QUIT MAKING SENSE.

I'm exhausted.

No seriously though, it was a bad analogy. He was trying to put words in my mouth.

Ah, yeah.

Oh, and trust me, I know what sorts of cool things we get from war.

Duct tape and nightmares and more comfortable car seats.

Excellent counterargument. I'm thinking about conceding just now.

But, he wasn't.

Uh yeah.

You didn't see the art comment, or any of the other comments he made about my opinion?

The analogy was just tacked sloppily on top.

My point, to put it plainly, was that it's simplistic and immature to argue that funding for one cause should be moved to another completely unrelated cause because you don't personally find one as important as the other.

Luckily, government is structured in a way that no single individual or group has the power to do such a thing.

Yes, you've stated that water on Mars is "probably there" several times (hint: it is, it's found in trace amounts in the atmosphere).

I never said Mars exploration helps feed children, or cure aids, or any of the other things I pointed out. What my post explained to you is why what you're saying is retarded and you aren't reading my posts long enough to learn anything.

What your posts haven't explained is what you would do with that money if you had it. How will you spend it? On what?

These children are poverty-stricken, starving and diseased because they live in a part of the planet that is poverty-stricken, starving and diseased. In order to fix the problem you would need to move money, food and medicine to this region from another region. You can do this by either leeching neighboring regions dry or by shipping these goods long-distance, which would require more energy, more money, more time, and result in greater wastage. It would require a global infrastructure which simply isn't there, which we don't have the technology to build, which we don't have the resources to build.

Space exploration, even the current plodding Mars rover kind, is teaching us a lot about energy efficiency, matter reclamation, building machines that can operate in lower gravity environments, new power sources, material sciences and most importantly it's teaching us a ****-ton about transportation technologies. If you want to build the kind of infrastructure necessary to feed the world space exploration is the field you should be investing in.

Again: stop dismissing things just because you aren't smart enough to understand it. MONEY doesn't fix the problem if there aren't enough RESOURCES to BUY WITH IT.

Edit: Commander 978457, Martian gravity is about 1/10th that of Earth's. If we had the technology and infrastructure we would be able to mine Martian resources for space purposes far, far cheaper than we can with Earth.

Edit 2: Commander 9396342

I wasn't arguing anything, we weren't even in argument.

This fact makes you an even bigger moron.

[And as a small helper for you, you should know we're probably arguing over whether or not you're a moron now.]

1/10th? That's a bit low isn't it...? Anyway, it's still easier and cheaper to mine NEO asteroids and the moon.



Translation: We learned not to add another zero on to that automated deceleration burn. Honestly, I don't see that we've learned anything new...it's basically the same thing we did thirty years ago but with [much] better computers. As far as I can tell anyway...

Oh wow, you work at NASA and/or follow its countless projects?

Well... let's think about it... Mars is much smaller than the earth. Gravity isn't just magical, you know?

Is this government funded? Because I can think of a whole lot more important things than finding dead algae so some rock in space. Like things that could have some possibility of actually benefiting us in some way.

It does benefit us.

Earth and Mars and their masses:

Earth: 5.98 x 10^24 kg
Mars: 0.65 x 10^24 kg

Yup, that's about 1/10th.

yeah as far as you can tell because you don't know a thing about robotics or automation software. The advances we're making right now are huge. The military is certainly helping with the robotics and automation side of things but probing and data processing is almost entirely in NASA's camp.

Have you seen the program they use to drive the mars rover? I played around with it. It uses stereo images to build a 3D map that persists as you drive around with it. The whole thing is amazing. I'm not joking when I say this: it's one of the damn coolest things I've ever used.

In terms of engines: without space exploration we'd have never invented the ion engine, for instance. Some british engineer applied the same principle using photons as the propellant instead of ions and invented an EM drive that's actually powerful enough that it could replace jet engines once the technology is a little more advanced.

You're right, nothing NASA is doing will help the poor and suffering NOW but it will some day. You don't see the value here because you either don't understand what NASA is doing or you're an impatient infant who can't comprehend how a long-term investment can pay off in dividends.

Oh, and in the future please refrain from "translating" my posts if you do not understand the subject matter I am talking about.

that's at the same distance from the core (i.e. if you were flying at earth's equatoral radius)

the actual gravity at mars' equator is closer to 38% earth's

EM drive...? Yes, now I remember... Replacing jet engines is not going to happen, however it may remove the need for wings seeing as how it's more of an anti-gravity device than an engine, though with sufficient advancement I imagine it can take over that too.

My problem is not with space exploration or the poor exactly, in fact I could give a crap about the poor and i'm all for space exploration, I just think we're going to look back on rovering dead rocks as a monumental waste of time and money in the future. I understand that the Mars Rovers have some nifty pieces of technology, but couldn't we put them to better use than picking out rocks in a desert? As I understand the robotics side of this, they can maneuver around without going off the side of a cliff, right? I suppose that is somewhat impressive...

All in all, I wasn't even thinking of the rovers per say mostly the space side of things. I figured the rovers to be mostly remote controlled car parts running off some solar panels and some useful software running it or being remotely operated... What's the time delay on signals between here than there again? I didn't really figure them to be much more physically advanced than the last two we landed there.

On the whole I see us as currently spending exorbitant amounts of cash confirming theories we've had for half a century.

I guess I just feel like we could be doing more with the money we're putting into it...especially seeing as how what we're currently spending could have ended up as a new Martian crater...

We could be developing other technologies closer to home that would make sending a billion dollar probe across the system easier as well as putting up an actual infrastructure and people in space which just make everything about space exploration a thousand times easier.

I guess i'm saying that we should put off the actual "exploration" part till it stops feeling like a night in Vegas casino... It's not like we're going to encounter something mind blowing in this system till then.

"mostly remote controlled car parts running off of some solar panels"? christ almighty, do you know what space is?

the technology in the mars rovers is astronomically more advanced than even your wildest notion about them.

The time delay is 22 minutes each way when Earth and Mars are at their most distant. The rovers are almost entirely automated and the instructions fed to them are more of a suggestion of what they should be doing than a detailed summary of how to do it.


yeah, see, this kind of thinking is horrendously dangerous.

When the Apollo programs were planned and executed we didn't know about, oh, say, Earth's radiation belts. The astronauts who went to the moon survived because they were lucky. We also didn't know that moon dust has a fine crystalline structure that causes silicosis and also sticks to outerwear (like space suits). They reported problems breathing even with their extremely short visit. If the mission had been any longer, again, they would have died.

So no, there are no technologies closer to home that would help us develop "an actual infrastructure" or "put people in space." Losing a billion dollar probe loses you a billion dollars NOW. Losing a person on a mission to Mars would set back the space program 50 years. If we send the machines first, we can see what problems the machines encounter and then design the human-piloted vehicles to overcome those problems.

um no it is not an "anti-gravity device," it is an photon thruster

I hope our astronauts have heavy boots so they don't fly off of the surface when they get there

Orbital space colonies, and the refinement of current tech and knowledge that would without a doubt happen as a result of spending decades building and working said colonies.



You're missing the point... I'm saying we just sort of put the exploration on the back burner until it's just paying someone to stay in orbit for X days as you research.

I think you might understand better with this example. I hate to do it cause it just sounds like crap but it's not obscenely wrong...

UC Gundam, minus weird particles and mecha. After half a century they've got hundreds of colonies, several hollowed out asteroids, the moon colonized, and they have ships making regular trips back and forth to Jupiter.

When you get to that point, you can basically just charter a ship for your research needs. Hell, you could just set up a colony in orbit and research 24/7.

I'm going to be flayed for that aren't I?



We are talking about this EM Drive right?

You just proved that you either didn't read the article, or don't understand the concept at all. When they say "lift a car" it's just an analogy for the amount of force, it doesn't mean flying cars.

If you thought Mars rovers were expensive...

Also, as Jon said or was in the direction of saying, a single space-related death would cause a huge public backlash of the sentiment that we shouldn't be "wasting" time, money, and lives on space. I think this entire discussion has confirmed my suspicion that NASA needs a strong public relations/education arm (if only they had the funding to promote one).

Merely having misguided assumptions and uninformed opinions I can understand, but the tenacity with which people defend them... it's mind-boggling.

sure it is. neutron stars are much smaller than a single state in the US, yet their gravitational force is so strong that some collapse into black holes. size doesnt mean necessarily mean squat

nobody knows how gravity works. through observation we assume it has something to do with mass, but thats all we know.

gravity is billions and billions times weaker than electromagnetism and the strong/weak nuclear force. it is the weakest force we know about, and scientists have not even been able to find evidence of it at the atomic level.

some string theorists deduce that gravitation is caused by closed loops traveling across branes (aka graviton particles); essentially the conclusion is that gravity is a force leaking off of higher dimensions, which also explains its substantial weakness compared to the other three known forces. this is the only explanation we have to go off of, and string theory itself hasn't even been proven yet.

i believe that gravitation is similar to light, and that we will someday (soon) figure out a way to manipulate gravitational forces by simply juicing up a machine.

some people may have already done it http://www.coralcastle.com




and finally: what caused the big bang? division by zero

no, you're missing my point because you aren't reading my posts.

we cannot prepare to build "orbital space colonies" (NOR DO WE HAVE ENOUGH METAL ON OUR ENTIRE PLANET TO BUILD EVEN A SINGLE O'NEILL CYLINDER MR. GUNDAM FAN) unless we are aware of what hazards are in space. We cannot find out what hazards are in space unless we send probes out there (or send up people and sacrifice them in a series of failed experiments, but most of the world isn't Japanese so I'm not sure how much they enjoy human experimentation)

nuh uh, there is liek, an unlimited supply off gundanium right by the Yang C river. They said so in that one episode.

Hey, so that's a pretty understandable reaction, right? You're like Maddox except you're not funny at all. Making internet jokes doesn't make you funny.

So yesterday, I was going to make a post to this thread. I clicked "Post Reply" and then it came up with the login screen.

"Oh," I thought. "I'm not logged in." So I started to log in. I got to the "u" in "happydud" before I decided it wasn't worth it, so I closed the tab and went outside and took a nap.

Size doesn't, but mass means everything. Mars and Earth have equivalent densities. Therefore, their relative sizes should equate to an equal change in mass.



The problem with this thread is too many people confusing science fiction with reality. People need to realize that science will not give them Star Trek in twenty years.

Good thing I'm not trying to be funny, I guess.

I don't care about your e-mpathy. No arguments = boring.

Complacency is boring.

Actually Jon`C, we probably have more than enough aluminum to build one, but it would be prohibitively expensive and would probably require tearing up large parts of the crust to get at it.

How about thirty? Fourty? Come on! ... (fifty)?

I'm not trying to argue with you. I hate arguments. But please do stop putting 'e-' before words that start with e, just say them like a normal person. :downs:

Alien life exists.

You can have interesting discussions without arguing =p

It gets better! Mars chocolate drink!

You're on the wrong forums if that's what you think.

I don't see why, I've had plenty of interesting discussions on these forums without arguments.

Yeah, seriously.