• From: Van Dieman's Land
  • Registered: 2011-06-02
  • Posts: 1,358
  • User Karma: 233

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

Thought experiment: What would it be like after landing?

Let's assume a perfect trip to Mars with no zero-gravity or comic radiation concerns...
And I'll further concede a perfect landing with unlimited air and food and no solar radiation concerns...
You touch down, you don your suit and open the hatch...

You see a plain of red rocks. In all directions. Average temperature is about -100. Atmosphere is a near vacuum. Land surface area = Earth's land surface area. So what do you do?

After the initial euphoria, you kick some rocks around. Hit a golf ball. Send some twitpics.

You wonder what's over the horizon. You're an 'explorer' after all. And this is so 'cool', right?

Except you ALREADY KNOW what's over the horizon as the entire planet is mapped in 30cm/pixel resolution. MRO HiRise and Mars Express and subsequent missions have scanned the entire planet in HD. You can Google Mars it. So you're not really exploring unknown virgin territory. So what could you possibly do that warrants the $100 billion price tag?

Collect some rocks for sample return? Sure. But a rover could do that too. Slower, sure, but 1000X cheaper.

After Day #3, when you're sick of wearing the suit and breathing an artificial atmosphere and eating freeze-dried food and the sight of endless plains of red rocks, the 'cool' factor will surely start to wear thin.

How long before you're longing for the green and blue of Earth? Beaches. Bikinis. Real food. Variety of company. The wind on your face as you're driving a convertible?

For $100 billion, I'd want Pandora, not a barren monochrome frigid wasteland.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq5y7bg3661qc823io1_500.jpg

not long to go now...

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  • From: Maryland
  • Registered: 2012-07-08
  • Posts: 398
  • User Karma: 78

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

^
||

clap

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  • From: Montpellier, France
  • Registered: 2011-12-05
  • Posts: 1,141
  • User Karma: 497

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

I concur.

(though, beaches, really? Give me mountains and forets any day.)

Sébastien Fraud
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  • Dave
  • Dave
  • Australian Correspondent
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  • From: Melbourne, Australia
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,594
  • User Karma: 341

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

Were you Parisian, you would be craving cigarettes, dog poop, and ridiculous traffic.

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  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

Personally, while I am not one who wants to actually go, I admire those who do. Its similar to the Moon-there were several Apollo missions and the terrain was a little less hospitable than Mars.
I think with Mars there is more to it than just what avatar posted, though I certainly understand his point of view. The point, I think, is the challenge of it, just like past explorers. Whether it makes rational, logical sense, it is still apart of humanity.

I don't think that the government should underwrite it completely. It will probably take a combination of private enterprise and public funds to create the project, develop the test parameters, training and technology to make it work. Yeah, it might take a little for-profit motivation, but that's not all bad. It motivated Columbus, Hudson, and several other explorers, for good or for ill.

God loves you!

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  • From: Kent, England
  • Registered: 2010-02-09
  • Posts: 1,327
  • User Karma: 146

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

In reality, you wouldn't have much time to get bored or sick of your new surroundings. If you read and listen to the people who spent days on the moon, which is as equally desolate as Mars, you never get any sort of impression that this how they felt. Similarly, the folks who spent months on the ISS aren't the type of people to mope and pine over luxuries.

You wouldn't want to go, sure, and you would undoubtedly experience what you describe, but there are plenty of others who would want to go and wouldn't feel the same. The first people to land on Mars will want to go and will want to be there. It will be both a passion and a job for them. And their daily tasks will keep them occupied for months and months. There will be a wide range of experiments, classes with school children, maintenance jobs, geological expeditions, gardening, rock analysis (the whole point is that you bring the man and lab to Mars, not bring the rock to the man and lab), personal research projects, photography opportunities, etc. quite aside from the fact that you are living and working on FUCKING MARS.

Perhaps most significantly, they'll be scientists working in a completely different setting doing what no-one else has done and can do. I really wouldn't underestimate this.

Also, Mars isn't like Tatooine at all. It's not just a sea of reddish rocks. There are mountain ranges, canyons, gorges, etc. It is, to borrow a phrase, magnificent desolation. The view from a rover is far more interesting than a satellite picture, no matter how HD it is, and the view from actual eyes in a human head would be even more interesting.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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  • Dave
  • Dave
  • Australian Correspondent
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  • From: Melbourne, Australia
  • Registered: 2009-12-01
  • Posts: 1,594
  • User Karma: 341

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

I love this place.

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  • From: Red Deer, AB
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 4,044
  • User Karma: 664

Re: Someone hold Brian back.

Red, you forgot this.

http://i.imgur.com/TBpRfIv.gif

ZangrethorDigital.ca

BigDamnArtist's Website

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