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

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#341

Post by fjabre » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

orthecreedence wrote: post #315

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…

> Although I think you're far more likely to make Starfleet 0.5 in the private sector Can you (or anyone) explain this to me? It's not like there's a bunch of briefcases floating around in space with $4B in them...why would there be any private interest in space exploration? Seems like even the private companies are just being fed money from governments anyway, so in the end it's public funding.

Can you not see the potential of space exploration/settlement? There will be industries we can't even imagine that will be worth trillions. Imagine an economy that is more massive than all state economies on earth combined. That is space in the next 50-100 years.

Public funding and government obviously because they were the only ones with the capability for space exlporation up until maybe 10 years ago. Now that the private sector can, it will, and much more efficiently than government ever could.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#342

Post by henryaj » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

azernik wrote: post #323

henryaj wrote: post #316

Per the Great Filter[0], this is really bad news, right? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

No, whatever happened on Mars has to do with issues of planetary geology and natural climate change that aren't issues for us. i.e. it's a term in the Fermi equation that doesn't apply to us anymore.

Sure, but a large body of water makes finding life much more likely. And if we find life on our doorstep, we ought to reduce our estimates of how unlikely abiogenesis is – suggesting the Great Filter is ahead of us, not behind us.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#343

Post by 3rdAccount » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

henryaj wrote: post #342

azernik wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, whatever happened on Mars has to do with issues of planetary geology and natural climate change that aren't issues for us. i.e. it's a term in the Fermi equation that doesn't apply to us anymore.

Sure, but a large body of water makes finding life much more likely. And if we find life on our doorstep, we ought to reduce our estimates of how unlikely abiogenesis is – suggesting the Great Filter is ahead of us, not behind us.

Still not sure how many planets can form life. We think you need water, certain gases, a stable temperature, magnetosphere to block solar radiation, planet like Jupiter to absorb asteroid like impacts...etc. I'm not sure if Mars ever had all that.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

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Post by Aloisius » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #237

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?

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), mo…

> 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)

Mmm. No.

In 2016, government spending on healthcare would have been lowered by $435 billion and covered every single American if we somehow had transplanted Canada's healthcare system and costs to the US.

Total healthcare spending (including co-pay and what not), would have been lowered by $1.6 trillion.

Indeed, we could have increased to coverage to every American just with the government healthcare spending we already have with a similar transplant of all but 3 countries systems/costs the OECD collects data for.

That said, that would all be taken right out of the GDP hitting the economy pretty hard.

--

US Federal healthcare spending (2016): $944.1 billion

US State & local healthcare spending (2016): $564.5 billion

Total gov spending (2016): $944.1 + $564.5 = $1.508 trillion

Canada govt spending (2016): $3,319 per capita

US population (2016): 323.4 million

Cost with Canada's system (2016): $3,319 * 323.4M = $1.073 trillion

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#345

Post by eagsalazar2 » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:44 PM UTC

Why is "lake" in quotes? Seems like it is a real lake right?

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#346

Post by itronitron » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

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…

>> (NASA has has a budget of around 18 billion lately)

the proposed 12B farm subsidy really puts the NASA budget into perspective

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#347

Post by CydeWeys » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

evanlivingston wrote: post #209

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…

I think the dialogue quoted here demonstrates the underlying issue that is lost in futurist thought. No one "pioneered the west". Various groups of people with powerful technology traveled west and stole land from other groups of people. They also traveled south and east and used that technical and economic power to enslave other humans and forced them to develop the west. Development and progress for progress' sake…

There aren't native inhabitants on Mars, though. It will be true exploration in every sense, not just displacing existing residents.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#348

Post by itronitron » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

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…

alternatively, you could have big pharma cut the spending they devote to marketing and spend that money on R&D

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#349

Post by ChuckMcM » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #333

ChuckMcM wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this image, although when I think about deserts I think about the Mojave desert and the people who died crossing it to get to the gold that was in the Sierra's. Or the oceans people crossed to get to the Americas. While there is 'hospitable' there is 'hard to survive' and I think surviving a journey across the ocean with 16th century tech might have some parallels. I get the mindset of staying at home around t…

There's a pretty substantial difference between "living on the other side of the ocean" and "living in a submarine", which is probably what life on Mars would be like given foreseeable technology. It's not just fear of the unknown. It's the sheer practical matter that life on Mars (if possible) will be extremely difficult, and the only obvious benefit is that you can say "hey look, I'm on Mars!" Hell, you can simulat…

I don't disagree, just like there is a substantial difference between living in a submarine and living in orbit. But we've gone from "impossible to live in a submarine" to living in orbit in less than 100 years."

There are a lot of indications that 'living under conditions that were true for the last 1500 years but may not be available again for a while' is also a good plan. A city on Mars is likely a 100% energy sufficient and materials sufficient city. Such a city could survive any global warming catastrophe as well.

Most of this discussion comes down to various belief systems. I believe that any civilization that can live on Mars will also be able to treat cancer effectively, as well as survive other threats like asteroid bombardment, climate change, or major volcanic events. I don't believe that a civilization that can "only" treat cancer can survive those other problems. Clearly others have a different set of beliefs and that guides their research investment priorities.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#350

Post by Steko » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

rory096 wrote: post #324

Steko wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human can collect more specimens in a day than ALL of the rovers have to date. So could a better rover and rovers are getting better quickly. And you could send hundreds of rovers for the cost of a manned mission.

Curiosity cost $2.5 billion. The next generation rover, Mars 2020, is based on the same design. Where is this technological leap in rover technology?

> Where is this technological leap

Umm Moore's Law? Curiosity was a big leap from Opportunity and Mars 2020, while built on the same platform, has a laundry list of upgrades.

Meanwhile, a manned mission is likely to be a trillion dollar project and even if they come in at half a trillion, that's still literally hundreds of $2 billion rovers.