Life on Mars?

[Kaylia]

I really really really hope they are right, because the probability to find life in the universe will increase from an unknown number to something close to 100%), but this new is too good to be true. I'm going to call bullshit until we get a 2nd or 3rd proof.

[Obev]

Me too. I want fucking asaris, jesus christ.

I see what you almost did there. Yeah, blue-skinned tentacle-haired polyamorous near-immortal hotties would be nice.

But!

Mars as an objective is a serious populist goal. Nobody gives two cosmic shits about the ISS: near earth orbit; been there, done that. However, if people say we're going to Mars, people get excited because it's the final frontier. It's good for science (and therefore the world because where the hell would we be without biros and microwave ovens?) if people are excited and interested about an objective, because even if sending Joe Schmoe to Mars doesn't achieve anything more than the fucking Viking landers at least we've got people sufficiently psyched up to start studying this crap and maybe achieve a more Max-friendly objectively important objective in the long run.

[Zalius]

Why do we have to live on a planet?

Explain this to me, why is it inherently superior to have a permanent gravity well to deal with, and VAST amounts of wasted material hidden inside of it?

Do you have more usable space on the outside of a solid sphere, or on the inside of a hollow one?

nobodys going to hollow out the inside of a planet asshole

[Kuya]

Boy it sure is dead space in here.

[Takedown3]

yo i lost this thread back on the first page but im wondering about the viability mining asteroids for precious metals that we may or may not be able to get at compared to mining mars which in most cases would be alot easier with an established base

pretty sure they would both be on a scale of billions of dollars but i guess if one is available to us the other would be either wouldnt it? or at least within reach

i guess what i think is that any accomplishment in space would be grand, if i could take a shit on mars i would be happy.

[Takedown3]

yo we aint cave dwellers dawg, well not anymore, i like the sun and forward progression

[Woozie]

Your sig is hilarious. Who did you quote that from?

[Nuker]

how the fuck do you land on a asteroid? lol (here comes bruce willis.)

[510Meeze]

1. Sing "I don't want to miss a thing"
2. Slingshot around the moon
3. ???
4 Profit

[Zilong]

Armageddon is a shitty movie, and you're a shitty poster for bringing it up.

[510Meeze]

Kinda harsh on that nuker kid.

[Zalius]

Armageddon is a shitty movie, and you're a shitty poster for bringing it up.

youre a shitty mcfuck suck a dick dont have taste in movies with a severe case of the punkbitch for dissin armageddon yo that movie was dope

[Mizango]

yo i lost this thread back on the first page but im wondering about the viability mining asteroids for precious metals that we may or may not be able to get at compared to mining mars which in most cases would be alot easier with an established base

Three thousand problems with this.

1) The average asteroid travels roughly 50 to 70 THOUSAND miles per hour in the vacuum of space. First problem would be to slow the 'mining bot' (lol I know) down enough to where it is right side up, stable and can do its job in a timely fashion.

2) Let's assume that problem one was resolved and everything went perfectly and you harvested an asteroid, how would you outfit a probe that is carrying thousands upon thousands of pounds of rocks with a firing system that would give it the proper escape velocity to thrust itself off of said asteroid?

You cant harvest 6K lbs of Iron and Iridium and just leave it there lol.

3) Considering an Asteroid (depending on mass and velocity) can traverse a space plane in 1/3 the time in most cases as a man made satellite, how would it look if you were to send a probe on a 4 months voyage to an Asteroid, harvest it for a modest 3 months or so and to have it take a year and a half to fly back with that payload?

There are MANY more problems with this idea and we could go on and make a list to 100 as to why that just would not be feasible or logistically appeasing to anyone involved.

[Zilong]

youre a shitty mcfuck suck a dick dont have taste in movies with a severe case of the punkbitch for dissin armageddon yo that movie was dope

Deep Impact was superior, and Deep Impact was a fucking mediocre disaster movie at best.

So yeah, sorry you like shitty movies and/or Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck's cock.

[Mizango]

I bought it just to see Liv Tyler tbh.

[Max™]

nobodys going to hollow out the inside of a planet asshole

lmfao

Obviously not what I was saying, you silly twat, but if you BUILT your habitat you could use the material in ways besides the most wasteful one (a solid sphere with habitable surface only on the outside).


I'm not talking about ISS, I'm talking about the vast amount of space between Earth and Jupiter orbit, readily accessible, with like... enough raw materials to build another planet.

Or fleets upon fleets of spaceships and colonies to live into, like a mature species, instead of hopping from one crib to another.


I've been jaded with NASA since watching the Challenger blow up, though, so I've got an odd take from most people.


How much will the Mars mission cost?

Ever heard of an orbital loop? Space fountain?

[Kryssan]

Yes, it works. I don't know if we've implemented it. I've never heard of it being used, but the effect of being in a large rotating station is indistinguishable from that of gravity (if you rotate at the correct rate. But the station has to be large enough so that our head isn't feeling less "gravity" than our feet or else the tidal forces would make us sick, or at least I think they would).

Edit: Now that I think about it, there was a problem in my classical physics book that showed that a 6 foot tall astronaut would only experience like a 2% difference in force between their head and feet if they were in a 40 meter doughnut shaped space station rotating to give us a 9.8m/s^2 acceleration. I don't know how small the percentage has to be to actually approximate Earth, but I could probably derive that mathematically. I wonder how small the percentage needs to be so that it doesn't affect our health.

True enough; their are some issues that the general populace forgets about in this scenario: one being that the gravity is only felt on the ring (assuming your habitation module is in the form of a spinning ring since I don't think we're talking spheres here). This also kind of limits the amount of decks you're allowed to have in said ring, because if you set it so that earth gravity is felt due to spin at a certain point from the axis of rotation, moving inwards or outwards is going to change that perception of gravity. Additionally, large coriolis forces would be present and things would fall in curves rather than straight trajectories when dropped. Also, the gravity would be against the outer walls, not the inner walls, another one of those movie misconceptions (assuming they do it 'right' in the first place). Similarly, if there were windows in such a station your viewpoint left and right would actually be up and down assuming the ring is mounted horizontally (like how it is seen in most movies); which could tend to generate some interesting mental affects in certain people.

Moreso, think about actual engineering principles in this undertaking. A craft (with a design of two separate sections mounted on pylons to a centralized fuel/engine block) with a 1km radius would need to have the ends accelerated to 100m/s with a rotational speed that allowed one revolution to be completed in around 63 seconds. That's not exactly a simple task, nor a fuel efficient one. Not to mention that the design and construction would need to be near perfect, as variances in the ship's mass distribution would be difficult to deal with. And it might also be necessary to constantly account for the changes in the mass and actions of the people inside, depending on the size of the station and crew. Also, once again lets look at human conception here: a ship spinning that fast but being that small would not present much of a view externally without some sort of computer generated imaging... and several humans sort of have these issues with being locked in rooms they can't look out of, especially for long periods of time.






Personally I think we should keep it zero-g, there are a great deal of advantages to such a system. I'm thinking about the ability to move objects as well as those nifty personnel transport system ideas. Figure out a way medically, genetically, or surgically to help counteract some of the side effects of the weightlessness.... although personally I'd see nothing wrong with keeping the necessity of having people exercise. Y'know half of 'em won't unless they have to anyway.

[Kaylia]

how the fuck do you land on a asteroid? lol (here comes bruce willis.)

Same way you would land on the orbital station I assume, except you will need some drill to attach your ship to it

[Kryssan]

how the fuck do you land on a asteroid? lol (here comes bruce willis.)

Same way you would land on the orbital station I assume, except you will need some drill to attach your ship to it

In before the sexual references.

[Woozie]

You brought up some of the issues I've always had with a large rotating station. Like I mentioned earlier, the force of 'gravity' at your head would be different than that at your feet. And as you mentioned, changing the mass of the station would change the 'gravity' since it would change the spin rate. I'm assuming if we had such a space station or colony, we'd need to dock huge ships to transport food, people, and supplies.

Both of these problems can be circumvented by making the station very long and very massive. But this would make the moment of inertia HUGE, to the point where getting the thing to rotate would be difficult.

And then there's the other difficulties you pointed out.