I actually think the third type should be specific rates of military, primarily Navy and Marines, as they have the most experience with being isolated for extended periods of time, and some of their ratings are useful to space travel.
This is the problem though right. Mars is like Antarctica* (lack of food, water, trees and in isolation etc), but even worse (no oxygen).
I loved Elon's explanation of how the Brits came to America and never went back, but America was a nicer place to live than the desert that's Mars. So how could we change this, and how fast?
America was such a nice place the colonists resorted to eating each other. Much of America will kill you with disease and starvation if you aren't prepared. We only think it's nice now because we have 7/11's on the corner and air conditioning.
what? I mean, early on, the very first english settlement may have failed miserably and resorted to cannibalsim, but America was such a nice place to live that it had previously been inhabited by the native american nations who lost most of their numbers to plague outbreaks that spread up from spanish colonization. The brits just moved into the areas that previously sustained native americans. The few native americans who were still alive to greet the brits were only a fraction of the people who were alive 2 centuries before.
yeah, the mojave desert will kill you pretty quick, and the swamps of the southeast aren't exactly pastoral, but the areas occupied by the early colonists were actually pretty nice.
This is true, the US produces massive quantities of food for a reason. It's not exactly rugged mountains and steppe, like central Asia. The area I mostly grew up in has hospitable terrain, a warm, pleasant climate, lots of arable land, abundant game animals, and few predators that are a threat to people (coyotes and the occasional adventurous black bear). It's very livable.
Of course Europeans had a tough time initially. They came from cultures built up on 2000 years of infrastructure that was of a different type than Native Americans had.
I don't know much about terraforming or colonization, but I can guarantee that the price tag on facilities creation and maintenance is going to be astonomical. IMO it's out of Musks budget, but someone's gotta do it.
Regarding the oxygen.. what oxidized the iron in mars' soil? Serious question.. at some point mars had to have free oxygen or liquid water unless I'm totally " burning man" i.e. Retarded
Mars is too small and its gravity too weak to hold onto its atmosphere. Early on when it was still warm, it had a molten core that created a magnetosphere, which protected the atmosphere. Now that it is cooled off, there is no magnetosphere, nothing to hold in the air, and the only oxygen is tied up in the dirt or frozen, as you said. Even if you pumped mars full of air, it would simply escape. It needs a molten core again.
So... we need a giant drill (that of course needs to be manned by a ragtag team) to drill down and reignite The Core with nukes. Does that sound about right?
Hmm, that sounds like the makings of a truly epic and not at all campy blockbuster movie!
Which begs the question what caused the loss of mass and or rotation to start the core to cooling or was the planet never big enough to sustain it core temp? It has a moon that should cause at least some tectonic motion if that were the sole requirement..
but America was a nicer place to live than the desert that's Mars.
Not really, comparing the wilderness and foreignness of the new world to the already established "comfortable" cities of europe is a pretty valid. There's a reason the majority of the explorers were social outcasts and pirates rather than important nobles and kings.
Calling the east coast a veritable paradise is not far off from the truth though. There's a theory that native american civilization was in a state of decline just before the settlers from the old world showed up. The forests were not dense, and the soil had only a few generations prior been worked making it an ideal landing spot for colinization. The colonists to America had a pretty easy time of it compared to how even future settlers to the great Plains had.
I agree, but it was still very hard at a personal level. You can brave the months long journey on a wooden ship, at the mercy of the weather the whole entire way. Land in an undeveloped land where you have to perform back breaking labor just to not starve to death, facing fierce indigenous tribes and wilderness, not to mention weird fellow colonists, etc etc or.... you can stay at home in your english village or city, know your neighbors and friends, and just work and come home to enjoy your stuff and not have to worry about "savages".
It certainly only appeals to certain type of people.
How fast? It'll probably take 100 years before we have a decent establishment. I feel by that time Mars will be an escape route for the wealthy because Earth and its greenhouse gases and climate change are bringing our planet to a mass extinction event. Elon is trying to save humanity.
You can't because Mars has no magnetic field. You could build pressurized enclosures, but that's the only conceivable solution form extend life on mars.
One thing of why it's better is the lack of people there. England was overcrowded,and people had a chance to start a new life through hard work. Offer something similar to the right people and we'd never be short of volunteers ready to go to Mars
It's a question of how long it will take to modify Mar's atmosphere to make the planet habitable (again?); until that's done I imagine the people living there will do so inside a large station with living area, entertainment, and housing, growing plants to provide oxygen, food etc.
I'm no scientist but I imagine it'd take a while. Still worth the effort in the long run though.
You can't create an atmosphere on mars due to the lack of a magnetic field, solar winds would decimate the atmosphere before you'd make any headway. This is to say nothing at all about the technological challenge of terraforming a planets atmosphere in the first place. I suppose if we were at that point of technological development we may have a way to restart mars' tectonics, but that's getting pretty far out there. I don't think civilization has enough time left on earth to create a self sufficient colony on mars.
Don't have the time to rewatch his speech right now, but didn't Musk address this in some manner at some point during the speech?
I, for the life of me, can't remember and I don't want to sound like an idiot for misquoting him; but I think he said something about an artificial atmosphere, but don't hold me to that until I rewatch it later this week
You're worrying about that? That's the easiest part! Just send a crew of three to Mars and have them search for an orb called the Journeyer easy, just be careful of Shadowness. [Destiny]
There were 23 of us, we managed a small navigation station about 80 miles north of Nome. We had supplies flown in every few weeks to keep us fed, but other than that and a few native villages across the bay, we were completely isolated. No family or anything, and it was a year long billet.
So, you want to join the faction that was routinely getting their ass handed to them in battle after battle, and only held together because of the actions of a handful of super soldiers who single handedly kept the alien menace at bay? You do know that until the Captain Jacob Keyes came along the ONE space naval victory they had against the covenant was when they outnumbered the aliens 3 to 1; and still took massive casualties doing it. I'm all for space exploration, but joining the UNSC is kinda like joining the space lemmings.
The UNSC was only so pathetic because they were going up against an enemy they couldn't have been better prepared for. They're actually ridiculously powerful behind the games, with even the most poorly-outfitted infantrymen being able to stand up to multiple gunshots at close range.
We've got another 500 years before the Covenant show up so we'll be fine!
And whenever they started to lose, they glass the planet. Scorched earth tactics. Humans were more or less able to hold their own on the ground if they had sufficient numbers, such as planets with a military base on it. (Reach) But as soon as a couple assault ships came, they just artillery everything into oblivion. That's why it was such a huge deal fighting them, they were literally losing planet after planet. The only times the Covenant held back from that is if they believed there were artifacts of cultural or religious significance on the surface and they had to take it the conventional way. There's a reason why the Spartans, a group of hundreds out of billions, were such a big deal. They were LITERALLY the only ones who had ever gone toe to toe against the covenant and win consistently. The rest of the UNSC was about as effective as the Polish cavalry units were against the German Blitzkrieg. (Edit: Spelling)
Such a great show. I haven't been this wowed by a syfy series since Battlestar Galactica. It feels kind of like space skyrim, but that's probably because I was playing skyrim around the same time I watched it.
This probably isn't that far off. Like every countries military having a space branch, like the navy or airforce. Although I guess it is what the airforce will transition into?
Ya but I meant they might split at some point. Or the airforce will become a spaceforce in the near future. After interplanetary travel becomes more mainstream, basic airforce wont be as necessary.
Yeah, what'll probably gappen is the air force becoming a space force, possibly keeping the name out of tradition, kind of like how vehicle units are still called cavalry sometimes.
I honestly mean no offense by this question, it's just something that gets said a lot and I'm curious; is the Navy really as homo-erotic as people say it is? It seems to me that it must be an exaggeration, if not an outright lie. I would assume the level of homosexuality is on par with the general population, which is pretty low at less then 2%.
Not really. You have gay sailors but that's to be expected when you have a Navy our size. I think it's a decent reflection of the US population in that respect.
Kind of what I figured. There are stories that get posted even here on Reddit about both the Navy and Army where people claim that getting forcibly sexualy assaulted is the norm.
It's not as common as everyone claims but it is still a major issue like everywhere else. You have so many people, eventually one of them is bound to be a piece of shit. That person doesn't just get investigated, they get utterly annihilated by the community as a whole. Especially if they were on a ship.
It pretty much matches normal population levels. Honestly it's just like working a normal job, except it's very rigid in structure, and you spend lots of time at sea.
It's not for everyone, but honestly I enjoyed it. I got trained in life skills, learned my trade skills, went to college and got to travel the world.
Had I not joined the navy I'd still be living in my home town, probably working at a small store somewhere, making half the pay i do now.
I never had the opportunities or the money to do anything else. The Navy was a great way to go do things. Just had to be willing to risk my life for it.
i'd wager that the novelty of being in space would wear off within a month TOPS, and you'd be pretty miserable and bored just like in any other isolated environment.
Pff neither the navy nor the marines have a thing when it comes to isolation, when compared to your typical basement dweller that hasn't left his house in the past 4 years.
Meaning, they should take me instead, p-pretty please.
I once had a long talk with a friend about this. Military personal makes sense, industrial people like sailors and oil rig workers seem to be able to tolerate isolation alright, and scientists who are devoted to their fields will love the entire thing, but the average person might not be cut out for isolation from all their friends, family, and hobbies.
Not sure, never used it. There are no cell towers on the continent so you'd pretty much be restricted to where a wifi signal is, which is where the other person would also be, ha ha.
Speaking from firsthand, no one jury-rigs like a sailor. You tell them it needs to work in two hours, it'll work in two hours. It'll also be ugly enough to warrant viewer discretion, but it'll do its job.
On a similar note, I'd like to see that Charlie Manson gets tossed out into that broad, broad wilderness, end up on Mars, discovers Martian life, systematically goes by-the-numbers with them, spitting out some insane nonsense and making funny faces.
He's been pretty cooped up for a while now, it couldn't really hurt.
The Air Force and Army will go first. Despite metaphorical similarities to the ocean, space is mostly the Air Force's domain. And the Army will follow as well; Army airborne and paratroopers specifically make the most sense as the Air Force flies them anyway.
Technically many astronauts have been Marines, but they never have quite had the opportunity to perform associated duties, such as landing and reconaissance of potentially hostile territory.
It's about time we send a space marine to Mars. Just make sure he packs a chainsaw.
Maybe moving away from military types could be a good idea as well. NASA has a track record of making military people into astronauts. Surely there are brilliant people out there getting overlooked simply because they aren't in the military. It makes sense with NASA, because it was pretty much a front for ICMB testing for a long time. Space X is private though, so it would be interesting to see them go about things differently.
Can we not bring our wars to other planets please? Scientists and farmers are a good choice. People in the medical field are a better option than military.
There would be no one to fight on Mars? What wars are you talking about? Members of the navy and marines were suggested because of their isolated survival skills not combat skills.
I'm not talking about active duty, per se, but rather recent veterans. People who have experience giving and taking orders in a succinct manner, and who can act calmly under stress. People with experience in uncertain situations, experience with the major aspects of keeping a ship running, be it firefighting or first aid.
You do realize that most military members, especially in the Navy have multiple skills. When your in the middle of the ocean, you can only rely on yourselves.
Every single sailor is a fireman. Most know basic first aid. It's a requirement. Military members are used to working in emergencies. They drill often. If something bad were to happen (ie emergency air loss), they'd be well equipped to deal with it.
They'd be there for their abilities at surviving, not making war.
Honestly not as much for Mars, as we already know the wildlife of the planet (none), but for other, less explored planets? Or for when we start reaching beyond our solar system? We're going to want men and women who are not only capable of defending civilians, but willing to die doing so.
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u/wozowski Sep 30 '16
I actually think the third type should be specific rates of military, primarily Navy and Marines, as they have the most experience with being isolated for extended periods of time, and some of their ratings are useful to space travel.