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Staying on Terra Firma
For many years, a main goal of NASA has been to send a man humans to Mars. In fact, it seemed right after the moon landings to be the next logical step in space exploration. I was a youngster when the Gemini and Apollo missions were big news. I watched the first moon landing live on television. I remember the drama of Apollo 13 (as well as the movie).
I watched the original Star Trek series when it first aired, and went to the movie theater twice to watch Star Wars when it was first released. It seemed like anything was possible. We were going to invent Warp Drive and go faster than the speed of light! The universe was ours to explore!
But it’s not. We are not going to the stars. The distances are much too great. We might be able to send people to Mars, but the other planets are very unlikely destinations. They are too far and if we could get to them we would find that the environments we would encounter would make it impossible for us to visit much less live – even with technology we could possibly develop.
We have picked Mars because it is one of two “close” planets. Venus has a poisonous atmosphere so that is out of the question. And we have always had a much greater fascination with Mars (the god of war) than with Venus even though Venus is ‘hotter’. (Pun intended.) But Mars is not that hospitable either. It has little or no atmosphere and its gravity is too small to hold any kind of atmosphere we could live on much less to grow crops on. So we would have to take both air and food to Mars, enough to sustain the crew through the trip. (Building some kind of colony seems impossible.) That would take an enormous payload. The rocket ship would be huge and extremely expensive.
There is another possibility, I am told, and that is to grow the food on the ship. What else does the crew have to do but grow stuff during a months-long trip? This is not a quick trip to the moon. It would be a huge, extremely expensive expedition. And it would be far too dangerous for anyone to make. It would be unwise for the bravest, even the ones with “the right stuff”. There are risks worth taking and there are foolish risks. This falls into the latter category.
I know that NASA scientists know all about the dangers. The reason that I know is that I personally know a few of them myself. There is a NASA base about five miles from here. Two of them have done work for the Space Station. They all seemed convinced that people will make it to Mars someday. But what they cannot tell me is why we would want to go. Some speak of the fact that we would gain scientific knowledge. Others say that we would benefit greatly from the technology developed to make the trip. About the former, I would agree, but would the expense outweigh the possible gains?
I think that whatever gains we might get from persons traveling to Mars would be much less than even just the financial outlay. I especially do not think that the gains would be worth the risk to human life. I am not a snowflake. I know that great progress comes at great expense and often the cost of many human lives. I am not completely risk-averse. But the cost must not outweigh the gains. In other words, the cost/benefit analysis, if it can be done, seems to tell us that there is no good reason for humans to go to Mars. A lot of the knowledge that might be gained we can get by sending instruments and robots to Mars to find out what we can. And I am not saying that we shouldn’t do that.
Additionally, there is the opportunity cost of such a quest. We really need our best scientists to work on other things at home to make life on earth better. I would rather have them in other research or private industry to increase the living standards not only for us but for the developing world. Science has given us a tremendous amount already, but this pandemic has shown us that there is much more to do. Let’s concentrate on continuing our progress here on earth and not waste resources on a not-very-fruitful but fascinating goal. I think we ought to get our heads out of the clouds and realize that science fiction can be entertaining, but it is not realistic. We are here on earth and we are staying here. I have not mentioned religion yet, but I must. As a Christian, I know that God made this earth for us to live on and to have dominion over. He did not give us Mars to live on. He did not give us the moon to live on. He gave us the earth. Let’s stay on it.
[I am sure that my Ricochet friends will correct any errors of scientific fact, but I do not think that it will change my thesis.]
Published in Technology
Good thing you were not around to advise Columbus.
Also, as the previous and continuing space efforts have shown, the technology and knowledge developed DO improve things on Earth, often in ways that nobody would have imagined.
At the price of nationalization of our schools and universities, for which we are now seeing the inevitable effects.
You can try to support that assertion, but don’t expect anyone to accept it.
Visiting other planets won’t be feasible until we’ve developed some kind of constant-boost drive.
Please enlighten me on what a constant-boost drive is.
There may be diminishing returns and there is still the opportunity cost aspect.
It’s one where you can accelerate constantly. Requires some kind of fusion, I’d think. Coasting for hundreds of millions of miles if right out, I think.
Once in space, some kind of ion propulsion might do it. Or an atomic/nuclear method such as Orion.
But I don’t see a practical long-term base or colony on either the Moon or Mars until there’s some kind of gravity-enhancement available. And rotating rooms etc wouldn’t make sense because even the lesser existing gravity would cause complications. Orbiting space stations would be easier since all of the “gravity” would come from rotation and could be arranged any way we liked.
Lots of people would volunteer to go to Mars anyway, of course, even knowing it would be a one-way trip. And I wouldn’t mind that, as long as it can be arranged that they can’t start begging for rescue when the time comes. Make it so that their transmitters can be disabled from Earth, or something.
Orion requires a pretty serious butt-plate.
There are a few different versions, including the one used in the movie “Deep Impact.” (I couldn’t find a video clip of the “rocket” used.) Probably feeding small pellets of “fuel” into a chamber and then heated to fusion temperature by lasers.
I’m more pro-manned space than the author of the OP, but he makes a valid point that’s been kicking around for years: what we call space travel is Moon-Mars travel, nothing else. We can’t “land” on Jupiter or any of the planets beyond it, because they’re nothing but frozen clouds of methane and carbon dioxide. We’ll never “land” on the inner planets, Venus or Mercury. It’s possible for us to land on Saturn’s moon Titan, as pictured in Life Magazine in 1944:
Thing is, there’s nothing to learn from going to Titan. Given the rate of technological progress, it’s hard to even guess how long it’ll take to develop the capacity to travel to other solar systems. We might not ever have it, or it might take something like 10,000 years of further human evolution. On this I’d be an optimist; when you see the progress since, say, the Renaissance to now, it’s possible that 500 years is enough. If so, it requires a planetary commitment of resources for many generations, and I don’t see that happening.
What’s your basis for that? For the “planetary commitment” part, I mean.
I expect a lot of people support it. I don’t expect you to, though.
I meant support it with evidence.
Getting from the Spanish Armada to Apollo required something more than faster boats; it required centuries of science and learning that in many cases didn’t have immediate practical applications, or pay off for a very long time.
Interstellar travel? We’d be talking about something more than faster rockets. We’d require a transportation technology that’s still unimaginable in 2021.
No, being able to make SF movies with a streaking light effect isn’t imagining the technology.
How do you know?
Because I know what the moviemakers thought would look good, and I know how little they cared, or needed to care, about the underlying science. Not one of them has made any claim of inventing anything. Paramount Pictures does not actually know how to make the Enterprise 1701-D jump to light speed.
They could. Maybe they’re just keeping it secret.
Actually, I really liked Firefly, but the physics was horrible.
Sorry, Gary. I was just trolling you.
This bit is funny, but also relevant. I mean the part about the time from the first powered flight, to landing on the moon. Scientific advancement is clearly not linear.
Some of the DS9 stuff was also horrible. Mostly things like Bajor supposedly having like 6 or 8 moons, some of which had Earth-like gravity and atmosphere, yet they ORBITED AROUND Bajor? Nonsense.
How do You know?
If you’re not actually trolling, like Randy was, I’ll answer. But it shouldn’t be difficult to figure out on your own.
This episode was notable because the hot looking guy was so stupid that the hot girl dragged the brainy guy off to bed for hot sex.
Now that’s what I call a happy ending.
And they ended up the series being “married, with child(ren)” too.
I’m sorry. The answer We were looking for is “white privilege. White privilege.”
Oh, and this was the next morning:
The Bajorans aren’t white. They’re Bajoran.
You guys are cracking me up! :)