What do /sci/ think?
>>7970243
No.
>>7970248
Please clarify dude...
>>7970260
settlement =/= suicide mission
It wouldn't be, if it ever actually got to Mars. surviving on Mars for a few years wouldn't be all that difficult. What's difficult is getting there, and they'll never get there, and it's so obvious that they have to know that they'll never get there, so it must be a scam.
>>7970243
Never gonna happen, it's just a publicity stunt.
>>7970243
No, yes, and no.
No, it's not a suicide mission to migrate to Mars for permanent settlement.
Yes, if you did it with the Mars One clowns in charge, you would certainly die.
No, Mars One isn't going to get anywhere near actually landing people on Mars.
suicide mission basically
>>7970295
>Yes, if you did it with the Mars One clowns in charge, you would certainly die.
This.
Not only that, but unless you can become a fully self-sustainable colony, there's going to be a big problem. That is stability of the original company and/or country they are based in. That life line is extremely easy to sever. It can be cut via war, bankruptcy, political lobbying, faulty technology, etc.
Personally, I think the first off-Earth colonies should be on the Moon. It'd be cheaper and safer to do. It'd also be worth more in the short run. You can spend tons of money lobbing shit up to the moon all you want and still not exceed the cost of a single mission to Mars.
>>7970326
Honestly, I don't believe any "Mars to stay" mission would really be "Mars to stay".
If you can send people there, and you can support life on the surface indefinitely, coming back just isn't that hard.
With the best upper stage engines and liquid hydrogen propellant, the launch to Mars orbit only takes about 150% of the mass of the mass of what's going to orbit. A mere 6000 kg of LOX/H2 propellant (which you could make from about ten tons of water -- you discard some oxygen) could take 4000 kg of stuff (including the engines and tanks and stuff) to orbit. Nothing like our rockets from the Earth's surface, of which only about 2% of the lift-off mass is LEO payload.
It's hard to imagine that people able to live on Mars for years wouldn't be able to produce a few tons of return propellant (and provisions), and equally inconceivable that an organization which would send them to Mars wouldn't provide the rest of the means (other than propellant) to return them from Mars.
>>7970441
Staying there is meant to lower costs. Costs of a return trip a far above anything that is one-way. However, the very fact that it is one-way means it will cost more because the people planning this are forgetting it needs to be fully self-reliant or resupplied. Both things will take a lot more resources than a single round trip would never need. The points you bring up are very reliant on too many things. It'd be a gamble that you could make proper quality fuel and in enough quantities required for a return trip. It'd be better to plan for both return trip and permanent settlement.
>>7970243
Won't leave Earth. Its just a circlejerk of insufficient expertise and funds.
Its suicide in the aspect that you'll die of radiation poisoning in space or cancer on mars
>>7970476
>Costs of a return trip a far above anything that is one-way.
Only if you don't produce propellant on Mars. Most of the cost is landing mass from Earth on the Mars surface. Propellant for a return trip is going to be a substantial amount of mass. Furthermore, if it's sent from Earth, it has to be storable for months in space and for over a year on the surface of Mars.
As the SpaceX people point out, the cheapest way is to reuse the departure stage as a lander and a return vehicle. You have to fly it back to Earth to load it up for another shipment anyway. And if you can't even produce some methane and oxygen on Mars, you're not building much of a settlement.
As I already pointed out, the launch from Mars to Earth is far, far easier than the launch from Earth to Mars.
>>7970243
>solar flare
>they all die
Settling on Mars is useless unless you manage to build a bunker under a rock. And unless some government is willing to pay hundreds of billions to bring you food every few years or so.
>>7970610
Solar protons can't get through even Mars's thin atmosphere. And you don't need to pile up that much dirt on your hobbit hole to be safe from cosmic rays on Mars.
>>7970243
consider that no crop in existance can function on the soil or the atmosphere of mars and that everything to bring up to orbit is worth its weight in gold, let alone to mars.
If they do get to mars (which they wont, because after getting to orbit they'll cancel it) they would almost certainly die of starvation
>>7970243
Wasn't this proven to be a fraud?
>>7970618
>>7970610
Food production is also pretty straightforward. Certainly, not much harder than other life-support chores.
You'd want a garden for sure. Mostly, this would be a matter of letting sunlight in while keeping the air and heat from escaping. Plants aren't too sensitive to radiation, so you'd just ignore that. You probably wouldn't want to keep the air in it breathable. The native Martian soil is rich with plant nutrients, like nitrates. The processing to plant in it would probably not be elaborate.
The garden would mostly be for psychological purposes, though, to provide an enjoyable, varied diet. A huge variety of seeds could be taken. There are simpler ways to make the nutrients you need, such as microbes which can grow in the dark, with hydrogen or methane as an energy source. They can be used to make high-protein, high-fat, or high-carbohydrate substances, and these systems could be developed and fully proven on Earth.
As long as you had electrical power, and could maintain your machines, you would be able to survive.
>>7970598
I'm talking about what the Mars One reasoning is. They are retarded that's all.
>>7970563
We can shield against that, if needed.
>>7970610
>unless you manage to build a bunker under a rock
Very doable actually, and part of quite a few other plans from different places. Not really needed.
>>7970651
No, they are just a non-profit pipe dream. More misguided than fraudulent. One former astronaut called it out as being "too easy" to get a seat. Evidently, he feels he's better than anyone else or something and wants to keep the normies out. lol
There's also this:
http://www.exploremars.org/
Living is a suicide mission.
We're not likely to send people only to have them starve to death after 30 days. If we do send a 'one-way trip' it will have a life expectancy of several years at least.
It would even make sense to send it with an expectation of new technology - for example we could build a refuellable, relaunchable landing stage without any of the necessaries for in-situ propellant production but send a device that can do that at a later date.
Either way, if we do go it won't be for a few days like it was on the moon. It's like the difference between diving with scuba gear trying to reach a few hundred metres and diving with scuba gear and trying to reach the bottom of the mariana trench.
>>7970243
More of a scam than suicide mission. They'll literally never get off the the ground. You won't even orbit Earth.
>>7970694
>The processing to plant in it would probably not be elaborate.
Truly, we have technology now that allows us to not even use soil in a wide array or ways. Actually having soil to use is a bonus really. The plants you eat are great for micro-nutrients you can't manufacture yourself.
I don't see farming on Mars all that difficult really. The difficult part is proper reuse and extraction of stuff like water. People and plants take a lot of water even when very efficiently maintained. One neat fact is that what little "air" Mars has, becomes 100% saturated with humidity at night. So, there is a chance of moisture extraction from the air alone. But, the atmosphere is less than 1% of Earth's. I'm sure someone could do the math on the amount of water you could get.
>>7970723
But it's so much easier to design and build stuff that can be maintained and operated by a human. Once we can get humans there and land them safely it opens massive opportunities for building human-operable technology we can drop off.
Just need to get them there and keep them alive until launch 2, then we're basically set for our usual human feedback loops.
>>7970713
>The difficult part is proper reuse and extraction of stuff like water. People and plants take a lot of water even when very efficiently maintained.
Reuse isn't hard. You just don't let it out of the sealed habitat.
Extraction's not exactly rocket science either. There's plenty of water in the soil on Mars. You can dig it up to extract it, or you can stick transparent domes over it on sunny days and let the sun do the work.
Nobody is going to Mars we were all born 100 years too early.
>>7970734
>But it's so much easier to design and build stuff that can be maintained and operated by a human
I didn't say not to do that. I mean there's not much a human can do when extracting water from air. You don't even need them to push a button for that. When they show up later they can fix what needs fixing. You can drop off anything you like. Someone will still have to unpack a lot of it later on when they arrive. That also include payloads of nothing but food.
>>7970770
>Reuse isn't hard. You just don't let it out of the sealed habitat.
It is harder than just that.
Air extraction is far easier than soil extraction of moisture. For instance, the lack of the need for digging. The solar still idea is still air based, and passive, always a simple thing to do.
it might work as a really demoralising psyop
it would be like 6 months of reality tv where everyone dies, and might make humans realise we need to take care of earth a bit more
every cloud and all that
>>7970810
>reality tv
Meh. Kill me now, I don't want to see another reality TV ever again.
>>7970790
I think that if you're not even able to dig in common soil, you're going to have a pathetic sort of settlement.
>>7970902
Well, you can be the one who needs to move metric tons of soil every day in order to get a little water out of it. Have fun with that.
>>7970243
>people actually wanting to settle on a cold desolate rock
>>7970902
>>7970790
Anyway, air extraction is going to be a very feeble method of getting water. The atmosphere is extremely thin, and only a tiny percentage of it is ever water vapor.
Air extraction isn't even a great way to get CO2 on Mars. The shit is frozen into the ground all over the place. You can compress it from near vacuum levels, or you can just pick up the frozen solid stuff.
>>7970925
The only feasible way to get water from the soil it to land in the areas where it is highest concentrations and have drones dig and process it with other drones ferrying water to and from them.
There's one massive catch to this though. It is illegal to take the water from the soil on the moon, mars, or any celestial body in outer space. There is literally an "Outer Space Treaty" that prevents any thing from going near or taking samples from celestial-based water sources to prevent contaminating them (). So, water extraction from the air is the best method around that problem. If a way can be found to get around that treaty then everyone is good to go (like complete sterilization of everything involved).
Oh, did I mention that this also make Mars One completely illegal? And it makes all ideas of terraforming completely illegal. Thank you hippies of 1987.
The only suicide mission is the one your money will go on if you give money to those scammers.
>>7970243
I don't trust Mars One. The Mars Society does better just making the argument to go there.
>>7970949
>The only feasible way to get water from the soil it to land in the areas where it is highest concentrations
>It is illegal to take the water from the soil on the moon, mars, or any celestial body in outer space. There is literally an "Outer Space Treaty" that prevents any thing from going near or taking samples from celestial-based water sources
For fuck's sake, if you don't know about something, don't try and tell us about it.
>>7970990
Well it is true. Look it up yourself.
>>7971053
There isn't a single mention of water in the Outer Space Treaty.
It sure is reddit in here.
A Mars colony is a fucking pipe dream and at this stage of the game is kinda pointless.
> So we have ~1000 people on Mars barely surviving
> And...Uh...
What's the fucking point. Invest that time and money in fusion.
>zubrin fudges his numbers
>still gets worshiped by exactly the kind of moron who gets scammed by emdrive and zeitgeist
>>7970243
It's not a suicide mission because it's not a mission at all. Mars One is a scam that has no intention of sending anyone anywhere they have not even spoken to any engineers or scientists their only intention is to take money in donations and collect private information from would be candidates.
>>7971087
It has to do with how it is worded. No, it doesn't say anything about water. But, because of how it is worded, you can't touch water unless your shit is 100% sterile. You also can't change the terrain.
It is really a pretty shitty treaty. Even N.Korea signed it. I think mostly everyone signed it to keep nukes out of orbit more than anything else.
>>7970441
I think it would be much easier to launch from Mars on SRBs.
>>7971371
>I think mostly everyone signed it to keep nukes out of orbit more than anything else.
Which in of itself is pretty fucking stupid. A nuke is a lot more capable sitting atop an ICBM on the ground, ready to hit any point on the globe within 45 minutes at any moment, than in some arbitrary holding orbit for which firing solutions against any given target only occur twice a day.
>>7971554
Im more irritated by the general refusal towards reactors in space. The fear of something going wrong and plutonium raining down over places is a valid one, id admit, but with such a low probability that it should only set requirements, not completely block any research and development.
>>7971371
>Best Korea
>Signing treaties
What?
>>7971574
they might not have known what they signed
>>7971371
>It has to do with how it is worded. No, it doesn't say anything about water. But, because of how it is worded, you can't touch water unless your shit is 100% sterile. You also can't change the terrain.
>you can't touch water unless your shit is 100% sterile
That's not at all what you said before.
Look, you can't expect us to take your word on it. Quote us the relevant sections.
>>7970243
>2016
>being a planetary chauvinist
even if they live they'll all be fucked up
>>7971832
>spoonfeed me mama!
Go fuck yourself.
http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why-nasa-s-mars-rovers-are-banned-from-investigating-that-liquid-water
http://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm#treaty
>Article IX
>States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.
Meaning nothing from there to contaminate the Earth and nothing from Earth to contaminate them.
>>7971871
>http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why-nasa-s-mars-rovers-are-banned-from-investigating-that-liquid-water
Yeah, that's about what I expected. A shitty news site that references a blog that just asserts your point, without making an argument.
The shitty Quartz page pointed to by the shitty Science Alert page actually points to NASA documents about its own non-contamination standards, particularly a page on why the Mars 2020 lander shouldn't be repurposed to investigate a liquid water site.
The crowning stupidity of the page you linked is that it claims that treaty forbids "anyone from sending a mission, robot or human, close to a water source in the fear of contaminating it with life from Earth" but then wraps up with, "NASA is planning on sending humans to Mars for the first time in mid-2030, so maybe some lucky astronauts will get to see liquid Martian water with their own eyes".
Excuse me if I don't sew myself to the end of your human centipede.
It's not about obeying hard rules in the fucking Outer Space Treaty. It's just about voluntarily trying to avoid contamination, because these are scientists who want to learn about whether there's native life on Mars, not jump straight into experiments on whether Earth life can take hold on Mars if we seed it there.
>>7971887
>gets spoonfed the actual link to the actual treaty and posts the actual exert from it
>"hurr durr not real"
Point is, no state that signed the treaty can do anything of real note off the Earth. No, colonies, no teraforming, fucking nothing.
>>7971871
>Meaning nothing from there to contaminate the Earth and nothing from Earth to contaminate them.
It specifically says, "avoid their HARMFUL contamination" and "where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose".
In the first place, it's not an absolute rule against contamination, it specifies "harmful", in the second place, it specifies that this is to be managed by adopting appropriate measures, NOT by avoiding sites at risk of contamination.
>>7971895
>Point is, no state that signed the treaty can do anything of real note off the Earth. No, colonies, no teraforming, fucking nothing.
Okay, so now we're from
>It is illegal to take the water from the soil on the moon, mars, or any celestial body in outer space. There is literally an "Outer Space Treaty" that prevents any thing from going near or taking samples from celestial-based water sources
to:
>no teraforming [sic]
?
Look, if someone wants to do something as major as terraforming, the Outer Space Treaty isn't going to be what stops them. The Outer Space Treaty was always understood to be provisional, not final, a set of rules for the early days of space exploration.
The major points are:
1) don't put weapons in space,
2) don't screw with other people's stuff in space,
3) don't act like putting a lander on something first means you own it.
Minor points like, "Do serious science and try not to fuck stuff up for everyone." are so vaguely worded that you can basically do what you want.
When it's time to graduate from space exploration to colonization, it's going to get officially disavowed, or people are just going to start breaking it. Treaties get violated all the time.
A treaty isn't much more than establishing beforehand that party A won't like it if party B does something. It stops mattering when party A stops caring about the something or party B stops caring what party A thinks.
>>7971949
Even at the height of the Cold War neither side broke the treaty. Merica could have easily stationed nukes on the Moon, Russia could have easily turned Buran into a space bomber (IIRC the incorrect belief that the Space Shuttle was a treaty-violating space bomber was the reason for the development of the Buran). If distant colonial wars on Earth were expensive wars on Mars would be another level. No-one wants to start that shit because it will never finish until one side goes bankrupt or Earth gets nuked because commanders on Mars no longer worry about MAD.
>>7972031
>Even at the height of the Cold War neither side broke the treaty.
That's not a line that should start with "Even at". It was a Cold War treaty. The whole point of having it was that both sides wanted it. They didn't uphold it out of simple abhorrence toward the idea of breaking any treaty.
Anyway, the whole "Star Wars" missile defense program (SDI) of the 80s was all about technologies that would violate the Outer Space Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. While many of these treaties were meant to end the arms race, in part to save both sides money, the USA undertook a strategy of continuing it, to bankrupt the USSR, turn the Soviets against each other in bitterness of their incompetence, and undermine their confidence that what they had would work when it mattered. It was the same way they fought since Apollo: doing expensive things the USSR couldn't afford, with overtones of having advantage in a nuclear war.
The USA has been more or less continuously violating the essential parts of the Outer Space Treaty in spirit, if not in letter, at least since the 70s.
The point of the portion about not claiming territory is mostly about one side setting up a moon base, putting nuclear missiles on it, and claiming to own the whole moon, with a right to blow up anyone else who tries to land on it. That's exactly the kind of gesture the space race was leading toward, and it could easily have started with a bloodless exchange of blowing each other's hardware up on and around the moon, and then escalated to a full scale nuclear war.
The point wasn't to stop people from claiming regions of the moon and Mars by living on them, while leaving space for others to do the same, and nobody's going to get too bothered about it if someone starts to do so.
>>7970441
>Nothing like our rockets from the Earth's surface, of which only about 2% of the lift-off mass is LEO payload
Whatever you want to bring to Mars, you pay for it 50 fold. Unless we can improve this by at least an order of magnitude Mars is an economic black hole
>>7972102
>>Nothing like our rockets from the Earth's surface, of which only about 2% of the lift-off mass is LEO payload
>Whatever you want to bring to Mars, you pay for it 50 fold.
Mars is quite a bit harder to get to than LEO. You don't just have to go to LEO, you don't just have to escape Earth's gravity well, you also have to brake at Mars and land on Mars.
People are quite excited at the prospect of using a whole Falcon Heavy launch (a vehicle capable of putting over 50 tons in LEO) to land about a ton of pressurized cargo on Mars with a Dragon lander, at a cost around $100-$200 million. This would be a considerable improvement on past combinations of launch and lander.
However, the big initial mass of the rocket isn't the problem. Most of that mass is propellant, and most of the propellant mass is just oxygen. Isolating and liquefying atmospheric oxygen on Earth is cheap, and gets cheaper fast as you need larger quantities.
Once you get a reusable rocket, and cheap fuel like kerosene, methane, or hydrogen, you're basically just looking at energy costs. Chemical rockets are over 10% efficient at converting chemical energy to orbital energy, which is really not bad, and would be hard to improve on. A reusable one is likely to be around 5% efficient, which only sounds bad until you look at other options like high-Isp launch or a space elevator with microwave power transmission.
>>7971949
It is illegal to take water because there's no guarantee of non-contamination. You've been told, shown, and you're still a moron about it.
If American tries to take water or fuck with shit like colonizing N.Korea is going to go full ICBM on your asses.
I just requested a Mars One application on their site, pray they send me one.
-4chan astronaut
>>7972305
You have to pay an admin fee or something to do it though.
>>7970243
It's very clearly a reality TV show. If you think otherwise you are seriously retarded or a straight up nigger.
>Is this a suicide mission?
not really. theyre filming in arizona. just watch out for those redneck militias.
>>7970291
Otherway around. Getting there is a solved problem, the only difficulty is life support.
>>7972248
need nuclear pulse propulsion
Worked OK on the moon back in the 60's.
Land on Mars today in a week all of the volunteers and astronauts are dead.
>private sector space exploration and traveling
top kek
tesla and bezos can't even get a fucking rocket into space while nasa put men on the moon 50 years ago with the technological equivalent of your calculator
this will fail miserably
>>7973188
some asteroid bounced and make stepping stone marks on the ground, so what ?
>>7973100
>the only difficulty is life support.
Not a difficulty. We have the tech to do all this, just no proper funding because.....no one really wants to do it.
>>7970243
If you think about it, life is a suicide mission.
What I don't understand is why rockets still blow up or mess up at the drop of a hat. Every other piece of technology, from planes to trains seems to be standardised as hell and reliable.
>>7972275
Do you seriously believe that there are countries willing to start a nuclear war over a sample of ice on Mars?
Protip: there are not
Why do humans need to colonize other planets so badly and so quickly.
Zones like Antartica arent being colonized, even uninhabitated places in other countries arent and its not even an overpopulation issue.
Its redundant and if we can even make it to Mars, how do we know its going to work. If anything, create something on the moon before we even try to populate a place we've never been.
>>7973110
Nuclear pulse propulsion wouldn't save any money.
Do you think they could just build a Project Orion ship and it would work without testing? Like they just came up with the idea of a chemical rocket and built one and had it work reliably on the first try?
It would be far cheaper, easier, and faster to develop cost-effective reusable chemical rockets. The problem has been a lack of demand to justify the investment.
Like oh, wow, you can build a space ship with a five thousand ton cargo? Or hey, you can get a fleet of ships with airliner-like reusability that run on cheap fuel and just launch thousands of tons every day.
So reusable chemical rockets are way better for getting to orbit. If you want deep-space high-Isp propulsion, there are much better, more efficient, more-easily-developed options than NPP, like thrust-augmented dusty-plasma fission fragment rockets.
>>7973622
Pretty much the entirety of a rocket is taken up by two substances that are chosen because when they come into contact with each other they explode. The rest of the rocket is understood in the design phase to be dead weight and is therefore minimized.
>>7973399
This has to be bait. Dear lord, let this be bait
>>7973622
>What I don't understand is why rockets still blow up or mess up at the drop of a hat.
High performance, large quantities of oxidizer onboard, pushed to its limits the first time it's used, low flight rate, general stinginess because of expendable hardware, lack of open competition, originated as ammunition.
Blow-up rate of a few percent is pretty good, all things considered.
Now that private companies are increasingly allowed to compete, and are working on reusable rockets, we should see rockets that don't blow up.
>>7973881
Another thing to consider is that you need to use a rocket quite a few times to work the bugs out, but as rocket designs get old, they get harder to build, due to the techniques, materials, and devices used in them becoming obsolete.
After a few decades, things that were off-the-shelf products become special-order products, then have to be made by hand in machine shops or labs. You end up having to change the design whether you like it or not.
On top of that, the newer technology is superior in many ways, particularly the materials and control systems, and the old payload limitations start to chafe, so there are strong temptations to do a clean-sheet redesign rather than continue to produce a rocket after it's twenty or thirty years old, but then you have ten years of delays and reliability problems.
At least Mars is safe from being blown up.
http://world.time.com/2014/02/27/islamic-watchdog-issues-fatwa-against-joining-the-mission-to-mars/
>>7974472
>in space, no-one can hear you Allah Akbhar
Wait... why don't we just funnel all our ozone onto mars? That way if we have to move there, it'll have appropriate living conditions to sustain life.
>>7973829
Nuclear pulse propulsion would be talking about hundreds of thousands of tons
A reusable NPP craft would be cheaper to operate than massive fleets of reusable chemical rockets
Fission fragment is only a hypothetical design now
>>7974625
>Nuclear pulse propulsion would be talking about hundreds of thousands of tons
That's hella dumb. The development for that would cost a fortune and take forever, then nobody would let you use it because there'd be as much fallout as from a major nuclear war.
>A reusable NPP craft would be cheaper to operate than massive fleets of reusable chemical rockets
First of all, a reusable NPP craft is a ridiculous idea for so many reasons, and second: hell no, it wouldn't be cheaper to operate. Nuclear bombs aren't cheap.
>Fission fragment is only a hypothetical design now
In what world is a nuclear bomb pogo stick not also "only a hypothetical design now"?
>>7974472
Mars confirmed the first caliphate planet
>>7973872
Not bait. The private sector believe it or not cannot perform as well as the government in some areas.
>People rushing to build colonies in desolate planets instead of just calming the fuck down and tackling the engineering, material and logistic problems like sane persons
If they have such a boner for pioneerism like this, then let the Chinese do it first since they have a lot of Kerbals to waste on endeavors like this
Oh Puke-tan...
>>7974689
You use the same fissionable material for a 5000 ton launch as a 100,000+ ton launch
So theres no point doing it small
Nuclear bombs, especially small straight fission mass produced ones ARE cheap. Lets estimate 1 million each bomb, needing 1000 bombs for the mission gives you a 1 billion dollar fuel pricetag.
It's not like rockets are free
Using "fission fragments" for thrust is entirely hypothetical, there is no practical design or prototype, or anyone even working on it.
Meanwhile thousands of nuclear bombs have in fact been detonated, so we know it works.
>>7974773
Government is the only one who can throw billions at something for no practical gain, and nothing to show for it afterwards.
>>7974991
>Using "fission fragments" for thrust is entirely hypothetical, there is no practical design or prototype, or anyone even working on it.
>Meanwhile thousands of nuclear bombs have in fact been detonated, so we know it works.
>Using "fission fragments" for thrust
>nuclear bombs have in fact been detonated
Anyone with the slightest bit of common sense understands that the question of whether nuclear bombs can detonate isn't the issue with NPP.
>there is no practical design or prototype, or anyone even working on it.
Jesus. If you don't know about something, then don't make claims about it. Yeah, there's no prototype, but again, there sure as fuck has never been anything near a NPP prototype. (and don't link me that video of the chemical pulse propulsion test -- that's like making a firecracker and claiming it proves you can make a nuke)
There are certainly practical designs for fission fragment rockets, and people working on them.
>>7974991
Austrian pls
>http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/government-private-sector-leads-innovation.html
>http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2009/6/technology-west/06_technology_west.pdf
>>7970643
>>7970694
No such thing as Martian Soil
Mars has regolith, much like the Moon
Soil is made from formally living things, all the soil, dirt on Earth was once something that was alive
No soil on Mars, none
Remember Mars size, gravity will affect humans and plants, things don't grow, live like they do here
You need, air, pressure, heat, food, shelter and a constant supply
For what return, Mars is not another Earth it is a pretty, cold, desolate rock, a bit larger than our Moon
Mars has no atmosphere not speak of, surface pressure is 1% of Earth, no magnetic shield, localized spots but no core magneto, solar wind is still stripping the remaining atmosphere, surface is bombarded by solar radiation, has some type of water, how much is debatable, how accessible is still up for debate
Mars is doable for a small research outpost, heavily and expensively supported by Earth, the more people there the more the costs, that are subject to review and alteration, cancelation every budget year, by each adminstration, by the public's fading memory
Best if left to private corporations, they reap the rewards, they take the risk, the inevitable disasters
NASA believes the largest payload from orbit to surface has already been reached, and without new technology, larger payloads are not possible
It is doable, but more like the current ISS and much more dangerous and costly
The reality of Mars needs to be kept front and center, not the fantasy of Mars
>>7976029
>No such thing as Martian Soil
Get your head out of your ass, kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_soil
>Martian soil is the fine regolith found on the surface of Mars. Its properties can differ significantly from those of terrestrial soil. The term Martian soil typically refers to the finer fraction of regolith. On Earth, the term "soil" usually includes organic content.[1] In contrast, planetary scientists adopt a functional definition of soil to distinguish it from rocks.[2] Rocks generally refer to 10 cm scale and larger materials (e.g., fragments, breccia, and exposed outcrops) with high thermal inertia, with areal fractions consistent with the Viking Infrared Thermal Mapper (IRTM) data, and immobile under current eolian conditions.[2] Consequently, rocks classify as grains exceeding the size of cobbles on the Wentworth scale.
There rest of your post is completely retarded.
>>7971895
>terraforming
Unless you have knowledge of some hidden technology, Terraforming a dead world is a still squarely in the realm of Fantasyland
The cost, the resources needed to terraform a world are beyond the current and foreseeable abilities of humanity
Before any terraforming began on Mars you would need to create/restart Mars' magnetic core or all your work is lost to space
The timescale needed to make Mars even remotely habitable would be longer than the probable lifespan of humanity
The best and quickest fix to this and other world colonizing problems would be genetic alteration of humans rather than terraforming, instead of attempting to change a planet to suit our present needs, it would be far easier to alter our genetics to adapt our bodies to whatever conditions present on Mars or any other world
Rather than attempting to pound a square peg into a round hole, change the peg so it fits the hole
>>7976049
>trying to rebutt with a link to wikipedia that actually backs up what your opponent said
>calling others retarded
Obvious high school dropout is obvious.
>>7972275
Hey dipshit, the Outer Space Treaty is an international agreement. Unless someone does shit that severely damages an alien ecosystem, the international community won't give enough of a shit to indict the responsible party.
There is a genocide currently occurring in Syria which should mandate action under the UN Charter, but it isn't recognized as such under any resolution. If you think that they're going to hassle scientists over some ambiguous wording in an old treaty, then you clearly don't understand how the international community operates.
>>7976077
Terraforming is easy peasy baby mode. We do it on Earth all the time. Just make............
...........
.........
....................greenhouses!
OH SH-!
>>7977142
Being in a signed treaty with asshole countries means you are subjected to their crybaby whims when you do something that even slightly fucks up a treaty article.
You clearly have no clue about anything and should probably stop posting, kid.
>>7970949
>Outer Space Treaty
Prevents nation-states from claiming resources.
It doesn't prevent private parties from doing so.
>>7973622
Weight is absolutely critical in rockets. It takes about 15 lbs of fuel to put every lb or cargo into orbit. Possibly up to 20 lbs per lb in orbit.
So for every lb you cut out of the design you need 20 lbs less fuel, which means you need less fuel to move that fuel, which means you need even less fuel etc.
It basically snowballs. Tiny reductions in mass can cut the size of the rocket significantly. I know the game Kerbal Space Program isn't a simulator but it does demonstrate this point very well. It's amazing how increasing the weight of your vehicle you want to put in orbit by 10% results in you needing a much more powerful and larger first stage.
Basically a rocket is trimmed down to the absolute minimum strength needed to get the job done.
>>7977365
Then they will have to launch from international water while hiding their association with Netherlands, as the founder came from there as well as the university that officially support the launch.
And I don't think that Netherlands will be impassive when it will create international issues.
>>7977642
Sounds like there may be some science involved in doing rocketry...
>>7978765
it might even be called....rocket science?
The thing is that these people will be a novelty. They'll be super popular and great water cooler talk the first few years. But then the exciting news starts getting more and more sparse.
By the time they reach old age, they'll be all but forgotten by the average person and then they'll die.
Threw their lives away for a meme
It's not a suicide mission because it's never going to get off the ground in the first place.
