2012 Republican Presidential Candidate Race

[Eaglestrike]

By the time that happens, it won't really be a very important loss.

I wonder. Has one estimation saying it would take 11 million years, then a new one saying 7.6 million. Alright, if that's the time frames, it's not a problem at all, lol, but I wonder what colonizing it and landing on it would do (since I assume we'd likely land on the moon from the not-Mars side). Granted this is from twitter, but had a thing the other day on what the fuck facts that stated that if all of China jumped at once it would move the world ever so slightly. What effect would adding all sorts of shit on Phobos have on how quickly it rotates into Mars?

[Greatguardian]

We don't need to colonize, man, or completely deface Phobos. Putting supplies like fuel there is enough. You don't need a return base on the moon because you already have the ability to produce fuel on Earth. That's the biggest reason to have a supply base on Mars.

If you run out of supplies on Mars and can't get home, you are fucked. If you run out of supplies on Earth, you go to Wal-Mart.

Also the added mass wouldn't affect its orbital acceleration. Phobos could suddenly quadruple in mass and still orbit/fall at the same rate.

F(G) = Gm1m2/r^2. F = M/A. A = F/M. M = m2. A = Gm1/r^2.

Acceleration is independent of the mass of the orbiting body, and only depends on the mass of the central body and the radius.

Edit: Layman's terms, a common example is a hammer and a pencil both fall at the same speed on the Earth because the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is independent of the mass of the falling object.

[ronin sparthos]

Not exactly an expert on asteroids but wasn't it deemed impractical from a cost/benefit point of view mining near-Earth asteroids for valuable minerals?

[Greatguardian]

Not exactly an expert on asteroids but wasn't it deemed impractical from a cost/benefit point of view mining near-Earth asteroids for valuable minerals?

Only with current prices, I believe. There's certainly still room to make space travel cheaper. It's just that going to the moon again won't really help much in that regard.

Unless the federal government suddenly decides to dump tons of money into NASA so that the geeks can geek their hearts out, the best bet for research that reduces the cost of space travel is to open NEA mining up to private corporations and strictly regulate (as in, not how the US currently treats business "regulation") their safety protocols. Thar be gold and shits up there.

[Eaglestrike]

We don't need to colonize, man, or completely deface Phobos. Putting supplies like fuel there is enough. You don't need a return base on the moon because you already have the ability to produce fuel on Earth. That's the biggest reason to have a supply base on Mars.

If you run out of supplies on Mars and can't get home, you are fucked. If you run out of supplies on Earth, you go to Wal-Mart.

Also the added mass wouldn't affect its orbital acceleration. Phobos could suddenly quadruple in mass and still orbit/fall at the same rate.

F(G) = Gm1m2/r^2. F = M/A. A = F/M. M = m2. A = Gm1/r^2.

Acceleration is independent of the mass of the orbiting body, and only depends on the mass of the central body and the radius.

Edit: Layman's terms, a common example is a hammer and a pencil both fall at the same speed on the Earth because the acceleration due to Earth's gravity is independent of the mass of the falling object.

I wasn't trying to imply orbit would speed up from people being there so much as the effect of force when people land on the planet with all these new supplies. If a ship lands and shifts the orbit 1mm closer each time, how much does that potentially speed up the collision course? You did say the radius would have an effect and each ship landing could reduce the radius.

Though I think I do see your point. And if anything happens to earth it could easily fuck up the moon, so Phobos is a safer bet in some ways than the moon. Although the moon you can likely commercialize faster, which could be crucial in development.

[ronin sparthos]

Only with current prices, I believe. There's certainly still room to make space travel cheaper. It's just that going to the moon again won't really help much in that regard.

Unless the federal government suddenly decides to dump tons of money into NASA so that the geeks can geek their hearts out, the best bet for research that reduces the cost of space travel is to open NEA mining up to private corporations and strictly regulate (as in, not how the US currently treats business "regulation") their safety protocols. Thar be gold and shits up there.

Moon aside, what would the incentive be for a private corporation to spend billions on reaching an NEA when the Earth is still ripe with resources that remain untapped? I just don't see the incentive given the safer choices here on Earth along with all the money it'd take just to design an efficient system of bringing the payload back to Earth in a timely manner.

[Greatguardian]

Moon aside, what would the incentive be for a private corporation to spend billions on reaching an NEA when the Earth is still ripe with resources that remain untapped? I just don't see the incentive given the safer choices here on Earth along with all the money it'd take just to design an efficient system of bringing the payload back to Earth in a timely manner.

Lie and tell people there's oil on the NEAs, duh.

Honestly, this is pretty much why no one's mounting the expeditions right now. I'm just saying, if we were to revitalize the space program and go somewhere, the moon is the last stop on my list. We'd get a lot more out of pretty much anything else in our neighborhood.

I wasn't trying to imply orbit would speed up from people being there so much as the effect of force when people land on the planet with all these new supplies. If a ship lands and shifts the orbit 1mm closer each time, how much does that potentially speed up the collision course? You did say the radius would have an effect and each ship landing could reduce the radius.

Though I think I do see your point. And if anything happens to earth it could easily fuck up the moon, so Phobos is a safer bet in some ways than the moon. Although the moon you can likely commercialize faster, which could be crucial in development.

You're overestimating the kind of impacts we're talking about here...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...olour_2008.jpg

Those are craters. Phobos has been hit by plenty of cosmic objects already.

What in the world are you talking about, though? Escape from nuclear winter? Shit, it doesn't matter if we're on Mars, the moon, or Io man. Losing the Earth is going to mean game over for a long time.

[Eaglestrike]

You're overestimating the kind of impacts we're talking about here...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...olour_2008.jpg

Those are craters. Phobos has been hit by plenty of cosmic objects already.

What in the world are you talking about, though? Escape from nuclear winter? Shit, it doesn't matter if we're on Mars, the moon, or Io man. Losing the Earth is going to mean game over for a long time.

Sounds like that's a whole other reason to avoid Phobos, unless we can come up with an atmospheric generator to protect from most meteorites and shit.

But yeah, some apocalypse scenario like that would be one worry about why we should focus on another place in the universe to inhabit.

[Kuya]

I agree with spending more money on NASA. Our spacecraft are just too inefficient to ever make commercial spaceflight viable. I think that we can always propose slicing the shit out of the Pentagon and sticking the money into NASA (not that NASA tech is not used by the military), in theory anyway.

[Milkster]

Newt Gingrich, what a guy..

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/479364/thu...M-large570.jpg


Newt Gingrich has three marriages and repeated infidelity under his belt, but that doesn't stop him from sounding off about the sanctity of male-female marriage.
On a conference call for Religious Right supporters Wednesday, Newt compared gay marriage to paganism. Right Wing Watch has excerpts from the conversation:

It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

Last month Newt submitted a lengthy signing statement to the Iowa Family Leader's controversial "Marriage Vow" pledge. Here is the part where he discusses his plans for marriage legislation:

Defending Marriage. As President, I will vigorously enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, which was enacted under my leadership as Speaker of the House, and ensure compliance with its provisions, especially in the military. I will also aggressively defend the constitutionality of DOMA in federal and state courts. I will support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification. I will also oppose any judicial, bureaucratic, or legislative effort to define marriage in any manner other than as between one man and one woman. I will support all efforts to reform promptly any uneconomic or anti-marriage aspects of welfare and tax policy. I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.

Newt's second wife, Marianne, unloaded a bombshell right before the South Carolina primary, claiming that Newt requested an open marriage so that he could continue his affair with Callista.
When asked about the allegations during a CNN debate in Charleston, Newt got into a heated exchange with John King and dismissed the story as a "despicable" lie.
"Every person in here knows personal pain," he said. "Every person in here has had someone close to them go through painful things. To take an ex-wife and make it two days before the primary, a significant question in a presidential campaign, is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine."

[RKenshin]

I support NASA as well.

It's an incredibly small part (like, ~1%?) of our budget and frankly, IMO not enough of our budget goes towards hard science/research/innovation (that isn't just military).

If I had the choice, I'd like to see far more go into that field overall (rather than mostly just for the space program). But I'll take what I can get with NASA.

I do agree though that a focus on a moon base would be of the least desirable options for advancing our program.

[ronin sparthos]

Newt's wife frightens me.

[Cantih]

What's really disturbing is she looks like one of Sabrina's witch aunts.

[ronin sparthos]

What's really disturbing is she looks like one of Sabrina's witch aunts.

What's more disturbing is I caught that reference instantly.

Aunt Zelda!

[Caiyuo]

and horrifyingly the other one looks slightly like victoria jackson

[RKenshin]

Newt's wife frightens me.

Every time I see her, the only thing I see is this:


(excuse the photo-shop rush)

EDIT: Ha, and I didn't even have to add the beak shadow.

[archibaldcrane]

Wait

guys

he doesn't just want to add a moon base

he said once that base has a population of 13,000, it can become the 51st US state.

I'm serious.

Can you even procure oxygen on the moon? Would we have to tap into dark-side polar ice?

[Greatguardian]

Wait

guys

he doesn't just want to add a moon base

he said once that base has a population of 13,000, it can become the 51st US state.

I'm serious.

Can you even procure oxygen on the moon? Would we have to tap into dark-side polar ice?

bring plants to photosynthesize duh

[Kuya]

I could totally see a moon base becoming the 51st state before PR.

[Pirian]

I could totally see a moon base becoming the 51st state before PR.

Well, 1st - Only 1 "state" can become the 51st state, so PR would be something beyond that by that point. 2nd - lol, PR is never going to be a state.