[PenultimateManStanding]

A few thoughts on the notion of terraforming other planets such as Mars. The reason I am posting this is because this idea which is part of Hollywood's grab bag ever since Gene Roddenberry is a perfect illustration of what is soon about to collapse, namely the uncritical abject worship of technology. Didn't those biodome experiments in Arizona end in failure? We have been conditioned by all these remarkable developments relating to the early twentieth century work in quantum mechanics (transisters, the silicon chips, then video games, cell phones that take pictures, internet, etc) into thinking that technology is OMNIPOTENT. It isn't. Try and see that and get past your conditioning. That isn't easy to do I know. If we were off into the galaxies it would be like heaven. No worries about the limitations of life here on earth. No worries about carrying capacity. We could expand and grow FOREVER! The real problem is that people have difficulty accepting their finite nature. We want to hook up with God. We can't do that as painful as it is. The best we can do is believe and hook up with a church.

[autonomous]

The Mars Curiosity Rover sent this image before it abruptly stopped transmission:

[dsula]

Very unfriendly, those martians. Don't they know that multi-culti and uncontrolled mass immigration must be tolerated.

[dissident]

They have been observing Earth for eons and have seen the systematic colonial rape and pillage pattern that humanity routinely manifests. They don't intend to be the next set of victims. I hope they have some serious weaponry to stave off the Earth invasion force. LOL.

[autonomous]

NASA is looking for hydrocarbons on Mars, in addition to water?

Oil and Natural Gas on Mars

On Earth, according to conventional theory, the largest, by mass and volume, identifiable trace of past life is subsurface oil and natural gas deposits. Nearly all coal and oil on Earth and most sedimentary source rocks associated with coal, oil, and natural gas contain molecules of biological origin and is proof of past life. If Mars possessed an Earth-like biosphere in the past, Mars may contain subsurface deposits of oil and natural gas indicating past life. Life might still exist in these deposits. Subsurface oil and natural gas on Mars would probably cause seepage of hydrocarbon gases such as methane at favorable locations on the Martian surface. Further, if Mars contains substantial subsurface* life, the most detectable signature of this life on the Martian surface would be gases generated by the life percolating up to the surface and venting into the Martian atmosphere. In this paper, systems that can detect evidence of subsurface oil and gas, including ground penetrating radar and infrared gas sensors are explored. The limitations and future prospects of infrared gas detection and imaging technologies are explored. The power, mass, and volume requirements for infrared instruments able to detect venting gases, especially methane, from an aerobot is estimated. The maximum range from the infrared sensor to the gas vent and the minimum detectable gas density or fraction of the Martian atmosphere -- as appropriate for the instrument type -- is estimated. The bit rate and bit error rate requirements for transmitting the data back to Earth are also estimated.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000SPIE.4137...63M

Full pdf report, "Oil and Natural Gas on Mars", Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, Instruments, Methods and Missions for Astrobiology III, 2000
http://www.jmcgowan.com/mars_reprint.PDF

[PrestonSturges]

Bloody Abos.

[Oneaboveall]

I'm pretty sure that this is the photo in question:


Alien 2 by Snapping Platypus, on Flickr

[Schweinshaxe]

The Mars Curiosity Rover sent this image before it abruptly stopped transmission:

That picture is faked!

How do I know? Well, I watched a documentary by David Attenborough about the different kinds of creepy crawlies we occasionally find burrowing inside our bodies. There were insects, spiders, amphibians and even fish and mammals found in people in Great Britain by x-ray and surgical procedures. It is still a mystery how mammals manage to enter and survive inside a human body due to lack of oxygen and freshwater.

Kurt Gödel also published his "incompleteness theorems" in 1931. Does this make him a Buddhist? No, it does not make him a Buddhist! If you still think Dr. Gödel is a Buddhist, well, then YOU ARE WRONG! Do you UNDERSTAND?

If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to post them in this thread, or contact me directly by PM.

Thank you!

[Fishman]

Oh look, OWS on Mars

[Graeme]

http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosit ... -8.03,61.5

This is a 360 degree view of the planet Mars from the Curiosity rover.

[Sixstrings]

Well, I'm a big space nerd.

I was, at first, very disappointed by Obama's big NASA cuts. We ended the shuttle program with nothing to replace it, and wound up canceling projects after that. Yet we've got government spending gazillions still on rocket test facilities for programs that aren't ever going forward, because it's in some congressman's district, even though it's pointless. Our space program is a mess.

Until Space X, we didn't even have a way (other than the Russian Soyuz) to get astronauts or cargo to and from the ISS.

Their dragon capsule is almost ready for human crew, eventually transporting 7:



I think this vid was their third cargo trip to the ISS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIVLonlXL2w

They just launched a Thai satellite with their Falcon 9 rocket:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24i8G5a5d5Q

They've got $40 billion in contracts lined up, from clients around the world. It's all really amazing what Musk has done with SpaceX, and thanks to him Obama's plan for privatizing space is actually working out. Their missions to the ISS cost 1/3 of what the old shuttle did. Nobody in the world can beat their satellite launch prices, his company is profitable and poised to be very profitable, government saves a lot of money, what a big win all around.

He's got the Falcon 9 Heavy about to rollout, which nobody else in the world can compete with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTwRxtmQ9IY

They're also developing reusable rockets, that's the big dream there, as it will dramatically cut costs (most of the cost is in the rocket not the fuel).

Elon Musk says his dream is to get the USA to Mars, and lay the groundwork for colonization. In a time of doomy news everywhere and America is dispirited and nothing ever works out, this guy is really amazing and someone to root for.

So the purpose of this thread is..

Isn't colonizing space important?

If our environment is doomed, if peak oil is here and all that, and peak water and we're headed for a runaway greenhouse and all that -- shouldn't we be moving forward with space?

Stephen Hawking has said this, that humanity must expand into space or we will become extinct -- it's the only assurance for survival of our species.

There's a lot to do yet in space and I wish NASA would fund more, we need big missions to Saturn's moons. A couple of them have oceans of water under the ice, and very well may have life -- on Earth, if you've got geothermal vents and heat and water then there is life.

[Plantagenet]

Richard Branson's spaceship is also almost ready to start taking tourists into space ---- another private space venture

NASA May be moribund but it Looks like a new era of private commercial manned flight to space is about to begin

[KaiserJeep]

I believe in colonizing space and in living in space habitats, not on the surface of a planet. Mars has nothing to reccomend it.

Space itself has endless room, a whole asteroid belt full of dense materials, limitless solar power, and gas giant planets where oxygen, water vapor, and various gasses can be scooped up on a flyby that dips into the atmosphere.

There is space and energy and enough materials that I am convinced that eventually Trillions of humans will inhabit the solar system, and very few of those will be on the surface of a planet.

[Sixstrings]

I believe in colonizing space and in living in space habitats, not on the surface of a planet. Mars has nothing to reccomend it.

It's going to be difficult, for sure, but we have to start somewhere. Europeans colonizing the Americas had a hard time of it for a while. And it took centuries. We just have to get started.

Weightlessness is a problem long-term, on the body. You could do some 2001 space odyssey style centrifuge habitats.

Radiation is a problem. There's no protection in space, you need a magnetic field and if memory serves, Mars doesn't have one and neither does the moon. If those Apollo guys had been hit by a solar flare they could have all fried. I imagine somebody smart has it figured out though (build underground?).

Saturn has a huge magnetic field, so you could colonize a moon there and not worry about radiation. Saturn's a long ways off, of course.

By the way, have you all heard about China's Jade Rabbit mission? They just landed a rover on the moon:



It's looking for helium-3:

Is China’s Jade Rabbit a precursor to a helium-3 empire?

Some space officials, including Robert Bigelow, have previously speculated that China is looking to lock up the resources of the moon, including its reserves of helium-3, which could be used to produce fusion power.
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/12/is-chinas-jade-rabbit-a-precursor-to-a-helium-3-empire/

With all the money we spend on crap in this country, I just wish we could come up with money for a Saturn mission and drill through that ice on Europa and send a submarine probe to look around the ocean. How cool would that be?

The Cassini mission has been fascinating. The moon Titan has liquid methane seas, thick atmosphere, and water ocean under ice.




Size comparison of Ligeia Mare with Lake Superior.

You really get a lot of bang for buck with these probes, we should be doing so much more of them, it's so cheap compared to the old Apollo program and shuttle.

[Plantagenet]

With all the money we spend on crap in this country, I just wish we could come up with money for a Saturn mission and drill through that ice on Europa and send a submarine probe to look around the ocean. How cool would that be?

Yup

And while they are doing that they should invent the light saber too.

[Sixstrings]

And while they are doing that they should invent the light saber too.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised.

That Europa mission isn't science fiction, it's a planned mission from back in 2010 that got shelved. Drilling / melting through the ice cap to get to the ocean would be challenging but not impossible. We'd find out if there's life.

Bringing this thread back around to Peak Everything and Collapse of Civilization and All That..

What if.. we really only do have like 20-50 years before we devolve? And space tech becomes impossible?

I would say in view of Peak Oil and climate problems, we should push forward while we still can. What if China does get helium-3 from the moon, and that leads to fusion power? That's a major game changer. That can buy the world TIME, energy wise.

If we're at the tail end of the Oil Age and the apex of human civilization, then NOW is the time to get going and expand into space. Maybe Peak Everything and civilization collapse is like 300 years from now -- well, by branching out and going forward while we can, we may actually save ourselves in the process.

Humanity has always done this. We move on. We migrated out from Africa to spread all over the world, and that's how we're not extinct because we adapt and spread all over the place and can live anywhere.

If a species stays stagnant, IN ONE PLACE, extinction risk is much higher.

No matter what happens, humanity MUST expand into space or eventually WE WILL be extinct because the whole planet is going to be burned up and destroyed billions of years from now when the sun expands into a red giant. That's a really long time from now of course , yet the date is there, we do know the definite date of the end of the world.

If humanity devolves and never makes it back, then that would be it, if we never get off this planet then that's it for homo sapiens.

So really this is something that must be done. We have to keep pushing forward with space -- if nothing else, a darn asteroid could whack us and wipe us all out so wouldn't we be clever if we were able to do something about that?

Yes we need to save the planet we have, but at the same time we have to keep pushing out to space. If we don't progress, we WILL collpase. We need new energy. We need new tech. We need new growth and innovation, and we're at the point where we have to look outward for that.

[SeaGypsy]

We 'need' such fantasies for the same reason we 'need' organized religion- fear of reality and refusal to face our own mortality and that of the entire world and Universe beyond.

[SeaGypsy]

The best way forward is clearly to hybridize with jellyfish and cockroaches. The combined lack of need for gravity, brains or a radiation free environment should do the trick.

[Sixstrings]

Technology is a religion in the USA. The Good Book is called Progress and contains lots of chapters; AI, Singularity, Genome, Space Colonization, God Particle, Energy Independence, Time Travel, Facebook, Apple.

Steve Jobs is Jesus Christ, and Elon Musk is his second wife. He divorced the Woz years ago.

Okay fine I give up, we're all interested in different things. I think space is cool, others think "The Road" and surviving in a peak oil doomscape scraping scraggly potatoes out of the yard is cool.

(actually I think both are cool, but the tech future is far more interesting and certainly preferable)

As for poo-pooing tech.. you just wrote on a computer, or an iPhone or your android phone or maybe a netbook. I'm old enough to remember a time when I didn't know a single person interested in computers -- I sold them as a teen, I actually had to convince person after person what use a computer could possibly be in their home.

I had a smart phone browsing the web before anyone had ever seen such a thing. I got tired of it by the time the iPhone craze happened and suddenly everyone had one.

Yes, I love tech. I love progress.

I'm actually not a fanboy type, but Musk is truly exceptional. He's a trained physicist, and wicked smart businessman. He approaches everything with the idea of doing it differently than everyone else is doing it. The guy is a space nerd, wants to see us on Mars, so he starts a rocket company to do it. I just think that's awesome. He's like that Rearden character out of Atlas Shrugged.

He's so honest and blunt too -- in interviews he says it's shameful we have to use Russians to get to space, and he went and solved that problem. That's not cool?

This guy is the next Steve Jobs, but more like an industrialist Rockefeller. If SpaceX ever goes public that's one stock I want to own, I know that much. I already missed the boat on everything else over the years, from ebay to Apple to those stupid bitcoins.