Does Life Exist

[Growltigger]

As we are talking about colonising Mars, does anyone know anything about the radiation issue outside the Van Allan belt or something round the Earth.

As I recall, this was something I read about cosmic radiation, and how the Van Allan belt protected Earth, but outside it, long exposure would frankly kill astronauts. A short trip to the moon was not too bad, but longer flights would really be a no-no. Dunno if this is true or not, I suppose conventional radiation shielding would be too heavy to make it practical to launch (unless you did it peicemeal and assembled theship in orbit) but that would be a hellish undertaking.

My view is that there is most likely intelligent life out there as the universe is just so vast that even the remotest chance of life will mean it pops up in a few places. What I dont think it dies do is zip around Earth going wibble wibble and scaring farmers, rednecks and other wierdos

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Ruatha:

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Originally posted by Atrocities:

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I don´t think we´re hundreds of years from having self-sustaining colonies on other planets. All the technology that we´d possibly need has long since been invented (say 30 years ago). If they could send a man to the moon in 69 we can most surely send several to mars and have them stay there indefinately... the ony problem is the will to do so. (if you have the will you find the money and the means)

You should consider that to send a manned mission to Mars would require far more technology than we currently have. The effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body, the micro metorites that would pummule a ship to dust, and the enormus calculations needed to get there and back, the cost, etc.

Keep in mind that NASA has stated that ships with rotating sectiosn are not fessable in any degree and the technology to create such a ship is currently not available.

The best we can hope for in the next 200 years is perhaps a small moon base or orbital facility near the moon. Nothing more.

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I think you are pretty alone in thinking that it's technology that hinders a manned mission to Mars.
Today it's mostly economics, the cost will be huge.
The problems with micro-meteroids won't be all that much bigger than when we went to the moon i'd belive, just more prolonged but not a major problem, we've sent probes much further than Mars. Yes, they get hit but it's solvable. Even I can solve that one, 1 meter of lead will stop most meteroids (Not the best solution I agree ).
Prolonged zero-g is not a hindrance either, a problem yes but not unsurmountable. The Russians have had people in space for over a year with much less training facilities than would be possible to mount inside a Mars mission.

The huge calculations is not any problem, that could be solved by most nations space agencies, even our small Swedish space agency has resources to calculate trajectories needed, fuel amount, thrust, launch dates etc..

No the problem is cost, it just costs too much and the profit isn't availible in any near future, to justify that cost will be hard.
If the motivation was right we could have had a manned mission to Mars in the 90-ies, heck, even in the early 70-ies if the motivation was STRONG enough to justify the cost in money and lifes.

Remember that it's hard to get funding for the international space station, the most expensive human space project so far, and that is much cheaper than a Mars mission I'd guess.

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I just watched a show on it a few weeks ago and the NASA guys stated that at current levels, we do not have the technology, nor the funding, for a manned mission to mars. They went into all the pros and cons and were very open about what was needed in order to mount a manned mission to the red planet.

So I am not talking out of my *** when I said what I said. It was all based upon what was said in the documentary.

[Slick]

I don't know the radiation levels exactly, but, yes, there are some lethal areas between Earth and Mars. The current idea is that there would be a small shielded compartment in the ship where the crew would go when passing through these areas. A small shielded (probably Pb) compartment is much more practical than shielding the entire ship. If required, the crew could safely make short excursions out of the shielded room to operate equipment, etc.

Slick.

[Loser]

The Soviets were ahead where they were ahead because Stalin choose to emphasize so-call 'old math' (mostly because an oppressed and decaying Soviet Union could not afford computers). This is the same reason such a huge percentage of the twentieth centuries' great mathematicians were from the eastern bloc. They came up with the mathematics that made it possible for one person to plot an orbit in a multiple-body system, that made that rocket engine possible, even the math behind stealth technology was developed by a Russian in the thirties.

The U.S. got to the Moon (which is not a moon, but that's another story), put out more deep space and interplanetary probes, and (until recently) had a much better safety record because it replied on 'new math', math that emphasized quickly turning any equation into one that could be run by a computer: less understanding, less elegant, more powerful, more number-crunching.

I don't know what the bleep happened to the U.S. space program after Apollo. It seems like they really haven't done anything useful since then. It is sad and I, for one, am waiting for the day when one of two things happen.

1. The Chinese get their act up to the level that actual completion for something meaningful starts and NASA gets its aft in gear.
2. The space program is pulled of its current 'life support' level of funding and finally laid to rest. Maybe someday someone else that really loves it will pick it up and do something with it.
   

On another note, the reason that whole spinning-thing won't work is because there will be mass (astronauts and whatever) moving around inside it. "Every action ...." It then costs lots of fuel not only to maintain the right facing or alignment, but also to maintain the correct position relative to your surroundings. You may remember footage of the astronauts running around the inside of Skylab? Wonder why you don't seen any astronauts doing that anymore? It's because those kinds of antics actually knocked Skylab off course. I don't know if the Soviets ever even tried that nonsense, but you can bet that if it had worked, they would have set up something spinning on one of their eight space stations.

Additionally, on the note of how long the Russian or Soviet Space agency has kept people in orbit, do remember that those were experiments in how much a human body can take. They haven't put people up for longer because of the damage those experiments did to those men. Also recall that when long-term station residents come down they are weak: these men can only barely walk. Not going to do much good on Mars if you need three months to recuperate after landing.

(Yeah, yeah, Martian gravity is low... only one month.)

[Erax]

Guys, remember the old saying : "When an expert says something is possible, he is very likely right; but when an expert says something is impossible, he is very likely wrong."

[kalthalior]

Re-discovered another good link from NASA on FTL travel and the challenges it poses.

WARP DRIVE WHEN

[Growltigger]

Side tracking slightly to our earlier chat about ET's and all that, I always recall a really good short cartoon story in 2000AD (a great comic over here in Blighty).

Basically, NASA are shocked when an observatory spots flying saucers. All telescopes are tracking the ET's and they see them fly to the dark side of the moon. Over the next few weeks, blinding light is seen from the dark side of the moon, and a shuttle is prepped to go up there and make contact.

The shuttle launches and gets to the moon to see the ETs flying away. It goes round the dark side of the moon to see what is happening there and is shocked to find a great big sign, kind of like a road sign that says no parking or whatever.

The gallant astronauts manage to decipher the sign and are shocked when it turns out as saying "WARNING, IRRESPONSIBLE RACE IN CHARGE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AHEAD"

Laugh? I thought it was