Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Flying Dice]

Good on them quoting Chyba. The man's spot on, “Humanity should become a space-faring civilization, and if that is not the point of human spaceflight, what the hell are we doing?” indeed.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's to the point where I really question people's sense of priority. From the day I first saw the Blue Marble photograph as a child onward I knew in my heart that this was really the only thing that Actually Mattered. Everything else, all of our social and economic goals, are just in the service of bringing humanity to space and expanding throughout the universe.

Hell, even a lot of people's personal goals are that, and rightfully so. Honestly, I think a lot of us are in outright denial. We treat everything outside Earth as usually being just some kind of sci-fi fantasy, not a real place that actually exists all the time, and we've never been. To really give a shit about our mindless wars and conflicts down here demands that you not give out there any weight, because there's a lot more out there.

[Flying Dice]

Also loving all the morons complaining about "buh buh if Earth has a catastrophe it's still going to be more habitable than Mars", ignoring that we'd lose the base needed to survive such conditions, that a self-sufficient Mars aiding Earth post-catastrophe would be vastly easier than bootstrapping from pre-digital bullshit with a bunch of information-age limpwristed office drones, that the long-term plan is to terraform Mars, &c. &c.

That and the people who don't comprehend the timescale the solar wind-assisted stripping of planetary atmosphere occurs over. Didn't NASA work out that it was something like 100g per year on Mars? Yes, lacking a magnetosphere is troubling, but in the sense of "we have to have a slight net increase in the production of atmospheric gasses and build underground so that our per-decade cancer risk increase stays roughly in line with Earth average". Also the people trying to assert that skeletal deterioration living in ~1/3 Earth-normal gravity and never trying to return to living in 1g is equivalent to living in 0g for a while and then living the rest of your life in 1g. Or assuming that forces from tripping and falling &c. would be as severe as in 1g.

I mean god damn the people who know a tiny bit of science come off as far more foolish than the stoner who asked about what would be done with astronaut crap (recycle it, dumbass).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The magnetosphere protects the atmosphere, not the humans. A thick atmosphere with no magnetosphere will eventually be stripped away, but while it's there the cancer risk will be negated.

Still, terraforming remains far off unless we make some unforeseen breakthroughs. The Mars colonies will be bubble-cities for a while yet.

[Dorsidwarf]

Musk wants to nuke the ice caps to terraform, apparently

[Starver]

I say we just power up the ancient alien ice mines, just in time to save the three-breasted woman of negotiable affection.

[LordBaal]

Wonder what Musk must think about the venusian floating habitats... yes, I went there(as in I touched the subject tha was hotly debated a few weeks ago)

And while I applaud and wishes the best for Musk, and honestly I'm more than willing to help him in any way I could. I still firmly believe that firstly, a moon outpost is needed and is the first logical step. Not a huge city or anything, but a simple outpost where effects of lower but not 0 gravity could be studied closer to home. A place where robots or rc machines could build some.infrastructure beforehand with virtual real time input and feedback from earth and where help, supplies and critical medical care are measured in hours away instead of months.

[Starver]

Wonder what Musk must think about the venusian floating habitats... yes, I went there.

How was the weather? Did you try the local cuisine?

(Grumble grumble typo corrected.)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It takes days to reach the moon, not hours.

[TempAcc]

Putting and managing things on the earth's orbit is also considerably easier and cheaper then using a moon base, too, both on the logistical and rocket science- sense. Building a moonbase likely wouldn't help all that much with giving insight on how to build a base in mars, either, considering mars' conditions are significantly different.

[mainiac]

A moon base lets you use an electro magnetic rail launcher.  You cant do that in orbit.  Well you could, there just would be no point.  Moon bases can use local resources.  Moon bases can be underground which might be a good design for mars colonies.

Honestly I dont get why people want to go to mars at all when the moon is right there.

[Max™]

Mars has a bit of protection from radiation due to the atmosphere, but remember that 6.3 kilopascals is where your body is warm enough to boil water, and even the deepest canyons on Mars only reach 1.1 kilopascals. You need a different type of spacesuit than you would on the moon, but you still need a spacesuit, because it's close enough to space that you aren't really going to care about the minute differences as it kills you.

The infrastructure is exciting, the colony idea is silly. We won't have the sort of colony that could survive by itself on Mars and reseed a post-catastrophe Earth any time in the next century, most likely several centuries.

[Gentlefish]

Mars has a bit of protection from radiation due to the atmosphere, but remember that 6.3 kilopascals is where your body is warm enough to boil water, and even the deepest canyons on Mars only reach 1.1 kilopascals. You need a different type of spacesuit than you would on the moon, but you still need a spacesuit, because it's close enough to space that you aren't really going to care about the minute differences as it kills you.

The infrastructure is exciting, the colony idea is silly. We won't have the sort of colony that could survive by itself on Mars and reseed a post-catastrophe Earth any time in the next century, most likely several centuries.

The body has its own internal pressure, fam.

Body-hugging space suits are also now a thing so we don't have the bulky space suits of the 60's. Those are like the old diving suits of the 30's. Bulky and bad where the new ones are compressive and slim.

[Max™]

Internal pressure is part of why exposure to vacuum is damaging, but I was assuming the presence of a compression suit, that won't help when the water in your lungs and mouth and on your eyes starts to boil, doesn't sound fun. I mean, obviously it isn't the same as having 373 K water dumped on you, but definitely not something I want to try either way.

[Gentlefish]

Internal pressure is part of why exposure to vacuum is damaging, but I was assuming the presence of a compression suit, that won't help when the water in your lungs and mouth and on your eyes starts to boil, doesn't sound fun. I mean, obviously it isn't the same as having 373 K water dumped on you, but definitely not something I want to try either way.

Why are you not assuming a hard helmet? I mean, we do still need to breathe and the Martian atmosphere isn't, you know, breatheable. The helmet will be pressurized, but we don't have to rely on clumsy "astronaut" suits any more.