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Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

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Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#101

Post by dang »

shoulderfake wrote: post #7
jmyeet wrote: post #2

Sure let's continue unmanned exploration of Mars but manned exploration let alone colonization makes absolutely zero sense. mars is nothing more than a further, more annoying version of the Moon. Similar gravity, less sunlight (ie further from the Sun), communication latency (~10 minutes vs 1.5 seconds), no magnetosphere (just like the Moon so you'll probably need to live underground) and just enough atmosphere to pr…

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Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#103

Post by spywaregorilla »

sevenf0ur wrote: post #16
jmyeet wrote: post #2

Sure let's continue unmanned exploration of Mars but manned exploration let alone colonization makes absolutely zero sense. mars is nothing more than a further, more annoying version of the Moon. Similar gravity, less sunlight (ie further from the Sun), communication latency (~10 minutes vs 1.5 seconds), no magnetosphere (just like the Moon so you'll probably need to live underground) and just enough atmosphere to pr…

Agreed, if an extinction level event happened on Earth, we'd be better off riding it out underground, than moving off planet.

You'd probably live underground if on mars anyway.

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#104

Post by slothtrop »

sevenf0ur wrote: post #16
jmyeet wrote: post #2

Sure let's continue unmanned exploration of Mars but manned exploration let alone colonization makes absolutely zero sense. mars is nothing more than a further, more annoying version of the Moon. Similar gravity, less sunlight (ie further from the Sun), communication latency (~10 minutes vs 1.5 seconds), no magnetosphere (just like the Moon so you'll probably need to live underground) and just enough atmosphere to pr…

Agreed, if an extinction level event happened on Earth, we'd be better off riding it out underground, than moving off planet.

Earth obliteration is a certainty on a long enough timeline, before the Sun goes out. There's no question of riding things out underground at that point. We'd have to be elsewhere.

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#105

Post by thoms_a »

bostonsre wrote: post #69
gambiting wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very flippant comment, but I will try to respond anyway - we simply haven't achieved a post scarcity society yet. Maybe we will at some point, but we just aren't there yet. So right now our time, money and natural resources are quite simply limited. So maybe it's not that we shouldn't have a base on Mars - it's just that maybe that shouldn't be the first step in human habitation in space.

What about motivating humans to strive for greatness? Being curmudgeon underground mole people sounds a lot less likely to inspire the next generation to strive to excel at STEM education. I think even just trying to colonize mars could inspire tens of millions of the next generation when they look up at the sky. A large majority of those won't go into the space colonization field and most will instead contribute to…

I genuinely had a good laugh at the idea that simply by building an underground colony, the inhabitants would become "curmudgeon underground mole people".

I would personally love such a habitat, and would market it as a Safe Space for The Curmudgeonly(TM).

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#106

Post by merpnderp »

gambiting wrote: post #50
merpnderp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except 8 billion starving desperate people trying to get it. For instance if people were starving or hiding from fallout, those doomsday shelters the rich are building for themselves would likely be overran by the locals who helped build them or heard all about them from town gossip.

How are those 8 billion starving people getting into a base 10km below the surface of the ocean which requires a specialized submarine to get to? How is this any more realistic than 8 billion starving people getting to Mars? And finally - I hope you aren't suggesting that the base on Mars is a way to escape "8 billion starving people".

A few of those people getting access to a submarine or just building a robot to go down there is a lot more likely than them building a vehicle and equipment to land on Mars and assault the habitat there.

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#107

Post by gambiting »

merpnderp wrote: post #106
gambiting wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are those 8 billion starving people getting into a base 10km below the surface of the ocean which requires a specialized submarine to get to? How is this any more realistic than 8 billion starving people getting to Mars? And finally - I hope you aren't suggesting that the base on Mars is a way to escape "8 billion starving people".

A few of those people getting access to a submarine or just building a robot to go down there is a lot more likely than them building a vehicle and equipment to land on Mars and assault the habitat there.

I think we're talking about different kinds of scale here. A habitat that could be destroyed by "a few people building a submarine" isn't a backup policy for humanity. Not here, not on Mars, not anywhere. I'm imagining a proper city-sized habitation for few million people - with industry and agriculture to support it. A truly separate colony that trades with the rest of Earth when it needs to, but can survive on its own.

Also I really don't like how the arguments so far are about preventing the starving people from coming over and messing things up. It strikes me as very "we need to keep the pleb out" kind of thinking, no different than what some rich people are doing.

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#108

Post by bayesian_horse »

jvanderbot wrote: post #51
bayesian_horse wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gravity is higher, which is important for Humans. Also the resources are more diverse. And you can study Mars better from the surface of Mars than from the surface of the Moon (duh...). I'm not a massive fan of Mars colonization. But I do get the appeal of getting manned missions there. Some science really can't be done as well or cheaply by robots alone. Though even with Humans on board, much of the work will be don…

> Some science really can't be done as well or cheaply by robots alone. I'm struggling to imagine how a "lab full of equipment, life support, beds, bathrooms, comms, and return rocketry" doesn't ($-wise) translate much better to "many, many more teleoperated robots with miniaturized labs operated from orbit or Earth with frequent sample return round-trips". Boots on the ground is a moral victory, but I don't see the…

Humans can get a lot more work done, just by their dexterity, flexibility and ability to learn and adapt. For robots, even simple tasks have to be pre-planned, in this case sometimes years in advance.

It is conceivable that you could build a robot/machine that can collect one type of sample and do one type of analysis cheaper and quicker than a Human. However, human astronauts can do multiple types of these, maybe even adapt them on the fly.

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#109

Post by gambiting »

signatoremo wrote: post #93
gambiting wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm positively certain that in all of your examples people have pushed into new areas because of food, to find new land to live on, to find riches, to find the promised land or other mythological reasons. Somehow I don't imagine aborigines crossing the ocean because "it's cool". You know what we're going to find on Mars? Rocks. A whole lot of radiation. No breathable atmosphere and freezing temperatures. Imagine the…

> I'm positively certain that in all of your examples people have pushed into new areas because of food, to find new land to live on, to find riches, to find the promised land or other mythological reasons First of all, you can’t be positively certain of those. We don’t have access to the reasoning of why the Vikings decided to cross the Artic to America, or Polynesians crossing the Pacific. Second of all, let’s say…

>>Are you sure they ran out of land to grow food, or forest for hunting that they had to look for new land? The answer is quite resounding no.

The answer is an absolute and resounding yes, because that's exactly what hunter gatherers do - they move with the herds and where the food is. This isn't just an educated guess, we know this because there are still hunter tribes on Earth right now which do exactly this.

>>Finally, what were those mythological reasons you listed there, if not the desire of human being to explore?

We have historical records of entire tribes moving purely due to religious reasons, either believing that land somewhere else is sacred, or that the land they are on currently is condemned. If you think your deity lives over the horizon, then you get on your boat and go in that direction. Yes ultimately it's a desire to explore, but it's not just because it's "cool".

Re: Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion

#110

Post by jvanderbot »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #108
jvanderbot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some science really can't be done as well or cheaply by robots alone. I'm struggling to imagine how a "lab full of equipment, life support, beds, bathrooms, comms, and return rocketry" doesn't ($-wise) translate much better to "many, many more teleoperated robots with miniaturized labs operated from orbit or Earth with frequent sample return round-trips". Boots on the ground is a moral victory, but I don't see the…

Humans can get a lot more work done, just by their dexterity, flexibility and ability to learn and adapt. For robots, even simple tasks have to be pre-planned, in this case sometimes years in advance. It is conceivable that you could build a robot/machine that can collect one type of sample and do one type of analysis cheaper and quicker than a Human. However, human astronauts can do multiple types of these, maybe ev…

for this, teleoperation from orbit seems reasonable. It's not been tried however.
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