Possible Mars missions

[Urien]

We as a species live in the equivilent of an uninsured house. We know for certain that there are hazards human made, and natural that are capable of destroying our civilization and perhaps our species as well. We are also short term creatures, few of us can think in terms of the decades and billions required to create viable and sustainable systems for settling/exploiting/colonizing space.

To those that say "wouldn't this money be better spent on...(well meaning project of choice)" then how much is species survival worth? Or don't we care because we're short term and by the time viable space colonisiation comes about we'll be dead or decrepit. But that's an argument for never addressing long term problems.

So I don't know if a Mars project is the right route; probably a better long term route is reducing payload costs into space. A massive space elevator project is probably a better idea than another gigantic firework.

[Sparrow]

I'll go ahead and jack this thread back on topic...

The article linked below is dead on target concerning humankind's chances of populating the far flung wasteland that is our universe. It's by Charles Stross, science fiction writer, and I should add, a futurist who thinks with his mind more than his heart. Our romantic notions of space exploration are horribly outdated to the point of being old fashioned and even irrelevant.
We are perhaps further away from deep space travel then you think. In context, the time it's taken us to go from donkey cart to modern automobile may well be how far we are from space ships capable of reaching neighboring stars, much less setting up colonies.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ier_redux.html




I take my science fiction serious. If not, well then I'd confine myself to reading those books about elven kingdoms, dragons, knights, wizards, vampires, etc... by and large, science fiction is merely fantasy dressed up with technology.

[dustinzgirl]

Sparrow,

I don't want to disagree with you, but

Only the rich merchants and pirates and rulers had their own cross-ocean worthy vessels. Columbus, Poncho, and all the other guys spent small fortunes with NO guarantee of any economic viability. Many died from disease and crashes. It was dangerous, expensive, and most failed to increase any real economy in their own lifetimes.

Even in early times, the Vikings for example, while they did cross oceans and go to N. America, entire villages worked tirelessly to build their vessels, together, and most didn't survive, and furthermore, they never got rich from it.

Spice trading did increase the economy massively for nearly all sea faring nations. BUT NOT FOR MANY YEARS UNTIL AFTER THEY HAD CHARTED A PATH!

Its not like they built a ship by the lowest bidder, stuck a monkey on it, and had an automatic method of making money. It took long hard years, dangerous years, of working and building and thinking and mapping and trading.

I love space exploration.

Space exploration means we are:

Still thinking about the possibilities
Still hopefull about the universe
Not arrogant enough to think we know everything about the universe
Striving, trying, working, believing in something greater than our bound earth.

[johnsvenn]

Going to the stars is one thing (and the more you think about what it would entail, the more daunting it becomes) , but surely something like the colonisation of Mars is actually within our grasp right now.

This isn't to say it would be remotely easy but IMHO its more a question of the application of a lot of money and a lot of technology, it doesn't need us to invent anything new - it would be about the synthesis of a lot existing stuff - although as Urien just said we'd need something better than more big fireworks...

Anyway about to read the Charles Stross Article.