Sending humans to Mars is a bad idea

[Tropo-Bob (Bob)]

In the same breath as saying we should visit Mars, it is said that there is water on Mars and we can exploit the water, thus making the provisioning of the trip easier.

It is also speculated that there could be simple life on Mars, because it has water. And what.... people are expected to drink that water!!!!

That sounds like a big risk to me. IMO, we need to know a lot more before we go visiting Mars.

[leon]

I don't know why they waste all this money and even bother entertaining the idea of actually populating the place.
Seriously, what a waste of resources, but what would i know.

Leon

[xelasnave]

I think it would be a good idea to send people to Mars but nothing under 4 billion.
Alex

[Kunama]

There are many many people I would like to send there right now without any provisions but I am against polluting the red dot.....

in the meantime, lets make a concerted effort to clean up our act on this globe, with the way we treat this place I doubt we deserve the right or chance to colonise (and f-up) another place in the heavens.....

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Before humanity sends people to Mars we would need to build a permanent base on the Moon. When it comes to water, astronauts on the ISS have a saying: yesterday's coffee is today's coffee...water is continuously recycled over there and astronauts drink recycled water for months at the time, so I do not see a real problem with drinking Martian water as long as it is safe to do so.

As for the cost, IMO space exploration is definitely not a waste of resources and there would be many potential benefits if we took space exploration more seriously. On the contrary, I can easily think of numerous examples where humanity has been continuously wasting enormous resources on - wars, shallow movies such as Fast and Furious 27, useless computer games etc...It as all about priorities and we humans do not easily give up detrimental habits.

[astroron (Ron)]

Spending Billions of Dollars to go to Mars and in the future Billions/trillions more to terraform it so humans can live on it is the height of stupidity
Spending the same amount of money on repairing a perfectly good planet that we are stuffing up at a great rate of knots,would be a much saner use of said money.
Cheers

[JA]

Originally Posted by Slawomir

As for the cost, IMO space exploration is definitely not a waste of resources and there would be many potential benefits if we took space exploration more seriously.

Absolutely right - the benefits it potentially brings to science & technology, in developing new methods, technologies, products and employment is huge.

Originally Posted by Slawomir

On the contrary, I can easily think of numerous examples where humanity has been continuously wasting enormous resources on - wars, shallow movies such as Fast and Furious 27, useless computer games etc...It as all about priorities and we humans do not easily give up detrimental habits.

As for the wars, yes of course, they are a huge waste of life and resources. They are simply a method of transferring wealth at the expense of life.

Best
JA

[glenc (Glen)]

Originally Posted by astroron

Spending Billions of Dollars to go to Mars and in the future Billions/trillions more to terraform it so humans can live on it is the height of stupidity
Spending the same amount of money on repairing a perfectly good planet that we are stuffing up at a great rate of knots,would be a much saner use of said money.
Cheers

I agree

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Kunama

There are many many people I would like to send there right now without any provisions but I am against polluting the red dot.....

in the meantime, lets make a concerted effort to clean up our act on this globe, with the way we treat this place I doubt we deserve the right or chance to colonise (and f-up) another place in the heavens.....

But, Matt. you're already talking about dumping our rubbish there...

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Slawomir

Before humanity sends people to Mars we would need to build a permanent base on the Moon. When it comes to water, astronauts on the ISS have a saying: yesterday's coffee is today's coffee...water is continuously recycled over there and astronauts drink recycled water for months at the time, so I do not see a real problem with drinking Martian water as long as it is safe to do so.

As for the cost, IMO space exploration is definitely not a waste of resources and there would be many potential benefits if we took space exploration more seriously. On the contrary, I can easily think of numerous examples where humanity has been continuously wasting enormous resources on - wars, shallow movies such as Fast and Furious 27, useless computer games etc...It as all about priorities and we humans do not easily give up detrimental habits.

You are absolutely right here. The Apollo program was canned because people said it was to expensive yet, it was calculated that for the price of the Vietnam war, we would have been able to colonise Mars in the 70's. There may have been tech challenges that made that a lot harder but Armstrong and co were driving a LEM using a computer with less power than a hand held calculator does now. That was G&D on a grand scale.

The spin-off's from Apollo have been enormous including SkyLab and ultimately the ISS. Of course we have a huge responsibility with Mars especially if there is endemic life, but I suspect that when life is discovered there, it will be the same as here due to sharing material from asteroid strikes. Lots of research to do before we even contemplate such a move.

I guess you have long range V short range thinking here. Long range says two rocks are better than one and a stepping stone even further, YEP!, interstellar or massive permanent habitats on asteroids or as independent space based colonies, ARKs, even. I certainly think virtually all heavy industry needs to be in orbit with mining of asteroids as the source of materials and, gawd dare I say it... solar as the power source . Short range thinking is putting all your eggs in one basket that is ripping around in a shooting gallery tied to a big furnace that will get us in the end.

I for one think its vital to repair this glorious blue dot, but for the price of the worlds military budget we could be doing massive amounts "out there". I guess I think long

[Tropo-Bob (Bob)]

When viewing Rogue One (4 stars) after my post this morning, it had a Trailer for the film: Life. Its about growing a culture of life from Mars and then it all goes bad.

Talk about serendipity!!

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Originally Posted by JA

As for the wars, yes of course, they are a huge waste of life and resources. They are simply a method of transferring wealth at the expense of life.

Best
JA

It's amazing just how accurate George Orwell's 1984 is. Goldstein was right on the money (if he actually existed)

There's nothing wrong with going to Mars. The NASA book on all the discoveries and practical applications from the space program is amazing.
Trying to alter the planet is a different thing entirely though.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Originally Posted by astroron

Spending Billions of Dollars to go to Mars and in the future Billions/trillions more to terraform it so humans can live on it is the height of stupidity
Spending the same amount of money on repairing a perfectly good planet that we are stuffing up at a great rate of knots,would be a much saner use of said money.
Cheers

Not much point in cleaning up Earth, Ron, unless we can work out how to limit population growth. Unless we can do that, we will still stuff up our planet anyway.
I wouldn't like to be the political leader who initiates population restrictions, given the opposition to China for attempting it!
So maybe we need to colonise other planets to accommodate our burgeoning population. Of course we will eventually stuff up those planets too and have to move on to even newer worlds. That would make us a bit like the aliens in "Independence Day"

[pmrid (Peter)]

The argument which you hear all the time (including in this thread) that until we should clean up earth before we look elsewhere has a major flaw. It is pie in the sky dreaming. If we wait for our elected representatives to put aside the vested interests propping up their respective parties and campaigns for something substantial to be done, we will wait in vain. It ain't gonna happen. King coal and emperor oil have got this planet's governments by the shorts and will not be letting go any time soon.
Our fate as a species has already been substantially determined by that unholy alliance.

So, if we wait for the miracle of serious climate-change action, serious atmospheric healing to happen before we venture out to try to find an alternate place for humanity to roost, we will die without discovering the first thing about how to live and thrive off-earth.

On the other hand, if we continue to make the effort and continue to use resources to discover what needs to be done in order to make that possible, we just may have a chance, as a species, to outlive this planet we are so comprehensively destroying.

I vote for looking up and outward while we still can.

Peter

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

I know it is old news, but sort of helps to put things into perspective:

According to Steve Anderson, a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. Petraeus' chief logistician in Iraq, the Department of Defense spends $20 billion air conditioning tents and temporary structures for the military. That's more than NASA's entire $19 billion annual budget.Jun 18, 2011

The truth is that Americans annually spend 30 times NASA's budget just on gambling, while also 15 times NASA's annual budget is spent on treatment of tobacco and alcohol related medical problems in the US.

Australia and Iceland are the only two countries in the OECD that do not have a space program, but we have committed to buying seventy two (72) F35As that cost from memory about 150 million, each.

As I wrote before, it is all about priorities...

[xelasnave]

I seem to recall USA spends 100 billion in new weapons research.
So clearly they have their priorities right.
All we need is a casino on Mars look what that did for Las Vegas and Mars probably has more water.
Think of the many billionaires who would go for it.
Alex

[Kunama]

We only got to the moon because of the weapons research.....

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by xelasnave

I seem to recall USA spends 100 billion in new weapons research.
So clearly they have their priorities right.
All we need is a casino on Mars look what that did for Las Vegas and Mars probably has more water.
Think of the many billionaires who would go for it.
Alex

KAPOOWW!

[billdan (Bill)]

@Kunama -- We only got to the moon because of the weapons research.....

That is correct, Hitler and his gang of thugs put the first rocket into space when developing the V2 rocket to bomb London. However the launch sites were quickly overrun by the allies after D-Day.

After the war the German rocket scientists never faced any criminal law courts as the Americans quickly whisked them away to the USA to help their military and create NASA.

[xelasnave]

I believe we can thank the military for MacDonalds kitchens.
Designed by a man who designed kitchens for submarines, compact can fit a lot of bodies and turns out excellent nourishing food and gear that won't rust.
Alex