Space Exploration

Are NASA's future missions and budget justified?

  • It's worth the time and expenditures

    Votes: 224 66.1%

  • Complete waste of money

    Votes: 41 12.1%

  • We need to explore, but not at the current cost

    Votes: 74 21.8%
  • Total voters
    339
#5,979
#5,979
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#5,982
#5,982
#5,983
#5,983
LittleVol said:
Elaborate.
I have my opinion about it, but Id rather hear someone else’s about it too
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We have known that Mats has at least SOME water in its crust but estimates have not been that large. Water is the single most critical resource for space travel. It is literally worth more than its weight in gold. With water, you can produce, oxygen, hydrogen or methane for rocket fuel, grow crops, and of course, hydrate humans. At 8.3 pounds per gallon, it is also very heavy making it extremely problematic to launch and transport through space: The thought had been that extracting trace amounts of water from Martian soil would take lots of time and effort. Finding massive anoints of easily obtainable after on Mars turns what would be a difficult and slow process into a cornucopia of rapid and dependable resources; speeding up human colonization by potentially an order of magnitude
 
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#5,984
#5,984
OrangeTsar said:
We have known that Mats has at least SOME water in its crust but estimates have not been that large. Water is the single most critical resource for space travel. It is literally worth more than its weight in gold. With water, you can produce, oxygen, hydrogen or methane for rocket fuel, grow crops, and of course, hydrate humans. At 8.3 pounds per gallon, it is also very heavy making it extremely problematic to launch and transport through space: The thought had been that extracting trace amounts of water from Martian soil would take lots of time and effort. Finding massive anoints of easily obtainable after on Mars turns what would be a difficult and slow process into a cornucopia of rapid and dependable resources; speeding up human colonization by potentially an order of magnitude
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even at 6 miles that would be just short of world record for deepest hole. and we would have to do that on Mars.

Trying to pump water up that distance is not feasible.
 
#5,985
#5,985
LouderVol said:
even at 6 miles that would be just short of world record for deepest hole. and we would have to do that on Mars.

Trying to pump water up that distance is not feasible.
Click to expand...

Sure it is, the deepest oil well is almost 7 1/2 miles deep. And on Mars you're dealing with 1/3rd less gravity.
 
#5,986
#5,986
LouderVol said:
even at 6 miles that would be just short of world record for deepest hole. and we would have to do that on Mars.

Trying to pump water up that distance is not feasible.
Click to expand...
Most deep drilling attempts on earth are stopped by heat, not distance. Mars should not have the same issues as it is geologically dead.
 
#5,988
#5,988
hog88 said:
Sure it is, the deepest oil well is almost 7 1/2 miles deep. And on Mars you're dealing with 1/3rd less gravity.
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Water isn't oil. Regardless, Deep oil pumps don't just work by sucking the oil out. They pump something down, typically a "mud", to maintain pressure in the well, as well as maintaining the vacuum seal necessary.



You can only suck water up a distance equal to the atmospheric pressure. Or you have to create artificial pressure on the down side.

So you are still going to have to have something liquid to make it work. Which seems to defeat the gain. As well as a pump big enough. Yet alone the drilling.

Granted maybe something works differently on Mars that changes all of this.
 
#5,989
#5,989
LouderVol said:
Water isn't oil. Regardless, Deep oil pumps don't just work by sucking the oil out. They pump something down, typically a "mud", to maintain pressure in the well, as well as maintaining the vacuum seal necessary.



You can only suck water up a distance equal to the atmospheric pressure. Or you have to create artificial pressure on the down side.

So you are still going to have to have something liquid to make it work. Which seems to defeat the gain. As well as a pump big enough. Yet alone the drilling.

Granted maybe something works differently on Mars that changes all of this.
Click to expand...


I know how it works. We pump stuff from below ground every day.
 
#5,992
#5,992
LouderVol said:
even at 6 miles that would be just short of world record for deepest hole. and we would have to do that on Mars.

Trying to pump water up that distance is not feasible.
Click to expand...
The article says anywhere from 7-12 miles deep in their crust.

But I think maybe viewing as an oil drill is whats throwing you off.

1) There’s the polar ice cap water on the surface to resource first. This water will go into the millions man city that Elon builds on Mars. We know the air pressure doesn’t exist to hold it as liquid H2O. It’s not high enough. So that’s why we need the bubble cities that create the air pressure

2) This subterranean water is the exact resource engineers will use to create the atmospheric pressure and create a more earthlike weather cycle. TIME is the difference in the reality of the resource and oil on Earth. We’re not going to try and create a quick turnaround. It will be a decades long process systematically digging down and creating refining and stabilizing structures along the way


3) Life COULD still exist in this water. Do we risk destroying our first contact with real alien life? This wouldn’t be enough to stop us forever but steps would have to be taken to at least give the impression we are being humane an preserving the organic Martian life.
 
#5,993
#5,993
LouderVol said:
Water isn't oil. Regardless, Deep oil pumps don't just work by sucking the oil out. They pump something down, typically a "mud", to maintain pressure in the well, as well as maintaining the vacuum seal necessary.



You can only suck water up a distance equal to the atmospheric pressure. Or you have to create artificial pressure on the down side.

So you are still going to have to have something liquid to make it work. Which seems to defeat the gain. As well as a pump big enough. Yet alone the drilling.

Granted maybe something works differently on Mars that changes all of this.
Click to expand...

With the almost nonexistent atmosphere on Mars, simply exposing the water should cause it to sublimate directly to a gas that can be collected without pumping
 
#5,994
#5,994
OrangeTsar said:
With the almost nonexistent atmosphere on Mars, simply exposing the water should cause it to sublimate directly to a gas that can be collected without pumping
Click to expand...
And that process can be done methodically over decades maybe even centuries, as the surface ice and dry ice are already there to work with.

Let’s say me and you have 5 Trillion dollars to help colonize Mars.
I have a simple belief. Bring people that can build and fix things. And pring people that build and fix people. Let’s go get some Chinese and Emirate architects. Elons Boring company as Space X is also already involved at this point.
Climatologist from all over the world. Russian and American Nuclear Engineers.

- See before we go any further we have to find a way to systematically restart that core on Mars. Or else will be screwed in 200 years when all the water we gathered slowly seeps back into the ground.

Mars has water but it’s still super dry and moving water once place to another is simply delaying the fix.
- Eventually we need to somehow someway get Cerus to orbit Mars. From there we can simply jump water from Cerus to Mars adding a surplus to the planets level of saturation. This is also a long period of time. But it takes care of the water issue as well as creating the same relationship as Earth has to it’s moon. There are astrophysicists that have done the math on this. And they’re worried the energy needed to move Cerus would cause it to crumble

But let’s say for me and you that doesn’t happen!
Now we can build Mars in a consistent state, to where when we’re done, humanscan live and even EVOLVE on Mars over tens of thousands of years.

I honestly think getting the core started and having Cerus pull and push on Mars is the key to living there imo
 
#5,995
#5,995
LittleVol said:
And that process can be done methodically over decades maybe even centuries, as the surface ice and dry ice are already there to work with.

Let’s say me and you have 5 Trillion dollars to help colonize Mars.
I have a simple belief. Bring people that can build and fix things. And pring people that build and fix people. Let’s go get some Chinese and Emirate architects. Elons Boring company as Space X is also already involved at this point.
Climatologist from all over the world. Russian and American Nuclear Engineers.

- See before we go any further we have to find a way to systematically restart that core on Mars. Or else will be screwed in 200 years when all the water we gathered slowly seeps back into the ground.

Mars has water but it’s still super dry and moving water once place to another is simply delaying the fix.
- Eventually we need to somehow someway get Cerus to orbit Mars. From there we can simply jump water from Cerus to Mars adding a surplus to the planets level of saturation. This is also a long period of time. But it takes care of the water issue as well as creating the same relationship as Earth has to it’s moon. There are astrophysicists that have done the math on this. And they’re worried the energy needed to move Cerus would cause it to crumble

But let’s say for me and you that doesn’t happen!
Now we can build Mars in a consistent state, to where when we’re done, humanscan live and even EVOLVE on Mars over tens of thousands of years.

I honestly think getting the core started and having Cerus pull and push on Mars is the key to living there imo
Click to expand...
Yes, longterm the solution is geoengineering. In the next century or so, we should have enough resources to start our colonies.
That is one reason why, as much as I love what Musk is doing with DOGE right now; I really wish he would focus 100% on Mars. The United States might exist for hundreds of years more; but humanity has to think even longer term than that. We need humans on other worlds NOW
 
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#5,997
#5,997
Elon and SpaceX to the rescue....again!

"NASA is proceeding with a plan to swap out certain science investigations on the upcoming SpaceX CRS-32 (SpX-32) cargo mission in favor of crew consumables and station hardware. That Dragon launch is now expected no earlier than April 21.

While NASA has not detailed exactly how much science has been cut from SpX-32’s manifest, historical trends show previous missions delivering close to a 50-50 split between science and crew supplies. SpX-31, launched in November 2024, carried 961 kilograms of crew supplies and 917 kilograms of research. In contrast, SpX-30 delivered 545 kilograms of consumables and 1,135 kilograms of investigations."

 
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