I just saw a video on another site, a guy who's show is named "The Big Picture" over at the escapist magazine. Pretty old so to say, but check it out it might peak your interest if you like that sort of things, like me! Link: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... The-Future Quite frankly I agree with him. Just wanted to share as I didn't find any Off-Topic forum EDIT: NEVERMIND I FOUND AN OFF-TOPIC FORUM! Admin! HALP! Dx EDITEDIT: Moved, yay
Re: Journey into space! Colony on mars! THREAD NEEDS MOVING! D: WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MNC OMG BAN THIS NOOB LOLOLOLOL.
Re: Journey into space! Colony on mars! THREAD NEEDS MOVING! D: They be like, "You is trollin'" and I be like, "I'm not trollin'".
Re: Journey into space! Colony on mars! THREAD NEEDS MOVING! D: What is this, I don't even... Booted to Off Topic. PS: I agree with Bob, we shouldn't just give up on space exploration because it is tough on the budget, that includes the ESA (European Space Agency). We basically have the technology to get to Mars, all we really need to do is polish it and fing do it already. Dammit, they flew to the moon with computers that were slower than todays smartphones! I always say: If we have enough money to send troops to some 3rd world country and mess that up we should have enough money to explore space.
Re: Journey into space! Colony on mars! THREAD NEEDS MOVING! D: I would so move to mars if it were an option. *sigh* To bad it will never happen.
Let's spread the word! Start revolts! Overthrow the throne and take it for ourselves! We shall force money out of the swine calling themselves politicians and bet everything on space technology to speed up the process!! If it only was that easy... This world is going to hell anyway, might as well switch planets. Though terraforming would have to be invented first...
Not necessarily. Mars has no magnetosphere. You would not want to put a colony on the surface or at least not the larger part of it. Besides, there are planetwide sandstormes that make a hurricane look like a ridiculous little cough. If you are going to colonize Mars everything of importance should be below the surface and you will need a reliable powersource that will work for month without or with strongly diminished sunlight. It's not impossible, but it takes a lot more effort than Hollywood would suggest. Think Antarctic, with harmful radiation and one tiny rip in your room's walls or your suit will kill you in a very short time. And when things go south: A call home will take minutes to arrive, the response the same time. It's more like communicating via YouTube clips. Help? Everywhere from 6 month to 2 years later - if you are still around. I think we might be better off starting with a small colony on the moon to be honest. If something goes horribly wrong there is at least a slim chance to save the crew. Plus it would give us some valuable insights on the psychological stress you will have to tolerate. They are trying to simulate that in closed-off testing sites but that's not the same.
I don't think lunar or martian colonization are viable from economic standpoints. The Moon: No atmosphere. By a crapload of solar-powered crap it'd be feasible enough to power and keep an air supply for a colony(including plants to help turn carbon dioxide into oxygen of course), but the lack of an atmosphere is a HUGE problem with the concept of a lunar colony. You know all that crap like meteors that get caught in the gravity of larger objects and lesser things like paintchips or screwdrivers that are lost in spacewalks? Well, it's still there. Moving really, really fast. An atmosphere would burn that crap up, but without an atmosphere a paintchip is going to be a lot like a bullet and a screwdriver moving at orbital speeds will probably have a stronger impact than a sabot shell fired from a tank(not to mention would a meteor moving at millions of mile per hour could do). The only way to protect against that kind of crap is to have every single part of a colony made of beyond military-grade armor...which isn't something any corporation or government is going to be willing to invest in, nor will transporting all that crap be remotely worth the ridiculous amount of money to do it. Mars: The atmosphere blocks the armor-piercing paintchip problem, but the logistics problems with putting a man on Mars are as insane as Jessep said. In my opinion, the only remotely feasible way of colonizing Mars would be to send hundreds of flights with AI-controlled robots to set up everything for a colony and possibly perform some milder bits of terraforming(but I'm uncertain of how practical actual terraforming on Mars would be: I'm merely skeptical). Such a process would probably take well over a century. Alternatives to that? Send a shipload(harhar) of rockets full of supplies, crews, and equipment in a much smaller period of time for a brief visit of a couple years. This wouldn't be much easier because they'd need do launch back off the planet themselves within a very limited window of time and regardless of things like how much better computers and such get: they'd still be hauling an extra rocket to Mars.
Yup, Mars has an atmosphere but it's incredible thin. Pressure on Mars is 600 Pa on average and earth has something like 100 kPa. Note the kilo in Pascal for Earth. Basically, there is just enough gas to slow most stuff down a bit, not to burn it up like on earth. Terraforming, or producing enough breathable atmosphere is another problem: Yup, not only do you get unhealthy amounts of radiation, the solar wind strips your valuable atmosphere away. I still think the only way to go is to put a long-term colony under the surface. At least if the astronauts are planning on having children with only one head and two eyes... Getting stuff there would be indeed expensive as hell, unless we can build a space elevator. I think that might really be the first step that needs to be taken before we can realistically think of any larger projects in space. NASA's proposal for a manned Mars mission was by several factors smaller. They just wanted to send two modues, a crew lander and a cargo module. The cargo module was designed to produce fuel from the atmosphere for the crew module's return flight - clever!
People at NASA knowing more about space travel than a layman? What is this?[/Barry Burton] But nah. I just don't think it's economically viable. We're not going to gain anything from it, it's incredibly expensive, and who'd want to actually be on that mission? Think about it from the crew's point of view. You'd be stuck with those guys for like two years and all. Without vidja games or the ability to go outside and take a walk. That's torture. Then your body could always adapt to Mars' lower gravity and suddenly things in Earth's gravity may be a lot harder. Hell, could the result of a return trip be dangerous? I don't imagine there's much data on that since there's no way to study what happens to internal organs after being in reduced gravity for an extended period of time that I can think of. Also, underground colony? Wouldn't it require even more resources to send all that specially-designed mining equipment? Unless there's some incredibly awesome, pollutant-free fuel source on Mars I just don't think it'd be viable.
