Mars so cool? I really don't get it. The only thing I can imagine is that people think it's cool because they have no clue what it would really be like.

Mars may sound not very fun, but I'll argue it's better than big parts of Russia or Canada. And those are habitable. Not many people live there, but they do.

Mars has no air. That's downside.

But there's no snow to block your roads and no rain to turn them to mud. Then there's no permafrost to make ground undiggable. That's tremendous upside for e.g. mining operations.

There's no rivers, lakes or forests. There's probably some rough terrain and canyons, but you may build bridges that'll last long.

Whatever you build on Mars, stays on Mars. Whatever you build in the far north, detoriates rapidly.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#35

Post by 001sky »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #19
rolandog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why don't they allow the testing of those rockets in stable ground? We've done crazier tests, like nuclear testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

I thought the reason involved the FAA requiring SpaceX's to prove that the first stage could be guided accurately to the general pad area instead of plowing into a populated region. Landing on a barge out at sea reduces the risk of the latter.

Yep, a flyover of populated areas is avoided with an offshore lz/barge.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#36

Post by wlesieutre »

dimitriye98 wrote: post #29
lisper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Why? The truth is that Mars is a pretty miserable place for humans. It's cold. It's dry. It's dusty. I just came back from a trip to northern Canada, and it was a pretty bleak, desolate place, but it's a tropical paradise compared to Mars. So what makes Mars so cool? I really don't get it. The only thing I can imagine is that people think it's cool because they have no clue what it would really be like.

Well, if we get a self-sufficient mars colony up, nuking ourselves will become survivable.

More like slightly more difficult and not likely to happen by accident. Which is still an improvement.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#37

Post by chrisabrams »

eljimmy wrote: post #20
astrowilliam wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the first humans to go to the red planet will actually orbit and not touch down. They will stay in orbit and either pilot robots on the ground or study what happens to the body during long space flight. This will help future space faring people that visit Mars and beyond.

I don't know about that. I think that would be a pretty big waste of time and resources. We're already controlling robots on Mars from Earth and anything they would be wanting to test on the body could be done in Earth's orbit. I'm also fairly certain they're already quite knowledgeable regarding the effects of weak gravity on the human body.

Yes, but the lag time between Mars orbit and Mars surface is far less than Earth surface and Mars surface.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#38

Post by mattstreet »

Nadya wrote: post #30
lisper wrote: post #25

This is probably not going to be a very popular position but I'm going to say it anyway: there is no rational reason to bring a human back from Mars. In fact, there are precious few rational reasons to send a human to Mars to begin with. Robot technology has advanced to the point where they can do all the science better than we can. The only reason to send humans to Mars is to colonize, and if we're going to think se…

>if we're going to think seriously about colonizing Mars, we ought to think seriously about colonizing the arctic and antarctic first. And with this you completely miss the reason why we need to colonize away from our planet. What if a catastrophic event completely destroyed all life on Earth - the poles included? All of humanity. Wiped out in a single event. Getting people onto Mars is the first step to making sure…

Why is that such a priority for people? Why can't we just worry about taking better care of the people we have NOW?

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#39

Post by ethbro »

dimitriye98 wrote: post #29
lisper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Why? The truth is that Mars is a pretty miserable place for humans. It's cold. It's dry. It's dusty. I just came back from a trip to northern Canada, and it was a pretty bleak, desolate place, but it's a tropical paradise compared to Mars. So what makes Mars so cool? I really don't get it. The only thing I can imagine is that people think it's cool because they have no clue what it would really be like.

Well, if we get a self-sufficient mars colony up, nuking ourselves will become survivable.

>>> Yeah but colonizing Mars is just straight up cool.

>> Is it? Why?

> Well, if we get a self-sufficient mars colony up, nuking ourselves will become survivable.

Along with releasing an eco-system ravaging engineered biological organism. Or nanotechnology. Or AI. Or getting a bad luck roll with an asteroid. Or climate change blowing past a tipping point. Or something that I have no concept of anymore than an individual circa-1900 would understand the concerns of today.

Why?

Because we owe it to the !$%^ing universe to safeguard our (as near as we can tell) incredibly rare existence.

You know what happened to all those species that said "This planet is good enough?" Something bad happened. 1,000 years; 10,000 years; 100,000 years; at some point. And... poof... have fun starting another 3.5 billion year slog back to us.

Disclaimer: I don't think "us" is necessarily the pinnacle of evolution, but I tend to feel we're special enough to save another 3.5 billion years of history on recreating.

Re: How Will We Get Off Mars?

#40

Post by doki_pen »

versteegen wrote: post #33
lisper wrote: post #25

This is probably not going to be a very popular position but I'm going to say it anyway: there is no rational reason to bring a human back from Mars. In fact, there are precious few rational reasons to send a human to Mars to begin with. Robot technology has advanced to the point where they can do all the science better than we can. The only reason to send humans to Mars is to colonize, and if we're going to think se…

Robot tech might be rapidly improving (and actually by "robots" you seem to mean rolling laboratories like Curiousity rather than truly general purpose robots), but AI is no where near close to capable of replacing a technician/scientist on the ground (or even in orbit). Doing things remotely is massively slow. E.g. commanding a robot to pick up a rock and having to wait 4-24 minutes to find out whether it succeeded.…

Wouldn't putting humans in orbit solve the latency issue without having to solve the relaunch issue?
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