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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

#321

Post by ethbro »

keenerd wrote: post #317
ethbro wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

Maybe world building is the wrong term? I consider civilizations, economics, infrastructure, etc, as another character in the story. They have background and develop over time. They should be as believable as the humans. This is common in the "future history" sub-genre but you find unexpected gems too. Discworld was remarkably good about it, for example. Just found my copy of Ender's, one of the few OSC books I still…

That's a more detailed way of putting what you're looking for. And I enjoy books like that as well (e.g. A Song of Ice of Fire). Incidentally, how'd you feel about KSR's Mars books, if you've read them?

But I guess I forced myself to read enough Golden Age sci-fi that I developed a neurotic category for lazy... "deep worlds"? I'm looking at you and Foundation, Asimov.

So much of that stuff is a splash of human-esque characters and plot on an otherwise naked thought puzzle that I feel like it deserves its own category. I suppose it irks me less when I feel like the author did that not because they couldn't do otherwise, but because they intentionally didn't care to. Which is to say, the thought puzzle interested them more than the characters.

I feel the same about Lost. JJ Abrams doesn't give a damn about solving mysteries. He just likes creating them. Not liking him for not solving them is like not liking a dog because it wags its tail. That's a valid preference against tail wagging... but maybe not dogs for such a person?

And I really wouldn't chance a reread. I started reading it because I'd heard good things about the tech. Let good memories lie.

The lines that did me in were something to the effect of: "{Someone does a thing that makes Honor happy}. Honor felt happy because someone did a thing." (!!!)

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

#322

Post by ItsDeathball »

ItsDeathball wrote: post #318
ethbro wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 abou…

My point was as a direct counter to your assertion that warfare increases with degree of difference between peoples. That would predict that the Germans would prefer to ally with other Europeans against people like the Japanese, who they are maximally different from. Historically this did not happen. Yes, there are clear conflicts between each of the groups named, but they are more similar to each other than they are…

@ethbro: I'd expect anyone who fires on any side on a battlefield to receive return fire. That hypothetical entirely disposes of "alienness" as a variable.

In any case, I've been trying to argue a point on my own rather than being a Scott Alexander repost-bot, but I have clearly failed. Most of what I'm getting at is based on what I remember from http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... . He presents this far better than I have.

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

#323

Post by theseatoms »

ceejayoz wrote: post #82
theseatoms wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow. That's disappointing.

Why is that disappointing? NASA today exists, in part, to do exactly that, and has benefitted tremendously from their SpaceX partnership.

Just thought SpaceX had other revenue sources, I guess.

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

#324

Post by njarboe »

zatkin wrote: post #78
Quarrelsome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because space is more than us and it isn't us. It gives us a non-nation based activity to pursue that is greater than the whole of earth. It represents new frontier, new resources and ways of thinking that transcend this planet. It is a form of evolution and of freedom that isn't shackled so much by our self-made problems of earth. There are new mistakes to make and that's super appealing.

We can't even cope with the environmental issues that we have on our own planet, so we avoid that and instead look to plaguing the rest of the solar system and beyond? Good grief.

People who view humanity as a plague upon the Earth definitely won't want us spreading elsewhere.

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

#325

Post by DrScump »

datr wrote: post #184
bluGill wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science fiction almost universally assumes the speed of light is not a hard limit. At this time we have every reason to believe that it is a limit. Our theories also say that if you were to go faster than light (which you cannot) it implies time dilation and time travel - again science fiction just assumes a loop hole so that doesn't happen. Many talk about travel at 10 times the speed of light (warp-10) as if that i…

Just an FYI. In Star Trek at least the warp system works like this: warp-1 is the speed of light and it then increases exponentially with warp-10 being infinite velocity. Source: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor

But... can it make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs?

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

#327

Post by keenerd »

ethbro wrote: post #321
keenerd wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe world building is the wrong term? I consider civilizations, economics, infrastructure, etc, as another character in the story. They have background and develop over time. They should be as believable as the humans. This is common in the "future history" sub-genre but you find unexpected gems too. Discworld was remarkably good about it, for example. Just found my copy of Ender's, one of the few OSC books I still…

That's a more detailed way of putting what you're looking for. And I enjoy books like that as well (e.g. A Song of Ice of Fire). Incidentally, how'd you feel about KSR's Mars books, if you've read them? But I guess I forced myself to read enough Golden Age sci-fi that I developed a neurotic category for lazy... "deep worlds"? I'm looking at you and Foundation, Asimov. So much of that stuff is a splash of human-esque…

Mars was alright. I had a lot of trouble with one of the books. Took almost a year to read because it felt like there was nothing but political infighting in it.

Foundation was actually what got me started on the "future histories" kick. The civilization is a more fleshed-out character than any human in the story. But I was eleven and didn't read any further than the original trilogy.

My favorite golden-age sci-fi would probably be Heinlein's "The Past Through Tomorrow" collection. The parallels between Elon Musk and D. D. Harriman are amusing.

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

#328

Post by ComodoHacker »

ethbro wrote: post #246
ComodoHacker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me anthropomorphically assume there will always be a closer target to spend excess planetary resources on.

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, this have stirred up interesting discussion.

Ironically, I initially didn't mean war, but some project that requires concerted effort of all the population. Like colonizing nearby uninhabited planets or improving life conditions on their home one.

Turns out I wasn't thinking anthropomorphically enough.

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

#329

Post by squarefoot »

kchoudhu wrote: post #204
gnode wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics could resign us to an alien invasion?

An alien invasion could fix our politics.

This. If they come from a distant star/galaxy to a place where we let a rotten economic system be the hardest obstacle preventing us to go to a nearby planet, a contact with them would become a damn opportunity to learn something good.

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

#330

Post by Tepix »

Asdfbla wrote: post #209

While this would certainly be a blow for science in general, I don't understand why people are so enamoured with human space travel and think it's a realistic avenue for humanity to get out of the responsibility we have for Earth (there's the strange defeatist sentiment on the internet that we have to leave this planet in the foreseeable future). Fact is, the laws of physics probably dictate that we won't ever leave…

You don't know how much time we have left before desaster strikes.

Also, don't take it for granted that humanity has enough resources to build a colony on another planet in the far future. Resources are only getting more scarce. Technology doesn't advance by itself. It's smarter to start right now instead of waiting.

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