Curiosity on Mars

[Pabmusic]

I don't wish to be disrespectful of your daydreams, prokkyshosty, but while we have enough food on this planet to feed everyone, people still starve. If you think of the cost of colonising Mars, then imagine those resources being applied to solving the problems of overpopulation and hunger here, there would be no need to go elsewhere.

And I'd add that, if (big 'if') it ever became feasible to regenerate an atmosphere, then that would be easier - and ought to be done - on Earth.

[prokkyshosty]

But surely shouldn't overpopulation lead to wanting to go somewhere else?

[Pabmusic]

But surely shouldn't overpopulation lead to wanting to go somewhere else?

Well...you seem to be arguing in favour of a horrendously expensive project to make Mars habitable. How about spending those horrendous amounts on Earth to (1) improve our atmosphere, (2) lower CO2 levels (easiest way - plant huge areas of forest) - and (3) irrigate the desert areas to produce more good land for people to live on (and for those trees to grow on)?

Your fantasy would require a system for us Earthlings to choose who goes to Mars, and how to (1) force them to go there if they don't want to, or (2) choose one person over another. Even if that were remotely possible, they'd have to live in circumstances very different from those we have evolved to live in. In particular, gravity that's 38% of Earth's, temperatures that never rise above about -63 degrees C, very low atmospheric pressure, requiring (at least at present) permanent pressure suits or (perhaps in the future) 'bubbles' in which cities can be constructed. The atmosphere is mainly CO2 (obviously they need to plant very special trees at -63 degrees!). And the colony can only survive, of course, if it's large and varied enough to allow breeding (this isolation would eventually result in a new species of human, of course). And none of this deals with the need, at least for the foreseeable future, for everything to be transported to Mars from Earth.

And, above all, none of this tackles the fact that most people will have no choice but to remain on Earth, with far fewer resources, since so much is being consumed building a Martian overspill colony. A sort of galactic Telford.

[amateur51]

A sort of galactic Telford.

steady on!!

[Pabmusic]

Thanks, Ams, I don't mind if I do...

[prokkyshosty]

Well, there go all my daydreams!!

[Pabmusic]

Well, there go all my daydreams!!

Sorry to be the harbinger of bad news. It's all George W Bush's fault. He announced ambitious plans in 2004 for manned missions to the Moon and Mars, which led to speculation about colonisation. Then someone pointed out the cost. Obama was left having to pull the plug.

[These emoticons can be fun, can't they?]

[John Wright]

.... a Martian overspill colony. A sort of galactic Telford.

Well, there go all my daydreams!!

Well, from what I have seen of Telford, prokks, it would have been a nightmare.


(apologies to any offended Salopians but I have only seen some roads into and shops in a Telford mall and it wasn't pretty)

[amateur51]

Very interesting edition of Radio 4's Material World devoted to updates on the Curiosity Project

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ljl5n#synopsis

[LeMartinPecheur]

I'll have a go. What reaches us from the sun is electromagnetic radiation from a gigantic nuclear furnace, in which hydrogen is being transformed very slowly into helium, and helium into all the heavier elements. All elements heavier than lithium were created in stars like our sun – especially (for us) carbon – and distributed throughout the universe by exploding stars (supernovas). We are all made of stardust!

Pabmusic: isn't this a tad oversimplified? Surely the sun generates its energy entirely by the fusion of hydrogen into helium? It'll only generate heavier elements when it gets close to dying and it's exhausted its hydrogen, and even then it won't make any very heavy elements such as useful metals (the divide comes somewhere roundabout carbon IIRC). The heavier elements (already existing in the sun and its planets) were made in long-vanished and recycled supernovae. This is the extraordinary sense in which 'we are stardust'.