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If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:2)
I selected 2030 - 2035 because if we haven't done it by 2035 it would never happen and before that it's not feasible, but we have to start planning now to be able to do it.
Re: If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:1)
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Trump is working hard on annoying everyone.
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I agree on that. But also look at Puttin's love for unconventional nuclear arms. They are working on something extraordinarily (life threatening, stupid?, use your favourite noun). It's as if they are planning it together... or is that too much of a conspiracy? Lets rely on the fear of MAD... and America and the second Rus' union will be great again.
And... maybe that's the price we have to pay for people walking on Mars... Because there is finally an indisputably human made need / threat that makes a second
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(Yes I know. It's not a noun but an adjective. Stupid grammar stuff. Sorry.)
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Project Pluto?
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We need more than a Mickey Mouse project.
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I agree on that. But also look at Puttin's love for unconventional nuclear arms. They are working on something extraordinarily (life threatening, stupid?, use your favourite noun)
Yea, it's called an "Election Year."
Re: If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:1)
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yeah, but do they believe in science as a tool to outdo their opposition?
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10 years ago i would have voted 'later than 2050'. I figured we surely will get there, question is when, will it even be this century.
But recent developments in the commercial space industry, one player in particular, seems to (want to) shift it a bit earlier in time.
So the question is, what is realistic. 2020's is too early, besides, we'd need to ship a truckload of supplies there before we send humans. But 2030's.. feasible.
So i arrived at the same 2030-2035 time slot as you, but with opposing argumentati
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Same here, but I voted 2026~2030 instead. Elon is in a hurry to reach Mars, and he has a legion of top-grade engineers who feel the same. Since the Falcon Heavy is now flying, the Dragon-2 is nearing completion, and the block-5 boosters are in production, by the end of this year SpaceX will be able to devote nearly all of their R&D efforts toward the BFR and Mars. Given what they've achieved in the last 10 years, I'm betting they can at least manage a "flags & footprints" mission by the end of 2029.
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I'm betting they can at least manage a "flags & footprints" mission by the end of 2029.
No can do, unless you massively oversize the rocket to go Mars-Earth when it's out of alignment you can't really do that. Once you go you're fairly committed to stay a cycle which means a long term habitat and a few years worth of supplies.
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Well, not to nitpick, but... a full "cycle" stay would still qualify as "at least" a flags & footprints mission, no? More to the point, I'm basing this prediction on SpaceX getting the BFR into regular service in the meantime. The ability to lift 150t to LEO in fully reusable mode ought to qualify as "massively oversized" for a rocket... and that's not even counting on-orbit refueling, which should be standard practice by then anyway.
Elon seems to be "betting the farm" on the BFR. Once the BFR is flying
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How do you figure that it has to be now or never? Never is a long, long time. In that time period, the United States will no longer be a nation, nor will China or Russia or any other country that now exists. 10,000 years ago we were still in the stone age. In the next 10,000 years, WHO KNOWS what we will have accomplished, whether that is self-annihilation or populating the galaxy!
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Who needs money when you have automation? "Computer, print me a fueled spaceship."
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"The IP 'fuelled spaceship' is property of the Disney-Amazon Corporation. You do not own a valid license for this design. Ask Alexa to order you a copy of WALL-E 43."
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nah, the good deal is to sunny, picturesque Venus
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People do not have the money to go to Mars now. They will not have the money in 50 years. Why should they? Your whole argument inconsistent.
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People do not have the money to go to Mars now. They will not have the money in 50 years. Why should they? Your whole argument inconsistent.
You probably aren't paying attention?
The price tag Elon Musk currently estimates for a round trip is about 150.000 USD.
Affordable by most home-owners - currently.
Back to the future: when automation makes all manufactured goods extremely cheap - but the middle class income is gone due to that same automation - the small percentage of people seeking adventure from the previous existing middle class will become too small in numbers to reach the critical mass of one million mars-goers to become self sustai
Re: If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:2)
First, you look very much through the eyes if an US citizen. There is and will be middle class in other countries, e.g., France, Denmark, Germany and even China. Second, if you are a home owner, you often have a family and cannot throw away $150k. Third, a goal of Elon Musk is not the same as an actual flying device which can keep the price promise. Especially most of the tech necessary does not exist. Until now he has used existing tech and technology concepts which have been evaluated for decades. This is
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First, you look very much through the eyes if an US citizen.
That's funny, I am not. Greetings from Belgium, Europe! I might have used some US/English formulations as that's where the majority of the Slashdot public is coming from, but my perspective is VERY international.
There is and will be middle class in other countries, e.g., France, Denmark, Germany and even China.
Welcome to the globalised economy! As soon as there are machines to automate a certain task, they will automate that task globally - except maybe in those cases where workers are still cheaper than the capital expense necessary for the machines. But even FoxCon is now robotising while they do have
Re: If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:2)
You probably aren't paying attention?
The price tag Elon Musk currently estimates for a round trip is about 150.000 USD.
Affordable by most home-owners - currently.
I'm not sure you understand what affordable means. Most homeowners might have a house worth 150k. Very few are going to actually have 150k of equity in that house and even if they do, most people their largest asset is the equity in their house and even if you are single, spending your entire equity on a single trip to mars is nowhere close to affordable.
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Back to the future: when automation makes all manufactured goods extremely cheap - but the middle class income is gone due to that same automation - the small percentage of people seeking adventure from the previous existing middle class will become too small in numbers to reach the critical mass of one million mars-goers to become self sustaining over there.
So what you're saying is, in the future, all the rich people will have hidden in Galt's Gulch with their marvelous technology, and since they're the only job creators no one else will have jobs? I see that prediction here a lot these days. When did so many Slashdotters become Ayn Rand fans?
Setting aside that automation for the past 150 years has only made the middle class grow, consider this: it's precisely the lowest-skilled (and thus lowest-paid) jobs that get replaced by automation. I worry about a fu
Re:If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:5, Funny)
For example, I pay nothing to shitpost on Slashdot.
Just because your mom pays the internet and utility bills doesn't mean your shitposting is cost-free, sonny.
Re: If we don't do it soon, then never. (Score:2)
Why not take a criminals serving life sentences (non violent types of course) and use them as a test subject ?
What type of non-violent crime gives you a life sentence? Nothing I can think of in the USA.
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We'd probably be much better off if the aliens thought a bunch of incarcerated stoners were our politicians than if they met our actual politicians.
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A lot of the doomsday predictors say that we'll start running out of natural resources to build something as complex as a Mars rocket and lander by 2050. I don't buy it myself, but I've heard it prognosticated before.
Never (Score:2)
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The distinction is important because if the reason for doing it is the "backup plan" argument, we shouldn't depend on it, instead we should spend our efforts fixing the way we treat the planet we currently live on.
I'm don't think those two options are mutually exclusive. In fact, I think that trying to create a complete ecosystem in gradually larger and larger bottles may give people the perspective they need to realize that the planet we live on is just a really big container and we still need to take the same precautions we would trying to live in any other.
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Getting them back won't happen, walking on the exposed surface won't happen, but lava tubes are going to be miles to tens of miles in diameter and will allow access to heavily shielded regions of the planet, fresh water and whatever life is still there. Which would be the main scientific reason for going, robot explorers can't study such caves and therefore can't study such life.
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That's the one. That's all it means. Someone just has to get there and exit the spacecraft alive. If they do more, that's swell, but getting a single person there, who staggers out of the craft, tears off his helmet in madness and dies 2 minutes after landing, is enough to count.
The reason for doing it would be to p
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I think you're over-complicating this. "Walk on Mars" surely means "first boots on the ground", and will be an exploratory there-and-back mission like the moon mission. I'm not sure how one could reasonably interpret the phrase in any other way. If the intent was to predict the timeline for a self-sustaining colony, the question would have been "when will humans permanently colonize Mars?"
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There is a significant chance that whoever becomes the first person to walk on mars will also be the first person to die on mars, or at least will need to wait decades before a return trip becomes feasible.
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Trying to refuel a lander on the surface is just asking for trouble. Throw enough fuel into Mars orbit, and you can fuel your lander for both descent and ascent there. That way the tricky bits are done before you decide to land.
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Never is a long, long time.
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Quite likely they will die before (Score:2)
I
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Because. We. Can.
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Because. We. Can.
Dumbest. Rationale. Ever.
You know, we can nuke ourselves into oblivion too... why not?
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This is Slashdot, News for Nerds.
If you can't make the distinction between those two outcomes, then maybe this place isn't for you.
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Because-we-can motivates some people regardless of dumbness. What reason is there to climb Everest? (All I can think of is: to impress chicks after you get back down from there.)
Do you think that's uncommon? I bet plenty of people who go apeshit and murder a bunch of people+self, are motivated by such a whim. So turn it around: if you can mass-murder, why not something "cool" instead? Lulz is lulz.
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No, actually we can't. Realistic predictions show a worst case scenario of about 50% of Russia and US populations (add China into the mix these days). Other nations would be relatively unaffected by first/second strike. Nuclear winter might bump that to 50% of the world population. For a little light reading try "On Thermonuclear War" By Herman Kahn.
This is a worst case scenario because it postulates that all warheads are trained on the most population dense areas, rather than military bases, etc.
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Let's see. The journey. The FDA have approved suspended animation techniques, so the immune system should be unaffected. There's no need for life support, so replace it with radiation shielding. Radiation is now a non-issue.
Landing should not be a problem, Beagle II landed just fine, as have about a third of all other landers. They can survive far less than any human, so if they can manage it, we can.
Living would be inside of a lava tube. You seal it at two points with airlocks and then turn the tube into a
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Let's see. The journey. The FDA have approved suspended animation techniques,
That's the same FDA that still allows Seraquil XR, a dangerous psychotropic narcotic that's been banned across Europe and Asia, to be sold in the US?
Good luck with that.
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5 minutes with Google will show you that it is a real thing. Of course, it's only good for about 2 hours right now, and only approved for when the patient is going to die anyway, but that's how new medical technologies sometimes begin.
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I still have to understand why some people are so eager to embark for such a deadly experience.
Why does Rice play Texas?
Where's CowboyNeal (Score:3)
I chose Never because predicting things is very hard, especially when it concerns the future. So we need a CowboyNeal option here.
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CowboyNeil is already on Mars.
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CowboyNeil went to Venus, because it's more feasible and he gets to keep his bones.
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CowboyNeal is dead and gone from an older era of Slashdot. You're in a new world now.
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He's not dead yet. He comes around every once in a while still. But he is old and tired, that is true.
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Darn (Score:2)
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Damn fool thing to do, which is why we'll do it... (Score:2)
I was torn between a within-my-lifetime option and the big-50-year-window option. I finally went optimistic on the basis of logarithmic advances in technology, though in practical terms I think it would be silly to go before robots had gone first and done all the groundwork. The Subject: is about why we won't be willing to wait that long.
Having said that, I'm not much interested in Mars. Perhaps reading too many of the Culture books from Banks has spoiled me and raised my expectations too high?
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This is missing a "much later" option (Score:2)
My personal guess would be 200-500 years from now, but only if we can keep civilization going. Be on the Moon with actually no dependency on Earth for, say 50-100 years, then we can talk Mars.
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In deed. And again. People have learned nothing from history.
2100 or later (Score:2)
Cockroaches are not interested in Mars (Score:2)
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I Am Coffee Of Borg. Eating Is Irrelevant. You Will Be Percolated.
Now that SpaceX has the heavy lifter (Score:2)
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You don't need humans to survive the trip, though. Hawking pointed out all you need is a bunch of test tube babies launched in the general direction of Mars. The landing only has to be soft enough for a zygote.
However, if you do want actual humans, it's not too bad. The FDA approved suspended animation techniques. That means that as long as you have a Biosphere II environment on Mars, you don't need to carry any life support. Replace that with radiation shielding and you should be fine for the journey.
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I think figuring out how to raise a zygote into a functioning human adult without any human adults present is a MUCH more difficult problem to solve than how to get an adult human to Mars. The former requires advances in basic science, the latter is just an engineering problem. Perhaps the zygote strategy makes more sense if you are looking for interstellar travel. Biosphere II was sort of a failure- we still haven't figured out how to keep a small environment like that habitable without outside supplies co
Even if we do... (Score:2)
We could do this in 15 years, without space suits. (Score:2)
Teraforming isn't necessary. Just redevelop a lava tube as a Biosphere II substitute with artificial lighting. That can be done by machine and it would take about 15 years to complete. You then have a completely habitable, self-maintaining biosphere inside of Mars that you can extend (underground) at will.
This requires losing most of the risk averse nature, the paranoia towards science, and the hesitation towards investing with a return that isn't in the next quarter or even next quarter century. We're talk
NEVER! (Score:2)
Old guy here, I remember in 1960s "we'll have men on Mars in 1980s." In 1970s, "we'll have men on Mars in 1990s." In 1980s, "we'll have men on Mars in 2000s." VSE in 2004, "we'll have men on Mars in 2020s." These days, "we'll have men on Mars in 2030s."
See the trend, it will always be 20 years into the future people will be on Mars (and to do above was cut/paste then change a couple numbers).
Kind of like that MLM crap where people keep losing their money in hopes to strike it rich sometime in the future
Do you remember early 60s? (Score:2)
You can do it now (Score:2)
As long as Elon Musk goes, it's all good (Score:2)
I understand that the first trips are one-way.
Divine intervention (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'm pretty sure the tribulation will reduce the number of people interested in going to Mars to just about 0 and will eliminate their ability to actually do so for a long time thereafter so I voted never.
I'll acknowledge in advance that date setting is pointless, but remember that God's timing has always been about Israel. It'll be 70 years this year since Israel became a nation again. The establishment of Israel as a country and the return of the Jewish people was the last bit of prophecy that still need
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Then, roughly seven years post rapture
This is a Sci-Fi thread, not a Fantasy thread.
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The word rapture does not appear, but the process which has been termed the rapture of the church by Christianity is indeed described in 1 Thess. 4.
Maybe He's trying to get your attention. He does care about you, you know. Third time's the charm.
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The second coming is when Christ returns to Earth to establish His millennial reign. The appearance to Paul and the rapture of the church is a return in the clouds - not to Earth to stay for an extended period. Other scriptures about this are 1 Cor. 15:51-58 and Titus 2:11-13. The rapture described in the verses you quoted precedes the second coming by the duration of the tribulation period.
1 Thess. 5:1-10 and verse 9 in particular supports that the rapture precedes the tribulation period. 2 Thess. 2:1-9
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Christians refer to it as the second coming. The Bible is largely silent on Christ's specific activities post ascension and pre rapture. In the Bible it is typically called the day of the Lord.
I think the phrase you're missing is from 1 Thess. 4:17 where it says Christians living at the time of the rapture "shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air". This is why we don't specifically believe the rapture will involve His return to Earth. If He were to come to Earth at
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I think you misread my last comment. What I was trying to get across was that if there was no chance of Christ returning for the faithful at some random time then people would, by their sinful nature, spend much more time living in a non-Christian manner than they do now under the assumption that they could make things right when they got on in years and had lost interest in drugs, sex, and rock and roll to quote a cliche. It is bad enough now. I think the chance of the rapture happening at any time has kep
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Wait, I thought the Antichrist would arrive presenting himself as Christ and lure people into a twisted version of Christianity. That seems like it would be particularly easy after the rapture.
Of course, a more reasonable reading of Revelation has everything there happening centuries ago, as it was thinly disguised descriptions of powerful people alive at the time, but that's just boring.
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[even though that's not in the Bible, we made this shit up]
What's in the Bible is also stuff that was made up.
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Yep. No doubt parts are inspired by true events though. Like every other fictional novel.
Very hard to grok (Score:2)
But we shouldn't turn it into a mining colony unless we want to pay royalties to the archangel Gabriel
The bigger question (Score:2)
Humans on Mars?
or
Male Contraceptive?
More importantly, (Score:2)
But first... (Score:2)
First we have to walk on the moon. For real this time.
Thousands Martian ago... (Score:2)
too fine-grained (Score:2)
My guess is that it will either happen during the 21st century or not at all. There's enough interest in the idea that if we don't manage to get at least one person from one country there in the next century, the only possible explanation will be that we no longer have the capability--probably because we are rapidly heading for extinction, and the first creature from Earth to walk on Mars will have to be our successors in a few million years.
But trying to pin it down to a specific decade? That's just silly.
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since even eternal optimist Elon Musk doesn't think it can be done before 2030
Are you sure? [youtu.be]
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Sorry to break the news to you, but only Technical Challenges stood between the Roman Empire and putting a division of Legionnaires on Mars. They were somewhat bigger, sure, but that is a totally meaningless thing to say.
Same with NASA and Mars, same with Roskosmos and Mars and same with you and your Mars dream. Technical Challenges, all the way.
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You drank the koolaid. Look at the number of countries with space agencies successfully working in near earth orbit. Now look at the number of failed inter-planetary missions. Now realize those are all unmanned.
Going to another planet is hard even when you don't have to deal with fragile fleshbags and their annoying life support requirements.