2 thumbs up for mankind

Human Survival on Mars would be far more problematic than any conceivable issues on a post ā€œclimate crisisā€ Earth.
A Mars Colony would be totally dependent on artificial life support systems and energy sources.
There is a reason Life exists on Earth without NASA like efforts required to maintain it.
 
It's a step in the right direction to even find a way to make it to an uninhabitable planet. Eventually, large scale geo-engineering could also be figured out.

Would be nice to live on a planet where only the most intelligent inhabit and leave this one behind.
 
neptronix said:
.

Would be nice to live on a planet where only the most intelligent inhabit and leave this one behind.
You would not be ā€œliving on a planetā€ ..you would be living in a bubble / space suit, with your life totally in some one elseā€™s hands.
What happened to that ā€œGeodomeā€ living experiment ?
 
Southeast Utah is the place where I would film a movie about Mars. Plus there is more oxygen and it's warmer in the summertime. It's easier to colonize SE Utah than Mars. Maybe better to find some way to limit the population here on Earth...

Grand-View-Point-Hike.jpg
 
Hillhater said:
You would not be ā€œliving on a planetā€ ..you would be living in a bubble / space suit, with your life totally in some one elseā€™s hands.
What happened to that ā€œGeodomeā€ living experiment ?
They ran out of CO2. Which, interestingly, would not be a problem on Mars.
 
neptronix said:
Eventually, large scale geo-engineering could also be figured out.
Yep.

Initially we dig a huge shallow hole with robotic excavators about 20 miles deep. At the bottom the atmospheric pressure is such that we can walk around with just an oxygen mask, and plants can grow. Then we expand that as the colony grows. Over time, the plants convert the CO2 to oxygen.
 
Some links and a video (the full smooth one, not the jerky early release) of the first powered flight on another planet:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-MarsIngenuityHelicopter-FirstFlightVideo-20210419.webm?embedplayer=yes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

Schematic cutaway of the Ingenuity test vehicle:
Anatomy_of_the_Mars_Helicopter[1].png

Excerpt from the wikipedia article:
Ingenuity is a small robotic helicopter operating on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. On 19 April 2021, it successfully completed the first powered controlled flight by an aircraft on a planet besides Earth, taking off vertically, hovering and landing.[9][10] The battery-powered coaxial drone rotorcraft is serving as a technology demonstrator for the potential use of flying probes on future missions to Mars and other worlds, and will have the potential to scout locations of interest and support the future planning of driving routes for Mars rovers.[11][12][1][13]

Ingenuity travelled to Mars attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover, arriving at the Octavia E. Butler Landing site in Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. It deployed on 3 April 2021,[5][6][7] and after unloading the drone Perseverance drove approximately 100 m (330 ft) away to allow it a safe "buffer zone" in which it made its first flight.[14][15] First takeoff was on 19 April 2021 at 07:15 UTC, with livestreaming 3 hours later at 10:15 UTC confirming the flight.[16][17][18][19][20][21] Ingenuity rose 3 m (9.8 ft), hovered there for about 30 seconds, before returning to the surface of Mars with a total flight time of 39.1 seconds.[22]

Ingenuity is expected to fly up to five times during its 30-day test campaign scheduled early in the rover's mission. Primarily technology demonstrations,[1][23] each flight is planned to fly at altitudes ranging from 3ā€“5 m (10ā€“16 ft) above the ground for up to 90 seconds each.[1] Ingenuity, which can travel up to 50 m (160 ft) downrange and then back to the starting area,[1] will use autonomous control during its short flights, which will be telerobotically planned and scripted by operators at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It will communicate directly with the Perseverance rover after each landing.
 
JackFlorey said:
Initially we dig a huge shallow hole with robotic excavators about 20 miles deep. ......
Hmmm ?....shallow.......20 miles deep.. the ultimate oxymoron ?
Better make sure there are no ā€œGreenā€ activists in the colony who might object to landscape development on that scale !
 
The first deepest hole ever was 9" diameter, 12.262km (40,230 ft; 7.619 mi)
surpassed in 2008 by the 12.289km long (40,318 ft) (7.636 mi) Al Shaheen oil well in Qatar.
 
You couldn't use a hole (shaft) like those. You would have to have one wide enough for the entire colony. It wouldn't have to be that wide over it's entire distance, of course, only near and at the bottom, so it could be made like a "flask" (or a cave), if you did not need sky access. (this would also provide radiation and micrometeorite shielding, and probably even shielding against many larger impacts). This method would also not greatly affect the landscape above it, depending on how much setup work was necessary at the initial shaft site, and how the tailings were disposed of.

It would be a long-term project, but it may be possible to use supervised AI automation to do a significant part of the work, once we develop that sort of thing sufficiently.
 
neptronix said:
Would be nice to live on a planet where only the most intelligent inhabit and leave this one behind.

Not so fast. Someone will have to sweep the streets and bag the groceries. No hope for only the most intelligent, who cannot survive on our own and we know it. So we'll take some of you. . . .

Hillhater said:
. . . . with your life totally in some one elseā€™s hands.
What happened to that ā€œGeodomeā€ living experiment ?

The 'Someone else's hands' turned out to be Steve Bannon.

JackFlorey said:
Initially we dig a huge shallow hole with robotic excavators about 20 miles deep. ......

Whattaya mean 'We?' The only reason you'd get to come is so YOU can dig the hole.

Hillhater said:
Hmmm ?....shallow.......20 miles deep.. the ultimate oxymoron ?
Better make sure there are no ā€œGreenā€ activists in the colony who might object to landscape development on that scale !

Why would their be any green activists? They're not smart enough to be among the leaders, they're too useless to dig our hole or anything. The only others there would be RED activists living under the rule 'Those who do not landscape do not eat.'
 
How much energy needed to dig a hole on that scale ?
And what would be the energy source.. Wind ? (X),...Solar ?( NFC) !
Mars = Total waste of time, effort, and resources .!
Its just a cowards way of running away from the issues here on the one place we can survive.
Musk = NASA = Dik Heads !
 
Carrying sufficient fuel for the excavation would be tricky. Probably not 18650s
Solar would take a while
Nukes? Too messy. Titan has some fuel but we're stuck for oxygen
Redirect a big metor might be the best bet - Ideally with some stuff like frozen water/ CO2 etc on it.
 
It took over 120 years to dig out the Sphinx. Probably meant moving sand from more than a mile in each direction because of course sand will seek its' own level and fill in the holes until it was ALL dug out. Much of the work was done by manual laborers because this started at the beginning of the 19th century. No heavy equipment.

Digging on Mars would probably go much the same.
 
nicobie said:
Hillhater said:
ā€œ Nukes, Too messyā€ ?.

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

We've always wanted to play God. It's part of being human. šŸµ

I hope you're quoting the sentient nuke in DarkStar? - I love that film https://theofficialjohncarpenter.com/dark-star/
I'm sticking to my redirect a metor idea - mountains are a bonus mess but won't kill you with radiation
Ebiking in low grav could be fun
DarkStar.JPG
 
Speaking as someone who used to work for the spacefaring business:

Manned space flight is a boondoggle. Unless/until there's unlimited free energy, we have to throw so many resources at it that it can't possibly pay off in any practical way. It is, and will remain, a dick measuring activity for imperialist governments and the ultra-ultra rich.

We have zero chance at establishing a community in a hostile environment outside Earth, when we can't even do basic preventive maintenance on a planet that we're optimized to live on.
 
BobBob said:
I'm sticking to my redirect a metor idea - mountains are a bonus mess but won't kill you with radiation
Ebiking in low grav could be fun

With the gravity on Mars being something like 37% of Earth and all the books that were older than I was as a kid that I read on Mars being softer packed than Earth, (I'd have to DIG UP information to see if they've changed their minds on that) a meteor hit would put such dust in the air for perhaps a decade. Probably similar to what the nuke would cause.

We should power manned space flight with the same unlimited free lithium batteries we plan on for unlimited free electric transportation on Earth. The same boondoggle that powers this board can power conquering the universe.
 
Chalo said:
Manned space flight is a boondoggle. Unless/until there's unlimited free energy, we have to throw so many resources at it that it can't possibly pay off in any practical way.

Indeed, it's an energy breakthrough we need for serious space travel and also inhabiting other planets. Getting to mars itself is a very impressive feat of engineering though. It's something to the degree of being a thousand times further than the moon.

Chalo said:
It is, and will remain, a dick measuring activity for imperialist governments and the ultra-ultra rich.

Many people said the same thing about computers. Nobody believed they had non-military/university/large corporate applications until the 80's. Governments and the ultra rich are always the first developers of technologies that roll out to everyone later.. because these technologies cost a shit-ton of money to develop.

Chalo said:
We have zero chance at establishing a community in a hostile environment outside Earth, when we can't even do basic preventive maintenance on a planet that we're optimized to live on.

I don't think the chance is zero at all. A local company here just tested an oxygen generator on that trip called MOXIE. The thing actually worked. Another small step towards inhabiting a planet.
 
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