Should we go to Mars when.....

ikester7579 said:

Let's take the trip to Mars. The mars conditions do not support that life ever existed on the planet. But yet to get a trillion dollars to go lets convince everyone and imply certain things which are not true.

1) Mars has a barometric pressure that is 1/4-1/8 that of our earth. This would make the boiling point of water about 50 degrees F.
2) Such a low boiling point would mean that no warm blooded animals could exist on the planet because their blood would boil (warm blooded animals body temp is above boiling point of water on the planet, which would make their blood boil and kill them).
3) Low barometric pressure means that any water on the planet would not stay in liquid form.
4) If there were oceans they would boil away into the atmosphere.
5) And because that would leave water into a gaseous state, there would be evidence of this in the atmosphere. But there is not.
6) In fact the atmosphere on Mars is mainly CO2. The poles on this planet get so cold that the CO2 freezes and fall like snow on the poles creating a ice like cap. Which means the poles are not covered by frozen water but frozen CO2.
7) The magnetic field on the planet is a lot weaker than earth, which means it does not deflect the solar wind from the sun to well as our planet does. This solar wind is slowly stripping away Mar's atmosphere and only gets worse every year because the magnetic field loses strength constantly just like every planet does.
8) And because there is no ozone layer on Mars, the direct rays of the sun hit the planet daily. These rays are deadly to all life. And they also sterilize the soil ensuring no plant life or microbe life.
9) Water from rain, if it happened, would never reach the ground on mars because of the low evaporation point due to low barometric pressures. Ensuring once again no life.

You see, we are told the the polar caps are evidence of water on Mars. When in actuality, it's frozen CO2. None of the above facts about the conditions of Mars being so much against life is being relayed to the world. Withholding information like this is a deception. And it's a deception to the tune of 1 trillion dollars. And because it's a deception, it is also considered stealing from the tax payer. And if figured out by the masses, it will go down in history as the biggest grand theft ever of the whole world.

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You've made a great argument for why life similar to that on Earth, other then extremophiles, could not exist in the current Martian conditions.

You've strangely neglected to argue against other, theoretical biochemical systems and past conditions.

ikester7579 said:

Does going to Mars sound as logical as they make it out to be, after the facts are known?

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Yes, because your argument against the possibility of life on Mars, if anything, removes the ethical concerns with colonizing the planet.

ikester7579 said:

Let's take the trip to Mars. The mars conditions do not support that life ever existed on the planet. But yet to get a trillion dollars to go lets convince everyone and imply certain things which are not true.

1) Mars has a barometric pressure that is 1/4-1/8 that of our earth. This would make the boiling point of water about 50 degrees F.
2) Such a low boiling point would mean that no warm blooded animals could exist on the planet because their blood would boil (warm blooded animals body temp is above boiling point of water on the planet, which would make their blood boil and kill them).
3) Low barometric pressure means that any water on the planet would not stay in liquid form.
4) If there were oceans they would boil away into the atmosphere.
5) And because that would leave water into a gaseous state, there would be evidence of this in the atmosphere. But there is not.
6) In fact the atmosphere on Mars is mainly CO2. The poles on this planet get so cold that the CO2 freezes and fall like snow on the poles creating a ice like cap. Which means the poles are not covered by frozen water but frozen CO2.
7) The magnetic field on the planet is a lot weaker than earth, which means it does not deflect the solar wind from the sun to well as our planet does. This solar wind is slowly stripping away Mar's atmosphere and only gets worse every year because the magnetic field loses strength constantly just like every planet does.
8) And because there is no ozone layer on Mars, the direct rays of the sun hit the planet daily. These rays are deadly to all life. And they also sterilize the soil ensuring no plant life or microbe life.
9) Water from rain, if it happened, would never reach the ground on mars because of the low evaporation point due to low barometric pressures. Ensuring once again no life.

You see, we are told the the polar caps are evidence of water on Mars. When in actuality, it's frozen CO2. None of the above facts about the conditions of Mars being so much against life is being relayed to the world. Withholding information like this is a deception. And it's a deception to the tune of 1 trillion dollars. And because it's a deception, it is also considered stealing from the tax payer. And if figured out by the masses, it will go down in history as the biggest grand theft ever of the whole world.

Does going to Mars sound as logical as they make it out to be, after the facts are known?

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water on mars - Google Search

space exploration is the future. Wouldn't it be awesome if the next great advance in propulsion technology occurred in our lifetimes?

laconicstudent said:

Yes, because your argument against the possibility of life on Mars, if anything, removes the ethical concerns with colonizing the planet.

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As we have no intention of colonizing, and we have already checked there for life, there is no justification other than curiosity.
Besides, our heat must have reached there, because the poles are melting. Must be from our CO2, eh?

SkyWriting said:

As we have no intention of colonizing, and we have already checked there for life, there is no justification other than curiosity.

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This shouldn't be the case, obviously.

SkyWriting said:

Besides, our heat must have reached there, because the poles are melting. Must be from our CO2, eh?

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Huh? I really couldn't care less.

It's the journey, not the destination.

ikester7579 said:

Let's take the trip to Mars. The mars conditions do not support that life ever existed on the planet. But yet to get a trillion dollars to go lets convince everyone and imply certain things which are not true.

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You're absolutely right! Going to Mars is worthless!

Instead, you Americans should seriously consider taking that trillion dollars and going to Iraq and Afghanistan instead. Hey, at least it's warm and Sunni there! You're Shia to have a blast.

=========

Back in the real world, NASA gets about $18 billion this year, which sounds like a lot until you realize it's half a percent of the $3 trillion national budget. Defense spending on the other hand is $782 billion, or 23%. Guess the American government thinks killing non-Americans (or maintaining the means to do so) is more than 400 times more important than exploring space.

So fret not, ikester, your government won't be fooled into spending such substantial amounts of money on the betterment of mankind any time soon. Until one of them Marshead boffins stumbles upon this:

shernren said:

You're absolutely right! Going to Mars is worthless!

Instead, you Americans should seriously consider taking that trillion dollars and going to Iraq and Afghanistan instead. Hey, at least it's warm and Sunni there! You're Shia to have a blast.

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The award for Best Pun goes too....

shernren said:

Back in the real world, NASA gets about $18 billion this year, which sounds like a lot until you realize it's half a percent of the $3 trillion national budget. Defense spending on the other hand is $782 billion, or 23%. Guess the American government thinks killing non-Americans (or maintaining the means to do so) is more than 400 times more important than exploring space.

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I agree that we should divert at least half of all military spending to the Red Cross. This way our military staff would only have mops and buckets. We would pull out of all foreign countries and only enter when asked, and our only duties would be to clean up the blood with our mop buckets and set up food tents. The food tents would not be staffed. Each country can handle them as they see fit.

This would be better appreciated than our current foreign strategy and allow other countries to decrease their population on their own, without our interference. Our current policy of applying Christian morality to countries not interested in it, is foolish.

Originally Posted by SkyWriting As we have no intention of colonizing, and we have already checked there for life, there is no justification other than curiosity.

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laconicstudent said:

This shouldn't be the case, obviously.

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Unless you can come up with a good reason to spend that kind of cash on a deadly space junket.

SkyWriting said:

Unless you can come up with a good reason to spend that kind of cash on a deadly space junket.

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I'll give you an answer in one word and one in two words: unemployment, human capital.

The way I see it (and I speak as an ignorant outsider) the infrastructure of the USA is essentially mature. You've built your highways and your subways, your transcontinental cables and your intercontinental ones too. You've built your skyscrapers and your suburbs; and by golly, you've even left the farms for the people who want to keep farming. I genuinely think it's all a wonderful achievement; but it's done.

As such, your country has relatively few "hard" jobs compared to the multitude of "soft" jobs that still (and always will) need doing. The only people who can build a highway are the people who will physically stay where it is during the job; their positions can't be outsourced. But in today's economy, you don't have to be a local to be a telephonist, a software programmer, or even a car manufacturer. As such, the pool of jobs which can't be relocated to some other country with cheaper labor costs is relatively small compared to the pool of jobs which can.

Now assume that President Obama announces a Mars programme. For the next ten years, at least, he will have instantly created a slew of jobs which cannot be outsourced. For which American, no matter how profit-minded, will ever trust the lives of his fellow Americans to a foreign-made spacecraft? All the jobs will be local, right down from machining and QC to design and mission planning, unable to be exported to Bangalore or Shanghai. Indeed, it would even stand a chance of drawing the brightest (but only the brightest - not many places!) minds from around the world to working in America for a while.

And that would lead to the second effect, an improvement of human capital. Most of your kids today see science as irrelevant at best and downright dweebish at worst. Their role models are people not exactly known for their intelligence. That would all change if your government made it a national priority to put people on Mars. Students would be deeply immensed in all the questions that space exploration poses. Why is space mostly vacuum? Why is Mars red? Why do we need to burn lots of fuel to get away from Earth? Why do we need to burn less once we're out in space? (And even, to teach them some economics: why are we spending money to send men to Mars?) Science and the quality of your national thought life in general would increase. Why, your politicians might even have something to unite over!

How much would all this cost? NASA has said $11 billion, apparently. Let's assume that NASA, like any other government institution, has an 800% overrun on costs. In other words, price the project at $100 billion. Over a ten-year period, that would work out to be $10 billion a year. Consider that your government spends $300 billion on defense a year. Now, I'm not saying that all or even most of that money is going to waste. (I'm just insinuating it. ) But is the marginal benefit of that last $10 billion really all that great, especially considering that $290 billion is already being thrown at defense? What can $300 billion achieve that $290 billion can't? Probably a lot less than $10 billion put into a Mars mission can.

And let's just say you object that your government isn't fit to send people to space. I'd agree! Governments can be very messy and inefficient. So, sure, don't give the money to NASA. Instead, make it a matched investment for any private venture that wants to go to Mars: "for every dollar you spend on a Mars mission, we'll match it with fifty cents now and another fifty cents when your guys get to Mars safely". Private spending would go wild, too, and that would certainly prick up the economy.

So there are lots of reasons to go to Mars!

Then again, I doubt there's any oil on Mars. Unlike the Middle East ...

shernren said:

I'll give you an answer in one word and one in two words: unemployment, human capital.

The way I see it (and I speak as an ignorant outsider) the infrastructure of the USA is essentially mature. You've built your highways and your subways, your transcontinental cables and your intercontinental ones too. You've built your skyscrapers and your suburbs; and by golly, you've even left the farms for the people who want to keep farming. I genuinely think it's all a wonderful achievement; but it's done. As such, your country has relatively few "hard" jobs compared to the multitude of "soft" jobs that still (and always will) need doing. The only people who can build a highway are the people who will physically stay where it is during the job; their positions can't be outsourced. But in today's economy, you don't have to be a local to be a telephonist, a software programmer, or even a car manufacturer. As such, the pool of jobs which can't be relocated to some other country with cheaper labor costs is relatively small compared to the pool of jobs which can. Now assume that President Obama announces a Mars programme. For the next ten years, at least, he will have instantly created a slew of jobs which cannot be outsourced. For which American, no matter how profit-minded, will ever trust the lives of his fellow Americans to a foreign-made spacecraft? All the jobs will be local, right down from machining and QC to design and mission planning, unable to be exported to Bangalore or Shanghai. Indeed, it would even stand a chance of drawing the brightest (but only the brightest - not many places!) minds from around the world to working in America for a while. And that would lead to the second effect, an improvement of human capital. Most of your kids today see science as irrelevant at best and downright dweebish at worst. Their role models are people not exactly known for their intelligence. That would all change if your government made it a national priority to put people on Mars. Students would be deeply immensed in all the questions that space exploration poses. Why is space mostly vacuum? Why is Mars red? Why do we need to burn lots of fuel to get away from Earth? Why do we need to burn less once we're out in space? (And even, to teach them some economics: why are we spending money to send men to Mars?) Science and the quality of your national thought life in general would increase. Why, your politicians might even have something to unite over!

How much would all this cost? NASA has said $11 billion, apparently. Let's assume that NASA, like any other government institution, has an 800% overrun on costs. In other words, price the project at $100 billion. Over a ten-year period, that would work out to be $10 billion a year. Consider that your government spends $300 billion on defense a year. Now, I'm not saying that all or even most of that money is going to waste. (I'm just insinuating it. ) But is the marginal benefit of that last $10 billion really all that great, especially considering that $290 billion is already being thrown at defense? What can $300 billion achieve that $290 billion can't? Probably a lot less than $10 billion put into a Mars mission can.

And let's just say you object that your government isn't fit to send people to space. I'd agree! Governments can be very messy and inefficient. So, sure, don't give the money to NASA. Instead, make it a matched investment for any private venture that wants to go to Mars: "for every dollar you spend on a Mars mission, we'll match it with fifty cents now and another fifty cents when your guys get to Mars safely". Private spending would go wild, too, and that would certainly prick up the economy.

So there are lots of reasons to go to Mars!

Then again, I doubt there's any oil on Mars. Unlike the Middle East ...

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Not too bad an argument. But I'll have to counter with the evil "profit".
Why is America great? Because we take things that are cheap, and convert them to useful products that make life better.

Nuclear fission, Hydroelectric sources, and oil. In space, nearly everything is hard to exploit....I mean use. Odds are tiny that Mars will have anything of value to cover the expense of getting it. Simple as that.

Same problem with stimulus spending. If it doesn't create wealth, or convert the useless into useful, then it's a waste. "Cash for Clunkers" worked in direct opposition to this....take useful items and destroy them!
Dumb idea from the getgo. People could have used those cars to deliver pizza at worst, or to transport valuable freight at best.


But if you say that the idea of going to Mars, could stimulate R&D that would create wealth, that would create businesses that would create / convert resources for other uses, then maybe so. Maybe it would be profitable.

SkyWriting said:

Our current policy of applying Christian morality to countries not interested in it, is foolish.

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The award for biggest LOL of the day goes to...

shernren said:

Now assume that President Obama announces a Mars programme. For the next ten years, at least, he will have instantly created a slew of jobs which cannot be outsourced. For which American, no matter how profit-minded, will ever trust the lives of his fellow Americans to a foreign-made spacecraft?

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Trusting these live to the lowest bidder is another matter.

we would have to create an oxygenated atmosphere to raise BP, problem is that the GF is still so low that we'd have to live under a UV dome or something or in the ground.

I don't believe it's in human nature to truly improve things when we focus inward. Our biggest, best ideas have come out of the desire for expansion. Getting a manned mission to Mars will be incredibly hard, and we may not see direct benefits from Mars itself for a century. But the technology that will have to be developed to accomplish it will no doubt aid mankind.

We simply cannot look at manned spaceflight as something that should bring direct profits within our lifetimes or even our children's lifetimes. It is a start down the long path that will eventually allow mankind to leave this planet and colonize other worlds. As long as that is viewed as impossible, it will be.

crawfish said:

I don't believe it's in human nature to truly improve things when we focus inward. Our biggest, best ideas have come out of the desire for expansion. Getting a manned mission to Mars will be incredibly hard, and we may not see direct benefits from Mars itself for a century. But the technology that will have to be developed to accomplish it will no doubt aid mankind.

We simply cannot look at manned spaceflight as something that should bring direct profits within our lifetimes or even our children's lifetimes. It is a start down the long path that will eventually allow mankind to leave this planet and colonize other worlds. As long as that is viewed as impossible, it will be.

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(At the risk of levity) But there could be unobtanium there, man!

teddyv said:

(At the risk of levity) But there could be unobtanium there, man!

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and sexy blue alien women?