Obama/McCain and space exploration

[PrettyBoy]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

I missed this one. It's not just a frozen rock, PhiGam. Mars has a lot of great scenery. It actually has mountains three times as tall as Mount Everest, canyons three times as deep and five times as long as the Grand Canyon. It also has a ton of dry riverbeds. You also need to look at the fact that its unexplored surface may hold unimagined resources for future humanity, as well as answers to some of the deepest philosophical questions that thinking women and men have pondered on for eons. I honestly think Mars may someday provide a home for a dynamic new branch of human civilization. I also think with future human settlement and growth there, it will provide an engine of progress for all of humanity for generations to come. But all that Mars holds will remain beyond reach unless and until women and men land there. You would be surprised, temperatures on Mars can get pretty warm. Mars also has water frozen into its soil, as well as large quantities of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, all in forms readily accessible to those inventive enough to use them. Also, these four elements are not only the basis of food and water, but of plastics, wood, paper, clothing, etc etc. You can also get rocket fuel out of those same elements too. That doesn't sound like a frozen rock to me.

Damn girl, you love you some planets. LOL. Damn, if it takes 9 months to get there, you would have to consider a joker needing to use the crapper. Hell, a joker's gotta eat, boo boo, drink and piss. And with no gravity?

It would be hard as hell to keep track of time on another planet, or while travelling there too.

cheers, how about you and two other jokers go to Mars and you lead the mission. $20 you jokers wouldn't come back.

[AGDee]

Hate to think about how many astronaut diapers they'd need for 9 months.

When the Cold War ended, the "space race" became a cooperative effort for the International Space Station, which doesn't get nearly enough press, I think. Read up on everything that's happening there! It's incredible what we're accomplishing TOGETHER. Two heads are better than one. Two super power resources are better than one also.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by PrettyBoy

It would be hard as hell to keep track of time on another planet, or while travelling there too. \ission. $20 you jokers wouldn't come back.[/COLOR][/I][/B]

A watch would do the trick

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

A watch would do the trick

Psssst...a little 5th grade astronomy lesson...day light hrs on other planets can be measured differently as sunrise and sunset varies...a watch is not always a viable option especially since most other planets do not have a standard 24hr period like......Earth?

Avg Mars day 24.66 hrs

Avg Lunar Day 24.56 hrs

Avg Venus Day - 243 EARTH days (see why a watch would be impractical?)

BTW....has anyone been paying attention to the Asian space race lately?

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Psssst...a little 5th grade astronomy lesson...day light hrs on other planets can be measured differently as sunrise and sunset varies...a watch is not always a viable option especially since most other planets do not have a standard 24hr period like......Earth?

Avg Mars day 24.66 hrs

Avg Lunar Day 24.56 hrs

Avg Venus Day - 243 EARTH days (see why a watch would be impractical?)

BTW....has anyone been paying attention to the Asian space race lately?

lol lol

Thanks Daemon.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

A watch would do the trick

And it's comments like this one that make you look as though you haven't a clue. There are mathematical equations that determine how to tell time on another planet. You just wouldn't use a watch.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

And it's comments like this one that make you look as though you haven't a clue. There are mathematical eqautions that determine how to tell time on another planet. You just wouldn't use a watch.

"I made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". - Han Solo

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

And it's comments like this one that make you look as though you haven't a clue. There are mathematical equations that determine how to tell time on another planet. You just wouldn't use a watch.

Actually, the human body has become accustomed, through centuries of acclimation, to a 24-hour clock. While there are also other related issues (such as the effects of sunlight on production of serotonin, for example), there's literally no good reason to keep time in "Mars time" for a basic exploration. It's likely more useful to keep a 24-hour schedule to prevent a sort of hyper-jet lag (especially considering how much the body would wither with 9 months of zero gravity) - a watch would be very useful, much more so than calibrating time to an astronomical idea of a "Mars day."

[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Actually, the human body has become accustomed, through centuries of acclimation, to a 24-hour clock. While there are also other related issues (such as the effects of sunlight on production of serotonin, for example), there's literally no good reason to keep time in "Mars time" for a basic exploration. It's likely more useful to keep a 24-hour schedule to prevent a sort of hyper-jet lag (especially considering how much the body would wither with 9 months of zero gravity) - a watch would be very useful, much more so than calibrating time to an astronomical idea of a "Mars day."

I was thinking the same thing, the only thing a "Mars day" would tell you is when it was daylight or darkness. You can just look around to figure that one out. Staying on 24 hour time seems much more useful to me.

And I don't disagree that it's possible to at some point go, but we can't do it now. Even if you could theoretically get to Mars, a capsule can't carry enough food for a trip of over a year (5 months there, 5 months back, however many months there to wait for the planets to get aligned correctly for the return trip. Let alone anything else you would need. Nasa's goal is to have the new capsule-based orbiter (looks like a bigger Apollo capsule) ready by 2012 or 2013, able to return to the Moon by 2020, and think the capsule would be suitable for Mars travel at some undefined point in the future after that if we can figure out other details. It isn't something we can do now though. Sure we have the technology to blast some shit to Mars, clearly, we've been doing it for a good while. We don't have the technology to keep people alive on that trip though.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by CrackerBarrel

I was thinking the same thing, the only thing a "Mars day" would tell you is when it was daylight or darkness. You can just look around to figure that one out. Staying on 24 hour time seems much more useful to me.

And I don't disagree that it's possible to at some point go, but we can't do it now. Even if you could theoretically get to Mars, a capsule can't carry enough food for a trip of over a year (5 months there, 5 months back, however many months there to wait for the planets to get aligned correctly for the return trip. Let alone anything else you would need. Nasa's goal is to have the new capsule-based orbiter (looks like a bigger Apollo capsule) ready by 2012 or 2013, able to return to the Moon by 2020, and think the capsule would be suitable for Mars travel at some undefined point in the future after that if we can figure out other details. It isn't something we can do now though. Sure we have the technology to blast some shit to Mars, clearly, we've been doing it for a good while. We don't have the technology to keep people alive on that trip though.

can't carry enough food? why not?

You forget we have a space station orbiting overhead that's doing just that...testing out how long we can last up there...remember?

You are getting a few things confused...the new Ares craft is designed for lunar travel not to Mars...when we get ready to go to Mars there are plans on using a larger type craft to do the job...now come on...you won't send a speedboat to do the job of a cruise ship now will you?

Think....

[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

can't carry enough food? why not?

You forget we have a space station orbiting overhead that's doing just that...testing out how long we can last up there...remember?

You are getting a few things confused...the new Ares craft is designed for lunar travel not to Mars...when we get ready to go to Mars there are plans on using a larger type craft to do the job...now come on...you won't send a speedboat to do the job of a cruise ship now will you?

Think....

No... Ares isn't designed to go anywhere. It also isn't a craft. It's the rocket stage for the Constellation project. Ares I is the light lifter, Ares V is the heavy lifter. Orion is the orbiting module and Altair is the lunar lander. The plan is to modify the Orion/Altair pairing for a Mars mission later using information they get from the lunar missions. The target date to put humans on Mars is 2037 though, so it is very possible that the plan will change before then.

And you can't carry enough supplies right now. The ISS has enough power to stay in orbit, not to fly 50,000,000 miles. The Orion/Altair pairing just isn't big enough to hold everything yet and you can't power something the size of the ISS to Mars. I think the idea is to eventually boost up supply capsules that Orion can rendezvous with on the way, but that's still kind of a pie-in-the-sky idea at this point in time.

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

Actually, the human body has become accustomed, through centuries of acclimation, to a 24-hour clock. While there are also other related issues (such as the effects of sunlight on production of serotonin, for example), there's literally no good reason to keep time in "Mars time" for a basic exploration. It's likely more useful to keep a 24-hour schedule to prevent a sort of hyper-jet lag (especially considering how much the body would wither with 9 months of zero gravity) - a watch would be very useful, much more so than calibrating time to an astronomical idea of a "Mars day."

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.

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

And it's comments like this one that make you look as though you haven't a clue. There are mathematical equations that determine how to tell time on another planet. You just wouldn't use a watch.

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...