191–200 of 322 posts
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Have you not read Stranger In A Strange Land?
Yes. Why do you think that's relevant? You are aware that this was a work of fiction, yes?
Did you honestly believe that I was suggesting that the first person born on Mars was going to be considered the owner of Mars?
Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…
My friend who wintered over claimed that the Pole doesn't have "plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure" - it's high above sea level, the earth's spin reduces the pressure at the poles and if a low pressure weather system comes in people suffer from altitude sickness https://www.usap.gov/USAPgov/travelAndDeployment/documents/M...
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> how difficult and fraught it is to keep a few people alive down there, how does anyone expect to keep a few people alive on Mars, let alone build a colony there? Necessity is the mother of invention. It makes no sense to use precious Antarctic time and space growing all the food when it's cheaper to ship it in. Similar to how civilizations with a history of littoral shipbuilding figured out ocean-faring--if you're…
Let me pose a different question. If the purpose of Mars is being a lifeboat for some life-ending disaster on Earth, why doesn't that group of people go and build a self-sufficient colony in the Antarctic? It'll get you 90% of the way there for way less than 10% of the effort. Necessity is the mother of invention, and nobody is doing it because it's not actually necessary. Martian colonisation is more of a religion,…
Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…
We've had permanent bases in the south pole for 120 years now. It's not particularly fraught. It's not free, but with a small investment of money we're perfectly able to do it. We can't colonize it of course, because The Antarctic Treaty forbids territorial claims. Not because we aren't able to build things in the conditions that exist there. Mars introduces a lot of new challenges, but 120 years of technological dev…
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Something I've never even seen mentioned , let along seriously discussed, is the protocol for deciding under what circumstances the first human will be born and raised off-earth. I predict that will turn out to be an intractable problem.
When a female crew member gets nutted in on the two year long journey to mars... I give it like a day before they're all having sex.
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We've had permanent bases in the south pole for 120 years now. It's not particularly fraught. It's not free, but with a small investment of money we're perfectly able to do it. We can't colonize it of course, because The Antarctic Treaty forbids territorial claims. Not because we aren't able to build things in the conditions that exist there. Mars introduces a lot of new challenges, but 120 years of technological dev…
How do you figure 120 years? The first South Pole Station was Old Amudsen Scott which started operations in 1957 (65 years ago), the winter of 57-58 was the first time humans stayed through the long night at the pole.
> "Slow and intermittent Internet access." Hmm, how long until Starlink (or similar) reaches the South Pole?
There are polar orbits that make that possible since McMurdo is out of view of the standard starlink orbits. It should work at the South Pole just as well.
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https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-service-antar... Edit: as someone pointed out this is McMurdo.
That's McMurdo, not the South Pole, a orbit a lot easier to achieve. I thought that Starlink satellites wouldn't orbit that far on the poles, but looking on trackers [1] it does look like there a few stragglers up there (or down there in this case, he). Maybe there are some special talks with the military and other countries on getting some good internet. I don't believe polar orbits would be commercially viable othe…
Whenever I read about how humans are about to colonize Mars, I think about how much logistics it takes to keep even a single base with a handful of people populated on the South Pole. It's like Mars, but with plentiful oxygen and atmospheric pressure, plentiful (albeit frozen) water, shielded from radiation, low-latency communication with civilization, and is reachable by air and ground vehicles. Given how difficult…
Humans are not going to visit Mars anytime soon, let alone colonize. There are not one but many unsolved technical, economical etc. issues. But its a dream and a wish list. And We're the only species who can have dreams as big as we want.
It's perfectly reasonable to say the reason we don't currently have anybody on Mars is because we (politically) just don't really want to. If the Russians had beat us to the Moon, we probably would have made it Mars decades ago.