Yeah, just movie quote :) However, your initial suggestion of contamination was essentially the reason why the humans received the message. With Jupiter turned into a star, life was going to evolve on Europa and the aliens were like "stay away you fools."
Fully agree with you Amy! I think one of the worst outcomes that can happen from a manned Mars mission is to basically have a repeat of the Apollo program where we go someplace, walk around, bring back some sterile rocks and go yep, we did that. And then space exploration stagnates for another 30-50 years due to lack of return on investment.
Luckily there is spaceX. If the planned transportation system is going to be entrenched we might as well be able to expand it to the Jupiter/Saturn moons..
You are ill informed about Apollos ROI. It's R&D payed off thirteen fold till today and gave us a huge technological boost. We might now be a decade behind in high end electronics if it wasn't for the space race.
Thank you, Amy. I enjoy your insight even when you're on your "soapbox." I'm in my early 60's now and grew up in the heyday of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, watched as many as I could on T.V., and read books about them, so I'm a big fan of the U.S. Space Program in general. Way back in the days of Apollo, I naturally assumed we'd be going to Mars by the time I was in my 30's. Mars always seemed to be the place, but I thank you now for sharing some interesting alternatives. Your knowledge and enthusiasm is always appreciated. By the way, if you're into Space Program Science Fiction, there's an interesting series of novels by Austin Boyd (the three-book Mars Hill Classified Series). Mr. Boyd was a U.S. Navy pilot who went through the astronaut selection process right up until the final cut. He's now an aero-space consultant in Huntsville, AL as well as a novelist. I got to hear him as the key-note speaker at a writers' conference. I gave him a copy of one of my own novels as a thank you gift for his speech. He gave me copies of all three of his Mars Hill Classified novels in return, which I took home and read one after the other. He used his knowledge as a pilot and almost-astronaut, along with his imagination, to craft his stories about missions to Mars and a first colony there, along with danger and intrigue back on earth and on the red planet, and a possible encounter with alien robots. The first booking the series is entitled THE EVIDENCE. On the back cover, Marv Langston, Phd., the U.S. Navy's first Chief Information Officer and a Navy combat systems designer, said of the novel, "Non-stop action. Realistic to the last detail. A story our nation could face on any day. Austin Boyd has leveraged his exceptional naval career and knowledge o military and space systems to create a book that excites, inspires and wakens each of our emotions. A must-read."
1: Colonize the moon. 2: Make an interplanetary spaceport with materials gathered on the moon. 3: Explore the solar system. - Since the moon only has 16% of the gravity on Earth, we can launch massive spacecrafts, using a fraction of the fuel.
The exact same composition as on earth, like almost EXACTLY down to the %, with perhaps an even higher amount of heavy metal elements in the upper crust, due to the fact that the moon was molten, but cooled faster than the earth, which allowed the heavy elements to not sink to the core as fast. Besides, a lot of Ice at the poles, and solar wind, consisting of heavy Hydrogen isotopes gathered in the craters and soil, for easy hydrogen harvesting, used for fuel and energy generation for the spaceport. Seriously, the Moon is the perfect staging area for an interplanetary spaceport, because of the abundant elements for production, and low gravity+no atmosphere, allowing significantly larger spacecrafts, using much less fuel.
IchBinEin how is this possible when the mass of the earth is more than the moon. all of the materials on the moon do still have a mass so they cant be to the %.
... Are you joking? Of course the moon doesn't have the same *Amount* of materials that the earth does. The moon only has 1.2% the mass of the earth, and about 2% of the volume of the earth, but because it is relatively dense (60% of the earths density), you're so close to the core of the gravity well, you still experience 16% of the gravity, despite only having 1.2% of the mass of the earth.
I just don't understand why it seems like no one gives a shit about our own moon anymore. It should be the test bed for anything else we do in the solarsystem. Habitation domes or launch systems or in field resource gathering and manufacturing should be tested on the moon before we take it somewhere else. There's a bit of a larger safety net of something fucking up on the Moon than on Mars. And I would rather we be launching from the Moon to go to Mars, than from Earth. But overall, loved this video. And I totally agree, Venus is just so fascinating. Maybe not obvious but my avatar is from Destiny, where Venus is a playable location and even if it's not scientifically accurate in the slightest I have much more interest in any other planet than Mars at this point. Maybe because I'm biased against the red hue.
The moon is completely unlike Mars, the gravity is much weaker, and it has no atmosphere. So there are no lessons to be learned there. Landing on the moon is virtually nothing like the challenges faced to land on Mars. Secondly the moon has virtually no resources that can aid the travelers to be there. It's essentially a desert that has nothing to provide astronauts. The challenges with landing on the moon and having to launch again it will certainly deplete needed fuel and the duration of a lunar presence will deplete food and other essentials. All being on the moon can do is consume time, energy and supplies. If you want to go to Mars, just go to Mars. If you want to go to the moon, go there. But there's basically nothing there that is of any use to anybody. The moon is nothing more than a big pile of rocks.
Dave B If I'm correct the moon has a lot of helium4 which is a component of very efficient rocketfuel, I could totally envision the moon being one massive ball filled with miners and mining equipment.
Whether we go or not, 'terraforming' is a pipe dream. With no molten core driving the electromagnetic protective shield like on Earth, any atmosphere we build up, will be forever and constantly being blown away by solar wind. It blew the atmosphere off once, perfectly ready to do it again. Ahhhh! She mentions that! Excellent. Truly a complex mind.
There are other options. A shield assembled at the right lagrange point could block the solar winds. Still have to deal with the cosmic rays though. Wouldn't want get superpowers like what happened to the Fantastic Four.
@@dcanaday yeah only problem is that we would have to largely disassemble an ENTIRE PLANET to build it, not to mention we need to power it and refuel it so it can maintain position
For that matter, even if terraforming Mars is to some extent is possible, even if only to the extent that it becomes more possible for a colony of humans to live there, how long would it take to do it? How do we know that the technological epoch of human civilization will last long enough for the project to be completed? Some people seem to think that space exploration and colonization will serve as a sort of technological insurance policy for the human race guaranteeing that both technological civilization and the human race itself will survive indefinitely. But how does anyone know this? Why would anyone believe that a project inevitably involving only a small portion of the entire human race guarantee any aspect of the human race's future? For another thing, the impetus toward space exploration and the cultural belief in the significance of space colonization seem to be the province of the West only, and really the province of the two superpowers only, the United States and the lesser one, Russia. The Far East might be interested only because it sees itself as competing with the West as a civilization. The rest of the world might not on its own have anything close to the capability, ever. Frankly, I think the fascination with Mars grows out of the belief that there might once have been life there, or even a past civilization long ages ago. Or even life still in existence there. These are a reasons to want to explore Mars. But the fascination with the idea of terraforming is just plain science fiction. At least as of now. Some people seem to think that all it would take would be popping open a cannister of the right microbes and letting them do their thing for some defined period of time. I am skeptical, to say the least. Science fiction has some brave and inspiring things to say about the human spirit. But the human spirit still needs oxygen to live and can only tolerate a certain cumulative exposure to radiation before the body dies.
Very astute of u. I thought of that yrs ago when I was a just a kid, the atmosphere got blown off when the electromagnetic field died, which died when the core cooled off and solidified. What I then proposed was, that I believe the core cooled off when a planetoid struck Mars, leaving that HUGE scar across it's face as long as the US is wide, exposing its deeper layers, and blowing a huge chunk of Mars's atmosphere off at once as the planetoid hit, further exposing the deeper layers to space.
Obviously we would want unmanned robotic missions first, to build as much infrastructure as possible before people get there. For instance, grow a whole lot of crops and establish a useful oxygen atmosphere within the domes. Radiation shielding, power supply, a nice place for the manned rocket to land, sleeping/recreation areas, medical facilities, fuel supply for return missions, scout out the local area, etc. This could and should all be done before real people get there.
After watching the video, I see where you are coming from, Amy. I am personally in the camp of making humanity a multi planetary species, but I am becoming an aerospace engineer because I want to help humans explore "strange new worlds". We can accommodate both camps if we let the private sector (a la SpaceX) focus on Mars Colonization, and have the public (NASA) focus on deep space exploratory missions, like New Horizons or Cassini/Huygens.
We had no idea about how to get to the moon until Kennedy said we're going. Direct ascent or orbital docking. The point of going to mars is not about getting to mars, it's about getting human beings going somewhere. You see that as a bad thing, personally, I'm sick of everything great we've ever done being decades ago.
Thank you, Amy, for stating support for a rational approach to manned space exploration. Finding and utilizing resources in space is a priority to me, so that we can shift the impact of the human race away from Earth and into space.
I agree. I beleive we should start with developing infrastructure in earth obrit and then onto the moon. Staying close to home will give us a strong Foundation to move out into the solar system. My 2 cents...👍
I am older so basically cautious. I would keep the robotic missions going to the places we want to explore and build up good knowledge before we go. But let's send manned missions to Mars to develope our abilities and methods of manned space travel. And at the same time, set up a base as a place to stop if needed on trips further outbound in the solar system. It could be a planned stop or a convenient emergency stop local. After all, I do not believe AAA does repair or retrieval work that far out in the system. I would hate to send a manned mission as far away as say Titan without help closer than clear back at Earth.
@@StevenBanks123 - This is a big misconception that sounds great in sci-fi but is not so great for rocketry. The Moon is no better than Mars in terms of delta-v, despite the smaller gravity well, because there's no atmosphere to slow you down. So you're burning fuel the whole way to descend and not crash. In fact, any given rocket can land more payload on Mars than the Moon for this reason alone. That's why NASA hasn't been prioritizing lunar rovers since Apollo! NASA's Gateway / Deep Space Transport proposal is exactly how you want to stage a crewed Mars mission. Use a highly-elliptical lunar orbit that doesn't require a lot of fuel burn to enter or leave. This way, you can use the Gateway as a staging point for lunar missions as well while keeping the heavy, habitable hardware farther from the lunar surface and thus closer to Earth and Mars in terms of delta-v budget. That orbit around the Moon preserves about 85% of the kinetic energy needed for an Earth flyby and trans-Mars injection, so it's an efficient compromise parking orbit between the Moon (near-term) and Mars (longer-term). It's counterintuitive unless you've studied orbit mechanics / play a lot of KSP
@@brianfoss571 This a good point that people don’t often consider, and when you’re talking about landing something with a shit ton of dry mass like a lunar base you are going to need more deltaV to land on the moon than on mars due to aerodynamic forces naturally bleeding off velocity. Not to mention entry heating is basically non existent in mars atmosphere.
@@johnnyringo2670 Reentry heating is still in the thousands of degrees on Mars, because you're coming in at several km/s. But it's not as difficult of a heat transfer challenge as surviving Earth reentry from the Moon.
The problem with Mars, aside from the lack of atmosphere and radiation, is the gravity. We could live in domes to shield us but the gravity, overtime, would change the density of our bones. Especially if people are born on Mars. Those people would be born with new birth defects, and most likely never be able to set foot on earth without being crushed. Living on the moon would be even worse.
Mars = great PR value. Great PR for public agencies = more funding. More funding = more exploration. I would be kind of on your side in a super perfect world where everybody loves exploring space instead of killing each other, but untill this happens, we have to get people interested in space exploration and Mars can be great for this like the Moon was at the time.
Elon would send people & robots to those 4 places for NASA's budget to Mars alone. Perhaps crowd source some money. It's apples Vs oranges, and not a real debate.
Big, ambitious missions to Enceladus and Europa (especially below-the-ice) would tell us so much more than manned exploration of Mars. I will say that from a purely engineering standpoint going to Mars would result in so many innovations and engineering solutions it might actually end up being more profitable than automated exploration.
Its so upsetting that you don't understand the concept of baby steps. This isn'y one-hour photo, idiot. Do you think that we will get to Mars and just stop? You can't be serious.
@@KH4444444444N IF we ever go to Mars, we'll plant the flag, confirm that thare's nothing worth going for and that's about it - perhaps Ford's concept of joint Venus-Mars mission will happen, and that's all.
@@Vector_Ze "dyed in the wool jerks?" What in the fuck does that even mean? I've arrived here simply and ultimately to extoll the virties of Human space exploration...So, if your agendae be erstwhile, well then I will likely never understand your idiocy.
I think the problem with missions farther out is that they are farther out. At its closest, Mars is 35M miles away. Jupiter is about 360M miles away. Getting to Mars is not "halfway there". It's more like 1/10 of the way there. We should start with the Moon and work out the bugs first. Then go to Mars and get a feel for farther missions, time lag, the feeling of abandonment, and all that. Then we go deeper into the Solar System. And hopefully by then we get the Epstein Drive or something close to it.
And her arguments, granted reasonable at the time, assume that the cost of doing a crewed Mara mission will not decrease. SpaceX is of course, at the forefront of this. They could be doing Mars missions in the early 2030s. Even Starship doesn't work exactly how they hope, I feel confident the commercial market in general will enable not just more crewed missions in deep space, but many more science missions than were ever possible.
Why not go to Europa instead? Simply, because in the terms where it really matters, Europa is WAY harder to get to than Mars. Starting in LEO, how do the journey costs for Mars and Europa stack up? Going to Mars, with full use of aerobraking and parachutes, AND then returning to earth once the planets are aligned, requires some 9600m/s of delta-v, a trip time of 300 days there, 300 days back, and you need to return almost immediately or else wait more than a year for the next ticket home. Going to Europa, ONE WAY, requires a delta-v of about 17500m/s, and the trip time is 1100 days. About that delta-v.. Remember rocket equation? Your rocket to Europa will be many, many, MANY times bigger to deliver the same mass.. This is the reason we do not yet have probes that land on Europa, or Callisto, or Enceladus, or any of the similar very enticing possible destinations. Know why we DID send a probe to Titan? Because it has an atmosphere, which simplifies the capture-and-landing sequence enormously.
In theory so could the moon if there is enough water, and once it gets started crashing small ice asteroids onto the moon at low speed could replenish it. Then all you need for fuel is a huge solar array and a big electrolysis tank. Unfortunately it takes 500 amps of electricity for 193 seconds to get just 1 g of Hydrogen. but there are GaAs photocells that are far better than silicon ones. They are just mind boggling expensive.
Yes, there is water on the moon. It is about as common there as 1-carat diamonds are on earth. On Mars, water is about as common as it is in Death Valley, California. I.E. You are not likely to find it lying about on the surface, but dig down even just a few meters and you get vaguely "damp" permafrost in the soil. With reasonably easy access to sand, rock, water and CO2, Mars makes local resource extraction practical. On the moon, you have to bake your oxygen out of the rock, and import your water. Realistically, import your hydrogen. Tons and Tons of it. Also Nitrogen. Also carbon, typically in edible form.
+Marvin Kitfox Your outbound times for Mars sounds like an opposition-class mission. It's not at all ideal. A fast conjunction transfer can get you there in 6 months... or as little as 110 days with a 2 year free return trajectory. Surface stay times then are around 500-600 days. Also, delta-V drops to around 4k. Check this out wiki.developspace.net/w/images/2/2f/HumanMarsMissionTrajectories.pdf
Theoretically you can get there a lot faster than that with a 4 stage rocket. It would though be absolutely enormous as it would in effect be a Saturn V sitting on top of something about 4 times the weight of the Saturn V. You could also in theory do a moon transfer in say 4 days, then use a rocket that size to get to Mars in less than 2 months.
I think sending people to Mars is hugely premature until we could send people back to the moon on a longer term basis as a proof-of-concept. An ISS-style lunar outpost that we can send crews to for months at a time, dealing with the radiation and resource production problems, with the potential to return to Earth quickly in an emergency. edit: Also if the US would just accept it doesn't need such a huge military, downscale them by 10% and give that $100 billion-ish to NASA then they could do ALL these potential missions.
+3rdWheel _"Also if the US would just accept it doesn't need such a huge military, downscale them by 10% ..."_ The US military budget has decreased by about 20% in constant dollars since 2008, and by about 8% in nominal dollars during that same period. By the end of next year, the army's active-duty strength will have shrunk by about 20% since 2011.
Studying Mars from orbit is a very smart idea! It has two ready-to-use space stations named Phobos and Deimos. You don't exactly LAND on either one--you dock like to the ISS.
If we want to put "space-boots on the ground", let's go back to the moon for more permanent exploration. No need to go to Mars to capture the imagination. And I agree, we need to go to Europa, Enceladus, Titan, etc, that's where the frontier is.
Colonize Venus, WTF ??? There are many reasons that Venus is not habitable, including the presence of poisonous gasses at the level that a "Venus Zeppelin" would fly.
We could always go to the sunny-side of Mercury. Just think of the plentiful solar power to be had there. (The juice will be needed to power all the AC we'll need.)
I agree with chardtomp, you are adorable, especially when you're expressing your intelligent, scientific, balanced, and obviously brilliant opinion. Please don't hold back! As an Aries, I'd love to check out my, lol, "home planet" Mars, but I think it'd be idiotic to dedicate all our (NASA's ) money and time on just one "space adventure". I'm with you 100% on that, I'll gladly fist-fight any opposition you encounter!! Put 'em up bi'chez!! Hah!
@@nickjust5208 most women don't like being called "adorable". I also don't think Amy needs you to fight people who disagree with her. You just don't come off well.
I agree with you, Amy! I think that since we (humans) have to live in controlled environments in space, then your idea of an orbital visit with remote controls for robotics on the surface works for any of the planets and moons you mentioned. The planned gateway out by the moon may be a good model for a system of slightly larger stations positioned at strategic points around the solar system. What about building a settlement inside Phobos or Deimos? They would always be in orbit, they are large enough to mine and excavate, and their gravities are low enough that spacecraft could rendezvous with them, vis-à-vis landing on them. Think of the bunker space available for the storage of food and supplies! I'm glad you mentioned Titan and Europa. Also thinking about Enceladus, it seems obvious to me that the tremendous costs associated with taking resources into orbit would be ameliorated by harvesting resources from moons and asteroids already in space. Titan has lots of hydrocarbons. Can we take and refine those for use in our space stations? Water ice and other elements exist in abundance on moons, asteroids, and planetoids. Why not build refining plants, laboratories, and factories on these smaller bodies so people can live and work there, but also have the ability to refine our space technologies in the perfect weightless and airless environment? In the same vein, why not use the mined-out areas left inside a large rock for living space? (Provided the structure of the space rock will allow it!) We can also work on systems to steer, push, and altogether wrangle asteroids so we can work with them! I like the idea that NASA can help with the scientific research and then create partnerships with private industry to develop and test new technology, supply our stations, or even bring resources back to Earth. As a side note, the highly poisonous perchlorate present in the Martian soil will likely cause us to either need to use hydroponics or raised planting beds or to perform some kind of strip-and-replace operation with fertile soil. Perhaps the elements could be developed and combined in space so we don't need to launch suitable soil from Earth! I think that having a network of small waystations scattered around our system could pave the way for larger settlements, or even cities, perhaps inside much larger asteroids or inside the smaller moons orbiting the gas giants. Again, each of the stations could have remote-controlled scientific instruments so we can do research. They could have resources for manned missions. They could also serve as shelter for space travellers caught in an emergency! What do you think?
@@csn6234 Thank you for your opinion, but I think it was pretty clear that I was joking, and not ACTUALLY offering to fight anyone on her behalf. Also, saying she's adorable was meant as an overall compliment, not a lame pick-up line. You sir, "come off" as an idiot. Mind your own business.
I think the obsession with mars also has a bit of an antropomorpic component. Even though mars is quite hostile (very thin atmosphere, dry as a cork, perchlorates in the soil and radiation everywhere), it still is the most recogniseable to us. It looks like a desert on earth, we can recognise mountains and features, dry river beds, dry seas and such. Even the sky, sunrises and sunsets reminds us of earth. Mars often looks like and reminds us of earth, so we romanticise it and want to go there. Even though Europa, titan or even venus might be better to explore, these places seem thoroughly alien to us and a bit scary. Mars is slightly more comforting because it looks so much like earth at times. Maybe all the robotic missions have made mars so familiar to us it seems it is just right next door to us, and so like earth in many ways. And secondly, Europa and Titan are really far away for humans, and would turn a journey of a few months into a journey of years in zero G. We really have no idea what this would do to a human crew. Mars seems so much within our grasp, and when something seems within our grasp we want to go there and explore... Europa and titan seem like a galaxy away, and going there with a human crew seems maybe a bit too far fetched and not plausible yet. But i agree that sending probes to Europa and Titan should be our priority. I want to see balloons on titan, i want to see pictures of methane seas and methane rivers, i want to see big slow falling blobs of methane rain, and mountians, dunes, volcanos and other landscapes made of ice. And i want to see pictures of the seas under the ice of europa, i want to see if anything is wriggling around down there, feeding off of volcanic energy... And lets not forget enceladus where the geysers are spewing out material many km into space for us to simply scoop up in a fly by with a probe. I don't care if it's robots making the pictures, it would be sooo interesting to see what is out there.
Not really, because Venus would need floating habitats, we wouldn't be learning how to live on the surface (or in lava tubes), we'd just be learning how to build floating habitats.
We'd hopefully already have learned how to live on the surface of another celestial body on the Moon. No need to go to Mars to learn that. We need to go to Venus to learn how to make floating habitats and/or automated bases floating in the atmosphere of gas giants to extract hydrogen and helium gases.
SaturnusDK yeah we could learn a lot from going to the moon and I don't think we should have stopped where we did with our investment into the moon. Though I was more talking about the advancements in travel that we would get by traveling to mars with a human cargo.
Going to Mars is going to take at least 7 months for a flyby mission, and likely just under 2 years if we have to land there. A round trip to Venus would take about 5 months. We know that 5 months is doable although stretching the limit, so why not go to Venus and learn more about making longer flights before jumping in at the deep end for a Mars mission? It really does not make any sense for me to insist on going to Mars but I digress, I guess that people just insist on the whole "having to plant a flag" mentality.
I'm on Team MOON. Let's set up a base or two. Then we have the ultimate platform, from which we can launch a whole slew of missions, manned and unmanned.
Exactly, and since you wouldn't have to fight the atmosphere of Earth, you could launch rockets from the moon that go much farther and are much smaller.
17R3W - A space elevator is pure fantasy. Its advocates are unaware of the physics of the latent electrical gradient omnipresent in our atmosphere. That would destroy any structure even a fraction of the height the elevator would have to be.
Going to Mars I believe would unlock technologies that will be needed for future space exploration. The moon missions gave us technologies and capabilities that have helped get us to present day. I believe if the Apollo program wasn't canceled we would be further ahead in technology than we are today. Just my 2 cents. Thanks for the videos Amy.
Yeah. I think that's what she is missing. It would have been similar to saying go to Mars because it is a planet, with an atmosphere instead of the moon. Mars doesn't have the chemistry for a substantial independent colony, but would provide an excellent target for a shakedown of interplanetary tech.
Apollo was a one shot deal to get to the Moon before the Soviets. It was never designed to be a sustainable means of routine transport. The Orion is nothing more than a Block 3 Apollo. A retro spam can on top of a Senate designed pork rocket. Until we build a shuttle that works, there can be no true exploration
5 лет назад
@@bernieeod57 so right the reason why there were so many Saturn gives were because polititians dident be live it would make it on Apollo 11
tom lu They best the Soviets to the Moon and that was it the throw away mega rocket topped with a retro spam can is not and never will be a viable means of space travel
I’m three years late but I totally agree and I love your platform and the way you explain this🤩 The idea of a Venusian Airship sailing away from the Dawn as it pursues science in the atmosphere is just fascinating 🙌🏻
My arguments: 1. Mars is the definite long-term goal. Whether you want to or not, we WILL end up on Mars, whether out of necessity (long-term human survival), or just curiosity (basic science). 2. Going to other places (Venus, Europa, Ceres...etc) is good basic science, but what are the applications? What do we ultimately get out of it? 3. We're going to build those infrastructure anyway, why not start early? 4. The Mars project will result in applications for the other stuff; logistics, communications..etc
Yeah I was quite pleased by this ESA long term objective; still i think that, in the long run, would be better and faster to put a lot of effort in creating some infrastructure on the Moon and then use it to send crafts manned or otherwise everywhere you want for 100k instead of 10B.
+JosephHF Hmm good question, I believe it depends on who builds it: A Nation or union of Nations being forbidden to exploit local resources for profit by the outer space treaty could benefit from the moon as both a good middle stob between Earth and the rest of the solar system, a testing ground for human colonizations (2 sec delay on communication and if something goes bad we can send help in days vs up to a year for Mars if is on the other side) and finally as science base of utmost importance: the polar craters have the lowest natural temperature in the solar system making good for cheap cryo studies (also presence of He and He3, the only mix that can go below 1K); the far side conditions would benefit any type of telescope: low temperatures at night for IR, no Earth radio interference and no atmosphere, we could have an astronomical resolution with mirrors even bigger than our biggest land telescope thanks to low gravity; finally geology of the solar system is good too. If is a company like SpaceX or blue origin making a revenue on space travel accessing lunar water to make LOX and LH2 also lunar regolith contains Fe, Al, Si and Ti in good amounts making feaseble to assemble entire satellites on site apart from maybe the computers. If is a company born only to make a revenue off the Moon then mining strategic resources like He3, Platinum group elements and rare earths could be profitable in low g, even titanium could be a good late revenue being abundant and light plus could also provide the things I mentioned above like LOX/LH2, orbital construction materials and science facility to make an extra once the infrastructure is there; finally there are interested applications if you want to build an orbital facility in LEO supplied from the moon working with ultra high vacuum, microgravity, low and high temperatures, far from Ow and humans (highly reactive, explosive, extremely polluting substances) could provide some really interesting new materials if can be committed a long term investment.
Climbing mount everest, going to Earth's poles, landing on the Moon. It's the nature of man to go places "just because it's there", it's inevitable. The question is not whether man should plant feet on Mars but at what priority. That priority depends at least on funds and ability. Both need better improvement.
Mr. Chandler: President Kennedy basically said what you've said above in order to motivate the country to join the space race. BTW, a little factoid: the Administrator of NASA reports directly to the Vice President of the USA. This was the way it was set up from the beginning when the name NACA ( a group of engineers who worked for the government) was changed to NASA. Vice President L.B Johnson was the most savvy person in Congress and had more political connections with the Pre-NASA scientists, that President Kennedy gave him the Job of oversight of the newly formed NASA. Kennedy wanted to keep LBJ busy, particularly because of Johnson's political clout. Why do you think the space center is in Houston TX? Since that time, the Administrator of NASA continually reports directly to the VP of the USA. James Webb was the first Administrator of NASA. It is justified that the Webb telescope be named after him. James Webb was a very smart and tough administrator who was responsible for what NASA is today, no matter what your personal opinion of NASA is now. Source: Rocket Men by Craig Nelson. I highly recommend the audio version of this book. It will eliminate road rage, I promise. DPA
Guilherme Soares u stupid idiot all of those moons we may colonize are too far from the planet itself to get affected by radiation and the chances of us colonizing any planet or moon is during these centuries is really unlikely
Mars is stupid (colony-wise) because of gravity. So the Moons are out of the window. Science would be amazing, obviously automated, and Europa for Water is an interesting thought. As for colonies, only Venus (upper atmo) seems feasible, and that still implies a fuckton of engineering challenges.
We don't even want to hang out on the surface of Europa, though, Guilherme. We are interested in the oceans, and a few feet of water and ice blocks all that radiation. So you only withstand the radiation for a few hours perhaps until underwater, then you're good until you leave. Hours is enough, since people don't just walk around naked, we have shielding, so if it takes a day naked to get sick, it might be weeks with shielding, and yet you only need perhaps hours again.
Mars is stupid because it has gravity? All planets have gravity. Europa may be interesting but we should land a rover or a probe there first. There is not enough information about Europa yet. Venus? Venus? Venus? Are you freaking kidding? Venus is hotter than molten lead at 464 degrees Centigrade. Nobody can survive there, do some reading, you might learn something about Venus and when you do you won't say that again.
I was watching the whole video both kinda of annoyed she kept on saying don't yell at me and exited for this sort of comment. Thankyou. Also Amy AWESOME JOB AS ALWAYS. :P Truly awalldone and intreseting video!
Exactly. A Moon base would expose all the kinks and problems with making a permanent off-world colony. I think there will be plenty of challenges. And if we have people on the Moon and everything goes wrong, we can rescue them real quick. We can't rescue anyone from Mars real quick, if at all. Basically, if you go to Mars, you ain't coming back. We all know it's a one-way trip.
Wow! 774 views and 80 comments, and seemingly nobody caught the pun of "putting your eggs in one basket" with this video posted on Easter Sunday. Lol! Amy, you've obviously put a lot of thought into this. Nice to hear your thought on the matter. Personally, I'd rather see us get some practical experience living on some other solid ground (for more than a few days - i.e. moon) before embarking on a mission to Mars. Sure, we have some systems experience with ISS, but ther still remains a notable difference between an clean orbiting outpost and a base planted on a solid surface covered in dust. Let's get systems developed that keep working in the presence of moon dust. There's some good practice there, as Mars certainly has its share of dust to get into every nook and cranny to gum up the works of anything that moves.
Amy lives in California. Using this locale as a reference, the video was posted at 3:26 AM PDT (very much Sunday at her home). She most likely uploads all her content in advance, which is then released on a pre-defined schedule. As to whether Amy was working on "internet time" (wherever, whenever), I'll leave that for her to answer. :-)
I say go to Mars for both reasons. Send lots of people. Improve the transportation methods to handle it. No shortage of scientists. You need the others to develop Mars enough that you have a fighting chance at surviving long term, growing and thriving.
"What is the real reason for going to Mars? Is it just because it's there and we need a destination to go to?" - Amy, 2017 Amy... why are you making me do this? "Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." " - President John F. Kennedy, 1962 Basically sums up my opinion on why go. As to why Mars? Because it's the easiest one to go to. Venusian cloud base missions, while being ludicrously cool, have even less scientific potential than Martian missions, and Europa, Enceladus, and Titan are all much much much further, and the risk of people dying increases dramatically the further, and thus longer, you go out into space. Mars is the most practical get by a long shot.
It is only practical if we care about Flags and Footprints on Mars. Which most don't. That is because our Economy is crap, and people are much more worried about putting food on the table and paying rent than they are in funding Mars Missions. That was not true in the 1960s. The economy was amazing, and we had a Space Race with the Soviets going on. Improve the economy... and the sky is the limit. But you won't do it through Taxation, or fiddling with the dials through government intervention. All you have to do is make it tax free to do space businesses. Thats all it would take to see an explosion of space innovation.
Although everything else in the solar system is great and exciting, to go forward you need a goal, and Mars is a planet that has captured the imagination of people for decades. But mind you, it's really not about the destination, the most important part of this all is the journey. The journey of developing enough science to make it happen. And as you pointed out, there's plenty to figure out. If there's no end goal, there's little reason for governments and companies to invest in research like protection against various dangers and survival of humans on a long journey and habitation in a harsh environment. And if there's no investments in these things, and we don't seek to overcome obstacles, we on earth will definitely not benefit from them.
Quite possibly true. I feel the discussion in the video has a lot of good ideas, the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons? Perhaps Amy just left the best/right argument to the end, instead of leading with it. That is what lost me, I agreed with her, but could not understand the points, until the end. (As in, "these things are cool", is not always the best argument when lots of money, stress, time and lives are at stake :P )
You said it yourself, we need a multipurpose space platform, instead of another giant one-off that we're not going to repeat ever again. If Mars is a first step that we _can_ get serious support for, this would set in motion a wave of funding and development that gets you to all of your favorite places as well. This is mainly about psychology and motivation. If we had a reasonable tech platform for human-based space exploration, we wouldn't need to spend *another* 50 years dragging our heels accomplishing less than nothing, and we wouldn't have to choose *one* target that "really" counts (which we couldn't all agree on in the first place) - we'd just go to *all* those places eventually. Or, we could just stay home and die out.
the problem with that is that a platform isn't exciting and inspirational. We didn't go to the moon for science, nor because we wanted to. We went there because of the cold war, and we used it AS the inspiration to fund other space programs. Saying we should just do a platform instead of going to mars exposes your massive lack of understanding of the human psyche, politics, and government priorities. All three of which elon DOES understand... you think he is spending billions for fun? Or even science? He is doing it to inspire science. To make the future scientists. To get the public excited about space again. I understand most people watching these kinds of vids are scientists, not politicians, but you still live on earth. Educate yourself in all fields. Stop pidgeonholing yourself. It makes you look very ignorant whenever we leave your wheelhouse..
Udo - Well Said! Which (by your own words/observation) makes a person wonder why we have been making so many sideways moves, spinning our wheels for so long on designing ONE OFF systems. We go from Apollo tech to Space Shuttle tech (scrap all the $Space Shuttle$ Tech) and are back to Apollo era tech... C'mon (seriously) wth...right!???
Wholeheartedly agree. So logical it's not funny! What's with this "been there done that" "we've already explored the moon" so let's jump off to the next world for its 15 minutes of fame and thrills before our big yawn makes us hop off for another's thrill fix. Mars and Titan can wait till our space technology prowess matures on the moon. There's SO much to learn about and exploiting the moon and testing life-critical deep space technology there right on our doorstep and it's being passed by -- Why?? I'm glad Lewis and Clarke didn't have that attitude -- or do they still teach about them these days??
@Steampunk Cowboy, the big issue with Fusion at the moment is containment pressure. Basically you maintain pressure with a magnetic field instead of a few inches of steel. New laminated magnets have been developed that make the whole thing smaller and lighter (way more powerful than neodymium) but you are still talking 12 tonnes per magnet for the field strength calculated to be needed. So you are talking possibly a 500 tonne reactor that cannot easily be made in a zero G environment.
There are some small modular (fission) reactor designs, and one of those based on thorium, molten salt cooled, might make sense on the moon. With this molten salt cooling, no containment vessel is needed. Thorium reactors, (one was built at Oak Ridge in the 1970s) can use nearly all the energy in the fuel, whereas uranium uses a few %, then is waste.
(in this context, containment does not mean containing radiation, but containing steam pressure in the case of water coolant overheating. See "Superfuel" by Richard Martin)
Yay Amy!! So glad to hear someone say it!! My little soap box: Three words: no magnetic field. We can’t “terraform” that problem away. So if we have to live in bubbles anyway, we can do that anywhere. So why mars? And by the way - millions of citizens getting probe data on smartphones in real time is pretty inspirational too. Better dozens of unmanned missions all over the solar system than just one expensive Mars mission. Thanks for soap boxing, Amy you rock!
Finally!! Someone stands up to say something about Space Exploration that makes sense!! Why are people so meek in saying this? Thanks for saying what's on most peoples"minds!! Thank you!! You Go Girl!!
Yep, I would also absolutely love to see a manned mission to Europa or Titan. I'd also love to see a manned mission to the Merry Old Land of Oz. I think both objectives have roughly the same chance of actually occurring.
-500 days to Mars! Sure, if you go chemical and not nuclear/thermal or nuclear electric... which is like using sails when you have actual access to steam turbines. -Yes on telerobotic control of sophisticated probes on Mars (HD stereo optics, hand-like manipulators, haptic feedback) while the operators are burrowed into Deimos (longer orbital period) for radiation shielding. -As for concentrating science on the outer system: yes please.
Omg 100% agree! Even building a lunar base would make so much sense. And especially going to Venus. Almost same gravity, good radiation shelding from the atmosphere and earth normal pressure at those altitudes. Sorry I'm late to the party watching this one but thank you so much for making this. Keep up the awesome work on all your channels!
why not both? The actual problem is that NASAs budget is too small, better fight for increasing the budget, and do both Mars AND robotic exploration of other places.
How about we de-fund / close a few US Government Departments? Like Dept of Commerce, Energy, Education, etc.... and send their funding to NASA. Another way to increase NASA's funding would be through auditing US Government aid programs. Specifically; "who" is receiving them. I'd "kick off the rolls: 1). Dead people 2). Any citizen who's not qualified 3). Undocumented / Illegal Immigrants 4). Anyone "sanctuary cities" have placed on their programs ((get funding from Uncle Sam)) I'm thinking...... there would be more $$$'s available quicker by Auditing (aid programs) than by closing Federal Departments / Agencies.
Really? You'd gut Commerce, Energy, and Education before cutting even a _fraction_ of our incredibly, *incredibly* bloated military budget? The USA has the 3 largest armies on the planet (Army, Navy, and Air Force), with a total military strength greater than that of the next 10 nearest competitors _combined_. You could cut 1-2% of the military budget and get more available capital that if you cut all 3 of the things that you mentioned. Seriously, our priorities are completely out of whack right now if people are honestly considering cutting the department of education before cutting any portion of our ridiculous military budget...
i say 90% of military budget goes to nasa, we hold out 10 years then say 'fuck you earth' and take the entirety of the US population (minus the amish becuase they make terrible road trip buddies) on a generation ship to Proxima Centuri and hope there's a rest stop when we get there :D
Space and exploration of space is quite cool. I also think that it is sad that we care more about space exploration and moving humans to other planets than we do about exploring our own world and fixing what we've done to this world.
Where do you source material for the floating city? Isn’t the point of Mars and Moon bases the ability to source material from the planet, especially metal?
No, because to support the cities would require mining on the surface of Venus. No one will be able to suck iron and heavy metals out of the atmosphere of Venus.
Like a child, before you jump you need to learn how to walk !! Also establishing a base on Mars would be almost half way to your desired Europa, having a base on Mars and more and more frequent travels forth and back (earth-mars) the quicker and better technology develops
Europa is a bad idea, too. The big problem is that a revolutionary power source is required before we can even think about going astronomically long distances.
The best habitation technique would be using an underground Thermonuclear Detonation to create a spherical cave, which would be shielded by a thick layer of soil. The radiation would be easy to address, since robots could clean the inner surface of the melted rock that would make the habitat, and this has already been studied & proposed.
David Hollenshead I don't think that's how it works. Any underground nuclear detonation I've seen footage of creates a massive crater after the explosion. When the chamber cools after detonation, it would collapse into itself.
@Robert Destree "Depending on various factors, including the yield and characteristics of the burial, this collapse may extend to the surface. If it does, a subsidence crater is created.[26] Such a crater is usually bowl-shaped, and ranges in size from a few tens of metres to over a kilometre in diameter.[26] At the Nevada Test Site, 95 percent of tests conducted at a scaled depth of burial (SDOB) of less than 150 caused surface collapse, compared with about half of tests conducted at a SDOB of less than 180.[26]" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_nuclear_weapons_testing "In planning subsurface shots at the Nevada Test Site, attention was paid to limiting the release of volatile radioisotopes from the shot. Placing the shot deep enough so that the chimney is guaranteed to never reach the surface would be sufficient to achieve this, but deep shafts are costly to construct and a compromise approach was reached for ensuring that a sufficiently deep rubble cap would exist if a subsidence crater was formed to keep the release to a minimum. The rule of thumb was that the scaled shot deep not less than about 400 feet (122 m): Eq. 7. d = 122 Y1/3 where Y is in kilotons and depth is in meters [Glasstone and Dolan 1977; p. 261]. For media with substantial water content, even deeper burial is recommended." nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Effects/UndergroundEffects.html
I agree, Green_Man, but before even that, we should try a self-sufficient colony (as opposed to a science base) on Antarctica. I think the Chileans tried it, but the colony failed. Until we can master that, there is no point even thinking we can go further. First Antarctica, then the Moon, then further afield, using the skills we have developed in these places.
I agree with you. Until we have an advanced propulsion system (NERVA, Timberwind, Ion propulsion, plasma or sci-fi reactionles thrusters, whatever) we need to back off planetary maned spaceflight. Once we can cut down the transit time to Mars to 180 days or less it will solve so many problems. Until we have that solution we need to stick to robotic missions and manned lunar exploration to see if we can develop a perminently manned instillation outside low earth orbit.
im very sceptic of Elon's idea of terraforming Mars myself. he has plans to create an atmosphere (by nuking the poles) but he doesn't know how to make it stay. without a functioning magnetosphere, the atmosphere will just be stripped away by solar wind in no time. however Mars in my opinion is an unskippable stepping stone if we want to go deeper into the solar system. Mars isn't the easiest to terraform or closest to earth's conditions. but it is no doubt the easiest to access among other earth-resembling moons of jupiter/saturn etc. i'm sure when Mars missions succeeds as a proof of concept or when we have refuelling bases on Mars built, we will go explore further. Mars is the nearest objective in human space exploration. it's not the only objective. Mars is also a planet we have the most data of thanks to all the robotic missions. the concept of "blimp" on Venus is only that, a concept. chances are it'll never get funded. in the unlikely scenario that it did get funded, it'll be decades of prototyping and robotic missions before actual human mission. by the that time we probably would've had rocket factories on Mars ready to go even further. to sum up, we go to accessible places first. then we aim for the more "liveable" ones when our technology matures.
It's not "no time". MAVEN established the stripping loss rate, which follows exponential decay, and the half-life is rather more than a billion years. Get a liveable atmosphere and you will keep it for a few hundred million years or two orders of magnitude longer than humans have been on Earth. But Mr Musk's "nuke" idea is horrible (think radiation). Others have found better ways to re-establish an atmosphere (including guiding meteors into water-bearing strata).
@@timothymcgee871 the reason mars lost his atmosphere is because its lack of a stron magnetospehere like earth has.. earth has a iron core.. mars has not
sadev101 as I said, the information u have dates 20-40 years back and is therefore incorrect! Recent discoveries proof u wrong. Atmosphere yes even a light blue sky, magnetosphere exists (weaker than earths but it’s there) even liquid water was discovered recently so your statement’s sort of obsolete as it is incorrect, old fashioned and false. Sorry
MardukNHR yes, but it is not really a habitable object, I see why nasa, space x etc. want to go to mars first before colonizing the moon. also, the moon is in control of our tides and should we really mess with that?
Many of the things we would need to live on Mars initially would have to be used on the Moon as well (closed habitats, rad shielding, etc.), but the Moon is close enough to resupply or mount rescue missions if needed, quite unlike the Red Planet. As far as the Earth's tides go, those will be just fine regardless of our activities. Luna is far too massive for us to affect in that way, so rest easy on that account. =)
There is nothing we could do to the Moon that would affect the tides. Even if every country launched every nuclear bomb that exists and landed them on the Moon the only thing that would happen is a few more craters.
"but the Moon is close enough to resupply or mount rescue missions if needed, quite unlike the Red Planet" My point exactly!! Also for training for futures crews to other planets.
There is nothing habitable about Mars either, and any tech you can do to keep a person alive on Mars will work just fine on the Moon too. With the benefit of not having to fight gravity and atmosphere when you want to leave.
SpaceX ITS addresses a lot of your problems with Mars: -Mars only acts like a jumping board for the ITS, it will ultimately be able to *colonize* the entire Solar System (Venus, Mars, Europa, Enceladus, Titan, they are all accessable through the ITS) -Its extremely cheap when compared to SLS/Orion and the DSG/DST System (10B in R&D and 500k per person on a 100+ person flight) -It increases public interest in Space due to the sheer grandness of the Rocket and its launch frequency, which could also increase interest in other celestial bodies beside Mars -It will make any kind of mission inside and outside the solar system much cheaper and easier since probes could be launched from other planets and moons like Mars or Europa. -It enables access to space for the middle class, which also increases their interest in Space Exploration Technologies. IMO the best option would be for NASA to fund SpaceX ITS with maybe 10B over 5 years, at 2B a year it would still be cheaper than Orion and SLS, and together with private funding from SpaceX, there would be a lot of money for R&D for ITS, and NASA could let the comercial sector develop the launch vehicles while it concentrates on the science and mission payloads, like robots, probes, landers, etc.
Lehtaan Problem is that the ITS is impractical, there's risk of tipping when it lands, the exposed heat shield, and the lack of a launch escape system. By the time you fix these problems it's practically not the ITS we saw in the presentation anymore
There is no need for a Launch Escape System on the ITS because it is not like any craft before it, it is what sets apart the first airliners from the first planes. Assuming it will have and/or need a Launch Escape System is like assuming a 747 needs a Launch Escape System: It is impractical to implement such a system for such a big vehicle. It would have to be integrated *into the ship itself* as it also holds tonnes of propellant, and a structure that would pull out the crew cabin in such a large ship would add a lot of complexity and weight. The Ship will fly so often, that it is basically just a big powerful airliner, at some point in any new technology one has to choose if this security measurement is not hindering the advancement of the technology, and the ITS LOC rate will be so low that a LES could be considered useless weight.
Lehtaan So let's say that a raptor engine overheats and explodes, and that causes a chain reaction that leads to the loss of the first stage. Then what? 100 casualties? Jet engines are much less dangerous than rockets, so that isn't a practical argument. This is why the shuttle was cancelled, there was no abort system to save the astronauts in case of failure. This and the exposed heat shield make this a safety nightmare. There's a reason why almost all manned ships have LES
In regards to the part about exploding raptor engines. I know that the octaweb for falcon 9, is specifically designed to protect the rest of the rocket and it's engines, in case a engine blows up. So I find it reasonable, that they would do the same for the ITS spaceship and rocket. Note. The octaweb is the part, of which the engines is mounted inside.
Amy, your argument presented is valid. The only point that I think is a valid counter point is that the infrastructure used to get to Mars is also multi destination functional to enable going to other places. Going to those other places are even more expensive but if the Martian voyage infrastructure is used to go to the other places as well. Then we are talking about building deep solar system exploration in staged steps to spread out the cost. I would like to know your thoughts on that aspect of this discussion. FYI: Even if I do not agree with your thoughts. I love hearing them because it does provoke thoughts I had not had before. I thank you for that too.
A space shuttle that works is a less sexy but more practical step. A throw away mega rocket topped with a “Block 3 Apollo retro spam can” Is not and never will be a viable transportation system
I've always felt we should colonize the moon first, learn to exploit its resources, and use it as a low-gravity jumping off point or way-station for exploring the solar system.
Great video. Good points. I think mars is like the moon for NASA. It's just about saying we done it. I also think any mission to mars MIGHT be a one way deal.
I feel like this could easily be solved if we reduced military spending by some small amount and moved it to NASA. We could get all of the missions we want easily enough. Hell look at how much it cost to develop the f-35 alone. That programs estimated lifetime cost by itself is more than ten times the cost to send people to Mars. let that sink in.. a shiny new fighter jet that we have minimal need for or.. like 10 manned missions to Mars.
Military spending in 16% of the federal budget. 60% is Entitlements. Deal with that, and we would already be on Jupiter with a base on Europa. Well, maybe an automated base :-)
_"but but... The Russians!! We need that F-35, so we can sell it to the countries that we influenced to be still scared by them even though they don't give signs of invading!"_ The F-35 is a good plane? From what I've seen around, yes, it seems to be a wonderful piece of hardware (and software). But do the USA really need it? I don't think so. Instead of having one plane that can do every mission in a battle and waste a huge amount of money, they could stick with normal bombers for bombing, normal fighters to fight and normal spy planes for spying. My theory is that the whole NATO build-up around Russia and the creation of F-35 are marketing moves. Remember that USA is the one spending the most in military, while most of NATO countries don't follow their own military spending rules. The F-35 bit of this move isn't working very well... I don't know how much they will get from the investment, but right now, "it is too big to fail", so they will do it to the end.
Tell that to Russia and China. Especially China. They might not have quite the know-how and experience as the US/EU, but they have the wealth. Pity they don't have the mindset.
It is a great theory to have one multi-role aircraft for all the branches to use and achieve interchangeability in parts, fuel, mechanics, and pilots; but considering that it is difficult for a single branch to design its own aircraft it is an absolute mess to have them all design a single aircraft.
+Timothy Black ALL tax money, INCLUDING to the military, IS an entitlement. I hate the way cuntservaturds try to use the word "entitlement" for social welfare programs for the poor or masses as some sort of insult, ridicule, belittlement. If by LAW the government OWES the poor that money back that they already pay in taxes, then GOOD for the poor. Let's see police & the military give up THEIR jobs and earn a living in free market capitalism. ALL government funding IS, by definition, welfare. That does NOTHING to distinguish money WELL spent from money POORLY spent.
Look around on RUclips. There's vids on "Why we should go to Venus" and all that sort of stuff. Makes a lot of sense. Personally, my vote is for City In The Clouds on Venus over a Mars colony. Surface-ism is overrated.
how to return from Venus if one wants to? even if it's a base in clouds, the gravity is comparable to Earth, which means just to lift off it needs a rocket with same size as rocket to take of from Earth - thousands of tons...
Crawl Walk Run: Moon Crawl, Mars Walk, End of our solar system Run, outside of our solar system Olympic running. Your best able to succeed and reach your intended goal when you take the time to learn how to accomplish your goal not by just setting lofty ones.
Mars is the closest. Same as getting man into space had to happen before going to the moon, Mars will be the gateway after the moon. They would have more info they aren't going to tell anyone else that influences their decisions.
It is not the closest. You can get into orbit around Venus for roughly 2/3 the delta v it takes to get into orbit around mars. AND there are significantly more transfer windows to Venus since it orbits the sun faster. So you can get back much faster too. Even though humans can't land on it, if they were in orbit, they could do hands on atmosphere research, and also directly control rovers without light delay, which could do a lot of things we can't do remotely, especially since Venus gives limited time for rovers before melting. You can also "land" humans bouyantly partway down the atmosphere in a zeppelin-like contraption, which may also be a habitation possibility. In terms of fuel and technology, if landing, in some ways Europa is almost as practical as Mars -- most of the energy can be spent with very efficient ion or nuclear drives in interplanetary space, and the actual landing and takeoff where you need low efficiency engines are only 1/3 of Mars (Mars can use parachutes to land but still). Europa also has much more available water which effectively = excellent, easy rocket fuel when electrolyzed with solar or nuclear power, for use in ascent. Get under the ice fast enough to not get cooked by rads, and you can stay awhile safely.
Spunky1991, I'll go quote myself from a different post as it basically covers it. "One thing that strikes me as odd is how few people consider Venus as a the natural choice for human colonization. Sky cities in the atmosphere 50-60 kilometers above the surface would have temperatures, gravity and pressures are comparable to that of the Earth surface at that altitude. There are no corrosive gases present at that altitude and most importantly the sky cities would be shielded from radiation and micro-metorites by the atmosphere above it. Add to it that breathable air is actually a lifting gas in Venus atmosphere we wouldn't even have to make special considerations for staying afloat. And finally, the travel time would be a lot shorter. A round mission to Venus would take a few months, not years, and we know the effect of a few months is doable."
How do you launch a rocket from a zeppelin? You know, for when the humans want to come back? Did you take into account the amount of fuel that you need to slow the rocket down from orbital velocity to a "balloon-safe" velocity, when you got your 2/3 Δv? And the size of said balloon to hold an entire rocket able to return the crew to orbit?
She's previously said that she doesn't care what private companies do. She's more concerned with what NASA's doing from a tax payer's perspective. If SpaceX successfully did the job, or just attempted it, she'd be cool with it.
+BuellersBack "Believe in science" What does that even mean? Obama was the one who gutted NASA by cancelling Constellation and left us dependent on the Russians to give us access to the ISS where we perform experiments and research. So you're saying he doesn't believe in science?
I think if we take your point about how much quicker we can learn by having a person in situ, then the educational benefit and progress of putting people on Mars could greatly improve our ability to explore other bodies. If we achieve manufacturing capability on Mars (Robert Zubrin claims that fuel manufacture would be easy for starters), wouldn’t it be a great springboard out into the wider solar system? So, a short/medium term delay on automated exploration so that we might improve our capabilities therein through initial human exploration. Kind of leap frogging our way out into the solar system by placing humans on one body, allowing easier automated exploration of a farther body, paving the way for human missions to that body.
All the arguments for not going to mars could be used against going everywhere else. the tech used to get to mars however could be used to go elsewhere such as europa. And as for sending more probes, we already know how to do that but manned missions out side of earth orbit is still a challenge to undertake. Mars sounds like a difficult but achievable goal.
1. Going to mars the grand narrative that gives us the will to even bother with space travel. Space science like probes and rovers are just that; space science. Space travel is what our human spirit is trying to achieve. This makes Mars the perfect goal for space travel. Science and technologies can always be progressed but getting the human race to agree on one objective and have the will to peruse it is sometimes near impossible. Tons of space science will be done when we have space travel anyway. Having both will and money made the moon mission happen very fast I would have hated to see us send robots to the moon for 30 years before we decided to travel there and again the process of going to the moon gave us the technology and science we were after anyway. 2. The effort to get to mars will develop all the technology we need to go explore anywhere afterwards. 3. When we Terra-form Mars (Not if, because Terra-forming Mars is so easy) we can just continue building the atmosphere faster than than the solar wind strips it away. On the issue of magnetic field we can Geo-engineer that too by building a power line around the circumference of the planet and energize it with HVDC power plants. This "coil" can be pulsed to inductively induce a planetary scale magnetic field in the core of mars. Also having an atmosphere will block about of ground radiation. 4. I agree that our spacecraft shouldn't be single purpose or single use. Advancements in electric propulsion and small scale nuclear power plants can provide us the ability to build multi-use spacecraft. 5. Your main argument is: what should we spend the limited money on first? Mars or general space science? To me I believe it should be spent on the mars effort for the reasons I said earlier as it trumps your argument because it deals with both human nature and scientific advancement.
I think we should focus on going back to the Moon for now, build a base from which we can launch to other places like Mars, asteroids, etc. We also need to resolve the problems with safely traveling to Mars or other places in the Solar system. Right now, with current technology, astronauts are likely to die of cancer from cosmic radiation and maybe be near crippled when coming back due to the lack of gravity.
One thing that strikes me as odd is how few people consider Venus as a the natural choice for human colonization. Sky cities in the atmosphere 50-60 kilometers above the surface would have temperatures, gravity and pressures are comparable to that of the Earth surface at that altitude. There are no corrosive gases present at that altitude and most importantly the sky cities would be shielded from radiation and micro-metorites by the atmosphere above it. Add to it that breathable air is actually a lifting gas in Venus atmosphere we wouldn't even have to make special considerations for staying afloat. And finally, the travel time would be a lot shorter. A round mission to Venus would take a few months, not years, and we know the effect of a few months is doable. So is the reason why we're not focusing on Venus as the first place to colonize when it's such an obvious choice that we're just old fashioned and still have a renaissance outlook on exploration as crossing a vast sea (in this case space) and exploring the surface of another world? So going to Mars is actually _not_ a smart idea. Let's learn the crawl before we can start running marathons, and let's head to Venus instead.
i get what u mean but i dont understand what we can do on venus. i mean floating in the clouds is cool but on mars you can use the soil and whats in mars to build rescourses or fuel etc. And on venus you have the atmosphere. Intresting too but i think on venus your very limited, because everything besides the upper atmosphere is like a fireball
Given the conditions are so ideal, it is extremely likely that there actually could be life forms that exist in the Venus atmosphere, so it would be a natural place to look for it. But I did say it was the obvious place for _human colonization_, not particularly exploration.
SaturnusDK hi I am a person who is usually interested in space travel but a floating city on Venus is actually quite difficult to say the least because you need a lot of oxygen to float on Venus atmosphere and at 100% O2 at one earth atmosphere pressure it will cause a spark to turn into a 🔥 fire ball one of vintage space video did talk about that which can be solved by filling part of the ship with inert gas like helium or nitrogen but it will need to be carried from earth.
@Mohd Afnan Azmi, that's not correct. Breathable air (78% nitrogen 21% oxygen) at fairly low pressure such as found on the ISS is a powerful lifting gas in itself due to it being much lighter than the predominantly CO2 filled atmosphere of Venus. In fact, it would very much behave like helium does in the Earth's atmosphere.
SaturnusDK the problem about the 100% O2 come from the fact we need to produce the gas there and we can't send a huge quantity of helium or nitrogen nor capture it from Venus atmosphere to fill an airship that can carry a crew, equipment, inert gas and the envelope to keep the gas from escaping which could be a logistics nightmare by it self. I also have no idea on how to power it and before you say solar panel understand that Venus don't have a 24 hour day cycle like earth it has 243 earth day cycle (fun fact Venus takes longer to do a day cycle than an orbit the sun 225 earth days) so 121.5 earth day at the day and 121.5 earth day at night. so I will need a big ass battery and solar panel that will make the mission impossible by themselves. but sending research drones that is carries a bit of helium, a small battery, solar panel, a small envelope to float on is a great idea.
OMG, one minute we are saying Mars is too far for humans and another Moonshot would be a safer bet and then you are saying Titan would be a cooler mission for humans, WTF? Mars is a gateway, to deeper space, and will be much better for longer term settlement for humans than the moon. We know there is unlikely to be life on Mars, but the geology on Mars is something worth fighting for and as you say we can do so much more if it's done by people and not robots. Just think of Mars as a port in space, it'll be 120 days closer to the rest of the solar system. The Moon would only be 3 days closer.
Phase 1: Build a space station that can escape the sphere of influence of earth Phase 2: Dock mars lander to space station Phase 3: Travel to mars Phase 4: land on mars
In this concept, the moon is actually a far better place to have a midway point. Far closer proximity means crews can be changed out more regularly. The gravity is lower and atmosphere non existent, so landing is a far smaller problem than on Mars. Exception would be having a resupply point on Mars as a sort of 3-9mo resupply rendezvous, however that require having all those necessary materials ON Mars. Which, in the case of non-renewables like food and water, would mean they would have to be brought TO Mars in the first place, making the mission redundant.
Amy, your recent videos have become very hostile to your fans. You always assume that we want to make fun of you, or yell at you. The internet can be a very nasty place, especially in YT comments, but we're not all bad! I pretty much agree with you totally! Just remember that we're not all trying to tear you apart! Have a wonderful Sunday!
Just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed listening to your audiobook "Breaking the Chains of Gravity". Being a bit of a 20th century history geek, it was right up my alley. Great storytelling!
Agree...... Auditing the Federal Aid Programs and removing everyone who shouldn't be on them "should" free-up tons of money. Another method to free-up money...... close a few Federal agencies; like Dept of Commerce, Dept of Energy, Dept of Education, etc. Putting all this "found money" into NASA's budget should give it enough to do everything it needs and then some. That and...... increase the Commercial Crew / Supply program.
If the situation in the USA is anything like the UK then then the real issue is the money that goes into the system that gets wasted. EG the total benefits paid out by our benefits system is less than 12% of the money that gets paid in. Increase the efficiency to 25% and that would be about $200 Billion saved in the UK and I bet it would be triple that in the US (possibly up to 5 times as your country has a population near 5 times ours).
I am actually very excited about the idea of getting boots on Mars but to be honest, your argument makes a lot of sense because as inspirational as landing on Mars would be and for all it would seem like the moon landing all over again.... I do agree that there are more scientifically interesting targets, I would LOVE to see a probe crack the ice on Europa and get a picture of what’s in the water but at our current rate of progress it will probably be another century before we find that out.
I feel that you make some valid points. I don't particularly like Musks' ideas of going to Mars. As a historian maybe it might be interesting to look at the factors that led to Columbus discovering North America. Musks' idea remind me of the early European colonists of America who turned up and died, not a fate i would wish on anybody travelling to Mars. You make a distinction between science exploration and multi-planetary expansion, there is I feel another reason for visiting other worlds/moons is money! Columbus went in search of new worlds to profit financially and of course the Spanish conquistadors explored South America for monetary reasons, the latter not instance not showing humanity in its finest hour. Yeah there's gold in them there Martian hills!
Forget boots on mars or building on mars till we do it on the moon.. we slowly made our way here going To mars/moon we need to have a hell of a game plan to get up and manufacturing (Not for wants but for survival)
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win We go not because it is easy, but because it is hard. If you're going to send a toy, instead of a man, don't deem to call it exploration. Where is the inspiration in dipping your toe? Where's the spectacle? Where is the awe inspiring moment of global unity? Where is the moment all mankind takes a moment, to consider its place, to consider its future, and to reflect on its self? It doesn't happen. Because you robbed a generation of it, for one more toy on the ground you're too afraid of sending anyone too. It doesn't happen because you'd rather sheepishly test and measure instead of daring to aspire and dream. it doesn't happen and it will never happen because instead of inspiring the world, a generation of children and a constantly shrinking scientific inquest on the part of developed and undeveloped countries you chose mediocrity.
Amy, I just want to say that I appreciate your videos. You talk about what most of us are already thinking, but don’t have the guts to say. My hat is off to you. From an old soldier, I say “Hooah!, and again, thanks. 😀
We can't launch back from it. Venus has almost the same gravity pull than Earth. We would need to have a fully assembled Saturn V filled with fuel hanging from balloons there.
8:30 Getting a person to Mars is too hard. Let's think about sending a person to Jupiter moon instead. What? Oh, having someone stuck in a space ship for 2 years each way is too hard. Let's jump to a 6 years each way transit problem.
@@SeaScoutDan The best I can say about you now is that you are arguing in bad faith, you are being plain dishonest intellectually. Literally **IN THE SAME SENTENCE** 10 seconds earlier she said "totally honestly I would take a robot over a human for now because it's easier and cheaper". Frankly, get lost. I don't wanna hear from you again.
As a diver, and also having knowledge of Apollo, I truely believe the Earth is a giant Oasis in a vast dessert, a Blue Beautiful marble! Before we worry about colonizing other worlds, we should be making efforts to make our own home more sustainable. As much as I love Aviation, and space flight, and test flying, I don't want to live anywhere else! I love my beach, my boat, and my oceans!
![Why I Don't Like the Space Shuttle [Amy's Soapbox]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4K7QRoemb-I/mqdefault.jpg)
EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
+lordofentropy
Why exactly? Afraid of contaminating potential life forms? Just curious.
It's a quote from the movie 2010
Thank you! Didn't know that one.
Yeah, just movie quote :) However, your initial suggestion of contamination was essentially the reason why the humans received the message. With Jupiter turned into a star, life was going to evolve on Europa and the aliens were like "stay away you fools."
To be perfectly honest, I don’t care where we go. I just want to see manned mission go beyond low earth orbit in my life time.
Same here, and I take it you also were born before 1969!!!
As long as you are satisfied with the moon…it is all dependent on water sources.
this really. idk if I'll live long enough to see people land on Mars so I'll take the Moon for now.
Why do you care if someone goes outside Earth's orbit? What is the point?
What about high earth orbit?
Fully agree with you Amy! I think one of the worst outcomes that can happen from a manned Mars mission is to basically have a repeat of the Apollo program where we go someplace, walk around, bring back some sterile rocks and go yep, we did that. And then space exploration stagnates for another 30-50 years due to lack of return on investment.
Yes. Been thinking that for a long time.
Europa H2O Alien the ITS can make the travel in 80-150 days, so 8 months is far ahead
'I'm All About That Space' , bout that space, space travel
Luckily there is spaceX. If the planned transportation system is going to be entrenched we might as well be able to expand it to the Jupiter/Saturn moons..
You are ill informed about Apollos ROI. It's R&D payed off thirteen fold till today and gave us a huge technological boost. We might now be a decade behind in high end electronics if it wasn't for the space race.
Thank you, Amy. I enjoy your insight even when you're on your "soapbox." I'm in my early 60's now and grew up in the heyday of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, watched as many as I could on T.V., and read books about them, so I'm a big fan of the U.S. Space Program in general. Way back in the days of Apollo, I naturally assumed we'd be going to Mars by the time I was in my 30's. Mars always seemed to be the place, but I thank you now for sharing some interesting alternatives. Your knowledge and enthusiasm is always appreciated.
By the way, if you're into Space Program Science Fiction, there's an interesting series of novels by Austin Boyd (the three-book Mars Hill Classified Series). Mr. Boyd was a U.S. Navy pilot who went through the astronaut selection process right up until the final cut. He's now an aero-space consultant in Huntsville, AL as well as a novelist. I got to hear him as the key-note speaker at a writers' conference. I gave him a copy of one of my own novels as a thank you gift for his speech. He gave me copies of all three of his Mars Hill Classified novels in return, which I took home and read one after the other. He used his knowledge as a pilot and almost-astronaut, along with his imagination, to craft his stories about missions to Mars and a first colony there, along with danger and intrigue back on earth and on the red planet, and a possible encounter with alien robots.
The first booking the series is entitled THE EVIDENCE. On the back cover, Marv Langston, Phd., the U.S. Navy's first Chief Information Officer and a Navy combat systems designer, said of the novel, "Non-stop action. Realistic to the last detail. A story our nation could face on any day. Austin Boyd has leveraged his exceptional naval career and knowledge o military and space systems to create a book that excites, inspires and wakens each of our emotions. A must-read."
1: Colonize the moon.
2: Make an interplanetary spaceport with materials gathered on the moon.
3: Explore the solar system.
- Since the moon only has 16% of the gravity on Earth, we can launch massive spacecrafts, using a fraction of the fuel.
IchBinEin Bist du ein? :P
IchBinEin do you know what materials are on the moon
The exact same composition as on earth, like almost EXACTLY down to the %, with perhaps an even higher amount of heavy metal elements in the upper crust, due to the fact that the moon was molten, but cooled faster than the earth, which allowed the heavy elements to not sink to the core as fast. Besides, a lot of Ice at the poles, and solar wind, consisting of heavy Hydrogen isotopes gathered in the craters and soil, for easy hydrogen harvesting, used for fuel and energy generation for the spaceport.
Seriously, the Moon is the perfect staging area for an interplanetary spaceport, because of the abundant elements for production, and low gravity+no atmosphere, allowing significantly larger spacecrafts, using much less fuel.
IchBinEin how is this possible when the mass of the earth is more than the moon. all of the materials on the moon do still have a mass so they cant be to the %.
... Are you joking? Of course the moon doesn't have the same *Amount* of materials that the earth does.
The moon only has 1.2% the mass of the earth, and about 2% of the volume of the earth, but because it is relatively dense (60% of the earths density), you're so close to the core of the gravity well, you still experience 16% of the gravity, despite only having 1.2% of the mass of the earth.
I just don't understand why it seems like no one gives a shit about our own moon anymore. It should be the test bed for anything else we do in the solarsystem. Habitation domes or launch systems or in field resource gathering and manufacturing should be tested on the moon before we take it somewhere else. There's a bit of a larger safety net of something fucking up on the Moon than on Mars. And I would rather we be launching from the Moon to go to Mars, than from Earth.
But overall, loved this video. And I totally agree, Venus is just so fascinating. Maybe not obvious but my avatar is from Destiny, where Venus is a playable location and even if it's not scientifically accurate in the slightest I have much more interest in any other planet than Mars at this point. Maybe because I'm biased against the red hue.
The moon is completely unlike Mars, the gravity is much weaker, and it has no atmosphere. So there are no lessons to be learned there. Landing on the moon is virtually nothing like the challenges faced to land on Mars. Secondly the moon has virtually no resources that can aid the travelers to be there. It's essentially a desert that has nothing to provide astronauts. The challenges with landing on the moon and having to launch again it will certainly deplete needed fuel and the duration of a lunar presence will deplete food and other essentials. All being on the moon can do is consume time, energy and supplies. If you want to go to Mars, just go to Mars. If you want to go to the moon, go there. But there's basically nothing there that is of any use to anybody. The moon is nothing more than a big pile of rocks.
Dave B If I'm correct the moon has a lot of helium4 which is a component of very efficient rocketfuel, I could totally envision the moon being one massive ball filled with miners and mining equipment.
South pole also have a huge amount of H2O. So you have wather, oxygen, fuel...
Fascist Canuck fucking get a life
Glenniebrother what the fuck are you on about?
Please don't apologize for having you own opinions Amy. I think they are great and encourage discussion.
Marty Cooper - Seriously?
Maybe Amy should use those totalitarianistic urges you feel she has, and delete your comment.
Comment by Jim Lovell, ''It's not a miracle, we just decided to go.''
Whether we go or not, 'terraforming' is a pipe dream. With no molten core driving the electromagnetic protective shield like on Earth, any atmosphere we build up, will be forever and constantly being blown away by solar wind. It blew the atmosphere off once, perfectly ready to do it again. Ahhhh! She mentions that! Excellent. Truly a complex mind.
There are other options. A shield assembled at the right lagrange point could block the solar winds. Still have to deal with the cosmic rays though. Wouldn't want get superpowers like what happened to the Fantastic Four.
@@dcanaday yeah only problem is that we would have to largely disassemble an ENTIRE PLANET to build it, not to mention we need to power it and refuel it so it can maintain position
For that matter, even if terraforming Mars is to some extent is possible, even if only to the extent that it becomes more possible for a colony of humans to live there, how long would it take to do it? How do we know that the technological epoch of human civilization will last long enough for the project to be completed?
Some people seem to think that space exploration and colonization will serve as a sort of technological insurance policy for the human race guaranteeing that both technological civilization and the human race itself will survive indefinitely. But how does anyone know this? Why would anyone believe that a project inevitably involving only a small portion of the entire human race guarantee any aspect of the human race's future?
For another thing, the impetus toward space exploration and the cultural belief in the significance of space colonization seem to be the province of the West only, and really the province of the two superpowers only, the United States and the lesser one, Russia. The Far East might be interested only because it sees itself as competing with the West as a civilization. The rest of the world might not on its own have anything close to the capability, ever.
Frankly, I think the fascination with Mars grows out of the belief that there might once have been life there, or even a past civilization long ages ago. Or even life still in existence there. These are a reasons to want to explore Mars. But the fascination with the idea of terraforming is just plain science fiction. At least as of now. Some people seem to think that all it would take would be popping open a cannister of the right microbes and letting them do their thing for some defined period of time. I am skeptical, to say the least. Science fiction has some brave and inspiring things to say about the human spirit. But the human spirit still needs oxygen to live and can only tolerate a certain cumulative exposure to radiation before the body dies.
Terraforming is easy, it just takes a billion years.
Very astute of u. I thought of that yrs ago when I was a just a kid, the atmosphere got blown off when the electromagnetic field died, which died when the core cooled off and solidified.
What I then proposed was, that I believe the core cooled off when a planetoid struck Mars, leaving that HUGE scar across it's face as long as the US is wide, exposing its deeper layers, and blowing a huge chunk of Mars's atmosphere off at once as the planetoid hit, further exposing the deeper layers to space.
For me, the mission to mars has always been about defeating the deep space travel challenges rather than discovering anything new about it
It's about both. We learn by doing...
Obviously we would want unmanned robotic missions first, to build as much infrastructure as possible before people get there. For instance, grow a whole lot of crops and establish a useful oxygen atmosphere within the domes.
Radiation shielding, power supply, a nice place for the manned rocket to land, sleeping/recreation areas, medical facilities, fuel supply for return missions, scout out the local area, etc. This could and should all be done before real people get there.
After watching the video, I see where you are coming from, Amy. I am personally in the camp of making humanity a multi planetary species, but I am becoming an aerospace engineer because I want to help humans explore "strange new worlds". We can accommodate both camps if we let the private sector (a la SpaceX) focus on Mars Colonization, and have the public (NASA) focus on deep space exploratory missions, like New Horizons or Cassini/Huygens.
#The Truth Of The Matter Why would it be a bad idea to become a multi-planetary species?
We had no idea about how to get to the moon until Kennedy said we're going. Direct ascent or orbital docking. The point of going to mars is not about getting to mars, it's about getting human beings going somewhere. You see that as a bad thing, personally, I'm sick of everything great we've ever done being decades ago.
Thank you, Amy, for stating support for a rational approach to manned space exploration. Finding and utilizing resources in space is a priority to me, so that we can shift the impact of the human race away from Earth and into space.
4:20 Amy, you have friends who are giant space people? I knew aliens exist! I knew it!
We found the master conspirator! She admits to being the gateway between the NASA and the "Giant Space People!"
JK :))
All hail Amy's friends... THE GIANT SPACE PEOPLE!!!
I, for one, welcome our new Overlords! Amys Giant Space People!
Beautiful timing of that phrase Amy!
XD
I agree. I beleive we should start with developing infrastructure in earth obrit and then onto the moon. Staying close to home will give us a strong Foundation to move out into the solar system.
My 2 cents...👍
Agree! The moon is so much easier to reach, with a shallow gravity well and many resources. A great staging base.
I am older so basically cautious. I would keep the robotic missions going to the places we want to explore and build up good knowledge before we go. But let's send manned missions to Mars to develope our abilities and methods of manned space travel. And at the same time, set up a base as a place to stop if needed on trips further outbound in the solar system. It could be a planned stop or a convenient emergency stop local. After all, I do not believe AAA does repair or retrieval work that far out in the system. I would hate to send a manned mission as far away as say Titan without help closer than clear back at Earth.
@@StevenBanks123 - This is a big misconception that sounds great in sci-fi but is not so great for rocketry. The Moon is no better than Mars in terms of delta-v, despite the smaller gravity well, because there's no atmosphere to slow you down. So you're burning fuel the whole way to descend and not crash. In fact, any given rocket can land more payload on Mars than the Moon for this reason alone. That's why NASA hasn't been prioritizing lunar rovers since Apollo!
NASA's Gateway / Deep Space Transport proposal is exactly how you want to stage a crewed Mars mission. Use a highly-elliptical lunar orbit that doesn't require a lot of fuel burn to enter or leave. This way, you can use the Gateway as a staging point for lunar missions as well while keeping the heavy, habitable hardware farther from the lunar surface and thus closer to Earth and Mars in terms of delta-v budget. That orbit around the Moon preserves about 85% of the kinetic energy needed for an Earth flyby and trans-Mars injection, so it's an efficient compromise parking orbit between the Moon (near-term) and Mars (longer-term).
It's counterintuitive unless you've studied orbit mechanics / play a lot of KSP
@@brianfoss571 This a good point that people don’t often consider, and when you’re talking about landing something with a shit ton of dry mass like a lunar base you are going to need more deltaV to land on the moon than on mars due to aerodynamic forces naturally bleeding off velocity. Not to mention entry heating is basically non existent in mars atmosphere.
@@johnnyringo2670 Reentry heating is still in the thousands of degrees on Mars, because you're coming in at several km/s. But it's not as difficult of a heat transfer challenge as surviving Earth reentry from the Moon.
The problem with Mars, aside from the lack of atmosphere and radiation, is the gravity. We could live in domes to shield us but the gravity, overtime, would change the density of our bones. Especially if people are born on Mars. Those people would be born with new birth defects, and most likely never be able to set foot on earth without being crushed.
Living on the moon would be even worse.
Mars = great PR value. Great PR for public agencies = more funding. More funding = more exploration.
I would be kind of on your side in a super perfect world where everybody loves exploring space instead of killing each other, but untill this happens, we have to get people interested in space exploration and Mars can be great for this like the Moon was at the time.
Mars = enormously high price. Enormous prices = less funding. Less funding = less exploration.
That's what happened last time.
I would pay to see a debate between you and Elon
Elon is doing it out of the fear of human extinction, not just for science.
Victor Gutarra
Elon would most likely crush anyone who tried debating him on that topic
Elon would send ppl & robots to all those places at less cost than NASA's cost to Mars alone. Not a real debae.
Elon would send people & robots to those 4 places for NASA's budget to Mars alone. Perhaps crowd source some money. It's apples Vs oranges, and not a real debate.
Trump Econ i dint wana ser elon crt
Big, ambitious missions to Enceladus and Europa (especially below-the-ice) would tell us so much more than manned exploration of Mars. I will say that from a purely engineering standpoint going to Mars would result in so many innovations and engineering solutions it might actually end up being more profitable than automated exploration.
Its so upsetting that you don't understand the concept of baby steps. This isn'y one-hour photo, idiot. Do you think that we will get to Mars and just stop? You can't be serious.
@@KH4444444444N IF we ever go to Mars, we'll plant the flag, confirm that thare's nothing worth going for and that's about it - perhaps Ford's concept of joint Venus-Mars mission will happen, and that's all.
@@KH4444444444N Why are so many anonymous people on RUclips dyed in the wool jerks? You don't have to be a jackass to make your point.
@@Vector_Ze "dyed in the wool jerks?" What in the fuck does that even mean? I've arrived here simply and ultimately to extoll the virties of Human space exploration...So, if your agendae be erstwhile, well then I will likely never understand your idiocy.
I think the problem with missions farther out is that they are farther out. At its closest, Mars is 35M miles away. Jupiter is about 360M miles away. Getting to Mars is not "halfway there". It's more like 1/10 of the way there.
We should start with the Moon and work out the bugs first.
Then go to Mars and get a feel for farther missions, time lag, the feeling of abandonment, and all that.
Then we go deeper into the Solar System. And hopefully by then we get the Epstein Drive or something close to it.
3:22 "This whole plan of course depends on the Space Launch System (SLS) being built in time."
I'll take Comments That Didn't Age Well for 500, Alex.
And her arguments, granted reasonable at the time, assume that the cost of doing a crewed Mara mission will not decrease.
SpaceX is of course, at the forefront of this. They could be doing Mars missions in the early 2030s. Even Starship doesn't work exactly how they hope, I feel confident the commercial market in general will enable not just more crewed missions in deep space, but many more science missions than were ever possible.
Just watched this again for the first time since it was first posted. All I have to say is "Ceres _Ceres_ *_Ceres_* *_CERES!_*
Why not go to Europa instead?
Simply, because in the terms where it really matters, Europa is WAY harder to get to than Mars.
Starting in LEO, how do the journey costs for Mars and Europa stack up?
Going to Mars, with full use of aerobraking and parachutes, AND then returning to earth once the planets are aligned, requires some 9600m/s of delta-v, a trip time of 300 days there, 300 days back, and you need to return almost immediately or else wait more than a year for the next ticket home.
Going to Europa, ONE WAY, requires a delta-v of about 17500m/s, and the trip time is 1100 days.
About that delta-v.. Remember rocket equation? Your rocket to Europa will be many, many, MANY times bigger to deliver the same mass..
This is the reason we do not yet have probes that land on Europa, or Callisto, or Enceladus, or any of the similar very enticing possible destinations.
Know why we DID send a probe to Titan? Because it has an atmosphere, which simplifies the capture-and-landing sequence enormously.
Mars can make a great base for further expolration.
In theory so could the moon if there is enough water, and once it gets started crashing small ice asteroids onto the moon at low speed could replenish it. Then all you need for fuel is a huge solar array and a big electrolysis tank. Unfortunately it takes 500 amps of electricity for 193 seconds to get just 1 g of Hydrogen. but there are GaAs photocells that are far better than silicon ones. They are just mind boggling expensive.
Yes, there is water on the moon.
It is about as common there as 1-carat diamonds are on earth.
On Mars, water is about as common as it is in Death Valley, California.
I.E. You are not likely to find it lying about on the surface, but dig down even just a few meters and you get vaguely "damp" permafrost in the soil.
With reasonably easy access to sand, rock, water and CO2, Mars makes local resource extraction practical.
On the moon, you have to bake your oxygen out of the rock, and import your water. Realistically, import your hydrogen. Tons and Tons of it. Also Nitrogen. Also carbon, typically in edible form.
+Marvin Kitfox Your outbound times for Mars sounds like an opposition-class mission. It's not at all ideal. A fast conjunction transfer can get you there in 6 months... or as little as 110 days with a 2 year free return trajectory. Surface stay times then are around 500-600 days. Also, delta-V drops to around 4k. Check this out wiki.developspace.net/w/images/2/2f/HumanMarsMissionTrajectories.pdf
Theoretically you can get there a lot faster than that with a 4 stage rocket. It would though be absolutely enormous as it would in effect be a Saturn V sitting on top of something about 4 times the weight of the Saturn V. You could also in theory do a moon transfer in say 4 days, then use a rocket that size to get to Mars in less than 2 months.
I think sending people to Mars is hugely premature until we could send people back to the moon on a longer term basis as a proof-of-concept. An ISS-style lunar outpost that we can send crews to for months at a time, dealing with the radiation and resource production problems, with the potential to return to Earth quickly in an emergency.
edit: Also if the US would just accept it doesn't need such a huge military, downscale them by 10% and give that $100 billion-ish to NASA then they could do ALL these potential missions.
+3rdWheel _"Also if the US would just accept it doesn't need such a huge military, downscale them by 10% ..."_
The US military budget has decreased by about 20% in constant dollars since 2008, and by about 8% in nominal dollars during that same period. By the end of next year, the army's active-duty strength will have shrunk by about 20% since 2011.
Studying Mars from orbit is a very smart idea! It has two ready-to-use space stations named Phobos and Deimos. You don't exactly LAND on either one--you dock like to the ISS.
If we want to put "space-boots on the ground", let's go back to the moon for more permanent exploration. No need to go to Mars to capture the imagination. And I agree, we need to go to Europa, Enceladus, Titan, etc, that's where the frontier is.
Nah. Venus is the ideal place to go first.
Venus will be great for colonization, but for now Moon is the best target for colonization, science and ECONOMY.
Colonize Venus, WTF ???
There are many reasons that Venus is not habitable, including the presence of poisonous gasses at the level that a "Venus Zeppelin" would fly.
and the 400°C lol
But at the height a zeppelin would fly it would be only about 70ºC though.
But we can't go to Europa, remember? All these worlds are ours except Europa. We may attempt no landing there.
MultiPaulinator why not ???
+the one febo10 It's a reference to Arthur Clarke's sci-fi novel 2010. Consider yourself nerdworthy.
Venus is protomolecule, can't go there either. We're running out of planets
We could go to Titan. We'd just have to watch out for 3 nymphic mermaids and a Tralfamadorian asking us for spare parts to repair his ship.
We could always go to the sunny-side of Mercury. Just think of the plentiful solar power to be had there. (The juice will be needed to power all the AC we'll need.)
You make a number of good points. And for the record, we all love you even when you're being opinionated.
I love her because she is opinionated. (And knowledgeable to back it up.)
I agree with chardtomp, you are adorable, especially when you're expressing your intelligent, scientific, balanced, and obviously brilliant opinion. Please don't hold back! As an Aries, I'd love to check out my, lol, "home planet" Mars, but I think it'd be idiotic to dedicate all our (NASA's ) money and time on just one "space adventure". I'm with you 100% on that, I'll gladly fist-fight any opposition you encounter!! Put 'em up bi'chez!! Hah!
@@nickjust5208 most women don't like being called "adorable". I also don't think Amy needs you to fight people who disagree with her. You just don't come off well.
I agree with you, Amy! I think that since we (humans) have to live in controlled environments in space, then your idea of an orbital visit with remote controls for robotics on the surface works for any of the planets and moons you mentioned. The planned gateway out by the moon may be a good model for a system of slightly larger stations positioned at strategic points around the solar system. What about building a settlement inside Phobos or Deimos? They would always be in orbit, they are large enough to mine and excavate, and their gravities are low enough that spacecraft could rendezvous with them, vis-à-vis landing on them. Think of the bunker space available for the storage of food and supplies!
I'm glad you mentioned Titan and Europa. Also thinking about Enceladus, it seems obvious to me that the tremendous costs associated with taking resources into orbit would be ameliorated by harvesting resources from moons and asteroids already in space. Titan has lots of hydrocarbons. Can we take and refine those for use in our space stations? Water ice and other elements exist in abundance on moons, asteroids, and planetoids. Why not build refining plants, laboratories, and factories on these smaller bodies so people can live and work there, but also have the ability to refine our space technologies in the perfect weightless and airless environment? In the same vein, why not use the mined-out areas left inside a large rock for living space? (Provided the structure of the space rock will allow it!) We can also work on systems to steer, push, and altogether wrangle asteroids so we can work with them!
I like the idea that NASA can help with the scientific research and then create partnerships with private industry to develop and test new technology, supply our stations, or even bring resources back to Earth.
As a side note, the highly poisonous perchlorate present in the Martian soil will likely cause us to either need to use hydroponics or raised planting beds or to perform some kind of strip-and-replace operation with fertile soil. Perhaps the elements could be developed and combined in space so we don't need to launch suitable soil from Earth!
I think that having a network of small waystations scattered around our system could pave the way for larger settlements, or even cities, perhaps inside much larger asteroids or inside the smaller moons orbiting the gas giants. Again, each of the stations could have remote-controlled scientific instruments so we can do research. They could have resources for manned missions. They could also serve as shelter for space travellers caught in an emergency!
What do you think?
@@csn6234 Thank you for your opinion, but I think it was pretty clear that I was joking, and not ACTUALLY offering to fight anyone on her behalf. Also, saying she's adorable was meant as an overall compliment, not a lame pick-up line. You sir, "come off" as an idiot. Mind your own business.
I think the obsession with mars also has a bit of an antropomorpic component. Even though mars is quite hostile (very thin atmosphere, dry as a cork, perchlorates in the soil and radiation everywhere), it still is the most recogniseable to us. It looks like a desert on earth, we can recognise mountains and features, dry river beds, dry seas and such. Even the sky, sunrises and sunsets reminds us of earth. Mars often looks like and reminds us of earth, so we romanticise it and want to go there. Even though Europa, titan or even venus might be better to explore, these places seem thoroughly alien to us and a bit scary. Mars is slightly more comforting because it looks so much like earth at times. Maybe all the robotic missions have made mars so familiar to us it seems it is just right next door to us, and so like earth in many ways.
And secondly, Europa and Titan are really far away for humans, and would turn a journey of a few months into a journey of years in zero G. We really have no idea what this would do to a human crew. Mars seems so much within our grasp, and when something seems within our grasp we want to go there and explore... Europa and titan seem like a galaxy away, and going there with a human crew seems maybe a bit too far fetched and not plausible yet.
But i agree that sending probes to Europa and Titan should be our priority. I want to see balloons on titan, i want to see pictures of methane seas and methane rivers, i want to see big slow falling blobs of methane rain, and mountians, dunes, volcanos and other landscapes made of ice. And i want to see pictures of the seas under the ice of europa, i want to see if anything is wriggling around down there, feeding off of volcanic energy... And lets not forget enceladus where the geysers are spewing out material many km into space for us to simply scoop up in a fly by with a probe. I don't care if it's robots making the pictures, it would be sooo interesting to see what is out there.
I think that the journey to mars, as the easier/known option, would teach us so much and potential expand our solar system reach by so much.
Nah. Venus is the ideal place to go first.
Not really, because Venus would need floating habitats, we wouldn't be learning how to live on the surface (or in lava tubes), we'd just be learning how to build floating habitats.
We'd hopefully already have learned how to live on the surface of another celestial body on the Moon. No need to go to Mars to learn that. We need to go to Venus to learn how to make floating habitats and/or automated bases floating in the atmosphere of gas giants to extract hydrogen and helium gases.
SaturnusDK yeah we could learn a lot from going to the moon and I don't think we should have stopped where we did with our investment into the moon. Though I was more talking about the advancements in travel that we would get by traveling to mars with a human cargo.
Going to Mars is going to take at least 7 months for a flyby mission, and likely just under 2 years if we have to land there. A round trip to Venus would take about 5 months. We know that 5 months is doable although stretching the limit, so why not go to Venus and learn more about making longer flights before jumping in at the deep end for a Mars mission? It really does not make any sense for me to insist on going to Mars but I digress, I guess that people just insist on the whole "having to plant a flag" mentality.
I'm on Team MOON. Let's set up a base or two. Then we have the ultimate platform, from which we can launch a whole slew of missions, manned and unmanned.
Exactly, and since you wouldn't have to fight the atmosphere of Earth, you could launch rockets from the moon that go much farther and are much smaller.
Alien bases on the moon wouldn't allow us there
@@mwglen
And we could build a space elevator.
Yes, it would be difficult but not impossible dont "at" me 😉
17R3W - A space elevator is pure fantasy. Its advocates are unaware of the physics of the latent electrical gradient omnipresent in our atmosphere. That would destroy any structure even a fraction of the height the elevator would have to be.
Going to Mars I believe would unlock technologies that will be needed for future space exploration. The moon missions gave us technologies and capabilities that have helped get us to present day. I believe if the Apollo program wasn't canceled we would be further ahead in technology than we are today. Just my 2 cents. Thanks for the videos Amy.
Yeah. I think that's what she is missing. It would have been similar to saying go to Mars because it is a planet, with an atmosphere instead of the moon. Mars doesn't have the chemistry for a substantial independent colony, but would provide an excellent target for a shakedown of interplanetary tech.
Apollo was a one shot deal to get to the Moon before the Soviets. It was never designed to be a sustainable means of routine transport. The Orion is nothing more than a Block 3 Apollo. A retro spam can on top of a Senate designed pork rocket. Until we build a shuttle that works, there can be no true exploration
@@bernieeod57 so right the reason why there were so many Saturn gives were because polititians dident be live it would make it on Apollo 11
tom lu They best the Soviets to the Moon and that was it the throw away mega rocket topped with a retro spam can is not and never will be a viable means of space travel
@@andyoli75 The throw away mega rocket topped with a retro spam can is not interplanetary tech
I’m three years late but I totally agree and I love your platform and the way you explain this🤩
The idea of a Venusian Airship sailing away from the Dawn as it pursues science in the atmosphere is just fascinating 🙌🏻
My arguments:
1. Mars is the definite long-term goal. Whether you want to or not, we WILL end up on Mars, whether out of necessity (long-term human survival), or just curiosity (basic science).
2. Going to other places (Venus, Europa, Ceres...etc) is good basic science, but what are the applications? What do we ultimately get out of it?
3. We're going to build those infrastructure anyway, why not start early?
4. The Mars project will result in applications for the other stuff; logistics, communications..etc
+wanrazul Very well said.
Well, using these points I could argue a moon base is even more impellent than a Mars one.
Yeah I was quite pleased by this ESA long term objective; still i think that, in the long run, would be better and faster to put a lot of effort in creating some infrastructure on the Moon and then use it to send crafts manned or otherwise everywhere you want for 100k instead of 10B.
+Quantum Shooter What, in your opinion, should be the primary goal of such a lunar base?
+JosephHF
Hmm good question, I believe it depends on who builds it:
A Nation or union of Nations being forbidden to exploit local resources for profit by the outer space treaty could benefit from the moon as both a good middle stob between Earth and the rest of the solar system, a testing ground for human colonizations (2 sec delay on communication and if something goes bad we can send help in days vs up to a year for Mars if is on the other side) and finally as science base of utmost importance: the polar craters have the lowest natural temperature in the solar system making good for cheap cryo studies (also presence of He and He3, the only mix that can go below 1K); the far side conditions would benefit any type of telescope: low temperatures at night for IR, no Earth radio interference and no atmosphere, we could have an astronomical resolution with mirrors even bigger than our biggest land telescope thanks to low gravity; finally geology of the solar system is good too.
If is a company like SpaceX or blue origin making a revenue on space travel accessing lunar water to make LOX and LH2 also lunar regolith contains Fe, Al, Si and Ti in good amounts making feaseble to assemble entire satellites on site apart from maybe the computers.
If is a company born only to make a revenue off the Moon then mining strategic resources like He3, Platinum group elements and rare earths could be profitable in low g, even titanium could be a good late revenue being abundant and light plus could also provide the things I mentioned above like LOX/LH2, orbital construction materials and science facility to make an extra once the infrastructure is there; finally there are interested applications if you want to build an orbital facility in LEO supplied from the moon working with ultra high vacuum, microgravity, low and high temperatures, far from Ow and humans (highly reactive, explosive, extremely polluting substances) could provide some really interesting new materials if can be committed a long term investment.
Climbing mount everest, going to Earth's poles, landing on the Moon. It's the nature of man to go places "just because it's there", it's inevitable. The question is not whether man should plant feet on Mars but at what priority. That priority depends at least on funds and ability. Both need better improvement.
Mr. Chandler: President Kennedy basically said what you've said above in order to motivate the country to join the space race. BTW, a little factoid: the Administrator of NASA reports directly to the Vice President of the USA. This was the way it was set up from the beginning when the name NACA ( a group of engineers who worked for the government) was changed to NASA. Vice President L.B Johnson was the most savvy person in Congress and had more political connections with the Pre-NASA scientists, that President Kennedy gave him the Job of oversight of the newly formed NASA. Kennedy wanted to keep LBJ busy, particularly because of Johnson's political clout. Why do you think the space center is in Houston TX?
Since that time, the Administrator of NASA continually reports directly to the VP of the USA. James Webb was the first Administrator of NASA. It is justified that the Webb telescope be named after him. James Webb was a very smart and tough administrator who was responsible for what NASA is today, no matter what your personal opinion of NASA is now. Source: Rocket Men by Craig Nelson.
I highly recommend the audio version of this book. It will eliminate road rage, I promise. DPA
I think the moons around jupiter and saturn are far more interesting than any of the planets
Guilherme Soares u stupid idiot all of those moons we may colonize are too far from the planet itself to get affected by radiation and the chances of us colonizing any planet or moon is during these centuries is really unlikely
Mars is stupid (colony-wise) because of gravity.
So the Moons are out of the window.
Science would be amazing, obviously automated, and Europa for Water is an interesting thought.
As for colonies, only Venus (upper atmo) seems feasible, and that still implies a fuckton of engineering challenges.
H4WK69: but it's red.. RED.. Who wouldn't want to go there.. I would.
We don't even want to hang out on the surface of Europa, though, Guilherme. We are interested in the oceans, and a few feet of water and ice blocks all that radiation. So you only withstand the radiation for a few hours perhaps until underwater, then you're good until you leave.
Hours is enough, since people don't just walk around naked, we have shielding, so if it takes a day naked to get sick, it might be weeks with shielding, and yet you only need perhaps hours again.
Mars is stupid because it has gravity? All planets have gravity. Europa may be interesting but we should land a rover or a probe there first. There is not enough information about Europa yet. Venus? Venus? Venus? Are you freaking kidding? Venus is hotter than molten lead at 464 degrees Centigrade. Nobody can survive there, do some reading, you might learn something about Venus and when you do you won't say that again.
Just put a multi laned McDonolds drive-thru on Mars,and people will come.
Trust me.
Ronald Schroder
Nope
Need a Chick-fil-A and a Krispy Kreme
The cost of human travel to Mars probably will be shared with europe (ESA) and Russia (Rosakosmos)
AMY, YOU HAVE A VERY INTERESTING OPINION AND BROUGHT UP LOTS OF GOOD POINTS, BUT I CAN'T STOP YELLING FOR SOME REASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was watching the whole video both kinda of annoyed she kept on saying don't yell at me and exited for this sort of comment. Thankyou. Also Amy AWESOME JOB AS ALWAYS. :P Truly awalldone and intreseting video!
lol 👏
I thought we'd have a moonbase first...use that 2nd step after Apollo to do the R&D solving the challenges close by
Exactly. A Moon base would expose all the kinks and problems with making a permanent off-world colony. I think there will be plenty of challenges.
And if we have people on the Moon and everything goes wrong, we can rescue them real quick. We can't rescue anyone from Mars real quick, if at all.
Basically, if you go to Mars, you ain't coming back. We all know it's a one-way trip.
@@protorhinocerator142 I agree with you fully.
Wow! 774 views and 80 comments, and seemingly nobody caught the pun of "putting your eggs in one basket" with this video posted on Easter Sunday. Lol! Amy, you've obviously put a lot of thought into this. Nice to hear your thought on the matter. Personally, I'd rather see us get some practical experience living on some other solid ground (for more than a few days - i.e. moon) before embarking on a mission to Mars. Sure, we have some systems experience with ISS, but ther still remains a notable difference between an clean orbiting outpost and a base planted on a solid surface covered in dust. Let's get systems developed that keep working in the presence of moon dust. There's some good practice there, as Mars certainly has its share of dust to get into every nook and cranny to gum up the works of anything that moves.
It's not Sunday yet in the Western Hemisphere, unless she works after midngiht.
Amy lives in California. Using this locale as a reference, the video was posted at 3:26 AM PDT (very much Sunday at her home). She most likely uploads all her content in advance, which is then released on a pre-defined schedule. As to whether Amy was working on "internet time" (wherever, whenever), I'll leave that for her to answer. :-)
I say go to Mars for both reasons. Send lots of people. Improve the transportation methods to handle it. No shortage of scientists. You need the others to develop Mars enough that you have a fighting chance at surviving long term, growing and thriving.
My currently thought process on this matter is as follows:
Moon Base - NOW
Mars Missions - Next
Beyond - ?
"What is the real reason for going to Mars? Is it just because it's there and we need a destination to go to?" - Amy, 2017
Amy... why are you making me do this?
"Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." " - President John F. Kennedy, 1962
Basically sums up my opinion on why go. As to why Mars? Because it's the easiest one to go to. Venusian cloud base missions, while being ludicrously cool, have even less scientific potential than Martian missions, and Europa, Enceladus, and Titan are all much much much further, and the risk of people dying increases dramatically the further, and thus longer, you go out into space. Mars is the most practical get by a long shot.
It is only practical if we care about Flags and Footprints on Mars. Which most don't. That is because our Economy is crap, and people are much more worried about putting food on the table and paying rent than they are in funding Mars Missions. That was not true in the 1960s. The economy was amazing, and we had a Space Race with the Soviets going on.
Improve the economy... and the sky is the limit. But you won't do it through Taxation, or fiddling with the dials through government intervention. All you have to do is make it tax free to do space businesses. Thats all it would take to see an explosion of space innovation.
Yelling? In RUclips comments? Never!
NEVER!
Although everything else in the solar system is great and exciting, to go forward you need a goal, and Mars is a planet that has captured the imagination of people for decades. But mind you, it's really not about the destination, the most important part of this all is the journey. The journey of developing enough science to make it happen. And as you pointed out, there's plenty to figure out. If there's no end goal, there's little reason for governments and companies to invest in research like protection against various dangers and survival of humans on a long journey and habitation in a harsh environment. And if there's no investments in these things, and we don't seek to overcome obstacles, we on earth will definitely not benefit from them.
Quite possibly true. I feel the discussion in the video has a lot of good ideas, the right conclusion, but for the wrong reasons? Perhaps Amy just left the best/right argument to the end, instead of leading with it. That is what lost me, I agreed with her, but could not understand the points, until the end.
(As in, "these things are cool", is not always the best argument when lots of money, stress, time and lives are at stake :P )
Thanks - an interesting perspective Amy!
You said it yourself, we need a multipurpose space platform, instead of another giant one-off that we're not going to repeat ever again. If Mars is a first step that we _can_ get serious support for, this would set in motion a wave of funding and development that gets you to all of your favorite places as well. This is mainly about psychology and motivation. If we had a reasonable tech platform for human-based space exploration, we wouldn't need to spend *another* 50 years dragging our heels accomplishing less than nothing, and we wouldn't have to choose *one* target that "really" counts (which we couldn't all agree on in the first place) - we'd just go to *all* those places eventually. Or, we could just stay home and die out.
Oliver Von arx or, you know, don't rely on one country to do the worlds work...
the problem with that is that a platform isn't exciting and inspirational. We didn't go to the moon for science, nor because we wanted to. We went there because of the cold war, and we used it AS the inspiration to fund other space programs. Saying we should just do a platform instead of going to mars exposes your massive lack of understanding of the human psyche, politics, and government priorities. All three of which elon DOES understand... you think he is spending billions for fun? Or even science? He is doing it to inspire science. To make the future scientists. To get the public excited about space again. I understand most people watching these kinds of vids are scientists, not politicians, but you still live on earth. Educate yourself in all fields. Stop pidgeonholing yourself. It makes you look very ignorant whenever we leave your wheelhouse..
Udo - Well Said! Which (by your own words/observation) makes a person wonder why we have been making so many sideways moves, spinning our wheels for so long on designing ONE OFF systems. We go from Apollo tech to Space Shuttle tech (scrap all the $Space Shuttle$ Tech) and are back to Apollo era tech... C'mon (seriously) wth...right!???
I made it successfully from one end of a small lake and back in my kayak. I'm pretty sure that means I'm ready for a transatlantic run.
A permanent base on Moon would be more interesting.
As soon as we figure out Fusion there will be many bases.
Wholeheartedly agree. So logical it's not funny! What's with this "been there done that" "we've already explored the moon" so let's jump off to the next world for its 15 minutes of fame and thrills before our big yawn makes us hop off for another's thrill fix. Mars and Titan can wait till our space technology prowess matures on the moon. There's SO much to learn about and exploiting the moon and testing life-critical deep space technology there right on our doorstep and it's being passed by -- Why?? I'm glad Lewis and Clarke didn't have that attitude -- or do they still teach about them these days??
@Steampunk Cowboy, the big issue with Fusion at the moment is containment pressure. Basically you maintain pressure with a magnetic field instead of a few inches of steel. New laminated magnets have been developed that make the whole thing smaller and lighter (way more powerful than neodymium) but you are still talking 12 tonnes per magnet for the field strength calculated to be needed. So you are talking possibly a 500 tonne reactor that cannot easily be made in a zero G environment.
There are some small modular (fission) reactor designs, and one of those based on thorium, molten salt cooled, might make sense on the moon. With this molten salt cooling, no containment vessel is needed. Thorium reactors, (one was built at Oak Ridge in the 1970s) can use nearly all the energy in the fuel, whereas uranium uses a few %, then is waste.
(in this context, containment does not mean containing radiation, but containing steam pressure in the case of water coolant overheating. See "Superfuel" by Richard Martin)
Yay Amy!! So glad to hear someone say it!! My little soap box: Three words: no magnetic field. We can’t “terraform” that problem away. So if we have to live in bubbles anyway, we can do that anywhere. So why mars? And by the way - millions of citizens getting probe data on smartphones in real time is pretty inspirational too. Better dozens of unmanned missions all over the solar system than just one expensive Mars mission. Thanks for soap boxing, Amy you rock!
Finally!! Someone stands up to say something about Space Exploration that makes sense!! Why are people so meek in saying this?
Thanks for saying what's on most peoples"minds!! Thank you!! You Go Girl!!
You make great points. Enjoyed this.
Yeah. I wanna see some of those "giant space people".
@@ashemgold the current and former astronauts, isn’t it?
Yep, I would also absolutely love to see a manned mission to Europa or Titan. I'd also love to see a manned mission to the Merry Old Land of Oz. I think both objectives have roughly the same chance of actually occurring.
-500 days to Mars! Sure, if you go chemical and not nuclear/thermal or nuclear electric... which is like using sails when you have actual access to steam turbines.
-Yes on telerobotic control of sophisticated probes on Mars (HD stereo optics, hand-like manipulators, haptic feedback) while the operators are burrowed into Deimos (longer orbital period) for radiation shielding.
-As for concentrating science on the outer system: yes please.
Omg 100% agree! Even building a lunar base would make so much sense. And especially going to Venus. Almost same gravity, good radiation shelding from the atmosphere and earth normal pressure at those altitudes. Sorry I'm late to the party watching this one but thank you so much for making this. Keep up the awesome work on all your channels!
why not both? The actual problem is that NASAs budget is too small, better fight for increasing the budget, and do both Mars AND robotic exploration of other places.
Good luck with that...
Actually there is a good chance we will do both: NASA + SpaceX mars, and NASA other stuff
How about we de-fund / close a few US Government Departments? Like Dept of Commerce, Energy, Education, etc.... and send their funding to NASA.
Another way to increase NASA's funding would be through auditing US Government aid programs. Specifically; "who" is receiving them. I'd "kick off the rolls:
1). Dead people
2). Any citizen who's not qualified
3). Undocumented / Illegal Immigrants
4). Anyone "sanctuary cities" have placed on their programs ((get funding from Uncle Sam))
I'm thinking...... there would be more $$$'s available quicker by Auditing (aid programs) than by closing Federal Departments / Agencies.
Really? You'd gut Commerce, Energy, and Education before cutting even a _fraction_ of our incredibly, *incredibly* bloated military budget? The USA has the 3 largest armies on the planet (Army, Navy, and Air Force), with a total military strength greater than that of the next 10 nearest competitors _combined_. You could cut 1-2% of the military budget and get more available capital that if you cut all 3 of the things that you mentioned. Seriously, our priorities are completely out of whack right now if people are honestly considering cutting the department of education before cutting any portion of our ridiculous military budget...
i say 90% of military budget goes to nasa, we hold out 10 years then say 'fuck you earth' and take the entirety of the US population (minus the amish becuase they make terrible road trip buddies) on a generation ship to Proxima Centuri and hope there's a rest stop when we get there :D
To live on mars must be as easy to have an underwater city on earth.
And its core is solid.. so forget sustaining the new atmosphere.
But we must go.
Space and exploration of space is quite cool.
I also think that it is sad that we care more about space exploration and moving humans to other planets than we do about exploring our own world and fixing what we've done to this world.
Floating cities around Venus would actually be easier than building an underground city on the surface of Mars.
Except for the sulphuric acid clouds
Where do you source material for the floating city? Isn’t the point of Mars and Moon bases the ability to source material from the planet, especially metal?
No, because to support the cities would require mining on the surface of Venus. No one will be able to suck iron and heavy metals out of the atmosphere of Venus.
The cities would float above the sulfuric clouds where oxygen is. Source material would have to be taken there.
we don't have to live underground on Mars.
Like a child, before you jump you need to learn how to walk !!
Also establishing a base on Mars would be almost half way to your desired Europa, having a base on Mars and more and more frequent travels forth and back (earth-mars) the quicker and better technology develops
Europa is a bad idea, too. The big problem is that a revolutionary power source is required before we can even think about going astronomically long distances.
I think we should try a moon base to master living on another celestial body
*+*
The best habitation technique would be using an underground Thermonuclear Detonation to create a spherical cave, which would be shielded by a thick layer of soil. The radiation would be easy to address, since robots could clean the inner surface of the melted rock that would make the habitat, and this has already been studied & proposed.
David Hollenshead I don't think that's how it works. Any underground nuclear detonation I've seen footage of creates a massive crater after the explosion. When the chamber cools after detonation, it would collapse into itself.
@Robert Destree "Depending on various factors, including the yield and characteristics of the burial, this collapse may extend to the surface. If it does, a subsidence crater is created.[26] Such a crater is usually bowl-shaped, and ranges in size from a few tens of metres to over a kilometre in diameter.[26] At the Nevada Test Site, 95 percent of tests conducted at a scaled depth of burial (SDOB) of less than 150 caused surface collapse, compared with about half of tests conducted at a SDOB of less than 180.[26]"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_nuclear_weapons_testing
"In planning subsurface shots at the Nevada Test Site, attention was paid to limiting the release of volatile radioisotopes from the shot. Placing the shot deep enough so that the chimney is guaranteed to never reach the surface would be sufficient to achieve this, but deep shafts are costly to construct and a compromise approach was reached for ensuring that a sufficiently deep rubble cap would exist if a subsidence crater was formed to keep the release to a minimum. The rule of thumb was that the scaled shot deep not less than about 400 feet (122 m):
Eq. 7. d = 122 Y1/3
where Y is in kilotons and depth is in meters [Glasstone and Dolan 1977; p. 261]. For media with substantial water content, even deeper burial is recommended."
nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Effects/UndergroundEffects.html
I agree, Green_Man, but before even that, we should try a self-sufficient colony (as opposed to a science base) on Antarctica. I think the Chileans tried it, but the colony failed.
Until we can master that, there is no point even thinking we can go further. First Antarctica, then the Moon, then further afield, using the skills we have developed in these places.
I agree with you. Until we have an advanced propulsion system (NERVA, Timberwind, Ion propulsion, plasma or sci-fi reactionles thrusters, whatever) we need to back off planetary maned spaceflight. Once we can cut down the transit time to Mars to 180 days or less it will solve so many problems. Until we have that solution we need to stick to robotic missions and manned lunar exploration to see if we can develop a perminently manned instillation outside low earth orbit.
I would love to see an unmanned mission to the surface of Ceres.
im very sceptic of Elon's idea of terraforming Mars myself. he has plans to create an atmosphere (by nuking the poles) but he doesn't know how to make it stay. without a functioning magnetosphere, the atmosphere will just be stripped away by solar wind in no time. however Mars in my opinion is an unskippable stepping stone if we want to go deeper into the solar system.
Mars isn't the easiest to terraform or closest to earth's conditions. but it is no doubt the easiest to access among other earth-resembling moons of jupiter/saturn etc. i'm sure when Mars missions succeeds as a proof of concept or when we have refuelling bases on Mars built, we will go explore further. Mars is the nearest objective in human space exploration. it's not the only objective.
Mars is also a planet we have the most data of thanks to all the robotic missions. the concept of "blimp" on Venus is only that, a concept. chances are it'll never get funded. in the unlikely scenario that it did get funded, it'll be decades of prototyping and robotic missions before actual human mission. by the that time we probably would've had rocket factories on Mars ready to go even further.
to sum up, we go to accessible places first. then we aim for the more "liveable" ones when our technology matures.
Yeah, he said that it would be a quick way, sarcasstically, but I do agree that mars is a better idea to go to than venus, our next best bet.
It's not "no time". MAVEN established the stripping loss rate, which follows exponential decay, and the half-life is rather more than a billion years. Get a liveable atmosphere and you will keep it for a few hundred million years or two orders of magnitude longer than humans have been on Earth.
But Mr Musk's "nuke" idea is horrible (think radiation). Others have found better ways to re-establish an atmosphere (including guiding meteors into water-bearing strata).
Just saying... Mars has an magnetosphere and an atmosphere..! No clue where you have your intel from... 40 year old studies..?
@@timothymcgee871 the reason mars lost his atmosphere is because its lack of a stron magnetospehere like earth has.. earth has a iron core.. mars has not
sadev101 as I said, the information u have dates 20-40 years back and is therefore incorrect! Recent discoveries proof u wrong. Atmosphere yes even a light blue sky, magnetosphere exists (weaker than earths but it’s there) even liquid water was discovered recently so your statement’s sort of obsolete as it is incorrect, old fashioned and false. Sorry
Moon first, as a "launch platform": mining, it's a sandbox to test human habitations outside the human atmosphere, lower scape deltaV...
MardukNHR yes, but it is not really a habitable object, I see why nasa, space x etc. want to go to mars first before colonizing the moon. also, the moon is in control of our tides and should we really mess with that?
Many of the things we would need to live on Mars initially would have to be used on the Moon as well (closed habitats, rad shielding, etc.), but the Moon is close enough to resupply or mount rescue missions if needed, quite unlike the Red Planet. As far as the Earth's tides go, those will be just fine regardless of our activities. Luna is far too massive for us to affect in that way, so rest easy on that account. =)
There is nothing we could do to the Moon that would affect the tides. Even if every country launched every nuclear bomb that exists and landed them on the Moon the only thing that would happen is a few more craters.
"but the Moon is close enough to resupply or mount rescue missions if needed, quite unlike the Red Planet" My point exactly!! Also for training for futures crews to other planets.
There is nothing habitable about Mars either, and any tech you can do to keep a person alive on Mars will work just fine on the Moon too. With the benefit of not having to fight gravity and atmosphere when you want to leave.
Enjoying the content - one of our guys recommended this episode. Well done.
I'm thinking We should go to all of them Amy....and find a good place to get away from all this looting :)
SpaceX ITS addresses a lot of your problems with Mars:
-Mars only acts like a jumping board for the ITS, it will ultimately be able to *colonize* the entire Solar System (Venus, Mars, Europa, Enceladus, Titan, they are all accessable through the ITS)
-Its extremely cheap when compared to SLS/Orion and the DSG/DST System (10B in R&D and 500k per person on a 100+ person flight)
-It increases public interest in Space due to the sheer grandness of the Rocket and its launch frequency, which could also increase interest in other celestial bodies beside Mars
-It will make any kind of mission inside and outside the solar system much cheaper and easier since probes could be launched from other planets and moons like Mars or Europa.
-It enables access to space for the middle class, which also increases their interest in Space Exploration Technologies.
IMO the best option would be for NASA to fund SpaceX ITS with maybe 10B over 5 years, at 2B a year it would still be cheaper than Orion and SLS, and together with private funding from SpaceX, there would be a lot of money for R&D for ITS, and NASA could let the comercial sector develop the launch vehicles while it concentrates on the science and mission payloads, like robots, probes, landers, etc.
Wauw, I had never even concidered the possibility of launching rockets from Mars. But its an idea worth exploring.
Lehtaan Problem is that the ITS is impractical, there's risk of tipping when it lands, the exposed heat shield, and the lack of a launch escape system. By the time you fix these problems it's practically not the ITS we saw in the presentation anymore
There is no need for a Launch Escape System on the ITS because it is not like any craft before it, it is what sets apart the first airliners from the first planes. Assuming it will have and/or need a Launch Escape System is like assuming a 747 needs a Launch Escape System:
It is impractical to implement such a system for such a big vehicle. It would have to be integrated *into the ship itself* as it also holds tonnes of propellant, and a structure that would pull out the crew cabin in such a large ship would add a lot of complexity and weight.
The Ship will fly so often, that it is basically just a big powerful airliner, at some point in any new technology one has to choose if this security measurement is not hindering the advancement of the technology, and the ITS LOC rate will be so low that a LES could be considered useless weight.
Lehtaan So let's say that a raptor engine overheats and explodes, and that causes a chain reaction that leads to the loss of the first stage. Then what? 100 casualties?
Jet engines are much less dangerous than rockets, so that isn't a practical argument. This is why the shuttle was cancelled, there was no abort system to save the astronauts in case of failure. This and the exposed heat shield make this a safety nightmare. There's a reason why almost all manned ships have LES
In regards to the part about exploding raptor engines. I know that the octaweb for falcon 9, is specifically designed to protect the rest of the rocket and it's engines, in case a engine blows up.
So I find it reasonable, that they would do the same for the ITS spaceship and rocket.
Note. The octaweb is the part, of which the engines is mounted inside.
Amy, your argument presented is valid. The only point that I think is a valid counter point is that the infrastructure used to get to Mars is also multi destination functional to enable going to other places. Going to those other places are even more expensive but if the Martian voyage infrastructure is used to go to the other places as well. Then we are talking about building deep solar system exploration in staged steps to spread out the cost. I would like to know your thoughts on that aspect of this discussion. FYI: Even if I do not agree with your thoughts. I love hearing them because it does provoke thoughts I had not had before. I thank you for that too.
A space shuttle that works is a less sexy but more practical step. A throw away mega rocket topped with a “Block 3 Apollo retro spam can” Is not and never will be a viable transportation system
Amy, you are extremely knowledgable, bright and reasonable. Your views make complete sense. No one should yell at you in the comments.
Amy, Sounds like you get yelled at a lot in the comments section =(
I've always felt we should colonize the moon first, learn to exploit its resources, and use it as a low-gravity jumping off point or way-station for exploring the solar system.
Jaybiam As safe as any other body in the solar system, save Earth.
easy answer.
Mars is one of the closest planet to go to, why not start with the easy thing?
It is also less deadly than venus...
But Venus is a lot more difficult to explore with anything because of the heat and acidic atmosphere when Mars doesn't have either problem.
SuperSmartt: damn right..
Crevetta: the last time something made to land on Venus and had to survive... Lasted more or less an hour.... That's why
Crevetta Yh good luck spacewalking on Venus.
73 65 it takes less energy to go away from the sun than get closer to it. that could be a reason besides the inhospitable environment on Venus.
Agree with every point you’ve made... and your enthusiasm is tremendous... I’ve never been so excited to go to Europa or Titan before today!
Great video. Good points. I think mars is like the moon for NASA. It's just about saying we done it. I also think any mission to mars MIGHT be a one way deal.
I feel like this could easily be solved if we reduced military spending by some small amount and moved it to NASA. We could get all of the missions we want easily enough. Hell look at how much it cost to develop the f-35 alone. That programs estimated lifetime cost by itself is more than ten times the cost to send people to Mars. let that sink in.. a shiny new fighter jet that we have minimal need for or.. like 10 manned missions to Mars.
Military spending in 16% of the federal budget. 60% is Entitlements. Deal with that, and we would already be on Jupiter with a base on Europa. Well, maybe an automated base :-)
_"but but... The Russians!! We need that F-35, so we can sell it to the countries that we influenced to be still scared by them even though they don't give signs of invading!"_
The F-35 is a good plane? From what I've seen around, yes, it seems to be a wonderful piece of hardware (and software). But do the USA really need it? I don't think so. Instead of having one plane that can do every mission in a battle and waste a huge amount of money, they could stick with normal bombers for bombing, normal fighters to fight and normal spy planes for spying.
My theory is that the whole NATO build-up around Russia and the creation of F-35 are marketing moves. Remember that USA is the one spending the most in military, while most of NATO countries don't follow their own military spending rules. The F-35 bit of this move isn't working very well... I don't know how much they will get from the investment, but right now, "it is too big to fail", so they will do it to the end.
Tell that to Russia and China. Especially China. They might not have quite the know-how and experience as the US/EU, but they have the wealth. Pity they don't have the mindset.
It is a great theory to have one multi-role aircraft for all the branches to use and achieve interchangeability in parts, fuel, mechanics, and pilots; but considering that it is difficult for a single branch to design its own aircraft it is an absolute mess to have them all design a single aircraft.
+Timothy Black ALL tax money, INCLUDING to the military, IS an entitlement.
I hate the way cuntservaturds try to use the word "entitlement" for social welfare programs for the poor or masses as some sort of insult, ridicule, belittlement. If by LAW the government OWES the poor that money back that they already pay in taxes, then GOOD for the poor. Let's see police & the military give up THEIR jobs and earn a living in free market capitalism.
ALL government funding IS, by definition, welfare. That does NOTHING to distinguish money WELL spent from money POORLY spent.
Look, I know we're supposed to have a serious discussion but SPACE ZEPPELINS.
Look around on RUclips. There's vids on "Why we should go to Venus" and all that sort of stuff. Makes a lot of sense. Personally, my vote is for City In The Clouds on Venus over a Mars colony. Surface-ism is overrated.
how to return from Venus if one wants to? even if it's a base in clouds, the gravity is comparable to Earth, which means just to lift off it needs a rocket with same size as rocket to take of from Earth - thousands of tons...
Yes!!!! Brilliant idea!!!
The first one would have to be called "USS John Bonham"
Aww! I like the idea of upper-atmo zeppelin bases! Sounds tough to engineer, but that is the point of leading-edge exploration.
Crawl Walk Run: Moon Crawl, Mars Walk, End of our solar system Run, outside of our solar system Olympic running. Your best able to succeed and reach your intended goal when you take the time to learn how to accomplish your goal not by just setting lofty ones.
Mars is the closest. Same as getting man into space had to happen before going to the moon, Mars will be the gateway after the moon. They would have more info they aren't going to tell anyone else that influences their decisions.
It is not the closest. You can get into orbit around Venus for roughly 2/3 the delta v it takes to get into orbit around mars. AND there are significantly more transfer windows to Venus since it orbits the sun faster. So you can get back much faster too. Even though humans can't land on it, if they were in orbit, they could do hands on atmosphere research, and also directly control rovers without light delay, which could do a lot of things we can't do remotely, especially since Venus gives limited time for rovers before melting.
You can also "land" humans bouyantly partway down the atmosphere in a zeppelin-like contraption, which may also be a habitation possibility.
In terms of fuel and technology, if landing, in some ways Europa is almost as practical as Mars -- most of the energy can be spent with very efficient ion or nuclear drives in interplanetary space, and the actual landing and takeoff where you need low efficiency engines are only 1/3 of Mars (Mars can use parachutes to land but still). Europa also has much more available water which effectively = excellent, easy rocket fuel when electrolyzed with solar or nuclear power, for use in ascent.
Get under the ice fast enough to not get cooked by rads, and you can stay awhile safely.
Gavin, well said.
Nah. Venus is the ideal place to go first. It's far far closer and far more hospitable than Mars.
Spunky1991, I'll go quote myself from a different post as it basically covers it.
"One thing that strikes me as odd is how few people consider Venus as a the natural choice for human colonization. Sky cities in the atmosphere 50-60 kilometers above the surface would have temperatures, gravity and pressures are comparable to that of the Earth surface at that altitude. There are no corrosive gases present at that altitude and most importantly the sky cities would be shielded from radiation and micro-metorites by the atmosphere above it. Add to it that breathable air is actually a lifting gas in Venus atmosphere we wouldn't even have to make special considerations for staying afloat. And finally, the travel time would be a lot shorter. A round mission to Venus would take a few months, not years, and we know the effect of a few months is doable."
How do you launch a rocket from a zeppelin? You know, for when the humans want to come back? Did you take into account the amount of fuel that you need to slow the rocket down from orbital velocity to a "balloon-safe" velocity, when you got your 2/3 Δv? And the size of said balloon to hold an entire rocket able to return the crew to orbit?
Mars deserves people.The other planets\moons can get Roombas with Go-pros attached.
😹
Send Pete.
Mars needs guitars!
It'd be interesting to see a debate with Elon Musk and Amy on this subject.
Neil Breeden that would be hot
She's previously said that she doesn't care what private companies do. She's more concerned with what NASA's doing from a tax payer's perspective. If SpaceX successfully did the job, or just attempted it, she'd be cool with it.
Wow. Spot the Trump supporter.
You can't "revitalize" NASA if you don't believe in science...
+BuellersBack
"Believe in science" What does that even mean?
Obama was the one who gutted NASA by cancelling Constellation and left us dependent on the Russians to give us access to the ISS where we perform experiments and research. So you're saying he doesn't believe in science?
I think if we take your point about how much quicker we can learn by having a person in situ, then the educational benefit and progress of putting people on Mars could greatly improve our ability to explore other bodies. If we achieve manufacturing capability on Mars (Robert Zubrin claims that fuel manufacture would be easy for starters), wouldn’t it be a great springboard out into the wider solar system? So, a short/medium term delay on automated exploration so that we might improve our capabilities therein through initial human exploration. Kind of leap frogging our way out into the solar system by placing humans on one body, allowing easier automated exploration of a farther body, paving the way for human missions to that body.
All the arguments for not going to mars could be used against going everywhere else. the tech used to get to mars however could be used to go elsewhere such as europa. And as for sending more probes, we already know how to do that but manned missions out side of earth orbit is still a challenge to undertake. Mars sounds like a difficult but achievable goal.
And please do a video on giant space people! I bet they have 3 boobs.
Don't forget...... once we get more hardware up in orbit (Cislunar or Earth) then it becomes easier to get other nations involved in space.
I'd like more exploration of the Uranian and Neptunian system, the only probe to my knowledge that visisted them is Voyager II.
1. Going to mars the grand narrative that gives us the will to even bother with space travel. Space science like probes and rovers are just that; space science. Space travel is what our human spirit is trying to achieve. This makes Mars the perfect goal for space travel. Science and technologies can always be progressed but getting the human race to agree on one objective and have the will to peruse it is sometimes near impossible. Tons of space science will be done when we have space travel anyway.
Having both will and money made the moon mission happen very fast I would have hated to see us send robots to the moon for 30 years before we decided to travel there and again the process of going to the moon gave us the technology and science we were after anyway.
2. The effort to get to mars will develop all the technology we need to go explore anywhere afterwards.
3. When we Terra-form Mars (Not if, because Terra-forming Mars is so easy) we can just continue building the atmosphere faster than than the solar wind strips it away. On the issue of magnetic field we can Geo-engineer that too by building a power line around the circumference of the planet and energize it with HVDC power plants. This "coil" can be pulsed to inductively induce a planetary scale magnetic field in the core of mars. Also having an atmosphere will block about of ground radiation.
4. I agree that our spacecraft shouldn't be single purpose or single use. Advancements in electric propulsion and small scale nuclear power plants can provide us the ability to build multi-use spacecraft.
5. Your main argument is: what should we spend the limited money on first? Mars or general space science? To me I believe it should be spent on the mars effort for the reasons I said earlier as it trumps your argument because it deals with both human nature and scientific advancement.
wow you should write science fiction with the emphasis on fiction.
I think we should focus on going back to the Moon for now, build a base from which we can launch to other places like Mars, asteroids, etc. We also need to resolve the problems with safely traveling to Mars or other places in the Solar system. Right now, with current technology, astronauts are likely to die of cancer from cosmic radiation and maybe be near crippled when coming back due to the lack of gravity.
One thing that strikes me as odd is how few people consider Venus as a the natural choice for human colonization. Sky cities in the atmosphere 50-60 kilometers above the surface would have temperatures, gravity and pressures are comparable to that of the Earth surface at that altitude. There are no corrosive gases present at that altitude and most importantly the sky cities would be shielded from radiation and micro-metorites by the atmosphere above it. Add to it that breathable air is actually a lifting gas in Venus atmosphere we wouldn't even have to make special considerations for staying afloat. And finally, the travel time would be a lot shorter. A round mission to Venus would take a few months, not years, and we know the effect of a few months is doable.
So is the reason why we're not focusing on Venus as the first place to colonize when it's such an obvious choice that we're just old fashioned and still have a renaissance outlook on exploration as crossing a vast sea (in this case space) and exploring the surface of another world?
So going to Mars is actually _not_ a smart idea. Let's learn the crawl before we can start running marathons, and let's head to Venus instead.
i get what u mean but i dont understand what we can do on venus. i mean floating in the clouds is cool but on mars you can use the soil and whats in mars to build rescourses or fuel etc.
And on venus you have the atmosphere. Intresting too but i think on venus your very limited, because everything besides the upper atmosphere is like a fireball
Given the conditions are so ideal, it is extremely likely that there actually could be life forms that exist in the Venus atmosphere, so it would be a natural place to look for it. But I did say it was the obvious place for _human colonization_, not particularly exploration.
SaturnusDK hi
I am a person who is usually interested in space travel but a floating city on Venus is actually quite difficult to say the least because you need a lot of oxygen to float on Venus atmosphere and at 100% O2 at one earth atmosphere pressure it will cause a spark to turn into a 🔥 fire ball one of vintage space video did talk about that which can be solved by filling part of the ship with inert gas like helium or nitrogen but it will need to be carried from earth.
@Mohd Afnan Azmi, that's not correct. Breathable air (78% nitrogen 21% oxygen) at fairly low pressure such as found on the ISS is a powerful lifting gas in itself due to it being much lighter than the predominantly CO2 filled atmosphere of Venus. In fact, it would very much behave like helium does in the Earth's atmosphere.
SaturnusDK the problem about the 100% O2 come from the fact we need to produce the gas there and we can't send a huge quantity of helium or nitrogen nor capture it from Venus atmosphere to fill an airship that can carry a crew, equipment, inert gas and the envelope to keep the gas from escaping which could be a logistics nightmare by it self.
I also have no idea on how to power it and before you say solar panel understand that Venus don't have a 24 hour day cycle like earth it has 243 earth day cycle (fun fact Venus takes longer to do a day cycle than an orbit the sun 225 earth days) so 121.5 earth day at the day and 121.5 earth day at night. so I will need a big ass battery and solar panel that will make the mission impossible by themselves.
but sending research drones that is carries a bit of helium, a small battery, solar panel, a small envelope to float on is a great idea.
OMG, one minute we are saying Mars is too far for humans and another Moonshot would be a safer bet and then you are saying Titan would be a cooler mission for humans, WTF?
Mars is a gateway, to deeper space, and will be much better for longer term settlement for humans than the moon. We know there is unlikely to be life on Mars, but the geology on Mars is something worth fighting for and as you say we can do so much more if it's done by people and not robots.
Just think of Mars as a port in space, it'll be 120 days closer to the rest of the solar system. The Moon would only be 3 days closer.
Mars would suck as a spaceport because of its somewhat strong gravity and thin atmosphere. Landing and launching from Mars will require a lot of fuel.
You will be going much faster if you use Mars as a gravity slingshot instead of landing. Stopping takes time and a lot of delta-v.
Mars would be the best option, I don't have anything else to add, since the original comment says it all
Phase 1:
Build a space station that can escape the sphere of influence of earth
Phase 2: Dock mars lander to space station
Phase 3: Travel to mars
Phase 4: land on mars
In this concept, the moon is actually a far better place to have a midway point. Far closer proximity means crews can be changed out more regularly. The gravity is lower and atmosphere non existent, so landing is a far smaller problem than on Mars.
Exception would be having a resupply point on Mars as a sort of 3-9mo resupply rendezvous, however that require having all those necessary materials ON Mars. Which, in the case of non-renewables like food and water, would mean they would have to be brought TO Mars in the first place, making the mission redundant.
Totally with you on this Mars thing, we have better things to do with space.
We are terraforming earth to be like Venus.
cis-lunar? I KNEW IT! Check your privilege, moon!
I think if we are looking for a base to launch into the solar system is the moon.
*+*
Amy, your recent videos have become very hostile to your fans. You always assume that we want to make fun of you, or yell at you. The internet can be a very nasty place, especially in YT comments, but we're not all bad! I pretty much agree with you totally! Just remember that we're not all trying to tear you apart! Have a wonderful Sunday!
Just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed listening to your audiobook "Breaking the Chains of Gravity". Being a bit of a 20th century history geek, it was right up my alley. Great storytelling!
How about we just give NASA more money and do both?
Agree...... Auditing the Federal Aid Programs and removing everyone who shouldn't be on them "should" free-up tons of money. Another method to free-up money...... close a few Federal agencies; like Dept of Commerce, Dept of Energy, Dept of Education, etc. Putting all this "found money" into NASA's budget should give it enough to do everything it needs and then some.
That and...... increase the Commercial Crew / Supply program.
If the situation in the USA is anything like the UK then then the real issue is the money that goes into the system that gets wasted. EG the total benefits paid out by our benefits system is less than 12% of the money that gets paid in. Increase the efficiency to 25% and that would be about $200 Billion saved in the UK and I bet it would be triple that in the US (possibly up to 5 times as your country has a population near 5 times ours).
whatarewedoing just cut a few dimes on the dollar of the military
I am actually very excited about the idea of getting boots on Mars but to be honest, your argument makes a lot of sense because as inspirational as landing on Mars would be and for all it would seem like the moon landing all over again.... I do agree that there are more scientifically interesting targets, I would LOVE to see a probe crack the ice on Europa and get a picture of what’s in the water but at our current rate of progress it will probably be another century before we find that out.
DHF F would u go lol u don't like research do u would u put your head in a lions mouth sounds like a plan.
I feel that you make some valid points. I don't particularly like Musks' ideas of going to Mars.
As a historian maybe it might be interesting to look at the factors that led to Columbus discovering North America.
Musks' idea remind me of the early European colonists of America who turned up and died, not a fate i would wish on anybody travelling to Mars.
You make a distinction between science exploration and multi-planetary expansion, there is I feel another reason for visiting other worlds/moons is money!
Columbus went in search of new worlds to profit financially and of course the Spanish conquistadors explored South America for monetary reasons, the latter not instance not showing humanity in its finest hour.
Yeah there's gold in them there Martian hills!
Forget boots on mars or building on mars till we do it on the moon.. we slowly made our way here going To mars/moon we need to have a hell of a game plan to get up and manufacturing (Not for wants but for survival)
DHF F lol dead boots if they can stand up
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win
We go not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
If you're going to send a toy, instead of a man, don't deem to call it exploration.
Where is the inspiration in dipping your toe? Where's the spectacle? Where is the awe inspiring moment of global unity? Where is the moment all mankind takes a moment, to consider its place, to consider its future, and to reflect on its self?
It doesn't happen.
Because you robbed a generation of it, for one more toy on the ground you're too afraid of sending anyone too.
It doesn't happen because you'd rather sheepishly test and measure instead of daring to aspire and dream.
it doesn't happen and it will never happen because instead of inspiring the world, a generation of children and a constantly shrinking scientific inquest on the part of developed and undeveloped countries you chose mediocrity.
Amy, I just want to say that I appreciate your videos. You talk about what most of us are already thinking, but don’t have the guts to say. My hat is off to you. From an old soldier, I say “Hooah!, and again, thanks. 😀
#cloudcitiesovervenus
We can't launch back from it. Venus has almost the same gravity pull than Earth. We would need to have a fully assembled Saturn V filled with fuel hanging from balloons there.
8:30 Getting a person to Mars is too hard. Let's think about sending a person to Jupiter moon instead. What?
Oh, having someone stuck in a space ship for 2 years each way is too hard.
Let's jump to a 6 years each way transit problem.
Except that we would not be sending Humans to the Jupiter System, the proposal is sending robots.
She talked about sending humans to Venus.
8:46 ”It might make sense to have humans physically there”
@@SeaScoutDan The best I can say about you now is that you are arguing in bad faith, you are being plain dishonest intellectually.
Literally **IN THE SAME SENTENCE** 10 seconds earlier she said "totally honestly I would take a robot over a human for now because it's easier and cheaper".
Frankly, get lost. I don't wanna hear from you again.
I would love a manned mission to the Jovian moon Ganymede
The radiation from Jupiter would kill the crew.
As a diver, and also having knowledge of Apollo, I truely believe the Earth is a giant Oasis in a vast dessert, a Blue Beautiful marble! Before we worry about colonizing other worlds, we should be making efforts to make our own home more sustainable. As much as I love Aviation, and space flight, and test flying, I don't want to live anywhere else! I love my beach, my boat, and my oceans!