You missed the point. The movie that was cited on this thread had humans walking around in space suits like those that were shown in "The Martian". And, scientists stated that the suits in "The Martian" would have been totally insufficient. My argument is that the suits in the movie cited on this thread would also be insufficient for many of the same reasons. As for extinction, which do you think would be harder to survive: - earth after a supervolcano eruption - mars as is My bet is that it would be easier to engineer human species survival here on Earth than on Mars without Earth support.
A supervolcano would kill billions and there's nothing we can do to stop it. A Mars colony would slowly be built up in a controlled manner. Let me know when engineers figure out how to stop a supervolcano or an impact event...especially since you are so against space travel.
I didn't say anything about stopping a supervolcano. What I proposed is that we could build a colony on earth that could survive a supervolcano more easily and for less money than we could build a colony of similar size on Mars. I'm in favor of our science and engineering future in space. But, I'm not really sold on the idea that humans have to be there - at least in the foreseeable future.
Martian suits would be quite similar to those used in "The Martian" and new suits being developed right now are almost the same.
How many people are you planning to have living on Mars with no Earth support for the same period of time?
First, not just Mars. Second, as noted previously, it may take a century to build up both the technology and infrastructure to make self-sustaining off-planet colonies.
My understanding is that these suits are being designed for Earth orbit. Such orbits are protected by our magnetosphere and thus require far less shielding than would an interplanetary flight. Also, Mars has far less of a magnetosphere than does Earth. So, existing on Mars for an extended period remains a serious problem. Ideas do exist - such has building habitable spaces inside some large lava tube that could be found on Mars.
Not just Mars?? Do you think it would take a century to build an environment on Earth capable of supporting a human colony through a supervolcano event? I'm sure that eventually we'll have people staying in space somewhere for longer than a year or two. However, I just do not see that as an objective in itself. We're making rapid progress in automation and robotics. It seems to me that our need for space activities will be addressed by automata for a long time to come. As we see today, sending humans even just to low earth orbit is HUGELY more expensive than sending nonhuman objects. I'd rather budget 1,000 robotic missions than one human mission - and I think that's a conservative estimate of the cost tradeoff.
Nice questions, but obviously diversionary. Do you really think you can save all of humanity from a supervolcano or impact event? More to the point, why do you hate the idea of space exploration and colonization so much?
I find it unlikely humans will colonize Mars for multiple reasons. 1) It is far easier and less expensive to create a colony is space (Gravity/storms/dust...etc....). 2) Transport logistics are difficult at best. 3) Life will soon be found underground. A rotating hub station can be expanded as required and creates the gravity needed for human health. Hydroponics and other food sources are in the loop already and resource availability is already floating in space.
I think survival from catastrophes are more easily addressed on Earth. In fact, preparing for that on Earth could have direct benefit to more earthlings than would fit in a survival pod. I am very interested in space exploration. But, i don't see there being a cost/benefit to spacemen.
Very good points. Still, thatleaves open the issue of food, water, oxygen, etc. We can scavenge o2 and h2o from eliminations. But, we can not eat poop yet. Also, there is some amount of loss in scavenging, I suspect.
Lol. Yes, that would notwork too well! But, if there is to be a publicly funded project for ensuringthe survival of a few humans, I thini it will work better if Earth is the "spacecraft"
One of the must abundant elements in the Universe is water which is almost everywhere we look, this can be broken down into oxygen for breathing, hydrogen for fuel and used to drink and grow food....in fact all of these things are being done at some level today. Human waste can be mixed with soil to make fertile growing materials and recycling water/Air is also being done in practice.
....and now liquid water may have been found on Mars. https://www.wired.com/story/large-body-of-liquid-water-on-mars/ FOR DECADES MARS has teased scientists with whispers of water's presence. Valleys and basins and rivers long dry point to the planet's hydrous past. The accumulation of condensation on surface landers and the detection of vast subterranean ice deposits suggest the stuff still lingers in gaseous and solid states. But liquid water has proved more elusive. Evidence to date suggests it flows seasonally, descending steep slopes in transient trickles every Martian summer. The search for a big, enduring reservoir of wet, potentially life-giving H2O has turned up nothing. Until now. The Italian Space Agency announced Wednesday that researchers have detected signs of a large, stable body of liquid water locked away beneath a mile of ice near Mars' south pole. The observations were recorded by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument—Marsis for short. "Marsis was born to make this kind of discovery, and now it has," says Roberto Orosei, a radioastronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics, who led the investigation. His team's findings, which appear in this week's issue of Science, raise tantalizing questions about the planet's geology—and its potential for harboring life. Marsis collected its evidence from orbit, flying aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. It works by transmitting pulses of low-frequency electromagnetic waves toward the red planet. Some of those waves interact with features at and below the Martian surface and reflect back toward the instrument, carrying clues about the planet's geological composition. Conceptually, using the instrument to study Mars' polar regions couldn't be more straightforward: Just point it toward the ice and see what bounces back....
You don't need to reach lightspeed, just 99.9%. Send a ship accelerating at 1g and you'll reach that in a year while having gravity. 1/2 way to your destination (or a year out depending on what's sooner), flip the ship (or better yet, have a 2nd set of engines on the other end) and fire the engines at 1g acceleration in the other direction to break. We don't have the tech for that atm but it's more attainable than FTL.
Intergalactic travel is not a wise decision without a new physics to make it possible. The time frames involved as well as the enormous risks involved in high speeds through "Empty Space" (which is far from empty) make the entire concept unacceptable. Large scale space station travel makes far more sense and is an attainable possibility.
The idea that motivated this immediate discussion was that of maintaining enough people somewhere in space to live through a catastrophic event and then reseed earth with a human population. Anthropologist Cameron Smith believes it would take 10,000 humans to assure the start of a population on a new planet. He says 40,000 would be better. The Moore idea that 150 would fail. I just believe that a habitat that would maintain that many people for the years required would be easier to create on Earth, where we have water and oxygen even after any known catastrophe, and where we have energy sources that can be hardened, where we could create multiples of these environments, etc. In fact, we could do more to harden our defenses of our full population in some ways.
The entire idea in this would be to do as our species has always done and explore what is beyond the horizon in order to move forward and onto new possibilities.. this is what we do and have always done. Human kind has grown to the point that this amazing Earth is simply not enough anymore, so we want to find something more. Space is the next natural frontier as the Oceans are far less hospitable to our type of life. Building on Earth to survive the Earth makes little sense in the long run and is in many ways shortsighted if not against the nature of what we are.
