Does Life Exist

[Ruatha]

I gotta read the Posts better before I reply, sorry.
I missed the first post and replyed to the reply, thought it was about a simple two-way mission to mars, Colonies is something enterely different, I agree on that!

My sincere apologies, it won't happen again, ever, promise

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by kalthalior:
Might be a little on the optimistic side, but it does spell out a fairly serious program. Also, I will admit to be a tad biased in favor of Mars colonization -- I'm a member of the Mars Society.
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I totally believe Mars will be colonizable someday. I was merely commenting that we aren't there yet. And not just fomr a lack of money or political will. There are definite, significant technological hurdles that need to be overcome for a permanant habitation. Self-sufficency is a long way past that, although I believe both are possible.

I just question whether it will ever be possible to build a ship that can travel between the stars without all the crew dieing and the ship turning into scrap metal before it gets there.

I do however believe life exsists out there. I think someday we may figure out a method of communication with them and be able to learn about each other. I am just not confident we will ever be able to visit them.

I can envision a "galactic internet" with information being shared about the various worlds and races. We could use this information to design virtual trips to these places.

[JurijD]

[quote]Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

No, because when you send out a signal pulse, it moves out in a spherical shell. The area of the shell is proportional to r^2. Dividing the signal out along that surface, you get 1/r^2

yes, yes I realize that normal enery disperses at that rate because of spacial enlargement... but Em waves are a combination of magnetic and dipole movement... I haev a vague memory that my physics book even has it derived somewhere that EM transmissions actually fade at 1/r^3 because of dipole movement on the antena...

I fo course could be wrong .. it´s been two years since I studied physics carefully

[ August 08, 2003, 16:13: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[Slick]

Originally posted by kalthalior:
Did the Drake equation thing that Slick posted, used pretty pessimistic figures (by my standards, anyway) and arrived at N=3. Interesting.

Also, note that the Drake equation was formulated to look for life that can communicate with us. As such its numbers are for our galaxy alone because the assumption is that other galaxies are too far away to pick up individual signals.

So if the question is about "intelligent live in the universe", Drake equation would have to be multiplied by the "biyyllllons and biyyllllons" of other galaxies, and the term about communication dropped.

Slick.

[Loser]

Amusingly the Soviets, right at the end, had the capacity to get a man to Mars. The Energia rocket, biggest rocket in the world, has a huge potential for lift. With all six booster rockets it could easily lift the top Apollo stages high enough for the trans-lunar burn. I do not remember the exact details, but I believe it was also capable of getting something like fifteen tons to Mars. That's enough to get a brave hero to Mars. He isn't coming home for a while, but he can get there, maybe walk around for a little while, claim a great victory for the motherland, and take a happy-sleepy pill.

This is not as unlikely as you might think, either. These men, and women, have just about anyone else beat for pure daring-to. Read about cosmonauts some time, incredible humans with incredible accomplishments.

[JurijD]

Well the Russians (or our slavic brothers ) have always had the edge in space exploration, even now after the collapse of the USSR, NASA actually bought the plans for a 20 year old russian rocket engine that offers a 30% better force to weight ratio than the best engines the americans every developed... and this masterpiece was sitting in an old abandoned warehouse ont he outskirts of Moscow for lack of funding in space exploration.

That aside... back to Mars: I still say the only real obstacle to Mars colonization is politics and the lack of will power... heck 20 years before they went to the moon we barely discovered the jet engine! When Kennedy proposed the idea there were large portions of the so called scientific community that called him a "very optimistic war-monger" that didn´t know what he´s talking about... their most serious objection was that if anyone ever tried to land on the moon they (and their Rocket-ship) would sink in the soft sandy surface never able to get free again.... LOL

The thing is that there are always problems... if there were´t any someone would have already done it. The challenge is to go for it and try to do it. Don´t try to solve every problem on the blackboard, that´s crazy and sadly that´s how nasa operates now... and its also the reason why the russians were alaways ahead with 1/10th of the USA resources.
I mean why the hell would rotating ships be a problem... there is no reason for it... just bring a big wheel into space, spin it around and you have a rotating ship... I mean asteroids spin all the time and they have no problems with space travel heeh, jokes aside, there will always be people who say something is not possible and that we should wait... I say try and do it now and see if it cannot be done.

Capitalism really canot explore space... because every capitalistic country thinks in terms of money gains and not in terms of human advancement... but the Soviets saw the big picture, sadly the largest social experiment in human history didn´t work out so well because of human flaws and enemies aborad and within

[Growltigger]

As we are talking about colonising Mars, does anyone know anything about the radiation issue outside the Van Allan belt or something round the Earth.

As I recall, this was something I read about cosmic radiation, and how the Van Allan belt protected Earth, but outside it, long exposure would frankly kill astronauts. A short trip to the moon was not too bad, but longer flights would really be a no-no. Dunno if this is true or not, I suppose conventional radiation shielding would be too heavy to make it practical to launch (unless you did it peicemeal and assembled theship in orbit) but that would be a hellish undertaking.

My view is that there is most likely intelligent life out there as the universe is just so vast that even the remotest chance of life will mean it pops up in a few places. What I dont think it dies do is zip around Earth going wibble wibble and scaring farmers, rednecks and other wierdos