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Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

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Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#91

Post by danielweber »

1123581321 wrote: post #76
cryptoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So just getting to Mars would exceed the safe limits This is the problem with your argument that I'm underestimating risks. You're assuming that nobody finds a way to solve this problem or to mitigate the effects of the radiation, and that nobody would be willing to find a way to go even with the health concerns. I know this will be extremely difficult and quite costly, but I think hard work and constant innovation…

We have already measured bone loss in low gravity environments. http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGen... Gravity plays an essential role in bone maintenance. You can work this out from first principles if you know anything about biology, or read about NASA's findings. This has been known for a long time, well before humans ever went to space. For example, HG Wells' First Men on the Moon describ…

That's microgravity, or what other people call "zero gravity."

We honestly don't know how much gravity people need to survive. Your talk of people's chests collapsing because you read it in science fiction is just that: science fiction. HG Wells is great but he's not really a good source of science for modern astrophysics.

Odds are, there are many bodily functions that work just fine in a little bit of gravity, and others that scale up as you get more and more gravity.

We really need to get some spinning space stations set up to find this stuff out. Unfortunately, NASA has a really big fetish for "let's spend money on microgravity research" instead of just doing the obvious thing of seeing how 1/6 g or 3/8 g affects people and systems.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#92

Post by lovehashbrowns »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #66
n3rdy wrote: post #49

My biggest fear would not be dying on Mars or on the way to it. My biggest fear would be having the novelty wear off and coming to the realization that I just moved to a trailer park.. on mars.

Definitely the first people on Mars shouldn't do so merely to live on Mars, they should be the sort of people who are going to build Mars up. And if that's the case then it's unlikely the novelty will wear off quickly. There is a lot to do on Mars and a surprising amount can be done with fairly small amounts of capital equipment. Within the first few trips there could be enough equipment to bootstrap a Martian indust…

Yup, it just depends on what mentality you take with you. If you sign up for this with the mentality that you're going to have lots of fun and how amazing Mars is going to be, obviously the disappointment is going to set it very quickly. But if you go there with the goal of building everything from the ground up and knowing that it's going to be a very crappy place to live in for quite a while, then I think it would be hard to be disappointed. As you said, there is a lot of work to do and each little project would just add to the excitement of living there. At least for me it would.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#93

Post by keeperofdakeys »

cryptoz wrote: post #9
dangrossman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I doubt it would be much riskier than we're currently living our lives here on Earth. You're probably underestimating the risks associated with humans leaving Earth for any considerable period of time. Radiation is the first issue. NASA will not plan a mission that exposes astronauts to higher than a 3% risk of exposure-induced death. Their reports from 2010 based on all the studies done up to that point put th…

> So just getting to Mars would exceed the safe limits This is the problem with your argument that I'm underestimating risks. You're assuming that nobody finds a way to solve this problem or to mitigate the effects of the radiation, and that nobody would be willing to find a way to go even with the health concerns. I know this will be extremely difficult and quite costly, but I think hard work and constant innovation…

With current technology (both existing and theoretical), I don't think you'd be able to create a rocket capable of returning with healthy people (even just the returning bit is a practical nightmare). Also, most people underestimate just how big the radiation problem is in space, since we have an earth-sized magnet to mostly protect us (you can't just make a second earth and attach it to your spacecraft). The apollo astronauts are really quite lucky to not be exposed. http://sciencefocus.com/blog/how-apollo-astronauts-avoided-d...

The "send people to die on mars" idea isn't about developing the technology to allow travelling back and forth, it is a compromise with todays technology to say "let's go and explore, until we have the technology". So you can't shoot down the argument with "when we have the technology...".

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#94

Post by danielweber »

eCa wrote: post #45
smnrchrds wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I'm most worried about is what happens if one of the residents needs medical attention. Mars is going to be a one-way trip and while the pioneers will most probably be young and healthy, they won't stay young and healthy forever. It is entirely possible to place a doctor within the group and send medical supplies, but it could work only for the simplest medical conditions. I think it would be a long time be…

I think you are right. Medical procedures would likely go back to basics: Bad tooth? Pull it out. Broken leg? Maybe amputate. However, with the right provisions fairly advanced procedures should be possible to carry out with minimum personnel. For instance, in 1961 a Russian doctor in Antarctica removed his own infected appendix [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-surgery

Amputate a broken leg? Just how bad do you foresee that injury?

It's not like we can't ship anesthetics up there. It's not like a layman can't set a broken bone, although I dunno if an X-ray machine would be there to see.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#95

Post by randomchars »

Qantourisc wrote: post #48

... food ... water? Otherwise your life (before you die) would be rather short ...

They're not sending people to sit in the corner and wait until they die.

It's about building a colony. Regular supply missions and growing stuff on Mars would be part of the plan.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#96

Post by damoncali »

danielweber wrote: post #91
1123581321 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have already measured bone loss in low gravity environments. http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGen... Gravity plays an essential role in bone maintenance. You can work this out from first principles if you know anything about biology, or read about NASA's findings. This has been known for a long time, well before humans ever went to space. For example, HG Wells' First Men on the Moon describ…

That's microgravity, or what other people call "zero gravity." We honestly don't know how much gravity people need to survive. Your talk of people's chests collapsing because you read it in science fiction is just that: science fiction. HG Wells is great but he's not really a good source of science for modern astrophysics. Odds are, there are many bodily functions that work just fine in a little bit of gravity, and o…

To be fair, It's really hard to make 1/6g or 3/8g environments.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#97

Post by mistermann »

shantanubala wrote: post #46
rdl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I could do a particularly good job running the country, and wouldn't try (beyond a few weeks/months in transition). There are plenty of other African leaders in other countries, particularly elected in the past ~10 years, who are far better. I don't think there's any reason why EG wouldn't be able to come up with some domestic political leadership which was better than what they have now. The problem is…

Practically speaking, how do you ensure that the new government doesn't become corrupt in a year or two? Or more importantly, how do you restore the people's faith in their government so that they participate? Also, how would a trade embargo "fix" a country? Perhaps it would force a dictator to lessen or hide civil rights violations, but it would not repair the economy or necessarily give people more confidence in th…

> Practically speaking, how do you ensure that the new government doesn't become corrupt in a year or two? Or more importantly, how do you restore the people's faith in their government so that they participate?

Here's how I'd do it: pass laws specifically forbidding these actions by government officials, the punishment being death. And then when someone violates the law, you kill them. You wouldn't have to do this too many times before the problem magically disappeared.

I think this would both fix the corruption problem as well as restore faith in government.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#98

Post by bilbo0s »

rdl wrote: post #47
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you vastly underestimate the difficulty of "fixing" a country. I think Russia is a good example: communism fell, but that doesn't mean things have necessarily gotten better for the average citizen. You could replace the entire government of Equatorial Guinea, but that won't address the problems like poor education that underlying many poor country's problems.

I agree entirely for middle tier countries (which Russia was -- and, honestly, Iraq under Saddam was). For really defective places (NK, Somalia, EG, maybe Afghanistan under the Taliban, ...), your odds of killing the leadership and randomly replacing are much more likely to give you something adequate. It doesn't always work out, and it's hard when you have set yourself up for failure (like the US did in Afghanistan,…

You discount so many variables that go into making a place a "good" place to live that it's actually a little humorous to read these posts.

Look, EG is, I'm pretty certain, almost 90% Fang. That probably doesn't mean much to you but for Africans... tribal affinities matter. The idea that you would get rid of one government, and another would govern appreciably differently in EG is fanciful. Add to that Oil and then unexploited Gold and Zinc deposits, and anyone who is familiar with Africa, and especially EG, would laugh heartily at your assertions.

Places like the MidEast and North Africa also have more issues than can be solved by changing governments. For instance, the reality in Somalia, or indeed even Egypt, is that there are hard Bio-Physical resource constraints that are not going away. Desertification and Soil Salination are mother nature's method of breathing. And she doesn't care about governmental edicts. Egypt's population is around 80M I think... and I'm pretty sure the arable land is right around 2% and it drops every year. Somalia is what... 10 maybe 15 million? With MORE diversity (ie - tribes) and even LESS arable land.

One of the first things I learned working at Halliburton was that if a nation is importing energy AND food... it's in trouble. Nation building is much more than Civil Affairs. If the requisite people and materials aren't there ... it doesn't work. Full Stop.

"Bad" governments, for a given definition of "bad", are symptoms of problems. Not the problems themselves. The Taliban and the NA are manifestations of the lack of resources in Afghan land and the lack of trust among Afghan people. These are difficult problems to solve. And certainly simply changing the government will not make them go away.

Re: Wanted: People Willing to Die on Mars

#99

Post by 1123581321 »

danielweber wrote: post #91
1123581321 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have already measured bone loss in low gravity environments. http://weboflife.nasa.gov/currentResearch/currentResearchGen... Gravity plays an essential role in bone maintenance. You can work this out from first principles if you know anything about biology, or read about NASA's findings. This has been known for a long time, well before humans ever went to space. For example, HG Wells' First Men on the Moon describ…

That's microgravity, or what other people call "zero gravity." We honestly don't know how much gravity people need to survive. Your talk of people's chests collapsing because you read it in science fiction is just that: science fiction. HG Wells is great but he's not really a good source of science for modern astrophysics. Odds are, there are many bodily functions that work just fine in a little bit of gravity, and o…

I was hoping you'd see the Wells item as showing how straightforward and early known is the connection between healthy human bone maintenance and gravity of earth's strength, not science fiction. Certainly the rate of bone loss will be slower in low gravity than in no gravity environments, but it will happen. It must happen to a degree just as surely as missing calcium and other nutrients would harm our bones.
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