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Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#231

Post by chunky1994 »

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…

This is almost exactly the point addressed in Dr. Ernst Stuhlingher (then the associate director of NASA) in this elegant response:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

Which was written to a Zambia based nun who asked how this funding could be justified given the numerous starving children she saw everyday.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#232

Post by gls2ro »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #172
enraged_camel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are about a thousand things you use and benefit from everyday that were side effects of other research and spending (primarily military). But you take them for granted and so it is easy for you to make value judgments regarding how money is spent.

Eh, the military invents very few things, they mostly spend money on custom development of existing tech to make it better at killing things or facilitating the killing of things. The car, the calculating machine, the photograph, the steam engine, the radar: none where invented by military men or even those funded by the military.

I might be very wrong (as I don’t have right now time to research more) but I think _the calculating machine_ and _the radar_ are things actually created as usable products because the military needed them in the first place. I am not in favor of spending (more) money on military.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#233

Post by darpa_escapee »

pc86 wrote: post #218
darpa_escapee wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that there are many problems endemic to the way we've structured society that spell out our doom on Earth, and if they aren't fixed here, will spell out our doom on other planets. We should fix our problems here, today, before exporting them elsewhere. Nevermind the fact that the after almost any type of disaster, the bottom of the ocean is infinitely more habitable than Mars. Mars as a holdout for humanity…

Aside from us killing ourselves in myriad spectacular ways, the most looming threats are cosmic. The sun is on a timeline and asteroids hit planets with some measure of regularity. Any cosmic extinction-level event will render the bottom of the ocean just as inhospitable as the south of France or the Midwest US. An ELE on Earth in the short term future wipes out the human race, full stop. The only thing that can cont…

Yet, given the last asteroid induced extinction event, the south of France, the midwest US, and the bottom of the ocean would still have been more habitable than Mars.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#234

Post by clarkmoody »

russellbeattie wrote: post #50
remote_phone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

But think of all the DoD employees who would lose their jobs! And the Lockheed Martin engineers! And their hungry children!

/s

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#235

Post by LeifCarrotson »

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…

> For any exploratory drilling, or covering any real amount of ground, you need humans.

I completely agree that we should better fund space exploration, but I disagree that humans on Mars are the best way to do that. It would be great to have humans on Mars for many other reasons, but realistically, the human body is pretty poor pound-for-pound and watt-for-watt as a rover, actuator, drill, sensor, or computing substrate.

Opportunity didn't cover much ground not because they tried to make a 2800 mile robot but couldn't build one that could do more than 28, but because we have been extremely patient and thorough in exhaustively studying those 28 miles. It's a depth-first, not breadth-first search.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#236

Post by clarkmoody »

qaq wrote: post #144
endymi0n wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would blame the size of the financial services sector on the Fed and inflationary money. I don't see what military power has to do with it?

What's the size of the financial sector of Luxembourg or Switzerland?

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#237

Post by adventured »

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?

You're underestimating the cost of US healthcare per capita by an extreme amount. Universal healthcare would cost a minimum of $3.6 trillion (that's an ideal scenario where the US gets its per capita spending down to other high spending nations), and a more likely ~$4.5 trillion.

Higher education for all would cost at least $600 billion (close to the existing spending for all post secondary institutions annually), more likely $750b+ with the cost expansion that would entail.

You obviously can't eliminate all of the US defense budget. That would be wildly irrational and dangerous. Let's say the best you can do is a 2% of GDP expenditure rate, or roughly $400 billion per year.

That $300 billion directed at universal healthcare would pay for the healthcare of 20 million people, 6% of the US population.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#238

Post by freehunter »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #230
freehunter wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say pretty much the same thing about other cities, other states, other countries, other continents. Why did mankind leave Africa if they just repeated the same mistakes in Europe and Asia? Why did they leave Europe to go to the US if they just did the same thing over there? Why would someone leave New England and go west across America if they're just bringing the same thing? All of that ignores, of course,…

Europe certainly brought their problems to their colonies: they exported their religious extremists, criminals and brought their need to profit, proselytize and conquer with them. Considering the same pressures are behind space colonization as were behind colonization of old, I find your concerns as merely speculation based in fantasy and not history. > but what if "here" is the problem? The same "here" that is human…

You talk about these things like they're some kind of final solution, like either option is the one single path that humanity must travel, and if we pick the wrong option we're doomed, and if we pick the right option we're saved. I don't see it that black and white.

Many people in Europe stayed and eventually fixed their problems, and ended up with revolutions across almost all of the continent to throw off the monarchy and old religious system in favor of tolerance and democracy. They did that even after people who were sick of the old system left for the New World. The Pilgrims established the system they wanted on another "world", and eventually everyone who stayed behind fixed their problems as well. It can be both.

It can also be neither. Like you mentioned, both America and Europe have a lot of the same problems now that they did back then. They never got fixed. So in your vision, we all stay on Earth, never fix the problems, and eventually die off. Or we send some people to Mars and even if we never actually fix the problems we're facing on Earth, at least we reset the clock to give us more time.

Ditching capitalism and militarism isn't going to stop the sun from devouring the planet. Shunning religion and solving the problem of crime isn't going to prevent a supervolcano. And being in the Garden of Eden won't matter much when an asteroid destroys the planet. What seems like fantasy to me is the idea that we can solve all of humanity's oldest and most deeply ingrained problems if we just try hard enough. What is actually history is that extinctions have happened before, and the biggest one wasn't caused by humans.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#239

Post by thaumaturgy »

Robotbeat wrote: post #192
remote_phone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Why doesn't Elon Musk try to solve problems down here on Earth instead of wasting it on space???" (Meanwhile, two weeks ago as Musk and team are trying to solve problems down here on Earth...) "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SOLVE PROBLEMS DOWN HERE ON EARTH? YOU'RE NOT THE EXPERT! STAY. IN. YOUR. LANE!" (With the caveat that Musk's reaction wasn't exactly great, this is literally what happened. Notice that billionaires NOT…

When someone's as public a figure as Musk, it becomes nearly impossible to be any sort of human being and still be "decent" according to the standards of the noisy crowd. The few celebrities that are mostly universally liked pull it off by having almost no personality, so everyone can agree, "oh, yeah, they're nice."

After @popehat's tweet the other day [1], it finally sunk in that everyone's favorite hobby today is finding people to hate, and hating them. A lot of people are competing to be the noisiest about it, to make sure that they have an opinion about other people and that as many people as possible know what that opinion is.

We've added audience participation to the afternoon soap opera.

Celebrities can let the public chisel away at them until the only thing left to say about them is that they're "nice", or they can resist being chiseled at and that will only make the public hate them more.

[1]: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1021912366722637825

footnote: people whose hobbies include "hating Elon Musk" might interpret this as a defense of Musk. It's not. It's an indictment of modern society.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#240

Post by adventured »

qaq wrote: post #144
endymi0n wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Financial services - including insurance - are 7.5% of the US economy, not 40%.

https://www.selectusa.gov/financial-services-industry-united...

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