[HN Gopher] Mars has a layer of molten rock inside ___________________________________________________________________ Mars has a layer of molten rock inside Author : isaacfrond Score : 141 points Date : 2023-10-26 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nature.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com) | jimnotgym wrote: | We need to go there so we can study it properly. What would the | Victorians, or Columbus, think of us if they saw how we gave up | after going to the moon a few times. | mcv wrote: | I think they would first want to know if there were any natives | worth enslaving there. | | I kid. I agree we should go there. But not because of Columbus | specifically. | Jeff_Brown wrote: | It's actually an interesting comparison. If the Queen of | Spain circa 1500 had today's technology she wouldn't care | nearly as much about Mars as she did then about India (sic) | because extracting anything from Mars can't possibly be | profitable yet. She wasn't in it for the science; she was in | it for god, glory and gold, and not necessarily in that | order. | jimnotgym wrote: | On the other hand both Spanish capital and Columbus | personally took a huge risk. They knew less about what lay | ahead than we know about Mars. They new the rewards were | high, but the risks were enormous. | gosub100 wrote: | And in 600 years, modern society might consider _us_ slaves | for having to work under duress for the wealthy elite. | yieldcrv wrote: | "there must not have been any gold" | idlewords wrote: | More accurate is we can _either_ go there or study it properly. | A human mission to Mars would be entirely dedicated to keeping | the crew alive; only remote probes can do real exploration for | the foreseeable future. | nsxwolf wrote: | The robots we've sent thus far seem far more limited than | what humans could do with their own hands and standard tools | and lab equipment. | | We wait decades to maybe get a tiny sample of a rock. | idlewords wrote: | This is a common thing that trips people up -- you can't | compare the capabilities of robots _on Mars_ with what | humans can do _on Earth_. You have to compare like with | like, and a human crew on Mars would essentially be living | in a Level 4 biocontainment facility and remotely operating | the same kind of robots we could send to the planet | autonomously. And their effective time available for work | would be worse even than ISS, where the entire station (6 | people) does something like 35 hours /week of science. | | Robotic Mars exploration has made huge progress on what is | a shoestring budget compared to boondoggles like Artemis or | ISS. Just look at the improvement between Sojourner and | Ingenuity and imagine what an adequately funded robotic | exploration program could look like. | jodrellblank wrote: | > " _worse even than ISS, where the entire station (6 | people) does something like 35 hours /week of science._" | | You may have seen China launching their youngest ever | crew to their space station this week, and I noticed the | quotes from the three crew members: | | "I'm solely focused on the mission, on how to accomplish | the mission successfully. I have to get prepared every | minute, every second, and this was my aspiration when I | joined the Air Force, and that aspiration has never | changed," said Tang Hongbo, Commander. | | "I feel that I am fully prepared physically, mentally and | technically. I am confident to complete this upcoming | flight mission. In fact, to be honest, I can't wait to | carry out the mission now." - Tang Shengjie, Operator. | | "Talking about the roles and responsibilities, I will try | my best to complete the routine maintenance of the space | station" - Jiang Xinlin, Operator. | | One of those sounds less exciting than the others. | | [1] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-25/China-unveils- | Shenzhou... | hutzlibu wrote: | Well humans can do many things, a robot cannot. But in | general yes, sending a swarm of robots to mars will deliver | way more data for way less money, than a human mission. | usrbinbash wrote: | > Well humans can do many things, a robot cannot. | | True. | | For example: suffocating, starving, dying of thirst, | getting sick, suffer psychologic breakdowns, having their | bodies deteriorate due to low gravity,... | | Robots cannot do any of these things. | tcmart14 wrote: | We can definitely starve a robot, just don't give it a | way to recharge itself. | hutzlibu wrote: | No but robots on the other hand have the disadvantage of | being dumb with no understanding of the situation. Also, | they can "die" of thirst for energy as well. Have some | unplanned thing gone wrong? Boom, all mission is lost. | Happened countless times. Human are flexible. Why do you | think, they sometimes need to go outside to fix something | on the ISS? Not automated yet. | | With more advanced robots that might be possible, but | currently robots can only do, what you exactly told them | to do. Depending on the real parameters, that might be | enough, or not. And they certainly can get "sick" and | broken as well. Hardware as well as software. | jackcviers3 wrote: | I totally disagree. Ro optic probes are awesome, but their | range of activity is extremely limited. They can stay on | mission for years at a time in that limited area, but the | ground you can cover with several manned missions is | currently greater. | | We've proven that we can keep humans alive indefinitely in | space with the International Space Station. Expanding that | practice beyond Earth's orbit can and will go a long way in | advancing our understanding of our solar neighborhood. | | The initial human explorations of the planets will be more | limited than the rover projects. But I think we are getting | very close to being able to mount much more significant | investigations of our closest neighbors. We just need to | choose to go. | idlewords wrote: | The ISS is heavily dependent on regular resupply from | Earth, is teleoperated from Earth, and depends on large | Earth laboratories to analyze air and water samples. We can | keep humans alive "indefinitely" there in the same way we | could keep people alive indefinitely on the ocean floor; | it's an expensive stunt entirely reliant on support | operations from the surface that does nothing to advance | our ability to explore. | mschuster91 wrote: | The ISS is way more limited in what it can do because it | exists in a vacuum, which inherently limits the size it | can reasonably have, and there's zero gravity. The moon | has a bit more gravity, but zero atmosphere. | | In contrast, there's enough atmosphere available on Mars | to make it possible to build larger, pressurized | structures and even use aerial flight, and more gravity | than on the Moon. | idlewords wrote: | The ISS design is ultimately constrained by cost and | fairing size (how big a thing you can fit on your | rocket), limits that are far more stringent for the | surface of Mars (where the limiting size is set by the | descent stage). The fact that it's in vacuum doesn't | affect its size at all. | | The average surface pressure on Mars is a few millibars; | from an engineering perspective it's the same as building | pressurized structures in vacuum. If anything, it's more | difficult, since your design will have to deal with wind | loads and airborne dust. | Guvante wrote: | Bootstrapping scientific facilities in a planet with an | unbreathable atmosphere which can only be effectively | transversed to and from every 18 months is not an easy | thing. | | Not to mention the phenomenal effort required to grow | food there or transport who knows how much food per | person to provide the kinds of safety margins you would | want to avoid your first Mars astronauts starving. | idlewords wrote: | An amusing and underappreciated technical obstacle to | Mars trips is that food you can subsist on long-term with | that kind of unrefrigerated shelf life doesn't exist, | even on Earth. | | BTW the Earth/Mars synodic period is not 18 months, but | 26 months. | kwhitefoot wrote: | How did Reid Stowe manage? He surely could not have | relied on frozen food, too much risk of a generator | failing. | | "In 2010 Stowe completed a more extensive ocean voyage, | entitled 1000 Days at Sea: The Mars Ocean Odyssey--a | journey that commenced on April 21, 2007, from the 12th | St. Pier, Hoboken, New Jersey.[1] Stowe was the principal | designer and builder of the Anne, a 70 ft (21.3 m), | 60-ton (54,400 kg) gaff-rigged schooner which he sailed | on this voyage.[1][2] The purpose of the enterprise was | to remain on the open ocean, without resupply or pulling | into any harbor, for a period of one thousand days, " | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Stowe | macNchz wrote: | > In contrast, there's enough atmosphere available on | Mars to make it possible to build larger, pressurized | structures and even use aerial flight, and more gravity | than on the Moon. | | True, though the atmosphere there brings challenges of | its own: | | "Every year there are some moderately big dust storms | that pop up on Mars and they cover continent-sized areas | and last for weeks at a time," said Michael Smith, a | planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center | in Greenbelt, Maryland. | | https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/the-fact-and-fiction- | of-ma... | usrbinbash wrote: | > In contrast, there's enough atmosphere available on | Mars | | The martian atmosphere has less than 1% the pressure of | Earths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars | | So for the purposes of building habitats, it might as | well have none. | | > and even use aerial flight | | Yes, if we are talking about very small, very light | robotic probes, that can rotate their blades 10 times | faster than what's required on earth. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)#Mech | ani... | usrbinbash wrote: | > but their range of activity is extremely limited. | | Not when I compare it with the range of activities a human | can do _on Mars_. | Wytwwww wrote: | > but the ground you can cover with several manned missions | is currently greater. | | Wouldn't we able be to build much better robots which would | probably be more effective than humans for the same cost it | would take to send a manned mission to Mars? | sho_hn wrote: | By the way, I enjoyed your essay on this topic: | https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm | | I imagine it must be hard to participate in the conversation | without simply pointing people at it, so I've decided to let | you off the hook :-) | | Still occasionally refresh hoping to find the sequel ... | datameta wrote: | Columbus is not a measuring stick for human exploration... | Nevertheless I think some would be flabberghasted that such a | leap fizzled out but some would wonder why we went in the first | place if not to gather resources. | rsynnott wrote: | I think they'd have gotten the Cold War dick measuring | aspect, or at least the Victorians would have; a lot of 19th | century colonialism was of that general form (in particular | see Germany in Africa). | paxys wrote: | Victorians/Columbus didn't exactly have scientific study on | their mind. If there was oil or gold on Mars it would have been | "discovered" several times over by now. | | Also I'm not sure how we've "given up" considering there are | two rovers on Mars right now, the last one going as recently as | 2021, plus several more in development. People expecting Mars | colonies by now have been reading too much sci-fi. | frutiger wrote: | Wouldn't discovering a massive supply of gold on Mars | instantly devalue it? | paxys wrote: | Not if you control how much you mine and bring home. | HPsquared wrote: | OGIC "Organization of Gold Importing Corporations" | actionfromafar wrote: | First I laughed, then I remembered it worked with | diamonds. | colanderman wrote: | Not if you are the first and establish exclusive control of | the supply. | lagniappe wrote: | Find out who that person is, and bring them water. | gus_massa wrote: | The shipping and handling fees are astronomical. Sending | gold to Mars is very expensive. Sending gold from Mars is | even more expensive. In particular there are no oil | deposits in Mars, so kerosene for the return rocket is very | expensive. (Hydrogen and Oxygen are very expensive too.) | | Note that there is already a huge amount of gold in the | oceans, but it's very diluted so it's too expensive to | extract. You don't want to just know that there is gold. | You want to know how much profit you would get after the | gold bars arrive to Fort Knox. | mattsan wrote: | What about generating methane and oxygen from Mars' | atmosphere? I'm aware it would take a long time and a | vast area of solar panels but say we set up a base there, | would it be feasible? | | edit: this is assuming we're not allowed to set up | nuclear reactors there | HPsquared wrote: | Maybe not Mars, but if you're willing to go to Titan | there are literal lakes of methane: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakes_of_Titan | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan | actionfromafar wrote: | But then you'd have to bring the oxygen instead. To | manufacture anything resembling normal rocket fuel you | need at least oxygen + hydrogen. Preferrably oxygen, | hydrogen and carbon, so you don't have to deal with | cryogenic storage of hydrogen. | kwhitefoot wrote: | There is water on other satellites. | gus_massa wrote: | It's weird to think about Titan. Fuel is free as air | here, but to drive a ICE car ypu need to pay to fill the | oxygen tanks of your car. | anticensor wrote: | And oxidiser injectors and fuel turbochargers. | usrbinbash wrote: | Possible in theory? Yes. | | Feasible? No. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wum8_8sWdeU | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHjOXvmuZWQ | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-MQrp2P2GI | echelon wrote: | > In particular there are no oil deposits in Mars, | | We really lucked out with all of that ancient | unmetabolized biomass. | | Without that, we might not have had our fancy computers | by this point. | HPsquared wrote: | The cost would come down massively if there was ongoing | repeated operation. Things are mostly expensive because | everything is bespoke and one-off. | jacobwilliamroy wrote: | >there are no oil deposits on Mars | | I'm genuinely curious: why do you say this? | hackeraccount wrote: | The thing I wonder about is this - what if there's a city | on Mars that has a 10 ton block of gold. | | What's the price of gold on Earth? Is it the same as now? | What if I could email someone on Mars and buy 50oz of gold? | Could I sell it to someone here? What if it's cost | prohibitive to move all of the gold to Earth? Or any of the | gold to Earth? How refined does the Martian gold have to be | before someone on Mars can say the own it? | | The answers to all of those are clear (or at least only | marginally unclear) for materials that are intrinsically | valuable but for the "store of vaule" as opposed to | industrial use of something like gold it gets weird for me. | | I guess the answer to all of those questions is - whatever | someone will pay. | huthuthike wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones | | In Micronesia there was a practice of carving massive | "coins" out of stone. These "Rai stones" were often too | large to move. Yet individuals could "own" them and they | were traded often for things of great value. I believe I | even read an account of one that had sunk in a shipwreck, | but the owners went on to trade it even though it was at | the bottom of the sea. | | Just cause a physical item cannot be possessed physically | doesn't mean it is valueless. | | However, for gold specifically, part of what makes it | valuable is that it has some manufacturing uses and | people like making jewelry out of it. There is no doubt a | much larger supply of gold throughout the universe than | on earth and it has no effect on the price here. | | So I think while you can buy and sell gold on another | planet (provided people can widely agree on it's transfer | of ownership), that would be a completely separate market | from the terrestrial gold market. | tenpies wrote: | Gold is probably also not valuable enough on a per volume | or per weight basis to offset the transport costs. | | We'd need something much more valuable, although the usual | go-to, diamonds, also wouldn't work since it's a highly | controlled market. | | At that point you're in exotic materials territory. Maybe a | natural source of Californium which on Earth is only | produced in reactors or particle accelerators, and actually | has industrial uses? Even if its price dropped | substantially, we'd probably find new uses for the new | supply and the stuff costs millions of USD _per gram_. | mschuster91 wrote: | > If there was oil or gold on Mars it would have been | "discovered" several times over by now. | | There is something even rarer than gold on the moon: | helium-3, usable for cryotechnology and potentially in | nuclear fusion reactors. Helium on the Earth is about to run | out (partially because the US keeps on selling their | stockpiles, that are then wasted for stuff like party | balloons) - that is why everyone and their dog are pushing | moon missions at the moment. | mjh2539 wrote: | _Cheap_ helium on Earth is running out. We can always | transmute more. | nine_k wrote: | The principal difference from Mars is that you don't need a | rocket to send bulk goods from the Moon, you can literally | hurl it into an Earth-bound orbit using an electromagnetic | catapult. Sunlight is also more plentiful on the Moon, so | powering the catapult does not require operating a large | nuclear reactor. | | When some if the new 3He-based fusion reactors with huge | magnets actually breaks even, this _maybe_ become | potentially practical. You don 't need so much 3He for | generation if you produce it from Li in the blanket. | maxlin wrote: | If there was a new continent somehow popped up we wouldn't be | fine just sending some drones there or taking pictures of it | with satellites. | | We have had the capability to develop ourselves to send a | colony to mars in 10 years if we really wanted to, for 50 | years, so yes we're late. But I for one am very happy we've | got some real vision and development towards it now. | paxys wrote: | > We have had the capability to develop ourselves to send a | colony to mars in 10 years if we really wanted to, for 50 | years | | Like I said, pure delusion. We can still barely manage to | launch rockets into space, and it still costs thousands of | dollars per kg of cargo just to get to LEO. No human has | lived in space for an extended period of time at a range | beyond the ISS (400 km, while Mars is 400 _million_ km). | actionfromafar wrote: | On Mars you can build shelter with dirt or in caves. You | would be better protected than in LEO. | | The _Moon_ is very inhospitable, but it 's close enough | we could have just shuttled an endless stream of ready- | to-live habitat modules there, one after another. The | tech was there. The will was not. | | I'm not saying it would have been _rational_ to do it in | the 1970s, but we could have! | | On the other hand, what we actually _did_ do (to the | Earth) wasn 't exactly rational, either. | usrbinbash wrote: | > On Mars you can build shelter with dirt or in caves. | | Really? What machines would be used to build these | shelters? How do they get to Mars? How would they be | powered? What auxilliary materials will they require and | how do those get to Mars? | notfish wrote: | Pretty sure we could design and launch a digging robot in | 10 years, I dont really buy that as the bottleneck to | mars exploration | axus wrote: | I'm pretty sure that we could not, I guess our opinions | cancel each other out. | feoren wrote: | Humans have 10 successful missions landing robots on | Mars, starting in 1975. Robots have been operating on | Mars continuously for almost 20 years. Opportunity was | active for 15 years. The helicopter Ingenuity has flown | 63 separate times and counting. The Perseverance rover is | about the size of a hatchback car and carries seven | advanced scientific instruments. | | Ten years of strong-willed national effort was enough to | get us humans landing on the moon. From where we are now, | you honestly don't think ten years of strong-willed | national (or even international) effort could get us a | robot capable of digging holes? | usrbinbash wrote: | > you honestly don't think ten years of strong-willed | national (or even international) effort could get us a | robot capable of digging holes? | | Yes, I do think that. | | Because there is a big difference between an exploratory | vehicle that carries a number of scientific instruments | and can be powered by a few solar panels or a small | nuclear battery... | | ...and these beautys: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boring_machine | | Just for comparisons sake: Perseverances MMRTG provides | 110 watts of power. A single metric horsepower is 735.5 | watts. I leave looking up the power requirements of even | a small machine that would be capable of digging habitats | into the martian bedrock, as an exercise to the reader. | feoren wrote: | I agree it's not realistic to send a full tunnel boring | machine, drilling out 200 to 700 meters per week for | subways and highways, to Mars in the next 10 years. Such | a thing would have to be assembled on Mars with advanced | industry already in place. | | I vehemently disagree that we need a 700 meter/week | behemoth, sized for heavy rail, to dig out a habitat for | one or two dozen humans. I'm imagining something more | like a small-ish Roadheader[1], two to four times larger | than Perseverance. It would either need to be Diesel | powered (yes, shipping the diesel would suck, but it | doesn't need to run forever) or we'd need a small solar | farm and a couple Tesla batteries powering the thing (we | probably want that anyway, for our habitat). | | It would take months to dig out a cave large enough for | 10 to 20 humans, and there are hundreds of other problems | to solve to actually turn a small, potentially unstable | Martian cave into a livable habitat. We know the first | steps will be slow; that's OK. Besides, we have a decade | of engineering to refine the design. Don't underestimate | humans. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadheader | usrbinbash wrote: | Okay, let's talk about that. | | A (very) small roadheader starts at around 8 metric | tonnes, and requires around 20kW of power...just for | operating the cutting head. And that's a really small | one. | | Again, for comparison, Perseverance: 1025kg, 110W of | power | | > It would either need to be Diesel powered | | That would be a neat trick on a planet with an | atmospheric pressure of 610 pascals, where oxygen | registers barely above a trace element. | | > or we'd need a small solar farm | | Or maybe a not so small one. | | Using Tesla solar panels | https://www.tesla.com/solarpanels as a reference point, | they produce up to 400W and are just shy of 2m2. That's | on Earth. Solar irradiance on Mars is 59% of Earths, so | these panels will probably produce ~240W apiece. So to | meet the energy requirements of even a small roadheader, | we need 83 of these panels, each of which is ~21.5kg in | mass, so a total of 1.784t in solar panels alone. | | Note, that is without cabling, inverters, electronics, | spare panels, support structures, etc. ... or the | batteries for that matter. Production numbers are also | for peak sunlight conditions on Mars, so best-case | daylight during the martian summer, and no dust storms. | | So depending on how heavy the batteries are, I reckon we | are already looking at around 12-14 tons of equipment, | just for digging with a single machine. And that doesn't | include any prefabricated parts, spare parts, airlocks, | other heavy machinery, support beams, other auxilliary | materials.... | | I mean, these roadheaders will require new drill heads | every now and then, won't they? | | What's the payload capacity of our current space ship | designs again? Because... | | > It would take months to dig out a cave large enough for | 10 to 20 humans, | | ...we need food and water and medical supplies and power | and space suits, and a lot of other things for all these | people. Oh, and habitats, because they will need | somewhere to live during all these months bevore the cave | is ready. | notfish wrote: | You could totally just dig a 1 meter deep hole with a | fancy bulldozer, then plop down a prefabbed house and | bury it | | Hell, you could even have humans do the digging assisted | by machines and just live on the surface for the first | few months while they build | usrbinbash wrote: | > You could totally just dig a 1 meter deep hole with a | fancy bulldozer, then plop down a prefabbed house and | bury it | | Yes, and that "prefabbed house", that is sturdy enough | that we can "bury it" under a pile of rock [1] thick | enough to provide adequate protection from cosmic | radiation, where does that come from? How much mass is | that? How is that mass transported to mars? What machines | and tools are required to assemble it there, and how much | mass are those? How is the energy for these tools | provided? | | [1]: Just to be clear what a pile we are talking about | here: If we used the water-shield method, it would | require 5m of water for a 50% reduction in radiation | intensity. | usrbinbash wrote: | Design? Sure. | | Launch? Maybe. | | Launch while also having to launch everything the people | we send there need for the rest of their lives, and also | launch everything needed to power and maintain that robot | for as long as it's required? Hmmmmm... | | But okay, let's say we do all that. We can now dig up | Mars-dirt. How do we make that into airtight shelter that | is also proof against cosmic radiation? | notfish wrote: | Probably, you dig a hole then put an inflatable hab | inside and bury it? This feels like a supremely solvable | problem | Wytwwww wrote: | > On Mars you can build shelter with dirt or in caves. | You would be better protected than in LEO. | | Is that true? Maybe if you never ever go outside but you | might as well just dig a very deep cave here on Earth if | your entire is to prove that humans can live in extremely | inhospitable environments. | lamontcg wrote: | Apollo wasn't really fiscally sustainable, particularly | given the expansion that you visualize. In 1965 it was | 0.75% of GDP per year and NASA was 1% of GDP per year. By | comparison the "pork program" SLS is running at 0.018% of | GDP so is 40x more affordable. Expanding the Apollo | spending in the 1970s probably wouldn't have helped us | any when climate change became a concern. | usrbinbash wrote: | > If there was a new continent somehow popped up we | wouldn't be fine just sending some drones there or taking | pictures of it with satellites. | | True. | | You know what else is true? We could breathe on that new | continent, there would be enough nitrogen compounds to grow | food, anyone who wanted to go back home could eventually do | so, our colonists bodies would not deteriorate due to the | low gravity, and if our colonists there got into trouble, | we could send help before they all died horribly. | notfish wrote: | There are nitrates on mars, nobody is seriously proposing | unconditional one way trips, mars has enough gravity to | prevent bone loss. | | But yes, it does mean bringing your own air and being | self sufficient, but we do both of those things on the | ISS already | ccooffee wrote: | There are definitely people advocating one-way trips to | Mars. Buzz Aldrin wrote "Mission to Mars: My Vision for | Space Exploration" (2013) pushing the idea of one-way | trips and colonization by 2040. There are quite a few | projects that have invested time and money into the idea. | MarsOne (2012-2019) is possibly the most serious of the | attempts, but they weren't exactly close to sending a | mission. | Wytwwww wrote: | I guess there are zero practical reasons to go to Mars | that would justify the massive cost required to do so. | The only thing that comes close on Earth (from the | practicality perspective) is the exploration of | Antarctica and the Artic and that was done on a shoe- | string budget. | usrbinbash wrote: | > There are nitrates on mars | | The martian atmosphere is 2.8% N2. For comparison, Earths | atmoshpere is 78.08% N2, while also being more than 100x | as dense. And Earth already has soil, and a developed | nitrogen cycle, while Mars doesn't. | | So there is nowhere near enough Nitrogen in-situ on Mars | to support any form of agriculture. It has to be brought | from Earth. | | > mars has enough gravity to prevent bone loss | | https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/07/407806/traveling-mars- | will... | | So yes, lowered gravity has negative impacts on our bones | and physiology in general. The gravity on Mars is 1/3 | that of Earth. And that's after spending several months | in-transit at microgravity. | | > But yes, it does mean bringing your own air and being | self sufficient, but we do both of those things on the | ISS already | | The ISS is not self sufficient, and relies on continuos | supply runs from earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unc | rewed_spaceflights_to_the_I... | notfish wrote: | Nitrates on earth range from 10-50 mg/kg in soil, on mars | they make up 1100ppm = 0.1% = 1mg/kg, so in the extreme | you can convert 10% of martian land to soil. Seems like | plenty. | | We just don't know if the 1/3 gravity will cause bone | loss problems - going to the moon is the best way to | study it, but who knows. Probably, people will just age | 3x faster in terms of bone mass on mars. | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_osteopenia | | And yeah, the first years of a mars colony are gonna be | dependent on earth. We'd definitely make sure we have | enough rockets that they can abort if shit goes south on | supply missions, but there's no reason earth can't supply | them at first. | usrbinbash wrote: | Nitrogen in Earths soil is present in the form of | Ammonia, and derived substances. Occurring naturally, it | is the product of microbial nitrogen fixation of | diazotrophic bacteria, and subsequent biological | processing. Plants can use these compounds directly. | | Nitrates on mars will probably be in the form of nitrate | salts. | | Btw. agriculture also requires soil. Which the martian | regolith isn't. | | > We'd definitely make sure we have enough rockets that | they can abort if shit goes south on supply missions | | Have enough rockets where? On mars? Using what fuel? | Using what ground installations like scaffolds and launch | pads? Also, launching between Mars and Earth is only | possible during specific time windows. For an Earth-Mars | transit, these occur ~once every 2 years. So if "shit | goes south" outside these windows, the amount of rockets | won't matter. | nine_k wrote: | Earth crust has relatively small amounts of iron, or | nickel, or silver, but it has areas with high | concentration of these, so large as to enable massive | metallurgy on Earth. | | Chances are, Mars may have local concentrations of | nitrous minerals (as does Earth), and these can be used | to run a large enough agriculture. Few plants know how to | consume atmospheric nitrogen anyway. | | Air pressure and temperature can be maintained below | transparent domes, greenhouse-style. | | Dim sunlight looks like a much bigger problem, which | can't be fixed by any terraforming. | usrbinbash wrote: | > Chances are, Mars may have local concentrations of | nitrous minerals | | Which would have to be found, ideally near the equator | (otherwise landing and solar power generation is going to | be a problem), mined and transported. And since Nitrous | minerals aren't fertilizer, it would have to be processed | (which is an energy intensive process even on earth, | where we get to use atmospheric Nitrogen in the Haber- | Bosch-Process). | | And of course there is no soil on mars, so we have to | bring that as well. | bigbillheck wrote: | Columbus was a pretty rotten human being, if his ghost is | looking up at us from Hell I don't care what he thinks. | usrbinbash wrote: | > We need to go there so we can study it properly. | | The only thing that would accomplish, compared to sending | robotic probes, is wasted payload capacity that could otherwise | transport scientific instruments. | huthuthike wrote: | Well it took Columbus 2 months and 9 days to get across the | Atlantic. He never made it to India, which was his original | goal. The first expedition from Europe to India via the ocean | was by Vasco da Gama and it took him around 10 months. | | Earth to the moon is 240,000 miles. Earth to Mars at it's | closest approach is 34 million miles. So this would be like | telling Columbus to sail not for 2 months and 9 days, but for | 27 years to get to India. He wasn't even willing to sail for 10 | months to do it! (Also bear in mind that's the one-way | timeframe; the return from Mars would be about twice as long in | this scenario.) | | And not only that but also let Columbus know there won't be any | gold, spices, or slaves at the end of the trip. See how willing | he is to dedicate the next 81 years of his life to it. | | Hopefully this puts the interplanetary distance in perspective. | notfish wrote: | It doesnt take 27 years to get to mars. If you push, you can | get it down to like 8 months or shorter - it depends how much | fuel you bring. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mission_to_Mars | huthuthike wrote: | You are right about that. My post was answering a poster | about "how would Columbus feel that we went to the moon but | not to Mars?" The 27 year timeframe is an analogy comparing | the distance to the moon vs the distance to Mars, and | relating it back to the timeframe it took Columbus to do | his famous voyage. | phkahler wrote: | I thought the "reason" mars has no magnetic field is that its | core solidified a long time ago. How does this new finding affect | understanding of Mars magnetics? | pixl97 wrote: | Earths core spins slightly faster than its surface. If Mars | core is locked with its surface speed because it is more | viscous then this may kill the field generation ability. | jpitz wrote: | Recently, it has come to light that the relative rotational | speed of Earth's core seems to have a decades long cycle of | leading and lagging the surface. | | https://www.space.com/earth-inner-core-slowing-study | tomrod wrote: | Oof. Does that mean it could lock in at any time? | | Internal dynamics are weeeeird. | | Wonder if the moon affects this. | bell-cot wrote: | My impression is that the "planet has no magnetic field <==> | planet has solid core" theory was retired quite a few decades | ago now. | | The current theory looks like, at best, a work in progress: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Magnetic_field_and_core | robg wrote: | The push for humans on Mars is deeply misguided. The same | resources should be used to send many more probes and for far | longer durations. After 100 years of deeply mapping all available | resources, then _maybe_ send humans if a long-term colony is | self-sustainable and necessary for deep space exploration with | better propulsion technologies. | | Edit: Without a self-sustaining colony and next generation | propulsion tech, any humans on Mars as a backup plan will die | lonely deaths. Surprised people seem confused on the necessary | and sufficient conditions. Show me that robots can set up a self- | sustaining colony with self-generating resources to get to other | worlds, and that's a legit "backup" plan. Otherwise we're just | arguing about edge cases with no viable solutions. You don't need | humans on Mars to show what's possible. | baq wrote: | You're missing that a man with a shovel can find out in a day | what a robotic probe cannot find out in a year, unless you're | talking serious AI. | robg wrote: | You're telling me we can't send, in the next 100 years, a | fleet of remote controlled backhoes with the same sensors and | assays the human would use? | runeofdoom wrote: | With no buried fiber to feed on, the backhoes will starve. | macNchz wrote: | I don't really see what a person with a shovel could | accomplish that a robot can't, other than consuming the vast | majority of the project budget on life support systems. | tomrod wrote: | Eyes. | macNchz wrote: | Are there things that someone can see with their eyes | that can't be picked up with an array of state of the art | cameras / specialty sensors / microscopes, that would | justify the overhead of everything required to get a | human there? I'm genuinely curious. | throwaway5752 wrote: | Human eyes are not good. We have a massive central void | in our vision that we literally fill in with our | imagination. We can't sense light polarity, we can't | sense beyond infrared or ultraviolet, and our resolution | is poor. I suspect you could put together and deliver to | Mars a highly redundant system with all of those | capabilities for less than the addition fuel cost to | launch a 100kg human, supplies, and life-support systems | out of Earth's gravity well. | usrbinbash wrote: | Cameras. | | Which btw. can see better, further, and in a lot more | spectra than the human eyes. Oh, and they can record what | they see, and send it back for thousands of pairs of | human eyes to examine back home on earth, where the users | of said eyes are not constantly in danger of dying to | explosive decompression, being frozen to death, or killed | by space radiation or microabrasive silica dust. | | And the best part? I don't have to waste tons of payload | capacity on food, water, air and toilet paper, just to | keep the cameras running! | tomrod wrote: | Eyes connect to one of the best diagnostic systems in the | universe. | | IMHO, we should WANT TO waste tons and tons and tons on | payload capacity of food, water, air, and toilet paper, | to establish a permanent, viable, and most importantly | independent colony on Mars. | | At our stage, having that come from the private sector | versus public sector makes more sense. Similar to how the | New World was colonized (minus/following the annihilation | of ancient cultures), governments explored but private | companies promised the reward settled. | | People will die. Inevitably. Cannot be stopped. But we | should grow and expand as a species. Intelligence and | comprehension of beauty are unique and wonderful things, | in my opinion worth preserving across several planets, | solar systems, and I hope galaxies. | tkahnoski wrote: | Even a hybrid mission with humans in orbit doesn't make | sense. You have to bring less fuel for landing/take-off | from Mars. But for that same cost you could send way more | robotic workers and just deal with speed of light/delays | (3-20 minutes). | | If there was significant uncertainty in what resources | needed to be deployed to where then I could see a benefit | to having an onboard team of humans who could assemble | workers or payloads on the fly from orbit. However this | would be a big shift from current mindset of designing | robots for exact problem/solutions with precise payloads to | instead having an excess of resources on board. | | If the perspective shifted to "we're colonizing Mars so | every ounce of metal in orbit will get used at some point" | this is less of a concern. | usrbinbash wrote: | The robotic probe is backed up by thousands of scientists, | analyzing the data it sends back home, while the man with the | shovel is unlikely to even survive long enough on Mars (if he | even gets there alive) to discover anything the robot missed. | | If I send a probe, I can pack the entire payload with | scientific instruments. If I send a man with a shovel, I have | to pack food, water, air, habitats, spacesuits, and other | tidbits instead, just to keep the man with the shovel alive | (for a time). | nick_ wrote: | Find out what, though? That it's a dry, frozen wasteland? For | tens of billions of dollars? No thanks. | tomrod wrote: | The push for human on Mars is misguided in that we aren't | taking enough risks. | | We are one bad cosmic event from total known life annihilation. | That would be a bad day | soneca wrote: | What kind of cosmic event would transform Earth in a worse | place to support life than Mars currently is? | blue1 wrote: | Impact with a rogue planet? | | Grey goo? | downvotetruth wrote: | A directed gamma ray burst could affect the solar system: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLykC1VN7NY A nuclear | powered bunker seems much more pragmatic than generation | ship(s) to another star system to survive one. | usrbinbash wrote: | I would argue that a civilization that is actually | capable of building a generation spaceship, should be | capable of defending their planet from GRBs. | | How? I have no idea. | | Then again, we also have no idea how to build an actually | working generation ship :D | FranOntanaya wrote: | In the long run an overheated planet Venus style is much | harder to deal with than a cold, nearly airless one. | Anything that triggered mass plant death and decomposition | could do. | roughly wrote: | We are nowhere near being able to support and propagate life | unaided on Mars. Life on mars as a backup for life on earth | is like keeping bitcoin in case of a technological collapse. | hackeraccount wrote: | Is this an argument for doing more or doing nothing? | cmrdporcupine wrote: | It's an argument for doing the _right things_. | tomrod wrote: | Today, that's more. | WrongAssumption wrote: | And how do you think we would go about achieving that | capability? | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Except Mars has already had total life annihilation, so I'm | not sure what the point of using that as your argument is... | | Stick a few people on an already-annihilated planet where | they will never become self-sufficient, anyways? | | If you want humanity to escape vulnerability on earth, your | best bet is to not go into another gravity well at all. Esp | one with no ionosphere, thin unusable atmosphere, brutal | storms, and toxic fine sand everywhere. | | The moon makes a lot more sense -- easier to manage | shipping/trade with earth, no gravity well. And if you need | off a planetary body completely, build orbitals. | | Also many life-terminating events for earth -- local | (galactic region) supernovae or other mass irradiating event, | our own sun flaming out, etc. would just do the same to Mars. | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: | It would really suck if, in the next 100 years, we see some | extinction-level comet or asteroid crash into the Earth when we | might have done the "not all our eggs in one basket". | | Some kinds of caution aren't very careful at all. | kzrdude wrote: | What timeframe do we need to setup a fully independent colony | on Mars, so that we survive if Earth is not there? | | If you asked me to guess, it would be somewhere between | impossible and 1000 years of terraforming. | jrd259 wrote: | Suppose we did get 100 year advance notice of some | catastrophe. How many people would call it "fake news", or | perhaps even interpret it as part of "God's plan"? Let's | suppose, through some miracle, a substantial majority of the | world agrees the catastrophe is coming, agrees to cooperate, | to accept unlimited damage to the Earth (so e.g. we can use | Project Orion style launchers) and to give up on all short- | term profit. | | Our response to climate change (which, even if it's not at | the level of total planetary extinction, is still quite | serious) suggests we would instead obfuscate, dispute and | quarrel. | | Realistically, what fraction of the world's people could we | possibly move to Mars, and how would we even pick those | people? How would we even come to agree on a fair way to | choose? | | We probably could get enough breeding pairs there to preserve | our species. There is evidence of genetic bottlenecks in the | past. But 99% of humans would be left to die. Not to mention | all other life forms. (Maybe we'll bring cats, too?) | | I'm not opposed to visiting Mars, but to do so under the | claim that we could save humanity from disaster is utter | folly. | Mechanical9 wrote: | Is it even remotely possible that a Mars colony could become | self-sustaining within the next 100 years? It seems like | surviving the loss of Earth is a long way off regardless. | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: | It certainly won't be if we don't build the infrastructure | to send (temporarily, at least) people to Mars. | | Can we bootstrap up an energy economy there? Dunno, that's | the first step. With a large enough energy budget, food's | doable. Water is likely in situ. | | > It seems like surviving the loss of Earth is a long way | off regardless. | | Even longer if you wait to try. | usrbinbash wrote: | It would suck a lot more if we wasted money on a mars colony, | that will take hundreds of years to become self sufficient, | if it is possible at all (I am still waiting for a solution | to human bodies deteriorating in low gravity that is actually | workable at scale), instead of using these resources to | further develop things that have already had successful | experimental runs. | | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63221577 | | Added bonus: Investing resources into this saves Earth and | everyone on it. | maxlin wrote: | 100 years with ZERO humans on mars? You have no sense of risk | or scale. We should be there already. | | We're focusing everything on the easier planet that might not | be livable after one year of bad politics. In 100 years your | kind of thinking will be considered ludditean and playing | russian roulette with 5 in the chamber for no reason. | throwaway5752 wrote: | Apply startup software ethos to interplanetary travel! It did | well for deep sea exploration. | rowanG077 wrote: | I have no idea how you got that from the comment. | ceejayoz wrote: | The middle ground you're ignoring (between #yolo startup | culture and Boeing's defense contractor culture) has been | done pretty well with SpaceX's Falcon 9. | throwaway5752 wrote: | The technologies to delivery humans to and back from Mars | with any defensible level of safety do not currently | exist. The benefits of doing so are dubious and the real | viability of a human colony are almost nil. The sort of | people that advocate otherwise have killed innocent | civilians deep in the North Atlantic and are failing to | run a previously healthy, if unspectacular, social | network. It is less exciting work, but we should make | every effort to not reduce ourselves to a Paleolithic | lifestyle on our home planet via accidental terraforming | instead. | ceejayoz wrote: | > The technologies to delivery humans to and back from | Mars with any defensible level of safety do not currently | exist. | | But are being worked on. This statement would've been | true about landing Falcon 9 stages less than a decade | ago. | | > The sort of people that advocate otherwise have killed | innocent civilians deep in the North Atlantic and are | failing to run a previous healthy, if unspectacular, | social network. | | The differences between SpaceX's approach to safety and | how Twitter's being run are pretty stark. Same guy, very | different cultures. SpaceX's safety record is good enough | for NASA, and they're hardly the #yolo set. | throwaway5752 wrote: | https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closes-spacex-starship- | mish... I was not impressed by this incident and it gives | me concerns for their safety culture. My comment is not | limited to propulsion or delivery technology. | | I respect SpaceX, but I also respect the real challenges | of responsibly sending a crew to Mars. | ceejayoz wrote: | Does the Apollo 1 accident report give you similar | concerns about NASA's culture and ability to get to the | moon? | runeofdoom wrote: | Musk is in the driver's seat at Twitter. At SpaceX he's a | frontman, carefully managed by people who know both him | and rocket science. | ceejayoz wrote: | While I agree (and give a lot of credit to Gwynne | Shotwell for the steady hand), that reinforces the point; | that you can do space work somewhere inbetween "startup" | and "giant defense contractor" style approaches. | hn_version_0023 wrote: | HN is unprepared for this level of sarcasm. | robg wrote: | With no next gen propulsion system and no self-sustaining | colony, humans on Mars are a resource sink with no added | benefits. | | Lest you forget it took 300 years for North America to | generate self-sustaining colonies from the first Europeans. | And those didn't require life support for oxygen and water | for every second of survival. | robotresearcher wrote: | North America had self sustaining human populations for | thousands of years before they ever saw a European. | burnished wrote: | The point is the challenge that was involved sending a | small group on the same planet out to be self sufficient, | not commentary about the habitability of the americas. If | anything that underlines their point. | disconcision wrote: | While I think having people on mars would be neat, I'm not | sure there's anything we could do to earth period, let alone | in a year, that would make it less livable than mars | usrbinbash wrote: | > We should be there already. | | Why? What purpose does a human presence on Mars have? | Exploratory activity can, is and should be done by robotic | drones. Mars has zero resources Earth doesn't already have in | abundance, is inimical to almost every lifeform on earth and | confers no advantage as a launch platform for furture space | exploration over the moon or a space station. | | > We're focusing everything on the easier planet that might | not be livable after one year of bad politics. | | Fun fact: Even after a full-scale thermonuclear war, Earth | would still be a more liveable planet than Mars. | | So what policy decisions could possibly make Mars attractive | as a living space, or a "backup planet"? | thehappypm wrote: | My sad take is that if we ruin Earth, we don't deserve a | second chance. We would just ruin Mars too. | usrbinbash wrote: | > We would just ruin Mars too. | | Well, considering that Mars is currently a frozen, low- | gravity, toxic, airless, irradiated, soil-less desert | with barely any water, no nitrogen to speak of, very few | options for energy generation, no protection from cosmic | radiation and constantly wrecked by planet-wide | duststorms, I honestly cannot imagine how we could | possibly make it worse, even if we actively tried. | adriancr wrote: | > Why? What purpose does a human presence on Mars have? | | I bet some people said the same about america in 1400s. | | You never know what can come from this in the future. | | If we can we should. | | > So what policy decisions could possibly make Mars | attractive as a living space, or a "backup planet"? | | Large asteroid impact might destroy us entirely like this: | https://youtu.be/02S3_DEaQWA?si=urqC47r14cFxbNjD | usrbinbash wrote: | > I bet some people said the same about america in 1400s. | | Here is what I bet _noone_ said about america in the | 1400s: | | _" Man, it sure would be nice if there was air, arable | soil, and building materials in america."_ | | > If we can we should. | | Humans can do lots of things that they absolutely | shouldn't. | | > Large asteroid impact | | Ah, so we moved on from policy decisions. Good. Okay, | let's talk asteroids. | | a) I would be alot more worried about asteroids if I were | on Mars. Mars is closer to the asteroid belt after all, | and it's thin atmosphere is a lot less of a hurdle to | evil space rocks than Earths. | | b) Humanity has already proven, that it has the technical | capability to alter an asteroids course: https://en.wikip | edia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te... So far, | humanity has _NOT_ proven that it can build a self- | sustaining colony on mars. As a matter of fact, we have | not even done so in the Antarctic Dry Valleys, and they | would at least have air there. So purely from the | perspective of resource-allocation, it seems there are | better ways to protect humanity from asteroid impacts, | than trying to build a mars-colony. | adriancr wrote: | > Here is what I bet noone said about america in the | 1400s: | | The point I made is you can never know the benefits. | | Asimov, end of eternity is a pretty nice book to see how | your point of view might be flawed. | | > Humanity has already proven, that it has the technical | capability to alter an asteroids course: https://en.wikip | edia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te... | | Sure... we can barely detect asteroids and you're saying | we can deflect them, is the argument in good faith?, do | you really believe we can detect and deflect a planet | killer? | | > So purely from the perspective of resource-allocation, | it seems there are better ways to protect humanity from | asteroid impacts, than trying to build a mars-colony. | | So you don't want humanity to waste resources on space. | That is your point of view which I hope is a minority at | large. I disagree, but I doubt I can convince you | otherwisr. | hotnfresh wrote: | > We're focusing everything on the easier planet that might | not be livable after one year of bad politics. | | Nuked Earth that's also climate-changed so bad that only the | poles are temperate is still a whole lot better than Mars. | | Why is the solution for this "establish a colony somewhere | already 100x worse than a multi-catastrophe-stricken Earth | would be, and is also very-expensive to get back to Earth | from" ? It makes no sense. | | Asteroid strike? There are (much) cheaper ways to guard | against that--hardened, distributed bunkers with paid | inhabitants, increasing asteroid-hunting programs and | interception research. Orbital habs or even the Moon if | you're worried about a whole-crust-liquifying event that you | can't stop in time. And we're not doing those. Why would we | do Mars? It's worse than those options in basically every | way. It's a _really really_ bad place. | | Most the other threats those measures couldn't guard against, | would probably also take out Mars. | | Going to Mars is cool and romantic and I hope to see it, but | I think people trying to pin some practical reason for | _colonization_ other than "because it was there" (romantic) | are misguided. | jklinger410 wrote: | We should map the ocean and available resources on earth along | with future-proofing our atmosphere as a priority over | colonizing Mars. | | Unless the cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis is true, in which | the solution is to get as many of us off this ticking time bomb | before it happens next. | throwaway290 wrote: | I don't think the pole shift theory holds, but there still | are all those rocks flying around solar system... as well as | gamma bursts, but those would probably take out Mars too. | pavel_lishin wrote: | If I remember correctly, a thick layer of soil would | protect people from a GRB - if most of the Martian colony | (or Lunar colony) lives underground, they would survive - | and there is no large-scale biosphere that humans depend on | for survival on Mars or the Moon. | | As long as those colonies are self sufficient (the biggest | handwave of the whole deal), they would survive while the | majority of Earth would have a rather bad time of things. | | Then again, it's likely that more humans would survive on | Earth than elsewhere - nuclear submarines, underground | government complexes, maybe even the Antarctica base | depending on the angle. | keiferski wrote: | People who say this don't understand that Mars colonies aren't | about pragmatic, resource-optimized decisions. Yes, it would be | a better use of resources to set up a colony on Antarctica | first. But who cares about that? It's not that interesting or | inspiring to anyone that doesn't already care about space | travel. | | A human being landing on Mars would probably be the single most | watched event in human history. _It 's exciting._ That | excitement is what inspires people to get involved (and | governments to fund projects.) | | _If you want to build a ship, don 't drum up the men and women | to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, | teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea._ - Antoine de | Saint Exupery | robg wrote: | Everything you say can be applied to the history of humans on | the Earth's moon. 50 years later you've been proven wrong. | Robots are better and cheaper at space exploration and humans | being in the loop have only made things more expensive and | more risky. The failures of human space adventures have made | things much harder on space budgets. See also the Shuttle | program, after Apollo. | keiferski wrote: | But nothing interesting has really happened on the moon | since the initial landings, so it's not surprising that | interest has dried up. There's no colony, no space casino | resort, nothing that is a big leap from the initial | achievement. | | The simple fact of the matter is that no one really cares | about robots exploring the universe. Humans care about | humans, not probes. | robg wrote: | That's neither simple nor a fact. Space exploration has | almost all been robots, telescopes, probes, etc. The | interest has been self-sustaining with an endless stream | of discoveries, discoveries including still Voyager. | keiferski wrote: | And the average person has almost no interest in it, | _except_ for world-history events like the first landing | on the Moon. The first landing on Mars would be a similar | event. | robg wrote: | Sustained funding for 60 years shows the continued | interest in there, to use one of the "reasons" you cite | for Apollo. | fastball wrote: | You think there would've been _more_ interest if the Apollo | program had never happened, and we 'd just done it all with | robots? | robg wrote: | The last 60 years have shown the interest is there | without humans AND having humans in the loop dying have | deeply impaired progress based on limited resources and | their allocation. | deelowe wrote: | NDT* does an excellent job explaining this every time he gets | a chance to do so. One of my favorite quotes is him saying | something to the affect of "take a look at the pioneers of | space exploration. Note down their age. Notice a trend? They | all grew up during the apollo programs! Why? Because sending | a human to the moon was exciting. How many people do you see | today with posters of the rockets that carried Perseverance | or the rover itself versus Apollo or even the Shuttle? We | must put people in space, not because the science demands it, | but because of the impact it will have on society." | | Sending humans to Mars isn't about exploring Mars. It's about | the impact this would have on society as a whole. Suddenly, | there's another planet out there that we care about and focus | on. Perhaps wars on earth seem just that much more petty? At | a minimum, it will likely inspire a whole new generation to | explore the cosmos. | | * Neil has his flaws, I get it, but I've sort of come 360 on | him. His exuberance is contagious and as ambassador for space | exploration, his approach does have a certain "public | resonance" to it that I've not seen from others even if he | tends to embellish things... | robg wrote: | He's conflating all of the resources spent with the | outcomes involved. Need to see the graph? | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Budget- | Federal.svg | | Now imagine if those same resources were spent on fusion | propulsion... | deelowe wrote: | Whataboutism. | | I don't think he's confusing anything. He's saying the | only reason those funds were allocated were because: | | 1) The government wanted to do it (military reasons) | | and | | 2) The public found it exciting (we're putting a man on | the moon) | | Without either of those, this wouldn't have happened. | robg wrote: | Those two "reasons" are no where in the same universe. | Take away the Soviets and it wouldn't have happened. See | also the last 60 years. | deelowe wrote: | I said both were important... The military push already | exists today. See SpaceX... | tivert wrote: | > NDT* does an excellent job explaining this every time he | gets a chance to do so. One of my favorite quotes is him | saying something to the affect of "take a look at the | pioneers of space exploration. Note down their age. Notice | a trend? They all grew up during the apollo programs! | | That doesn't make any sense at all. The "pioneers of space | exploration" would obviously include the people who _did_ | Apollo [and Sputnik, and Mercury, etc], and they _obviously | did not_ grow up during the Apollo program, unless NASA has | a time machine they 're not telling us about. | deelowe wrote: | Most of the pioneers of space TODAY got into space b/c of | what they witnessed with apollo and to some extent, the | shuttle. According to NDT, budgets and education | enrollment has been down because of a lack of enthusiasm | and this lack of enthusiasm is b/c we no longer have | people EXPLORING the frontiers of space (the IST doesn't | count). | tivert wrote: | > Most of the pioneers of space TODAY got into space b/c | of what they witnessed with apollo and to some extent, | the shuttle. | | 1) that "TODAY" is a pretty important qualification, and | 2) it's a stretch to call those people pioneers. I live | in the American West TODAY, but I certainly shouldn't be | labeled a "pioneer" like the people who moved to this | area 150+ years ago. | hoten wrote: | I think the word is being stretched a bit, but not much. | Space is not inhabited by any meaningful number of | people, and very few have been, so for the foreseeable | future anyone simply leaving Earth could be called | pioneer - among the first to explore a new area. | deelowe wrote: | Feel free to substitute a more appropriate term. The | premise doesn't change. | dividedbyzero wrote: | No idea who NDT is, but I'm kind of afraid that doing | something like a Mars mission too early will turn out | having the opposite effect. With the tech available for a | soon-ish to launch Mars mission, chances are pretty high | that something would go wrong catastrophically, there's | just so much complexity that cannot break down for such a | long time under extreme conditions, we're not ready for | that. Watching the people we send there die slowly and | horrifically isn't going to be a rational "we knew the | risks" thing for the general public, people will be | horrified and it'll put a big damper on future endeavors of | this kind. I'd expect manned spaceflight to be pretty much | dead for decades after that. | robg wrote: | Exactly this. The current hype for a human on Mars is | repeating the mistakes of Apollo then the Shuttle. By | contrast the public has absolutely been engaged in what | rovers and telescopes find. | johnyzee wrote: | _Did we fly to the moon too soon? Did we squander the | chance? In the rush of the race The reason we chase is | lost in romance | | And still we try To justify the waste for a taste of | man's greatest adventure_ | | Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satelite | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Ck38Cl474 | notfish wrote: | I feel like spacex is the only group that has a chance at | landing on mars this decade, and Starship is exactly what | we'd want if we were trying to make a self sustaining | mars colony right? | vel0city wrote: | NDT = Neal deGrasse Tyson. Astrophysicist, director of | the Hayden Planetarium, a pretty big science | communicator. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson | kjkjadksj wrote: | So we risk a human dying 40 days from help and severely | overcomplicate the mission just for the public to not care | even a tenth as much as they did during the apollo era. I | wish we had a space program that didn't rely so much on | sacrificial heroics and building of a public myth. | tivert wrote: | > A human being landing on Mars would probably be the single | most watched event in human history. | | I'm actually skeptical about that. It certainly would be the | "single most watched event in human history" _among geeks | interested in space,_ and probably among geeks in general and | nationalists of the country that did the landing, but I | suspect it 's a biased projection to extend that attitude to | all of humanity. Objectively, it's likely that stuff like the | opening days of some war or the 9/11 attacks would be more | watched than a Mars landing. | | Apropos: Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official | Audio): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 | keiferski wrote: | I think it would be comparable to the first moon landing. | Even if it wasn't _as big_ , the population and access to | video has drastically increased. It doesn't seem crazy to | me that a few billion people would watch it live/within 24 | hours. | tivert wrote: | > I think it would be comparable to the first moon | landing. Even if it wasn't as big, the population and | access to video has drastically increased. | | Though that introduces the problem that you're not really | measuring what you're talking about, sort of like how | lists of the "highest-grossing films of all time," are | mostly about inflation and not popularity. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest- | grossing_films: | | > As the motion picture industry is highly oriented | towards marketing currently released films, unadjusted | figures are always used in marketing campaigns so that | new blockbuster films can much more easily achieve a high | sales ranking, and thus be promoted as a "top film of all | time",[24][31] so there is little incentive to switch to | a more robust analysis from a marketing or even | newsworthy point of view.[30] | wongarsu wrote: | The first human moon landing is among the top 5 most | watched television events, topped mostly by sports events | (and possibly the rescue of the rescue of Chilean miners). | | Of course "most watched event" is more complicated, but I'd | still bet on the moon landing, soccer and the Olympic | opening ceremonies making up the top, rather than war or | terror attacks. | tivert wrote: | > Of course "most watched event" is more complicated, but | I'd still bet on the moon landing, soccer and the Olympic | opening ceremonies making up the top, rather than war or | terror attacks. | | IMHO, that makes my point much stronger. If sports got | higher ratings than the Moon landing, it's a clear | indication we're in a bubble that inflates the importance | of and interest in space exploration. | notfish wrote: | Or maybe it has gotten easier to watch things than it was | in 1969? | burnished wrote: | Might be making a mistake there, it sounds like you are | dismissing sports as unimportant, instead it might be | impressive that something so abstract and distant was | able to rival something so elemental and popular. | tivert wrote: | > Might be making a mistake there, it sounds like you are | dismissing sports as unimportant, instead it might be | impressive that something so abstract and distant was | able to rival something so elemental and popular. | | My only point is I think geeks over-estimate the | popularity of space exploration, incorrectly generalizing | "it excites me/my type" to "it excites | everyone/humanity." If _regularly-held_ sporting events | eclipse _singular_ events in space exploration, it | deflates high-flying rhetoric that expects the latter to | be "the single most watched event in human history." | | I make no comment on the importance of sports. But I'd | argue that professional sports are probably _more_ | abstract (ultimately counting according to some arbitrary | rules) and (practically, in a human sense) about as | distant as space exploration. | pcthrowaway wrote: | The global population in 1969 was about 3.5 billion | people, and I imagine global TV adoption was much lower | at the time as well. Even if 60% of people alive at the | time watched the moon landing, a sports event today would | only need to be watched by ~30% of the global population | to eclipse it. | | I agree that a televised Mars landing would be the most | watched televised event in history. | stickfigure wrote: | So you get incredible Nielsen ratings for an hour or two, | then what? | robg wrote: | And if the Apollo "success" is any guide, it actually | hampers further progress because the milestone was | overhyped with no sustainable plan. | OfSanguineFire wrote: | I'd question even the interest among geeks. Recall the | observation that the rationalist or new-atheist community | of the early millennium declined just as social-justice | rhetoric rose: people were shifting their interest en masse | from one thing to another. I think geeky Westerners are so | focused right now on social and political battle within | Earth society that space exploration would draw no more | than a "that's neat" response before the discussion in | their bubbles went right back to the usual. | vkou wrote: | The first landing would be the most watched event. | | The sixth landing wouldn't pull anyone away from this | week's Monday-Night-Handegg game. The sixtieth would be | fighting for ratings with Charlie's Angels. | usrbinbash wrote: | > But who cares about that? | | Everyone who actually has to make a mars colony _work_. | | Because, yes _" yearning for the vast and endless sea"_ is | certainly more poetic than figuring out how to make beams | from tree trunks. | | But without lots of people who think alot about trees and | carpentry figuring out how to reliably produce good quality | beams and techniques that allow for them to be fitted | together into a hull that won't break apart when hit by the | first few waves, no amount of yearning will result in a | working Carrack. | | > human being landing on Mars would probably be the single | most watched event in human history. | | Probably. And now imagine the reaction of all those people | watching, when the landing vehicle crashed and exploded, or | the Astronauts died horribly from thirst or starvation. | | That's why there are people who care about building a | sustainable colony in the arctic dry valleys. | polotics wrote: | May I suggest that people who say what you say also do not | understand one thing? | | To get excited about watching one man eking survival on Mars, | you have yourself to be quite far away from any concern for | your own survival here on earth. | | To say it differently, this is very high on Maslow's pyramid. | | For reference maybe check out Gilles Scott Heron's "Whitey on | the moon"... | walleeee wrote: | > People who say this don't understand that Mars colonies | aren't about pragmatic, resource-optimized decisions. | | On the contrary, many of us agree very much with this. Mars | is not a practical goal at the moment and it doesn't make | sense from a resource perspective. | | What might be more exciting, I think, is to develop such a | well-functioning, resilient terrestrial society, such an | abundant, adaptable community of life, that we _could_ | realistically take ourselves and our companions to Mars and | hope to persist there. But that takes a lot of know-how, a | lot of materials and energy, and (most importantly) a lot of | wisdom. | | Is a species steamrolling its paradise of a homeworld's | living fabric really capable of planting a viable colony on a | dead planet? | huthuthike wrote: | I agree with you that for the cost we can do more with | robotics, and it's safer. | | However, we also need to factor in human psychology. It would | inspire billions of people worldwide to see a person on Mars. | This is not something that can be replicated by sending robotic | missions. It's possible that this could increase public support | for funding space exploration, and drive more people to go into | careers in science. | | It's hard to predict the benefits of human exploration of space | because we don't know how the world will react. But it's a lot | more significant than just measuring the scientific output of | the mission. | robg wrote: | It's been over 50 years since a human was on the moon. The | need to replicate that psychological success has not been | there for humanity given the costs and better use of | resources. Mars is exponentially more expensive. | Quekid5 wrote: | Also the whole... "they're very probably not coming back | from Mars alive" thing :) | huthuthike wrote: | Doing something we've never done before is a lot more | exciting to people than repeating our previous success. | | Think about it this way: who were the astronauts on the | first lunar landing mission? Who were the astronauts on the | last? Why do you think that we remember the first ones to | do it better? | robg wrote: | Who were the astronauts that died with Challenger? | Notoriety is hardly an index worth investing in. | | A colony on the moon is technically possible, albeit very | expensive. Many nations could create one today. People | are choosing to spend their limited resources on better | forms of progress. | huthuthike wrote: | To your first point, I think success at doing something | that no human has done before is going to be more | memorable to the masses than failure to do something that | many people have done before. Hence we remember the first | people to land on the moon but we don't remember the | 200th astronaut that didn't make it into space cause they | died. Regardless, referring back to my original point, | it's not the fame of a specific individual that should be | the goal in a human mission to Mars. Instead it's a | combination of the scientific yields as well as the | increased public enthusiasm for science that could make a | human mission more valuable than robotic ones. It's very | hard to measure the latter but it should not be | discounted when considering the value of a human mission. | | Regarding your second point, you were the one that said | we should spend the same resources of a manned mission on | robotic missions. So if it is going to cost $2 trillion | dollars for a manned mission we should spend $2 trillion | instead on robotic missions. Now it seems you are arguing | that we should spend the money elsewhere. If that's your | point it is a different discussion. | autoexec wrote: | > I agree with you that for the cost we can do more with | robotics, and it's safer. | | I don't see much that's safe about robotics in our future. In | space they'll be great (until they turn on us), but on Earth | it seems like they'll mostly be used to kill people and if we | ever do get robot butlers and maids you can bet that they'll | be sending a continuous stream of audio and video of our | homes, conversations, and sex lives back to at least one | remote server as "telemetry" that will be sold off to data | brokers and our government. | robotresearcher wrote: | Robots on earth are mostly used in manufacturing and to | clean floors. Millions of them, today. | autoexec wrote: | That's the case today only because they have such limited | capability. Our lowly roombas already want to spy on us. | | https://gizmodo.com/roombas-next-big-step-is-selling- | maps-of... | | https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomb | a-i... | | https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/19/robot-vacuums-can-be- | hacked-a... | renewiltord wrote: | Then you should build that space company. Show us how it's | done. | Balgair wrote: | To add on to the Edit: | | You can get humans on Mars with a big effort. Fine. Now get | them back off. | | Simple hand waving shows it's a really really hard thing to do. | Let's assume current rocket science. You somehow have to get a | fueled launch vehicle off the surface. The gravity is less, | ~3/5ths, so it's a lot less fuel than on Earth, but it is still | a _lot_ of fuel. Somehow, without nearly any infrastructure and | in a near vacuum, this rocket has to successfully get off of | the surface. We can see that it 's really hard to do this just | on Earth with huge hangers and loads of experts and tools on | standby. Doing this on Mars with a few astronauts and lord | knows what sort of repair and maintenance facilities is just | going to be a _lot_ harder to pull off. | | Fine, sure, now let's assume that we've somehow managed to have | improved the science of reliability engineering to the point | that we can just have fully fueled rockets just sitting on | Martian dirt for years on end [0]. How do you get that rocket | down from orbit? Like, how do you land that much fuel? That's a | _really hard_ problem to solve. Sure, fine, lots of little | payloads all over the place. But then you have to have some | sort of industrial machinery to go retrieve all those fuel pods | and then load up the rocket. Who or what are going to drive all | over Utopia Planitia to grab it all and then handle fueling? | Astronauts? AI? Whatever it is, it 's really expensive and has | to be really safe. Why not build the rocket on Mars too? | | Any return from Mars requires sciences and industry that we | currently do not have, full stop. Iterating our way to that | future is possible, but is currently outside of our skill sets. | A _lot_ of money and time is going to be needed to get to | return missions. Ideas that this mission requires also upset | the state of current industrial manufacture, repair, and | maintenance here on Earth. Not in a bad way, mind you, but | those techniques are miles beyond what we currently can do and | will very much change the future of Earth just as much as it | changes Mars. | | [0] By the by, do you have any idea what that science will do | to our Earth based industry? Nothing will ever break ever | again! | fastball wrote: | I'm not sure you realize this, but your comment is _exactly_ | why colonizing Mars is a worthy adversary. It requires doing | things far beyond our knowhow, which historically is the best | way to actually get something done - inspire towards an | impossible goal and humanity can make it happen. You | generally don 't make technological leaps by pursuing things | you know you can do already. Even if we _don 't_ make it | happen, we are guaranteed to learn a plethora of useful | things along the way. | | Needing "a lot of money and time" is irrelevant. Money is a | fiction and time we have in spades. Would we instead prefer | the brightest minds of humanity spend more of their days | optimizing algorithms that encourage other humans to sit on | their asses consuming ads? Or maybe it would be better if, | instead of designing Martian space-suits, we spend more time | designing fast-fashion clothing meant to be worn once or | twice, basking in hitherto unimagined heights of navel- | gazing. | marcosdumay wrote: | > Would we instead prefer the brightest minds of humanity | spend more of their days optimizing algorithms that | encourage other humans to sit on their asses consuming ads? | | If I had to allocate them, I'd put them working on | renewables, useful carbon capture, and artificial "slow | organics" like wood. | | But then, the great thing about markets is that they can | see more broadly than me. (And the bad thing is that they | can't see as far.) | | Anyway, if we decide to invest on space exploitation | (instead of just exploration), I'd bet on asteroid mining | much before planet colonization. Settling down on a planet | seems to be a completely useless action. | vkou wrote: | > I'm not sure you realize this, but your comment is | exactly why colonizing Mars is a worthy adversary. It | requires doing things far beyond our knowhow, which | historically is the best way to actually get something done | - inspire towards an impossible goal and humanity can make | it happen. | | You can say the same thing about literally any other hard | problem, most of which have a far better ROI, and are still | not getting much traction. | | There's a reason nobody's built a moon base. | at_a_remove wrote: | We can't even swing a _self-sufficient_ (emphasis added) colony | on the much more hospitable Antarctica. Short of that, anyone | sent to Mars needs a handy supply of cyanide capsules for the | inevitable disaster. In the next twenty years, arrival of human | meat on Mars is just bragging rights. Want exploration? We | could do more of that with robots. Backup civilization? Simply | not going to happen until we can get that Antarctica colony | rolling. Nobody in, nobody out, allowance of once every two | years robot-guided payloads under ten tons, and it has to run | for forty years ... _that_ is a good example of a colony. | | Realistically, we need things like autonomous self-replicating | robot factories in the asteroids chucking payloads of metals | onto designated landing targets on Mars, and their cousins | maybe retrieving the odd iceberg from the Oort to make a long | trip over. We'll need boring machines, Mars specials, that can | leave sealed tunnels several yards underground where the | radiation won't be as annoying. We will need to create thirty | Biospheres a year here on Earth, each year a new generation, | and _learn_ from them. Thirty is a good number if you want to | do stats and discount one-offs. And we 'll have to start | tweaking the genes on what is in those Biospheres to figure out | what will make them compatible with, say, underground caverns | built by those boring machines. | | This isn't like a trip to a remote island. | burnished wrote: | Sounds like a plan to put boots on mars. | nico wrote: | We could be exploring the inside of our own planet. We have | literally only scratched the surface and we barely know | anything about the deeper parts of Earth, yet we are obsessed | with places that are incredibly far away and hard to reach | BiteCode_dev wrote: | I'm pretty sure people said things like that when talking about | sending people to the moon. | | And people probably said things like that to Columbus about | sending boats across the ocean. | | Humanity has to do grand projects like this that seem | ridiculous, because once in a while, it changes everything. | | And even if it doesn't, the cheer amount of ingenuity it | requires brings benefit on their own. | marcosdumay wrote: | > I'm pretty sure people said things like that when talking | about sending people to the moon. | | Yep. And those reasons are why people touched it a few times | and never came back. | | > And people probably said things like that to Columbus about | sending boats across the ocean. | | Hum... Nope. People were already sending boats across that | specific ocean for centuries. | BiteCode_dev wrote: | > Yep. And those reasons are why people touched it a few | times and never came back. | | And it changed the world forever. Probably contributed to | avoid the cold war to turn hot. Not to mention we got | diapers out of it, and a healthy space program that made | amazing things possible like the GPS. | | > Hum... Nope. People were already sending boats across | that specific ocean for centuries. | | Nick picking. People didn't know that. | usrbinbash wrote: | I'm also pretty sure some people said things like "We will | soon have colonies on the moon" shortly after Neil Armstrong | stepped off that Lunar Lander ladder. | | Fun fact: No human has set foot on the Moon since 1972: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17 | | Also: When Columbus set sail, he could reasonably assume that | he would see his home again. Big boats and long sea voyages | were not a new technology in his time. When NASA started the | Apollo Missions, they had them planned out from start to | finish and knew exactly how that would work. | | So yes, once in a while, humanity does something amazing, | that seems a bit far fetched, but still reasonable. What | humanity usually doesn't do, is something that it has | absolutely no plan on how to do it. | mikewarot wrote: | If you want humans on Mars, first you need a self-sufficient | logistics chain on Mars. We've made breathable Oxygen on Mars, | and we should be able to make a Von Neuman probe to send, and | set up that supply chain. Instead of having it manage itself, | we simply make it remote control, and we don't have to worry | about run-away issues. | | We should be able to go anywhere there's large enough of a | fraction of the resources required for human life. For | instance, if there's NO phosphorus, instead of just a smaller | percentage, it's no-go, unless we're willing to live off a | stockpile imported from elsewhere. | | So, ambient temperature and pressure, along with elemental | composition, are really the only hard limits. | Projectiboga wrote: | Mars only has 0.39 of our gravity. I don't see that as a viable | place for humans to live. | jayGlow wrote: | why not? we know microgravity has a negative effect on people | but we haven't tested 1/3rd gravity. unless I missed | something we don't know the threshold for negative effects | from lowered gravity. | awongh wrote: | I just watched this depressing video about the $130b dollars | spent building a high speed rail in England (HS2). He actually | mentions off-hand how many James Webb Space Telescopes that | could buy. (the video is about the fact that the rail line will | actually be 100% useless in the end, not just overpriced) | https://youtu.be/rQ8mpBL07l8 | | So maybe it's fine if we spend a bunch of money on getting to | Mars. There are plenty of interesting arguments for doing it, | and it would be a way better use of resources than just | flushing it down the toilet on useless infrastructure. Could be | much worse. | Qem wrote: | > Without a self-sustaining colony and next generation | propulsion tech, any humans on Mars as a backup plan will die | lonely deaths. | | Actually there are elder scientists wanting to volunteer for | such a mission. See https://philpapers.org/rec/MAKTBG | mjan22640 wrote: | Self sustaining robots would be a cool project on Earth even. | simonebrunozzi wrote: | Agreed with you. | | Relevant reading: "Why Not Mars" [0] | | [0]: https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm | throw1234651234 wrote: | I have to ask the stupid question: Geothermal heating and energy | production is still impossible in a practical sense, right? | kaycebasques wrote: | The ingenuity (and accumulated knowledge) of people never stops | amazing me. "Well, we can't actually drill into Mars to see what | it's made of, so let's slap a marsquake detector on the surface | and we'll measure seismic energy from meteor impacts to figure | out what this bad boy's guts are made of." Of course no NASA | person actually talks like this; I have been reading too much | Heinlein. | | Also, they use the term "marsquake". Never stopped to think about | how geocentric the term "earthquake" is! | KingLancelot wrote: | It'll blown your mind when you realize what "Geo" means. | | (Geo is the Greek word for Earth) | qiine wrote: | moonquake exist too ! | https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/14/world/moonquakes-apollo-1... | kaycebasques wrote: | That was some pleasant, info-dense reporting from CNN. Didn't | know they still had it in 'em! | | > The lunar surface is an extreme environment, oscillating | between minus 208 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 133 degrees | Celsius) in the dark and 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees | Celsius) in direct sun, according to a news release about the | study. | | Just re-read _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_. It 's fun to | have some hard data on exactly how harsh the surface is. It | comes up a few times in the book. | wongarsu wrote: | As the article shortly touches on, it's how we know what the | earth is made out of too. Our deepest borehole reaches 0.2% of | the distance to the middle of the earth, most of what we know | is instead from measuring seismic waves from earthquakes. | HerculePoirot wrote: | In French "to land" is "atterrir" (to earth). So we have | "alunir". | | >The eagle has mooned ! | | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amarsir | tomrod wrote: | I love this in so many ways! | umanwizard wrote: | "earth" (with a lowercase letter) means roughly the same | thing as ground, land, soil, etc, just like "terre" in | French. | feoren wrote: | Some people call Hacker News the "Orange Site", but of course | that's way too fruit-centric, so we shouldn't call it that -- | the website banner is not actually a citrus fruit at all! | | Or can we just accept that orange-the-color is a fundamentally | different idea than orange-the-fruit, despite the fact that the | former is named after the latter? Can we accept that "earth" | can simply refer to the material that makes up the hard surface | layer of a planet, as a different idea than "Earth" the planet | after which it's named? Is that OK? Do we really need to come | up with a new word for "Solar Power" if the power comes from a | light source other than our own sun? Can we call the large- | scale geoengineering of Mars "terraforming", or must we insist | that it's "marsaforming" (and not "geoengineering", but | "marsoengineering")? Can we call something "romantic" even if | it isn't actually written in Latin ("from Medieval Latin | romanice, Vulgar Latin romanice ("in the Roman language", | adverb"))? Is that OK with everyone? | | It's a damn earthquake. | burnished wrote: | ..how did the words 'marsquake' and 'geocentric' set you off | so badly? None of your examples even loosely fit the mold, | 'terra' and 'geo' don't refer to a specific planet in this | context at all. | | Marsquake is a fun word. You can also call it an earthquake | and no one will bat an eye. | ChainOfFools wrote: | I'm not sure why I agree with the op, but I do. I think it | has something to do with the fact that this convention of | planet prefix, and geological activity suffix is not going | to work well at astronomical scales. Epsilon-eridani-c- | quake is kind of a mouthful, no? | | It could be argued that doesn't work very well on a human | scale either. after all when there's an earthquake, barring | a civilization-ending apocalyptic situation, it's not the | whole Earth that's quaking (at a human scale perspective), | but rather a localized crustal region of it. A patch of | earth (lowercase). | dumpsterdiver wrote: | This is akin to worrying that the sky is falling when | literally two drops of rain fell. | | "Oh my god, what are we going to do when the rest of it | comes?!" | feoren wrote: | > 'terra' and 'geo' don't refer to a specific planet in | this context at all | | Although originating as basically meaning "dry land", the | word "Terra" became a proper name for the Earth in Latin | around the Renaissance. The prefix "Geo" comes from the | Greek for "Earth", the name of our planet. If you argue | that "geo" really just means "land, ground, soil", etc., | then you are _exactly agreeing with me_ , since the word | "earth" went through the same evolution: Geo-the-planet was | named after geo-the-dirt. Earth-the-planet was named after | earth-the-dirt. | nine_k wrote: | If we start retiring Earth-centric terms too quickly, | we'll have to invent tons of planet-specific cognates: | not geography but marsography, lunagraphy, etc. Same with | Sun-centric terms vs other star systems. | | I would suggest going for generic terms like | "planetquake". | ChainOfFools wrote: | That raises an interesting question, is the surface of Mars | made out of mars, or is it made out of Earth? In english, | capitalizing a noun clarifies this, but that approach may not | generalize to other languages. | croddin wrote: | Once we start construction on mars, will the machines be | called marsmoving equipment? | Kye wrote: | Is this a bit? It feels like a bit. | adolph wrote: | It got enough comments chewing it that it's at least a byte | tomrod wrote: | Quake is sufficient, no need to apply designations. | adolph wrote: | Many things may quake, friends. | tomrod wrote: | Indeed. Such as planets, love handles during aerobics, | and Jello. | dekhn wrote: | and bowels. | pcthrowaway wrote: | > Of course no NASA person actually talks like this | | Are you saying "The Martian" was inaccurate? | ojosilva wrote: | Off-topic nitpicking: I find it intriguing to encounter the term | "marsquake" in scientific articles, or anywhere outside science | fiction. Replacing the prefix "earth" with the nomenclature of a | celestial body is somewhat perplexing and unnecessary. This | practice is more plausible when applied to "Earth," our own | planet with that capitalized "E" - for instance, the | transformation from "earthling" to "marsling" is linguistically | sound. Are we going to now "unmars" new data from these studies? | Will potatoes grown on Mars have a "marsy" taste to them? Will | this practice scale when we finally colonize the Solar System and | have to replace these words for each and every planet or moon? | Should "colonize" be called "elonize" the Solar System since | Columbus is controversially bound to Earth history alone? /s | AnIrishDuck wrote: | > Will potatoes grown on Mars have a "marsy" taste to them? | | Probably will depend on whether there is a difference you can | taste from earthy to "marsy" potatoes. Some experimental trials | [1] have indicated that growing potatoes on Mars will be | difficult, but possible. | | Google is telling me Geosmin is the chemical typically | associated with earthy odor and taste [2]. The mars regolith is | apparently quite salty, so it's completely possible that | "marsy" taste may become associated with some similar common | chemical product of martian agriculture? | | 1. https://cipotato.org/annualreport2016/stories/mars-potatoes/ | 2. https://www.acs.org/molecule-of-the- | week/archive/g/geosmin.h... | bilsbie wrote: | Why no magnetic field then? | bell-cot wrote: | Spoiler: The "surprise" layer is (relatively) quite thin, and | just outside Mars' molten core. That Mars _has_ a molten interior | is not a surprise at all, and evidence for very recent | (relatively) volcanic activity on the Martian surface has been | piling up for a century or more. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-26 23:00 UTC)