Return to the moon: The race we have to win (again)

[Unclear Engineer]

I elucidated upon the points in the second post.
I got your point. My point is that everything that needs to be tested, except for gravity, can be tested on Earth a great deal safer, faster, and a lot less expensive than on the Moon. For potentially fatal situations, a few minutes on Earth is several orders of magnitude better than 4 days to the Moon, and even that is assuming a suitable spacecraft is sitting and ready on the launch pad.

A large enclosure with controllable changing light and temperature can simulate those aspects of Mars, and a lot more accurately than anything on the Moon. Simply preparing something for a harsher environment does not translate to preparing for the eventual working environment.

You said, " makes a better test bed than Mars", but no one is suggesting using Mars as a test bed for Mars.

We already have the technology for long term habitation and survival off-Earth.

As for alien bacteria or other infectious microbes, it is highly unlikely there would be any on Mars. All of the infectious tiny wildlife here are based upon our DNA and were adapted to interact physiologically with our biological systems. There is no reason to believe that any alien microbes would be dangerous to us. The concept that they would be deadly to us is strictly a baseless Science Fiction construct.

I strongly disagree with what you just posted.

You seem to be dangerously naive about some realistic hazards.

Of course the survival technologies will be developed as much as we can do so here on Earth before trying them on the Moon. But, to suggest that we will get everything right with how to extract resources from the Moon itself without being there and actually doing it is dangerously over-confident. And, I doubt we can fully simulate the problems with Moon dust here on Earth, especially with our current state of knowledge about how it behaves on the Moon's surface, naturally.

As for life on Mars (if it exists) not being capable of being fatal to humans - that is pure wishful thinking. It is our own immune systems that have to adapt to defend our life processes against infection by other organisms. Yes, there is a current status to a long-term infection vs immune systems conflict here on Earth that is specific to the evolved biologies of both the infecting and the infected organisms. But, as demonstrated by the recent COVID infection, just an immune system over-reaction to a "novel" infecting agent can cause fatalities in humans. And, there is also real potential for a novel infecting agent from a different world to simply use our bodies as a resource without our immune systems having any features that can effectively combat it. Plus, there are plenty of disease-inducing organisms here on Earth that humans are still trying to develop specialized medicines to combat. Just because Hollywood uses some of these concepts to motivate fictional plots does not make all of these possible hazards fictitious.

You seem to be dangerously naive about some realistic hazards.

 

[Atlan0001]

As the energy and infrastructure to support our 21st century complex was not in place a hundred years ago and is in place now, so will the infrastructure develop (the tools to make the tools, the structure to produce the structure) and be in place on time to support fully in-space colonization and growth and spread. Mental Avenger shows so clearly, he knows nothing of history, civilizations, great industrial revolutions and evolutions. The matter mass resource availability for in-space colonization networks, for the infrastructure, will be almost infinite for centuries, and the energy availability will be immediate and beyond all needs for thousands of years. It is through enlarging in-space occupations and infrastructure, not on planet or moon occupation and occupations, that we will enter upon interstellar activities in space. The stepping stone isn't Mars, it is permanent in-space occupation and means.

We don't want Mars; we want the galaxy. We won't get there in a thousand years if we concentrated on Mars rather than in-space Solar Systemic infrastructure, which means colonization as if we were stepping right out into the space of the galaxy through the space of the Solar System, which in fact we will be doing with in-space colonization. We will be on our way out to the galaxy, structurally, infrastructurally, vast revolutions and evolutions of ships and shipping and possible lanes, immediately and directly. Mental Avenger never heard of A. T, Mahan or his 'The Influence of Sea Power Upon History' and wouldn't have read it even he had. Once started and gaining momentum, we will have all the resources and infrastructures developing or in place to go the next revolutionary and evolutionary steps to conquer Space, not Mars. And, again as Michio Kaku said, "to solve the problem of Relativity."

Mental Avenger isn't even talking, therefore isn't even thinking through, orbits to orbits, Venus to Mars, to Jupiter and Saturn and the rest, need, require, in-space occupation and infrastructure. He implies it can't be maintained. It will be easily maintained. It will be resource network sustained and largely self-maintaining via endoskeleton and exoskeletal robotic structure. That in-space infrastructure will be advancing at light speed (so to speak) in human symbiosis with machine / robotic technology. Also, advancing just as fast in evolving power structures for faster and more far-reaching mobility.

 

[Atlan0001]

If we go straight for Mars from the Earth or the Earth and the Moon, it would be a delicate proposition in the extreme and I would give it twenty years at most before it gets recalled or be simply abandoned out there with a "too bad, so sad," epitaph. It would have no great solid space-based infrastructure to support it and keep it going no matter the problems back home. Throughout history there have been many, many, such colony and base and momentum abandonments, Essentially, it dare not happen with an embryonic developing in-space infrastructure, once started and in progress gaining momentum, for too many frontier economic / political / (sea power-like) space power reasons to enumerate here.

 

[Mental Avenger]

I strongly disagree with what you just posted.

You seem to be dangerously naive about some realistic hazards.

Of course the survival technologies will be developed as much as we can do so here on Earth before trying them on the Moon. But, to suggest that we will get everything right with how to extract resources from the Moon itself without being there and actually doing it is dangerously over-confident. And, I doubt we can fully simulate the problems with Moon dust here on Earth, especially with our current state of knowledge about how it behaves on the Moon's surface, naturally.

As for life on Mars (if it exists) not being capable of being fatal to humans - that is pure wishful thinking. It is our own immune systems that have to adapt to defend our life processes against infection by other organisms. Yes, there is a current status to a long-term infection vs immune systems conflict here on Earth that is specific to the evolved biologies of both the infecting and the infected organisms. But, as demonstrated by the recent COVID infection, just an immune system over-reaction to a "novel" infecting agent can cause fatalities in humans. And, there is also real potential for a novel infecting agent from a different world to simply use our bodies as a resource without our immune systems having any features that can effectively combat it. Plus, there are plenty of disease-inducing organisms here on Earth that humans are still trying to develop specialized medicines to combat. Just because Hollywood uses some of these concepts to motivate fictional plots does not make all of these possible hazards fictitious.

You seem to be dangerously naive about some realistic hazards.

I never said, suggested, insinuated, nor alluded to anything remotely like " extract resources from the Moon" or " Moon dust". That has nothing to do with the question of a test bed for Mars missions.

You are ignoring the fact that the Covid and other viruses have RNA with sequences shared by sequences in our DNA. There is no reason to believe that pathogenic micro organisms on another planet would have any structure even remotely similar to ours.

 

[Mental Avenger]

Atlan0001 is continuing to make derogatory and insulting comments, purporting to know what I think, what I know, and even so far as to what I would or would not do. Therefore there is no point in attempting a reasonable, rational discussion.
I have neither the inclination nor the obligation to convince anyone of anything. I present the information, and it is up to the reader to agree or disagree, accept or reject, verify or refute, acknowledge or ignore it. I really don't care.

Long ago, I learned that it is pointless to attempt to change the minds of those with diametrically opposed belief systems in internet discussions. The best that can be done is to counter misinformation and provide reasonable arguments, accurate information, and scientific facts for those readers who may be undecided and/or badly misinformed. I post for those silent onlookers and open minded people who have not yet made up their minds on a subject.

 

[Atlan0001]

I never said, suggested, insinuated, nor alluded to anything remotely like " extract resources from the Moon" or " Moon dust". That has nothing to do with the question of a test bed for Mars missions.

You are ignoring the fact that the Covid and other viruses have RNA with sequences shared by sequences in our DNA. There is no reason to believe that pathogenic micro organisms on another planet would have any structure even remotely similar to ours.

You are obviously wrong according to the extraterrestrial meteorites arrived here to Earth that have been analyzed and found to have microbe, or microbe fossilizations in them. It means most microbes, even the ones originating on our planet, [sparked{ to life on this planet, ultimately have a common background origin in, and similarity to, the universal at large.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

This conversation has gone to weirdness.

First, there is no evidence in meteorites (so far discovered) that there has been any actual "life" anywhere else but on Earth. What has been discovered is that abiotic processes seem to be able to assemble the molecular "building blocks of life" in many places off Earth.

Second, pathogens do not always need to deal with DNA or RNA of the organisms infected. Viruses do, but bacteria and other organisms do not. If they can reproduce without hijacking the metabolic processes of the infected organism, then the infected organism is just like "garden soil" to the invader, and the infected organism just gets its own life processes disrupted or destroyed by the actions of the invading organism.

 

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001 is continuing to make derogatory and insulting comments, purporting to know what I think, what I know, and even so far as to what I would or would not do. Therefore there is no point in attempting a reasonable, rational discussion.
I have neither the inclination nor the obligation to convince anyone of anything. I present the information, and it is up to the reader to agree or disagree, accept or reject, verify or refute, acknowledge or ignore it. I really don't care.

Long ago, I learned that it is pointless to attempt to change the minds of those with diametrically opposed belief systems in internet discussions. The best that can be done is to counter misinformation and provide reasonable arguments, accurate information, and scientific facts for those readers who may be undecided and/or badly misinformed. I post for those silent onlookers and open minded people who have not yet made up their minds on a subject.

We had a vicious battle, it was allowed, and I actually enjoyed it for it is a historical battle between the landsman and the mariner and much, much, more . . . the Earth-Martian chauvinist who looks to go sideways versus the Spacer who looks to going up and out to the stars and galaxies by way of creative generation, colonizing, occupying and traveling Space in a big, big, way.

Being a seventy-year close student of history and the physics, the natural laws, and the "lessons" of history, I really feel sorry for the Earth-Martian chauvinist wanting to go sideways in "Mars Direct." It might happen for a short time, the sideways movement, but it is, it will be, so thin a thread (exactly like "the sword of Damocles" hanging by a thread), it would inevitably be doomed and before long.

On the other hand, the Spacers, like all the other mariners before them will produce, generate, bulk infrastructure in, on, and around the seas (Space) on the fly (so to speak). A growth of bulk infrastructure that will merge with the homeland's infrastructure in a synergy of growing exchanges of peoples and energies (money is nothing more than the token of energy) few will want or be able to get rid of. The Spacer can colonize all the Solar System, short the sun, all the planets and so on, simply by colonizing the space in PCs (Personal Colonies, stations, ships) throughout it and above it all! It will be the Spacer who can produce the room, the infrastructure, and thus most importantly the TIME! for a successful Martian colonization.