A big question, so this got a bit long even before I inserted some extra details in post-production.
This video series is a classic Ask Me Anything, with 1-2 questions answered each week. It’s for ThisIsTrue.com readers who are curious about whatever. Questions are accepted (only) from Premium subscribers. My wife and I live on a Residential Cruising ship, and I record from my office there.
Questions in this Episode:
- 0:15 Chuck in Texas: Re Andy Weir’s The Martian, with your experience with NASA and friends, how long it will be before we have a full-blown (manned!) Mars mission, if ever?
The Martian on Amazon *: book or movie on 4K BlueRay.
What’s a Klemperer_Rosette. The Puppetteers then moved that cluster away from their galaxy.
Since Youtube Comments are typically a vast, brain-free wasteland of obliviocy, I’m putting the videos on my site where there can be intelligent discussion. The comments are NOT a place to ask questions.
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This was a great show. Informed speculation at its best. Thanks.
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Glad you found it interesting. -rc
An interesting, and valid, take on the possibility of mankind ever colonizing another planet. Many science fiction authors have addressed this. As well as the possibility of whatever environment we go to being toxic to humans in some way. However, the fact that we are able to fundamentally destroy this planet in various ways, whether by pollution of various types, or war, or even a man made plague, makes me feel that we must get our eggs into multiple baskets. Obviously, it won’t be soon, but it is something I feel must be done to save humanity.
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And I don’t argue with anything you’ve said there. -rc
Too often in the discussions about Mars, the discussion is completely focused on the technology of the space travel part of the trip (including landing and return to Earth). It is refreshing to hear you bring some very important issues from outside that sphere.
A great, fairly new, source of research and information on the subject is A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. They cover the topics you brought up and a whole lot more. Each topic covers what we know now, what we need to know to contemplate a colony on Mars, and what we need to do (including some ‘should have dones’) to close the huge knowledge and technology gap.
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Hadn’t heard of that one yet — thanks! Looks interesting. -rc
And just out, a pre-publication copy of A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars from the National Academies. True to form, it is 241 pages for what science humans should do on Mars when they get there.
Of course, neither this report nor the Weinersmith book counter anything you said about political will. I’m pretty firmly in the “What’s the point again?” camp when it comes to humans on Mars. If we need more adaptable and flexible searching on the planet, I suggest we combine the latest advances in robotics and AI with the absolutely freaking amazing engineering of today’s rovers (thanks to JPL and friends). It won’t be that hard to create bots that can do almost everything a human could there but they would be a lot tougher.
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Tougher AND much cheaper to send: they wouldn’t even need a pressurized spacecraft. I did hear about this new report, but hadn’t even begun to look for it yet. I’ll note for others that even the Prepublication edition (240 pages) costs $44.10 in PDF format. -rc
I just clicked download and got the whole thing (I was logged in with my free account).
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Interesting! So much for the price tag. It was easy to create an account and grab a copy. Thanks! -rc