Do you believe?
- Thread starter Sliver
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I suspect their attitude would be like the Goddess in that old Discordian parable where the man cries out at all the war, cruelty and general inhumanity of his species. And the goddess replies: "well, if it's what people want." "But nobody wants it!" "Oh, okay - then stop."
Our hypothetical aliens might well think the same - I mean it's not like war, inhumanity and pollution are things we're subjected to from outside. Terraforming Mars for us isn't going to stop us polluting or warring or give up sexism or racism or religious persecution. If the species doesn't like the way it's behaving, it should stop behaving that way.
Soldato
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several hundred years of oxygen, food, etc etc is going to be hard to manage. i'm not saying it's physically impossible, just that i doubt we're going to be able to get the entire human race to unite in sending a large enough group of people, in a massive spacecraft that will take generations to fly let alone build.
i mean keeping people alive in space for the short (relatively speaking) time it'd take to go to mars and back is a massive challenge.
lets not forget our own propensity for conflict, and 100 years is long enough for a war to break out on board.
Reminds me of the World War series by Harry Turtledove where a species of very long-lived, stable society aliens discover us. Their probe reports back images of warriors in bits of metal waving other bits of metal at each other and riding around on hairy quadrupeds. So the long-lived, stable society'd aliens set off in their ship to come take over our lovely habitable biosphere for themselves. It's only an nine-hundred year trip so nothing much will change.
They arrive in the middle of World War II just as humanity is developing nuclear weapons.
would it not be more likely that the initial ships would be crewed w/ robots who could then set p the staging posts for when humans arrive? given the time, they could set up hydroponic farms or whatever that could be fully functioning by the time people came, etc etc. i'm guessing also that there would be no conflict on board as people would be in suspended animation for the trip.
I think you underestimate current technology and where it is heading.
mars is a massive undertaking but it's not out of current technology, it just costs a lot. We have recycling systems and the larger the ship is the easier it is to have a closed systems with plants and recycling systems.
There are also many other possibilities on the horizon, Nasa and others are currently studying hibernation and are having great success, there's also the possibility of robots/ai in the medium term, you could send frozen embryos and raise them once you reach there.
it really depends on what time frames you put on it. Whether you are talking our lifetimes or the next several hundred years. But it is not hundreds of thousands of years and it certainly is not beyond technology on the imminent horizon.
conflict will always happen but it is not an issue, in fact some of the fastest development in technology comes when we have conflict.
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In the beginning god created man.... And later he created Wookies and Jawas
God made earth in 4 days, the next 2 days he made tattoine and on the 7th day he rested.
there is no actual evidence that worms holes even exist though - it might be impossible.
it always amazes me the arrogance of some religious people I've met, not only are we created in his image, but they believe we are the only ones he created(and ignore the other races in the bible like angels as a few he created but not civilisation like us), and he's done nothing else in the history of the universe or in the several thousand years since.
I don't really understand what the question "do you believe" means, I have no evidence to state either way so I don't believe anything. Logically there should be life out there as it has formed on our planet, so statistically it should also have formed on other planets given the size and scale of the Universe; how ever we are unable to say how frequently it should happen and we won't be able to state unequivocally it has happened until we actually find life. At which point everyone in this thread will probably be dead.
Soldato
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the international space station is currently the most expensive vehicle in the world, and took the combined efforts of multiple nations to acheive.
and that can't last a year without a resupply, so forgive me for thinking we're going to be making something even bigger with engines large enough to go to mars in the near future.
it's certainly possible, but possible and practical are far far removed from each other in this case.
My first instinct is to stick my hand up and say "Oooh! Me! Me! I want to do it!"
And then I think about how embarrassing it would be to explain humanity.
but again like voyager you are talking about totally different designs, in different eras and different technology. we have learnt a hell of a lot thanks to the ISS on recycling, growing plants in space, human health etc.
oh and you again you don't seem to understand what technologically what is needed, you do not need huge engines to get to mars, it doesn't have to be bigger than the iss (although we could launch a single Bigelow expandable habitat and have an extremely roomy ship, or just 3 would beat the size of the iss) , it will almost certainly be smaller though. It also no longer costs 1billion to launch an iss module to space like it did with the shuttle and once Spacex Falcon Heavy launches(should be by the end of the year if it's not delayed again) you can cut that too well under 200million.
oh and you again you don't seem to understand what technologically what is needed, you do not need huge engines to get to mars, it doesn't have to be bigger than the iss (although we could launch a single Bigelow expandable habitat and have an extremely roomy ship, or just 3 would beat the size of the iss) , it will almost certainly be smaller though. It also no longer costs 1billion to launch an iss module to space like it did with the shuttle and once Spacex Falcon Heavy launches(should be by the end of the year if it's not delayed again) you can cut that too well under 200million.
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Katie hopkins
Has to be a member of our species.
Soldato
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oh i understand what is needed, you don't seem to understand how difficult it is. it's a simple numbers game as to how much force your going to need to go, and the more you send the more you need, unless there's some magical fuel-less drive that's cropped up without being noticed we're going to be stuck using conventional engines to send this craft.
it's going to need to be large enough for the crew, artificial mavity (you want the crew to be able to walk when they get there), food, oxygen etc all without the luxury of a resupply.
plus any lander is going to need to be big enough to both land, survive several days, and take off, sure there's less atmosphere and less mavity but it's still going to need to be big.
and this is still absolutely nothing compared to the scales required to send people to other stars....
actually, it has nothing to do with force, which is why ion engines work. Delta v through efficiency over force for space travel. You can use little force over many weeks or even years depending on destination.
you absolutely do not need artificial mavity.
all your assumptions starting with it'll take 100s of thousands of years has been wrong.
Soldato
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ok, at this point it's clear that you're talking out your rear, go watch a video of an astronaut being pulled out of the pod after a long enough stint in space then come back and say that he's fit and capable to conduct an exploration mission on mars with no assistance.
lol, you do realise that space is one of my interests and I follow such things daily.
Now go remind yourself that earth is 1g where mars is slightly over 1/3rd g.
on top of that ISS is not well designed from what we know now or even what was purposed before and since it was built.
the biggest issue for manned mars missions isn't even money, its political will and the fact 10s of billions are continually wasted at nasa thanks to Congress and its mind changes every few years and its lust to be a jobs program and so forces nasa to keep using the same old and expensive technology. SLS is a prime example of this, utter waste of money and will be extremely costly per launch.
Soldato
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you do realise you're still talking crap?
you're making space travel sound so easy i'm amazed we don't have a manned moon base yet, after all if mars is so easy to get to then the moon's just a walk in the park right?
also, you're beginning to cite political will, when that was pretty much the first thing i said- the ability to motivate people to such endeavours.
you're making space travel sound so easy i'm amazed we don't have a manned moon base yet, after all if mars is so easy to get to then the moon's just a walk in the park right?
also, you're beginning to cite political will, when that was pretty much the first thing i said- the ability to motivate people to such endeavours.