Outer Space Game: The Mars One Bitches
- Thread starter Tuthmosis
- Start date
- Status
The whole "one way trip" concept seems a bad idea to me. The gravity on Mars is a little over 1/3 that of the Earth. ( The moon being 1/6th). So they would need a bigger rocket motor to get into Mars orbit to dock with the mothership/orbiter than the Apollo missions used but much much smaller than is needed to get into Earth orbit.
Plus the technologies developed for the Mars round trip would pave the way for further solar system manned exploration. And for goodness sake why not establish a viable base on the Moon first?? We know we can bring people back safely from the Moon so it seems logical to me to learn how to create a self sustaining base there first.
Plus the technologies developed for the Mars round trip would pave the way for further solar system manned exploration. And for goodness sake why not establish a viable base on the Moon first?? We know we can bring people back safely from the Moon so it seems logical to me to learn how to create a self sustaining base there first.
Oz.
Pelican
To be honest I don't think half of the idiots on this trip actually I'm willing to bet only one graps the concept of "one way trip"
Hypothetically speaking they make it to Mars even the most sane person will eventually start to miss things from their old life which they cannot go back to and start to go a little nuts.
They should just send Buddhist monks
Hypothetically speaking they make it to Mars even the most sane person will eventually start to miss things from their old life which they cannot go back to and start to go a little nuts.
They should just send Buddhist monks
I don't know why they don't try this out on the moon first. That will ensure that the life-support technology actually is feasible. And there is actually the ability to bring them home if there is an emergency. I don't understand this rush to Mars. There's absolutely nothing to do there unless you are conducting science research.
speakeasy said:
The main rationale that's put forward for Mars over the Moon is because Mars does have some of the basics required so constant resupply from Earth might eventually be eliminated, i.e. Mars as a colony at least theoretically can become self-sustaining as a place for open-air human life while the Moon pretty much can't.
The Moon's got no atmosphere, no water, and its supply of volatiles like nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon,
I got interested in this and had a bit of a click around on potential sites across the Solar System for colonisation, and if I were really cynical I think Saturn's moon, Titan has a stronger chance of ever being colonised than the Moon or possibly Mars - mainly because it's got a shitload of chemicals which are or would be useful to Earth in the near or far future: hydrocarbons. Titan's basically swimming in organic compounds - there's a few dozen lakes that contain more hydrocarbon liquid than all of Earth's gas and oil reserves. I'm no Malthusian when it comes to the planet's oil reserves, but whether we eventually move to miniature fusion plants or not, we're going to need plastics into the foreseeable future - which require organic compounds to make them. A big corporation might eventually conclude the cost-benefit analysis of bringing that shit back to Earth is better than scratching around the backblocks of Bumfuck, Chad to find some new reserves.
BortimusPrime
Ostrich
I got to thinking about this, and my thought is that a necessary first step proof of concept would be to get a biodome project (the one in the Pauly Shore movie) that's actually successful. If I recall correctly the actual biosphere project didn't turn out too well, since they had a hard time maintaining ecological homeostasis even with Earth-like gravity, sunlight, air pressure, radiation shielding, and no serious space limitations.
The next step would be to prove you can accomplish the same thing in shittier conditions on Earth, i.e. caves or Antarctica. The first attempt at an actual colony should be building a space station in Earth's orbit by using robots to drag an asteroid into orbit and using the minerals from that to construct a station and spin it up for fake gravity. The main advantage of doing an orbital colony or even a moon base for that matter is that if it fails you can still evacuate the colonists.
The next step would be to prove you can accomplish the same thing in shittier conditions on Earth, i.e. caves or Antarctica. The first attempt at an actual colony should be building a space station in Earth's orbit by using robots to drag an asteroid into orbit and using the minerals from that to construct a station and spin it up for fake gravity. The main advantage of doing an orbital colony or even a moon base for that matter is that if it fails you can still evacuate the colonists.
BortimusPrime said:
Well, you can make a rescue faster, certainly, but this is the thing with all offworld colonisation: whether in orbit, lunar, or Martian, if it's much beyond a low-end problem, to borrow a phrase from the upcoming The Martian, in my considered opinion you're fucked. A malfunction on a lunar colony that results in your air running out in 2.5 days has no different result to a Martian colony malfunction where the air runs out in 100 days. At least with Earth-based colonisation if your crops fail you can always eat the fucking grass or shoot a couple of buffalo. (And even then they still failed: Roanoke, Virginia is meant to have descended into cannibalism, to say nothing of what happened to the Greenland colonies the Vikings founded.)
iamdegaussed
Kingfisher
Paracelsus said:
Are you saying we require more minerals?
iamdegaussed said:
I'm more concerned about our recent failure to invest in the correct tech trees. We were doing fine right up to the point we built the Apollo Program Wonder, then some fuckhead decided to reassign all our spare resources into Women's Suffrage. How're we ever going to satisfy the Victory Conditions at this rate?
iamdegaussed said:
But judging from the current state of the Earth, at least we have more than enough Overlords.
*ducks*
" This also means that the project will easily cost at least tens of billions of dollars, and, unfortunately, Mars One doesn't have that much source of income."
Trying to do the mission on the cheap will be a disaster. On a shoe string mission if even one supply or equipment ship crashes then the colonists are dead as there will be no spares.
The Moon though does have water in deep craters near the poles and this water could be used to manufacture rocket fuel.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...eep-crater-ice-scattered-quarter-surface.html you can make rocket fuel (H2 and O2) from water. And with the moons very low gravity would be a simple matter to get the fuel for a Mars return ship into orbit and on the way to Mars.
The biggest problem I can see though is energy supply on Mars. Solar panels will not give enough power on Mars and under Martian conditions the panels themselves will be knackered in a few years. And I don't see a tiny Martian outpost being able to manufacture their own replacement solar panels.
Trying to do the mission on the cheap will be a disaster. On a shoe string mission if even one supply or equipment ship crashes then the colonists are dead as there will be no spares.
The Moon though does have water in deep craters near the poles and this water could be used to manufacture rocket fuel.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...eep-crater-ice-scattered-quarter-surface.html you can make rocket fuel (H2 and O2) from water. And with the moons very low gravity would be a simple matter to get the fuel for a Mars return ship into orbit and on the way to Mars.
The biggest problem I can see though is energy supply on Mars. Solar panels will not give enough power on Mars and under Martian conditions the panels themselves will be knackered in a few years. And I don't see a tiny Martian outpost being able to manufacture their own replacement solar panels.
Paracelsus said:
Your post made me think about the possibility of dormant microbes causing a new epidemic once you terraform a planet. I don't know how possible that actually is, but extreme environment based microscopic organisms exist on earth already. I'd wonder if an increased heat or new mixed of chemicals in the air would cause a metabolism boost to "dead", fossilized microbes.
I wouldn't be too negative about prospects. Mars One has brainy sponsors like Nobel winner Gerard 't Hooft. Can't imagine him to be outsmarted by anyone, especially on this topic.
Chances are slim, but not zero.
FD: I wouldn't join, ftr. Although, I'm open to leaving this shitty planet if I ever get the chance
Chances are slim, but not zero.
FD: I wouldn't join, ftr. Although, I'm open to leaving this shitty planet if I ever get the chance
TonySandos said:
I've heard this story before...
Going to Mars would suck... It's basically a cold radioactive desert. Imagine the amount of Vitamin D supplementation required.
Native Baltimoron
Pigeon
Paracelsus said:
You're absolutely correct. Even if we had a rocket on the launchpad waiting to rescue these maroons the moment they ran into a problem, it wouldn't get there fast enough. Unless they have a means of escape built into the mission, they aren't coming back.
To flesh out the picture a little more, a moon mission has a ΔV of ~15 km/s, starting from the ground. Aerobraking makes it easier to get back down, since Earth's atmosphere and weather is a known quantity, but the bigger the spaceship, the less efficient that is.
A Mars mission only has a ΔV of ~19 km/s, but it will take you a ton of time to get there, assuming you're puttering along the most efficient Hohmann transfer, and you will have a very narrow launch window for that optimum orbit. Launch windows for Mars can have gaps of around 2 years, while lunar launches can be a lot more frequent.
Not to mention round-trip manned missions to Mars are not really feasible with current technology, as they would take around 3 years to make a round trip, after about 11 launches (using current lift vehicles) to assemble the spacecraft. Even with a fusion-powered rocket (which has a prototype in development at UW), it would take around 120 days (assembly not included) to get there and back.
Also, judging by the neon hair and the fact they signed up to die on a dustball tens of millions of miles away, they'll rip each other to pieces before they hit escape velocity. If you want to see whether someone would crack, put them on a nuclear submarine and don't let them see the sun for six weeks, give them a month's break, and then stick them in the dark again.
This isn't just a bad idea, it is a spectacularly bad idea.
@speakeasy
It costs a lot of fuel to launch that fuel.
As for the energy to create fuel on the moon, most believe that we'll build/3d print solar cells there. Cost wise solar cell plants on the moon are more cost effective in the long run.
WIA
It costs a lot of fuel to launch that fuel.
As for the energy to create fuel on the moon, most believe that we'll build/3d print solar cells there. Cost wise solar cell plants on the moon are more cost effective in the long run.
WIA
Thanks WIA - exactly as you said it costs a lot of fuel to launch the fuel from Earth but a lot lot less than from the Moon if you make Hydrogen and Oxygen from Lunar water, using as you said solar panels as the electricity source for electrolysis of water.
Speakeasy, just think how big a rocket you need to get two or three guys off the Earths surface into orbit versus the tiny rocket motor the Apollo missions needed to get the LEM back into Lunar orbit with 2 guys and 100kg of moon rock on board. So it would take a much smaller rocket motor using much less fuel to launch the Lunar fuel versus the earth made fuel into orbit.
And...once you have the base on the moon you are set up for more fuel manufacture for further exploration eg of the moons of Jupiter.
Speakeasy, just think how big a rocket you need to get two or three guys off the Earths surface into orbit versus the tiny rocket motor the Apollo missions needed to get the LEM back into Lunar orbit with 2 guys and 100kg of moon rock on board. So it would take a much smaller rocket motor using much less fuel to launch the Lunar fuel versus the earth made fuel into orbit.
And...once you have the base on the moon you are set up for more fuel manufacture for further exploration eg of the moons of Jupiter.
- Status