posted on Aug, 11 2006 @ 08:14 AM
The idea is exciting. You might say it’s exhilarating. I do hope every young person age 11 to 14 will fantasize about going to Mars. Our own
president does. And he’s 50 or 60. But by time you finish high school, you’ll have to accept that a trip by humans is unlikely. At least a round
trip. Without unduly slandering an ethnicity, maybe some of our Muslim Arab friends will volunteer for a one way ride? Our president calls them
Islamic-fascists. I think he calls anyone he does not like an Islamic-fascist. Which if he knew me would include me. I have called him “Dumbya”
from the beginning. Or worse.
If we were able to maintain a spacecraft at escape velocity of 25,000 mph - that’s 41,000 km/hr for you Euro-centered types - all the way to Mars,
then discounting the fact we cannot follow a straight line from here to there, Mars being 120 million miles from the Sun, and on that scale, Earth is
90 million miles, we’d have to travel 30 million miles. So how many hours are we talking about? 1,200. That’s 50 days. Actually, due to planetary
mechanics and so on, I think it will take about 4 times that long should we begin a real trip and not a make-believe one.
If it takes the same amount of time to return to Earth - it would not in real life - then you’d need at least 100 days food and water - plus waste
disposal capacity - unless you’re going to flush your w/c straight into space - now that would really be panspermia in action! In your darkest
moment you don’t suppose a passing spaceship did just that some 4 billion years ago? Which makes us descended from what?
So how much fuel would lift-off from Mars require compared to Earth? I think Martian gravity is about 20% of earth gravity, so you’d need
proportionally less fuel. (V = 4/3 X pi r cubed.) I think we’d encounter 2 serious problems going and coming to Mars - as if throwing your garbage
overboard is not serious - and that is oxygen to breathe and shielding to protect us from the solar wind. I know how to make oxygen from rocks, but I
don’t know how to make it from nothing. So, let’s think about that for a while.
Thanks for the heads-up on Mars.
[edit on 8/11/2006 by donwhite]