Hint: Lunar (luna) is Latin for...?

Either way, man will have to land on the moon again and establish a base there before they go to Mars...but I doubt seriously they are taking capsules..and part of that testing that you are referring to includes making something that can break from orbit and go to Mars...

So I agree and disagree with some of your points but we both can agree with all of our money going elsewhere **coff* fugging up Iraq and AIG speinding bailout money *coff* we can't afford Mars!

heh!

Ksig RC, this makes sense, but I was thinking that since the Martian year is 669 Martian days (or 686 Earth days) wouldn't we need to be on it's time? Once they arrived on Mars, since Earth and Mars are constantly moving, they would have to stay (more than likely) at least 550 days on the Martian surface before their return launch window opens up. I was just thinking since they would be there that long, the correct Martian time would be needed.

I agree with you about the effect of zero gravity, but what about the Soviet cosmonauts, many of whom have spent a lot of time in zero gravity on their Mir space station of over 6 months and some for over 18 months, nearly three times the duration of a mission to Mars. I was just thinking that in all cases, near total recovery of the musculature and immune system occurs after reentry and reconditioning to a one gravity environment on Earth. They could probably recover in a few days.

omg!!!! lol lol lol the bolded made me laugh SO hard. lol. :p:p

Though we have a long way to go financially, I still think after we are back on our feet and we get a president in office who isn't going to continue to waste money in Iraq, using money to look for other life would be worth the cost. We don't just have to look on Mars. Even though we're just starting out, it's still great progress in taking steps towards exploring other worlds around us. I understand that it's possible that our planet is the only Earth like planet that exist, but to me, that seems unlikely. Around 20% of the observed stars have huge hot planets orbiting them. Some are even larger than Jupiter. We're also starting to find smaller ones, some down to a few tens of Earth's mass. I think finding planets like Earth will be like looking into the past and future at the same time. I think it provides a glimpse a few million years in the future or even a few billion years into the past. Not only will it tell us about life on other planets, but I think it will also clarify some of the big unanswered questions about our own world.

Thats irrelevant, we wouldn't need to tell time on another planet to have a usable frame of reference. If the mission is drawn out in earth time then the astonauts could use earth time...

Do you realize how impractical a colony on mars would be? Expensive, it would take FOREVER to build seeing as it is extremely difficult and time consuming to run ONE mars mission. It would then cost us $10,000/ lb of cargo, not enough to warrant mining any mineral on mars.

Why spend billions to go into space when there are thousands of homeless people on the streets and millions without healthcare?

No PhiGam, I don't. It's cheaper to run one Mars mission than it is to send troops to a country that doesn't even want us there. And yes, I think Mars can be colonized. From a techinical point of view, there's little doubt that we can eventually do just about anything we want on Mars, including terraforming Mars, like transforming it from a frigid, arid world into a warm, wet planet, I think it once was. Yes, I think we can afford it. Not now, but when Barack Obama is in office and our economy is better, I think we can. I was thinking that while the exploration and base building phases can and probably have to be carried out on the basis of government funding, during the settlement phase is when economics would come into play. While a Mars base of even a few hundred people can probably be supported out of pocket by governmental expenditures, a developing Martian society, one that may come to number in the hundreds of thousands, clearly cannot. I think to be viable, a real Martian civilization has to be completely autarchic or be able to produce some kind of export that allows it to pay for the imports in requires. I think after we're done wasting money in Iraq, and our economy is doing well, I think we should start putting some kind of plan together to make it happen.

I asked the same question when Bush sent troops to Iraq to fight a war over nothing. At least with exploring Mars we would be accomplishing something.

Your logic is faulty. Yes, Bush made a mistake, but why follow up with another costly one?

It's a matter of priorities. Even if there was no WMD/Al Qaeda in Iraq I consider deposing a murderous dictator and putting a democracy which, though while it took a lot of work, now seems to be working in it's place something much more worth doing than flying to Mars just for the hell of it.

Wow.

http://www.drwob.com/lisa/images/life_on_mars.gif

A mission to Mars wouldn't just be done just be for the hell of it. Plus, since Saddam has been gone, it's actually gotten worse over there, I mean at least with the terrorist it has.

Why spend billions when you can spend.....trillions.....?

*cue Dr. Evil Music*

http://content.answers.com/main/cont...74/Dr_Evil.jpg

This "discussion" really makes me want my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

"Where's the kaboom?! There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"

:p

I went to Mars and all I got was this coffee mug
 

Sweet! I haven't seen this album ((that's right, I said Album!)) cover in ages!!

NASA is a waste of money. If NASA thinks their work is so important then let them sell their discoveries and fund themselves.

I hope the new President cuts NASA's budget. If I was President NASA would not be going to Mars unless there was oil there. We have our top scientists collecting rocks from Mars. They should be working on energy. If they develope a cheap fuel source then let them keep part of the profits and they can go back to collecting space rocks.

NASA's a waste of money??? and sending troops to Iraq isn't?

How do you know there isn't resources that can be used on Mars?

This is a thread about NASA, don't make it into something else.
There would have to be a resource worth the cost of obtaining it, which would be over $10,000 per POUND.

This is not a thread about what WE think about space exploration (or Iraq), it's about what the CANDIDATES think about space exploration. Once the readers know that, they can - in part - base their opinions of the election on the candidates' viewpoints.

So far, no one has explained McCain's view of space exploration.

5 seconds in google does wonders...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...e/4260504.html

According to you I suppose the thread is over now?:rolleyes:

"Popular Mechanics"? I'm not even clicking on that link.

Doesn't McCain have something on his official website on NASA or anything pertaining to the space program?

A few reasons why atually.

1. We are decades away from setting up a permanent base there to even see if we can survive there for long periods.

2. We may be at least a century away from even being able to refine and ferry anything we find there and bring back

3. With the way we are wasting money here on EARTH tearing shyte up we won't ever be able to do one or 2....not at least in my lifetime.

Whats wrong with popular mechanics? The only people I've ever met that had a problem with that publication are the "truthers" because popular mechanics systematically destroyed every statement in "loose change."

Uhmm, been on greekchat long? How many threads on this message board start off as the "thread title" and end up something else?

The war in Iraq is a waste of money. Scientific research and in this case space exploration is not. I would even like to see money spent on ocean exploration. There is so much life in the deep that we don't even know about.

Exactly

Daemon, I agree partly, but if we cut NASA spending, I don't think we would know in even 100 years. I think we have the technology now, just with more spending and research we can make it a reality sooner than we think. I know all the stuff I posted earlier may very well be wrong, but no one on GC really knows. I mean, we could be on the brink of an amazing discovery. There are planets like our own all around us. Think about it. If you had a telescope like the one I have, and if you went to some of the places I go to look at the stars you would see what I'm talking about. I go where there are no city lights and it's beautiful. You can see everything. You can actually see a few thousand of the billions of stars in our galaxy alone.

20 bucks if the Cold War was still going on as we speak, I'll bet we would either have been on Mars or on our way there within the next few years. I also think that if there were images of some kind of life form there sent back to Earth we would find a way to get there now. People just think there isn't anything there based on the small amount of area that we've seen through cameras. I know Mars can be an ice ball at times, but terrestrial organisms have an extraordinary ability to adapt themselves to extreme conditions, including cold, acidic, and hot environments. Without more money being spent on research, how do we know if life can begin in such an environment? Life can adapt to extreme environments, but can it originate there? Like with extremophiles. They can live and adapt to an amazing range of environments. So that can make it possible for life to exist on other habitable worlds. I'm thinking that if extremophiles don't need mild climate conditions in order to evolve, then we can imagine a 1st glimpse of the variety of habitable planets among the stars, from frozen planets on the outer rim of their habitable zone, with bacteria living below the ice, to planets with high iron content in their atmospheres. So just because Mars isn't like Earth doesn't mean there isn't or hasn't been life there. We're just not pressed in spending the money to go because we haven't seen anything that gives us a reason to go, or so we think.

ETA: lol @ the "tearing shyt up" comment. lol

There is no intelligent life in our solar system. The nearest star is 4.3 light years away. The fastest that we could get there with our current technology and no snags in the mission is 19,000 years. Even with nuclear pulse propulsion, a technology that is nothing more than a dream, we're talking 85 years (if the human body could even handle it). If we're not exploring space to find intelligent life, then what are we looking for? And before you start talking about iron and minerals being on other planets I'm going to say this again: it doesn't matter what kind of minerals are on another planet, it is simply not economical to mine and transport the material.

I don't know what McCain's NASA policies actually are, he claims to support the program but I feel that if he's big on cutting government waste (which his record has shown him to be) then NASA will be one of the first programs to lose money in the budget.

There's a huge article in the October 27th edition of Time about what we're doing with Mars exploration and where we're going with it.

Who said I was talking about intelligent life, and who's saying that life on Earth is intelligent? To us, yes, but maybe to something else, somewhere else, no.

PhiGam, yes it does matter what kind of elements there are on other planets. Carbon is probably the most important element there is, but I won't get into that or why I think it is. What about water? When it comes to fostering life, water has the highly useful property of staying liquid across what most biologists regard as a fairly wide range of temperatures. The trouble is, most biologist look to Earth, where water stays liquid across 100 degrees of celcius scale. Another planet doesn't necesarily have to resemble Earth to support life. Like on some parts of Mars, atmospheric pressure is so low that water is never liquid. A cup of H2O boils and freezes at the same time. Yet in spite of Mars' current state, it's atmosphere once supported liquid water. If Mars ever harbored life on its surface, it would have been then. Where there once was life, there are fossils. And who said anything about intelligent life? Like I was saying earlier, extremophiles are everywhere. As far as I know, extremophiles were the earliest life forms here. And to declare that Earth must be the only planet with life in the universe is pretty big headed. I say this, because planets cannot be all that rare in the universe if the Sun, an ordinary star, has at least 8 of them. So there is a lot to look for.

I found your peeps, cheerful : http://www.interzonga.com/martianfed...elcome.htm#top

This is classic: Why I Want To Go

You're saying the same stuff over and over again.
Tell me why its worth our resources to send manned missions to mars/ other planets. Prove to me that the billions of dollars that NASA receives in funding every year wouldn't be better suited for medical research or alternative energy research. Only then can I not feel that NASA is anything more than an example of government waste.

Congratulations! This is seriously the dumbest possible thread regardless of topic. Sweet, guys! Great work!

NOT SNARK: CG, seriously, you're just quoting Wikipedia at this point. Think about that.

I've already told you why. Medical research is good, I don't disagree with that. But I don't think NASA spending is government waste.
-130 is cold

Ksig, I don't even know what Wikipedia is. I'm not familiar with the blog and other computer terminology you guys use on here. And I don't think it's a dumb thread at all. If you think it's that dumb, then why even post on here?

:eek: