Aliens.

That is all.

No one cares about the water we all know is on mars.


I wish they'd stop spending billions of dollars on this ****.

Land a monkey there. Then I'll start to pay attention.

Deep hole found on Mars!

Did they find a giant robot there as well?

You don't care about the possibility of life on other planets?

I think its safe to assume there is no life on mars. We need to check out Saturn and Jupiter's moons, or go outside the solar system.

But we should definitely build a colony on mars so I can go live there.

I want to see them conduct trans-dimensional experiments on the surface, then I will be totally satisfied....well, I may like to see some terraforming as well, but one sinister step at a time...

oh, just in case anybody is wondering

this "proof of water" was found by reconstructing photos from the topographical map the rovers created with their stereo cameras. The "puddles" are actually regions of the terrain from which the software couldn't resolve topography (i.e. it's an artifact from missing data). Anybody who downloaded that Java rover sim knows how the 3D view is generated and precisely what missing data looks like and this is pretty much it.

The big warning signs here: the water surface is perfectly flat (it wouldn't be) and follows a single plane (like, for instance, if the camera were placed too low relative to low-lying terrain features, which it was). The "water" is also only visible when you reconstruct a photograph from the topographical data the rover generated (it's not visible in the source imagery). I do think it's hilarious how people think they can see underwater pebbles though.

Finally, from what I hear the guy who submitted this paper is known to have made a number of other false and easily disproven mars water claims in the past. Essentially the logic this guy is using in this situation can be summed up with "If we can't see a place where water might be, there must be water there." So there's nothing to see here. Literally.

We don't "know" there is any more than a scant trace amount of water on Mars and such a discovery (if it were true) would be extremely exciting. Some day we're going to move out to that region of space and having a readily-available supply of water would repay a hundred fold any investment we could make.

Also, the rovers are not just there to "find life" or "find water" but are there to legitimately expand our knowledge of the universe. The more we know about exogeography the easier a time we'll have once we get off this dying rock. The information we've learned about Martian geography is invaluable. Don't dismiss something just because you aren't smart enough to understand why it's being done.

I underestand, that in my natural life time, the probability that any of these things will be important is pretty slim.

There are a kajillion better things to spend money on.

We will most likely achieve immortality in this lifetime.

It better be robot body immortality.

I want machine gun knees and laser beam eyes.

From what I hear Rob's still too busy trying to locate here on Earth any other lifeform as great and august as his own noble presence is. He's far too busy to mind other planets yet.

Not really, I'm just a little more worried about things like this;










(Included just because serious post needs something serious cute)


I couldn't find pictures of our failing education system. Or anything that depicted our ridiculous dependence on a non-renewable fossil fuel. (But hey maybe you'll find something else to burn on on of them thur planets!)

(PS, before you start, I do donate money out of each week of my pay.)

But hey, I guess I'm wrong for caring more about people.

No, what you are implying is: "I guess I'm wrong for caring only about people."

However, while I'm no sociologist or economist, I still think if all other expenditures were scrapped and all the money was poured into feeding those people you only care about, it might work for a short while, but then our societies would collapse, and instead of suffering people here and there we would have suffering people everywhere.

That being said, in a realistic world money used for the limited kind of space exploration and science that is now going on is not money away from helping people such as those.

No, you're wrong for being another bleeding heart hippie without a clue.

You want to feed starving children? Okay. Good for you. Let's transfer all of the space program money into a program to feed children.

What food are you going to buy to feed them? The region they live in is famine-stricken because they have no food, right? So where's the food coming from?

How about water? Where are you going to get water for this little land-locked bone dry hellhole?

How about vaccinations? Or vitamin supplements? Why do you think there aren't enough to go around?

Did you know that, after that huge tsunami in the pacific, charity organizations were actually telling people to stop donating money? It's because they had nothing to spend the money on. No sources for construction materials or machines, no sources for fuel,... there simply weren't any suppliers. You can throw as much money you want at the problem, but it's all going to go into advertising and bribes for the express reason that the problem exists because there are shortages and you can't fix the problem by creating a shortage somewhere else.

Space exploration is going to help far more people, you simply can't see the value in the investment (and it is a very long term investment). Stop discounting something just because you're not smart enough to understand it.

Yeah.

You still haven't shown how spending money on the water on mars is helping poverty stricken nations, the aids epidemic, or any of the other things I pointed out.

I never discounted mars water.

It's probably there. Yay for that.

I disagree with the looking over dead rocks with a fine tooth comb part of current space exploration. If the gravity of Mars was low enough that we could efficiently mine it, it would be another story however, it's gravity isn't much less than Earth's, which already costs a few million dollars per launch.

The only place I believe we MIGHT find life in this system is on Ganymede (Frozen moon around Jupiter right?). Even then I doubt it would be anything but a blind fish, if that.

Making permenant bases on dead high gravity rocks is retarded.

Personally, I believe we should currently be turning our efforts to orbital colonization. A few decades of that will make space travel cheaper as well as actually give us something besides an over sized and over budget science lab as well as providing something in space that actually involves people other than over paid test pilots and biologists.

I don't think there should be any interference with those types of countries. We've caused a lot of harm to the people; long enough to where their suffering is great due to the stray from the balance with perfect accordance with the laws of nature.

As cold hearted as that might sound to people...

Why prop up a dying system?

Poverty is a result of scarcity. Not enough resources for too many people. If we devote our money inward to redistribute resources to areas of poverty, there will be more people but the same amount (or less) of resources. Therefore, there will be more poverty.

Although this would not practically happen, imagine that the current productive capacity of the world is such that if we were to redistribute resources evenly, everyone would enjoy a "decent" standard of living (translated into a grossly reduced standard of living for you and I, but that's beside the point). As the population expands (not having to worry about starving, we can instead concentrate on making families), it is possible that we can continue to innovate and achieve even higher levels of productivity. However, our natural resources are limited and the surface area of the Earth is limited. Unless we have "somewhere else" to go, these are hard limits to the current exponential rate of growth for humankind. It wouldn't be too pleasant if, when this time came, we had little to know useful knowledge of the universe around us to attempt to increase the habitable space for human kind. Otherwise, war, disease, and scarcity would pare our numbers back down to a more sustainable size....

"Throwing money" at the problem seems like a self-sacrificing and noble solution, but it is actually a tragically short-sighted means of making the problem it attempts to "solve" a lot worse in the long run.

So according to you the only goal humanity should seek is preventing disease and famine. What other fields of science do you feel are a waste of time and money? What about art and music, are they silly too? They don't help feed hungry kids last time I checked.

To quote from a protracted debate I once had (on my facebook wall, no less!) with a nursing major:



:/

This is what we should really be worried about:

Point out where I said that.

It's the same line of (immature) reasoning. "There are a kajillion better things to spend money on" makes sense when you talk about going to war in Iraq or spending billions on 'wars' against drugs.

Where did I mention all of space exploration?

Where did I mention the war on drugs?

Where did I mention Iraq?

You're just adding things to the discussion now, and putting words in my mouth. If this were a discussion about Iraq, I'd complain about how stupid the situation in Iraq is. But this isn't a discussion about the war in Iraq.

If this were a discussion about the war on drugs, I would mention that pot really isn't that bad but coke barons are kind of scary. But this isn't a discussion about the war on drugs.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0504/WaterOnMars2_gcc.jpg

>.<

Haha.

Problem solved. Now let's get back to Mars exploration.

The filtration systems for water developed for the space shuttle are being used in humanitarian efforts in Africa. No source, just families around here who have been there and thats what they told me.

I know there is a long line of things like this that have come from the space program, I just don't know enough about them to really talk about it. I just wanted to make sure that was considered in the argument.

However, that's not to say that NASA isn't an ineffeicient, overfunded, beuracratic piece of junk.

Thankyou. I know.

Like I said, I am not discrediting the entire space program or possible gains.

(FYI, we get alot of cool stuff from war too..)

You think that's the best use of billions of dollars? Sure it'd be neat to find some algae, but c'mon, it not going to be like Star Trek. There are more important things.

You're a moron.

Hey guys, I was just thinking that what this forum needs most is another argument! Well done!

Hey, I was just thinking this forum needs another post where you complain about people arguing!

Wahhhh! Why doesn't everyone get along!

You should all be complacent and agree completely on everything because I'm zell and I too have e-mpathy! This stuff harshes my e-vibes!

I'm not allowed to defend the starving Africans?

It's called an analogy. You're just dodging his point...

I was pointing out why it was a bad analogy.

No, if you pointed out why it was a bad analogy, you would have stated why the two topics are not analogous to each other, not just said "I never said that."