Countdown: Curiousity Mars landing

[Gargamel]

Actually, I think china beating the us/ESA/rus to mars might be a good thing for those space agencies.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Platapus

It will be a long time before China can send a man to Mars.

For some of us here, we will be dead by the time the US sends men to Mars.

Not for want of manpower, I think there are thousands of people who would volunteer to go to Mars, of course, out of them only perhaps 25% would be fit enough to be able to actually go...but that's still at least two hundred people.
If only we could put the kind of energy that put a man on the moon into putting a man onto Mars, and then further on.

We have the technology, we have the manpower, we have the need, but we've built such complex walls and rules around advancement and technology based upon finance that it is choking us.

I hope I live to see pictures of mankinds first step on Mars, I really do.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Oberon

We have the technology, we have the manpower, we have the need, but we've built such complex walls and rules around advancement and technology based upon finance that it is choking us.

I am not sure we have the technology at this point. Traveling to Mars is not like just a longer moon trip. It is pretty complicated.

I will agree that we have the people though.

About that need thing? Honestly, I feel it is a very low need and more a desire than a need.

I feel that a lot more can be learned about Mars by orbiters and rovers than by anyone planting a flag and picking up a few rocks. Once we have exhausted our ability to extract information from unmanned missions, only then should we consider manned missions.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I am not sure we have the technology at this point. Traveling to Mars is not like just a longer moon trip. It is pretty complicated.

I will agree that we have the people though.

About that need thing? Honestly, I feel it is a very low need and more a desire than a need.

I feel that a lot more can be learned about Mars by orbiters and rovers than by anyone planting a flag and picking up a few rocks. Once we have exhausted our ability to extract information from unmanned missions, only then should we consider manned missions.

The worry I have is that as our population continues to grow unhindered and our drain on resources does as well, unless we have a population level out as per the theory put forward (very well) by Hans Rosling and we manage to wean ourselves off oil then the next fifty years are looking very shakey for us. We will either turn inwards and fight ourselves to death, or look outwards and head into space, and quite honestly I can't say for certain which way we will swing, at the moment it's certainly looking like the former rather than the latter.
Furthermore, the problems with being limited to one planet are immense, we have a very fragile hold and with one virus, one asteroid, one global nuclear exchange, everything we have done for the past two thousand years, gone. The human race would survive, but our progress would be put back by several generations. It'd be like walking up to the very edge of the pool and then being kicked in the balls before you can jump into the water.
Now in terms of technology, I think our primary problem is logistics, drive systems we have a few and lots of theories that lack funding to become either fact or fiction, and people wouldn't be a problem. It would be feeding and watering those people that would be the biggest problem I'd say. Journey time to Mars and back could be reduced significantly if we turned our nuclear weapons into fuel for an Orion drive vessel, constructed in orbit in order to avoid the distasteful (but minimal) nuclear fallout generated in a land-based launch.
From there the possibilities are only as limited as we make them, Orion drive ships could take us to Alpha Centauri, and beyond! And unlike most advanced drive systems out there, work could begin on an Orion drive tomorrow if certain treaties were worked around.
I just worry that if we don't get our collective arses in gear within the next century then it'll be too late for us.
Alternatively, it could just be a selfish instinct to want to be alive to see these things take place.

[eddie]

I have to agree with you Oberon. What it would take for these things to happen (the looking outward part) I have no idea. I agree with the "selfish instinct" too,lol I would give anything to be around long enough just to see what the future holds for the Voyager spacecraft, just what they might encounter in the next few years. Both Voyagers are still sending back signals to earth, even after being in space for 35 years now! Voyager 1 is just about out of our solar system, Voyager 2 is not far behind. They just completed sending instructions to Voyager 2, to switch to its backup thruster systems, and it has responded by doing so!

Voyager 1 is 11 Billion miles from our sun,and is sending back information that boggles the mind. It is so much more interesting to me, then all the crap we are inundated with everyday, that's for sure!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/vo...r20111205.html

We sat for what seem' s an eternity to find out if Curiousity had landed safely, it takes 16 hours and 38 minutes to get a signal from Voyager.

[Oberon]

I hear you Eddie, although I did see this wonderful little jibe at NBC on the internets:



But that aside, I was just watching a speech by Neil Degrasse Tyson, and I think I can elaborate a bit further about other reasons why I feel that a manned mission to Mars is so important.


In his speech, Tyson touches on how space once captured everyones imagination, and so did the world of tomorrow. In the 1950s and 1960s we had so much drive and imagination that in the world of tomorrow we would be doing this and that and the other. Then we stopped dreaming.
Somewhere in the past fifty years the imagination went away, the dreams became nightmares, instead of the world of tomorrow being a technotopia (not even sure if that's a word, if it's not it should be) the world of tomorrow is decay, ruin, war. You can see it in modern media, in our collective consciousness, we seem to have gone from being excited about tomorrow to being scared of it.
I'm guilty of it as much as any person, I find it hard to see a positive future for mankind based upon current trends, however I know that this could change, there is still time.
This is WHY I think a manned mission to Mars is so important, not for its scientific value, which is virtually nil, but for its effect on the people who want to dream but can't. To get that drive back into people, even if it's just American people, so that then the ball can get rolling, and THIS time, this time we won't just stop, this time we'll keep going because by the time this all has taken place, we'll need to keep going.
Progress is driven by one part fantasy and one part fear, we have the fear, we know our frailty on this planet, and if we don't then I dare say we'll soon have a demonstration of some form, but what we have forgotten is our fantasy, and that's sad.

EDIT: Just realised another little cool thing about Curiousity...my name is on it! Etched on a microchip carried on Curiousitys back along with 1.2 million others from all around the world. I'd forgotten all about it until just now! Anyone else here stick their name on it?
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/.../sendyourname/

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Platapus

It will be a long time before China can send a man to Mars.

For some of us here, we will be dead by the time the US sends men to Mars.

You're probably right, that's too bad.

Nice video of the complex landing sequence
7 Minutes of Terror

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

You're probably right, that's too bad.

Nice video of the complex landing sequence
7 Minutes of Terror

Are you sure that's Mars? Sure looks like Wyoming in the summer.

[eddie]

Apathy sets in fast Oberon. I was doing some reading about the Apollo 13 flight, it took place just short of 9 months after Apollo 11's historic landing. They were going to have a live TV broadcast from the spacecraft (this was before the explosion) but the networks wouldn't broadcast it because they didn't have enough people interested in seeing it. Not enough interest to interrupt the soap operas,lol But, after the explosion, and the astronauts lives were at stake, then everyone took interest!

[BossMark]

Couldn't they have taken the Tory toffs with them? and of course left the buggers there

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by BossMark

Couldn't they have taken the Tory toffs with them? and of course left the buggers there

Don't pollute Mars!

[BossMark]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Don't pollute Mars!

Yeah good point, they can be chucked out in space

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by eddie

Apathy sets in fast...

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by BossMark

Couldn't they have taken the Tory toffs with them? and of course left the buggers there

Originally Posted by BossMark

Yeah good point, they can be chucked out in space

Well, there's another thread down the toilet.

I think you two are going on my ignore list.

[August]

They have released the first images from Curiosity: