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Mars, do we really need to go there?   You are logged in as Guest
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estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

Mars, do we really need to go there? 

I’m not enthusiastic about going to a place that takes a few years to reach and has two nasty environmental factors, regolith (dirt) with perchlorate concentrations too high to grow plants, and radiation. Not interested in any of that. I’m in favor of sending as many robotic exploration missions as possible, but humans don’t need to go to Mars. I’m more interested with what in in the abyssal zones of our planets oceans.

Mars - yeah or nay? Please discuss.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 23 2025 11:44:19
 
El Burdo

 

Posts: 658
Joined: Sep. 8 2011
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

A visit or two might reveal a source of minerals that might be needed to keep Earth going, though astronomical spectroscopy has probably already done that.

I doubt there is any politically tolerable way of halting 'progress' voluntarily so off-planet provision of minerals could be important. At least, until Gaia reminds us of the pressing need to adjust by letting loose a billion ton iceberg to prove its point. And bears.

There is the chance that ideologically opposed miners might co-exist, but one cohort probably elected Donald Trump, and the other sides didn't elect anyone, so I doubt that.

Colonising Mars is an idea that allows the powerful to ignore what we are doing to Earth.

Having said that, at least we will be rid of Elon Musk.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 23 2025 12:41:18
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to El Burdo

quote:

ORIGINAL: El Burdo

A visit or two might reveal a source of minerals that might be needed to keep Earth going, though astronomical spectroscopy has probably already done that.

I doubt there is any politically tolerable way of halting 'progress' voluntarily so off-planet provision of minerals could be important. At least, until Gaia reminds us of the pressing need to adjust by letting loose a billion ton iceberg to prove its point. And bears.

There is the chance that ideologically opposed miners might co-exist, but one cohort probably elected Donald Trump, and the other sides didn't elect anyone, so I doubt that.

Colonising Mars is an idea that allows the powerful to ignore what we are doing to Earth.

Having said that, at least we will be rid of Elon Musk.



Oh I doubt spanky boy will go himself. As far as he’s concerned, I think he’s aiming at controlling the world single handedly. Eventually he’ll broach the subject, because why not, he’s mastered buying companies, next challenge is countries. Maybe going to Mars is a distraction concept to make himself look altruistically focused on the survival of earthlings by selling a fable that we will become a space fairing entity?

My agenda is not to bash him, although I dislike him with immense personal force, I’m interested objectively in whether establishing presence on Mars is a good idea or a foolish idea. I’m deeply interested in scientific investigations, but scientists have to pick their battles. Can we learn about our solar system and create advances in technology from these studies that will provide equal benefit for humankind without actually occupying Mars?

Did Shackleton really have to seek Antarctica before we had the ships and gear to go there without the heroic hardships? Or should we have waited 60 years for better ships? Realizing we didn’t start cracking the questions about the questions we asked about that environment until recently, what did the challenge of exploration for exploration sake get us besides Shackelton’s base camp cabin frozen in time? Are we aiming at putting a radiation proof Shackleton base on Mars before we have the technology to make it a routine trip?

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 23 2025 14:30:41
 
Ricardo

Posts: 15486
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

but humans don’t need to go to Mars.


Even if they are Republicans?

I agree about robots. But eventually human scientists need to go out there. We will expand into the solar system as envisioned in the show the Expanse. It is just a matter of time. But for sure, we are not there yet.

I love this lady, she is up on the modern tech and realistic future in space.



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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 1:01:13
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Ricardo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Ricardo

quote:

but humans don’t need to go to Mars.


Even if they are Republicans?

I agree about robots. But eventually human scientists need to go out there. We will expand into the solar system as envisioned in the show the Expanse. It is just a matter of time. But for sure, we are not there yet.

I love this lady, she is up on the modern tech and realistic future in space.





Republicans need to go to Mercury or into the Sun.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 3:36:41
 
RobF

Posts: 1729
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:


Republicans need to go to Mercury or into the Sun.


That's ridiculous. We don't have the technology yet to go into the Sun. Do you realize how fast you'd have to go? What with showing up at night and then getting the heck out of there before it turns back on in the morning?

Nope...unless Elon and Donnie got something up their sleeve they're not telling us, that ain't happening for at least another forty years. At least.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 4:15:36
 
El Burdo

 

Posts: 658
Joined: Sep. 8 2011
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to RobF

quote:

that ain't happening for at least another forty years. At least.


D'ya think? I attended university in the early 70s and 'studied' Applied Physics ('played guitar').

We did a unit on nuclear Fusion, principles, Tokamaks etc. But....we were advised, sadly it wasn't going to happen for AT LEAST another 25 years. Twenty five years after that missed target, I read that it is envisaged...blah blah blah...twenty five years.

Twenty five years must be a Physics way of saying 'mañana' or 'しばらくこない’. In the UK we already have a unit of measurement 'the size of Wales' generally appropriate to how much rainforest has been converted into burgers.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 16:29:52
 
Ricardo

Posts: 15486
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to RobF

quote:

That's ridiculous. We don't have the technology yet to go into the Sun. Do you realize how fast you'd have to go?


I know you are joking but my kids got to visit the Parker probe and put their names on the data disc before it was launched...recently it touched the corona and is the fastest made made object right now (due to gravity whipping the thing).

So we could easily send republicans there, and auto tuned singers, human traffickers, certain democraps, etc.

Also mercury is pretty nice by comparison (at the poles) compared to Venus, which is hotter on the the surface than mercury, due to global warming.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 17:38:19
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

You could cook a pizza on the surface of Venus in 3 seconds.

I’m highly suspicious of Elon’s push to go to Mars, it’s psycho-obsessive behavior. To my observation it is a narcissistic quest.
The peripheral technologies that could be spun off of the research and development of the process of preparing such a mission could benefit our local planetary environment and intelligence, but ultimately even if we could I’m not convinced we should. We have human psychological and physiological problems to solve that we have not yet encountered and the problems we’ve experienced at the ISS are substantial.

The Earth is a hostile enough environment, space is going to tear us apart. I love sci fi stuff, but we are not close to being a space faring civilization. As much as I like a good Belter yell.



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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 19:02:25
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

My literature teacher was grizzled old ex journalist for a Boston newspaper. He’d spent his career in various countries on the foreign desks. He was a classics specialist, he knew the history of English literature well having attended, as he regularly reminded us, Brown University and London School of Economics for journalism. He was an American and very realistic, not pompous, but proud of his accomplishments at his schools.

His name was Bernard Mullins. He taught from the Norton anthology’s of poems and literature, plus Conrad and other novels, mainly because they were available at our school. He taught The Birches by Robert Frost one day. I told him I couldn’t really get my head round it, because I didn’t take his sort of hints at what the poem meant to him. Of course he wouldn’t say what he felt the poem meant to him because he wanted us to take it away and think about it. He didn’t want to hand out an obvious message. I think at the time I looked too deep into it and expected there could be layers of meaning embedded in it and I wasn’t understanding it. Now I’m not looking for a meaning, but when I watched The Expanse I recalled this poem and Bernie’s cryptic comments about it. He says to me, read the The Birches and think about the space race. Now that’s an obvious thing to say, I’ve heard many people commenting on the space program in relation to this poem, but it was written in 1915, less than a decade after the first flights at Kittyhawk.

It’s not changed, the relevance of the poem, birches still grow in places where the snow lasts until early spring. We’ve done crazy **** like go from a prototype airplane with lawnmower engine on a beach in south eastern US to creating the SR-71 and space reaching rockets and that’s all behind us by five decades. What does Elon know that I don’t know about life? Answer is, precious little.




When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust —
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows —
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 19:31:48
 
RobF

Posts: 1729
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.


I used to love doing that when I was a kid.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 22:40:16
 
Ricardo

Posts: 15486
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

I’m highly suspicious of Elon’s push to go to Mars, it’s psycho-obsessive behavior. To my observation it is a narcissistic quest.


Whatever the psycho analysis (honestly this is coming from more recent political stuff IMO), the guy had a vision long ago and people laughed at his childlike behavior....until he got the rocket working and then governments needed his company. VERY serious scientists have been on board with his vision for decades. It was MANY years ago he laid out his plan for mars. It is quite bizarre to me why people are just now questioning his ideas and motives. At the time only a handful of astronomers were like "why risk humans on mars?". but honestly the robots so far suck. We need people there to do even basic biological research. He was dead serious long ago and now they want to label him narcissist? It is only just of the trump thing etc. IMO.

_____________________________

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www.ricardomarlow.com
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 25 2025 23:17:07
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Ricardo

That’s not how I see Musk. He’s not that smart, he’s very good at buying and selling companies. He’s a money guy, every scientist who went to 8 years of school to learn astrophysics and aerodynamic engineering has a vision and contemplates the known and unknown limits.

Musk has always been erratic, his biographer Walter Issacson stressed in recent interviews about his bio that Musk isn’t a Leonardo, but temperamental man whose character has been masked by corporate obscurity. Once he stepped into the light of public discourse, he’s been revealed as an unreasonable control freak.

I’m still interested in whether going to Mars is an important goal, or a romantic theme which could be used as an instrument by a charismatic person who doesn’t know themselves very well?

That’s a valid question to continue to ask while we do the work. And restating that I think the throw off, peripheral technology, that the work create is valuable.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 26 2025 3:31:30
 
RobF

Posts: 1729
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

I’m still interested in whether going to Mars is an important goal, or a romantic theme which could be used as an instrument by a charismatic person who doesn’t know themselves very well?

That’s a valid question to continue to ask while we do the work. And restating that I think the throw off, peripheral technology, that the work create is valuable.


If by "we" you mean humanity then, yes, I think it would be worthwhile, and pretty well for the reasons you've been stating. But so would any serious efforts made to clean up our existing messes right here, including the one our man Elon is helping create in the night sky. Which doesn't discount the value of exploration as a goal in and of itself.

As an aside, while I'm no fan of Elon's, like him or not he sure has managed to accomplish a lot. You can't take that away from him. There are lessons to be learned from this, too, I suppose.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 26 2025 4:24:33
 
ernandez R

Posts: 820
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana

That’s not how I see Musk. He’s not that smart, he’s very good at buying and selling companies. He’s a money guy, every scientist who went to 8 years of school to learn astrophysics and aerodynamic engineering has a vision and contemplates the known and unknown limits.

Musk has always been erratic, his biographer Walter Issacson stressed in recent interviews about his bio that Musk isn’t a Leonardo, but temperamental man whose character has been masked by corporate obscurity. Once he stepped into the light of public discourse, he’s been revealed as an unreasonable control freak.

I’m still interested in whether going to Mars is an important goal, or a romantic theme which could be used as an instrument by a charismatic person who doesn’t know themselves very well?

That’s a valid question to continue to ask while we do the work. And restating that I think the throw off, peripheral technology, that the work create is valuable.


Whenever I hear an argument about a currently improbable goal I always refer to people that flight has been a dream for mankind for what 2000 4000 years maybe and we only just acquired this dream a little more than 100 years ago.

How we get to mars or rather the moon first will take time and most likly this will involve some nature of robotics.

As to the Alien monetizing this dream, in a way he is no different the The explorer Columbus conning Isabella into hocking the state jewels to finance his adventure for “souls”

The first group of mars explorers will most like fair no different the first couple groups who tried to settle North America, but it will happen and we will infest another planet, then another, it’s almost as if we were created to spread across our environment and once we have sucked a space dry we move to another…

HR

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I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy,
doesn't have to be fast,
should have some meat on the bones,
can be raw or well done,
as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 26 2025 6:06:27
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to ernandez R

It’s going to take a long long time to suck space dry, because space is more vast than I can imagine, and I’ve watched enough space operas like STOS, DS9, Babylon5 and Galaxy Quest to get an idea of how vast space is. 😝

Voyager entered interstellar space a few years ago after speeding through our solar system for decades. We’d have to launch multi generational spacecraft capable of carrying enough people so that they could hook up and produce kids en route to other systems and it would take centuries. It requires a craft large enough to carry a genetically diverse enough population so there wouldn’t be inbreeding. Plus the fact that it’s unknown to us how space will change our DNA in a few short years, the long long term effect on our bones from gravity less than earths lovely gravity. Just getting to the edges of our own solar system and establishing a colony like the Belters in The Expanse is likely centuries away.

I have an idea, instead of continuing to use the model of exploration that united almost all of the globe in instantaneous communication, the culmination of centuries of terrestrial and oceanic exploration, let’s explore unification without homogenization of the character of the world citizenry? That’s radical departure from our model to create a planet where there is no terra incognita. We can map our planet via the hardware that Elon launched ( standing on a century of others research and practice in rocketry) but this is an outcome that calls for more of them same, run away from our problems, explore them away. But the same problems will follow us. My questioning whether we should go is more about priorities, it’s probably something we should try, but for me it’s not a priority over making a paradigm shift away from from exploring for the sake of exploring.

If the idea is to save humanity from an increasingly populated world etc. ultimately the people who would leave would be privileged to go, when the exodus becomes routine, like in Blade Runner ‘live off world’, then only the rich elite will be able to go. Where does that leave everyone else?

We have like 10 major religious belief systems that cannot completely get along, are we going to hike that baggage with us into space colonies and then end up with outposts that veer into Easter Island syndrome where half the colony divides along a belief system line and massacres the other half? Boy that would be fun.

Why doesn’t that happen at Mc Murdo station in Antarctica? Is it because they population there is unified in a goal of producing research in a place that we established a foot hold in that’s a harsh environment? What would happen at McMurdo if the population were not all on board with the same goal?

All these things keep me up at night.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 26 2025 7:24:26
 
RobF

Posts: 1729
Joined: Aug. 24 2017
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

My questioning whether we should go is more about priorities, it’s probably something we should try, but for me it’s not a priority over making a paradigm shift away from from exploring for the sake of exploring.


My feeling is the opposite...we should be making the shift towards exploring for the sake of exploring, not away from it. That would be a refreshing change from the norm, where that which was initially borne out of necessity was quickly supplanted by the banner of exploitation and conquest.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 26 2025 15:59:53
 
Ricardo

Posts: 15486
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

It’s going to take a long long time to suck space dry, because space is more vast than I can imagine,


The hospitable zones are few and far between. People probably thought the world was plenty big enough not long ago. Now, everybody wants to get in here or Europe, etc. Just doing Skype lessons with people like in Africa, etc., was eye opening for me. The idea of "sucking it dry" is regarding the good stuff, which there is not so much.

Voyager will eventually be overtaken and put into a museum. It was headed no where anyway. Like a message in a bottle a century ago still floating at sea today, but now we have Amazon and Fed Ex flying over that bottle delivering guitars.

Space changes our DNA right now. Elon's idea was to make small shields that slow that down, just like our planet does. Magnets are not high tech. But Expanse was centuries away, that is the point (meaning the fiction is fairly accurate). That is not that far off considering humans have been around for several HUNDRED THOUSAND years already, doing their bad deeds.

About problems and priorities. There are people working on various problems, some doing great things we are not even aware of. To claim we are ignoring problems that need to be dealt with now or at least first (Elon and others should not be permitted to look to mars before he fixes these other problems), in my mind, is an insult to those people working it now. It is not every person's responsibility to solve every problem top down. That is why things like carbon tax actually work. There is some smart people that already figured out how it can work. Elon already made an electric car. Point out its short comings fine, but it is already the guy addressing a problem that was NOT his responsibility to begin with. Next mars. If he wants. Or not. Who cares. If you want a global elite mindset to prioritize all of humanity's goals, well, what the heck does THAT sound like? No good. And it doesn't work anyway.

If you want to fix problems then do your part. There is PLENTY to do, while letting some nerds explore space if they want. Seriously...watch that interview I posted. People are already way ahead working on this thing, Elon is sort of old fashioned already.

Last the idea of saving humanity from OVER population via space colonization. Well, I already know you don't like Elon, but his argument has always been the EXACT opposite. He claims the world pop is going DOWN and signaling our extinction, hence going off world to salvage what we have now. I am not joking.

_____________________________

CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 29 2025 13:07:14
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

We had electric cars before Elon. The USPS ( U.S. postal service) delivery fleet was scheduled to convert to EV before Tesla began building cars. Sen. (the feckless idiot) McConnell scuttled the funding.

Saying “do my part “ seems hostile 😆 I’m teaching kids how to speak a foreign language, teaching a guitar ensemble and making guitars, I don’t have much time to make a wooden Venus probe. I don’t like Elon, but I said that’s not what I’m on about. I’m thinking
about what our motivations are and whether the paradigm of exploration as we know it in our western tradition is still as valid as it used to be. Mars mission is just a platform for this evaluation of something we take for granted.

And I have reasons questioning the paradigm based on my reading of history and what really were the underlying motivations for past global exploration, which was usually to find the most rapid way to corner a commercial market. That’s not a situation we have any longer because we have a global commerce market that’s based on which materials are in demand for creating high tech products, we can ship them as fast as we want, the questions are who is being exploited to extract the materials and how does that moderate or change the way we read the history of exploration? Going to Mars is a just a subject to which these arguments and observations can be developed with. I have no doubt this operation and all the preparatory work will continue, that’s not even a question. But while the preparation happens, is it going to kill anyone to compare the future of exploration to the history of exploration? No. Are people going to get butthurt over analyzing this comparison? Yes, yes people will get butthurt. It’s the reasons why it makes people uncomfortable to compare the Mars project with the history of Earthly exploration that’s interesting to me.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 30 2025 3:57:06
 
Ricardo

Posts: 15486
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

There is nothing wrong with making comparisons. Of course history repeats itself and will continue to do so, as we make baby steps toward "progress" (or extinction, which I actually think IS part of progress ).

But there are various motivations different than Elon, who is singular about Mars. That is fine, others have other "singular" focuses. I am just saying the concept is already being deeply explored and again, you need to watch ARIEL in the video I linked above, when you have the time to hear her out.

Simply put, people want to have sex in space and no logic you put forward will stop that.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Jan. 31 2025 13:24:31
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Ricardo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Ricardo

There is nothing wrong with making comparisons. Of course history repeats itself and will continue to do so, as we make baby steps toward "progress" (or extinction, which I actually think IS part of progress ).

But there are various motivations different than Elon, who is singular about Mars. That is fine, others have other "singular" focuses. I am just saying the concept is already being deeply explored and again, you need to watch ARIEL in the video I linked above, when you have the time to hear her out.

Simply put, people want to have sex in space and no logic you put forward will stop that.



So then are you ordering a 660 Venus Probe model or the 670 Uranus Probe model? In plain clear French polish or Conde Mars Orange?

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 1 2025 3:11:19
 
Estevan

Posts: 1948
Joined: Dec. 20 2006
From: Torontolucía

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

So then are you ordering a 660 Venus Probe model or the 670 Uranus Probe model? In plain clear French polish or Conde Mars Orange?


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Me da igual. La música es música.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 1 2025 16:09:26
 
Ricardo

Posts: 15486
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

6-69 mm.

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CD's and transcriptions available here:
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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 1 2025 17:30:03
 
Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3471
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

quote:

Estebanana: What does Elon know that I don’t know about life? Answer is, precious little.


Having spent a few hours with each of you, I'm sure that you know a lot of stuff about life that Elon does not. But also, vice versa.

SpaceX launched their first flights from Kwajalein. I worked there for the missile range as a Test Director on three of their four flights. Elon couldn't raise significant venture capital, since too many space startups had flunked egregiously. He had $100-million of his own money to get to orbit, to prove he wasn't a flash in the pan. He kept getting delayed launching from Vandenburg. Military and intelligence launches took priority, and kept sitting on launch pads sliding into the future beyond their planned schedule. He risked running out of money before he could do enough launches to work the kinks out of their rocket designs. Kwajalein was in a slow spell, and was willing to take its first non-military customer.

SpaceX's performance at Kwajalein was impressive. After the expected spectacular initial failures, they made it (just barely) to orbit within the tight limits on time and Elon's money.

For example, the first launch blew up after liftoff because the bare-bones pre-launch computer checkout missed an important flaw. On the second launch they had quickly developed a very comprehensive computer countdown. Each time they failed they quickly identified their mistake and never did it again. That's one form of good engineering.

Some engineers who worked for me ridiculed SpaceX's spectacular initial failures. I was a veteran of the ICBM business. I asked them how many of their complex electronics designs flunked the smoke test when they first fired them up in the privacy of their lab.

The team Elon assembled during the early days of SpaceX was outstanding in capability, motivation and work ethic. He must have taken some very good advice. For example the leader of the small Kwajalein contingent was a joy to work with. He is now SpaceX's Vice President for Launch and Safety. Looks to me like he's still doing a good job.

When it comes to science and engineering Elon might be the quickest person I ever met. If you could find a place to start from in his competent understanding of physics, you could explain anything to him. He asked intelligent questions. He consumed information. You never had to repeat yourself. He could incorporate new info into his thinking.

Except when he didn't want to. He objected to the expense of Kwajalein Missile Range's required safety procedures. He repeatedly delayed meetings with temper tantrums about them. It should have been obvious to him that the Army wasn't going to budge.

The Kwajalein range had no way to offset the increased risk of essential facilities being damaged by flaming rocket junk falling from the sky due to relaxed safety procedures. Elon was in no position to offer compensation for the expense of rebuilding and the loss of revenue due to downtime. He had nowhere else to go. He should have seen how the cow ate the cabbage, pulled up his socks and got on with it. But he didn't. He screamed, shouted and insulted people.

When he said, while hosting Saturday Night Live, that he was on the autism spectrum, the penny dropped for me. At times he seemed simply to miss important social cues.

However, my take is that Elon is an essential element of SpaceX's success. I had some insight into an era of rapid technological progress. My brother was Head of the Flight Medicine Branch of NASA throughout the Apollo moon landing program. He was responsible for the biological containment facility where the astronauts were quarantined when they got back from the moon. He was responsible for the life support systems that got the Apollo 13 crew back home after an oxygen tank exploded--and considerably more stuff. I worked in conceptual design, flight test and evaluation of every ICBM system on our side, starting in 1966. I spent about a third of my time in intelligence review and tasking that dealt with the Soviet strategic missile defenses. So I got to see some serious and rapid tech progress up close. You can do it by hiring a sizable contingent of the best people, giving them good leadership, and an essentially unlimited budget.

Elon duplicated NASA's successful rocket development and rapid progress, and even went a little further to implement re-usability. He did it with a lot less money and fewer people, and he made space operations a lot cheaper. His philosophy was to move fast, break things, find your mistakes, and fix them--and SpaceX had the benefit of looking back at NASA's developments, and those of others.

But when Elon gets away from dealing with physical objects, and takes on something that requires a degree of social intelligence, it is fairly certain to be a disaster. His success with SpaceX and Tesla have taught him that he is infallible. He's not even infallible at engineering--have you seen any of those electric solar panel roofing shingles around town? He's just unusually smart and successful at developing physical stuff.

Socially he's a total doofus, viz Twitter.

His financial success has given him tremendous power. It's a flaw in the U.S. version of capitalism that anyone can get that rich. It's a serious flaw in U.S. law and politics that someone as socially inept as Elon can have as much influence as he seems to have at the moment.

We're lucky that it may appear that his ineptitude might not generally be compounded with malice, but he's still capable of serious damage just by being clueless.

Historically clueless too. I saw a clip of him talking with Joe Rogan about imperialism. Elon said that empires were usually "acquisitive," but the USA was virtuous in not wanting to acquire a lot of land.

"You f***ing dork!" I exclaimed to the TV. "Don't you realize that at this moment you are sitting in the middle of what used to be 50% of Mexico's arable land, taken from them by military force?"

As he has grown more powerful Elon has displayed his a$$hole tendencies more often and more publicly. Actually this is a good thing, at least partly. People are driving around Austin in Teslas with bumper stickers that say, "I bought this before we found out he was an a$$hole".

I found out long ago. Now that he is more widely exposed, many of the rest of us are finding out too.

RNJ
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 5:09:50
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

The difference, mainly, between artists like myself and the powerful rich men that perform hostile takeovers and risk cultural continuity for the furtherance of their ambitions, is self doubt. Artists confront self doubt minute by minute, while the Elon’s live in perpetual silos of self confidence. Honestly he’s dangerous AF because he’s so unself aware. And now in this moment I believe more than ever that going to Mars for him in particular, is nothing but a delusion of grandeur.

It’s cold comfort to me personally, but one of my advisors in graduate school told me “You suffer from integrity.” Which is as both funny and bewildering. If I had it to do all over again might have read law and gone into public service as my fighter pilot grandfather encouraged, but he also saw the importance of not taking that road. But also at least people are not identifying the work product I make with Nazism. My guitar’s will never take humans to the stars, but neither will anyone call my work product shameful. Ultimately your only power is to live by example, even if you’re not a rich person.

As David Serva would say with a sarcastic wink, “I got my pride.” 😂

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 13:03:21
 
ernandez R

Posts: 820
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Richard Jernigan

RJ,
Thanx for sharing your experience.

I basically feel the same way, the teams the man has put together get it done but all the other associated baggage is intolerable.

We are going back to the moon and mars, just not that soon, and only if we don’t exterminate ourselves, or knock humanity back to the Bronze Age or worse.

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I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy,
doesn't have to be fast,
should have some meat on the bones,
can be raw or well done,
as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.

www.instagram.com/threeriversguitars
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 14:53:38
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to ernandez R

quote:

ORIGINAL: ernandez R

RJ,
Thanx for sharing your experience.

I basically feel the same way, the teams the man has put together get it done but all the other associated baggage is intolerable.

We are going back to the moon and mars, just not that soon, and only if we don’t exterminate ourselves, or knock humanity back to the Bronze Age or worse.



You mean, let’s be honest and call it what it really is, he’s staging a coup? Yes it’s a coup. And that idiot with his 25% tariffs right before Los Angeles is going to require enormous amounts of Canadian made construction products to build back the city and prepare for the 2028 Olympic Games. Get ready for the economy to suck when these idiots find out the US construction industry can’t function without Mexican and Canadian construction supplies. People will say buy the stuff from American suppliers, right, the affordable lumber comes from Canada, and knowing that supply will be shorted the Russian plywood suppliers will raise the prices because demand can’t be met by U.S. suppliers alone. Tech bros are the worst people on the planet, half are complete boneheads.

( not to mention Russian and Chinese plywood is metric and it’s not rated for most Unified Building Codes so the US as a structurally rated sheeting product. And it’s metric, which does not fit on residential and commercial standard framing formats) As a former carpenter who’s put together budgets for medium sized residential building projects I’d like to punch a hole in that idiots chest and take a sh-t in the cavity. WTF - I 💩 on his dead.

I’m beginning to think twice about my suspicion that Musk bought access to voting machines in key counties in swing states. This was dismissed as impossible, but really? Is it impossible? The voting in the swing states and especially Ohio didn’t match the historically accurate pollsters in states races. The poll by Ann Seltzer in Ohio was never wrong before this election. How difficult could it be for the richest tech bro to buy access to voting systems? Remember when the idiot in chief hinted at a fix when he was giving a speech? He said “ we don’t need your votes, and you’ll never have to vote again.” Etc He was onstage with Christy ‘the puppy killer’ Noam.

**** 💩

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 17:44:58
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

Anyway, some days I feel crazier than Ezra Pound. Maybe I’ll write 5000 word poem about how much I loathe the anti-enlightenment movement of American Christianity.

But this clip of Neil deGrasse Tyson on this conservative talk show is interesting, at around 37:00 minutes he talks about why the US would need Musk, and it’s because the US would need to buy the Mars exploration technology from him in order to stave off the adversarial threat of other nations trying to get to Mars. He models his thought around what JFK said in a speech just after Yuri Grigarin had a successful ride into orbit with the USSR space program.

I know some of you think Neil is passe’ but he’s out in the media markets with high visibility to regular folks and he breaks it down in a way that doesn’t talk condescendingly. You may differ with his opinion, but what he says about the motivations in the early 1960’s to enter space are predicated on American fears during the Cold War period. He maintains that this situation could once again be a motivator to go to Mars.

This is a thought I have that’s like Tyson’s in that I’m a skeptic of a Mars mission by one country. I’d be more secure about it if we first established a science base on the moon that’s modeled after McMurdo station in Antarctica. A station that’s half buried under the surface to see I if we can make radiation proof structures shielded by rocks and land, to see if a long term hydroponic farm could be established. And most of all to create an internationally co-operative exploration and occupation treaty, like the one at Mc Murdo that seeks to assure that these new frontiers are not explored out of fear that China or and other alignment of countries get there first.

To me this is more important, because I watched Star Treks the point of Star Trek original series was to model a future without cold wars. Most scientists are philosophically on board with these ideals, the current spate of politicians and ‘Broligarcs’ are old fashioned, they still see the model of exploration as motivated by territorial dominance and gaining a profiteering advantage out of being the first and the fastest.

This is why tech bros say go fast and break things, it’s for no other reason than to create faster route to profit over the competition, but science doesn’t work as well on this crappy work philosophy. This is why I think it’s a retrograde way to think, the go fast and break it model of exploration is how we got massive colonization which entrapped peoples because the power dynamics between cultures and regions were asymmetrical. Power in now concentrated in the hands of a few tech bro magnates who see themselves as pushing humanity forward, but I don’t see them that way, and unfortunately my long held negative intuition about most of these guys is being manifested. They look like like they are modern day versions of the worst attributes of past explorers. That said, look at the contrast between Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, Jobs’ wife and a few other techies, they may have gone fast and broken some stuff, but they prioritize Earth, rather than indulge themselves in the ‘Puer Aternus’ fantasies of Musk and his cronie bros.






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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 18:31:31
 
estebanana

Posts: 9696
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
 

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to estebanana

One last thing, in response to Ricardo’s quip about scientists wanting to get it on in space. I do know through extensive experimentation at engaging in acts of romantic sex that when you put on that Sade album or whomsoever you choose to get it up with, that lesser atmospheres are not as fun. Example, I’ve had lots of sex in swimming pools, hot springs and even the ocean and it’s not as good. The ocean is salty and offers a near neutral buoyancy environment for doing sexual activity which could work as a stand in environment for zero gravity sexual encounters. Let me tell you from vast experience that weightlessness during the act of copulation isn’t as good. Sex is hotter under the friction of gravity, Earth is the place for love.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 19:24:05
 
BarkellWH

Posts: 3484
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC

RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (in reply to Richard Jernigan

Elon Musk has a certain vision and a knack for hiring first-rate scientists and engineers that have served him well in the development of SpaceX. Tesla is a bit more problematical, however. Nevertheless, Musk has demonstrated he is a first class hypocrite when he savagely criticizes US government departments and employees as being bloated and out of control as he prepares to slash them to meet his particular standards, such as they are. That doesn't mean USG spending and programs cannot be made more efficient, but Musk is not the one to do it. There is no one individual--not one--who has benefited more from government subsidies and contracts paid for by the US taxpayer than Elon Musk. Elon Musk is the poster boy for living off the government teat. Below is a partial list of US government subsidies and contracts that have placed him where he is today.

TESLA

Received a $465 million preferential loan from the US Department of Energy in 2010
Received tax credits for EV buyers, which allowed the company to sell cars at a higher price (Remember the $7,000 rebate under Bidon?)
Received grants to boost electric vehicle manufacturing
Received "regulatory credits" from the federal and state governments, which can be sold to other carmakers

SPACEX

Received over $19 billion in federal contracts since 2008
Received contracts to build a lunar-landing vehicle and provide launch services to the Defense Department
Received contracts to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and resupply the ISS
Received a $1.8 billion contract to secretly develop a network of spy satellites for the U.S. government

OTHER GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR MUSK'S COMPANIES INCLUDES:

Federal contracts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA

It is no wonder that Musk and Trump have formed a "Bromance." Musk would not be where he is today were it not for the government teat, and Trump has never produced anything of value. Trump has declared bankruptcy six times on failing properties and investments. I have never understood how anyone can call him an astute businessman. He is anything but.

The US government today, from Trump and Musk to the Secretary of Defense, and nominees for HHS and the Director of National Intelligence as well as others, is a prime example of the inmates in charge of the asylum.

God help us with this crew in charge.

Bill

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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."

--Rudyard Kipling
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Feb. 2 2025 19:54:07
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