Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid. In fact, it's cold as hell.
i would, i don't like both my lives, would love to try something third and/or just vanish
Wow, read, that's really sad. I hope things get better for you in this life. Or, failing that, that Mars pans out as your third option.
Aw, read. No vanishing, but perhaps a change of scenery would help. I imagine Mars to look like Arizona.
Hell, I don't like my windows closed. I don't enjot the five minute drive to the store. I walk miles every day.
No, I wouldn't live in a tin can (small, than maybe bigger) for the rest of my life.
You can bet that the people sent to explore the oceans for the glory of their state sponsors didn't leave with the attitude, why bother coming back? Meanwhile, lots of colonists generally had ideas of making enough money enough money to come back or building some kind of stable life on the other side. Don't waste federal money pretending that going to Mars is just like that.
I don't have any idea why some aspects of the space program make me angry. I like the satellites & stuff.
Sure, if I suffer a catastrophic personal tragedy and am a broken man. And can still communicate with Earth.
Sending people to Mars is just a really fucking stupid idea.
Girl in Landscape is a good book about the kind of people who might do this.
On the other hand, isn't California having a prison overcrowding problem? Convicts were a major part of early new world settlement.
Wow, where to even start with something like that?
(13 to the linked article, of course.)
Some of the early English explorations of the Arctic, in the 16th century, were precisely the sort of expedition described in the article. Of course, the people that they were planning on leaving up there were more along the lines of convicts than not.
Anyway, as eb noted, this part just isn't really true at all:
Colonists and pilgrims seldom set off for the New World with the expectation of a return trip, usually because the places they were leaving were pretty intolerable anyway.
With a very few exceptions, most Europeans who went to the New World voluntarily did so with the intention of quickly making enough money there to return home and live in luxury. Almost none succeeded, of course, and many who did succeed ended up staying and living in relative luxury in America, but there's a clear tendency in this country to vastly overstate the importance of fleeing religious persecution as a motive for colonial settlement, and that's clearly the assumption behind this statement. Even the Puritans went back and forth quite a bit.
I don't have any idea why some aspects of the space program make me angry.
Around the time then-President Bush announced an increased focus on Mars, I went to a trivia night, the kind where you pick a funny name, and the team with the funniest name wins a free pitcher of beer or something. That night's winner, apt to eb's point above, was "Fuck the poor; we're going to Mars!"
Well, it's pretty geeky, and I don't want to give spoilers, not that many would care, but I have often wondered if Thomas Disch's On Wings of Song us a fairly direct response to Frederik Pohl's Man-Plus Structurally related, complete opposites in over obvious ways, different kinds of misanthropy, and the timing I think works.
Damn if the Cover doesn't give at least part of the punchline away. I very much identified with Roger Torraway in the 70s when I read it, but damn it is a filthy dark book.
Multi award winner, MP is also an example of "hard" SF as poetic parable. I could definitely see Disch riffing off it.
The idea that we're still aiming to send people to Mars while the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission has been shelved is just insane.
But seriously, I don't know too much about the English going for the Arctic, but aside from Cabot, didn't most of those voyages have some people come back?
The article linked in the OP did make me wonder: what would be the political status of a ({semi-?}permanent) space colony? Would it be a US territory, a la Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands? Would we (or, maybe, us and a bunch of countries?) claim the whole planet? Would people born there be citizens? Etc. I'd never really thought about that aspect of it before.
Would we claim the whole planet?
Yes, through the cunning use of flags.
I got distracted, but to further elaborate on 10, this:
Moreover, one of the reasons that is sometimes given for sending humans into space is that we need to move beyond Earth if we are to improve our species' chances of survival should something terrible happen back home.
is incredibly fucking stupid.
22: Yeah, the voyages as whole weren't one-way only; Frobisher was sent in the 1570s/80s to investigate the possibility of gold, first, and settlement, second. People were left as a means to determine whether or not settlement was possible for whites, without much expectation that they would be coming home. Joyce Chaplin's Subject Matter is good on this.
I'm not contradicting the overall position you and teo are putting forth; I quite agree, though I do think that in the very early years of exploration more than a few sailors figured that they might well be making one-way voyages.
I remember some guy I went to high school with who was a big Mars enthusiast. I think he works for NASA now. He used to talk about these elaborate schemes for terraforming Mars, and how it could be practical to fine-tune the mixture of gases in the Mars atmosphere to make it livable.
Given our ongoing project to alter Earth's atmosphere to be uninhabitable, I think I'm justified in claiming that imagining we can do make another planet habitable is moronic.
Magellan's expedition for instance--35 out of 237 eventually made it back to Spain.
I quite agree, though I do think that in the very early years of exploration more than a few sailors figured that they might well be making one-way voyages.
Right, but knowing that you might not make it back is quite differently from, say, knowing that you're going to break your ship up into firewood because it's going to be cold, there aren't many trees, and you have nowhere else to go.
Joyce Chaplin's Subject Matter
That was the second book I read in grad school. I can't say I remember it all that well.
I'm all for NASA promoting Mars to Objectivists as a venue for their utopian fantasies. "Going Galt? Go to Mars."
34: But you can't use our socialized space program!
Are they ever going to build that concrete island hell in the middle of the ocean? Come on, libertarians, get your asses in gear!
That's the beauty of it. They'd feel compelled to pay their own way.
You just know they'd send a pony to Mars before they ever got around to it.
I'm completely ignorant of the history, but based solely on human psychology and the belief that it doesn't change over a paltry few hundred years, I'm going to assume that most explorers and colonists expected to return.
Almost every one of the hundreds and hundreds of people I've known who left their original countries fully intended to return, and that is regardless of why they left, how old they were, if they were married at the time, etc. etc. It's a self-protection device as much as anything. Even when a pragmatic external observer would look and say, "You're 79 years old and in poor health, your country has been at war for a decade, your entire family has moved elsewhere -- what on earth makes you think you'll survive to come home?" people still believe they will. And an awful lot of them do...to be buried.
Parenthetical's argument, with which I agree, seems to be that yes, some of the early explorers of the New World were sent out with the distinct possibility that they were not coming back, but that this isn't an aspect of the colonization of the Americas that we should be emulating.
I'm trying to remember why Lawrence Krauss is famous, aside from The Physics of Star Trek. The utter absence of any description of his research from his Wikipedia page, and the lack of anything particularly noteworthy showing up in a database search for highly-cited papers by him, is making me think that's the only reason.
It never occurred to me until seeing this thread that most of the early US colonists might have been intending to return to Europe someday. That wasn't mentioned in class.
And an awful lot of them do...to be buried.
Dramatic Witt!
I mean, at least Stephen Hawking did important things before bloviating about how the future of mankind lies in space.
Almost every one of the hundreds and hundreds of people I've known who left their original countries fully intended to return, and that is regardless of why they left, how old they were, if they were married at the time, etc. etc.
Indeed, this has generally been the case with immigrants from the very beginning of the colonization of the Americas. There are some exceptions, however, and while those are certainly real enough (my great-grandparents had absolutely no intention of ever returning to Russia), they get way more emphasis in the American mythos than they deserve. Which leads to screwy ideas like this one.
43: You should have taken mine! Just today I lectured on this (sort of).
Aw hell, the reviewers at Amazon just don't get the book.
The Earth is destroying itself ecolologically, economically, and politically and desperately needs to colonize Mars in order to dave the species. One scientist volunteers to be physically transformed into a being that could survive on Mars naturally:big bat wings to absorbs sunlight, plate- sized eyes to see better, etc. The process is a series of agonizing surgeries. His changed appearance leads his wife to abandon him and his fellow scientists to be repulsed, but still they experiment carve him up, torture him. Think, you know, James's kid or the Omelas. He endures from duty and responsibility but with growing alienation. 1st punchline:he is turned into a goblin or demon.
En route to Mars, the world goes over the edge and the human race destroys itself. On Mars, he is the last intelligent being in the solar system. And he loves it, is deliriously happy for the first time in years. He is free. I considered it the best possible ending. Not that I want the race to die, but if we are going to do it, I wasn't gonna cry. Fuck us all.
It is a hard-science anti-science book, a humanist misanthropy. A science-fiction book attacking every SF trope. Pohl was on his second peak in the mid-seventies, an amazing achievement.
Night all.
That was the second book I read in grad school.
I read this as "grade school", apropos of yesterday's discussion, and was astonished.
OT: I'm editing a labmate's thesis proposal. It's a disaster of a document: with some careful thought, it becomes clear that his proposed work tests something in the neighborhood of his hypotheses, but it needs a lot of work at every level---sentences, paragraphs, overall structure, you name it. Given that it's part of his candidacy exams, how much help is it appropriate to offer?
44: I wasn't meaning to be dramatic. Just the literal truth. This is the kind of thing I was thinking of. (And I don't trust that priest's assessment of early Irish immigrants at all.)
Remember that Twilight Zone episode where James Whitmore refuses to come back to Earth on the very last ship, and ends up being stranded on some rock in outer space for the rest of his life? I wonder if Lawrence Krauss has seen that episode. It totally made me cry when I was a kid. ("I remember green!" Jesus, that still breaks me up.)
Whether or not people anticipated returning home during the Age of Discovery, I think it's safe to assume that they generally didn't expect to die on a distant fucking planet incapable of sustaining human life. Christ, what a stupid analogy.
I don't think these people expected to immigrate after their deaths...to be buried.
Early colonists from Europe to the Americas were ON A BOAT!
But not, one presumes, wearing flippy-floppies.
I bet John Winthrop would have looked hawt wearing flippy-floppies.
John Winthrop's eyebrows have a surprisingly sardonic lift.
Yay, finally tracked down the bug I've been hunting for the last four days! Now I can relax and stop calling random people on the internet fucking stupid.
57: He wrote very sweet love letters to his wife, too.
58: Like, actual 6-legged bug? Or the computer sort?
60: The computer sort. Well, combination computer bug and, more to the point, stupidity in the input I was giving the computer. There must be something useful I can do with this talent for turning a one-hour task into a confusing four-day ordeal.
There must be something useful I can do with this talent for turning a one-hour task into a confusing four-day ordeal.
Tantric?
62: become a physicist. Worked for Mr. Bathyscaphe, anyway.
Oh wait.
There must be something useful I can do with this talent for turning a one-hour task into a confusing four-day ordeal.
Management consulting?
59: did he indeed? That's lovely. I'm glad.
66: I just enjoy being surprised by my dour Puritans.
You could start one of those TV documentary series in which the host wanders around aimlessly for as long as possible, while claiming to be "on the trail of", or "in the footsteps of", Jesus or the Jersey Devil or Amelia Earheart or Genghis Khan or some other historical figure.
69: That would be so much fun!
And 73 is just cruel.
"In the Wake of John Cabot: Footprints in Melting Snow"
69 was in the tradition of 63, 64, 65, and 67.
"Massachusetts Bay Colony on 50 Dours a Day"
And also to 68, representing a new vanguard of genuinely ambiguous comment.
AND POSTED ON TWO BLOGS AT ONCE.
"In Search of Anne Bradstreet's Lost House"
"The Bloody Trail of the Emerson Sisters"
"The Monstrous Births of Anne Hutchinson"
If I didn't know you were still in grad school, I'd think you were my friend who, when we were auditing a lecture course while preparing for exams, upon hearing the name "Anne Hutchinson", leaned over towards me and whispered, "monstrous births."
89: I'm glad to know there are other people out there who immediately associate those two things.
Slightly farther afield: "Tailing Elastic Rat Cunning Through the Maze"
Because it's a phrase too good to die. (Keep 'elastic rat cunning' on a respirator! Your death panels won't get this one!)
I'm on a major planetary astrophysics kick right at this exact moment -- taking a break from writing code to randomly generate planets orbiting hypothetical stars. I'm gonna explore the fuckers virtually. Fuck you, clown(s).
97: Don't! 80 is especially good. (I'm not really here.)
"I'd Rather Have a Sliced Tomatl in Front of Me Than Frontier Tomography"
||
I've just hacked off a significant portion of my hair. Weird feelings abound.
|>
70 et al: "We're Not OK, You're Worse".
"We're Not OK: The History of Indian Territory"
"Riding the Circuit: Methodism in Action"
"On the Hot Seat, hosted by Jean de Brebeuf"
"Artisanal Rebellion, by Nathaniel Bacon"
Apart from the religious nutters in New England (and South Africa? I don't know enough about the Dutch colonisation of the Cape, but there were a lot of religious nutters involved), I can't think of any significant group of explorers of colonists who didn't have a medium to long term perspective of coming home (rich).
Do you think we could persuade some of the more dangerous fundies in the US that they have a duty to go build a shining city in a crater?
(To clarify, I'm totally in favour of sending people to Mars in principle. The urge to exploration is an important part of what makes us human, and we deny it at our peril. I just don't think it's feasible in my lifetime or Barack Obama's.)
I'm too fond of other humans to want to do this, but surely there are some misanthropes for whom the principle is sound. there is a bummer sci-fi story about proles building a habitable mars who have to decide whether to fight for each breath in the expectation of returning to earth with the money from their voluntary servitude or succumb to the ventilator suit which will let them be comfortable but doom them to permanent life on mars. I would personally like the government to spend much more money on unmanned exploration and let crazy people go live on mars on their own dimes. I am also totally pro-terraforming. start smashing comets into that shit right now! truly, I have glenn reynolds-esque levels of techno-optimism.
23: Article II of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (1967), which is ratified by US, says: "Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
re: 112
That'll all change once they discover the dilithium crystals...
"ratified by the US", eh? that settles it, then, for sure.
I would personally like the government to spend much more money on unmanned exploration and let crazy people go live on mars on their own dimes.
This sounds exactly right. Never doubt that such people will be found, or find each other. They will certainly persuade themselves that they've done it all themselves and that the vital preparatory exploration done by the government is somehow out of the picture. But fuck em, we'll know better. And the first dozen or so attempts will all die anyway.
truly, I have glenn reynolds-esque levels of techno-optimism.
Once we establish property rights on Mars, the free enterprise system will have warp drives in a week!
I did like the Krauss's idea of sending up old people: it's not like they're doing any good down here.
28: I believe the correct term for our current efforts to change the Earth's climate is "Marsiforming," or perhaps "Venusificatoin."
110
Do you think we could persuade some of the more dangerous fundies in the US that they have a duty to go build a shining city in a crater?
Unfortunately, they seem to have their hearts set on the reverse.
I'm not a fan of the mission to Mars, or most manned space flight in general (umanned probes, on the other hand, are the coolest things ever). But I'd take a one-way trip to Mars in a heartbeat. Especially if it were the first manned voyage there. Obviously, it would depend on the exact circumstances of what I'd be doing there, the conditions in which I'd be doing it, how many books I could take and the quality of the broadband connection (joke), but still. It's fucking Mars.
Some blogger asked a while back whether you'd be an astronaut if the chances of dying were 1/10 rather than the 1/100 officially estimated for one shuttle launch, and again, I'd say hell yes. I might not if I were already an astronaut and had been in space, but to do it for the first time?
Re: the NYT article linked in the original post, don't feed the trolls. Conflating "the next decade or two" and "a century or two"? Determining interest in one-way trips by asking for a show of hands? Jesus.
I get that we're killing our planet and Waterworld was overly optimistic and all that, but there's a huge difference between exploring and settling, and it's very hard to imagine a situation in which deep space (where anyone going to Mars would have to spend a year or so on the way) is more hospitable than Antarctica.
I did like the Krauss's idea of sending up old people: it's not like they're doing any good down here.
This is actually a key part of Obama's health care plan.
I believe the correct term for our current efforts to change the Earth's climate is "Marsiforming," or perhaps "Venusificatoin."
Depends on if you believe the men or the women are to blame.
I did like the Krauss's idea of sending up old people: it's not like they're doing any good down here.
cf Bill Hick's line about using old people as stunt doubles.
Incidentally, I think Krauss is famous beyond his scientific output mainly because he's pretty active in the skeptical movement and in the ID/evolution "debate". Though the Star Trek book no doubt helped him with the geek cred.
Honestly, you all ought to read Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars."
Yes, we're short on cash. Yes, we're short on resources. But ... MARS!
125: God damn it, I just saw this and I was going to say that if I could be part of the First Hundred I would gladly leave tomorrow. Actually, given the way work is going, I would leave today if I could stop at home for a few odds and ends first.
Mars!
118: I think you'd use the stems, and thus "martiforming" or "venerification" (I like that one!). Just sitting in for neb, here.
Hershey!
All true, but we're barely past the dreaming stage here. I'm sure the Montgolfiers looked forward to transatlantic aerial commerce, but they flew a ballon, which was way cool at the time. Let's not loose the vision, but let's do it right. People didn't actually learn to fly by sticking feathers to their arms with wax.
Parenthetical is Samuel Eliot Morison!
When I was a baby, he went to the same church as my family. He looked down on me once and said, "Bless you, my child."
Has everyone completely given up on space colonies? I want to live in a habitat at L-5, with the main rotating part for gravity and the zero-G section for manufacturing and general coolness.
Generally, I'm with Frowner and Ginger Yellow. Not that it's sane, or anything, but if my responsibilities allowed for it, I'd have a hell of a time turning down a ticket to Mars if the prospects were anything better than a short-term suicide mission. I've spent too much time reading about this shit to react any other way.
Not that it's remotely practical -- I'm talking about how I'd react if the funding, technical problems and so forth were all solved. And if they needed middle-aged lawyers.
if they needed middle-aged lawyers
Matters legal are given far too little gravitas in space.
118: I think you'd use the stems, and thus "martiforming" or "venerification" (I like that one!)
Yeah, we need an ad campaign. "Global Warming: The Earth has a venereal disease. And it's your fault."
and the zero-G section for manufacturing and general coolness sex
If I didn't have kids (and thus, potential grandkids), I'd be in line right behind Frowner and LB.
I'm amazed at how many people actually want to do this.
If earth-originated organizationally complex arrangements of matter ever get to where they have a significant long-term role to play beyond our planet they will almost certainly be in a form factor different than our current brain-in-a-leaky-bag (which is so well adapted to this relatively wet and atmosphered place). Biggest challenge is sticking around long enough in the present form to even have a chance of being a part of making it happen.
Something entirely different from anything you, or anybody else, has seen or experienced before? It's goofy, but you've got to see the basis for the attraction.
136, 137: Why is it so surprising? If you haven't got dependants and you've been obsessed with space since childhood, is it not fairly easy to see the appeal? To be honest, I've been kind of surprised at how few people on here have said they'd do it, but I guess more of you have kids than I thought.
139: I suppose I can kind of see the appeal on an intellectual level, but it sure doesn't appeal to me on any level.
139, 140: Agree. I don't necessarily find the urge "rational", or have it myself, but I think it is quite understandable given ample facts in evidence re: human motivation and aspirations.
Also, the first one of these reminds me of the Great Unfogged Rap Battle of ought-9.
Also also (I think AWB will like this one).
But space is uninhabitable. And I see no evidence that there's any way to make it inhabitable.
But then you don't like music either, teo. Maybe space travel only appeals to people whose souls aren't dead. Or something.
I once got in a giant fight with a boyfriend (in like 1989) because when asked the question, "So if aliens came and offered to take you in their flying saucer and show you the universe but you had to drop everything and go that second and not tell anyone would you go?" his reply was "HELL YES." And then I was all, "You wouldn't eeeeeeven tellllll meeeeeee?!?!?!"
Maybe space travel only appeals to people whose souls aren't dead.
Counterpoint: LB.
But space is uninhabitable
New Mexico, on the other hand...
I think it is quite understandable given ample facts in evidence re: human motivation and aspirations.
Really? Generalizing this sort of thing is kind of a waste of time, of course, but I tend to think of people as being generally unmotivated and risk-averse. Explorers get so much attention because they're unusual.
UNINHABITABLE FOR YOU, PINK BOY!
New Mexico, on the other hand...
Totally inhabitable.
On the other hand, maybe this explains it. If you live in New Mexico, who needs space?
I am also in the would totally go on a one way mission to Mars camp. I mean sure I would probably die, but I am going to do that here anyway.
In the abstract, viewed from the perspective of some sci-fi world of magical technology and ponies and unicorns, "trip to Mars" sounds amazing. So, yeah, there's some sense in which it's appealing. But allowing even a minuscule amount of reality into the picture, it sounds insane and awful.
Space exploration thrills me. But I hate being cold, I hate being confined, and I tolerate air travel at best. I might talk myself into an orbital flight if one was offered to me, but I can't imagine wanting to colonize another (frigid, mostly airless) planet. That's what robots are for.
Never ever. I saw what happened to Tim Robbins.
Exactly. I mean, I'm perfectly happy with my life here, but I just don't see how you (ie me) can turn down the opportunity to go to bloody Mars. I mean, only an infinitessimal fraction of the world's population has ever even experienced the glories of space first hand, let alone stepped on another planet. It's the sort of experience you'd (ie I'd) give pretty much anything to do, including my life. You know the formulation "I could die happy, if..." Well, I could.
That doesn't mean I think we as a society should be spending vast amounts of resources to get me (or anyone else) there, however.
I would not go. I do not like cold and dark. Is daytime on Mars considered "dark" if everything is illuminated, but there's insufficient atmosphere to hide the black sky? Also I like being around people, although I suppose you could still comment on Unfogged from Mars.
This post is keeping Rocket Man stuck in my head. I always thought the line "And all the science I don't understand; it's just my job five days a week..." was very clearly not written by someone who likes science.
Im the abstract, viewed from the perspective of some sci-fi world of magical technology and ponies and unicorns
Unicorns and spacesuits don't mix.
Unicorns and spacesuits don't mix.
Truly like safety-pinning a condom to your valentine.
Have I mentioned here the time the college humor magazine I wrote for put out a Valentine's Day pamphlet with a condom stapled to it?
I might talk myself into an orbital flight if one was offered to me, but I can't imagine wanting to colonize another (frigid, mostly airless) planet.
This is a more difficult question for me than the original one. If it were a straight choice between an orbital flight with the ordinary risk of death and a mission to Mars with certain death, I'd probably settle for the orbital flight (almost definitely if it included an EVA). But if it's Mars or bust, then I'd take Mars.
140
If you haven't got dependants and you've been obsessed with space since childhood, is it not fairly easy to see the appeal? To be honest, I've been kind of surprised at how few people on here have said they'd do it,
Like I said in 121, there's a difference between exploration and settling. If I were (and this is a magically, hypothetically, pot-of-gold situation in which there is no chance of failure before the payoff, no investment in preparation, etc.) offered the chance to be on the first ship to Mars, I'd take it, and if that's all we're talking about, fine. But it's not; people are conflating that with permanent settlements. No thanks for me. Again, this world would have to get worse than we can imagine any mechanism of before living on another planet or in deep space looks appealing.
162: It's almost like you weren't sure whether I knew enough music to make the joke you thought I was making.
158: I would not go. I do not like cold and dark.
Would you? Could you?
On a boat?
Biggest mountain in the solar system? Ice caps? Being another freaking planet?
Seriously, though, I have no idea what heebie's talking about.
Elementary schools named after you?
Biggest mountain in the solar system? Ice caps? Being another freaking planet?
The look of wonder in a child's eye? The first time you open a card from a loved one? Getting a hug from a grandmother who you just helped across the street?
Elementary schools named after you?
On Mars?
173: Well, it'd be a home-school for elementary-age children, technically.
The song in 160 is better in context -- on the original album, it's followed by UFO, and then Get it All Together.
People interested in whose shirts you wear?
133
Matters legal are given far too little gravitas in space.
Sounds like Battlestar Galactica is the show for you, then.
157
That doesn't mean I think we as a society should be spending vast amounts of resources to get me (or anyone else) there, however.
Then you agree with me, teo, essear, et al. that the editorial sucks.
171: I like children too much to want that.
if it's Mars or bust, then I'd take Mars cake.
What's so great about Mars, anyway?
To be clear, Mars wouldn't be my abstract choice of suicide mission destinations. That would probably be Enceladus or, if it were feasible, an extra-solar planet.
If it's Mars or bust, I'd take my bust.
I am fairly sure that Mars is not in California.
On the other hand, it does have canals, so I'd like that part.
How come all you Mars-lovers aren't heading off to, say, Antarctica in the meantime? Antarctica is pretty amazing and alien too.
But allowing even a minuscule amount of reality into the picture, it sounds insane and awful.
Funnily enough, insane and awful are words commonly used to describe me.
182: Selfish. A whole planet of dewy-eyed children wiped off the face of the earth universe to satisfy one woman's vanity.
Antarctica is pretty amazing and alien too.
And you can actually go there! And, like, live and work and stuff.
I am fairly sure that Mars is not in California.
Veronica Mars?
I am fairly sure that Mars is not in California.
185: Well, it's not new. Weird and inhospitable, but not new. Ask me in 1890 (with the same caveats about suicide missions) and Antarctica might look more attractive.
Nobody goes to Antarctica anymore. It's too crowded.
Direct human exploration of the solar system is flatly stupid until we have really, really cheap launching capabilities. I think we should spend a good deal of money on probes, absolutely: tons of important returns for the funding. A human-crewed expedition *anywhere* besides near-Earth orbit makes no sense at this point, on the other hand.
The people who cite European exploration and say, "If Columbus had had that attitude, where would we be" not only forget the catastrophic dimensions of European expansion but also usually know nothing about the actual circumstances of European maritime exploration in the 1400-1500s. If we could launch cheaply and there were ready financial returns from human presence in space or on nearby planets/moons/asteroids, then there would be no need to debate what to do next in space: it would be happening already. Barring that, expensive human exploration doesn't produce superior scientific knowledge about the solar system, doesn't produce better R&D dividends than unmanned and robotic probes, and doesn't lead to anything sustainable.
That said:
1) Some early modern maritime explorers were pretty aware that a good proportion of the crew would not return home, and quite a few sailors accepted (admittedly often under pain of execution if they refused) assignments that they realized were likely to be deadly, such as being left off in a place previously unknown to Europeans with instructions to build a fort or get to know the locals. So there is that analogy.
2) If we *did* waste the money on a Mars expedition of this kind, and I was 65 and in good health, sure, I'd go and live out the last five-plus years of my life travelling to and exploring to Mars. I think the idea is a dumb one as an overall project, but personally, if my life circumstances were right, I'd fucking love to do it.
How come all you Mars-lovers aren't heading off to, say, Antarctica in the meantime? Antarctica is pretty amazing and alien too.
Oh, I'd absolutely love to. I just saw the Herzog documentary and was blown away, both by the Herzogian aspects and the place itself. See also my comments about Enceladus. But a) I can't afford it, and b) I've read that Antarctic tourism is doing quite a lot of damage to ecosystems and research projects.
I'd love to do deep ocean exploration too. New species are discovered all the time, and we haven't put in anything like the resources we've put into space exploration.
{scratches head} I've never figured out what the obsession is with Mars over anything else. I'd think you start with the moon with is also lifeless, airless (Mars atmospheric pressure: ~8 millibars), but happens to be nearby and gets more sunshine. It would also be extra ultra-helpful for the getting to Mars if you could, say, travel regularly to the moon and have people living on it testing out all that equipment and crap. In fact, I'd say that if you have the capabilities to go to Mars, you've pretty much got the capabilities to come back, regardless. (Getting into earth orbit is the hard hard hard part. Getting back from earth orbit is the other hard hard hard part.)
Extra bonus: I'm pretty sure Venus (provided you can get to the surface - not at easy) is probably more likely to have interesting fossil lifeforms.
144: But space is uninhabitable. And I see no evidence that there's any way to make it inhabitable.
Which is a problem, since you and everybody else lives there.
Anyways, I would of course go, and if I was old, I'd go even if it'd kill me.
max
['Couldn't be any worse than say, Detroit. Or Lawton, Oklahoma.']
the Herzog documentary and was blown away
Oh yeah. Amazing film on so many levels. I'd go in a skinny minute if anybody here would like to fund my Antarctic vacation.
In college I knew a couple of people who took a year off to go work in Antarctica. It didn't cost them anything -- in fact, they were paid handsomely for their services. And they were essentially unskilled 20-year-olds.
I feel a little guilty about my "with us or against us" attitude in 179 in my response to 157. No one here is saying that spending on a manned Mars mission should be a high priority in the near future. But that's what the editorial linked in original post was asking for, or at least encouraging. Some people are going along with its flights of fancy, and others are saying, "well, sure, that sounds cool, but in real life it doesn't sound like a good idea," and I left out the part before the word "but."
200
I've never figured out what the obsession is with Mars over anything else.
(1) Leftover myths from when people saw geological formations that looked like canals and deduced the contemporary existence of technologically advanced civilizations. (2) It's probably the closest and easiest after the moon, which has already been done.
I just flew in from Earth and boy are my gimbals tired.
Oh, I was only psyched about Mars, particularly, because that was the question. I'd react the same way to colonizing the Moon.
My uncle lived in Antartica for about a year, actually. He was working at some scientific research base, but in a non-research capacity as the cook or supply officer or something, I don't know, he came back before I was three.
I have never really picked his brain for details about it. I only remember two things. One is a picture of him wearing cold-weather clothes and covered in snow, just like I'm used to in a Vermont winter, but against a landscape far flatter and more barren than anything I've seen in real life with snow on it. The other thing is a story about some honorary club of people who heat up in a sauna and run a few hundred yards to the official South Pole and back, naked.
Googling proves that my uncle wasn't making that up.
That link in 206 is downright insane.
Whatever the merits of Mars exploration, I don't think we should allow a thirteen year old to attempt to fly there solo.
Also, I get really really tired of the "we need to go to Mars in case things get too bad on Earth" canard. Earth is full of many very challenging environments that humans don't currently inhabit, and any of those would be a cakewalk to colonize compared to the costs and difficulties of setting up permanent colonies on Mars, or even the moon for that matter.
Also also, the trip time to Mars would drive me batshit insane. It would be like history's longest and most horrible airplane voyage, and for what? To arrive at a cold dusty hellhole that you can only look at and walk around in while wearing a bulky spacesuit? Do not want.
I've never figured out what the obsession is with Mars over anything else.
It's because no one on Mars (or Barsoom, as the natives call it) wears any clothes.
Extra bonus: I'm pretty sure Venus (provided you can get to the surface - not at easy) is probably more likely to have interesting fossil lifeforms.
Care to elaborate on that? Do you mean that, if there were fossils on Mars and Venus, the Venusian ones would be more interesting? Because that I could buy. Or are you saying that Venus is more likely in absolute terms to have fossils? I mean, any fossils in space are going to be pretty fucking interesting. And that seems like a harder claim to justify (not impossible, though). Simply because it's a lot easier to hypothesise a Mars that looked somewhat like ancient Earth at some point, and hence would be more hospitable to life as we know it on Earth. Of course, recent discoveries about extremophiles on Earth have greatly expanded the known "hospitable" range of conditions, so Venus might not be out of the question.
Or are you talking about the differences in geology?
It's because no one on Mars (or Barsoom, as the natives call it) wears any clothes.
No, no, their clothes are spun from the finest, most luxurious cloth ever spun for a king.
Mars is inhospitable to Little Orphan Annie.
212: The child Heebie is right!
My understanding was that Venus has been in a runaway greenhouse state for a very long time, so probably wasn't amenable to life for long enough for anything interesting (if anything at all) to develop. But I don't really know what I'm talking about.
The other downside to visiting Mars would be all that secod-hand cigar smoke from those ladies. You know the ones. I'd be deadly afraid for my pet snake on Mars.
Do Republicans believe in Venutian warming?
Whatever the merits of Mars exploration, I don't think we should allow a thirteen year old to attempt to fly there solo.
On the other hand, we will definitely fly this boat to the moon somehow.
No fossils on either Mars or Venus are likely to be more complex than bacteria. Their impact would come from their existence, if they exist.
I never thought I'd be on Mars, motherfucker!
Joe Venuti has been de-warming for quite a while.
Holy shit to 206. I mean running naked in 30 below would be more than insane, 100 below? Shit. The people who jump in the sea on January 1st down here--if they're over 40--usually wind up with a cold for their trouble.
It's because no one on Mars (or Barsoom, as the natives call it) wears any clothes.
Not true they favor g-strings, submissive poses, and ornamental nipple coverings.
I would also work in Antarctica if someone offered me a job I think would be interesting. I remember looking at it a while ago and I seem to recall that it wasn't really that easy to get a position. I was looking at technical jobs though. Maybe cooking or something would be easier to get.
My understanding that jobs in Antarctica are there, and don't necessarily require much in the way of skill or experience, but so many people want them that the competition for them is insane.
Oooh, here's a good one. After impaling a green, four-armed space alien with a sabre, it is important to pick up a naked woman.
||
So, my uncle--my mom's eldest brother--who is kinda crazy (not crazy like my Mom, but still) recently got married to a woman he knew from California and disappeared.
My sister knows her first name but forgot to get her last name, and she doesn't have her telephone number though (the new wife) M has my sister's. Two of his kids knew a bit, but one of them had been in France for a bit and didn't know anything until my sister called him.
My uncle is in pretty poor health for someone in his late sixties. He's had a couple of strokes and has a hard time getting in and out of cars, so we're having a hard time imagining him traveling. I could understand why she'd want to move. I'm told she has her own house in California, and his is just disgusting. It smells awful, and there may be asbestos in it. And when I say that it smells awful, I mean that it's actively unpleasant. After more than an hour, you really want to get outside, because you have a hard time breathing, and you need to take a shower afterwards and wash the clothes you were wearing. I honestly don't know why it hasn't been condemned. Apparently, there's some concern that it has asbestos.
On the plus side, my sister says that M seems nice, and she made my uncle quit smoking. Still, it is so weird.
|>
Further to 227, my other cousin just spoke with a friend of her Dad's in California who is concerned, because her dad isn't answering the phone. She writes:
Dad got angry at him earlier this summer because Dad asked him to marry them, he agreed at first but the next day when M. called to ask if he could come out the very next day B. said no because it was too fast. That was the last time they spoke.
I'm not planning to get involved, but man,oh man.
I am struggling mightily with the preservation of pseudonymity here, because I get to go do just about the most exciting voyage-of-discovery type fieldwork EVAR* this fall, but I might as well drop the pseud as name the trip in a public forum. Anyone who's willing to be bragged to, email me at the linked address. Vicarious excitement can be yours!
That said, count me as another hell no for Mars, and a yes please for Antarctica.
*on Earth
Line me up behind apo and LB and Ginger Yellow and everybody else. I'd go to Mars or the moon in a motherfucking minute. If anyone has extra cash after they're done funding apo's Antarctica trip, for that matter, I'm all ears.
It smells awful, and there may be asbestos in it.
In the case of my bass player's apartment, as we found out in the middle of practice last night, the cause turned out to be the dead next door neighbor.
231: Well, then there's been a dead neighbor for a few years. I don't think that the asbestos would be the cause of the smell. I just used that as an example of how derelict the place is.
And I have no interest in going to Mars. I'm very earth centric. I love the pictures of the earth from space, and I find the other planets dull and ugly in comparison.
Line me up behind apo and LB and Ginger Yellow and everybody else.
In case of Rapture trip to Mars, can I have your stuff?
Really, though, the trip back from Mars would be even worse. You've seen Mars, the thrill of space travel has worn off, and now you just want to get home, or at least somewhere where you can pee without consulting a vacuum contraption. At current technology, Mars would take a couple of years each way, right? That would be pretty torturous.
at least somewhere where you can pee without consulting a vacuum contraption
"There's gotta be a Starbucks somewhere around here!"
Of course, if I wanted to go to Mars, I'd line up in front of apo and LB and Ginger Yellow and everybody else.
I just wanted to emphasize that whole last half of the sentence, to show how serious I am about not letting any two-bit commenters stand between me and Mars.
That's pretty odd and disconcerting, BG. Condolences and good luck and all of that. Does your uncle have a considerable fortune or anything sinister-attracting like that?
In the case of my bass player's apartment, as we found out in the middle of practice last night, the cause turned out to be the dead next door neighbor.
Your bass player must have some pretty awesome subwoofers.
235: About 7 months at their closest, but that distance happens about once every couple of years.
As someone who fairly regularly used to embark on airplane journeys that, including a couple of layovers, took 20 to 24 hours of travel time, I can confidently opine that for me, even 7 months is way too long.
Does your uncle have a considerable fortune or anything sinister-attracting like that?
I wouldn't call whatever he has "considerable," but I'm sure that that's biased by my coastal standards. He inherited around $1,000,000 when my grandmother died in 1995. That could now be as little as $700K or as much as $2.5 million. I doubt that his house is worth anything. It's in a pretty crummy neighborhood, and it's a horrid house. He also probably gets around $19K annually in trust income. That may go down or up. It was heavily invested in bonds in the late 80's, early 90's and went down (preservation of capital and all that), but it may be more now. I think he's helping out one of cousins though. She wouldn't be able to get her hands on that though, since the trusts were set up by my great-grandfather, a lawyer, and grandfather and were set to be tied up as long as possible. So, you know it will be 21 years after my aunt, the youngest and healthiest, dies before it's broken up. (I believe that MA law counts the class of a generation for purposes of determining whether a life is in being at the time of the establishment of a trust. Don't know whether my 2 adopted cousins will get anything.) At which point it will go to my generation.
At the same time, he didn't bother to buy health insurance for a long time which he could have done in MA, gambling on making it until he reached Medicare age. He did manage to get assistance from the state when he had his strokes. MGH has a very good social work dept, and their financial aid people probably helped him apply. I believe that MassHealth dropped the asset test, so he may have had assets but a very low income, depending on how he had invested.
242: If they could make it on a spaceship like the Enterprise, it might be more tolerable.
So, you know it will be 21 years after my aunt, the youngest and healthiest, dies before it's broken up.
Rule against Perpetuities FTW!!!!
242: I'm sure the lines for the holodeck would be insane, and they'd have to spend considerable time between each visitor um, cleaning up, IYKWIM.
I wouldn't call whatever he has "considerable," but I'm sure that that's biased by my coastal standards. He inherited around $1,000,000 when my grandmother died in 1995. That could now be as little as $700K or as much as $2.5 million. ...He also probably gets around $19K annually in trust income.
I am pretty sure for most that's considerable. His trust income is as much as I'm lucky to make in a year. (Granted, grad student income shouldn't be the measure of a comfortable life, but it is enough to live on.)
even 7 months is way too long
But once we get the high-speed rail lines built, it will be much, much shorter.
248: Hmmm. I think I could handle a train to Mars.
249: For this and a bunch of other reasons, everyone on this thread needs to watch American Astronaut. Not really a spoiler: Venus pwns!
245: Did you know that South Dakota got rid of the rule against perpetuities? They want to attract a lot of trust business.
Parenthetical, the cost of living in MA is pretty high, and he's not a grad student anymore (though he did get a grad degree from your school in agronomy) though there are cheaper places than where you live.
It's also possible that he's lost a lot of money, and the payout may have gone down considerably with te market drop.
"Considerable" to me in terms of liquid assets is $5-10 million. That gives you $250K-$500K to live on without working. But I think of "considerable" as a lot more than "comfortable" or middle-class.
245: Right, but technically, only the uncle in question was alive when my great-grandfather died.
252: Right, right - I don't want to consign every one to grad student levels, just pointing out that for much of America that sounds like a nice deal, and that for most that would probably seem like enough money to have something shady going on in terms of the situation you described (which sounds like a mess, my sympathies).
I would like to endorse 250 and, therefore, American Astronaut.
110
Apart from the religious nutters in New England (and South Africa? I don't know enough about the Dutch colonisation of the Cape, but there were a lot of religious nutters involved), I can't think of any significant group of explorers of colonists who didn't have a medium to long term perspective of coming home (rich).
Mormons in Utah?
Westward expansion is kind of a different thing from initial colonization.
252
"Considerable" to me in terms of liquid assets is $5-10 million. ...
And you were worrying that saying "died" instead of "passed away" is a class marker?
258: To quote Instapundit: 'Heh. Indeed.'
154
... But allowing even a minuscule amount of reality into the picture, it sounds insane and awful.
I agree.
"Considerable" to me in terms of liquid assets is $5-10 million. That gives you $250K-$500K to live on without working. But I think of "considerable" as a lot more than "comfortable" or middle-class.
That's an interesting interpretation of the word "considerable".
Well you can't argue that it's not "considerable".
That's an interesting interpretation of the word "considerable".
Not interesting so much as redundant. In that context it just means "rich". If you have a salary in the 250k-500k range, you are arguably "just" upper middle class. If you have that coming for doing nothing, you are plain rich.
Does anybody recall a Salon article that claimed the whole mystique of space travel was based on fantasies of space sex, but that in reality sex is space would suck? Wow, I found it http://www.salon.com/news/1997/10/14news.html
in reality sex is space would suck
Not sex in space with *me*, peep.
265: When you say that, apo, I can't help but believe you.
Ok, I'll fly to Mars with no hope of ever coming back, as long as I get to go with apo.
252, 254: Parenthetical gets it right. Lots of people who don't think of themselves as desperate would marry in order to grab a good deal less money than BG is talking about.
BG, I'm sorry, this is a rotten situation. Does your uncle usually burn his bridges, or is this a new development?
Did you know that South Dakota got rid of the rule against perpetuities? They want to attract a lot of trust business.
I did know that and I think it sucks. I think maybe Alaska did the same thing, too.
And I think I'm in the doesn't give a shit about Mars camp, but I can imagine that changing if there were an actual prospect. My escape fantasies have gotten pretty prosaic in my old age, but that's probably mostly because I require some degree of verisimilitude in my fantasies.
Of course, if you're starting out to colonize a mineshaft whole 'nother planet, you would need to make certain sacrifices for the future of the human race, abandoning monogamous sexual relationships and such, and since each man would be required to do prodigious service....
Hey i just started REd Mars a few weeks ago.
i'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather live in an L-5 or martian colony than in texas or most anywhere like that.
kim stanley robinson's mars books are a strange amalgam of stupendously boring and somewhat interesting. despite not really liking them, I have read them all and even the one about antarctica. sort of sad how I thought there was a female hard sf writer I hadn't discovered yet. it is one of my few serious life ambitions to see the earth from orbit before I die, and I'm ready to waste my grandchildren's inheritance going up in some tourist rocket as an old lady.
BG, I'm sorry, this is a rotten situation. Does your uncle usually burn his bridges, or is this a new development?
GB: My uncle has always been difficult, but he seems to have mellowed out a bit with age. A couple of his kids didn't talk to him for a while, and he used to be very intense and somewhat manipulative. Post-stroke he's gotten nicer. In the past, he's gone long periods without answering the phone. It's just that combined with the marriage that's extra bizarre.
As my other cousin said, there may be a totally reasonable explanation.
You know what hasn't happened in space yet? Friggin' murder!
