Crewed or uncrewed space missions

@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Why was it "good"?

Because it allowed our species to thrive and grow.

hightor wrote:

Survival isn't a matter of "good" vs "bad".

I disagree. I find survival to be good.

hightor wrote:

They moved in search of food and water.

I think it's more likely that they spread out in search of unclaimed space.

hightor wrote:

There is neither food nor water on Mars.

There is water. There will be food once we start growing it.

hightor wrote:

Because the earth isn't really "crowded" and the "open land" on the moon is inhospitable to human life. Population density on earth can be managed through smarter development and family planning.

Your statement is contradictory. If the Earth were not really crowded, there would be no need to manage our population density.

hightor wrote:

At some point we just have to admit that the game is up. It's over. It's neither good nor bad. Sayonara.

Probably. But not for a very long time.

We can move to a new star system when our current star grows old and dies. And then do that again as necessary.

Orange stars are pretty common and long-lived (between 10 billion to 30 billion years roughly). Finding a perfect orange star with 30 billion years left on the clock may be a long shot, but seeing how common they are, we could probably find a decent home that would last us 15 to 20 billion years before we had to move again.

We can still adapt and survive even after the galaxy runs out of fuel to produce new stars and the universe goes dark. There is plenty of deuterium in a single gas giant to run fusion reactors for a long time. And there are plenty of gas giants. Smaller planets can be mined for uranium and thorium for fission reactors.

If we ever develop the technology to generate energy by feeding mass into small black holes, we won't need to hunt down a few select isotopes in order to generate energy. Any form of matter will do. A single stellar remnant will provide us enough mass to convert directly into energy for a very long time. And there will be a lot of stellar remnants to move to if we ever manage to use one up.

1 Reply

@engineer,

engineer wrote:

What do you think is on Mars that is valuable enough for humans to make up for the lack of breathable atmosphere, the deleterious effects of low gravity, etc?

Unclaimed open space.

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@oralloy,

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Because it allowed our species to thrive and grow.

anthropic chauvinism

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I find survival to be good.

You're lucky. Some find it to be not so good.

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I think it's more likely that they spread out in search of unclaimed space.

By definition hunter-gatherers are always on the move in search of the conditions which they need to survive. Prey becomes scarce, the climate changes, rival populations threaten their security. They seek unclaimed space but not as an end in itself.

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There is water. There will be food once we start growing it.

Yes, that's a story we tell ourselves.

Mars surface 'more uninhabitable' than thought: study

Mars may be wetter than we thought (but still not that habitable)

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If the Earth were not really crowded, there would be no need to manage our population density.

Urban areas are densely populated, not the Earth itself. The fact that we have huge urban centers is a historical development but not an evolutionary adaptation.

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According to a "blue ribbon panel" reporting to the Office of Science And Technology Policy, we can't afford a "manned" lunar program. The United States is emerging from a recession with a lot of bills and it has to reduce costs wherever it can. [written in 2009 during the big recession]

If we can't afford the moon, how can we afford Mars?

I don't want to sound like a broken blog, but this isn't the first time I've discussed the expensive conceit of sending humans to Mars. Quoting myself, "Throughout NASA's history, there's been considerable tension between those who believe in the symbolic importance of getting our human butts out there and those who feel that the astronomical (good word here) costs and barely manageable risks aren't justified when robots are proving themselves so capable."

Lawrence Klauss suggests that we can solve all this by making the trip to Mars one-way. In a 9/11 interview on NPR's "Science Friday", Klauss discussed the cost of sending humans to Mars and, rightly, in my opinion, brought up the advantages of robots. He said that robots will continue to improve and, by the time we are ready for the trip, their abilities may rival those of human astronauts.

So that’s what we should do, right? Send robots?

Well no. Instead of reaching the obvious conclusion, Klaus, feels the pull of putting boots on red sand and thinks there’s GOTTA be a way. Why not, he says, do a one-way mission to establish the first permanent space colony? This, he says, makes sense since it would cost less to deliver the human payload and could lighten the required radiation shielding. A return trip might be fatal anyway because of Gamma ray exposure. So make it one-way.

ScienceAin'tSoBad respectfully doesn't get it.

What about the unbelievable ethical implications of exposing a crew to HALF of a fatal dose of radiation? Will we prohibit transmissions beyond the first joy-filled 3 months so that we don't have to watch them sicken and die? Would this colony, once established, have hopes of generationalism - bearing children and rearing the first native Martians? If so, the radiational offspring of the colonists may give us a chance to communicate with REAL Martians. Two heads, eye stalks, and obsidian skin.

Chopping out the return trip, although it does simplify the shielding design and reduce the bulk of the rocket, is unlikely to reduce the costs enough to make the numbers work but, even if it did, that doesn't justify putting human beings at such risk.

Besides. The "One Way To Mars" idea only blurs the absurdity of a human program. We should focus on building great robots. By the day of the expected human landing, maybe robots will be capable of experiencing the joy of watching the sun set over the earth. They could be our true, if improbable, descendants.

And we wouldn’t have to watch them crawl around on the rim of a crater, dying from radiation poisoning.

source

1 Reply

@hightor,

I think we can afford it. We just have to be willing to spend the money.

That said, I think these should be international endeavors.

With international endeavors, the costs (whatever they are) can be shared with the rest of the world.

I'm fine with making the trip to Mars a one-way trip. However, the international community should first try to manage a permanent lunar base before trying to manage a permanent base on Mars. Let's learn to walk before we try to run a marathon.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

anthropic chauvinism

I'm not ashamed to be human.

hightor wrote:

You're lucky. Some find it to be not so good.

I cannot comprehend not wanting to survive.

hightor wrote:

Yes, that's a story we tell ourselves.

I'm sure that colonizing and terraforming planets will be hard work.

I'm sure that humanity is up to the task.

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@hightor,

There are huge sections of the United States that are empty. You can drive for hours and see nothing but empty land. It might not be the best land, but you can breathe the air and walk around without life support. The US is big enough to give every citizen 6 acres of land. Why would you want land on Mars?

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@engineer,

I know. It's this fixation — Manifest Destiny. But Mars isn't Eden. It's not the Serrengetti. Nor the Olduvai Gorge. Siberia is more hospitable. Even Antarctica.

I appreciate bearnard45's obvious enthusiasm for space research and I don't mean to dismiss his interest at all. But I'm with David Chidakel here — bigger, better, smarter robots can tell us all we need to know. And if they lead us to conclude that it's really worth paying a visit, we can take steps in light of that knowledge, instead of just making the trip to fulfill our imagined role as heroes in some cosmic space opera.

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@hightor,

What do you propose that our descendants do when the sun begins to expand into a red giant?

And actually, the earth will become too hot to sustain life well before we get to the red giant phase.

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@oralloy,

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What do you propose that our descendants do when the sun begins to expand into a red giant?

Give it the finger.

Seriously man, it's not my job to prevent the inevitable extinction of humanity and all life on earth several billion years from now. Should any humanoids be around to witness the lead up I'm sure they'll have their choice of effective coping mechanisms.

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And actually, the earth will become too hot to sustain life well before we get to the red giant phase.

The Republicans will still deny it.

Seriously man, the earth is going to get too hot to sustain many forms of life a lot sooner than that. We're losing stuff already — species are going extinct at a record rate and coral reefs, boreal forests, and polar ice are dwindling.

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@hightor,

not to mention cedar waxwings. They all sobered up an moved away

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@farmerman,

Remember the canary in the coal mine.

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@hightor,

cn you hum few bars?

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Should any humanoids be around to witness the lead up I'm sure they'll have their choice of effective coping mechanisms.

I expect that humanity will be well on their way to a new star system by that point.

1 Reply

@oralloy,

we'll be able to upload ourselves to a gas "cloud" going out there at (c) and then be followed by a "Biological 3-D printer and were back.
Im still working on making the 3D printer chug along at least at 0.25 c .
We will have to leave the galaxy

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@farmerman,

Why will we have to leave the galaxy, and where would we go?

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@oralloy,

Andromeda will be in the neighborhood and could cause some local "unloosening". Opinions among cosmologists vary, some say big truble some say "nah"
When the sun begins to rise up, moving to Mars or a Jovian Moon could extend our Solar system occupancy a hundred million years or so.

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@farmerman,

The merger with Andromeda will stand a fair chance of sending our sun into the core of the galaxy (where chain supernovas will fry us), and a fair chance of expelling our sun from the galaxy altogether (leaving us in something similar to the Magellanic Clouds).

But this will be a very slow motion process. If our sun is moving somewhere where we don't want to go, we will have plenty of time to move to a different star.

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@oralloy,

The cosmologists who have taken a mor dire prognosis view were more concerned about garvity effects unleashing space debris and asteroid type bodies to recreate a "heavy Bombarmnt era" scenario .Then all those games guys will finally have a reason to be. Using highly focused energy beams like Ming the Merciless.

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@hightor,

Well done.

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