Liquid water exists on Mars, boosting hopes for life there, NASA says

[Quetzal]

It is the super rich geek parade.

Probably so. I get your money angle, I just don't think it's a real obstacle, and for this exact reason. There will always be filthy rich eccentric people who want to spend their money on crazy stuff like trying to put people on Mars, instead of boring yet practical things like solving world hunger. Look at Dubai as an example. You know how many zillions of dollars they spent to build that place up? They could have spent that feeding the hungry, but the world doesn't work that way.

Most people want stuff you can't get on Mars.

Like beer and free internet porn. Maybe you're right, life isn't worth living without those things.

The real problem with @columbus 's line of thought is that if everyone thought the way he did, no one would discover anything. The Europeans would not have discovered America. Magellon would have never circumnavigated the globe. We would not have gone into space. We would not have landed on the moon. We would not have an international space station. None of that would have ever happened because there were impoverished people at the time. By his flawed logic, we are selfish for taking part in any sort of recreation since we should be investing 100% into the poor.

 

[Demonslayer]

Columbus & crew expected to fail & die?

I mean I wasn't there to ask them of course, but from what I understand it was considered an extremely dangerous voyage that they were very uncertain they would return from.

Well, I'm OK with a manned Mars mission being a one way trip.

Oddly, so are the volunteers. I heard a very interesting interview on the selection process. They know they aren't coming back, but they also sounded very confident that they already have the equipment and technology to set up a viable and self sustaining habitation. I was surprised to hear how certain this one scientist was in her evaluation of the technology. They apparently know how to make as much oxygen as they need. Pretty incredible.

But it still doesn't look as productive as spending the same amount on unmanned missions & remote sensing.

Perhaps not. But remote rovers don't have the same impact and super cool Battestar Galactica-y feel as sending real people up there does. I haven't studied the economics of more unmanned missions vs. manned missions with regards to which would produce more knowledge, by any means so you're probably right from that angle. I just can't resist the idea of seeing human explorers take on this ultimate voyage. It's beyond awesome and I think we should do it for the same reason George Mallory wanted to climb Everest.

 

[columbus]

If people thought this way nothing would ever get done except tending to our very basic needs.

Let's do that.

Let's take the money out of military budgets. And improvements to high performance cars, and plastic surgery, and political campaign donations and out of season fruits, and .....

Let's see that sort of thing happen. You won't. You know why? Because the people who are in power don't care enough.
And I don't want them sending people to Mars. They'll just infect the whole solar system with their problems. Before you know it there will be an immigration problem on Mars and somebody will be advocating a laser defense system to keep Mars for the Martians.
Tom

 

[columbus]

The Europeans would not have discovered America.

"Discovered"?

That is the sort of idiocy I am talking about.
Tom

 

[Quetzal]

"Discovered"?

That is the sort of idiocy I am talking about.
Tom

From the European perspective, they did discover it. In the future, keep your ad hominem do yourself. Thanks. I also find it cute you have decided to not engage in any other part of the argument and instead would rather argue about semantics.

 

[Revoltingest]

Columbus & crew expected to fail & die?

I mean I wasn't there to ask them of course, but from what I understand it was considered an extremely dangerous voyage that they were very uncertain they would return from.

Well, I'm OK with a manned Mars mission being a one way trip.

Oddly, so are the volunteers. I heard a very interesting interview on the selection process. They know they aren't coming back, but they also sounded very confident that they already have the equipment and technology to set up a viable and self sustaining habitation. I was surprised to hear how certain this one scientist was in her evaluation of the technology. They apparently know how to make as much oxygen as they need. Pretty incredible.

But it still doesn't look as productive as spending the same amount on unmanned missions & remote sensing.

Perhaps not. But remote rovers don't have the same impact and super cool Battestar Galactica-y feel as sending real people up there does. I haven't studied the economics of more unmanned missions vs. manned missions with regards to which would produce more knowledge, by any means so you're probably right from that angle. I just can't resist the idea of seeing human explorers take on this ultimate voyage. It's beyond awesome and I think we should do it for the same reason George Mallory wanted to climb Everest.

When I think of drama, the moon missions pale in comparison to what the Hubble telescope delivers.
(I know I'm odd here....& in general.)
Tis one thing to explore a nearby rock, but it's much more interesting to see ancient galaxies billions of years back in time.

 

[Demonslayer]

Let's do that.

Let's take the money out of military budgets. And improvements to high performance cars, and plastic surgery, and political campaign donations and out of season fruits, and .....

Let's see that sort of thing happen. You won't. You know why? Because the people who are in power don't care enough.
And I don't want them sending people to Mars. They'll just infect the whole solar system with their problems. Before you know it there will be an immigration problem on Mars and somebody will be advocating a laser defense system to keep Mars for the Martians.
Tom

Funny that your screen name is columbus but you're against exploration.

It's not that people don't care about starvation and the other bad things in the world, it's just that we can't turtle up as a species just because there are bad things going on. If you have two kids, one is a bad actor and the other a good student, you don't ignore the good kid and defund his college career because you need to focus all your time and money on rehab and therapy for the bad actor. You try to do both at once because both things are important and one should not suffer for the other.

It's important to address the issue you're talking about...world hunger, etc. It's also important to continue to explore the world around us and increase our knowledge of our universe. Human beings hunger for knowledge is as real as our hunger for food, and both should be addressed.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Researchers have known for many years that Mars has water frozen at its poles, in its thin atmosphere, and, most recently, in tiny puddles that appear to form at night on the surface.

Nor is it the first potential clue that Mars could have once -- or may still -- host life. The Mars Curiosity rover, for instance, has detected methane on the surface of Mars, as well as other chemical signatures suggesting the possibility of past or present life.

It remains to be seen whether the new discovery improves the odds of life on Mars, but researcher Mary Beth Wilhelm said the results suggest "more habitable conditions on the near surface of Mars than previously thought."

How habitable, she said, depends on how salty and how cold the conditions are. [ibid]

OK ...

 

[columbus]

Funny that your screen name is columbus but you're against exploration.

Well, just like @Quetzal , you're changing the subject.
It's called moving the goalposts.

I have never said anything against exploration. I pointed out that a gazillion dollars to send a few people to Mars is dooming a few hundred million people to agonizing death because it is too difficult and expensive to fix the problems we already know about.


You can keep refusing to see that. It won't change the fact that about 10,000 kids will die from easily preventable causes by tomorrow.
Tom

 

[Quetzal]

Well, just like @Quetzal , you're changing the subject.
It's called moving the goalposts.

I have never said anything against exploration. I pointed out that a gazillion dollars to send a few people to Mars is dooming a few hundred million people to agonizing death because it is too difficult and expensive to fix the problems we already know about.


You can keep refusing to see that. It won't change the fact that about 10,000 kids will die from easily preventable causes by tomorrow.
Tom

You still aren't addressing the crux of our arguments against your position, that is, there is no reason we can't do both. Additionally, your line of thought, if globally accepted, would completely stunt any exploration at all (past, present, and future).

 

[Demonslayer]

Well, just like @Quetzal , you're changing the subject.
It's called moving the goalposts.

Settle down Beavis, I was just poking fun. Hence the

I have never said anything against exploration. I pointed out that a gazillion dollars to send a few people to Mars is dooming a few hundred million people to agonizing death because it is too difficult and expensive to fix the problems we already know about.

Unless by exploring Mars we discover some technology that helps humans on Earth. For example, did you know the CAT scan was developed by NASA originally to enhance pictures of the moon during the Apollo missions? How much human suffering has been prevented by the CAT scan?

http://wtfnasa.com/# This link is sort of crappy but it runs through a ton of inventions developed by NASA originally due to space exporation, that were eventually used to help humans in non-space related scenarios.

In building a colony on Mars, distribution of what little water there is up there is going to be a major problem. What if the efforts to irrigate a Mars colony leads to the development of a better system that can solve the problem of people dying of thirst on Earth? It's entirely possible. That's the thing about discovery, you really never know what you're going to discover until you have at it.

You can keep refusing to see that. It won't change the fact that about 10,000 kids will die from easily preventable causes by tomorrow.
Tom

And how would preventing a Mars mission stop this?

 

[Father Heathen]

Just the opposite.

Until humans can learn to get along with each other and the species and biosphere on earth, the last thing we should do is infect other planets.
Tom

I would hope that professional scientists would behave a little bit better than the lowest common denominator.

 

[suncowiam]

We can always rely on hollywood to transport us to Mars. That's another billion dollar industry that doesn't solve world hunger.

Personally, I want to keep on seeing movies with Matt Damon getting stuck on planets.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

You can keep refusing to see that. It won't change the fact that about 10,000 kids will die from easily preventable causes by tomorrow.

Do you have a point beyond this sophomoric hypocrisy?

 

[Quetzal]

Do you have a poind beyond this sophomoric hypocrisy?

Just want to point out that the statement was made by @columbus , not @Demonslayer

 

[columbus]

I would hope that professional scientists would behave a little bit better than the lowest common denominator.

One might hope that.
But one might hope that world leaders would be a bit better than the ones we have. But read the news, and tell me that the ones we have are any better than the lowest common denominator. From Egypt to USA to Pakistan to Russia to Argentina to Thailand to India to Spain to China to Greece, that's the best we've got.

We are not ready for Mars. We won't be in the foreseeable future. Send some robots to explore the solar system. Let's work on ourselves while the robots do that.
Tom

 

[Revoltingest]

Just want to point out that the statement was made by @columbus , not @Demonslayer

Due to unconventional representation of quotes.
To bold (yes, it's verby) them isn't as clear as the quote function.

 

[freethinker44]

I'd just like to raise a point I often do: while certainly a planet such as Mars, or indeed more Earth-like worlds further afield, is a fertile ground for habitation using sufficiently advanced technologies, by far the most viable and straightforward off-Earth settlement will constitute the mining of asteroids to produce habitats along the lines of Stanford Toruses, O'Neill Cylinders and a variety of other designs which rotate so as to simulate gravity using centripetal force. It seems very likely to me that ultimately the vast majority of the human population will dwell in such as these, although I am sure a hefty minority of planet-dwellers will persist.

We don't need that, Mars actually comes with gravity built in to its source code.

 

[columbus]

Do you have a point beyond this sophomoric hypocrisy?

Yes.
Not that you would know about it.
Tom

 

[Revoltingest]

We don't need that, Mars actually comes with gravity built in to its source code.

It's such a long commute though.
Tis much easier to just build a faux gravity structure nearby.