The Space Thread

[Tricone RC]

could the core still be liquid? given the lack of a magnetic field... or could there just be something interfering with the convection currents preventing the magnetic fields lining up and reinforcing themselves? I have no idea how any of this works...

I think it's theorised to be partly molten. You can tell a surprising amount about internal structure from the planet's inertial coefficient, which you can measure from an orbiting spacecraft

 

For a magnetic field you seem to need a molten outer core plus sufficient rotation, although there's only a handful of planetary examples and very little experimental info to base a hypothesis on. Mars doesn't have a planetary field despite apparently having a molten core and an Earthlike rotation - maybe the core is not sufficiently molten, or not sufficiently conductive to act as a dynamo (lots of oxygen or sulphur in with the iron), or something about the core's geometry prevents the required currents from developing - or we just might not understand any of that shit well enough to really get it yet (entirely possible)

[Rubin Farr]

InSight sending back first new images from Mars:

 

https://gizmodo.com/nasas-insight-lander-sends-back-stunning-image-of-the-m-1830672044

 

[ambermonk]

For all the dreamers getting wild ideas about colonizing Mars 'n shit, bear in mind that considering its thin atmosphere, apparent absence of water, as well as absence of magnetic field to shield against solar and cosmic radiation, not to mention just being a giant barren rock, living there would suck. I think we're better off striving to resolve the ongoing burdens of climate change, income inequality, and the trend of despotic asswipes being elected as world leaders.

The next planet even remotely hospitable for human life is light years away, and even then the odds of it perfectly matching conditions of Earth are probably next to none.

I will admit that's a cool shot though. For some reason it reminds me of the Second Bad Vilbel music vid.

[Rubin Farr]

I may be in the minority, but I see by the end of this century that robots will be so far superior in intelligence and ability, that human colonization of space seems counter productive. We can send out probes and rovers, submersibles that can run for years on solar power, are not subject to cosmic radiation poisoning, bone loss, they don't need oxygen, food, water, sanitation or retrieval, and can take decades to reach their destination. HAL will explore this galaxy for us.

At least science fiction gives us the fantasy of living on other worlds.

 

Apparently humans already live on Mars.

 

[caze]

For all the dreamers getting wild ideas about colonizing Mars 'n shit, bear in mind that considering its thin atmosphere, apparent absence of water, as well as absence of magnetic field to shield against solar and cosmic radiation, not to mention just being a giant barren rock, living there would suck. I think we're better off striving to resolve the ongoing burdens of climate change, income inequality, and the trend of despotic asswipes being elected as world leaders.

 

That it has an atmosphere at all is great, as they can easily extract the individual components in it (which is mostly CO2, but enough nitrogen and free oxygen to be useful for providing breathable air) and use it to create the pressurised living quarters (greenhouses can even be tailored to their crops with different pressure and composition requirements, they won't all require human breathable air, plants don't need nitrogen for example; and microbes, algae, and, or plants can be used to feed off the CO2 to create more oxygen too). There are also various non-biological means for creating oxygen from CO2, the next Mars rover, due to land in 2021, has an experiment on board to test one method out.

 

Mars also has abundant water, mostly in the form of ice (most easily accessible at the north pole, but also under the CO2 ice cap on the south pole, and also as permafrost across the whole planet), but we also found subsurface liquid water lake this year (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44952710), there's bound to be more of these kinds of things, as well as other areas with large quantities of subsurface water ice and glaciers.

 

Radiation isn't a big deal either, habitation structures would be buried under a few feet of Martian regolith, which would be all that's needed to lower levels to Earth-standard. The Martian atmosphere already removes quite a lot of the radiation, there's far less on the surface than would be experienced in transit to the planet. Time spent out on the surface would probably have to be rationed so levels are kept within reasonable limits, this has all been worked out already. Eventually larger structures will be built, probably with superconducting materials generating a force-field to keep the radiation at bay.

 

Living there would be far from comfortable for the first few decades of course, but if being difficult put humans off doing things we wouldn't have left the savannah in the first place. For the kind of people who are going to be doing this stuff, the thrill of exploration and being part of something so momentous will more than make up for the lack of creature comforts.

 

Cutting funding to space exploration to focus on other problems is such a dumb thing people keep saying, and so easily disproved it's annoying that anyone still believes it. You do realise we can both strive to solve problems on Earth and also continue to advance in other ways at the same time, right? And not only are they not mutually exclusive, but space research and exploration, like any other form of human advancement, can have big knock-on effects in other areas too (especially when it comes to tackling climate change: from increasing our understanding of planetary science, to techniques for creating new crops and microbes, both for agricultural uses and also geoengineering for helping to reverse/slow climate change). The amount of resources we currently allocate to space is relatively tiny as well (really we should be massively increasing funding in fact). Space mining will eventually become a requirement for Earth as well, so all this work has to be done at some point, ideally we'd want to be able to do it before it becomes an urgent necessity. But even if it was taking away from our ability to fix other problems, which it isn't, we should still be doing it anyway, just in case shit on this planet goes completely tits up (whether due to our own idiocy, or some other disaster completely outside of our control).

Edited November 28, 2018 by caze

[drome]

You never fail in delivering pomposity as boundless as the universe itself. Far out.

[caze]

invest in a dictionary, learn the meaning of words. stop believing in satanic ritual abuse hoaxes while you're at it.

[auxien]

I may be in the minority, but I see by the end of this century that robots will be so far superior in intelligence and ability

Naw. There's a barrier between computation power and self awareness that won't be broken any time soon (we're both predicting the future so obviously this is just guessing)

 

We can send out probes and rovers, submersibles that can run for years on solar power, are not subject to cosmic radiation poisoning, bone loss, they don't need oxygen, food, water, sanitation or retrieval, and can take decades to reach their destination. HAL will explore this galaxy for us.

This is very true. Maybe not the galaxy for quite a while, but yeah.

[Braintree]

 

We can send out probes and rovers, submersibles that can run for years on solar power, are not subject to cosmic radiation poisoning, bone loss, they don't need oxygen, food, water, sanitation or retrieval, and can take decades to reach their destination. HAL will explore this galaxy for us.

This is very true. Maybe not the galaxy for quite a while, but yeah.

 

Quite a while, indeed. It will take Voyager 1 40k years to reach the closest star.

[drome]

invest in a dictionary, learn the meaning of words. stop believing in satanic ritual abuse hoaxes while you're at it.

Stop spouting off like you’re the worlds foremost authority on everything then. Kind of pompous. Edited November 29, 2018 by drome

[may be rude]

This is when humanity realizes that round trips to things that could have microbial life is a horrible idea.

Edited November 29, 2018 by very honest

[ambermonk]

 

invest in a dictionary, learn the meaning of words. stop believing in satanic ritual abuse hoaxes while you're at it.

Stop spouting off like you’re the worlds foremost authority on everything then. Kind of pompous.

 

Or maybe he's just passionate about space exploration. I see no reason to hold that against him.

 

This is when humanity realizes that round trips to things that could have microbial life is a horrible idea.

I don't think we have to worry. It's a guaranteed one way trip with current technology.

[caze]

only the mars one mission of the current planned missions is one-way only. space x's plan depends on multiple reuse of the rockets to cut down costs, they're not just planning on sending a single rocket with a bunch of people. they won't even send the first crewed mission without first validating the fuel generation/refueling/return aspect. nasa's last concrete plan was just a boring rehash of the moon missions, go there, drive around a bit, come back (that was cancelled, their current plans are for a station in moon orbit followed by manned return to the moon, and unspecified manned mars trips after that, but that would almost certainly include a return plan too). mars one isn't credible though, might even be an outright scam, so all the serious manned missions involve coming back.

 

I think the chances of finding viable microbes on mars are pretty slim anyway.

[caze]

Stop spouting off like you’re the worlds foremost authority on everything then. Kind of pompous.

 

I'm not anywhere near an expert, nor am I trying to appear like one (not sure how you got that from my pointing out a few basic facts that can be easily found in freely available public sources, stuff you'd learn if you just casually paid attention to science journalism over the years). This is an interesting and important subject, and this is an internet discussion forum, the point of which is to discuss things.

[may be rude]

only the mars one mission of the current planned missions is one-way only. space x's plan depends on multiple reuse of the rockets to cut down costs, they're not just planning on sending a single rocket with a bunch of people. they won't even send the first crewed mission without first validating the fuel generation/refueling/return aspect. nasa's last concrete plan was just a boring rehash of the moon missions, go there, drive around a bit, come back (that was cancelled, their current plans are for a station in moon orbit followed by manned return to the moon, and unspecified manned mars trips after that, but that would almost certainly include a return plan too). mars one isn't credible though, might even be an outright scam, so all the serious manned missions involve coming back.

 

I think the chances of finding viable microbes on mars are pretty slim anyway.

 

i mean it's just not hard to imagine something like whatever killed the native americans but much worse. maybe it's not likely, but would this be bad practice? how many heavenly body return trips does it take to run out your odds?

Edited November 30, 2018 by very honest

[may be rude]

that brings me back to a point i made on the second page of this thread though. any reason to send a human somewhere is a reason to just make the robots better. there's no good reason to send people anywhere. it's a weird entertainment instinct that causes people to want it. the cost decrease that happens when you don't send humans is at least an order of magnitude. it will result in better robotics, which provide a better return on investment.

 

the only way to establish to a high degree of likelihood that mars doesn't have native microbial life is for there to be an extensive and long-standing robotic presence there, looking for it. maybe i'm wrong but that would seem like the right way to do this.

 

and it would seem fitting for there to be a protocol like you could do round trips to mars orbit, but trips to the surface are one-way. so any chance of earth contamination can be eliminated. at least at first.

Edited December 29, 2018 by very honest

[caze]

i mean it's just not hard to imagine something like whatever killed the native americans but much worse. maybe it's not likely, but would this be bad practice? how many heavenly body return trips does it take to run out your odds?

 

If they did find life on Mars there would be a very robust quarantine protocol put in place when returning (as there already is when sending stuff there, to stop us contaminating Mars with our microbes). And even if there was life, it's highly unlikely it would be dangerous to us, pathogens evolve to fill a niche where they can live off other organisms, they're harmful because they hijack the cellular processes of other lifeforms; if there's anything left on Mars it would be very simple, living off chemical, not biological, processes. There's evidence of microbes on Earth which might lay dormant for thousands of years, so there's maybe a tiny chance there's some dormant stuff buried deep underground maybe (but very unlikely after millions rather than thousands of years), but even then it's a pretty tiny chance that stuff would be especially harmful. we also have a few advantages native americans didn't have when it comes to dealing with pathogens. if we're lucky we'll find evidence of past life, but that's about the best we can hope for probably.

[caze]

that brings me back to a point i made on the first page of this thread though. any reason to send a human somewhere is a reason to just make the robots better. there's no good reason to send people anywhere. it's a weird entertainment instinct that causes people to want it. the cost decrease that happens when you don't send humans is at least an order of magnitude. it will result in better robotics, which provide a better return on investment.

 

the only way to establish to a high degree of likelihood that mars doesn't have native microbial life is for there to be an extensive and long-standing robotic presence there, looking for it. maybe i'm wrong but that would seem like the right way to do this.

 

and it would seem fitting for there to be a protocol like you could do round trips to mars orbit, but trips to the surface are one-way. so any chance of earth contamination can be eliminated. at least at first.

 

there's an argument to be made that there's no good reason to send people outside of the solar system, because of the time it'll take to get anywhere, so robot only missions make sense there (even long term). there's plenty of reason to send people to Mars though, and not just because we should be colonising it (along with the Moon, and building lots of space habitats). robots just aren't smart enough to do all the work we need to do there, it's very slow and laborious when you have to program all activities explicitly in advance and have to just hope they work ok because you can't adjust anything while it's in progress due to the time lag. we've gotten quite good at doing that kind of thing, as the recent nasa missions have proven, but progress is very slow and there's a limit to what you can accomplish with it. we'll still need lots of robots and other automated stuff for Mars, because it's a dangerous environment and it's better to get them to do the construction and mining and so on, but they'll need to be controlled on site, often in real-time. we're nowhere near close to implementing autonomous robots capable of complex intelligent behaviors.

[Tricone RC]

 

There's evidence of microbes on Earth which might lay dormant for thousands of years, so there's maybe a tiny chance there's some dormant stuff buried deep underground maybe (but very unlikely after millions rather than thousands of years),

You'd be surprised...

[caze]

lol:

 

 

 

Brouchkov has even injected himself with the 3.5-million-year-old microbe, known as Bacillus F, in the hopes that the "eternal life" bacteria will work their magic and extend his lifespan too.

[ambermonk]

 

lol:

 

 

 

Brouchkov has even injected himself with the 3.5-million-year-old microbe, known as Bacillus F, in the hopes that the "eternal life" bacteria will work their magic and extend his lifespan too.

 

What if...natural FEV

[Rubin Farr]

United Launch Alliance is sending up their Delta IV Heavy again tonight from California, streaming from their site. Launch time is 11:19 PM, EST.

 

https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/delta-iv-nrol-71

 

[Rubin Farr]

[ignatius]

silver surfer has arrived!

 

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/746841/NASA-conspiracy-alien-news-iss-international-space-station-blue-object-cut-live-feed-video

[auxien]

Sounds like something from Line.