Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum European Space Agencys latest Water & Ice Images of Mars

These pics are almost too good to be true.
Taken with the Hi-Res Sterio Camera. Dos'nt say anything about enhancement. Stunning Pics though.

If its as good and true as it looks, guess we will be living up there within 30 years?
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMLF6D3M5E_0.html

We may have a manned exploration mission there by then - depending on a number of factors, but I seriously doubt that any perm or semi-perm settlement will be established by then.

30 years is 15 E/M launch cycles. It will take them 3 more cycles to get the next level of surface Rover on site. And don't forget the delaying effect of putting military installations in space and on the moon. If you think the Space Shuttle has been a waste and a drain, wait till NASA is tasked with supporting and launching space planes, satellite intercepts and support facilities.

I would be more inclined to say that in 30 years time, NASA will be calfed under an expanded new Space Command and the pure research "privatized" in a pseudo gov/university/business venture headed by JPL with budgets more aligned to today's ESA programs (about 1/5th current NASA budget levels).

Europe is too far behind in manned space to make the 30 year window. China will be in the race to the moon. That leaves NASA as the only viable organization to put "living quarters" on Mars.

I hope you are right, but given how long it has taken us to refocus the space program after Apollo, the morass of our Terran commitments, and the short-sighted what-have-you-done-for-me-this-quarter capitalist mindset that owns our leadership, even the idea these bozos can concieve of something 30 years in the future is giving them way, way too much credit.

I hope you are right, but I wouldn't bet at any odds. It would be throwing your money away.

Since we are into prediction:
Take that window times 5, and given no major BioWar errupts, private investors - pilgrims of the New Flesh - will establish the first perm colonies on Mars.

NASA apparently is full of spies and saboteurs.
They conceal any discoveries that might be attributed to USA.

e :rolleyes: s

Interesting link DM but I can't helping noticing that even the private companies are obsessed with making space travel safe. Why? They'll never make it safe. Fast and unsafe would get things done quicker.

In the big picture, it is good that NGOs are getting involved in space exploration and travel.

They have to stress the "safety" issue, congress is getting involved in setting regulations and holding hearings.

If I may paraphrase a famous Jack Nicholson character "People just can't handle the truth." Space travel is very dangerous and will continue to be for a number of centuries at least - regardless of the prostrations of politicians and charlatans. Did I just repeat myself?

If the kingdoms of England, Spain and France were uber-concerned with safety, then there would never have been a Jamestown, a de Soto or many others who died exploring the N.A. wilderness. Losses, true, but ones followed up with successful settlements.

There is something to be found in the comparison to the 15th and 16th centuries. It is extrodinarily expensive, prohibitive in fact, for the "common man" to think about space flight and will continue to be so for a long time.

Looking at the colonization model - Governments sponsored exploration/exploitation expeditions. Once viable economic incentives (mineral/agricultural) developed ,then Governments sold or created NGOs to manage and expand their enterprise.

From 1500 - I could say it took until the early 1800's before transport between Europe and N.A. became an option for the "common man". Before that, indentured sevitude was the barter/slavery coin used by many. Communal groupings to build a better world was used by others. Neither was truely a free man's choice. Even in the 1860's Irishmen were brought to the Northern States and in effect empressed into service in the Union Army to pay for their trip.

350 years from exploration to Joe Common saving up some money to cross the Atlantic and still in that time, it was usually too expensive to chart a round trip ticket - it was a journey of colonization, a one way ride to find new opportunity, their death or their fortune in an unknown, unsafe and strange new world.

Hmmm, interesting comparison. Coming from down-under, I can't help thinking about the British colonization of Australia which relied mostly on prisoners from England.

Say, now there's an idea...

Good observation. Given China's use of political prisioners in "rehab" camps and the increasing paranoid security consciousness of the US, Luna gives a perfect dumping point for long term storage of highly intelligent "incouragables and criminals".

Empressed servatitude, ether somewhat voluntary as in long term work contracts by people making hard economic choices or contracts directly with governments to take away people society would rather be rid of, will certainly be part of opening up Luna, Mars and beyond.

Humanity fools itself when it thinks it has risen above its repeatable past. Death camps and genocide did not end with the fall of Nazism. It will occur again, and again, and again.

If I was looking at life behind bars, I don't think I'd have any hesitation in choosing instead to go build something on the Moon or Mars. How much does it cost to keep a person in a maximum security prison these days? $1000/day? What's the going rate for slinging something out of Earth's pull? Someone should do the maths on this...

High IQ/Anti-socials - serial killers, career criminals, pedophiles and sex criminals - are the obvious candidates for working on H3 collection facilities on Luna, maintaining solar panel farms and communication relay stations (Luna has no ionosphere and with Luna's slow rotation, there are few geosync points to park responders). Earth could serve as a large transponder but security would be a continual problem plus the bandwidth issue as facilities increased.

Our unfriendlies in Quantanimo (sp?) are another source of potential recruits for dangerous task. Who would you want exposed on the surface of Luna for regualr 7 or 8 hour EVAs given the hazzards of CMEs and other radiation?

The "volunteer" faced with a work or die delima - is dependant on the System of Exploitation for the very air they breath. A very real stick to keep discipline. Humanity has the habit of fooling itself in dire situations with such bromides as "Where there is a life, there is hope" and references to some mysterious plan of God putting people in places for purposes. This could be the carrot - reinforced as necessary to keep the captive worker motivated.

The end result - the slave at the end of the technological leash will continue to function until radiation sickness reduces their value so much the oxygen would be turned off for them and their remains will be recycled, used to create large hydroponic farms for sale and export to other orbitals around the Earth system.

Once empressed, the slave serves long after he/she is dead. Nothing I have described is impossible. Given humanity's track record, I believe it to be inevitable.

Hey, how long is someone a Junior around here?

"Hey, how long is someone a Junior around here?"

Until you make a certain number of posts, you are identified as "Junior Member". It changes at 25 or 50, I forget which exactly. It's not meant to be pejorative or insulting. Would you rather be a minnow or a tadpole? ;-)

It changed on post 31.

I know it was not insulting, but it could be a posting requirement or could be a setting of the admin function to allow or restrict certain features. I cut my teeth on the BBS and early net of the mid 90's so I am so far past flame wars and board cred. It is how one handles themselves and their consistancy that sets the unsaid ranking of wether someone takes time to read ones notes or not.

Thanks for the reply.

I like to debate/discuss issues but don't have the heavy science background to join in some of the topics here. That doesn't mean I don't read and try to piece things together as I go.

DM, recycling the physical remains is the icing on the cake! As you say, framing the whole thing as part of God's Plan could work well across all demographics.

Carbon is hard to come by on Luna. Recycling only makes sense. Who would "pay the freight" to shuttle dead criminals back to Earth for internment in soil when they can be reduced to nutrients, minerals and extract the precious H2O on site? An unspoken reality, a cleanzed chemistry form of cannibalism. No one will object.

No one will hardly notice. Like the shoppers of today who don't consider the pretty pink wrapped goodies were ever feeling, flesh and blood creatures, future feeders will not consciously consider that the food they are eating was grown at least in part from the distilled remains of the Pioneers of a New Australia.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Aww. Some of those moon rocks must have been carbonaceous, don'tcha think? We just gotta get our microbes up there and get them to work converting carbonate to organic carbon. We might end up with excess and have to store it in big plastic inflatable silos like they use here when they get so much silage it won't all go in the silo. Imagine a huge plastic bag, thirty feet across and a tenth of a mile long, a nozzle on the side for tapping the contents, filled with methane or free CO2 from bacterial degradation of rocks. The mind boggles. The story forms. Hmm.