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NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

arstechnica.com

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Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#301

Post by ethbro »

gorkonsine wrote: post #277
ItsDeathball wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 1930s Germans were pretty similar to Poles and the Dutch, and even more similar to German Jews. Indians and Pakistanis are also not exactly space aliens to each other, nor are Iraqis and Iranians, Russians and Ukrainians, or Syrians and other Syrians. I'd say the historical rule for warfare is that the belligerents are so similar that tiny differences seem irreconcilable. Proximity and competition for resources…

Exactly. I can't think of many wars where the belligerents were really different from each other. American Civil War: many were actual relatives! ("brother vs. brother") WWI: English are descended from Germanic tribes, French are closely related to Germans too. WWII: Same as WWI mainly; Italians aren't very different from French/English/Americans. Americans/Japanese were a pretty big difference though. But Japanese/C…

> The people who promote wars frequently try to cast the enemy as alien, in order to rile up support for the war and to get soldiers to participate.

I'd argue that the cultural perception of the belligerent humans towards their targets is far more important than objective differences.

And you and parent are certainly being overly-reductive compared to the context of the times.

What would a 1930s German have said about being compared to a Polish or Dutch person? Would they have seen themselves as "pretty similar"?

And I'm not sure how many Indians and Pakistanis you've talked to, but they're pretty close to space aliens to each other.

Same with Shia Iraqis and Sunni Iraqis, and both with Kurds. Etc etc.

I don't see how you can say "these peoples are the same" across any modern ethnic or national boundaries without a lot more support without it coming across as "those people all look alike."

Hell, I can localize most folks in the US within five sentences or so.

And yes, there were states that straddled the Mason-Dixon line (and states like Virginia that were shattered because of it), but outside of those limited cases I'm sure the majority of the people involved could have identified "the other" pretty easily.

Point being that if we're finely tuned enough to physical and cultural differences amongst our own species, yet still war on those we can perceive as different... imagine how much stronger that impulse would be against something that didn't even look like us.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#302

Post by qbrass »

anigbrowl wrote: post #264
habosa wrote: post #103

In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!

Why is it always an alien invasion and not just alien curiosity or scientific interest? I'm sick of this trope that all alien species must be like the worst demographic of humanity.

It won't be scientists because they won't want to alter what they're studying by revealing themselves.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#303

Post by nql »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #56
carsongross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd like to know why NASA is getting less and less funding and can expect this trend to continue, see this chart from Five38/NYT: https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/16fi...

Here's the article from which that graphic is sourced: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-i... I'm shocked that they are so brazen as to frame one of the categories as "entitlement spending". The neutral terms for the contents of this category are Medicare and Medicaid, pensions, retirement benefits, Social Security, welfare, and unemployment. You can also call them health insurance, retiremen…

Even rich societies require some function which controls the population. The more you shield people from natural forces, the more you will stress the system as impact of those forces builds up.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#304

Post by badloginagain »

ianai wrote: post #223
badloginagain wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to mention The Expanse, which definitely has hard limits on going over (or even reaching) the speed of light, and touches on many of the tropes you mentioned. It's also probably one of the best examples I've seen of a truly alien encounter- no bipedal humaniods with spoken language. The book series is excellent, and it has two seasons released from SyFy, which does a pretty good job capturing the feeling…

How do they zip around the solar system so quickly? It seems like at various points they go from earth to where ever almost instantaneously (in the show, that is). Not a troll - I'm genuinely wondering what I missed from the episodes.

Basically the Epstein drive allows for basically unlimited thrust, which is what gives most ships on the show gravity. Unlimited thrust == unlimited acceleration. When they reach the halfway point, they 'flip and burn'; turning around and start accelerating away from the destination to slow their relative velocity.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#305

Post by badloginagain »

svachalek wrote: post #235
badloginagain wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to mention The Expanse, which definitely has hard limits on going over (or even reaching) the speed of light, and touches on many of the tropes you mentioned. It's also probably one of the best examples I've seen of a truly alien encounter- no bipedal humaniods with spoken language. The book series is excellent, and it has two seasons released from SyFy, which does a pretty good job capturing the feeling…

spoilers It sounds like you may not have read all the books yet.

I have, but the interface by which the spoiler communicates is fairly realistic. The fact that the spoiler creates an interface to be able to communicate with humans seems a realistic take on alien-to-human communication.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#306

Post by gorkonsine »

CydeWeys wrote: post #241
Kazamai wrote: post #38

I don't see the purpose of landing people on Mars. Just to say, "we did it". Wouldn't it be a much more rewarding goal to research and execute systems that could send humans one way to planets in our galaxy. Even seeding organisms on other planets in the hope that they evolve into intelligent life.

I don't see much purpose in the Wright brothers' airplane either, but it was a necessary intermediate step between not being able to fly and today's modern commercial jetliners. In space travel as in software engineering, you need incremental progress.

Very soon after the Wrights demonstrated their warped-wing technology worked, they were already trying to sell planes to the military. It didn't take long at all for people to figure out they could use airplanes for surveillance and bombing.

There's no such obvious commercial use to going to Mars. If you want resources, they're much more easily available in nearby asteroids.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#307

Post by rasz »

ItsDeathball wrote: post #267
ethbro wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the closer target doesn't look alien . How often do countries go to war with people who are similar to them? Now how often with people who are the other ? (Whatever definition fits)

Well, 1930s Germans were pretty similar to Poles and the Dutch, and even more similar to German Jews. Indians and Pakistanis are also not exactly space aliens to each other, nor are Iraqis and Iranians, Russians and Ukrainians, or Syrians and other Syrians. I'd say the historical rule for warfare is that the belligerents are so similar that tiny differences seem irreconcilable. Proximity and competition for resources…

> 1930s Germans were pretty similar to Poles and the Dutch

not to germans, unless you ignore that whole biologically superior Aryan fad

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#308

Post by rasz »

anigbrowl wrote: post #264
habosa wrote: post #103

In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!

Why is it always an alien invasion and not just alien curiosity or scientific interest? I'm sick of this trope that all alien species must be like the worst demographic of humanity.

like that time I investigated ant hill with my magnifying glass

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#309

Post by rasz »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #200
habosa wrote: post #103

In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!

if we got a whiff of intelligent life on mars, funding would appear

a shred of ancient spacecraft wreck would suffice

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#310

Post by ethbro »

keenerd wrote: post #273
ethbro wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm rereading the Dune series right now and on Children of Dune . Actually REALLY enjoying the 2+ books more than the first. What would one do if one had become a human god but didn't like the future he saw? Like the post- Ender's books (before Card sold out), I find mulling over the consequences of upsetting an applecart far more interesting than the upsetting. The first books in both series feel a bit too "Mission…

For me it is all about the world building, the practicalness of the universe presented. Dune had a decade of planning go into it before the first book was written. The rest did not have that amount of background effort and it shows. After the first book it all feels like he's making it up as he goes along, instead of drawing on an encyclopedia. Children of Dune had the most egregious problem with this. Trying here to…

I hear what you're saying. I'm gradually arriving at a model of "good book" that includes what a person's particular transgressions of suspensions of disbelief are, and what degree is required to trigger them.

For me, the biggest things are currently "must be at least this hard sci-fi" and "must have believably human characters." It sounds like one of yours is "must have book-spanning world-building." Which I get, but don't think bothers me as much.

I expect the unexplored deus ex machina will probably irk me when it shows up though! Though maybe not, I think a large part of my enjoyment of Dune is the somewhat orthagonal-to-Western world-building. Although the Islamic religious echoes are ham-fisted and shallow sometimes, it's still refreshing to even read something attempting it.

By my memory, Ender's didn't mull over consequences nearly as much as Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, & Children of the Mind. It was more "Oh my god, this was horrible" and less "We did a horrible thing, so what do we do now? And how does that inform our reactions the next time we're presented with the same choice?"

Side note: if you ever want to read something laughably bad, especially for how modern it is, read one of the Honor Harrington books from David Weber. I tapped out after 20 pages.

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