The meaning of getting to Mars? Your view?

If we could convince government to spend as much money on science as we spend on the military most of the space travel problems could be solved. Look at the advances science has made in the last 200 years. All it takes is scientific effort.

But the question for me is should we spend all that science money on space travel or should we cure cancer or develop more efficient energy generation from renewable sources or better ways to recycle or something else. I don't see going to Mars as particularly beneficial in the short or intermediate term. I think it gets trotted out as a political tool or a distraction, but I'm very content with robotic exploration of the solar system while we develop the science to address more earthly problems.

How do you think it can be made livable with 38% Earth gravity?

Do you expect to double its mass somehow?

Science exploration has consequences for all life. The things that are discovered can be used for many branches of life. Look at the things that were discovered by the space exploration of the 1950s and the 1960s. Both electronics and health were unexpectedly improved. Until we go full bore into science we want know the results. To remain static means death.

Well, I watched your 30 minute video on terraforming Mars. I agreed with almost all of it, and I notice that he suggests getting nitrogen from Titan, just as I suggested. He also says you could get it from Venus, but Venus is a hell planet, and if it were my decision, I'd stick with Titan.

This I agree with 100%.

The problem is that economic liberalism has taken over the economy at the global level, and thus we are no longer making real advancements into sustainability except insofar as doing so generates the kinds of big salaries that consumers use to fund all the unsustainable purchases and resource-use they spend their money on.

If there was still a spirit of problem-solving among the general public, we would be progressing on various levels toward sustainability very quickly. That's not happening, however, because we have prioritized subjective preferences over the objective greater good.

But electronics and health were not improved by the space program per se, they were improved by the massive expenditure to support science. If you did a grand expenditure to eradicate cancer (for example) it would have an equal revolutionary effect. There is nothing magic about space science. You say to remain static means death, but what is the definition of movement? In the popular press of the early 1900's, it meant big ocean liners and transatlantic flights, but those really didn't compare to the advances in medicine and physics that were quietly changing the world. You want to fundamentally change the world, figure out renewable cheap energy. Then you can go to Mars with much less effort.

You don't understand energy. Energy is built into a system. A battery, for example, is filled with chemicals whose state is organized in a way that holds the energy, and that state has to change to a lower energy state for the battery to discharge.

Earth has energy built into it that is all stored up from solar-absorption and fossilization of solar-powered bioprocesses. There are nuclear fuels to be mined, but they are not unlimited and if humans get into the habit of mining them generation after generation, they will be depleted and/or radioactive waste will overwhelm us.

In short, Earth functions properly as it does because it hasn't had human engenuity tapping its energy reserves away for unnatural processes. When we tap energy that's been condensing underground for long periods of time, it's like spending money from your savings at a rate much higher than you get it back in income.

That money/savings metaphor for Earth's energy budget is accurate, but humans spending of money is literally tied to our energy use because economic activity doesn't run on human and animal power but fossil fuels and nuclear power. We expect wind and solar to match the levels of power that have been normalized by industrial/consumer culture, but those levels are unsustainable.

So when you want to pay all these people all this money to develop new technologies, you are just stimulating them to destroy the climate and natural resources that much faster. If there was a sustainable culture where no matter how much money people made, they would avoid spending it on anything that would cause unsustainability, then sure you could dole out money all day and there would not be climate/environmental degradation or even inflation for that matter.

But that is not the reality. If you pay people lots of money to do all this R&D, they will go around spending it and BS themselves that they are making sustainable choices so they can feel fine about the economic activity they are causing with their spending.

So what really needs to happen is that people need to commit to thinking and enacting innovations at the level of personal conservation and lifestyle change. Then when enough people have solved the climate problem by simply refusing to waste resources and do things that cause unsustainability, then the economy will be free from harm and it will be good to invest in R&D again.

Please explain how youve arrived at this hypothhesis??

NASA is already xpeimnting the most simpl mans that will possibly nable us to generate a "breathable atmosphere".
Certain things are part of their experiments

1A brethable atmosphere does NOT man to terraform an entire planet. We can live in covered or suburban compounds

2A breathable atmosphere does NOT mean that we have to duplicate earths atmosphere >N2 is a carrier gas for us but its an ion that critically composes most living tissues (in small volumes)
3SO, The present experiments are entirely at a level wjere we CAN accomplish things. (Pumping and huling N2 from number of satellite sources is still a bit beyond us, while a study involving simple obligate algae is in our bag of tricks.
The very next rovers are going to have species experiments using algae to do a volumetric production of O2 and other carrier gases from Martian Soil. N2 was never a big concern because JPL has a pretty good idea right now of the surficial makeup. Theres a huge amt of N salts left over from the epochs when mars was a water planet.

SMALL STEPS. At leawt we are seemingly moving forward.

Your comment about "stuck in hunter gatherer mode" is what I picture. Many of the inputs of this topic assume an "Either or" philosophy" on discovery and applications.
"We should kill disease before we experiment with space travel".I hear that kind of stuff a lot. WHY CANT WE DO BOTH?
Since most of these efforts rarely dovetail because they involve different disciplines, I dont see why we cant accomplish many multi-disciplinary goals at the same time.

Im certain we will find that many findings in one area will be insertable into others. I recall tht the original CAT scanning techniques was adapt FROM X ray crystallography by looking at direct oriented slices . In archeology, back in the 1960's the technique was called "Radiography" . These two dudes who cam together and discovered that the methodology, when rotated around series of axes, can see through various layers of tissue, hers radiography and x-ray crystallography re just able to read ion spacing ( called "2d" spacing).

Bragg won a Nobel prize early in the 1900's for powder diffraction and The next Nobel prize was based on making the tool a whole new generation of scanning that involved circular motion an better math analysis of the returns.

The atmosphere of Earth has a lot of Nitrogen, 78% according to Universe Today dot com. I acknowledged high start up costs for scooping nitrogen out of Titan's atmosphere, but once you've a shuttle or two running, it's start 'em up and forget about 'em. The goal is not just getting nitrogen into the atmosphere, but getting an atmosphere dense enough to protect life from stellar radiation, and avoiding the most extreme effects of almost no atmosphere. If you've going to set up domes for growing food and habitats on the surface, you need about 500 millibars of pressure withing them for humans to work. At 350 millibars, you'd need to add oxygen if people are going to do more than sit around and feel sorry for themselves. Thanks to the relative low gravity, we could drop off human-carrying rovers and a good many mechanical components with much less structural protection than is needed to drop something from space of the surface of the earth. The best initial set-up for human habitation would be living in cellars--you could build stout roof structures to resist the pressure differential and to let in sunlight, with the four walls and the floor dug down into the surface.

Eventually, though, the best way to obviate the costs of building and the pressure differential is to pump up the atmosphere. We can break up ice asteroids and drop them into even the existing atmosphere, and get some water vapor and some hydrogen and oxygen. Lots of nitrogen from Titan, though (right next door, practically, near Saturn) would solve a lot of the pressure differential problems.

Aw come on . . . she makes it up as she goes along.

We dont necessarily disagree, we are motly arguing what we can ccomplish and when and why.

Im NOT fan of a Mars with woods and fields . I feel we will be dwelling in suitable , safe spaces (Craters with carbon fibre roofs or Antarctica -like PODS)( the metals and the carbon gathered sdirectly from tuff like carbonates and metals like Al, Fe, Ti, and Cu/Mn )

I feel we will be living in compounds like that for a hundred years or so, then we will learn about how to better manipulate gradient point energy and nuke (probably thermonuke by then also)


We will need to learn how to manipulate our genetic code also (lotsa problems with this one-Itll be more like 2nd amendment disagreements)

Whether or not there are fields is not something which matters much to me, but with a dense atmosphere, so that the pressure differential problems can easily be solved, it will inevitably warm up the planet. Frozen CO2, dry ice, sublimates at about 193 K, which is well below freezing (273 K), and a temperature which we'd reach rather quickly. With a thicker atmosphere (and it wouldn't have to be very thick) we could release lichens. Those are symbionts of a fungus and alga, or a cyanobacterium. I suspect they'd adapt quickly, and spread quickly.

I’ll be interested in both the technical and social challenges.

Anyone remember ‘Biosphere 2'? They failed to make a self sustaining environment Right Here on this planet. The societal problem could be the biggest challenge. The 'crew' was carefully selected for compatibility and last I heard they were still not on speaking terms after the experiment prematurely ended.

See this post.

I came late to the thread.

If we are talking about the current Martian habitat craze, it’s all about Elon's vision of becoming a multi planetary civilization.
Hey, it’s his money. Go Elon.

We can if we remember the 80/20 rule. We can get 80% of what we want in numerous fields with 20% of the funding. The problem is when we start saying we want 100% in one field. That is going to absorb all the funding and freeze other disciplines out. I support robotic exploration of space, I don't support the huge investment it would take to get a person to Mars and back. To me that's going for the 100% and will come at the expense of research in multiple other disciplines.