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Will the Dutch really populate Mars?
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Kim Stanley Robinson already laid out how moving to Mars will work: send all your equipment ahead of time, build your first habitat underground instead of in a dome, invent anti-aging drugs and have an awesome socialist revolution.
I agree they definitely need to send the equipment ahead of time so they have a redundant backup for everything as a minimum. Even if it proves to fruitless I am a big supporter and fan of this because it is at least pointing us in the right direction toward space travel. If it becomes globally popular then at least most of the people on power will see that it is politically expedient to support it. Or at least give much more backing to space projects in general. I would really like to see the Universal Elevator become a reality though.
SDZ, I assume you mean the space elevator? The obstacle right now is coming up with ways to manufacture the super strong, super light nanomaterials needed to make the actual ribbon. Graphene sheets appear to be the most promising, although carbon nanotubes are also possible.As for Mars.
One way is the way to do it. Radiation shielding is going to be an obstacle on Mars, which has no full magnetic shield. It does have "spot" shields you could tuck your initial colony into. But both that and getting there would be made MUCH safer if we could crack magnetic shielding.
Jennifer wrote: "SDZ, I assume you mean the space elevator? The obstacle right now is coming up with ways to manufacture the super strong, super light nanomaterials needed to make the actual ribbon. Graphene sheets..."Hi Jennifer you are right, I don't know how it melded into a new name in my mind!
I read that they've raised $500m towards the $6bn, so there's quite a long way to go (in more ways than one...). It's intriguing that scientists are still not sure why there's methane in Mars' atmosphere (on Earth it's mostly caused by biological processes): if life is discovered on Mars, then growing your own food suddenly seems less daunting.
Hey, Mark Watney did it, why can't four rookies do it?
Mod
http://on.msnbc.com/1Fq6TRr
The more publicity it gets. The greater chance the program has at attracting more sponsors. If it can attract enough interest and money then it will have a chance. A part of me wants the other mars programs to collaborate when a front runner starts developing some major breakthroughs in ship design and technology. Another part of me thinks that competition is more ideal in creating reliable delivery systems. As for political structuring on mars, I think it will naturally have to evolve towards a social anarchical system if humans are to survive there. Most likely people won't have a choice. Those first poor four people are going to face insurmountable odds to survive. Just getting there is a huge problem. We just don't have reliable space ship technology yet. We have no manufacturing infrastructure in space for one thing, which is a huge hurdle. The space elevator is a great idea and probably more unlikely to be built until more industry is in space to warrant such a large investment. I wish Mars One luck for sure though. They should team up with people like Elon Musk if they already are not.
Personally I file them on the same shelf as the guys who run freedomship.comIE investment scammers. Like FreedomShip they have no hardware, no plan for how to get said hardware, a plan that's idealistically appealing but technically infeasible and a budget that's ludicrously short of what they'll need.
So no, the Dutch won't put people on Mars. At least not these Dutchmen.
Interesting interview, Betsy...I'd like to see a Mission to Mars, but they shouldn't send people who are abandoning dependents back home. People who would abandon family for glory will also abandon the team for their own selfish interests when the going gets rough.
As for the Dutch settling space? Who knows... Maybe this will spark off a new space race [*fingers crossed*] Such a more useful way to spend taxpayer money than funding wars in the middle east, eh?
I mentioned Elon Musk earlier because if anyone is going to do it. I think Elon should play a big part. At least he is showing how it can be done privately. We need more entrepreneurs like him. It's hard to put a figure on how much the commercialization of the mars mission would be worth, including the filming and rebroadcast of Life on Mars footage. Certainly, this would also mean that McDonald's are coming to mars!
Davidreneke
Lost opportunity to be sponsored by Mars Bars.
I wonder how much a Big Mac would cost on Mars?
Just watched the most recent episode of Castle last night. Episode involves several people who have been training to go to mars while living in a mars simulation. The episode and seeing the episode after noticing this thread was interesting. Episode was titled "The Wrong Stuff."
I think that is an impossible goal to raise that much money through crowd funding. Besides which the genetic diversity will not be enough to sustain a healthy population. Also, the obligatory joke. "Can't Dutch this. *Ni ninerner*" (Can't tough this.)
Joshua wrote: "I think that is an impossible goal to raise that much money through crowd funding. Besides which the genetic diversity will not be enough to sustain a healthy population. Also, the obligatory jok..."
I'm not sure that genetic diversity would be a problem for long. If they prove that a permanent colony on Mars is now viable, I think they'd soon have a lot of company--the Russians, more Europeans, the Chinese, maybe even North Koreans.
I'm not sure that genetic diversity would be a problem for long. If they prove that a permanent colony on Mars is now viable, I think they'd soon have a lot of company--the Russians, more Europeans, the Chinese, maybe even North Koreans.
I want to agree with you in theory but there are two problems. The first is just how many people it takes to make a proper gene pool. The second is the fact that we know we can do it on the moon... Yet we don't.
Joshua wrote: "The second is the fact that we know we can do it on the moon... Yet we don't......."
We can't really know that until we do it. There may be stuff we don't know yet until we live there.
We can't really know that until we do it. There may be stuff we don't know yet until we live there.
The below article doesn't paint a hopeful picture of this venture.http://qz.com/346639/sorry-but-those-...
We can't really know that until we do it. There may be stuff we don't know yet until we live th..."
The fact that it is so relatively close and easy to access compared to Mars and yet we haven't set up a colony, even to just mine exotic elements, is not a good sign for Mars colonization.
Conal wrote: "The below article doesn't paint a hopeful picture of this venture.
http://qz.com/346639/sorry-but-those-..."
Yeah, but that's just money.
http://qz.com/346639/sorry-but-those-..."
Yeah, but that's just money.
The diversity problem could be fixed easily enough. How many people do you think would be willing to share sperm and ova so that any space colony could have viable genetic material to create a new healthy colony. Certainly any colony creation would need lots of seed, so including some human seed seems very possible. So I guess we need to create some reliable artificial uterus.
Rion wrote: "The diversity problem could be fixed easily enough. How many people do you think would be willing to share sperm and ova so that any space colony could have viable genetic material to create a new ..."The implications of that are pretty weird... and that is only a short term fix, it wouldn't be viable until you reach at least a breeding population of at least 3k.
Of all the things to worry about when going to Mars I don't think this is one. Presumably if we're sending one ship we can eventually send others. Mars isn't very far away and it would take something pretty drastic like all of earth being wiped out in order for this to be an issue.EDIT: If we're talking some sort of intergenerational ship then this may become an issue but even then it seems low on the priority scale and easily solved.
See? I throw this out to my space opera peeps and already we're talking about PORN on Mars 3:-)[*okay ... that's a bit of a stretch ... but I still think it's funny*]
I think the bigger problem is what has been said, the fact we can't be bothered with the moon, so why Mars?
[*Dusts off old VHS tape of Red Planet...*]
As a kid in the seventies, I always imagined we'd have permanent colonies on the moon by now. It's like the sense of adventure left us and ran away after the last moon missions. I know we had the shuttles, and we still have the ISS, but I'm disappointed we've never gone any further and are still hanging around in low earth orbit.
I was a kid in the 'fifties. The year 2000 was a magic number, and those of us into Science Fiction thought we'd have the entire Solar System settled by now. A lot of optimism back then.
Coming out of World War II, there was this sense of shared communal values, of pulling together to win great things. There was also this shared sense of battling 'the other.' First Germany, and then that sentiment got channeled against the Soviet Union. There was also a lot more trust in the government and the other shared social structures such as religion and education. This sentiment persisted through the 1950's and most of the way through the 1960's (pre-Vietnam) when the Soviets suddenly launched Sputnik.Nowadays, that shared sense of purpose is gone. Unless an enemy the entire world truly hates (such as ISIS) sends up a mission before us, the people are too fractured to cough up and spend some money on the space program.
I think Putin in Russia is talking up a new "space race," but we'll see.
Ken wrote: "I think Putin in Russia is talking up a new "space race," but we'll see."In order for any race to take place you need at least two racers who desire to win. Whether the goal is to just beat the other (See the Space Race and arguably the entire Cold War) or to seize a prize doesn't matter.
Putin might talk up a race, but since ever conceivable player already have space launch capability and with the Cold War proving quite thoroughly that Soviet style communism doesn't work long term, a symbolic goal like landing a man on the Moon largely for the sake of doing it first isn't likely to gain much traction.
Christian wrote: "Putin might talk up a race, but since ever conceivable player already have space launch capability and with the Cold War proving quite thoroughly that Soviet style communism doesn't work long term, a symbolic goal like landing a man on the Moon largely for the sake of doing it first isn't likely to gain much traction...."
Hard to predict in some cases where popular opinion will go.
Hard to predict in some cases where popular opinion will go.
I've been to Russia ... twice. They have much more civic pride about their space program than we do, which is probably why we currently are sending our astronauts and supplies up into space in a Russian rocket. They have far fewer resources than we do, and yet their space program did not fall by the wayside.
Selecting candidates at this stage all seems a bit premature to me, when no country currently has the capability to take people beyond low Earth orbit. I know Mars One are doing it for the publicity to raise the cash, but it doesn't seem to be working. I suspect Space X might actually get there first.
$6 Billion in crowdfunding??? Did the person who made that claim truly believe that figure or was it, "Well make ahh...6 billion."?
Anna wrote: "I've been to Russia ... twice. They have much more civic pride about their space program than we do, which is probably why we currently are sending our astronauts and supplies up into space in a R..."Actually it did, quite hard. And it's more or less still lying were it fell.
These days the Russian Space Program is essentially a launch provider.
Leonie wrote: "At least they're still launching!"NASA isn't here to do routine jobs. NASA exists to push the boundaries of science, to take the risks and spend the effort the private sector can't afford. And putting satellites into orbit and people into low earth orbit is routine and should be pushed out to the private sector. This was how NACA worked before and it made it possible for the US aeronautical industry to dominated the world marked the way they did for 50 years.
Unfortunately NASA forgot that part in the aftermath of the Apollo program and the Shuttle program ended up as the tangled mess because of it.
The CCDev program and the Orion program looks to be a sign that they themselves have realised this. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel they're doing what they do best, and that's pushing the boundaries while they let the private sector what they do best, develop, optimise and refine.
I agree that they should have started the CCDev program way before they did. However that's a failure at a higher level.
And in case anyone is wondering the manned part of the CCDev program should produce a manrated platform sometime during 2016.
Christian wrote: "Leonie wrote: "At least they're still launching!"NASA isn't here to do routine jobs. NASA exists to push the boundaries of science, to take the risks and spend the effort the private sector can't ..."
Well go, NASA!
Christian wrote: "Leonie wrote: "At least they're still launching!"NASA isn't here to do routine jobs. NASA exists to push the boundaries of science, to take the risks and spend the effort the private sector can't ..."
Great to hear all of that!
If you haven't been watching the news lately, the Dutch company Mars One has announced they are funding a reality show to set up a base on Mars, populated by four volunteer astronauts who will set up a colony there and build a biosphere (gross over-simplification by me ... I am not all that technically gifted). They claim they will raise $6 billion dollars through crowdfunding to pay for this venture.
In any event, to up the ante, a second group of scientists now claims the first 'contestant' will die by Day 68.
http://qz.com/278312/yes-the-people-g...
A claim which Mars One disputes...
Okay, Space Opera Fans! We've got some of the most scientifically gifted minds on the planet in this community. So let's all rag-chew on this and pick apart whether this mission will work ... because ... a mission to Mars sounds cool ... especially if we all get to watch people overcome these kinds of challenges.
Be epic!
Anna Erishkigal
Borg Queen