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Have the aliens landed?; Have the little green men made contact, or is it a figment of our imagination?
Topic Started: Mar 12 2010, 02:42 PM (5,485 Views)
lamna
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One way mission? That would be a bit barbaric.
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34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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T.Neo
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One way mission? That would be a bit barbaric.


My thoughts exactly. Some, like Aldrin propose to have astronauts spending decades on Mars with the eventual possibility of "retiring" back to Earth... it's a bit better than leaving your astronauts to die, but it still has problems. Like how people would be able to live on Mars for decades, and how to prevent your people being stuck on Mars when budget cuts axe the retirement landers...

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First we need moon colonies.


Uh... no. I don't see why you need to send thousands of people to the Moon to send a few people to Mars. And the Moon is really crappy as a destination for colonisation... it has a lack of resources and mean temperature cycles, as well as gravity that might not be high enough for prolonged human habitation, which is why it might actually be better to build orbital colonies from lunar materials than colonise the Moon itself.
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
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lamna
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In for a penny, in for a pound. If you spend all that time, money and effort getting a man to mars, I see no reason why you can't bring him back.

Moon colonisation to help getting to Mars never made much sense to me, like building a forward supply base to help Antarctic expeditions, in the Channel islands/Tasmania/Puerto Rico.
Living Fossils

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34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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T.Neo
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In for a penny, in for a pound. If you spend all that time, money and effort getting a man to mars, I see no reason why you can't bring him back.


Yeah... pretty much. IMO that can extrapolate to the mission designs as well.

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Moon colonisation to help getting to Mars never made much sense to me, like building a forward supply base to help Antarctic expeditions, in the Channel islands/Tasmania/Puerto Rico.


Yeah... pretty much. NASA has been going on about a lunar base for learning how to survive on Mars for some time, but IMO it's a load of rubbish- the Moon is no more of an analogue to Mars than the Atacama desert or McMurdo valley, which could potentially be used to test mission equipment or variations of it (NASA in fact already does this with their surface probes) at a fraction of the cost, and other mission hardware and techniques can be tested on Mars probe missions to the intended environment, or even missions to NEOs. And other technologies could even be tested on satellite-like technology demonstrators, almost like Deep Space 1.

The only real reason to go to the Moon is partial gravity research. We know very little in that regard.
A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

T.Neo
Aug 30 2010, 04:23 PM
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Although the people we sent would most likely be irrepairably damaged, unfortunately. We're not ready yet, according to NASA.


I don't think so... radiation should not be a problem if you give your astronauts an emergency "storm shelter" to take shelter in during a solar flare.

The bigger problem is muscoskeletal and cardiovascular degeneration. It can be recovered from, but people need quite a while to recover- after months in space, people would run into problems doing strenuous work, even in the reduced Martian gravity. But concepts exist, like a VASIMR propelled spacecraft, that could make it to Mars in a month...

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With a fusion drive, like the Intersteallar Ramjet, theroetically about 6% of lightspeed could be achieved using theoretical bits 'n pieces but we can't really get them yet. Buissard collectors, for example.


Yeah, it might be possible to get to whatever speed using theoretical technologies, but we don't have them yet either. Even a fusion engine, much fabled in sci-fi, is not forseeable for a while. We haven't even achieved breakeven with a fusion reactor, let alone built an operational fusion rocket.

Although the carcinogenic effects of radiation could render the astronauts badly damaged, i concede that radiation does not have to be a short-term hazard in space.

Only because we're not getting back what we've put in. In a British reactor ( :P Who's at the technological forefront now?), 16 KW has been achieved [i think].

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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