6 ms·

How is having a dead citizen on Mars an embarrassment ? I'd have thought that it would be pride, even.

by Faaak 4y ago

graycat 4y ago
How? The person is, uh, did I mention, dead? Since our intention was not to send people out there to die, their death indicates a failure, and that is an embarrassment. If anyone is a little slow to see the embarrassment, then I'm sure the US MSM (mainstream media) would use the deaths as a grand source of shocking headlines to grab people by the heart and gut, have their eyeballs follow, and increase the ad revenue. If you like the idea of dying out there, sign up to be one of the first humans on Mars: Your chances of staying there for thousands of years are excellent. And, for your death, I doubt that will take very long, maybe less than 100 hours after you land. That is, for humans, the moon and Mars are dangerous places, wildly, outrageously dangerous. For a death on the moon or Mars, sending the body back to earth would be expensive. Leaving the body there and adding it to the growing collection of dead bodies will be for thousands of years a grand embarrassment. For a body in space, often retrieving it would be very expensive, so expensive that we are in line to have a large, growing collection of bodies out in space in whatever orbits around whatever masses. In a little more detail, out there, humans will suffer from high energy radiation, i.e., cosmic rays, and the effects of low gravity. Further, both the physical and social environments will be highly foreign and, thus, very likely harmful. Yes, soon one proposal will be to gather up the bodies on the moon or Mars, load them into a special rocket, and send them to the sun. That will be an expensive rocket and still do nothing about the bodies in orbits. Let the Chinese, etc. accumulate dead bodies. We in the US will have just dead robots, right, that can be used for spare parts! Soooooo, here in the US, just take this opportunity to research, engineer, and develop various robots. We can learn our lesson the easy way (just read what I am writing here) or the hard way. But one way or the other, we are in line to learn our lesson: (A) Sending robots into space is quite doable. (B) Due to the dangers and the really goofy environments, there is no role for humans in deep space now or anytime on the horizon. Sooooo, the humans build the robots and send the robots, not the humans. The easy way or the hard way, guys.
- BHSPitMonkey 4y ago
  Following your argument to its logical conclusion, we should cease human activities on Earth too (otherwise, humans will die there - and we can't have that!).
  - graycat 4y ago
    Nope. Doesn't follow. Instead, we get to bury our dead, and they quickly decompose and can be forgotten about. In strong contrast, on the moon or Mars, burial would be wildly expensive, and the bodies would remain frozen and last for thousands of years. Shipping the bodies back to earth for burial or sending them to the sun, very expensive. In practice, we would just let the bodies pile up. That would be a massive embarrassment. Look, we're not in line to create societies with nice neighborhoods with couples, families, kids, etc. on the moon or Mars, in bubbles, tunnels, or anything. We're not in line to colonize them. Instead, our interests that are at all feasible will be science or military. For the science, we don't really want or need humans and their eyes, hands, or brains -- instead we need instruments, e.g., like we already have doing well on Mars. For what we can use from human eyes, hands, and brains, with some development, we can get that from robots. For the military, as we are now moving quickly just here on earth, even more so on the moon or Mars, we will want robots operating the rockets, weapons, etc. Besides, humans in the necessary bulky space suits are just not very effective at anything, not even just staying alive.
    - abduhl 4y ago
      Many bodies remain on or on the way to mountain summits like K2 and Everest. Retrieving them is prohibitively expensive. The conditions ensure that they will remain there in decomposed for centuries. Should we stop going into the mountains? It’s not an embarrassment to try to achieve an amazing task and fail. The embarrassment is giving up because you’re scared you’ll be embarrassed.
      - graycat 4y ago
        > K2 and Everest Sport for a few people. Otherwise no gain. > amazing task The moon and Mars, all pain, no gain. There is no gain, utility, worthwhile accomplishment for humans in space except for just a few humans in low earth orbit. There is nothing "amazing" that we know how to do sending humans beyond low earth orbit: Yes, we can build the rockets and put people on them, but there is essentially nothing they can do out there. Instruments, robots, yes. Humans, no. The US had some men walking on the moon. While they were there, they accomplished next to nothing. In simple terms, the whole effort was a publicity stunt for US presidential politics. And, all these decades later, no human has returned -- there is a big reason for that, there is no reason for a human up there. A human needs a space suit, huge, so clumsy the human can do next to nothing productive. Else the human needs a big, complicated space ship (station, bubble, tunnel) where, again, there is not much they can do, amazing or otherwise. Gee, they could take a lot of PDF files along and read about literature, science, ..., whatever. What we want out there is instruments. If we need more, would want humans to do, we should just develop suitable robots. Otherwise what we want out there is military, where again there is no real utility for having humans there. Humans just have no real role out there. Sorry 'bout that. Robots? Yes. Humans? No. Simple. If we send humans, the main result will be collections of frozen dead bodies that will still be there 1000 years from now. That will be a big embarrassment, and all for no good reason.

How is having a dead citizen on Mars an embarrassment ? I'd have thought that it would be pride, even.

by Faaak 4y ago

How is having a dead citizen on Mars an embarrassment ? I'd have thought that it would be pride, even.

How? The person is, uh, did I mention, dead? Since our intention was not to send people out there to die, their death indicates a failure, and that is an embarrassment. If anyone is a little slow to see the embarrassment, then I'm sure the US MSM (mainstream media) would use the deaths as a grand source of shocking headlines to grab people by the heart and gut, have their eyeballs follow, and increase the ad revenue. If you like the idea of dying out there, sign up to be one of the first humans on Mars: Your chances of staying there for thousands of years are excellent. And, for your death, I doubt that will take very long, maybe less than 100 hours after you land. That is, for humans, the moon and Mars are dangerous places, wildly, outrageously dangerous. For a death on the moon or Mars, sending the body back to earth would be expensive. Leaving the body there and adding it to the growing collection of dead bodies will be for thousands of years a grand embarrassment. For a body in space, often retrieving it would be very expensive, so expensive that we are in line to have a large, growing collection of bodies out in space in whatever orbits around whatever masses. In a little more detail, out there, humans will suffer from high energy radiation, i.e., cosmic rays, and the effects of low gravity. Further, both the physical and social environments will be highly foreign and, thus, very likely harmful. Yes, soon one proposal will be to gather up the bodies on the moon or Mars, load them into a special rocket, and send them to the sun. That will be an expensive rocket and still do nothing about the bodies in orbits. Let the Chinese, etc. accumulate dead bodies. We in the US will have just dead robots, right, that can be used for spare parts! Soooooo, here in the US, just take this opportunity to research, engineer, and develop various robots. We can learn our lesson the easy way (just read what I am writing here) or the hard way. But one way or the other, we are in line to learn our lesson: (A) Sending robots into space is quite doable. (B) Due to the dangers and the really goofy environments, there is no role for humans in deep space now or anytime on the horizon. Sooooo, the humans build the robots and send the robots, not the humans. The easy way or the hard way, guys.

BHSPitMonkey 4y ago
Following your argument to its logical conclusion, we should cease human activities on Earth too (otherwise, humans will die there - and we can't have that!).
- graycat 4y ago
  Nope. Doesn't follow. Instead, we get to bury our dead, and they quickly decompose and can be forgotten about. In strong contrast, on the moon or Mars, burial would be wildly expensive, and the bodies would remain frozen and last for thousands of years. Shipping the bodies back to earth for burial or sending them to the sun, very expensive. In practice, we would just let the bodies pile up. That would be a massive embarrassment. Look, we're not in line to create societies with nice neighborhoods with couples, families, kids, etc. on the moon or Mars, in bubbles, tunnels, or anything. We're not in line to colonize them. Instead, our interests that are at all feasible will be science or military. For the science, we don't really want or need humans and their eyes, hands, or brains -- instead we need instruments, e.g., like we already have doing well on Mars. For what we can use from human eyes, hands, and brains, with some development, we can get that from robots. For the military, as we are now moving quickly just here on earth, even more so on the moon or Mars, we will want robots operating the rockets, weapons, etc. Besides, humans in the necessary bulky space suits are just not very effective at anything, not even just staying alive.
  - abduhl 4y ago
    Many bodies remain on or on the way to mountain summits like K2 and Everest. Retrieving them is prohibitively expensive. The conditions ensure that they will remain there in decomposed for centuries. Should we stop going into the mountains? It’s not an embarrassment to try to achieve an amazing task and fail. The embarrassment is giving up because you’re scared you’ll be embarrassed.
    - graycat 4y ago
      > K2 and Everest Sport for a few people. Otherwise no gain. > amazing task The moon and Mars, all pain, no gain. There is no gain, utility, worthwhile accomplishment for humans in space except for just a few humans in low earth orbit. There is nothing "amazing" that we know how to do sending humans beyond low earth orbit: Yes, we can build the rockets and put people on them, but there is essentially nothing they can do out there. Instruments, robots, yes. Humans, no. The US had some men walking on the moon. While they were there, they accomplished next to nothing. In simple terms, the whole effort was a publicity stunt for US presidential politics. And, all these decades later, no human has returned -- there is a big reason for that, there is no reason for a human up there. A human needs a space suit, huge, so clumsy the human can do next to nothing productive. Else the human needs a big, complicated space ship (station, bubble, tunnel) where, again, there is not much they can do, amazing or otherwise. Gee, they could take a lot of PDF files along and read about literature, science, ..., whatever. What we want out there is instruments. If we need more, would want humans to do, we should just develop suitable robots. Otherwise what we want out there is military, where again there is no real utility for having humans there. Humans just have no real role out there. Sorry 'bout that. Robots? Yes. Humans? No. Simple. If we send humans, the main result will be collections of frozen dead bodies that will still be there 1000 years from now. That will be a big embarrassment, and all for no good reason.