https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1455231175320956928
Sure mars ins beautiful. The universe contains wonders I'd love to experience. For humanity to venture into space and behold the oceans of europa with their own eyes... Truly marvelous.
But let's do that as comrades together after we deal with some shit here first. Don't let it just be a plaything for the rich goddamn.
Like, even just pure space travel and practical matters-wise we are so fucking far from reaching Mars to even just have a guy go walk around for five minutes and come back is impractical to a degree that's hard to imagine considering the sheer amount of logistics necessary. The checklist of things we'd need to be able to do and do safely and reliably is as long as CG credits in a marvel movie. That's not even getting into actually staying and living there. You would need to fully terraform mars into a functioning ecosystem that supports humans, if we can't even manage the one we were given this is clearly an absolutely impossible task until we can at least keep earth survivable before we try to make one from close to scratch. Until that point or during that process we're gonna do what? Strap enough resources to feed/shelter/hydrate/all thst several countries worth of people to rockets that will eat up a whole fuckload of our fuel supply? What fucking reason would someone living on earth have to do that? And unlike every other mutation of feudal patronage this could compare to, they're on a different fucking planet. I'm pretty sure there's only so long you can run your pathetic planet colony until they just cut you loose. It's dumb.
Not to be a super pedantic jackass, but we've absolutely had the tech to put a person on Mars for 5 minutes and bring them back since the 70s. The issues were justifying it to brain-addled congressmen who were perfectly satisfied that putting a guy on the moon meant that America had won the space race once and for all, and keeping people safely on Mars long enough to actually justify the long trip, scientifically speaking. We've been at the point where it just started being feasible in the late 90s/early 2000s to start building mission plans. We absolutely could have a mars base right now if governments had taken the MARPOST, Aurora, and Constellation programs seriously.
Yeah. Nasa has good rockets but not enough money, and for all we hate on musk, space x has actually good engineers, it's just run by a insane narcissist. China has good space tech too, and is definitely improving quickly on that front
I mean SpaceX only got where it is by poaching engineers and design concepts from NASA and ESA, and just straight copped a bunch of russian engines and retrofitted them.
You seem to know more about this than I do, but how practical and doable was it? Cause Mars is really really far away. Like I guess you could throw a lot of rocket fuel at the problem but at what point is the time spent travelling just cruel to the astronauts?
I mean, yeah, that's sort of been the issue for much of that time, that the amount of science they could do on a short jaunt of a few days or weeks doesn't justify the many months spent traveling there, though there is science that can be done in transit (though it's largely the same things that can be done in orbit around earth, anyways)
There are a number of different proposed methods of doing it, on different time scales, but I really dig the ideas proposed in Mars Direct , which could have even feasibly launched in the 2000s.
100%. There's value to be had in exploring the universe both manned and otherwise I think. But just going to Mars so a incredibly rich dude can look at some cliffs for 15 minutes is absolutely unacceptable considering the resource outlay needed as you said.
I have no interest in seeing Europa after seeing Europa Report (also the ocean in general is scary)
Inhabiting other planets has to be one of our most ridiculous delusions
i mean it's cool and it would be amazing to walk on mars but uhh we got some problems we should deal with on earth
And Arrakis would be 100 x more conducive to multicellular life than Mars lol
what co2 emissions and mars techdelusions have in common
extremely interested to see how a species that can’t even stop itself from destroying its own native habitat plans to convert a giant hunk of rock without a magnetosphere into a habitable world
Going to rename the Hellas Planitia to Galt's Gulch and just let Randian Ubermensch solve it from there.
The earth is on fire and launching more rockets to Mars makes Earth burn faster.
You stand on a pier and take a thimble of water out of the ocean, look at it and say, well, that's all there is to know about this place I guess
The water is here in your biome where you live.
The rust rocks are not.
There might be liquid water on Mars. There's evidence of liquid water having been there once. But really we don't know for sure, and that's the point. Theres so much we don't know. So much we don't know we don't know. So much we can learn.
The idea that we should let justified disgust of rich libertarian techbros poison the well on the entire concept of space exploration is reactionary. There have been several socialist countries (or as close as we get currently) with ambitious space programs too, don't forget.
Oh my God who the fuck cares we have to save THIS planet first
That meme of Xi telling western radlibs they were right and he's going to start dismantling the Communist Party, except it's Zhang Kejian telling western neoluddites that he's gonna take apart the CNSA.
I mean, is there really any reason to send actual humans to Mars? It's logistically almost impossible, risky and basically useless. Except for it being a pretty big feat rocket science it's not like we would get a lot out of it. Humans should be focusing on fixing this planet first and then on colonization of other ones. And it's not like SpaceX could even achieve this in my lifetime. They haven't even shown that they can send a man to the moon, let alone a planet that's a 1000 times farther.
The moon landing happened when Nixon was president, but that was still good. Good things can be done despite a bastard in charge
Also mars has caves which are likely to be the most scientifically important features in the planet, and robots can't really explore those because of the whole "needing a connection to data which is done from satellites" thing.
Wow. Thanks for the great write-up comrade <3.
I think I've misunderstood your original post. It's not like I'm totally against space exploration, I believe that humans can achieve anything when they put their minds to it. It's just that, in the current climate on Earth, I doesn't look feasible. The idea of sending several crews to Mars and seeing them well fed, with all their equipment and sheltering them from the elements would still demand serious investment (that no one on a profit driven planet is willing to make) and even more serious planing than it seems we can muster in this era. The main proponent of this whole endeavor is still a man who's intention is not space exploration for the sake of it but the generation of proffit. We also have to consider the reaction time that we would have in case of something going wrong there. I still don't think it's an acceptable risk to send humans on such a dangerous endeavor.
However, I stand corrected on the points regarding the science, you're absolutely right and I am sorry for talking out of my ass, I hope I didn't anger you too much.
Yeah, that's all cool and accurate, but Mars has a third of the Earths' gravity, people are not gonna be livin on Mars unless folks want everyone who grows up there to suffer bone disorders and osteoporosis
IF there's a future for humanity in space, it's gonna be in space habitats
The tech-capitalists obsession with Mars is stupid not because of the science but because of the economic, medical and social implications that they don't care about or understand
Posted this above but send up some robots and hook em up to a cool VR thing. Obviously this would be crazy expensive and you couldn't let people that might break it at the controls so probably no public access, but whatever, it's a step towards something we could all experience. It would at least make a cool stream to watch.
Love loading into the Mars Robot lobby and seeing the 480000 ms ping
All I'm saying is that any sort of real-time interactive Mars drone piloting experience just wouldn't work. Imagine playing Mario Kart but it would take 8 minutes from you pressing left on the analog stick for your kart to turn to the left, and another 8 minutes for the screen to show you that your kart turned to the left
It'd probably make more sense to record a bunch of data on Mars and then creating a virtual VR experience based on that (We could probably already do that tbh). Or maybe having rovers with 360 VR recording equipment doing regular preprogrammed tours and then showing the recordings to people afterward.
The time/light delay between Earth and Mars is anywhere between four minutes and 25 minutes one way, and then there's weeks where communication between the two planets is all but impossible because the sun's in the way. NASA programs the Mars robots' whole day, every action, well in advance. To just plug in to a VR system to 1:1 control a Mars robot you'd pretty much need to be on Mars anyway, or in Mars orbit at least.
There's nothing wrong with going to space (even if we have issues to fix on Earth) but space should not be for the capitalists. Just like how Earth should not be for the capitalists either.
I like Mars, I like space exploration, hate the fact that both are the domain of tech bro doofuses
I always like seeing pictures of Mars because I think it's pretty and I like that we're exploring Mars with robots because I think it's neat :I-was-saying:
I wish billionaires would have an Earth race instead of a space race, where they compete based on restoring as many acres of habitat, preventing or pushing back desertification, or otherwise trying to help the planet we all live on.
Instead they spend that money on creating thousands of tons of C02 emissions on competing, private space companies.
I know people that watch entire SpaceX launch videos that are just PR and footage of grainy rocket boosters. I would much rather watch a video of someone explaining how they helped restore a small forest or prairie ecosystem.
Imagine how better the world would be if the Western countries made an effort to help people to one up China and dunk on Xi, but even that is too much for them. Capitalists are the laziest people in existence.
I want to go to Mars too but I also have two braincells and understand that if Elon Musk colonizes Mars everyone who goes there is going to become his serf.
The good thing is he's never going to get close to Mars. It's like all the stuff about replacing the International Space Station with a private space station. It's either not going to get built or it's going to be a single module for Jeff Bezos to live in.
if Elon Musk colonizes Mars everyone who goes there is going to become his serf.
Until they smash his buildings with a physics-defying hammer and fling his rent-a-cops into the sun
Mars looks like shit. Very inhospitable, would not enjoy going there.
Actually that might not be the worst idea in the world. Just fucking load them all in a big cannon and shoot them to mars to suffocate in peace.
Actually cool use for VR. Being able to Avatar a robot that we send. We could like...do that in real life and it wouldn't be super impractical and stupid.
About 4 hours generally, but depends on where Earth and the sun are in relation.
