Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars • Hacker News Board

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#251

Post by pvaldes » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #203

pvaldes wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. You need a rover of 8x mass. 1- make a rover of standard weight and size an put it in the desired place, as before. Deploy a light but strong flat platform around. 2-Look around. What do you see? Probably a lot of heavy rocks. 3-Pick some rocks of the appropriate mass, or a bag of sand 4-Load stuff of your choice ov…

Sure, but you now have all kinds of extra mass to lift to orbit (not the sand, but a beefier rover). You could launch more payloads and assemble in orbit. It starts to become complicated...

I can't see why. After you remove the load again. Rover weight would be the practically the same as before. Maybe a little heavier, but not much.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#252

Post by mos_basik » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #222

spot wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we don't get people living and populating on other planets, the human species is doomed. does it have to be a planet? what's wrong with space stations?

Even if you manage to create a self-sustaining space station, that's going to cap the number of viable residents pretty low unless it's truly massive. And I don't even want to think about the psychological toll of being one of the last few dozen humans orbiting a dead Earth.

Tangent: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson is a hard sci-fi novel that explores this very situation.

Present day humanity (i.e., no manned interplanetary missions, minimal manned presence in orbit, etc.) discovers total-extinction cataclysm will happen in two years. Scramble to figure out short (how to get genetically viable population into orbit) and long (how to keep them alive for a thousand years until the surface is habitable again) term solutions to preserve humanity.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#253

Post by lorenzhs » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

gbugniot wrote: post #90

A note slightly related: Mars reaches perihelic opposition with the sun on July 27, 2018, which means observers on Earth will have their closest view of the planet since 2003. Great time to borrow a telescope.

That date coincides with a total lunar eclipse over parts of Asia, Africa and Europe btw. Should be fun to watch. More info at https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2018Jul27T...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#254

Post by pixelbash » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

darpa_escapee wrote: post #233

pc86 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not for the ones that experienced it first hand.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#255

Post by bordercases » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

robotrout wrote: post #187

bordercases wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL Seems more cost efficient long run to address lifestyle than deal with proximal consequence

OK. You tell your mom that, after she's gotten cancer, asshole. How did her lifestyle cause her cancer in her ovaries (another inflammation caused cancer), I wonder? While you're chastising your mom for her lifestyle, the rest of us will be looking/hoping for a cure. You should know that even you will experience increased and chronic inflammation as you age, no matter how much better than your mom, your lifestyle is.…

My mother did get breast cancer and it went into remission partially by increasing the quality of her lifestyle during and after treatment, as mandated by a pilot study she went through to help assess such an intervention. The lifestyle change was more extreme than what we would have considered necessary before her cancer, but doing cardiovascular exercise every day is already known as having an influence on bodily inflammation. Yes chemotherapy was involved but we are speaking of where the next span of marginal investment would have to go to make the highest impact.

At the individual level finding a cure would be great, and during late-stage we would definitely want to understand how to have more successful treatments, but to remove the long-term load of the cancer problem on the medical system would mean better environmental and lifestyle interventions which act at a level of root cause instead of proximal treatment. If anything maybe we would find common ground have having cheaper diagnostics so that we could find more motivation to engage in preventative measures concretely rather than as a catch all.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#256

Post by pixelbash » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #135

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.

> But you take them for granted and so it is easy for you to make value judgments regarding how money is spent. It's rude to make such assumptions about me. I do not take the positive side effects from research for granted. You simply haven't made a case showing why $400B in space research will generate more or better positive side effects than $400B in cancer research. All research will have side effects that can't…

So far our legacy as a species on earth is one of destruction. Only by taking on the challenge a place that is already dead can we be certain of creating something new. Maybe we will learn some perspective in the process.

Going to Mars will have myriad discoveries & side effects, if we knew what they were what would be the point of going?

Also, what if curing cancer is harder than going to mars? One is by now a fairly quantifiable objective, the other is debugging a mind bogglingly complex system with no version control.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#257

Post by qaq » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #236

qaq wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well name 1 other country that cab increase money supply the way FED does yet maintains the status of world's reserve currency? Luxembourg nobody cares on a global scale. Switzerland has extremely competent military and they are def. not in a position to manipulate the currency the way FED does and remain a viable financial center.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#258

Post by et2o » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

verelo wrote: post #196

pc86 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An oncologist wishing more money was spent on cancer? In other news, water is wet. First of all, the optimal place for me to spend my money is not necessarily the optimal place for someone else to spend theirs. We can't know for sure, of course, but who were would have preferred Elon Musk start a cancer research firm instead of SpaceX? Secondly, there is no universal "cancer" that we can fight. There are hundreds of…

Many medical research organizations have more money than they know what to do with. The heart and stroke foundation is a great example of that. I’m not suggesting we don’t fund these orgs, even reduce funding, but i feel like we could diversify into exploration of the universe a little more than we currently are.

I don't know how you come to this conclusion. I assume you mean the American Heart Association, whose grants are pretty incredibly competitive. Lots of good science doesn't get funded.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#259

Post by wiz21c » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

vibrio wrote: post #177

TeMPOraL wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if we hit a new resistant superbug... That will decimate everywhere, everyone. Think plague combined with malaria. Talking about multidrug resistant strains of bacteria. If just one becomes reasonably virulent we are really out of luck. AFAIR this is a bit of a dramatization. The primary threat of superbugs isn't a new super plague (which is unlikely). The danger is that a big part of our medicine will suddenly…

100% this, for sure. you don't have to sell me I'm a microbiologist-- my username here is a tribute to a bacterial genus that drives cholera, necrotizing fasciitis and other nasty stuff. We need new antibiotics now, and it is an economic problem at least as much as a scientific one. The basis for my post is the implication that funding cancer research is a "waste", which I disagree with.

since you're a microbiologist : is the threat to health you describe that bad ? I mean, when I read you, it's Michael Crichton level dystopia stuff.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#260

Post by swarnie_ » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 7:27 PM UTC

ryanmercer wrote: post #250

fjabre wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent summary. Although I think you're far more likely to make Starfleet 0.5 in the private sector. This problem is too big for current governments because they can't ever agree and ideas will be weighed down by infighting/constituents. Good luck getting 5 countries to agree to anything other than not going to war with eachother these days. Compromises on ideas would be too much for such a mission. I think the on…

>SpaceX IPO. I wish they would! I know it likely wouldn't outperform a broadmarket fund but I'd love to own a share or two of Spacex just to feel like I gave a little money towards it. Hell, I wish they'd sell non-functional models of their rockets. I'd buy one just to put on a shelf at home to look at and simultaneously support them with a few bucks of profit.

I'm with you on this one. I know it probably wont outperform the market but i would like to own a piece just for my own enjoyment.

On the other side I've been in and out of Telsa multiple times in the last 2 years. I get swept up in the hype, make or lose money then come to my rational senses.