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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
It doesn’t really matter. You can say that until the cows come home, and you would be right the entire time. But the argument works just the same. There are very few hard science researchers at a university who will argue publicly that the Feds should fund us but not the softer sciences. That would be seen as churlish and uncollegial. It might make the spouse angry if s/he works in a different science field, or might offend the researchers’ kids who want to get into some less exact science. The university works together as a whole. And when the softer sciences are funded there are very few who will say the Feds should fund science but not the humanities. They still want the biggest share for themselves, of course, but they are not going to draw a hard line.
On a related note, back in the 90s when I suggested that government agencies should argue against each other for public dollars, and should make the case that, “Our program is more deserving than that other agencies’ program,” the local newspaper editor acted as though that was the most immoral suggestion he had ever heard. Instead, the various parts of the government/media complex stick together and gang up against the public. And then complain about how the right creates an atmosphere of people vs the government.
Ah, but did anyone in the posts here? Did I miss one?
No, but I was mostly commenting then about how even that story written in 1959 included it, although it still had some of the… vivid imagination… common in earlier decades regarding subjects like Mars and Venus.
At least one of the other principles from that story might still apply, though: if a Mars mission is going to use some kind of nuclear propulsion (as did the experimental ship in “Secret…”), then weight for shielding would be far less burdensome than currently with plain rockets. And if there is an abundance of electrical power available, also due to the propulsion system being used, then some kind of electrical or magnetic shielding might also be possible. Early “deflector shields,” Star Trek fans!
Well, for practical colonisation of habital planets outside the solar system, we would need FTL. Serious FTL. All the SF writers are correct about this. Why, here’s one now:
Amazon.com: Charis Colony: The Landing eBook: Martin , John David: Kindle Store
I will get back to this later, but radiation shielding is one of the areas of research for NASA et alia in the long-term planning for a possible Mars mission. With off-the shelf 2021 technology, such a journey would most likely condemn the crew to death by radiation-induced cancer. See also: ESA – The radiation showstopper for Mars exploration.
Of course you are right, but it is up to our side. Specifically Politicians on our side to make better arguments when these things come up. In a certain sense I understand the academic collegiality and the media and government unholy alliance; however, it doesn’t change that Y can’t be fixed no matter how much money you throw at it. While X is something that can be done if it is funded. Maybe X shouldn’t be done as we are discussing right here but it is a solvable problem.
I doubt anyone will watch, as I post these channel and people don’t even click “Like”.
This pretty much lays out how we can, and I believe, will go to the stars.
Humans paddled to Hawaii in canoes, for crying out loud. We are brave enough to take on the solar system.
I agree with this, except that politicians on our side can’t be expected to make those arguments unless we make them to our friends and neighbors.
The rocket ship will be huge but not all that expensive. It’s called Starship and the first test vehicles are flying from the gulf coast of Texas. It’s an iterative engineering process to create a transformative low cost launch system. It’s ultimate aim is Mars.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/06/ols-grows-super-heavy-raptor-capacity-increases/
Something like that may happen, eventually, but I would point out – as I tried to before – that while paddling to Hawaii, they didn’t have to worry about how to breathe. And they could get fish from the ocean around them. Space has neither air, nor food. And it might take 100 YEARS or longer, not just 100 or even 1000 days or something.
There is nothing outside out understanding of science that says we cannot get to other stars.
The Will is there and will be there with enough people for it to happen.
Watch the video series. Or not.
I have no doubt our decedents, and I mean our species, as well as what comes after, will go to the stars.
It won’t be government that gets us to Mars.
Heck, I fully expect SpaceX to have its lander ready to go, while the trainwreck that is NASA won’t have their Artemins program ready. I figure SpaceX will send a lander and a Starship to the Moon and just go for it. Better expenditure of our tax dollars for sure.
That wasn’t the point. I was referring to the interstellar/generation-ships aspect. But, even if it only takes 100 DAYS to get to Mars, they can’t just breathe the air around them along the way. They can’t just pull fish or other food out of space. They can’t even make water from space, as could be done on the ocean with rather rudimentary technology.
Bravery etc can get people across the continents, and across oceans, etc. But they didn’t have to bring all their food, water, and AIR with them. In space, you do. Plus make some arrangements for “waste.” That’s a lot more than just bravery and will.
NASA’s plan for landing men on Mars, is a lot like my plan for sleeping with a Super-model.
There is no definitive budget, No particular schedule and any preparations all serve a selectively unspecific purpose.
2001 NASA’s Odyssey mission recorded data on radiation in interplanetary space, and once examined the results where heralded as proof that a manned mission to mars was possible with current technology. In 2003 the next mission to mars had the same instruments and collected the same data. This time the data was a buzz kill, because it showed that traveling to mars would require extensive research before it could be safely done. .. (Robert Zubrin speaks about this extensively)
You responded, specifically, to my quote talking about bravery with technical issues. That is a separate thing. I am not sure how much more clear I can be.
The videos I posted more than answer your technical issues. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, about the science that blocks us from going to other stars if we have the will. There is nothing in science that stops us building rotating habitats in space, launch loops, shells around the Earth, or even mining the sun for metals. Right now we have the technology to build large solar collectors. Expensive to put into space, but if we build them on the moon, not so much.
Your objections boil down too “But it’s harrrrrrrrrrd”.
That is a lack of Bravery and Will. Thank God there are other people with enough of both to keep moving the ball forward.
Sorry you miss my point. Bravery and will are necessary, but not sufficient.
I have never said that they were, yet you keep quoting me to make that argument. Why is that? Did you not understand me? Were my posts unclear, with hours of information to back up the understanding of technical acumen needed? What exactly mislead you to think I was saying that Braver and Will are sufficient?
And if that was not your misunderstanding, why, exactly, did, in a post where you understood I was not saying that Bravery and Will were sufficient, did you attack my point about Bravery and Will?
I also think it’s pretty clear that many/most people seriously underestimate the “technical details” involved. If not the reality of them, at least the implications of them, or some other term I haven’t thought of. If you think that engineers really have a handle on all of that, ask yourself why the epidemiologists etc didn’t have complete control over COVID. They’re “experts” too, y’know.
OK, so you did not answer either question. I would like an answer to those questions.
While I wait, though, it is pretty clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. I don’t see anyone here claiming that they have a handle on everything that will be needed. What, instead we have, is confidence that things can be figured out. But, if you can find where someone has said we have the technology to go to the stars today, I’ll shut up.
Apparently, your mindset is the same as the person saying that flight would be impossible. Well, a piece of the Wright Flyer is on a helicopter on Mars. When their plane first flew, we did not have the know-how to get to Mars, let alone have a helicopter on it. We do now.
Still not my point, but whatever.
However I will point out that, if/when any of the Wright Brothers’ projects failed, they could still breathe. There was air all around them, and water, and food…
Because the natural world doesnt behave as we would engineer it to. (also its a poor analogy)
There are many difficulties in traveling to Mars. Most of these difficulties are of an engineering/design concept. The basic research of getting a manned mission into interplanetary space has been done. The difficulties is designing and building the heavy lift boosters necessary to get the mission off the ground.
Using Zubrin’s Mars Direct program he though it was possible with SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy launchers… (Not ideal, as he admits but possible – with limitations)
Updated lecture using SpaceX StarShip: Mars Direct V2.2
What is your point then? You have not been clear.
It seems your point is that space travel will be impossible because we will never overcome the challenges poised by living outside a natural biosphere.
Is that your point? If not, what is your point?
If that is your point, you are so manifestly wrong, I stand by my statement that you are no different that someone saying Man would never fly. Different specifics, but the same core argument which is we just won’t be able to figure out the technology. People like that have been proved wrong over and over and over and over in history.
There are no laws of nature between us and a generation ship. It is figuring it out. Won’t be easy, but figuring things out is a matter of Will and Bravery, as much as going to the Moon in 1960s technology was.
More than that. Supplying oxygen and so forth for a flight that might take a year or longer, is likely to require something more advanced than just really big storage tanks. All of which introduces more possibilities of failure, which in space tends to be dramatic, drastic, and life-threatening if not life-ending. For that matter, even just rather small storage tanks have huge potential for disaster, as was seen with Apollo 13.
And, to repeat, no matter how many times the Wright Brothers crashed, they never had to worry about being able to breathe.
If you have boldness and bravery and will to try to fly an airplane, and it doesn’t work, you’re probably still alive. If you have boldness and bravery and will to try to get to Mars, and it doesn’t work, you’re probably dead. And everyone else who came with you.
And it didn’t cost just $500 or $5,000 or whatever, to build a plane out of wood; it cost maybe $500 Billion.
As has been demonstrated by ISS, Soyuz and the Space Shuttle – you can recycle air, and water. (having a supply of water on hand is handy – for double purpose of a radiation shield from solar flares. Granted you’ll need a larger reserves for a 6 month flight to mars vs a 15 day shuttle mission… Its not exceptionally difficult.
From what I can quickly find, the ISS requires bringing in about 500 gallons of water per year, for what… maybe 6 people at most? Sometimes only 3. Even if a Mars mission were to “create” water from fuel cells producing electricity, the fuel to power them has to be brought along.
Yup water recycling is not 100% efficient. You need to carry a reserve – and you’d want it also for solar flare shelter anyway.
We might be drifting into needless discord (us? Ricochet? Heaven forbid!) because we’re talking about two different things and not always making a clear distinction. AFAIK nobody on the thread claims we can’t get to Mars. Back in the Nixon administration, John Ehrlichman had to strongarm Spiro Agnew to not prematurely declare a 1981 or 1986 landing as a national goal. The country had just paid for Apollo and spending what at the time looked like a 30-fold increase for Mars wasn’t going to happen. Not even the biggest space fans in America would have been willing to pay the taxes it would have taken.
We didn’t have the technology to solve the problems of a Mars mission in 1972, but we can solve most of them today, a half century later. It would still be very expensive (Elon’s not going to be able to pay for this out of his own pocket) but do-able.
What we’re saying we can’t do today is interstellar travel. It’s not a matter of courage. The tech doesn’t exist. We can’t go FTL, or even 1000th of FTL, and we still can’t design a ship capable of supporting human life for thousands of years. We can’t get to Arcturus, any more than Leonardo da Vinci could have made it to the Moon.
The reason movies have gimmicks like warp speed and hyperdrive is because we have only fictional means of getting around the problems of time and distance.
So I have understood your point. Your point is that it is hard, and because we have not solved it now, then we can’t solve it then.
Again, you are no different than someone who would have said Man could not fly. You refuse to acknowledge it, but that is who you are. For anyone in 2021 to think that was is just sad.
Not to mention, bigger is better.
And, Mars has what we need to make fuel there. So does the moon. Really, smarter people than @kedavis are working on these things and think it is possible.
Or maybe, there is a degree in engineering I don’t know about that makes someone an expert?
What is being said is that because the tech does not exist today, it will never exist. Because Leonardo could not go to the moon, we never will. That is what is being said by @kedavis over and over. It is wrong and it is, frankly, stupid. There is nothing in our understanding of physics that prevents us figuring it out. Period. End of story and to think otherwise is to be the same sort of moron who would have said Man would never fly.
I have no respect at all for any mind that thinks that.