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Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#141

Post by wilsonnb2 »

ryanmercer wrote: post #112
wilsonnb2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question here is why bother spending 1% of our GDP on space exploration? What tangible benefits is it going to bring, and why are those benefits worth more than the benefit that will come from spending 1% of our GDP on something else?

Well, unless we outlaw reproduction without government approval we will hit the limit of what the planet can support as far as human life. Unless we start recylcing 100% of our materials we will run out of various elements we use for production of effectively everything. Commercially available sea salt has been found contaminated with microplastics, that means are oceans are already screwed so envetually it would be…

> Well, unless we outlaw reproduction without government approval we will hit the limit of what the planet can support as far as human life.

The birth rates of richer nations are significantly lower than the birth rates of poorer nations. I'm not convinced that overpopulation will be an issue as long as we can provide cheap and easy access to birth control to the entire population.

> asteroids contain unfathomable amounts of rare and common elements that will be easy to exploit once the appropriate technologies are developed

This is actually my favorite justification for space exploration, but if this is our goal, we should be focused on asteroid mining and not moon bases or manned mars missions.

> Space exploration will continue to add more and more technological and general scientific breakthroughs

You don't know this. It's just a guess. No one can know if the side effects from space research will prove to be more or less useful than the side effects from cancer research or any other kind of research. It's not something that can be known.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #125
sorrymate wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tangible benefits of research in space exploration are real and benefit us all. This infographic describes a list of products who's foundation was based on NASA research. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i...

You can't just point to a list of inventions that came from research in space exploration - you also have to make a case that these inventions would have otherwise not come about, or at least would have come about much later.

I disagree. You would have to make the case that these inventions would come about without space travel - that there were alternative commercial interests and government incentives that would finance the necessary research.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#143

Post by Nadya »

AstralStorm wrote: post #120
Nadya wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sufficiently sized meteor could wipe out all life on Earth as we know it - or play "Pick your end of days scenario" between WW3, superviruses, or whatever. Having a few backup humans on the Moon or Mars is more beneficial to the survival of the human race than curing cancer is. Curing cancer saves individuals - establishing an off-Earth colony of humans could save all of humanity. Are the chances of a mass extincti…

Unfortunately, super plagues still have a chance to propagate and Mars (even more so Moon) still can be bombed in the course of WW3. That is assuming the colony actually is reasonably self sustainable, which is quite a high bar.

The chances are arguably smaller though - which is the point of having more than 1 basket to store your eggs in.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#144

Post by qaq »

endymi0n wrote: post #76
russellbeattie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if we in the U.S. stopped killing people in senseless wars, we could use some of the trillions we spend on that to both fund medical research and fly to Mars. But that's obviously a fantasy.

Then again, for the 700 billion dollars defense budget you'd get free universal healthcare and higher education for all of the US — AND would still have a few dozen billions to spare on cancer and Mars expeditions... but who in their right mind would want that?

40% of US GDP is financial services it would be hard to argue that you could preserve that without being dominant military power.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#145

Post by fjabre »

remote_phone wrote: post #43
ryanmercer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…

I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…

Disease and hunger will be ongoing for as long as we continue to be human. If it's not cancer or hunger it will be something else.

Interplanetary travel is very obviously the next logical step for mankind. This doesn't have to come at the expense of biotech or medicine, and in fact would probably enhance it and accelerate discoveries across all fields of science and technology.

Just how much of a window do you think we have on this planet? It's not a free ride forever. At some point whether tomorrow or 1000 years from now things can and will go very wrong. We were not the first dominant species on earth and it's more likely that we won't be the last.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#146

Post by simplicio »

remote_phone wrote: post #43
ryanmercer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…

I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…

I don't think that's true. Musk, whose probably the most prominent billionaire funding space exploration, put about 100 million into SpaceX over a decade or so. While the funding just by the National Cancer Institute just for breast cancer in just one year is something like 500 mil. The funding for cancer research seems to dwarf that for privately funded spacecraft. (plus, its not like there aren't any billionaires funding cancer research)

Plus, I don't think its obvious that slow progress in finding cancer cures is due to resource constraints. Even if you showered 400 billion on cancer researchers, its not obvious you'd get a huge uptick in cancer treatment innovation.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#147

Post by 5thbootloader »

dekhn wrote: post #128
mjburgess wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> """ Python? Scala?

I use triple quotes when quoting, because many things I copy-paste have subquotes (either "..." or '...') or contractions (don't).

If someone quotes your triple quote, would they have to use quadruple quotes?

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#148

Post by robotrout »

gamblor956 wrote: post #110
wilsonnb2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also entirely possible that the cure for all forms of cancer is a diet consisting entirely of frosted flakes, and that spending $400B researching the effects of all-cereal diets would also discover the cure for cancer. However, it's far more likely that $400B in cancer research will do more for curing cancer than hoping for side effects from $400B in other research.

Cancer isn't one disease, it's dozens, each with different causes. For example, almost all cases of cervical cancer are traced to HPV infections...so the research into the HPV vaccine arguably did more to reduce future cancer cases than research into cancer has. Further research showed that HPV can also cause a number of cancers in men (though at lower rates), which is part of the justification for offering the HPV v…

Cancer is often caused when tissue is damaged and needs to heal or try to heal itself repeatedly (inflammation).

Sunburn, smoking, chewing tobacco, HPV, acid reflux, can all cause cancer. Saying those are all different cancers that require different cures is a good way to waste a lot of effort and money. It is more accurate to say that inflammation is a cause for cancer, and focus on that.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#149

Post by mtgx »

ryanmercer wrote: post #36
liberte82 wrote: post #11

Why don't we send a rover to some of these interesting places? It seems like we're constantly making fascinating finds on Mars, then send rovers to the middle of a random rocky desert.

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…

With $400 billion a year we could probably build an orbital ring or some kind of ramp to make all earth-to-space launches much cheaper and greatly advance the space age.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#150

Post by Raphmedia »

remote_phone wrote: post #43
ryanmercer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans. For reference, Opportunity Rover has only traveled 45 km/28 mi in 14 years. A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. If we remove this year's launch window, you have 10 minimum-energy launch windows in the next 21 years. 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026, 2029, 2031, 2033, 2035, 2037, 2039. If we could g…

I was talking to an oncologist yesterday. Her biggest frustration is that Silicon Valley billionaires are spending billions upon billions to send things to space, when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer. It’s hard to argue with her. $400B/yr would fund a lot of research that would benefit humanity a lot better than a coordinated mission to Mars, even though it would be v…

You can defragment your hard-drive all day, won't change a thing when it crashes and you have no backup.
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