31–40 of 138 posts
The way I see it, there are two goals to human space travels. The first, very distant one, is to seed ourselves among the stars to avoid being erased from existence by anything that would threaten our existence on earth, from man made cataclysm to natural event. The second, with much more immediate result on a human scale, is that every time we face such a challenge it's only an opportunity for us to develop a new te…
It’s like seasteading except that when you get up to something the governments really don’t like the cost of intervening is extraordinarily high.
On Mars we can build our society of genetically engineered supermen that engage in plural marriage, ritual funerary cannabilism, and telekinesis.
The atmosphere is too thin, and the planet itself is too small to maintain a real atmosphere. Even if we terraformed it using science fiction technology, most of the atmosphere would escape into space so it would require constantly producing this atmosphere, requiring a lot of off-planet resources, which is fundamentally impossible.
In addition, the lack of strong magnetic fields and Van Allen belts means that cosmic rays would kill everything eventually.
> Air pressure on Mars is very low; at 600 Pascals, it’s only about 0.6 percent that of Earth. > The thin atmosphere also means that heat cannot be retained at the surface. > Once temperatures get below the -40 degrees F/C mark, people who aren’t properly dressed for the occasion can expect hypothermia to set in within about five to seven minutes. Such a thin atmosphere will not transfer heat as effectively as it doe…
Does that mean things don’t cool down in a vacuum? Is there a weird curve where by at some point having less cold gas arounds you means you’ll cool down faster instead of slower?
The way I see it, there are two goals to human space travels. The first, very distant one, is to seed ourselves among the stars to avoid being erased from existence by anything that would threaten our existence on earth, from man made cataclysm to natural event. The second, with much more immediate result on a human scale, is that every time we face such a challenge it's only an opportunity for us to develop a new te…
There has only ever been one goal that has actually driven us to push our horizons further out into space, and I think it's the only one that really makes sense: We do it for the challenge and for the adventure.
As John F. Kennedy so famously put it, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't convection against conduction high school level physics though ? I know it was here in France a decade and a half ego when I was there ...
Yes, but that assumes most people try to retain that knowledge longer than it takes to pass the final.
I guess I'm just a bit weirded out.
The way I see it, there are two goals to human space travels. The first, very distant one, is to seed ourselves among the stars to avoid being erased from existence by anything that would threaten our existence on earth, from man made cataclysm to natural event. The second, with much more immediate result on a human scale, is that every time we face such a challenge it's only an opportunity for us to develop a new te…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think "guests on a robot-colonized Mars" is the more likely scenario. Humans are poorly adapted to space travel, and it takes a great deal of effort to keep humans alive in space. It's a shame about what's happening to our habitat, when you think about it that way.
Mankind is basically too poor and too stupid at the moment. Building a self-sustaining colony on Mars will require not only tremendous amount of resources, both material and intellectual, but also a transfer of knowledge - which will be impeded by the current legal framework, i.e. copyright laws, for example. But I do agree with Musk: we must colonize Mars in order to survive the next extinction event.