Heads up, Mars Rover Landing

Why bother with the probes if your not going to do anything with the information?

I think it's better to emphasize the squishiness and meatiness than the aqueous base.

Even so, those bags dry out mightily fast in a hard vacuum, you have to admit. They'll be preserved very nicely though (minus the cellular damage).

Now you're just being absurd. What else were they going to do, float a dinghy on a tow rope, wait for it to go out, then haul it back and hope for spices to appear? Don't forget how many died on those voyages. Not that that mattered; death was common back then, and states were more eager to grow their empires.

Neither the expense of launching "spam in a can", nor the loss of human life, is tolerable today. We have much cheaper, and much better, ways of doing things, ways that couldn't be dreamed of.

Remember further, few of the earliest explorers, settlers or pilgrims were even moderately prepared for survival, during the journey and in the wilderness. And that's landing on a continent covered in green stuff. There's food and shelter anywhere you look, you just have to know where to go and what to pick. And they couldn't even do that.

Later on, once we've gotten enough infrastructure out there (in orbit, on the Moon, asteroids, Mars, etc.) that we can have life support available, then, and only then, can humans move in, and again do some truely amazing things. But that's only possible once they can be self sufficient. This might be another 50-100 years -- which by a more suitable analogy with history, seems reasonable.

Tim

So much for 'Freeze Dried Colonists, just add water'. ;-)

In the first place it was a Star Trek 'joke' referencing one of their episodes but, in the second, it illustrates just how utterly meaningless and irrelevant assigning 'cutesy' names like "meat-sacks" is.

That the technology exists to put your, so called, "meat sacks" into space, have them perform useful tasks, and return safely to earth is not open to debate as it's been done for half a century. In fact, there are 6 "meat sacks" up there right now, not that the U.S. has any capability to get them there or back.

I tried to ignore the stupidity of you claming anyone suggested putting people in a vacuum but you seem to insist on acting stupid.

I will never understand why people will throw out things like "absurd" and then proceed to commit the offense in spades. Is it that you were trying to 'warn' me you're about to go insane?

I can see why you don't want to go; your technical expertise apparently extends no further than dinghies.

No one suggested you be conscripted for the adventure and turning people away is an infinitely more difficult problem than finding an amply supply of well informed volunteers chomping at the bit.

But I suggest you stay away from airplanes and automobiles too because those things can kill you and, of course, 'even just one life' is too much.

Good thing you weren't around then but what the hell has that, or any of the above babbling for that matter, got to do with manned space flight? No one suggested soliciting a group of disenfranchised Christians to travel by wooden sailing ship to another planet and dumping them there; good luck, bye.

Nor, in fact, did I say a damn thing about going to Mars, although I'm game. What I said is we now have ZERO manned space flight capability... to the ISS, or anywhere else... none, nada. And that that hardly comports with the self serving 'boast' by the 'help Muslim nations feel good' administration of "leadership in space."

If you want to discuss 'the best way' to accomplish it that's a different topic but this administration doesn't have a rational 'vision' or plan for anything, including 'space exploration'.

The entire thing was a hoax, much like AGW:

flipper wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

the ONLY way we will have "enough infrastructure" out in space is if MEN go out and BUILD IT. we can use robots to gather data,but not to build infrastructure,particularly man-rated infrastructure.

MEN have to learn the skills of working and building in space or low gravity environments like the Moon or Mars. We need to build on the Moon first,because it's nearby and we can get back and forth quicker. Only after we've gotten competent there should we send men to Mars. No one-way trips,no suicide missions.

Only if we forget we sent them.

"Stranger in a Strange land"

If the purpose is to establish a permanent colony, then sending a few scores of fertile women and some frozen test tubes on a one-way trip to a location prepped by robotics could do the trick-- with enough genetic diversity.

That's a great book even if it is total fantasy.

That one isn't science fiction, or even fantasy, it's half-baked religion.

Heinlein, remember, was the one who bet L. Ron Hubbard that Hubbard couldn't make more money starting a religion than he did writing science fiction. Heinlein lost, and it seems like he wanted a try himself.

Pure drivel.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

No, it's only 99.44% pure drivel. ;-)

The bet is real, but the denigration of Heinlein is a bit unfair. There is more to the book than pseudoreligions; it also addresses power politics, social conventions, some bits of Whorf's hypothesis, and some other related issues.

?-)

Jerk source for a jerk poster.

?-/

??? STTNG?