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It's a testament to humanity's ingenuity that we managed to put a rover on Mars. I sometimes wonder if in 1000 years we will look back and think how primitive w

It's a testament to humanity's ingenuity that we managed to put a rover on Mars. I sometimes wonder if in 1000 years we will look back and think how primitive we were and curiosity will be in some museum.

andreapaiola 8y ago
A museum on Mars!
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
On the other hand, for all the marvel that Curiosity has provided, a human on the surface of Mars could have achieved vastly more and vastly faster. Rovers and especially probes are ultimately very limited technology. If we continued on the trajectory we were on in the 60s we'd likely already have human outposts, if not civilizations, on the Moon, Mars, and perhaps even some of the outer planets' moons. Just imagine all the amazing discoveries and economic potential we've missed out on due to myopia mixed with a bit of conservatism. The entire space race was ultimately just a global level dick waving contest, and what space exploration we have had since has been hamstrung by fear of failure. That people will die in human space endeavors is hardly a reason to avoid them. Columbia was named after the ship that first circumnavigated the globe. And unsurprisingly that voyage came with immense risk. Nearly every seaman associated with that mission, though successful, would go on to die in sea related voyages and I doubt they would have had it any other way. Exploring new frontiers always comes with risks and it has never served as a deterrent to the right sort of people. That one of the biggest advocates for Martian colonization today is Buzz Aldrin, is not a coincidence.
- iamgopal 8y ago
  The thing you overlook is, billions people mindlessly sharing their photo on phone, are the ones actually providing economical and in turn technological advances that enabled such high tech missions. I really doubt we could reach sub 10nm chips only with government funding without such strong demand for consumer products. So a bit late is much better because it gave us time to actually improve technology at micro level, instead of just building larger rockets.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    I'd certainly agree in a way. Consumerism along with the backing of private telecoms is one of the big reasons private companies like SpaceX can even exist. And I do expect that the first rocket to land people on another planet will not come from a government, but a private company. Such a comment would have seemed quite sci-fi in the 60s when there was no private space industry to speak of. But at the same time, these are tangential achievements. Miniaturization and greater processing speed will certainly be nice tools. But the things that are really needed are effectively 0 fail rate self sustaining habitation, life support, energy production, and food production in extremely hostile conditions. We still have not entirely solved these and they are things we could have been working on decades ago, but as human space flight died so did their necessity.
    - iamgopal 8y ago
      You will be amazed how much side effect / cross improvement this had created in. For e.g. Because Semiconductor industry need precise high vacuums, large vacuum pump companies invested in technology of high speed rotating device at near zero vacuum scale. Which in turn enabled them to create ultra compact flywheel technologies for transportation. Or on socioeconomic side, because of higher wealth and more leisure times, there are tons of nutrition research which in turn created single food all vitamin products and superfoods.
  - visarga 8y ago
    I doubt 10nm chips would be useful on Mars. These rovers use special chips that are shielded against radiation. Cutting edge chips are much more fragile. They only work in ideal conditions.
- pcrh 8y ago
  I doubt populating the moon or mars would have reached that level. Consider Antarctica, it is vastly easier and cheaper to live there than even in near earth orbit, and it has huge untapped natural resources, yet the population of Antarctica is only just over 1,000 people.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Good point, but if Antarctica weren't protected by very strict environmental policies, there might be a lot more people there exploiting the resources.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Rules and regulations [1] inhibit a lot of Antarctica's potential. In a nutshell you're not allowed to do much of anything in Antarctica. And what you do do has to be effectively 0 environmental impact, and leave no footprint whatsoever. So you're not going to be 'tapping that.' And while we can breathe the air and not get radiated to death by the sun (during the times its visible) on Antarctica, it's in other ways much less hospitable than places like Mars. Mars has a relatively normal day/night cycle which [presumably] means no T3 syndrome like many suffer in Antarctic winters. It also gets warmer on Mars than it does on Antarctica. If not for the atmosphere, many days would be quite pleasant. The low density atmosphere also means you don't need to worry about things like storms (one of the main things that was completely faked in 'The Martian') - the most brutal storm on Mars would feel like light breeze. And it has to be said, even if for just an entertainment factor - low g! There's also the drive for discovery. You may make some interesting discoveries in Antarctica (if you were allowed to engage in operations that would allow such) but they're going to generally be 'terrestrial' in nature. While this may end up being true of Mars as well, for now no one entirely knows. We're still making revolutionary discoveries on the Moon's composition and we have actually landed on it! It's very hard to know what you don't know, but the one thing that blazing into new frontiers has shown time and again is that there's an immense amount we don't know that we don't know - and I don't see any reason to think that this is no longer the case. In many ways I think Mars has the potential to be another Earth. Different in many ways of course, but also similar in breadth and possibility. Whereas Antarctica's potential is something rather different, but altogether inhibited by rules and regulations in any case. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System
- bloak 8y ago
  Unmanned expeditions provide more useful information per currency unit, which is the measure that matters. Colonisation would probably cause permanent destruction of useful information through pollution: negative scientific progress.
- macintux 8y ago
  > If we continued on the trajectory we were on in the 60s we'd likely already have human outposts, if not civilizations, on the Moon, Mars, and perhaps even some of the outer planets' moons. I was amazed when I started looking at old maps of North America and realized how short a time it was between Columbus stumbling across the West Indies and a wave of explorers/exploiters mapping out the western hemisphere. (Obviously it's a vastly different situation than we face in space, and based on what we're learning about biology in space we might well have abandoned any such outposts by now, but your lament is well-taken.)
- ConnerMcP 8y ago
  => Columbia was named after the ship that first circumnavigated the globe The ship that first circumnavigated the globe was Nao Victoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(ship)

andreapaiola 8y ago

A museum on Mars!

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

On the other hand, for all the marvel that Curiosity has provided, a human on the surface of Mars could have achieved vastly more and vastly faster. Rovers and especially probes are ultimately very limited technology. If we continued on the trajectory we were on in the 60s we'd likely already have human outposts, if not civilizations, on the Moon, Mars, and perhaps even some of the outer planets' moons. Just imagine all the amazing discoveries and economic potential we've missed out on due to myopia mixed with a bit of conservatism. The entire space race was ultimately just a global level dick waving contest, and what space exploration we have had since has been hamstrung by fear of failure. That people will die in human space endeavors is hardly a reason to avoid them. Columbia was named after the ship that first circumnavigated the globe. And unsurprisingly that voyage came with immense risk. Nearly every seaman associated with that mission, though successful, would go on to die in sea related voyages and I doubt they would have had it any other way. Exploring new frontiers always comes with risks and it has never served as a deterrent to the right sort of people. That one of the biggest advocates for Martian colonization today is Buzz Aldrin, is not a coincidence.

iamgopal 8y ago
The thing you overlook is, billions people mindlessly sharing their photo on phone, are the ones actually providing economical and in turn technological advances that enabled such high tech missions. I really doubt we could reach sub 10nm chips only with government funding without such strong demand for consumer products. So a bit late is much better because it gave us time to actually improve technology at micro level, instead of just building larger rockets.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I'd certainly agree in a way. Consumerism along with the backing of private telecoms is one of the big reasons private companies like SpaceX can even exist. And I do expect that the first rocket to land people on another planet will not come from a government, but a private company. Such a comment would have seemed quite sci-fi in the 60s when there was no private space industry to speak of. But at the same time, these are tangential achievements. Miniaturization and greater processing speed will certainly be nice tools. But the things that are really needed are effectively 0 fail rate self sustaining habitation, life support, energy production, and food production in extremely hostile conditions. We still have not entirely solved these and they are things we could have been working on decades ago, but as human space flight died so did their necessity.
  - iamgopal 8y ago
    You will be amazed how much side effect / cross improvement this had created in. For e.g. Because Semiconductor industry need precise high vacuums, large vacuum pump companies invested in technology of high speed rotating device at near zero vacuum scale. Which in turn enabled them to create ultra compact flywheel technologies for transportation. Or on socioeconomic side, because of higher wealth and more leisure times, there are tons of nutrition research which in turn created single food all vitamin products and superfoods.
- visarga 8y ago
  I doubt 10nm chips would be useful on Mars. These rovers use special chips that are shielded against radiation. Cutting edge chips are much more fragile. They only work in ideal conditions.
pcrh 8y ago
I doubt populating the moon or mars would have reached that level. Consider Antarctica, it is vastly easier and cheaper to live there than even in near earth orbit, and it has huge untapped natural resources, yet the population of Antarctica is only just over 1,000 people.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Good point, but if Antarctica weren't protected by very strict environmental policies, there might be a lot more people there exploiting the resources.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Rules and regulations [1] inhibit a lot of Antarctica's potential. In a nutshell you're not allowed to do much of anything in Antarctica. And what you do do has to be effectively 0 environmental impact, and leave no footprint whatsoever. So you're not going to be 'tapping that.' And while we can breathe the air and not get radiated to death by the sun (during the times its visible) on Antarctica, it's in other ways much less hospitable than places like Mars. Mars has a relatively normal day/night cycle which [presumably] means no T3 syndrome like many suffer in Antarctic winters. It also gets warmer on Mars than it does on Antarctica. If not for the atmosphere, many days would be quite pleasant. The low density atmosphere also means you don't need to worry about things like storms (one of the main things that was completely faked in 'The Martian') - the most brutal storm on Mars would feel like light breeze. And it has to be said, even if for just an entertainment factor - low g! There's also the drive for discovery. You may make some interesting discoveries in Antarctica (if you were allowed to engage in operations that would allow such) but they're going to generally be 'terrestrial' in nature. While this may end up being true of Mars as well, for now no one entirely knows. We're still making revolutionary discoveries on the Moon's composition and we have actually landed on it! It's very hard to know what you don't know, but the one thing that blazing into new frontiers has shown time and again is that there's an immense amount we don't know that we don't know - and I don't see any reason to think that this is no longer the case. In many ways I think Mars has the potential to be another Earth. Different in many ways of course, but also similar in breadth and possibility. Whereas Antarctica's potential is something rather different, but altogether inhibited by rules and regulations in any case. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System
bloak 8y ago
Unmanned expeditions provide more useful information per currency unit, which is the measure that matters. Colonisation would probably cause permanent destruction of useful information through pollution: negative scientific progress.
macintux 8y ago
> If we continued on the trajectory we were on in the 60s we'd likely already have human outposts, if not civilizations, on the Moon, Mars, and perhaps even some of the outer planets' moons. I was amazed when I started looking at old maps of North America and realized how short a time it was between Columbus stumbling across the West Indies and a wave of explorers/exploiters mapping out the western hemisphere. (Obviously it's a vastly different situation than we face in space, and based on what we're learning about biology in space we might well have abandoned any such outposts by now, but your lament is well-taken.)
ConnerMcP 8y ago
=> Columbia was named after the ship that first circumnavigated the globe The ship that first circumnavigated the globe was Nao Victoria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(ship)