silhouette - 10 June 2008 06:53 PM

We could just extract some He from natural gas I suppose....
I’m sorry, but natural gas wont be used up for another 200 or so years.

I dare you to say that we might run out of H.

Well 100 years according to the Wired article http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html

Though it is interesting that they mention mining in space as a solution… I think that is pretty far fetched, though, unless the nation’s of earth dramatically change their attitudes about space travel.

Although it would be cool to think there is a population on Mars and have family to visit there. Who am I kidding? I would live there and visit Earth. The thought of living in a sort of space station or giant bubble is highly unappealing and really the only way this could happen. Unless we found a way to create a more sustainable atmosphere or all wore tons of 1000spf sunblock.

The only way this could really happen and not take 50 years to build a small town would be a super-massive space ship or station to carry all the needed supplies to build a livable place on Mars. That in itself would be a daunting task. Then getting it there and fueling it to get there (and back). I think the capital invested in a project of this magnitude would be better used to fix up good ol’ Earth. That or build on the moon. That way your vacation leave would be cut down from a year and a half to 2 weeks. Wait… bad idea again, build on Mars.

“Hey boss, I’m putting in for my vacation for next month”

“Oh, okay, how much time are you taking off?

“Umm, about a year and a half, I’m visiting family on Mars”

“You’re fired”

“Oh”

To touch on the subject of having a tractor beam pull in some junk from space to drive around Mars for a few years would be cool. However I don’t think it would work necessarily because we would be having too much fun playing with the tractor beam shooting large, planetary like objects at stuff. Imagine playing planetary golf, shoot a small useless planet into the nearest black hole! (Par 29,375,532,817,432)

By the way, to the one who posted about Hydrogen dissipating from our atmosphere, you really should stock up now, I hear it has plans to pack its bags and ship on out to Mars soon. It’s brother 0 will be coming shortly after H has established its place there and reunite there on Mars.

wiseman

Skicarver and I were joking about bombarding the planet or tractoring a satellite to re-kindle Mars’ atmosphere. 

It seems to me that without changing the atmosphere on Mars, people would have to live underground.  If we wanted to do that why not stay here?

I am in favor of exploration, even manned missions if and when they become feasible.  I do question colonizing Mars and the moon from a practical standpoint.  What exactly are we going to get out of a colony?  What is there on Mars and the moon we can’t get here?  (I have heard that the moon has a lot of H3 which is a great energy source so there may be reasons, i’m just not aware of any).  A colony would seem awfully expensive and I’m not sure how much we would get out of it. 

It also seems to me that we might be better off focusing on creating more reliable and efficient spacecraft before worrying about colonizing other planets.

JRM5001 - 17 June 2008 09:57 AM

wiseman

Skicarver and I were joking about bombarding the planet or tractoring a satellite to re-kindle Mars’ atmosphere. 

Please please please tell me you missed the sarcasm in my post by accident and didn’t actually take it literally…

While I think we are far too miniscule in skills to succeed in planetary manipulation, I saw an article where someone proposes seeding our upper atmosphere with a high abedo material so we reflect more sunlight and so compensate for global warming.  If this can be done, then let’s skip Mars and start seeding the upper atmosphere of Venus.  Especially if we can block just the side toward the sun, Venus would radiate its heat away pretty effectively.  Once we cool it down to the point where all the sulfur is solid, we could introduce sulfur eating bacteria.  Gradually, it could develop an ecosystem, and become terraformed in the next few million years.

Occam

wiseman,

I misread your post.  We also had an earlier poster who took our jokes seriously. 

Sorry about that.

JRM5001 - 19 June 2008 11:16 AM

wiseman,

I misread your post.  We also had an earlier poster who took our jokes seriously. 

Sorry about that.

haha its cool. I reread some of those posts and yeah… wow. I mean yeah sure one day it could happen, but not now. I know that if I ever developed a tractor beam I would be too busy playing around with it to do anything serious with it. Reminds me of that Pixar Short film “Lifted” You should check that out if you haven’t seen it. It’s hilarious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neWDRrBEQ_M&feature=related

Occam if I were a science fiction writer, I would steal that idea. 

More seriously, one wonders if Venus isn’t akin to early Earth.  I know the maps we have of the surface show few meteor craters which has led some to believe the surface hardened a billion or so years ago.  The Earth’s surface was once largely CO2 and inhospitable.  It makes one wonder, Mars is believed to have once had surface water, Earth currently does, maybe Venus will develop a different environment in a billion years or so.  I wonder if there is some sort of pattern there.  Maybe in another 3 or 4 billion years, Venusians will look on their grey, lifeless “twin” planet Earth and wonder about the dry lakebeds they see trying to imagine if life ever existed there. 

That’s not a bad sci-fi idea either I suppose I could just credit you as an inspiration in my brilliant novel since I’m not stealing your idea anymore.

........and then billions of years in the future as we are all crammed upon Mercury, orbiting our dying star, gazing upon Venus, Earth and Mars---wondering if.....

JRM5001, don’t worry about stealing my ideas.  I give them out freely.  I figure that when I have to worry about protecting my ideas, it means I’m running out of new ones, and that’s the time to enter a hospice and prepare to be barbequed. 

Asanta, that’s one scenario, but how about before dies, I understand the sun will become a red giant and expand out to about the orbit of Mars or Jupiter?  Maybe we should think of all moving to Pluto or one of Neptune’s moons.

Occam

Jupiter is a gas giant! Lets arrange to have our descendants meet on Uranus instead!

OK Occam when my $500 million blockbuster starring Will Smith, the ghost of Ted Knight (best known as Judge Smails in Caddyshack), and Eric Estrada (making a Tarvoltaesque comeback).  Part of the genius of the movie is the writing is so good, these three actors pull it off flawlessly.  I think I’ll call it Morning Star.

Geez, these kids with short memories.  Ted Knight was even more well known before Caddyshack as the newcaster on the Mary Tyler Moore show.  While you’re at it, how about including Jessica Alba?  I’d like to see her in a decent role for a change.

Occam

Believe it or not, I remember Mary Tyler Moore.  I also remember Too Close for Comfort.  Judge Smails to me is one of the best comedic characters in movie history though (as was Bill Murray’s Karl Spagler). 

My understanding is that Knight was nothing like the gruff jerk he played in MTM and Caddyshack.  I read somewhere that he weas the most decorated US veteran of WWII.  I just searched for that and could not find it.  However, I found his obituary in his hometown paper which states he did receive 5 battle stars.  In any event, it’s a nice article:

http://www.billjerome.com/tedknight/hisdeath/bp_860827_we.html