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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

You do realize we as a people can't even agree if global warming is even real?

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How do you expect us to be mature enough to take care of another planet...

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Nope, we would screw up Mars or any other celestial body just as we do our own.

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When faced with a choice, we always take the easy path, not the right one.

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And that needs to change before we go out into the universe and infect those unsullied places.

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Take a look at the moon, it is littered with decades of past landings/trash. Mars has dead probes left dormant.

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We leave satellites and other assorted debris in forever orbits without a thought.

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For example, what is our solution for waste disposal on this planet?

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Why, because we have soo much garbage on this planet, we need to bury it, and build on top of it.

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Do we really need to bring that kind of thinking to places untouched by ANY sentient hand for millenia?

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That is just human arrogance speaking, because we can't keep our own house in order first

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ORIGINAL: Aswad

Mars has another benefit: we don't have any handrails.

Simply put, on Mars, we either get it right most of the time, from the beginning, or we die.

That's a selection pressure humans have yet to face since we started shaping our environment, and it's a selection pressure that works on our higher faculties, our ability to grasp the necessities of life intellectually and respond rationally to those necessities. Few of the mistakes we have made on Earth are the sort that, in the short term, are the end of the world. On Mars, many of those mistakes would quickly end life there, and we would constantly be faced with the reality of having to be responsible for ourselves and the need to live well.

I think that can be good for the species. Plus, when life on Earth is wiped out, we can recolonize from Mars.

Two pragmatically worthwhile goals right there, in my opinion.

But the best reasons: it's hard and we can do it.

IWYW,
— Aswad.

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ORIGINAL: LookieNoNookie

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

Excellent idea, Lookie!

It may not be as hopeless as we imagine. I think various nations cooperated well on the International Space Station, though I'm no expert on the topic.

FUCK!!!...It may be hopeless...but....I think it's worth a gawdamned try.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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ORIGINAL: LookieNoNookie

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

Excellent idea, Lookie!

It may not be as hopeless as we imagine. I think various nations cooperated well on the International Space Station, though I'm no expert on the topic.

FUCK!!!...It may be hopeless...but....I think it's worth a gawdamned try.

Oh dear. My post was meant to be hopeful.

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ORIGINAL: Aswad

Yeah, significantly less gravity.

But, the West doesn't have the Will to colonize Mars.

Simply put, colonizing Mars would cost less than the Second Gulf War, and we could have people living there in less than three decades.

We have the Will to trash third world countries for oil, but not to safeguard our species against an asteroid impact or other global disaster. A back of envelope calculation tells us that a fully reusable launcher that can get two payloads per day to geostationary orbit without toxic emissions, using existing technology only, is about half a trillion dollars. By payload, I mean between one and three floors of the Twin Towers per launch, a couple dozen kilotons, about one thousand times our current payload capability.

Some orders of magnitude to think about:

An anchor: 1 ton.
Space Shuttle payload: 20 tons.
International Space Station: 400 tons.

Space Shuttle launch vehicle: 2 kilotons.
Battlestar Galactica, estimated: 50 kilotons.
RMS Titanic, fully loaded weight: 52 kilotons.

Nickel production pr year: 1 megaton.
Twin Towers (both buildings): 1.5 megatons.
The Great Pyramid of Giza: 6 megatons.
Seafood harvest (pr year): 85 megatons.
Weight of humanity: 400 megatons.

Steel production pr year: 1 gigaton.
Concrete production pr year: 3 gigatons.
Global oil output (2009): 4 gigatons.
CO2 output of USA (pr year): 5 gigatons.
Weight of a tall mountain: 10 gigatons.
CO2 in atmosphere: 700 gigatons.

World coal reserves: 3 teratons.
Organic matter on Earth: 10 teratons.
Modest asteroid: 100 teratons.

Earth atmosphere: 5 petatons.
Earth oceans: 5 exatons.
Moon: 70 zettatons.
Earth: 5 yottatons.

Putting a vessel of a few dozen kilotons on Mars is absolutely feasible. It would be orders of magnitude less than other human activities in scope, and orders of magnitude more than what we're currently doing about space. It would also cost less in every way than the war we just fought. It could be done in a few decades. And, in the process, we would be left with a launch facility that could handle kiloton range payloads, so we might as well do Venus while we're at it.

But that would take the same kind of Will we apply to matters like war.

China has that, apparently.

IWYW,
— Aswad.

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ORIGINAL: Aswad
A back of envelope calculation tells us that a fully reusable launcher that can get two payloads per day to geostationary orbit without toxic emissions, using existing technology only, is about half a trillion dollars. By payload, I mean between one and three floors of the Twin Towers per launch, a couple dozen kilotons, about one thousand times our current payload capability.

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ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake
The folks thinking about asteroid mining now want to do it in low Earth orbit, because they get free radiation shielding.

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ORIGINAL: shallowdeep

I want to see this envelope.

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For comparison, the Shuttle program cost ~$200 billion.

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So you are talking about something like a 4000X increase in lift capacity per launch.

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And the proposed launch frequency is about 80X higher than the Shuttle fleet ever achieved.

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But I'm pretty confident in saying it's not happening with existing technology.

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On the bright side, that sort of lift capacity would probably be overkill for doing something meaningful on Mars.

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I don't think anyone sane wants to put an asteroid in LEO, at least providing they have a modicum of relevant knowledge. Out of curiosity, was there some source that prompted this comment?

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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

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ORIGINAL: Aswad

Yeah, significantly less gravity.

But, the West doesn't have the Will to colonize Mars.

Simply put, colonizing Mars would cost less than the Second Gulf War, and we could have people living there in less than three decades.

We have the Will to trash third world countries for oil, but not to safeguard our species against an asteroid impact or other global disaster. A back of envelope calculation tells us that a fully reusable launcher that can get two payloads per day to geostationary orbit without toxic emissions, using existing technology only, is about half a trillion dollars. By payload, I mean between one and three floors of the Twin Towers per launch, a couple dozen kilotons, about one thousand times our current payload capability.

Some orders of magnitude to think about:

An anchor: 1 ton.
Space Shuttle payload: 20 tons.
International Space Station: 400 tons.

Space Shuttle launch vehicle: 2 kilotons.
Battlestar Galactica, estimated: 50 kilotons.
RMS Titanic, fully loaded weight: 52 kilotons.

Nickel production pr year: 1 megaton.
Twin Towers (both buildings): 1.5 megatons.
The Great Pyramid of Giza: 6 megatons.
Seafood harvest (pr year): 85 megatons.
Weight of humanity: 400 megatons.

Steel production pr year: 1 gigaton.
Concrete production pr year: 3 gigatons.
Global oil output (2009): 4 gigatons.
CO2 output of USA (pr year): 5 gigatons.
Weight of a tall mountain: 10 gigatons.
CO2 in atmosphere: 700 gigatons.

World coal reserves: 3 teratons.
Organic matter on Earth: 10 teratons.
Modest asteroid: 100 teratons.

Earth atmosphere: 5 petatons.
Earth oceans: 5 exatons.
Moon: 70 zettatons.
Earth: 5 yottatons.

Putting a vessel of a few dozen kilotons on Mars is absolutely feasible. It would be orders of magnitude less than other human activities in scope, and orders of magnitude more than what we're currently doing about space. It would also cost less in every way than the war we just fought. It could be done in a few decades. And, in the process, we would be left with a launch facility that could handle kiloton range payloads, so we might as well do Venus while we're at it.

But that would take the same kind of Will we apply to matters like war.

China has that, apparently.

IWYW,
— Aswad.

I like the weight comparisons. And you are very correct in why we aren't (haven't) done it yet. Another reason I wanted to bring up is we have a society that is too risk-averse, for the most part. And too litigious, in my opinion. In order to do this, we need to start taking the steps now. A GCTNR could do just what you said. And it's technically feasible. Just not socially feasible. You'd have every hippie on Earth wailing outside the launch facility about what would happen to the poor fishes and whales if one fell into the sea, forgetting all along there's already a shit-ton of less stable nuclear material already down there. In a way, Lookie is right, the only realistic way we'd get to Mars as a people would be under one flag. I don't know if I want that kind of compromise.

But I would like to see a real Battlestar in commission. (Major BSG nerd here) So say we all...

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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

Aswad, for the sake of illustrating better some of the designs and concepts, I'm linking to a site that mainly caters to SF writers in order to write better SF. All the concepts and designs shown on this page are validated and cited. Realistic-Designs-Atomic Rockets The site's author went to some lengths to get the hard data for writers wanting to inject a lot of realism into their creations.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

FR

I keep thinking: if humans haven't yet been able to colonise relatively benign places on Earth like major areas of the Sahara or the Antarctic, what's the point of talking about colonising other planets? I mean, Jesus, too hot or too cold is one thing, but lacking in the somewhat crucial item of breathable air - that's something else entirely. We're still pretty pisspoor at terraforming parts of the Earth - let's not try to run before we can walk.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

FR

I keep thinking: if humans haven't yet been able to colonise relatively benign places on Earth like major areas of the Sahara or the Antarctic, what's the point of talking about colonising other planets? I mean, Jesus, too hot or too cold is one thing, but lacking in the somewhat crucial item of breathable air - that's something else entirely. We're still pretty pisspoor at terraforming parts of the Earth - let's not try to run before we can walk.

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ORIGINAL: MasterCaneman

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

FR

I keep thinking: if humans haven't yet been able to colonise relatively benign places on Earth like major areas of the Sahara or the Antarctic, what's the point of talking about colonising other planets? I mean, Jesus, too hot or too cold is one thing, but lacking in the somewhat crucial item of breathable air - that's something else entirely. We're still pretty pisspoor at terraforming parts of the Earth - let's not try to run before we can walk.

Well, there is a line of thinking that goes along the lines of this. Since we're just starting to both realize that Earth gets hit repeatedly by space rocks and we're systematically damaging the environment, it would behoove us to begin sowing seeds here and there around the neighborhood to ensure our species' survival. One ELE impactor can't strike in two places at once, and if we have a (reasonably) self-sufficient outpost or two, it ups the chances the human race doesn't totally go extinct.

Plus, do you really want to take a chance at making either of those places habitable (as we know it). There are valid reasons portions of the Earth are cold and hot, and many things really on those places existing as they are now. And while it may provide a short-term increase in carrying capacity, all it would really mean is more people. There's a saying about not keeping all of your eggs in one basket, and terraforming Earth's desolate places just means you make that one basket larger.