Actually there's plenty of (frozen) water on Mars, and flows of highly salinated liquid water were found recently as well, an extremely important discovery regarding life beyond Earth. Europa seems a more likely candidate for finding life, but that search will be done through robotic missions and not colonization. Titan however is the closest matching Earth analogue in the outer solar system, and will likely be prioritized in future robotic missions searching for ET.
Also I'm curious what you mean by Neptune?
Frozen water isn't going to bring us any closer to finding life, and very small amounts of liquid water isn't highly likely, compared to the other worlds we discussed.
I'm not sure how well robotic missions where we have so very little control will do. Keep in mind, we wouldn't even see anything the robot would see until 35 minutes after it sees it, then there's another 35 minute delay for us to tell it to do anything. An hour and ten minute delay seems like we'd lose the probe if something went wrong. We wouldn't have the time to correct its course if something happens.
P.S. I'd also like to add something more on the topic, not in response to Alrien. We also have to consider gravity. Mars has gravity much more similar to Earth's than the moon does, and prolonged periods of time in low gravity can have some pretty nasty effects on the human body.
Frozen water isn't going to bring us any closer to finding life, and very small amounts of liquid water isn't highly likely, compared to the other worlds we discussed.
I'm not sure how well robotic missions where we have so very little control will do. Keep in mind, we wouldn't even see anything the robot would see until 35 minutes after it sees it, then there's another 35 minute delay for us to tell it to do anything. An hour and ten minute delay seems like we'd lose the probe if something went wrong. We wouldn't have the time to correct its course if something happens.
P.S. I'd also like to add something more on the topic, not in response to Alrien. We also have to consider gravity. Mars has gravity much more similar to Earth's than the moon does, and prolonged periods of time in low gravity can have some pretty nasty effects on the human body.
Mars is actually the best candidate for finding life on another planet in our solar system. Way back when, it was a 'wet' world and it very well could have been habitable. If we went there, we may find fossilized organisms or survivors in the soil. Also, NASA announced just last year that they found running water on Mars.
The delay is annoying, but there's not much on Mars that would happen suddenly. Dust storms, maybe, but even those only pose the threat of covering the solar panels (not flipping it over or anything, martian air is very thin) and could easily be spotted in advance.
Also, all gas giants have 'liquid' layers in them, so an extremely foreign type of life could possibly exist deep in the bowls of any gas giant, if one can imagine it.
That's true, but the trip to Mars is much longer than to the Moon. In order to even get to the Mars they'd have to travel a year or two in zero-g which is much worse than having the small amount of gravity the Moon has. Whatever gravitational aspect Mars would have is thus negated, unless one it planning to have kids on Mars and establish a long term colony, in which there is a small benefit.
One just needs lots of exercise in low-g and the amount of gravity on the Moon, however little it is, makes exercise much easier than in zero-G making the problem of the negative effects of low-g negated.
That's true, but the trip to Mars is much longer than to the Moon. In order to even get to the Mars they'd have to travel a year or two in zero-g which is much worse than having the small amount of gravity the Moon has. Whatever gravitational aspect Mars would have is thus negated, unless one it planning to have kids on Mars and establish a long term colony, in which there is a small benefit.
All the serious suggestions I've seen of sending a manned mission to Mars either state or strongly imply that it would be a one-way trip, due to the fact that the landing vehicle wouldn't be able to carry booster stages to help it clear Mars' atmosphere. Combined with the lack of useable resources on Mars, any manned mission would be an unfathomable drain on resources, as the crews would be 100% reliant on continuous care packages from Earth.
We have robots that can survive far more extreme conditions than the human body can, and with none of the moral, ethical, or legal considerations if something happens and they get damaged, destroyed, or abandoned. Why not continue to use them rather than sending people on a mission that serves no purpose other than to stroke our collective ego?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level."
-Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"90% of the Internet's statistics are made-up, and 7/8 of its quotes are misattributed."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
Mars is actually the best candidate for finding life on another planet in our solar system. Way back when, it was a 'wet' world and it very well could have been habitable. If we went there, we may find fossilized organisms or survivors in the soil. Also, NASA announced just last year that they found running water on Mars.
The delay is annoying, but there's not much on Mars that would happen suddenly. Dust storms, maybe, but even those only pose the threat of covering the solar panels (not flipping it over or anything, martian air is very thin) and could easily be spotted in advance.
Also, all gas giants have 'liquid' layers in them, so an extremely foreign type of life could possibly exist deep in the bowls of any gas giant, if one can imagine it.
That's true, but the trip to Mars is much longer than to the Moon. In order to even get to the Mars they'd have to travel a year or two in zero-g which is much worse than having the small amount of gravity the Moon has. Whatever gravitational aspect Mars would have is thus negated, unless one it planning to have kids on Mars and establish a long term colony, in which there is a small benefit.
One just needs lots of exercise in low-g and the amount of gravity on the Moon, however little it is, makes exercise much easier than in zero-G making the problem of the negative effects of low-g negated.
I suppose if you're only looking for fossils, sure.
That delay was for Europa, not Mars.
True, but it's better to bet on finding life as we know it and not life as we can only speculate it.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how long would it take to get to mars
I'm not sure where you got two years from. Regardless, though, the ships aren't ENTIRELY Zero-G. Their cabins have rotational gravity, I believe. And even then, half a year is nothing compared to a LIFETIME, which is what you're talking about if you're suggesting colonies.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
5/15/2014
Posts:
351
Member Details
You all make some pretty convincing arguments regarding whether or not we should, or even can make it to Mars over the Moon.
That being said, I think the Moon has just won out given that Space X will be sending two paying customers on a trip to orbit it. Let's look at it this way. It may cost a billion $$$ per a customer right now, but those costs would only decrease as time goes on and the technology improves. Therefore, such a vacation would become available to lower paying customers. On top of that, these two guys going up next year won't even get to land on the Moon. I don't know about you guys, but if I was going to the Moon for a vacation, then I would want to actually step foot on it. So, I think it's safe to say that we will eventually see some kind of facility built on the Moon for people to land and vacation on.
To end, I think it's a little funny how none of us posting had given much thought about the business motivations for selecting either the Moon or Mars.
You all make some pretty convincing arguments regarding whether or not we should, or even can make it to Mars over the Moon.
That being said, I think the Moon has just won out given that Space X will be sending two paying customers on a trip to orbit it. Let's look at it this way. It may cost a billion $$$ per a customer right now, but those costs would only decrease as time goes on and the technology improves. Therefore, such a vacation would become available to lower paying customers. On top of that, these two guys going up next year won't even get to land on the Moon. I don't know about you guys, but if I was going to the Moon for a vacation, then I would want to actually step foot on it. So, I think it's safe to say that we will eventually see some kind of facility built on the Moon for people to land and vacation on.
To end, I think it's a little funny how none of us posting had given much thought about the business motivations for selecting either the Moon or Mars.
I don't know that I see much in the way of commercial opportunities with the moon. As a tourist destination, it leaves a lot to be desired (the environment is very inhospitable, it takes several days just to make the trip there and back, and there's very little to do or see there once the novelty wears off; not to mention that even with the price coming down, it'll still be well outside of the budgets of most folks). I haven't heard of much in the way of exploitable resources, either. I suppose it may be useful for research purposes, but does it really have much advantage over, say, the International Space Station, which is considerably closer?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level."
-Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"90% of the Internet's statistics are made-up, and 7/8 of its quotes are misattributed."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
Gotta repeat what someone else said -- go to Mars for the bragging rights, and then a moon colony. Although neither have many useful resources and are huge expenditures, imagine if the US got the right to say both "We were the first to land on another planet" as well as "We were the first to land on the Moon".
Extending the idea further, consider the current president. Whatever you think of him, he has an ego of some size -- what better way to permanently solidify his name in history than to be the one to direct a US landing on Mars?
Extending the idea further, consider the current president. Whatever you think of him, he has an ego of some size -- what better way to permanently solidify his name in history than to be the one to direct a US landing on Mars?
Yo, we could prolly convince him to be the one to put his name on a monumental climate change bill too. We'll say, "Imagine it... people reading in the history books: Donald J. Trump saved the world."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king
Yo, we could prolly convince him to be the one to put his name on a monumental climate change bill too. We'll say, "Imagine it... people reading in the history books: Donald J. Trump saved the world."
It wouldn't be good from a persuasion/popular perspective. If he did that, not only would he not gain the trust of the vast majority of the Democrats ("He's still literally Hitler!") but he'd permanently destroy any kind of trust most of his base has in him. It would guarantee that he'd never get re-elected -- so there's no real chance that he ever would. A further point is that it's very hard if not impossible for either side to spin "he put a man on Mars" as a bad thing.
It wouldn't be good from a persuasion/popular perspective. If he did that, not only would he not gain the trust of the vast majority of the Democrats ("He's still literally Hitler!") but he'd permanently destroy any kind of trust most of his base has in him. It would guarantee that he'd never get re-elected -- so there's no real chance that he ever would. A further point is that it's very hard if not impossible for either side to spin "he put a man on Mars" as a bad thing.
...unless of course the mission went horribly wrong, and ended up costing a huge amount of money just to get several good people killed, of course.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level."
-Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"90% of the Internet's statistics are made-up, and 7/8 of its quotes are misattributed."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
...unless of course the mission went horribly wrong, and ended up costing a huge amount of money just to get several good people killed, of course.
The twisting the situation comment was in the assumption of a completely successful landing.
But yes, of course if this plan was announced, you know the news for the next few days would be all about how dangerous the mission is according to their panelists and experts and whatnot.
The twisting the situation comment was in the assumption of a completely successful landing.
But yes, of course if this plan was announced, you know the news for the next few days would be all about how dangerous the mission is according to their panelists and experts and whatnot.
Nah, anybody could spin it as a frivolous waste of valuable tax dollars in a time when the infrastructure's crumbling... and the climate change thing was only in the event that it was hugely successful and also managed to convince everybody it actually existed... ; )
I wish that we could get NASA back on 5%, we'd definitely get that Mars mission by the end of the 2020's plus we'd be able to get that Europa probe going and then it's also pushing for FTL travel...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king
Nah, anybody could spin it as a frivolous waste of valuable tax dollars in a time when the infrastructure's crumbling... and the climate change thing was only in the event that it was hugely successful and also managed to convince everybody it actually existed... ; )
I wish that we could get NASA back on 5%, we'd definitely get that Mars mission by the end of the 2020's plus we'd be able to get that Europa probe going and then it's also pushing for FTL travel...
Faster Than Light travel might be pushing hope and optimism a bit, but God knows if I was playing a Civilization game and knew that that was down the tech tree I'd be pushing for it ASAP.
No. Mars seems interesting, (we've studied the moon countless times) because it could lead way for us to live on another planet when the Earth has an extinction level event. Also, the Moon is pretty boring and it has already been studied multiple times. We need to do something new once in our lives.
I wish that we could get NASA back on 5%, we'd definitely get that Mars mission by the end of the 2020's plus we'd be able to get that Europa probe going and then it's also pushing for FTL travel...
Well Nasa could do a lot of great things with a 5% budget, but a manned mission to Mars just ain't happening before 2020, it would be stunning to see it happen before 2030, even impressive to see it before 2040. FTL travel though, that's firmly science fiction, not even on the horizon.
No. Mars seems interesting, (we've studied the moon countless times) because it could lead way for us to live on another planet when the Earth has an extinction level event. Also, the Moon is pretty boring and it has already been studied multiple times. We need to do something new once in our lives.
The whole Earth apocalypse argument for going to Mars is really not accurate. Any kind of permanent settlement on Mars would be a long-term investment, it likely couldn't be seen as any sort of backup for centuries. Meanwhile if our technology and infrastructure doesn't reach the point where we can stabilize conditions on Earth, we're in trouble, and so are any projects on Mars.
Frozen water isn't going to bring us any closer to finding life, and very small amounts of liquid water isn't highly likely, compared to the other worlds we discussed.
I'm not sure how well robotic missions where we have so very little control will do. Keep in mind, we wouldn't even see anything the robot would see until 35 minutes after it sees it, then there's another 35 minute delay for us to tell it to do anything. An hour and ten minute delay seems like we'd lose the probe if something went wrong. We wouldn't have the time to correct its course if something happens.
http://www.universetoday.com/736/are-there-oceans-on-neptune/
I meant exactly what I said. It's not very likely, but it's possible.
P.S. I'd also like to add something more on the topic, not in response to Alrien. We also have to consider gravity. Mars has gravity much more similar to Earth's than the moon does, and prolonged periods of time in low gravity can have some pretty nasty effects on the human body.
Mars is actually the best candidate for finding life on another planet in our solar system. Way back when, it was a 'wet' world and it very well could have been habitable. If we went there, we may find fossilized organisms or survivors in the soil. Also, NASA announced just last year that they found running water on Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars
The delay is annoying, but there's not much on Mars that would happen suddenly. Dust storms, maybe, but even those only pose the threat of covering the solar panels (not flipping it over or anything, martian air is very thin) and could easily be spotted in advance.
Also, all gas giants have 'liquid' layers in them, so an extremely foreign type of life could possibly exist deep in the bowls of any gas giant, if one can imagine it.
That's true, but the trip to Mars is much longer than to the Moon. In order to even get to the Mars they'd have to travel a year or two in zero-g which is much worse than having the small amount of gravity the Moon has. Whatever gravitational aspect Mars would have is thus negated, unless one it planning to have kids on Mars and establish a long term colony, in which there is a small benefit.
One just needs lots of exercise in low-g and the amount of gravity on the Moon, however little it is, makes exercise much easier than in zero-G making the problem of the negative effects of low-g negated.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king
Why land on Mars when there are perfectly good 7 exoplanets discovered?
All the serious suggestions I've seen of sending a manned mission to Mars either state or strongly imply that it would be a one-way trip, due to the fact that the landing vehicle wouldn't be able to carry booster stages to help it clear Mars' atmosphere. Combined with the lack of useable resources on Mars, any manned mission would be an unfathomable drain on resources, as the crews would be 100% reliant on continuous care packages from Earth.
We have robots that can survive far more extreme conditions than the human body can, and with none of the moral, ethical, or legal considerations if something happens and they get damaged, destroyed, or abandoned. Why not continue to use them rather than sending people on a mission that serves no purpose other than to stroke our collective ego?
"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level."
-Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"90% of the Internet's statistics are made-up, and 7/8 of its quotes are misattributed."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
I suppose if you're only looking for fossils, sure.
That delay was for Europa, not Mars.
True, but it's better to bet on finding life as we know it and not life as we can only speculate it.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how long would it take to get to mars
I'm not sure where you got two years from. Regardless, though, the ships aren't ENTIRELY Zero-G. Their cabins have rotational gravity, I believe. And even then, half a year is nothing compared to a LIFETIME, which is what you're talking about if you're suggesting colonies.
Because those are about 40 lightyears away... Are you serious right now?
You all make some pretty convincing arguments regarding whether or not we should, or even can make it to Mars over the Moon.
That being said, I think the Moon has just won out given that Space X will be sending two paying customers on a trip to orbit it. Let's look at it this way. It may cost a billion $$$ per a customer right now, but those costs would only decrease as time goes on and the technology improves. Therefore, such a vacation would become available to lower paying customers. On top of that, these two guys going up next year won't even get to land on the Moon. I don't know about you guys, but if I was going to the Moon for a vacation, then I would want to actually step foot on it. So, I think it's safe to say that we will eventually see some kind of facility built on the Moon for people to land and vacation on.
To end, I think it's a little funny how none of us posting had given much thought about the business motivations for selecting either the Moon or Mars.
I don't know that I see much in the way of commercial opportunities with the moon. As a tourist destination, it leaves a lot to be desired (the environment is very inhospitable, it takes several days just to make the trip there and back, and there's very little to do or see there once the novelty wears off; not to mention that even with the price coming down, it'll still be well outside of the budgets of most folks). I haven't heard of much in the way of exploitable resources, either. I suppose it may be useful for research purposes, but does it really have much advantage over, say, the International Space Station, which is considerably closer?
"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level."
-Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"90% of the Internet's statistics are made-up, and 7/8 of its quotes are misattributed."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
Gotta repeat what someone else said -- go to Mars for the bragging rights, and then a moon colony. Although neither have many useful resources and are huge expenditures, imagine if the US got the right to say both "We were the first to land on another planet" as well as "We were the first to land on the Moon".
Extending the idea further, consider the current president. Whatever you think of him, he has an ego of some size -- what better way to permanently solidify his name in history than to be the one to direct a US landing on Mars?
I'm a pixel artist who makes pixel things and maps! I also do line art occasionally.
I have two work in progress resource packs!
This is the second one!
And of course, by "work-in-progress" I mean "will never, ever be completed".
Yo, we could prolly convince him to be the one to put his name on a monumental climate change bill too. We'll say, "Imagine it... people reading in the history books: Donald J. Trump saved the world."
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king
It wouldn't be good from a persuasion/popular perspective. If he did that, not only would he not gain the trust of the vast majority of the Democrats ("He's still literally Hitler!") but he'd permanently destroy any kind of trust most of his base has in him. It would guarantee that he'd never get re-elected -- so there's no real chance that he ever would. A further point is that it's very hard if not impossible for either side to spin "he put a man on Mars" as a bad thing.
I'm a pixel artist who makes pixel things and maps! I also do line art occasionally.
I have two work in progress resource packs!
This is the second one!
And of course, by "work-in-progress" I mean "will never, ever be completed".
...unless of course the mission went horribly wrong, and ended up costing a huge amount of money just to get several good people killed, of course.
"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped. The success or failure of any given step will have no impact on the macro level."
-Red Mage, 8-Bit Theater
"90% of the Internet's statistics are made-up, and 7/8 of its quotes are misattributed."
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
The twisting the situation comment was in the assumption of a completely successful landing.
But yes, of course if this plan was announced, you know the news for the next few days would be all about how dangerous the mission is according to their panelists and experts and whatnot.
I'm a pixel artist who makes pixel things and maps! I also do line art occasionally.
I have two work in progress resource packs!
This is the second one!
And of course, by "work-in-progress" I mean "will never, ever be completed".
Nah, anybody could spin it as a frivolous waste of valuable tax dollars in a time when the infrastructure's crumbling... and the climate change thing was only in the event that it was hugely successful and also managed to convince everybody it actually existed... ; )
I wish that we could get NASA back on 5%, we'd definitely get that Mars mission by the end of the 2020's plus we'd be able to get that Europa probe going and then it's also pushing for FTL travel...
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king
Faster Than Light travel might be pushing hope and optimism a bit, but God knows if I was playing a Civilization game and knew that that was down the tech tree I'd be pushing for it ASAP.
I'm a pixel artist who makes pixel things and maps! I also do line art occasionally.
I have two work in progress resource packs!
This is the second one!
And of course, by "work-in-progress" I mean "will never, ever be completed".
No. Mars seems interesting, (we've studied the moon countless times) because it could lead way for us to live on another planet when the Earth has an extinction level event. Also, the Moon is pretty boring and it has already been studied multiple times. We need to do something new once in our lives.
Hello.
We've already been to the moon, and not one crumb of cheese was found, let's check out the Martians hiding on Mars.
I think some of the people mentioning artificial magnetic fields will find this interesting: http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a25493/magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere/
Well Nasa could do a lot of great things with a 5% budget, but a manned mission to Mars just ain't happening before 2020, it would be stunning to see it happen before 2030, even impressive to see it before 2040. FTL travel though, that's firmly science fiction, not even on the horizon.
The whole Earth apocalypse argument for going to Mars is really not accurate. Any kind of permanent settlement on Mars would be a long-term investment, it likely couldn't be seen as any sort of backup for centuries. Meanwhile if our technology and infrastructure doesn't reach the point where we can stabilize conditions on Earth, we're in trouble, and so are any projects on Mars.
On second thought, maybe we should go to the moon again. If we spend a little more time there we may actually discover something interesting.
Can't we just stop by on our way to Mars?
I don't care, i'll go to whatever planet has cool roller coasters. I'm sure there is a planet out there with some cool roller coasters. Besides Earth.
Internally screaming since 1400 B.C.