, and beamed back to the surface. Same goes to the primary communication array. This way the amount base on the surface should be minimized, and a replacement units could be sent from Earth.
Re:How about... (1)
K. S. Kyosuke (729550) | about 4 months ago | (#47189917)
Re:How about... (1)
mrchaotica (681592) | about 4 months ago | (#47190305)
And you don't have to worry about landing it.
Re: How about... (0)
Anonymous Coward | about 4 months ago | (#47191601)
Yeah, it is not like the red planet has anything like iron.
Re: How about... (1)
tlambert (566799) | about 4 months ago | (#47192021)
Yeah, it is not like the red planet has anything like iron.
OK, so we separate the iron out of the iron oxide, and use the iron as a building material, what are we supposed to do with all the extra oxygen, Mr. Smartypants, *breathe it* and *use it for fuel*?!?!
Oh... Wait...
Re:How about... (0)
Anonymous Coward | about 4 months ago | (#47192689)
I'm the original author of 'how about...'
That is exactly what I was thinking. Why bring resources over if you could possibly use existing resources on the planet itself. I've read all the replies above in-regards to hazardous materials within the cave which could range from poisonous dust particles, dangerous minerals, etc. The best option I see is treating the cave system as a quarantine area whereby the inner walls (and the ground) have to be covered with some form of material which would keep all that away from humans. The inner cave after it has been covered in the material will need further sterilization however it can be then inhabited safely.
How about... (0)
Anonymous Coward | about 4 months ago | (#47189919)
Or how about just live in the fucking space shuttle? Geniuses.
A while ago, NASA needed a pen that could write in space. They paid millions of dollars to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity and all conditions of space. The Russians used a pencil.
Re:How about... (2)
CRCulver (715279) | about 4 months ago | (#47189925)
This is an urban myth and has been thoroughly debunked [snopes.com]. Sad to see it being thrown forth on Slashot.
Re:How about... (0)
Anonymous Coward | about 4 months ago | (#47190127)
HA HA HA HA!!!!
You're making the assumption that all Slashdotters are highly educated, intelligent and well-balanced people.
You must be new here.
Re:How about... (1)
sillybilly (668960) | about 4 months ago | (#47192325)
Going to Mars in the first place is a major waste of time and taxpayer dollars, as the Moon is a lot closer with a lot less gravity to build a rotating cylinder centrifugal artificial gravity space station from. Then only thing Mars has going for it is the 100 x thinner than Earth's atmosphere atmosphere that has a lot of CO2, a good source of carbon should it be difficult to find in lunar rocks or meteorites, in a low gravity gravity well, but it's kinda far to go for it, and also solar panels and farming are less efficient that far away from the Sun. We should instead focus on turning Venus into a livable space, by smacking artificial comets into it to move it farther away from the Sun and to get it to start spinning and develop a magnetic field van Allen belt Aurora Borealis protection for its atmosphere from the solar wind, and possibly put up gigantic shades if we can't get it far enough from the Sun. It also has a lot of CO2 as carbon source for space station based life forms, such as more humans, especially if you end up with humans in the trillions instead of the 7 billion we have today, they need room to live and also lots of carbon to make up their bodies. There is a lot of room in outer space to put a lot of people, you just have to make it possible to live well surrounded by vacuum. Also Venus is a longterm project, and the biggest priority right now is setting up a Moon base, digging for silicate dust/rock and extracting oxygen and silicon and aluminum and iron and titanium via calcium reduction, making a gigantic tiltable solar panel/shade system at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point as an antidote for global warming, as a cooling effect, and then we can go berserk down here invading our deserts with greenhouse jungles, turning every livable place on the face of Earth green and full of life, instead of desert nothingness, and migrating sand dunes. What a waste of real estate deserts are, but you cannot invade them without upsetting the solar reflectivity of the Earth, and the heat budget. Of course even with a jungle invasion you still need to set up a few natural reservations for cactus and rattlesnakes and such, but much of the Sahara is full of nothing, almost 100% zero life. Once you can live on the Moon, you can also live in deserts, and then people don't have to get so congested in the good farming areas when there is 7 billion of them, or there can be a lot more of us to get the same congestion effect down here on Earth.
Taking a trip to outer space right now costs on the order of $10,000
Re:How about... (1)
tlambert (566799) | about 4 months ago | (#47193205)
Taking a trip to outer space right now costs on the order of $10,000
/lb in rocket fuel alone, and for a 200 lb person that comes to like 2 million dollars, so it's really expensive to emigrate into space even if there were livable space stations and farmable areas, pace, you can get a lot of energy that you can convert into rocket fuel, and drop the price of taking a trip to space to something like an airplane ticket cost.
Falcon 9.1 costs are already $1867/lb, so you're off by a factor of over 5X, and the Falcon Heavy is on target for $709/lb, meaning you're off by a factor of 1X4 once that's up and running.
A DC-X would have had less of cost per lb than that, but really, who wants the average person with access to ceramic coated rebar having cheap access to space?
Re:How about... (1)
sillybilly (668960) | about 4 months ago | (#47200549)
I like to see the price of shipping and handling to space drop. I still think it's very expensive, and think of really tiny people I've come across in life, they must have been like 4'10" at age 20 or so, they (or their kids assuming they'd be of tiny growth too) would make great cheap astronauts to keep sending up and down, all we gotta do is tell them what buttons to push when up there. Compared to a 200 lb person, even at $700/lb a saving of 120 lb comes to $84,000. Come to think of it $84,000 is not that much, except when you're talking about NASA, who's put on a shoestring budget by Obama and every penny counts. Obama sees keeping people from starving as his priority, not flying to outer space, and I can't talk enough on here that simply feeding people doesn't solve the problem, yes, indeed it does buy time, but achieving self sufficiency should be the ultimate goal, and in that you can't give everybody a job in this joblessness world, so you have to let them be self sufficient as Jefferson's yeoman's farmers. Fuck the economy if you can't fix it, let people be self sufficient irregardless of having a job or not, whether there is an economy or not, etc. You gotta figure out a way to buy land for them to get them off welfare, land which is impossible to procure, so the next best thing happens, urban areas are de-densified and streets that have gone empty and devoid of any buildings, well, eventually they are gonna be farming areas, not sufficient in area to feed yourself, but anything beats absolutely nothing.
Re:How about... (0)
Anonymous Coward | about 4 months ago | (#47192793)
Sure you could but you would have to factor in the dangers listed by:
Re:How about... (1)
sillybilly (668960) | about 4 months ago | (#47192147)
The answer to such health problems is artificial gravity. The way to create artificial gravity is really simple, it happens in centrifuges, like washing machines, or even merry go rounds or rollercoasters going upside down in a circle going fast enough not to fall down but stick to the track upwards. In 0 g environment like in free space all you need is a rotating cylinder space station and you walk on the inside walls. On reduced gravity places like Mars and the Moon, a flat cylinder doesn't work, instead you need a conical cylinder, with the walls angled dependent on the outside gravity. In free space the cylinder walls should be parallel, but on the Moon and Mars at a certain degree. I'm too lazy to do the vector calculations right now, oh what the heck, here we go,