Post: #51

(09-29-2016 12:14 PM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  Current environmental living conditions on Earth: Currently not-sustainable for long term life.
Current environmental living conditions on Mars: Currently definitely not sustainable.
Musk can't even build a self-driving car without killing people, you are gonna let this sperg launch you to Mars?

Every kind of human driven car kills people too. Self driving cars are coming. Tesla hasn't really been in the forefront of research on self driving cars, but they are on the fore front of deploying it to customers. However, every other car manufacturer has self driving cars coming in the next few years.

They're not 100% safe, just safer than humans drivers.

Post: #52

As a motorcycle rider, the sooner no humans are driving cars the better.

Post: #53

(09-29-2016 12:24 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  

(09-29-2016 12:14 PM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  Current environmental living conditions on Earth: Currently not-sustainable for long term life.
Current environmental living conditions on Mars: Currently definitely not sustainable.
Musk can't even build a self-driving car without killing people, you are gonna let this sperg launch you to Mars?

Every kind of human driven car kills people too. Self driving cars are coming. Tesla hasn't really been in the forefront of research on self driving cars, but they are on the fore front of deploying it to customers. However, every other car manufacturer has self driving cars coming in the next few years.

They're not 100% safe, just safer than humans drivers.

My pledge still stands: I want to be the first person to get a DUI in a self driving car.

Aloha!

Post: #54

(09-29-2016 06:03 PM)Kona Wrote:  

(09-29-2016 12:24 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  

(09-29-2016 12:14 PM)AboveAverageJoe Wrote:  Current environmental living conditions on Earth: Currently not-sustainable for long term life.
Current environmental living conditions on Mars: Currently definitely not sustainable.
Musk can't even build a self-driving car without killing people, you are gonna let this sperg launch you to Mars?

Every kind of human driven car kills people too. Self driving cars are coming. Tesla hasn't really been in the forefront of research on self driving cars, but they are on the fore front of deploying it to customers. However, every other car manufacturer has self driving cars coming in the next few years.

They're not 100% safe, just safer than humans drivers.

My pledge still stands: I want to be the first person to get a DUI in a self driving car.

Aloha!

*Officer pulls you over*

"What seems to be the problem officer (as you take a swig from a 26) The robot was driving!"

Post: #55

Have any of you guys watched some of the Gundam Anime series? In regards to colonizing near earth there's some interesting stories about colonies in space versus earth forces in a war in Gundam Wing.

To have a man set foot on Mars and stay there would be an amazing feat. I think it would be grand. I'm thinking a colonization of the moon might be a good first step and possibly when the technology exists to search for any kind of minerals that may be useful. Iron maybe on the moon?

I'm thinking maybe very, very, very far in the future there could be mining of Mars. Not sure how it would happen but its a fun idea. Just reminds me of Starcraft and Starcraft Brood War.

Post: #56

I think this will be pretty exciting. However, it will be super risky. I'm not sure if we have all the technologies needed to get us to mars and have humans build a self sufficient colony there. First thing is that he's powering this adventure with solar panels which don't work at night and aren't consistent with output.

Personally i think that the things he plans can be perfected on earth first, such as creating the fuel needed to return to Earth from mars.

Post: #57

I think we should all accept that if we do send colonists off planet, odds are excellent at least some of the colonies will die out. Shit, odds are good we'll lose at least some ships on the way too. Will we have the grit to keep going when we lose people?

Even the moon may be too far away to rapidly send help if they have an acute emergency, depending on the problem. And at its closest, Mars is 142 times farther away than the moon. Anyone on Mars will be on their own, in a way nobody has been before.

Post: #58

(09-29-2016 08:25 PM)weambulance Wrote:  I think we should all accept that if we do send colonists off planet, odds are excellent at least some of the colonies will die out. Shit, odds are good we'll lose at least some ships on the way too. Will we have the grit to keep going when we lose people?

Even the moon may be too far away to rapidly send help if they have an acute emergency, depending on the problem. And at its closest, Mars is 142 times farther away than the moon. Anyone on Mars will be on their own, in a way nobody has been before.

Some of the early colonists to North America managed to survive and some did peter out and fail. I assume there were many people that died in the harsh winters in parts of New England and Canada in the late 1600s and early 1700s. But still more came, and more, and more until the areas were tamed and made easier to inhabit.

It took a long time for a sailing ship to go from say....Dover or Portsmouth to where Boston would be today. I agree that that any colonists to Mars would be on their own for a very long time but there have been similar events historically albeit they didn't deal with the immense distances, lack of life sustaining essentialls, etc. There was obviously a lack of technology to make such distances easy to travel to and such places to comfortably inhabit.

. On foot going from say Seattle to Boston would be an immense endeavor. Same with sailing the distance without the Panama Canal to shorten the trip. Now we have airplanes that do the trip in a matter of hours. I am not sure if we will hit a big plateau in terms of transportation but I will hazard a guess that we may be able to travel further and faster through space in the next 50 years or so.

I don't know. Exciting but I think when the first man steps on Mars a lot of us on here will be either dead or quite old. That's my guess.

Post: #59

(09-28-2016 09:22 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  I don't mind the idea of a Mars colony, but I do wish he'd stop using my money to fund it in the form of all the government bennies he's getting.

Not a fan of Mr. Musk at all.

Tesla is an expensive toy for rich people. Solar panels are now, and probably always will be, a massive joke except for specialized applications. I pay enough taxes, and I shouldn't be forced to pay for either of these things.

I don't like it either, but your tax money already pays for birth control and abortions. People are also grilling porterhouses and lobster tails on your dime. I knew a guy who sold drugs, worked a part-time fast food gig, and used his food stamps to buy the nicest cuts of steak for his cookouts.

I'd prefer my tax money go towards a mars colony instead of asshole drug dealers gaming the system.

(09-28-2016 09:32 PM)Alsos Wrote:  Opinions of Musk and his businesses aside - assume this happens, and in the time frame claimed, the obvious question is: WYG (Would You Go)?

How hot will the girls be? I'm not about to become a martyr for a low gravity nut into a fleshlight.

Post: #60

Even if the girls were hot, I wouldn't go. Fuck that.

Just picture it. You're an interesting, attractive guy, especially compared to the other nerds on the trip, and you do well with the women. You don't let things get serious, but have several ongoing flings. You're on your way back to your bunk from your new harem addition's room, girl #4, the 25 year old redhead botanist, when you're clocked in the head from behind by an angry beta PhD who was trying to get her for months on the trip.

Your body is found in the decompressed cargo bay two weeks later, hidden under some lashed-down food crates. The perpetrator is never found.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be the guy who does better with women than most of the other men on a one way trip like that. Space is way too dangerous, and it's not like there's a police department with a forensics crew available to solve murders and disappearances. Probably pretty easy to fake an accident to kill someone when the only thing stopping everyone around you from dying is a whole lot of relatively complex machinery.

I hope they're planning on doing some serious psych evals of the people they're going to send into space on a one way trip.

Post: #61

Just to clear up a couple of misconceptions brought up here (my info is mostly derived from the link I posted earlier in the thread):

1. Mars is actually a better option to colonize than the moon from a purely practical standpoint, despite being orders of magnitude further away. The advantages are:
-Mars has an atmosphere to block out some of the sun's lethal radiation; the moon does not.
-A Mars day is very close in length to an earth day; a moon day is 28 earth days. That, coupled with the lack of atmosphere, means that the moon would be unfathomably hot during the (14 earth day long) day and unfathomably cold during the (14 earth day long) night. Mars is also extremely cold, but not to the same degree.
-Mars has H2O in the form of ice; the moon does not.
-Lunar dust may be extremely harmful.

2. The sun's imminent death in a few billion years is not the concern. There is an endless list of potential catastrophic scenarios (asteroid impacts, super volcanoes, solar flares, nuclear war, etc.) that could end mankind here on earth, and it is a statistical certainty that many such events will occur long before the sun dies out.

With all that said, I agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't be wasting resources on such a massive undertaking until we've achieved a near-perfect civilization here on earth.

Post: #62

So maybe just sending drones to the moon to collect materials would be a better option than building a manned moon colony?

Post: #63

(09-29-2016 10:30 PM)weambulance Wrote:  Even if the girls were hot, I wouldn't go. Fuck that.

Just picture it. You're an interesting, attractive guy, especially compared to the other nerds on the trip, and you do well with the women. You don't let things get serious, but have several ongoing flings. You're on your way back to your bunk from your new harem addition's room, girl #4, the 25 year old redhead botanist, when you're clocked in the head from behind by an angry beta PhD who was trying to get her for months on the trip.

Your body is found in the decompressed cargo bay two weeks later, hidden under some lashed-down food crates. The perpetrator is never found.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be the guy who does better with women than most of the other men on a one way trip like that. Space is way too dangerous, and it's not like there's a police department with a forensics crew available to solve murders and disappearances. Probably pretty easy to fake an accident to kill someone when the only thing stopping everyone around you from dying is a whole lot of relatively complex machinery.

I hope they're planning on doing some serious psych evals of the people they're going to send into space on a one way trip.

Ha you're describing a case that would most likely happen.

I agree.

You're gonna need to send hookers up with these dudes. A crew of 5 isn't going to sustain life on Mars. But send some whores and bam! Dudes aren't smashing eachother's heads.

I hope Elon Musk reads this this thread. Get 7 qualified dudes to man the mission. Make room for 20 whores.

Post: #64

(09-29-2016 09:49 AM)TheFinalEpic Wrote:  ^^ The science behind these "Halos" is pretty fascinating. Still my favourite childhood video game.

Ya, although these aren't Halo scale. Halo is in old sci fi terms a Ringworld - it's a ring around the sun at 1AU. (The distance from Earth's sun.) The land area is approximately 3 million times that of Earth. It's a smaller version of the Dyson Sphere.

These ones NASA envisioned in the 70s are way smaller, but still enormous on a human scale.

(09-29-2016 10:21 AM)Alsos Wrote:  Malone, you may want to check out these essays on the topic of O'Neill colonies:
http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive..._1_18.html
http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive..._1_19.html

Thanks, interesting articles and he's right. Potential freedom on a planetary settlement is much higher than in a L5 habitat. However, the L5 habitat will enable that freedom since it will be making all of the ships, and fuel and supplies initially to get settlers all over the system. We need that orbital industry first. When we have it we'll start to get the freedom we want in asteroids, and moons and other habs.

Post: #65

(09-29-2016 11:43 PM)wi30 Wrote:  You're gonna need to send hookers up with these dudes. A crew of 5 isn't going to sustain life on Mars. But send some whores and bam! Dudes aren't smashing eachother's heads.

I hope Elon Musk reads this this thread. Get 7 qualified dudes to man the mission. Make room for 20 whores.

Sexbots. With super-strong robot bodies and operating entirely on logic, they will be the dream girls for every beta nerd out there.

"I'd hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak." - Arnold

Post: #66

I originally avoided this thread because as a knuckledragger I didn't figure I'd have anything intelligent to offer.

Three pages in and it's down to space hookers.



RVF, I should have never doubted you.

Post: #67

(09-29-2016 10:58 PM)Delta Wrote:  1. Mars is actually a better option to colonize than the moon from a purely practical standpoint, despite being orders of magnitude further away. The advantages are:
-Mars has an atmosphere to block out some of the sun's lethal radiation; the moon does not.
-A Mars day is very close in length to an earth day; a moon day is 28 earth days. That, coupled with the lack of atmosphere, means that the moon would be unfathomably hot during the (14 earth day long) day and unfathomably cold during the (14 earth day long) night. Mars is also extremely cold, but not to the same degree.
-Mars has H2O in the form of ice; the moon does not.
-Lunar dust may be extremely harmful.

Also, unlike the Moon, Mars can be terraformed to make it habitable for human life. I believe Musk has this in mind as well.

Post: #68

Delta: "With all that said, I agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't be wasting resources on such a massive undertaking until we've achieved a near-perfect civilization here on earth."

I could outline for you what a self-sustaining permanent colony on Mars could look like, and how we might create it with existing or near-term technology and using humans-as-they-are. Can you define a "near-perfect civilization here on Earth" and how you would go about achieving it?

Any time the subject of space settlement comes up, someone will trot out this notion - even Patrick "Captain Picard" Stewart does this, for heaven's sake. Yet those who trot it out never offer concrete particulars about what constitutes a level of perfection at which colonization might then happily proceed. At best one gets Miss America-level platitudes about world peace or global human brotherhood, or exhortations on pet causes like universal income or socialized medicine or demilitarization. And even with those there is never any path proposed to attain these collectivist utopian dreamscapes, nor recognition that would require wholesale changes to human nature to even attempt to pull them off.

I don't exaggerate at all when I say that colonization of Mars is far and away an easier project than creating a "near-perfect civilization here on Earth". No question.

And while I generally accept that it's a sincere if misguided argument, it overlooks the amusing and quite likely possibility that colonization of Mars (or the moon or whatever) is the required catalyst for creating a "near-perfect civilization here on Earth", or at least taking a step in the right direction, by inspiring some social experiment or technological advancement that transfers back to and transforms the old world. It took the British North American colonies adapting their familiar ways and new ideas to a new social and physical environment to evolve the British system of rights and self-governance to the next level, for example. The transportation, communications, and navigation needs that arose from building and maintaining colonies in the New World drove the development of technologies that in turn make the modern world (for all its problems) far more "near-perfect" than it had been.

Post: #69

I'd absolutely love it if we took all of the fat feminists and put them on a shuttle to mars and forgot about them. That would make life on Earth a lot better for sure.

Post: #70

(09-30-2016 10:06 AM)eradicator Wrote:  I'd absolutely love it if we took all of the fat feminists and put them on a shuttle to mars and forgot about them. That would make life on Earth a lot better for sure.

No. Send them to Venus. Toxic, corrosive, overheated, and surrounded by an impenetrably dense fog that admits no light - it's the perfect colony world for feminists.

Post: #71

I don't see why so many of these programs to Mars (mainly the MarsOne program) are hell-bent on telling people it's a one-way trip. If the first settlers arrived on Mars in say 2028, you would assume that most of them would live for at least another 50 years. I can't believe that in that 50 years the technology to make return flights from Mars won't be around.

I suspect it is more of a codeword to say that the chance of death is quite high. But these people all know what they are going to undertake, so power to them.

Long-term, we HAVE to colonize Mars. It could be terra-formed. We are going to need to escape the solar system within the next 500 million years too, so they will have to find a way of building portable, small fusion reactors.

I would like to visit the moon or mars before I die. How lucky are we to be living in this generation of humans that have a chance to go to ANOTHER PLANET. After Mars, we will have the moons of the gas planets to explore and settle on.

Imagine telling someone in 1960 that in 100 years humans might be on the moons of Saturn.

Post: #72

So...who's gonna be the first to get that Mars flag?

Post: #73

If there are intelligent life out there in space and they are following humans for the past 5000 years its likely that one thing has stood out to them; that we are master engine makers.

In 100 years out of the past 20,000 we have built some of the most remarkable engines. In less than 1% of our civilization we have built cars, trains, planes and rockets, with most of the real advancements coming in the last 50 years.

We are due for another leap in engine technology. I give it another 5 years before we start seeing better ways of traveling through space. Space is quite easy to engineer for. Its perfect, just follow the math and physics. Out biggest issue is an engine and fuel problem which make the distance problem even greater.

Post: #74

(09-29-2016 08:25 PM)weambulance Wrote:  Even the moon may be too far away to rapidly send help if they have an acute emergency, depending on the problem. And at its closest, Mars is 142 times farther away than the moon. Anyone on Mars will be on their own, in a way nobody has been before.

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise ya kids.