Which will happen first?

[George P Burdell]

<diddy>Vote or Die</diddy>

 

[clamum]

I'd say Mars or kill itself... I voted Mars.

 

[imported_Trippin315]

I vote bottom of ocean because man has never been on the moon, so Mars is even more of a pipe dream.

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

We've already been to the bottom of the deepest ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
http://www.seasky.org/oceanxp/sea5a3.html

January 23, 1960
Deepest Ocean Dive
Jacques Piccard, son of explorer August Piccard, and two other men descend into the ocean to a depth of 35,797 feet, nearly seven miles. They make the trip in the Trieste, a sturdy underwater vehicle known as a bathyscaphe. Trieste was designed by Piccard and built several years earlier. The divers discover fish and other amazing deep-sea life at these tremendous depths.

 

[confused1234]

Originally posted by: Trippin315
I vote bottom of ocean because man has never been on the moon, so Mars is even more of a pipe dream.

o rly?

 

[clamum]

Originally posted by: Trippin315
I vote bottom of ocean because man has never been on the moon, so Mars is even more of a pipe dream.

:Q

 

[confused1234]

personally i think we could have a man on mars soon if we really tried. the only obstacles are storing enough fuel/food otherwise were good to go.

 

[Rip the Jacker]

Originally posted by: confused1234
personally i think we could have a man on mars soon if we really tried. the only obstacles are storing enough fuel/food otherwise were good to go.

It'd be a waste of $$$.

 

[fire400]

stupid pole, the last one is pretty cold for you even say such a thing. I wonder if you're going to become a wife beater of some sort?

study NASA dumbass Op, achievements done on Mars have yielded guided research for a lot of key focus in space research.

bottom of the ocean, if you wanted to get smart, think robotics and the success of compressed managability.

your poll, therefore, sucks.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: Rip the Jacker

Originally posted by: confused1234
personally i think we could have a man on mars soon if we really tried. the only obstacles are storing enough fuel/food otherwise were good to go.

It'd be a waste of $$$.

You think it'd be a waste of money to send a man to Mars? You need to open your eyes.

 

[blue1friday2]

Definitely Mars. nobody gives a crap about the ocean.

 

[mwmorph]

Man ahs already gone to the bottom of the pacific's lowest point so the poll is worthless.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
Man ahs already gone to the bottom of the pacific's lowest point so the poll is worthless.

Pretty much.

 

[eplebnista]

Mankind will KO itself before either of these happen

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
Man ahs already gone to the bottom of the pacific's lowest point so the poll is worthless.

:thumbsup:

sorry OP, been there, done that

 

[clamum]

Get your ass to Mars!

/Arnold

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Rip the Jacker

Originally posted by: confused1234
personally i think we could have a man on mars soon if we really tried. the only obstacles are storing enough fuel/food otherwise were good to go.

It'd be a waste of $$$.

Air too.

And having the crew living in close quarters for many months in a row could present social problems.

There's also the matter of Martian dust. Lunar dust could damage seals on equipment, and probably wasn't good to breathe. Martian dust has the bonus of being corrosive. There's also light winds to help get the dust moving. An airlock may be needed, which would add to the size of the spacecraft, which will increase fuel requirements.

Other problem: cosmic and solar radiation. A good solar flare still has plenty of energy out at Mars. Heck, that really strong flare a few years ago was easily detected by Cassini at Saturn. It was also detected on the Voyager probes, 7 and 9 billion miles away. It also nuked an instrument on the Mars Odyssey. According to NASA, "[The MARIE instrument] was able to make observations up until a powerful Oct. 28 CME overheated a power converter." CME = Coronal Mass Ejection.
So there's the local radiation and energetic cosmic radiation. Shielding against them for several months would require techniques we just can't do right now. Scientific American ran an article about this. The most "practical" method, ie. not requiring immensely powerful electromagnetic forcefields, would be to have a spherical spacecraft with a water shell. But I recall that it would have to be a few feet thick. Couple that with providing enough living space for astronauts for several months, and you've got a very heavy spacecraft, which would require not only a LOT of money to launch in pieces and assemble in orbit, but also an incredible amount of fuel.

Going to the surface of Mars won't provide much refuge from the radiation either. It's got a very weak, nonuniform magnetic field that doesn't do much of anything to cosmic radiation, and a thin atmosphere, which also doesn't help much.

So we can get humans to Mars quite easily. The problem is that they'll be dead or dying by the time they get there. Robots are going to be doing the work for awhile, in my opinion. They don't eat, they don't excrete, they don't care if they have to work for long periods, they don't care if they have to sit idle for long periods, they don't have any desire to come back home, and they don't care if you work them to death.