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Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#201

Post by TeMPOraL »

beamatronic wrote: post #81
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of reasons. The first is that to make a mission to Mars cost effective, we have to wait about 18 months for Earth and Mars to line up in the right positions, otherwise it costs too much in rocket fuel to be worthwhile. The second is that the missions lag behind the discoveries - it's much easier to analyze pictures and spectographs than it is to design a mission, secure funding for it, and then do it. Sendin…

We have a proven design in Spirit/Opportunity. There should be an assembly line cranking them out.

There would be, if NASA had the budget to plan and fund a couple dozen missions at a time. Going one at a time, with each next mission being uncertain, all they can do is to maximize the amount of science their mission budget buys, and that means building one-off, highly-specialized instruments.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#202

Post by TeMPOraL »

keketi wrote: post #37
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.

NASA scientist: I built this space mission up from nothing. When I started, all I had was a martian lake! Other scientists said I was daft to send a rover into a lake, but I sent it all the same, just to show 'em! It sank into the lake, so I built a second one. That sank into the lake. I built a third one. It got stuck, fell over, and then it sank into the lake. But the fourth one floated! And that's what you're goin…

I understand it's a Monty Python reference, but I'd like to point out that it sounds distinctively Kerbal.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#203

Post by NegativeLatency »

pvaldes wrote: post #154
walrus01 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. If you look at drill rigs used by humans for water wells and such, the rover will need to be 8x larger and heavier than the current Curiosity.

> Building a rover that can drill more than a few inches deep is presently a huge technical challenge. You need a rover of 8x mass. 1- make a rover of standard weight and size an put it in the desired place, as before. Deploy a light but strong flat platform around. 2-Look around. What do you see? Probably a lot of heavy rocks. 3-Pick some rocks of the appropriate mass, or a bag of sand 4-Load stuff of your choice ov…

Sure, but you now have all kinds of extra mass to lift to orbit (not the sand, but a beefier rover). You could launch more payloads and assemble in orbit.

It starts to become complicated...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#204

Post by [deleted] »

bvc35 wrote: post #166
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but to quote the annoyingly semi-reasonable creationist Ken Ham: “We weren’t there. We didn’t observe it.” (Note: I am not a creationist, I do agree with the logic of that argument, but I also see no scientific basis for any religious origin story of life to have more scientific basis than others). We have recreated the conditions that predate life and found that organic molecules were formed, but we’ve never ob…

You see a man lying still on the ground, blood pooling around his body, and a woman standing close by gripping a knife with bloody hands. What happened? “We weren’t there. We didn’t observe it.”

[deleted]

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#205

Post by ptero »

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #135
enraged_camel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are about a thousand things you use and benefit from everyday that were side effects of other research and spending (primarily military). But you take them for granted and so it is easy for you to make value judgments regarding how money is spent.

> But you take them for granted and so it is easy for you to make value judgments regarding how money is spent. It's rude to make such assumptions about me. I do not take the positive side effects from research for granted. You simply haven't made a case showing why $400B in space research will generate more or better positive side effects than $400B in cancer research. All research will have side effects that can't…

I think it is the other way around. Somewhere up the thread someone made the that instead of spending 400B on space travel we should have spent it on cancer research.

There was little, if any, explanation of why this should be done; and the posters arguing the opposite are, in my view, suggesting some of the "why not" arguments. The burden of proof is still on the fellow who made that "we should" claim. My 2c.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#206

Post by fucking_tragedy »

bordercases wrote: post #174
robotrout wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are many causes. We are in violent agreement. If you focus on the causes, you are preventing cancer, not curing it. You are playing whack-a-mole.

LOL Seems more cost efficient long run to address lifestyle than deal with proximal consequence

The thing about cancer is that you can live a perfect lifestyle and still have it ravage your body.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#207

Post by nradov »

beamatronic wrote: post #79
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…

There are populations of humans on this planet that have very low cancer rates. All we have to do is adopt their lifestyle. Eat right and exercise. That’s probably 90% of it right there. Don’t need to spend any money.

More like 42%.

https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/more-than-4-in-10-cancers...

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#208

Post by kbenson »

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…

> No to mention the fact that all the cancer drugs in the world will not save us from an asteroid. If we don't get people living and populating on other planets, the human species is doomed.

This is what I always come back to. Curing cancer is a great form of self improvement for the human race, but essentially that's like an ant colony learning how to make it's ants live a little longer. It doesn't protect from floods, or fires, or even an exterminator. What does? founding new ant colonies in different locations. Many of them.

Additionally, the caveman analogy is apt. A balance needs to be struck between advancement, and standard of living. Too much focus on standard of living and you reach the cap of what your technology is capable of. To much focus on advancement and people suffer unduly (and too much of that is unsustainable). To me, the parallels between this and the whole socialism and capitalism extremes are obvious, and similarly, we're best off with some shifting middle ground rather than at the extremes.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#209

Post by evanlivingston »

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 think the dialogue quoted here demonstrates the underlying issue that is lost in futurist thought.

No one "pioneered the west". Various groups of people with powerful technology traveled west and stole land from other groups of people. They also traveled south and east and used that technical and economic power to enslave other humans and forced them to develop the west. Development and progress for progress' sake alone leaves a lot to be desired, namely, ethics.

Also, It's clear that much like economics, technology doesn't inherently trickle down. It certainly has the potential to have positive downstream effects, but without having a priority of pushing those positive impacts downstream I would argue that we're left with a larger gulf between the marvels of modern science and technology and those and the bottom. That is to say, without prioritizing equalizing the gains of science and exploration and those gains actively stratify society further.

There are many, many people in the world who don't know that we went to the moon, there are people who don't have access to electricity and plumbing. I'm not arguing here for not exploring other planets, but I am trying to make a case for focusing out scientific efforts of improving the lives of everyone on the planet. Without spreading the achievements of science and technology to everyone on the planet, humanity is doomed.

Re: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

#210

Post by mirimir »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63
mirimir wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... we therefore find it plausible that a layer of perchlorate brine could be present at the base of the polar deposits. ... Damn! Water and oxidizer for rockets.

OK, but also, water that is undrinkable until refined.

Sure, but it's the refining that gives you the perchlorate.
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