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And it explodes on the launchpad?
Is that dream too big?
I mean the King of All Cosmos has a codpiece the size of the moon, so I dunno if he's really a good voice on the subject.
Still smaller than some King Henry VIII when you factor in relative sizes.
I like to imagine them running out of oxygen and food on Mars after weeks of nonstop arguing, expelling their final, hateful words at each other.
Either way, it’s like having a warm cup of tea under a blanket while I wait out the storm that is my mind.
Any trip to Mars is going to involve massive amounts of personal suffering and privation.
Minimum mission duration of 3 years. Living space no larger than a small RV. All the food is freeze dried. Can you imagine the smell that will develop? If anything breaks, it's on you to fix it, and there is no trip down to the hardware store, and no United Rentals to bail you out. Any medical complication? There's no ER, just whatever you've got in the kit.
And that's not even starting on the chronic radiation hazard for which there is no viable option to deploy shielding. And a freak solar flare can cook you with acute radiation that will kill you at any time.
Seriously, we're talking about an adventure that would be way more epic than Shackleton.
Honestly, I am opposed to sending humans to Mars, period. We shouldn't do it. It's unethical, a tremendous lapse of moral judgment just to stroke our collective egos.
There could be life on Mars NOW. There are bacteria that we know of on Earth, that if you transported them to certain locations deep under the Martian surface, would thrive. There are microbes that live in subterranean saline aquifers on Earth, and there are microbes that live in solid rock miles beneath the Earth's surface. There is no reason that these bacteria couldn't thrive equally well on Mars.
We know of Earth bacteria that could thrive under Mars's surface. Which means it is entirely reasonable to speculate that there may already be bacteria there filling that Martian ecological niche. But if we send people there...we risk contaminating it. We struggle to sterilize our rovers, but we do a pretty good job. But forget trying to sterilize a ship full of dozens of people. Our very gut bacteria are a contamination risk.
No, I think we should leave Mars the hell alone. And really, I think we have a very reasonable path forward for still producing very meaningful and important exploration of Mars. Look at how well robotics is advancing. Look at the recent Tesla event where they had all those robots wandering around, each remotely piloted by a human operator. THAT is the real future of Mars exploration.
I think we should simply wait on Mars until we've let remote presence robotic tech advance a few more decades. Then, you build such a robot that is durable enough to survive in an autoclave. You do send human to Mars, but they stay in orbit. The humans stay on a craft in orbit, and they remotely pilot humanoid robots on the surface to do the actual science work. This way, you can have exploration that has all the dexterity and flexibility of humans, as humans are able to pilot the robots in real time from orbit. And as an added bonus, your exploratory vehicles can be a lot simpler as you don't need to bring any crew or samples back from the Martian surface.
I think we could still exploit Mars as well. If we find that there is no surface life, well then setting up mining activities on the surface isn't a problem. If humans want to colonize Mars, we can build big orbital habitats from materials we mine on the surface. If, after a long period of study, we conclusively rule out the existence of Martian life? Well at that point we can start surface colonization by humans. Or, perhaps we discover a Martian deep-rock biosphere and fully catalogue it. Then maybe we discover that pretty much every terrestrial body has such a biosphere if conditions are appropriate. At that point, humans might decide that colonizing the surface with humans is worth the risk.
Anyway, I really do not support sending humans to Mars. We could potentially wipe out an entire biosphere, a biosphere that if it exists, could tell us remarkable things about how life arises and how common it is in the universe. We're only a few decades out from being able to do really good remote presence robotics. Let's just hold off on things until we can send humans that can get the full experience of being on the Mars surface, without actually being on the Mars surface.
Did you watch this video by any chance? https://youtu.be/5GjOuqAlFEk?si=XGnBJThntonV2AHM
But I agree, these arguments won me over. We can just go to the moon or asteroids instead, mars is not that important for a hypothetical human space faring civilization
Yes. I have! Though I have heard the idea before.
You don't understand though, by being visionaries who disregard accepted margins of safety, they lowered the cost per (attempted) launch by almost 3%!
That is an acceptable outcome.
Let em both get eaten by Brontorocs.