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Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#421

Post by zhyder »

pc86 wrote: post #185
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…

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 find the "asteroid" argument (and Musk's "multi-planetary species" argument) to justifying investment in Mars so strange. Mass-extinction-level asteroids hit Earth once in 100s of millions of years. And even when one does hit us, it'll be easier to find ways to make more of us survive on Earth (we'll see it coming, and can build whatever structures and equipment more easily on Earth than on Mars) than we'd be able to do so on Mars.

These arguments are the software equivalent of noticing the possibility of a super-unlikely bug (that probably won't happen to any customer in the software's lifetime), and then investing in a massive multi-month rewrite instead of a simpler one-day fix.

I'm not saying we shouldn't invest though: there's lots of positive side-effects to solving the requisite hard science problems, and to inspiring people with space exploration. Investment in Mars and cancer (and literacy, and a bunch of other important things for society) can happen in parallel. We're not yet at the point of exhausting our engineering capacity with just those things: and if we're running out of capacity, better to reduce our investment in the Nth messaging/photo-sharing/js-framework/... piece of software than to reduce investment in these ambitious pursuits.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#422

Post by kamaal »

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…

>>when there are serious problems on Earth that could be fought, most importantly cancer.

There will be very serious problems on Earth, as long as we are on Earth.

The only way to buy yourself more time and resources to solve these endless problems is to move to the vastness of space and settle there.

Once you have have that much time, do what you feel like doing. Cure Cancer or paint the next Mona Lisa.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#423

Post by SiempreViernes »

mattkrause wrote: post #416
SiempreViernes wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, their further development certainly benefitted from military money, but the basics came from civilian need for navigation, in general and in mist.

I'm fairly certain this is not true. Marconi and Hülsmeyer had some early ideas about using radar to find ships, but they weren't really developed and didn't use the pulsed approach that subsequent systems used. This wikipedia article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radar ) suggests a huge military involvement from the 1930s onwards

If you count nothing but the earliest version of military radars, then of course nothing but the military has funded it.

I will, however, not count pulsing as more than an improvement to the basic invention of distant object detection with radio waves.

As you can read on the page you linked Hülsmeyer made a working system, clunky as it was, for detecting ships in mist. Taking a system from prototype to mass produced, worthy as this investment might be, is not inventing it.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#424

Post by dredmorbius »

vibrio wrote: post #93
zimablue wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair cancer is super overfunded and a waste of money to fund relative to lots of more easily cured third world diseases or poverty itself. Always someone with a better case than you.

"waste of money" is strong. Live with a loved one as they progress through rounds of cancer therapies and I suspect you will identify unmet need. It will change you. It's not a cancer vs infectious disease/clean water situation, both goals are valid and possible within reasonable means.

I can point directly to a close friend who'd died of a particulaar forrm of cancer in the 1980s.

There's been no effective advance in therapy since then.

There hadn't been any since the late 1950s.

Some conditions are simply resistant to improved theerapies.

(CRISPR or similar direct genetic editing might break the logjam. But it's been a long time. And my friend remains very dead.)

Rather than high-tech aadvances, increased and consistently available medical care and public health measures would be vastly more effective. And always have been.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#425

Post by qubex »

mattlondon wrote: post #24
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.

From the BBC article it suggested that getting a rover there might be difficult. Since they were talking about flying rovers, I would assume this means that it is not a nice flat plain like the current wheeled-rovers are used to driving around on. I am guessing that it means that it probably looks a lot like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brei%C3%B0amerkurj%C3%B6kull#/... Kinda fascinating though. I would assume…

Yeah but you’re in a polar region that by definition receives less solar energy... how are we going to power it? Radioisotopes near the only local location of extraterrestrial life?

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#426

Post by djtriptych »

ada1981 wrote: post #289
thaumaturgy wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some modern thinking has confused self-loathing and careful introspection. There were a great many things that could have, or arguably should have, been done differently in the past, but many of those things were done in the context and to the standards of the day. The transgressions of the past resulted in a technologically advanced society. Introspection considers this and asks, "what should we do differently in th…

Certainly we ought to solve global hunger and access to water before spending trillions of dollars to go find water on mars.

Hunger and access to water are political problems not scientific ones.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#427

Post by badon »

tbabb wrote: post #398
xelxebar wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my mind, the Fermi Paradox isn't so much about explaining an absence of life. It's the simple observation that, if life were abundant in the universe, the naïve expectation is that we'd see it everywhere, but we don't, so what gives? Intuitively, I see it like a bunch of homemade pickles. Say we have 100 jars of homemade pickles but are not sure whether they actually picked nicely or spoiled. If we try a jar and i…

> if life were abundant in the universe, the naïve expectation is that we'd see it everywhere, but we don't No, that's my point: We don't see it because we can't ; we don't have the technology. The fact that we see no aliens has nothing to do with the number of aliens, and everything to do with the fact that are more or less incapable of looking. It would be like saying, "if butterflies were abundant in my garden, I'…

The key difference between a technological civilization like ours, and butterflies, is the butterflies have predators to limit their numbers. What is limiting technological civilizations? The most unnerving answer might be "predators".

Butterflies don't fly very fast, but if there were no butterfly predators, they would be everywhere. Not just in your garden, but absolutely everywhere. With exponential population growth and a slow flight speed - or even flightless varieties - they would have conquered Earth millions or billions of years before mankind arrived.

We don't need to be able to see a single butterfly to know they are everywhere. Everything we know about the physics of the universe tells us energy would eventually be the limiting factor for EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING. Whether we're talking about butterflies or technological civilizations, the easiest thing to see from a great distance is their energy demand. You could have a planet full of butterflies on the other side of the solar system, and I guarantee you any cheap telescope could detect their presence simply by looking at the spectra the planet emits. No image forming capability necessary. Not a single butterfly has been seen. But we would know they are there.

In fact, I'd bet my left pinky toe if that butterfly planet were anywhere else in the galaxy where we could see it, within a few decades from now, or perhaps a single century at most, we would notice it is not at all like any of the other planets. Something is consuming energy on that planet, converting it to different forms, changing the atmosphere, and making it completely impossible for the presence of butterflies to go unnoticed.

The same is true for technological civilizations. But, unlike butterflies, technological civilizations are fully capable of changing the spectrum of not just a single planet, not just a single star, and perhaps not even just a single galaxy. If there were no predators to limit population growth, every galaxy in the universe would be the color of butterflies.

So where the fuck is everybody?!

You want to take a closer look at that butterfly planet with a fine new telescope that can photograph a single butterfly in perfect color. But you look, and you don't see any butterflies. Not one. You see leaves. Lots of leaves. That seems nice too, at first, but then you realize those aren't all truly leaves. Some of them are butterflies, and they look like leaves. How interesting. Why would beautiful butterflies want to look like ordinary leaves? Because they are afraid of something out there.

Should we be worried about predators?

For now, there are no leaf-shaped butterfly planets, but one thing is certain. We will all agree about this, I guarantee it. This universe is violent, and it will never stop trying to kill us. We have to get up and move, NOW. We have one chance to do this right. ONLY ONE. We decide to fight and survive NOW, together, or we die here. In the nursery where we were born. Daydreaming about butterflies in the garden.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#428

Post by dr_strange »

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…

Countries(Politicians) could use a small amount from the billions spent on defence these days. But who wants to cut out their own existence, right?

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#429

Post by bushidone »

djtriptych wrote: post #426
ada1981 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly we ought to solve global hunger and access to water before spending trillions of dollars to go find water on mars.

Hunger and access to water are political problems not scientific ones.

I think the simple answer is 'hedging'.

Cancer, hunger and the like are unlikely to kill the entire human race in one go. A climate event or asteroid could, which would render all other efforts redundant. Mars exploration means hedging the survival of our species.

A diverse portfolio is where the smart money is.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#430

Post by rospaya »

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…

There's a great Gil Scott Heron song with the same theme. In his case it was poverty and healthcare among African Americans in the 60s, not cancer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4

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