Quake3World

and with that petulant outburst you still haven't contributed anything of value to this thread

why don't you go figure out a proper retort and then come back and join us at the adult's table for a proper discussion?

The issue of Mars isn't so much the technology or the money. There are already private companies (SpaceX) who would be capable of the task and the public space agencies could do it as well. The main deterrent is distance and frail humans who generally don't like being isolated in small spaces for extremely long periods of time, they tend to go a little loopy. For that reason, drones are still the best tool for Mars exploration.

Human visits to Mars might be better based on constant drive propulsion (ion engines or solar sails) to get us there quicker, or some kind of cryogenic transport so that we don't notice the extended passage of time, but that's pretty far beyond our capabilities at this time.

Edit: Fuck you, I was typing.

that's more like it

seremtan wrote:
as good as it would be to see private individuals take up the slack, we shouldn't forget that every milestone in space exploration to date has been achieved by the public sector - Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, Apollo, Space Shuttle, ISS, Curiosity - and even today the only way to get astronauts to the ISS is on top of a Russian Space Agency Soyuz rocket. national space agencies shouldn't be written off just yet

I can't ever see the private sector being as successful or reliable as NASA cos the money just ain't there unless it comes from the government, if the curiosity mission failed and NASA couldn't get funds for another mission then JPL were off to work with the military. It sucks there's not more of an equal balance with NASA leading innovation but they're a victim of themselves, I know i've read that they're not fond of sharing technology (like rover designs) with other organisations but like a fuckbag they'll never use them again and sit on them like a medal of achievement.

You'd probably need a lot more than the richest man alive to gain the achievements NASA has and you can't expect organisations / individuals with different goals to team up with each other. NASA and the ESA have tried to get something off the ground plenty of times but it's not like this is a sector you can make compromises in, if your goal is to visit planet X and NASAs goal is to visit planet Y then it's never gonna happen. You can't expect some sugar daddy in the top % of richest men to pick up the slack either so I can only say that any money diverted from NASA or any reduction in government funded space exploration in the hope that the private sector will succeed is a bad thing IMO cos they don't like burning money nor do they have a track record.

I was speaking with a JPL worker not long after curiosity had landed n all and apart from thinking that they should go it alone without NASAs help he seems to agree and said that any private missions to mars or the space X programs were developed / explored by NASA decades ago and even they're getting it wrong with the ikea manual provided.

obsidian wrote:The issue of Mars isn't so much the technology or the money. There are already private companies (SpaceX) who would be capable of the task and the public space agencies could do it as well. The main deterrent is distance and frail humans who generally don't like being isolated in small spaces for extremely long periods of time, they tend to go a little loopy. For that reason, drones are still the best tool for Mars exploration.

Human visits to Mars might be better based on constant drive propulsion (ion engines or solar sails) to get us there quicker, or some kind of cryogenic transport so that we don't notice the extended passage of time, but that's pretty far beyond our capabilities at this time.

Edit: Fuck you, I was typing.

so the field requires more research you say?...more funding? interesting

You know it's pretty obvious you're crying about my posts, more regularly than not. Not sure what your issue is...you asked me to join 'the grown up table', while you were never intending to show up in the first place. If you don't agree with my post say so, don't just act like a fucking moron and try to downplay my posts by grabbing on to expressive words like WW3 etc. Nothing that has been posted or said since my post proves me wrong or shows otherwise.
Seems to me you are completely missing my points, and I really don't feel like having to write a fucking book to explain my opinion on the subject in a stupidly boring as fuck manner for you to attempt to appreciate my POV.

Eraser, nowhere did I state anything about facts... it's all speculation from educated guesses of my own take of current and past events..you know that thing called 'reflection'. The type of thing intelligent people utilize when they have conversations.

Both of you morons are prolly better off not reading my posts at all from now on.

Tsakali wrote:Eraser, nowhere did I state anything about facts... it's all speculation from educated guesses of my own take of current and past events..you know that thing called 'reflection'. The type of thing intelligent people utilize when they have conversations.

Tsakali, if your point is that it would take a relatively large corporation to get a team to Mars and back, well no shit. I and everyone here understands that. Any significant human space expedition has never been or will ever be cheap. My beef with your post has everything to do with you sprouting nonsensical Weyland-Yutani bullshit. That's not speculation, that's called making shit up, and it's not relevant to the discussion.

I think do understand the point you are trying to make, but I think you're overestimating what it takes to get to Mars. The technology to do it exists, the financial cost while exceptionally large isn't that big of a stretch of the imagination. The difference between traveling to the moon and Mars is just the amount of time spent moving in between Earth and destination. The main hurdles are that:

• Sending people to Mars isn't the best "bang-for-buck" as drones are much cheaper and don't require a return ticket home.
• People physically suck at traveling for extended periods of time (particularly in zero-G environment to which we are not adapted to).
• Risk to human life isn't desirable.
• Humans are more likely to make mistakes.
• Humans are at risk to psychological stresses of isolation and fatigue.

So really, Mars exploration is actually kind of easy as long as you don't send any people, since we are the weakest link.

Obsidian, I did not overlook any of the above points in making my post... strictly speaking , the subject matter was taking man to mars and all that would entail. Which is alot.. so the end result must be worth something substantial.

And I have no clue who Weyland-Yutani is.. so I'm not sure if i should be offended or not.

PRO TIP: I don't like simply regurgitating facts as conversation. If I wanted to do that, I could just go read a more informed source...Learn to accept some tangents off the main path from my posts...bordering on philosophical tendencies. If you can accept that you'll enjoy what i have to share.
If you're strictly interested in hard facts, you're destined for frustration.

GONNAFISTYA wrote:Outer Space Treaty

"require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty"

yeah, like how big oil is supervised right now? shit like that isn't honored on land.. let alone in space.



"The Moon Treaty of 1979 was meant to be the follow-up to the Outer Space Treaty, but failed to be ratified by any major space-faring nation such as those capable of reaching space orbit."

lol you don't say.

Tsakali wrote:And I have no clue who Weyland-Yutani is.. so I'm not sure if i should be offended or not.

You didn't Google it? Not even the first link?

Fuckin fag.

Weyland-Yutani has been "Building Better Worlds" © for quite some time now. They call it a "Shake 'N Bake" colony...takes decades.

You can get there by an express elevator to hell that mostly comes at night, mostly

GONNAFISTYA wrote:
You didn't Google it? Not even the first link?

Fuckin fag.

Weyland-Yutani has been "Building Better Worlds" © for quite some time now. They call it a "Shake 'N Bake" colony...takes decades.

Nope , didn't google it., but FU for making me have to.

K googled. so apparently these guys know how it's done! but that bit about Weyland-Yutani not doing it so much for profit is odd. Maybe that's the next step up from economic domination. Maybe their 'hierarchy of needs' pyramid has added layers. That's some next level shit.

Fisted.

obsidian, you're forgetting one quite important issue, which I think is the main hurdle when it cones to exploring mars. It's relatively easy to land people on mars, but currently it's damn near impossible getting them back to Earth. So a trip to mars is one-way. That's a bit of an ethical discussion as well.

Ethical how? I guarantee there are people who would jump at the chance to go to Mars knowing it'd be one way.

I posted a topic about that already:

The man behind the private space project dubbed Mars One is looking for people to travel to Mars, but he's not offering a return ticket.

"The technology to get humans to Mars and keep them alive there exists... the technology to bring humans from Mars back to Earth simply does not exist yet."

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48938

Tsakali, it's just that your speculations are so fantastical and wide off the mark that it in no way can be taken seriously. And even if we condense it to just the point that you need some mega corporation to bring people to Mars, we find that's nonsense. You don't. I guess a case can be made for the point that a mission to Mars is impossible to be profitable, but since when has space exploration been about monetary profit. But even so, current privately funded space programs are finding ways to monetize it (starting with Richard Branson's tourist trips to the edge of our planet's atmosphere). Also, NASA's budget isn't astronomically large anyway. The Mars-One mission is hoping to (partly) fund the whole thing through selling television rights to what you could describe as the mission wrapped into a space reality soap television show. So you see, the real world is way ahead of your ramblings, which means there actually is tangible proof that your speculations are wrong.

obsidian wrote:I posted a topic about that already:

The man behind the private space project dubbed Mars One is looking for people to travel to Mars, but he's not offering a return ticket.

"The technology to get humans to Mars and keep them alive there exists... the technology to bring humans from Mars back to Earth simply does not exist yet."

http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=48938

Yeah it's a totally different thread though
It's worth repeating in this discussion.

EtUL wrote:Ethical how? I guarantee there are people who would jump at the chance to go to Mars knowing it'd be one way.

It was a bit of a devil's advocate statement, becaue I think people should go if they want to, but I guess there will be people who object to something like that. People who go on the mission will potentially die of something that, if exposed to on Earth, wouldn't kill them.

let's just send scared? to mars if it's one way

i'm positive noone will miss her

good idea. finally he could be the richest man on the planet

also the poorest

Eraser wrote:obsidian, you're forgetting one quite important issue, which I think is the main hurdle when it cones to exploring mars. It's relatively easy to land people on mars, but currently it's damn near impossible getting them back to Earth. So a trip to mars is one-way. That's a bit of an ethical discussion as well.

obsidian wrote:I posted a topic about that already:

The man behind the private space project dubbed Mars One is looking for people to travel to Mars, but he's not offering a return ticket.

"The technology to get humans to Mars and keep them alive there exists... the technology to bring humans from Mars back to Earth simply does not exist yet."

I'm a little skeptical of this, in our lifetime anyway. I thought one of the bigger issues with traveling from Earth to Mars is that our orbits are only close enough once every 18 months or so and supporting life long enough for a return window isn't feasible, so why would sustaining life for 18+ months no longer be an issue and now raising the problem of a return journey ?. There's more to my reasoning, like how plants/humans cope outside our gravity or how technology reacts to radioactive anomalies in space or how the majority of shit Mars bound still never makes it. I just feel if they can sustain life on Mars then it'd be pretty easy in comparison to arrange a return journey and if life could have been sustained on Mars NASA would have been the 1st to find out with access to the ISS, which took the worlds effort many years to slot together on our front door step and would already be running a ferry service.

To me it stinks a bit of someone selling land on the moon. Have they said anything like where they plan to generate the power for the large amounts of vegetation to create food ? cos Mars only receives 1% of the light Earth does, or even where they plan to find the space to grow this shit ?. I am intrigued as I have no idea but anyone who smokes weed knows that shit doesn't grow as fast as you can consume it if all you have is a closet and if they're landing spaces larger it wouldn't be hard to land a few tanks of gas, you'd only need 40% of what you would on earth n all if you exclude the atmosphere.

The problem is the fuel you need to get back. You may notice how huge rockets are. 95% of that is fuel to escape the Earth's gravity. All that fuel is burned up and the tanks holding the fuel are ejected when empty. All this sheds weight so the thing can keep going up. If they have to take along fuel for a return trip as well, there's no way the rocket can launch from Earth. With the moon it's less of a problem because it's gravity is less than half that of Mars.

but you forgot it's texas, where everything is bigger, except scared?

and if we ship scared?, who gives a flying fuck.

Eraser wrote:The problem is the fuel you need to get back. You may notice how huge rockets are. 95% of that is fuel to escape the Earth's gravity. All that fuel is burned up and the tanks holding the fuel are ejected when empty. All this sheds weight so the thing can keep going up. If they have to take along fuel for a return trip as well, there's no way the rocket can launch from Earth. With the moon it's less of a problem because it's gravity is less than half that of Mars.

I get that like, I was saying that if they're landing spaces larger than the ISS modules with frequency, which they would have to, then sending fuel wouldn't be a problem IMO. Even if they just remove the astronauts and all the equipment needed to keep them alive then you have just shed a ton of weight for a fuel load. Removing all over factors (like atmosphere / lunar positioning) then technically you would not need much more than double of the moon missions fuel to escape Mars orbit, so unless they're expecting the astronauts to live in cardboard boxes I can't see why it;s a problem.

That's just one idea n all, I know NASAs plans were to dock with items already in orbit (like research / fuel modules) then making the return journey to Mars, but sustaining life through research at the space stations has shown that traveling is the easy part when compared to sustaining life, which I still think we can't do. This is without saying that a plant has never been grown on Mars and only ever within our orbit so how they can claim that the technology is exists sounds like a sales pitch. I'm very interested how they solved the power consumption n all as NASA hate sending solar powered vehicles to Mars, the efficiency is bad without including the lack of sunlight Mars receives cos it has an atmosphere and why Spirit and Opportunity were at the limits of their technology with the solar panels almost doubling their size.

How the fuck are they landing anyone or anything ?, parachutes are useless with rockets being big and risky