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Who out there thinks one day, humans will go to mars? I am beginning to belive it less and less now. 
Martian settlements?
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It seems like no one cares anymore.Kirby said:
I really enjoyed looking at the pictures of Martian surface from Viking I and II and pathfinder back in the day. Imagining myself on another planet was so neat to me. It still is. But ever since the last "failed attempt" to send that last one to mars in 1999, I haven't heard any more news.
nothing usually happens during wartime. Knowing how bad Bush will **** up the budget defecit, NASA will probably not get any decent funding for a while, maybe not even in these next 4 yearsblueshogun96 said:
sadly, Mars is the last of our worries....
....but it will happen within this decade
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Now all they need to do is find a way to stop bone loss from being in space so long. The bones weaken when in space. So if we sent astrounots there now, they would be so weak they would fall and break so many bones and die. Gravity helps maintain muscle mass necissary to build strength. But then again, you can always bring a bowflex abord for non gravity based resistance.
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I doubt it's going to happen anytime soon, but we will eventually need to settle on another planet or space station due to population and natural resource concerns. I think Mars will just be the next step in that process.
It'll take a long, long while before we go to Mars.
Just going to Mars will be very, very expensive... and this will be only to send a couple humans over there.
Building a settlement in another planet is a far more challenging task. Without some sort of advanced bioengineering or very advanced materials/manufacturing techniques it'll be effectively impossible doing it.
My take on the subject? We would need at least some crude form of molecular nanotechnology before attempting to settle on Mars, and genetic engineering of potential settlers will probably be a must as well.
If the Singularity happens before we develop nanotechnology, or shortly thereafter, things will be way easier.
So, unless the Singularity happens first (or an unexpected breakthrough in Molecular Nanotechnology happens in a few years and we get so wealthy that we'll easily afford the trip, both economically and technologically), we'll have to wait at least 20 years before thinking about going to Mars and settling there.
Just going to Mars will be very, very expensive... and this will be only to send a couple humans over there.
Building a settlement in another planet is a far more challenging task. Without some sort of advanced bioengineering or very advanced materials/manufacturing techniques it'll be effectively impossible doing it.
My take on the subject? We would need at least some crude form of molecular nanotechnology before attempting to settle on Mars, and genetic engineering of potential settlers will probably be a must as well.
If the Singularity happens before we develop nanotechnology, or shortly thereafter, things will be way easier.
So, unless the Singularity happens first (or an unexpected breakthrough in Molecular Nanotechnology happens in a few years and we get so wealthy that we'll easily afford the trip, both economically and technologically), we'll have to wait at least 20 years before thinking about going to Mars and settling there.
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I don't like the "pay to breathe" idea either.
Maybe if future space ships can run off of anti-matter, we could get there faster. It's too bad that mars is so0o0o0o far away (further than the sun). Scientists belive that if a ship could run off of anti-matter, it could reach the nearest star in 40 years. 40 years compared to about 118,000, I'd say there is a big difference. If this is true, getting there would take a few minutes oO
The joys of watching the Discovery channel :bow:
Maybe if future space ships can run off of anti-matter, we could get there faster. It's too bad that mars is so0o0o0o far away (further than the sun). Scientists belive that if a ship could run off of anti-matter, it could reach the nearest star in 40 years. 40 years compared to about 118,000, I'd say there is a big difference. If this is true, getting there would take a few minutes oO
The joys of watching the Discovery channel :bow:
1. The distance from Earth to Mars varies widely. Sometimes it's much shorter than the Earth-Sun distance, sometimes it's much longer.blueshogun96 said:
The Earth is an Astronomical Unit (AU) away from the sun. This distance is roughly 150,000,000 km.
The distance from Earth to Mars varies, according to their relative positions in their orbits. It varies a lot, from 0.35AU to 2.5AU (the actual degree of variance is even greater) depending on the year and month.
Take a look at this site to calculate the distance from Earth to Mars.
2. Antimatter is still too expensive to mass produce here on Earth, so an antimatter drive is still far away. The nearest star, Alpha-Centauri is 4 light years away. Anyway, it would be useless to go there, since it has no planets. A ship using antimatter as a fuel could travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, depending on it's mass and fuel efficiency. Nonetheless, costs would be HUGE, even considering mature nanotechnology (though a superintellingence could solve the problems in ways that we humans cannot fathom).
3. We don't need antimatter drives to go to mars. It would be good, but it's not necessary. But a lot of developments are needed before we attempt to go anyway - see my previous post.
I was wondering. How do scientists take care of the problem of Mars rotation? When they launch a probe, do they take the speed of the probe and Mars current position, and project where Mars will be when the probe arrives? Or, do they launch the probe towards Mars current position and have it adjust it's angle?
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well it would a very very long time if that would ever happen... we can't even get a lot of people to go to the moon... so if there might be a possiblity for human travel to mars, that's a very very very long time... and iwe may be long dead by then...
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The "Singularity" thing was a pretty good read. So if I understood it correctly, there is basically no way to explain 'smarter' humans, since we aren't that smart. The part where it mentioned the human minds run @ 200Hz is pretty funny; gonna need lots of OC'ing there .
Oh yeah, is it true that the humans only use 10% of their brain power an "unsupported urban legend"?
.Oh yeah, is it true that the humans only use 10% of their brain power an "unsupported urban legend"?
The human mind does not run at 200hz (well, it does run at a serial speed of 200hz). Human neurons run at this speed.stilz said:The "Singularity" thing was a pretty good read. So if I understood it correctly, there is basically no way to explain 'smarter' humans, since we aren't that smart. The part where it mentioned the human minds run @ 200Hz is pretty funny; gonna need lots of OC'ing there
Our brain has a lot of neurons (something around 60 billion) and a highly paralelized architecture (with ~100 trillion synapses). This gives us a lot of computing power, even though our serial speeds are low (that's why our most powerful supercomputers are still a few orders of magnitude below the human brain in terms of raw computing power).
Anyway, you're right about our inability to understand what a truly superhuman intelligence would do (or think). It would require superintelligence to do it.
Yes, it is. I've posted about it elsewhere on the forums. But fear not, I can give you the link again: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html - it's a very good explanation of the myth.stilz said:
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BTW, it's always good to know that someone checks my links. It feels like I'm not wasting my time posting them
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That is the least of the problem there IMObcrew1375 said:
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I check them whenever I feel I can come close to understand them; otherwise they are too sophisticated for meBoltzmann said:BTW, it's always good to know that someone checks my links. It feels like I'm not wasting my time posting them
Hum, since we are talking about parallel computing power. Shouldn't the humans then be able to do something like 100,000 (or more) mathmatical calculations at once or something like that? I know as far as visual and audio recognition humans are still way ahead of machines, or we are just slow at math?
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