It looks like I was beat on the first part of my post. LOL Oh well. Human missions will be a lot more expensive but who cares about a picture from a rover when a human could touch a rock on another planet. Christopher Columbus (Spelling?) didn't send a rover over to the New World to see if it was safe, or wait for them to invent better ships, weapons, and armour. He just went over.



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Super interesting input everyone!

I did think that billions seemed somewhat extreme, but I could have sworn they'd said that on the news... $165 million, that's not so expensive, I can live with that

I knew I'd read about an experiment on Earth regarding this sort of thing in the past, it was called Biosphere II, and the link below gives the story behind it all and why it failed

http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay.html?DOC=vc2%5C2my%5Cmy2_biosphere.html

Anyone read Tad William's Otherland books?

First we send those little algae to Mars, which then transform it's atmosphere slowly towards more O2. Then we send robots which will start to built a habitat for us. Then at last, we can launch a big spaceship (maybe kind of the Civ3-Space-Race-Victory one). Et voila! Ce tout! LOL

Yeah, we need to heat up Mars first, so polluting it will do nicely (more CO2, greenhouse effect), then go the algea to transform CO2 into O2, meanwhile keep polluting until you can plant trees (the real O2 makers) and then just build a home It's just that simple

G-Force

Haven't I seen something like this in a movie a few years ago?
I just mention it, because in the movie almost everyone died ...

As for prospect for teh future, I think we're closer to getting to "Soylent Green" rather than the perfectly cleaned and tolerant world of Star Trek

As for Mars, maybe we can get there, but I don't see how it could be something really important (other than the exploration, which is important and enough of a reason to get there in the first place). Not with our propulsion techs, not with all the cargo problems (air, food, water, energy for the ship) and the reliability ones. And the cost of it would prevent from sending many people there.
Not anyway in a near future. And as the wise man would say, in the long long term, we're all dead. Specially with things degrading at such a fast pace: deserts spreading (maybe it's not the correct word), sources of water diminishing, and sea levels rising (too bad, I wished I could spend my old days in Rio, but it seems I would have my feet wet in there by then)

"Soylent Green" is people!

So?

G-Force roughly 70% of the oxygen made on earth every day comes from microbes living in the oceans. Trees aren't up to much oxygen-wise

Damn... its going to be some project to get enough water to mars to make actual oceans and then heat it

Just a dumb question...there isn't any water on Mars, right ?

Some frozen water. It's suspected that there might be some large underground deposits but afaik there's not any good evidence for or against this yet.

Water vapor's a good greenhouse gas, too, so having oceans would provide warmth as well as water and a home for microbes.

There is only one way the USA is going to put a "manned" station on the Moon or send astronauts to Mars. That will be after we get the wake up call when China, India or Luxembourg does it first. Remember Sputnik?

~SDC~

You can make water from the rocks, theres loads of oxygen in the soil - just add hydrogen

Sorry, guys, maybe you misunderstood me. To clarify, when we started talking about the feasibility of manned space exploration, I wasn't thinking in a Mars-specific kind of way. I was being more general. What I intended to say was that we cannot give up on space exploration altogether because then we won't even be in a position to PONDER sending men to Mars, or wherever. Besides, this house (the Earth) is getting a bit crowded, and eventually we'll have to expand. Got any colony ships available?

Bill

~SDC~

It would really need a lot more political incentive to get manned missions going - a statement like "Earth's doomed, this is humanity's best hope of survival" might do the trick, but we're not likely to hear that anytime soon

Something to remember about the original space race was its military context - it was often used as a way to demonstrate missile technology during the Cold War. Also, the Americans were pressured to move faster because it wasn't a one-horse race. Without either of those factors in play now, I don't see a manned mission to Mars happening soon. A Columbus-like mission (just try exploring and see what happens) isn't going to happen, either - if a mission does happen, it'll be planned down to the last detail. Media attention for lost explorers would be much larger now than in 1492.

What oceans on Mars? What microbes? The planet (currently) lacks the atmosphere to support life.

G-Force

Good point

Colonising other planets is no longer fashionable (except in games of GalCiv, obviously). Firstly, no matter how polluted earth gets (short of a massive nuclear war) it's still likely to be a better place to live than Mars. The Sahara desert may not be a great place for agriculture, but it has air to breath, plentiful sunlight for solar power, and food and liquid water within a reasonable distance. Any technology that could allow you to live on Mars would probably work better in the less habitable regions of earth. While it might be possible to give Mars an atmosphere, it's a project that most scientists think would take many thousands of years to have any noticeable effect.
The idea that putting a man on Mars would be a first step to leaving the solar system is also scientifically dubious. Anyone who's played GalCiv knows that in order to colonise another system, you need HyperDrive(TM) technology, and then you need to build an enormous colony ship. (Incidentally, does it bother anyone that a cheap spaceship can carry 99 billion people?) There is currently no reason to think that faster-than-light travel is possible. The other way to put a man on another planet would be to send a probe four light-years to Alpha Centauri (probably taking hundreds of years), have it send back information about the planets of that system, and if it was lucky enough to find something vaguely earth-like we could try to build a 'generation starship' which could make the very long slow journey to that planet, supporting a few people whose descendants might arrive there. This is not going to solve overcrowding on earth. Of course, it's always possible that something new will turn up that will solve all these problems, but I wouldn't bank on it.
Incidentally, the global overcrowding threat is now thought to be less serious than originally anticipated - in Europe, for example, the average number of children per family is falling dramatically, and some coutntries is below the minimum level required to keep the population level stable. Theories to account for this include (a) falling fertility levels, possibly due to pollution, (b) the incredibly high cost nowadays of raising a child, and (c) the fact that modern life is so complicated and interesting that people would rather focus on their careers or play computer games than bring up kids.
In many of the other countries where birth rates remain high, high death rates are keeping population levels down. (Not that this is a cause for celebration, of course; the amount of human misery suffered endured in places where 50% of the people have AIDS is probably greater than that potentially caused by overcrowding.)
I'm not saying that population levels are not a cause for concern - environmental issues such as the global fish shortage would be a lot less pressing with fewer people eating them - but I do think that if and when we're in a position to export a significant proportion of humanity to other worlds, we'll have had to sort it out one way or another already.

~SDC~

Here we are getting closer to Soulent Green everytime.
And the solution to overcrowding is more likely to be something like "Soylent green is people!", rather than sending them away to other planets. (although we may say that in order to convince the crowds into going to the soylent green processing factory).

Sorry if it sounds a bit dark. But there is little reason for optimism, and what I read in the environment thread took away all of it I had left...
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Well, looks like Bush is going to announce a Mars program, and a lunar colony as well.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/08/national2052EST0790.DTL&type=science

Good look out Vincible . . .

- from vincibles link



Woe thats a lot of bucks . . . 500 billion to establish a permanent moon base in the next 10 years or so ain't pocket money either . . . I'd say the Chinesse must be showing thier hand, what a radical call otherwise.

Interesting time to be alive don't you think?

Pick me, pick me, pick me! I got ten years to get into shape and learn all that pilot stuff . . .

My vertigo on the other hand might be a bit of a problem . . . sigh.


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Further update:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3950099/

I think Grathocke's point re: Sputnik is worth thinking about - especially as China has made it clear that they plan to actively pursue a manned space program on a short timetable... The timing of Bush's plan seems suspect, especially as the shuttle fleet is having serious problems and NASA currently has a very conspicuous black eye.

Mmm . . . no real suprize I guess, America's pretty keen to stay numero uno for as long as they can . . .

All other points aside, do you think humanity is honestly ready for this. The moon is an important influence on our Earth (tides and who knows what else?) . . . I'd shudder to think of a 'Space 1999' like accident happening there . . . what kind of effect on it's orbit are long range primary launches going to cause? It is a relatively small body in a balanced (slightly expanding) orbit . . . anyone know about this stuff?

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Not really, but Bush might have found himself something to rally the American people behind him as the elections are approaching ...

G-Force

I teach science, so I know a bit, but my specialism is chemistry so don't blame me if this is wrong , the launch of shuttles from a moons surface should have almost no effect at all on the moon, the gravitational forces that keep it in a relatively constant orbit are huge compared to the energy given out by launching any conventional ship, even powrful nukes aimed at the surface would have a minimal impact on its orbit which would soon normalise, I think

I know a little about this, because im in Physics. Exar is right, there would be no change to the moon's orbit from a launch, but a nuclear warhead of big enough maginitude could possibly cause a noticable difference.

With what everyone else is talking about, I think we should go to the moon and mars, and set up bases, because we need the experience with foreign planets, for a mission to Alpha Centauri. The costs will be obscene, but I think it makes sense. We need to develop a method for cryogenics, or we need generation ships.