Mars

[Skins24]

Ice, water, life? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2013000/2013114.stm)

I wish they would quit foolin' around and just send someone there for goodness sakes...
Send a monkey if you have to, just send something living! These robots and stuff are nice and all, but...come on...that's so '90s :rolleyes:
I know the technology is there, is it the money??
I'll give you the money if you need it!
Just do it!

[Henry]

Oh they'll definately consider sending manned missions now. Need water? Need Oxygen? Just stick a 3 foot tube in the ground ...

This is a pretty amazing discovery.

[The Evil Genius]

Where's Robinson Crusoe when you need him?

:rolleyes:

[Kilmer17]

The problem is sustaning the crew for the trip. They havent figured out how to take enough food and water to sustain the crew for the trip up and back. I read somewhere (dont ask where) that it would take a cargo hold the size of a football field for a crew of 7.

[Yomar]

And I always thought space as a frontier was impregnable using modern day technology. pretty impressive

[Tommy-the-Greek]

The US and Russia are going to put large amounts of nuclear warheads into storage. This creates a big problem in my mind. I want to know what would happen if we sent them to mars instead and detonated them in the polar region. Hmmmm something to think about.

[Brave]

"I'll give you the money if you need it! " - rskin24

Uh ... you front me the money and I'll try to find a group able and willing to go. How 'bout it? :)

[Tommy-the-Greek]

Do you think the ice would melt and reveal what is underneath before it refreezes? And then we could send something in to take ice samples and bring it back to see if there was frozen fossilized life forms in the samples????

[Zen-like Todd]

The problem is sustaning the crew for the trip. They havent figured out how to take enough food and water to sustain the crew for the trip up and back. I read somewhere (dont ask where) that it would take a cargo hold the size of a football field for a crew of 7.


Err... water is the biggest problem, by far. Ice on mars means water on Mars. Which means that a huge impediment is gone. Using solar power, we can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen == fuel, oxygen... well, you know about the oxygen. Hydroponics in effect with the water, grow your own food, etc. It's all good dude.

[Skins24]

Uh ... you front me the money and I'll try to find a group able and willing to go. How 'bout it?
Hmm.....
Try?
How do I know you won't go "try" to look for a group in oh..say Vegas or something?



1 word to solve the food problem:
Spam


I do hope they come up with something sooner rather than later. There are so many questions that can't all be answered by computers and robots. I know it's going to be alot, but they can do it!
I would also like to see them go back to the moon. I just missed out on being alive during the lunar missions, so I missed alot...

[Brave]

"How do I know you won't go "try" to look for a group in oh..say Vegas or something? "

Damn rskin, you psychic or something? :laugh:

[Kilmer17]

Thats still doesnt solve the problem of water on the trip to Mars. It would take months to make the journey. Even if they manage to figure out how to do it and then use the water on Mars, how do you collect it? and is it salt water?

Lot's of logistical problems.

[Terry]

OK, here's what I calculate:

A 10 month trip one way would take 310 days.

For 7 astronauts that's 2170 man days.

Each astronaut would consume, say, 5 pints of water per day for drinking, for a total of 10, 850 pints of water, or 1356 gallons.

A plastic gallon jug is roughly 6" X 6" X 8", or 288 cubic inches. So we would need 390,528 cubic inches to store 1356 gallons of water, or 226 cubic feet.

I have a closet that's 6' X 4' X 8' = 192 cubic feet. So we need the equivalent of a walk-in closet to store the drinking water for 7 astronauts for 10 months.

So, I don't see the issue as far as space is concerned.

The weight might be another issue. At 64 lbs per cubic foot, that would be over 7 tons of water that we'd have to carry one way for 7 astronauts to drink,

[Henry]

Thats still doesnt solve the problem of water on the trip to Mars. It would take months to make the journey. Even if they manage to figure out how to do it and then use the water on Mars, how do you collect it? and is it salt water?

Kilmer, if we have the technology to get people to Mars and back, we certainly have the ability to siphon water and oxygen and hydrogen from a virtually unlimited supply of ice no more than 6 feet below the planet's surface. Heck, nuclear subs have been doing this for years in our own salty oceans. That's not the problem.

Right now one of the biggest problems is how to keep people from going nuts being cooped up for such a long period of time together.

[Kilmer17]

After only 4 years of marriage I can agree.

[Om]

I can see where that used to be a problem, Henry, but not any more. A laptop and good satellite connection, and our astrofriends won't have to miss a day of Extremeskins. We got babes, we got ball, we got beer ... we got buds. Hell, with that setup, I think I could survive the trip.

That is to say, I could as long as Heidi Klum is my personal attendant, and she brings several Gibbs Era game tapes and a stock of Killian's.

*

Seriously though ... I think we're going to have to assume that any trip in excess of a few months is going to require that we make some dramatic progress in suspended animation techniques -- a la the Jupiter mission portrayed in 2001. Solve the medical problems associated with that, and make it practical, and you solve a host of other problems related to extended space flight; chief among them required food stores and psychological concerns.

I haven't read up on where the whole cryogenics field is recently, at least not in terms of dealing with short-term applications, but my guess is it's something we could probably have within a decade or two IF the demand is made upon the scientific community. If Uncle Sam offered up a $10 billion contract tomorrow to the outfit that shows it can produce the most timely and efficient suspended animation program, I tend to think we'd have a usable system in time to be made part of a potential Mars mission.

I've got $50 to chip in. Anyone else?

[Zen-like Todd]

Dude, salt in the water is not the biggest problem. It's caked in soil and all kinds of crap. They will be able to extract and clean the water. It's nothing that doesnt happen here on Earth every day. This isn't a 10 year journey, water is not going to be a problem for the trip over or back, don't fret.

[Darth Tater]

Thing about cryogenics or suspended animation:

My wife is 8 months younger than me. So, if I go on that trip, I'd end up being down for about 20 months total, right? Is she now a year older than me?

[Om]

Fun question.

Seems tome it would depend in part in how you defined "age." Your birthdates wouldn't change, so no matter what, you'd always be chronologically "older." Your aging process would certainly have slowed during that period, though.

[of course, without knowledge what affects suspended animation would have on you long-term -- not hard to imagine something like that would take a toll down the road that might affect your life expectancy -- you might indeed get some short-term comparative "aging" benefits over your wife, but she might well STILL end up living to enjoy the insurance policies you have after you're gone. :) ]

Thing about suspended animation, as I understand the concept, is that the aging process doesn't stop, but rather just slows dramatically. There wouldn't be a 1 to 1 relationship in terms of days/weeks/months between your "aging" and hers. Cleary though, your biological aging would have slowed to some degree during your down time, so you could probably make the case that her body had "aged" more than yours.

Either way, I'm thinking you'd definitely have to start calling her the "old lady," if just for grins. They love that.

[inmate running the asylum]

:gus: