Comments on post #3428731

@TheMadsAdmiral on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-04-03T13:38:45-04:00

Inb4 Aliens capture her

@NWSiaCB on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-07T23:58:56-05:00

Keep in mind that if you're not going to make a breathable atmosphere, or at least somewhere that people won't die from depressurization/crushing pressure if there's a puncture in the habitat, you might as well just make a space station. Yeah, it's resource-intensive to create habitats and you'd need to fake gravity with centrifugal force, but those are the same resources you'd have to spend on planetary pressurized habitats. It'd be easier and more profitable to just go mining the asteroid belt with drones (that place is dangerous, yo) so you don't have to contend with planetary atmospheric conditions or having to burn crazy fuel to get back off into space.

Again, the big problem is that getting back into space costs crazy fuel, but depending on how long you're willing to let it take, just floating around from space to space is relatively cheap, so just harvesting resources in zero G to use to build bigger and bigger habitats, or build whole spaceships in zero G is much more economical than having to spend, IIRC, 42 pounds of fuel for every pound of cargo into space.

@Saladofstones on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-07T23:05:15-05:00

Also don't forget radiation and radiation bands. Anything dealing with Jupiter or Saturn has to content with hitting shifting bands severe enough to slag any satellite that crosses them.

@DeltaNovemberAlpha on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-07T05:02:43-05:00

Habitability discussion aside...

About the tag, any particular reason for mars_opportunity_rover? I think it should be either opportunity_(rover) (or just opportunity, there's no ambiguity), or mars_exploration_rover-b

@RhythmicApogee on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-07T04:15:18-05:00

AyaReiko said:

Europa probably more colonizable than either Venus or Mars, assuming it does have a subsurface ocean.

I feel like we need to figure out how to survive in our own ocean first to understand what we could possibly do on any of Jupiter's candidate moons. Best case scenario, there's a subsurface ocean as some scientists theorize, but it still begs the question if there's complex life in any of them and whether or not we can live ideally within that environment. I wouldn't think to settle there, since it'd be a one-way trip. There's too much at stake to consider:
-How low is the sea floor?
-What are the pressures in that ocean like and how does it compare to our planet?
-Is the gravity similar enough to Earth that we can avoid osteoporosis?
-What kind of animals (if there are any) dwell in there and how do they compare to marine life on Earth?
-How would we make use of resources on the planet if any mineral necessary might be out of our reach, like within bone-crushing depths?
-How would we develop the tech sufficient to leave the planet without the above issue resolved?

Unless science addressed these points, I feel like the moons are better suited for advanced robotics to study them. Perhaps a complex system of machines that relay info between the icy surface and the ocean below? It would be a long and arduous process delivering any substantial information, but it's the nearest thing to Europa-exploration without overthinking colonization, and definitely the safest alternative to fall on (at least for now).

@AyaReiko on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-07T03:23:12-05:00

Europa probably more colonizable than either Venus or Mars, assuming it does have a subsurface ocean.

@SerialBus500 on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-02T02:21:43-05:00

I guess Curiosity's the only one left to explore the Martian landscape.

So long, Opportunity, and thanks for all the science.

@NWSiaCB on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-02T00:37:35-05:00

ithekro said:

Mars has another theoretical advantage over Venus. Pollution, or greenhouse gasses, as we put them out now, would actually be a benefit on Mars in an effort to thicken up its atmosphere. Heavy Industries could do a lot of harm, but also a lot of good in the terraforming efforts and we get a lot of product out of Mar factories.

Venus needs its heavy greenhouse gasses purged to cool the place down. while Mars needs them to warm the place up. Of an atmosphere swap was possible, switching the two might produce two more nearly habitable planets in our solar system.

Keep in mind that producing CO2 in chemical reactions requires burning things using O2 and having plenty of organic material to burn, which requires there actually, you know, BE those gasses and organic material there in sufficient quantities we can afford to burn them and just throw them out into the atmosphere, first. Oh, and then not have them fly out of the atmosphere. Basically, by the time you could solve the problem with that solution, you've already solved the problem, anyway.

There's also the fact that even if you generated enough gasses for an atmosphere, Mars once had an atmosphere but lost it because its geothermal processes died. The Earth's core isn't just molten because of gravity, it's a nuclear fission reactor, and the electromagnetic field the Earth's core generates shields the Earth's atmosphere from being stripped from the Earth the way that Mars's atmosphere was stripped after Mars's core cooled off for lack of fissile material. (Venus, meanwhile, is far too geothermally active, that's why it's basically all volcanoes.) Even if you artificially generate an atmosphere, Mars will be a cold, dimly-lit planet losing that atmosphere to solar winds. While it's hypothetically possible to artificially generate a planet-sized electromagnetic field artificially, that's just one more literally planet-sized project you have to contend with.

Also, remember that when you're making the atmosphere thick with smog clouds, you're cutting even more of the sun off from a planet that already gets about half as much sunlight as the Earth, so you're basically killing any chance at agriculture with natural light. I hope you have some cold fusion reactors or something to power all the greenhouses and that planet-sized electromagnetic field and everything, because there's slim odds of finding massive reservoirs of fossil fuels to burn for all this.

@ithekro on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-01T22:31:20-05:00

Mars has another theoretical advantage over Venus. Pollution, or greenhouse gasses, as we put them out now, would actually be a benefit on Mars in an effort to thicken up its atmosphere. Heavy Industries could do a lot of harm, but also a lot of good in the terraforming efforts and we get a lot of product out of Mar factories.

Venus needs its heavy greenhouse gasses purged to cool the place down. while Mars needs them to warm the place up. Of an atmosphere swap was possible, switching the two might produce two more nearly habitable planets in our solar system.

@MopZ on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-01T22:21:48-05:00

T34/38 said:

Tbh. Venus is pretty much a death world, while Mars may need terraforming or something for proto-type colonization too.

Isn't it something like "if the acidic atmosphere doen't melt you: molten-hot-mercury-rain-raining-sideways will.

@Elmithian on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-03-01T12:16:21-05:00

RhythmicApogee said: Stuff

There are some relatively straightforwards methods of keeping things afloat in the sky on Venus due to it's atmosphere density, but it would never be easy or simple. Which is why I said "in the long run", Venus would be a better candidate than Mars due to it's gravity, thick atmosphere and so on.

It would be massive undertaking and I think humanity should already have become spacefaring before even dreaming of doing it... which is why it puzzles me immensely why anyone wants to set up one-way-trip colony on Mars within this century. It feels like putting the cart before the horses, to leap before you can walk.

As other have said, making an "underground" colony on the moon would be the first step.

The next step would be what you suggested, the Dyson Swarm. I am all for it and we actually have most (if not all) of the needed tech to start doing it right now. We just need to set up proper lanes and industry in space and around the moon and the lovely thing about the Dyson Swarm is it would be a project that would increase in speed and magnitude the more of the satellites we make (more energy + material > more ability for production).

The Mercury plan sounds good (and i would say it would be *mostly* fully automated, better have couple of folk overseeing the stuff just in case) and even though we would likely have to use up most of Mercury I would say it is a decent tradeoff for making humanity a spacefaring race with near incomprehensible level of power.

Honestly, the Mercury plan sounds like something Isaac Arthur suggested regarding making a Dyson Swarm.

@T34/38 on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-28T08:22:00-05:00

RhythmicApogee said:

Colonizing other words would be cool, but man is it tragically impossible in these circumstances.

Both planets are a colossal joke when it comes to habitability, because almost everything you can come up with trying to live on either one is counter-acted by crucial design flaws. Mars is absolutely awful, don't get me wrong, but Venus is not much better. Colonizing Venus sounds good on paper, but it crumples up just like one. To wit:

a) The cost of building floating cities, even just towns, would be astronomically huge. Not to mention we would need to keep them afloat and we lack the means of doing so

b) The only layer we can live in is right where the sun's rays are blocked just enough by the greenhouse gases. Those conditions are suitable, but we have no means of staying in that zone because other than lacking the resources for point a), no amount of helium or even a similar element can be gathered in the amount it would take to keep a skyscraper afloat for long

c) It might be easier than Mars, but it's certainly not much better. If anything we're better off figuring out how to utilize the asteroid belt and slam all of the massive chunks of ice laying afloat onto the planet (Mars in this case), and that's if humanity's lucky enough to see the planet become habitable, if only for a little while in a planet's life cycle

d) Another flaw is how a hypothetical Venusian colony would gather any resources to manage living in these conditions. There's no ground to step on other than the impossible floating city, and no place for Earth ships to land let alone fly by to gingerly send whatever cargo's meant to support that colony. No consistent way of supplying water either, which is pretty much an obligation to live

Frankly, I find the idea of slowly building advanced robotics over time and sending them to Mercury to build Dyson satellites would do our own planets a lot more favors. While we're at it, we should also figure out how to clean up all the junk orbiting our planet.

Tbh. Venus is pretty much a death world, while Mars may need terraforming or something for proto-type colonization too.

@RhythmicApogee on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-28T06:22:56-05:00

Elmithian said:
[Venus > Mars]

Colonizing other words would be cool, but man is it tragically impossible in these circumstances.

Both planets are a colossal joke when it comes to habitability, because almost everything you can come up with trying to live on either one is counter-acted by crucial design flaws. Mars is absolutely awful, don't get me wrong, but Venus is not much better. Colonizing Venus sounds good on paper, but it crumples up just like one. To wit:

a) The cost of building floating cities, even just towns, would be astronomically huge. Not to mention we would need to keep them afloat and we lack the means of doing so

b) The only layer we can live in is right where the sun's rays are blocked just enough by the greenhouse gases. Those conditions are suitable, but we have no means of staying in that zone because other than lacking the resources for point a), no amount of helium or even a similar element can be gathered in the amount it would take to keep a skyscraper afloat for long

c) It might be easier than Mars, but it's certainly not much better. If anything we're better off figuring out how to utilize the asteroid belt and slam all of the massive chunks of ice laying afloat onto the planet (Mars in this case), and that's if humanity's lucky enough to see the planet become habitable, if only for a little while in a planet's life cycle

d) Another flaw is how a hypothetical Venusian colony would gather any resources to manage living in these conditions. There's no ground to step on other than the impossible floating city, and no place for Earth ships to land let alone fly by to gingerly send whatever cargo's meant to support that colony. No consistent way of supplying water either, which is pretty much an obligation to live

Frankly, I find the idea of slowly building advanced robotics over time and sending them to Mercury to build Dyson satellites would do our own planets a lot more favors. While we're at it, we should also figure out how to clean up all the junk orbiting our planet.

@Elmithian on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-28T05:47:57-05:00

DeadW@nderer said:

Right, seriously. Why we skipping close moon for a more distant planet? As if it's like with Antarctica?

And after the moon, Venus would be more ideal for long term colonization and Terraforming than Mars ever *will* be.

a) It has nearly the same level of gravity as Earth
b) It already has atmosphere, it is only question of gradually changing it until it becomes habitable
c) It is wayyyyyy closer to us than Mars is, is easier to get to and overall is a better candidate.
d) Due to it's gravity, the atmosphere isn't being flung out into space nearly as rapidly as the joke of an atmosphere Mars has

There are more reasons, but those are couple of the ones we should keep in mind... once we have colonized and industrialized the moon of course.

@DeadW@nderer on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-27T19:24:03-05:00

FJH said:

*does obvious and points at Moon*

Right, seriously. Why we skipping close moon for a more distant planet? As if it's like with Antarctica?

@FJH on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-27T14:44:20-05:00

ithekro said:
Mars is the closest we have to a place we can call a home with a (herculean) amount of effort.

*does obvious and points at Moon*

@ithekro on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-27T14:35:14-05:00

Steak said:

You're looking at this picture and thinking you want to send actual people there?

Its what we do. Especially if we can find something useful there. Even if that usefully thing is just land. If a way can be made to build habitable space on Mars, that's acreage that can and would be used. If there are resources their that are exploitable, we will go there to exploit them.

There are no natives, so that problem we will dodge (this time).

There a many people who want to start expanding off this one planet of ours. "All the eggs in one basket". Mars is the closest we have to a place we can call a home with a (herculean) amount of effort. Its being researched and considered a goal for some companies and space agencies. But it will take a while, and it will be expensive.

@NWSiaCB on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-27T14:04:29-05:00

Steak said:

You're looking at this picture and thinking you want to send actual people there?

Some people are always thinking of getting there, regardless of danger.

...

"Space! We're in space!"

@Steak on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-27T10:53:45-05:00

ithekro said:

We'll be back. One day they'll find Opportunity, assuming the Martian weather doesn't completely destroy it.

One day, if they build towns on Mars, someone will name a town Opportunity around the crater where the rover went dark.

You're looking at this picture and thinking you want to send actual people there?

@matteste on post #3428731 (mars opportunity rover (original) drawn by dishwasher1910)

2019-02-27T07:03:12-05:00

"My battery is low, and it's getting dark..."