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Mars One - Unethical?

Rhubarbodendron said:
Publiusr, thank you for this excellent analysis. Could you please explain to me the role New Orleans played in WW2? Apart from it being a town mostly inhabited by people of French and African origin, having been a major Mississippi-harbour and cotton market in the 1800s and having excellent cuisine and music I've never heard anything of that town until that flood they suffered about a decade ago. It might be wiser, though, to take that to PM as it'd lead the thread very far off-topic.
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Not at all, subsidence is caused by drilling for oil, but also for water. The plow is still far worse than the drill head, in that growing fuel needs large 2 dimensional surface impact, as opposed to drilling a hole the size of your fist. I even remember folks talking about turning oil into food, since we are all hydrocarbons after all.
 
I agree that drilling for oil (particularly fracking) and water can often lead to subsidence which can have catastrophic effects. Yet, oil is a very dangerous substance, biochemically. One drop of oil (0.01 ml approximately) can poison 1m³ of water to render it undrinkable. Or in other figures: at a dilution of 1:100,000,000 mineral oil is still poisonous to humans and other animals.
When drilling for oil, you can't always avoid a spill and the consequences can be terrible.

Still, could you please explein the importance of New Orleans in the last World war you mentioned? I was not aware of any importance of that city. (No offense meant to any inhabitants of New Orleans!)
 
Don't fall for it Publiusr. There's only one reason an Austrian would want to know secrets about the importance of a seaboard American city in WW-2, and that's probably so she can redirect U-boats via some sort of time portal. Loose lips sink ships. I suspect that Ba'al has some handiwork in it, traveling back to our time to figure out how to defeat SG-1 and conquer Earth, similar to his attempt to rewrite history by intercepting the US merchantman that transported the Egyptian Stargate from Europe to America during the height of the U-boat war. Thankfully that attempt was stopped by Colonel Mitchell, but Ba'al had many clones and one of them could have travelled to Austria and be wining and dining Rhubarbodendron and pushing her to get you to reveal things that were at one time highly classified. To us it no longer matters except as something of interest, but Ba'al could use the information to tactical or strategic advantage.
 
I'm no Ösie! I'm Bavarian *sulks*

And Tanith is so much more handsome than Ba'al! :adore:
SG1_VOL22_SKU2-179bw.jpg



:D
 
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No offense, but do government-controlled agencies always stick to what's legal?
Just remember those anthrax-spur infested letters that got sent to officials shortly after 9/11. A few months later it was found out that they had gotten sent by the boss of a government-run lab for biological weapons who was pissed that he had gotten a budget cut.

(No offense to Americans meant! My point is that no control whatsoever can guarantee correctness and legality. There's always the human factor and every system can be abused. It's just a matter of what we over here call "criminal energy". I'm not sure if such an expression exists in English but I think you get what it's meant to express.)
 
The Martian is a great and gripping read. One of the best sci-fi books I've read in ages. It's very fast paced and a lot of it is hysterically funny.
 
Mars One, "if I may... I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had ... your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
 
Oh don't worry. Mars One most likely will never launch anything manned, nevermind anything that leaves earth orbit.
 
Shaka Zulu said:
No, thank God. And that 'classic' is probably crap anyway.
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If you've never seen Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), you might want to give it a look. Aside from the scientific inaccuracies regarding conditions on the Martian surface, it's a thoughtful, intelligent, well-written science fiction film, with pretty good FX for the time.

And the monkey is cute.
 
Robert Maxwell said:
Anything Elon Musk says needs to be taken with a Saturn V rocket full of salt. ;)
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Ain't that the truth.

Good thing the Saturn V life cycle is already done, otherwise:

--ULA would try to kill it and replace with multiple EELV launches

--Rand Simberg would call it pork

--JPL would try to raid its budget after being spoiled by Dan Golden handing out Delta II sounding rockets like they were the lollypops handed out by an alcoholic father to silence noisy kids in the back seat of the car--they whine if you want to save candy money on a filling meal at the end of the day:
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=48460

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/nasas-mars-design-reference-mission-goes-nuclear-2001/
Nice quote from Mr. David S. F. Portree at the comment section of his site above:

"Myself, I think there's no substitute for heavy lift. Aren't propellant depots designed to give "private" space something to do?"
dsfp


One last dig
There is this certain man named Rick who likes to fill space.com with junk op-eds against SLS http://astromaven.blogspot.com/2014/02/article-on-ultimate-fate-of-so-called.html

--Better
http://www.americaspace.com/?p=34964

As for me, I find more credible the sober words of a wise Griffin over those of a questionable Boozer
 
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Seriously? You're trying discredit the guy based on his last name? :rolleyes:
At least attack his credentials or the content of his article.
 
You get that it's a joke--trying to be light here :)
Here is something with a bit more meat:
You hear a lot of overworked phrases like "standing armies" as if that's a bad thing.

I want to see larger numbers employed in space fields, not fewer.

Offshoring jobs has hurt American industrial power--and now the same people (with "Rand" as a first name) want to do that to spaceflight? Fah!
DoD and the folks behind the Farm Bill have a lot of muscle that all but makes them cut proof--and I want spaceflight to have that same broad base of support--that same unassailable power of the Pentagon and ADM.

This is what made the Soviet Chief Designers so much more powerful than many of our NASA Chief Admins. They had less money than the US, but more bullying power, in that the missilemen there were rather like the Air Force here--they made up a real power block, and had the design bureaux fought each other less sharply--with Glushko undercutting Korolyov at every turn--the Space Race would have been even closer.

On the other hand, the whole collapse of the Air Taxi/Very Light Jet model proves you cannot depend on the invisible hand of a market that has no qualms in dropping you.
I close by posing a very important question you have to ask yourself:

Is the cause of spaceflight helped by less folks having a vested interest in space--or more?

I already know the answer to that question...and the trend has not been pretty
http://www.knowledgeorb.com/2011/11/bad-day-to-be-a-russian-satellte-engineer/
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/G...Decreases_for_First_Time_in_20_Years_999.html

Oh yeah, that and the real reason Rodman was in the DPRK is that he was the only one tall enough to hook up the umbilical from the gantry to their new rocket.
Then too, maybe that's not so funny.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/N_Korea_completing_large_rocket_pad_US_think_tank_999.html

Another reason to be behind "big Gov't" can be found in this exchange I had over at nextbig: http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/02/escape-dynamics-and-microwave-power.html

"The dissappointment of my career was knocking at the door of Dr. Myrabo to the unfortunate news of his retirement. The lightcraft should have the potential to carry on board lasers in 10 maybe 15 years."

My response: "This is why we need more money for gov't institutions, so the loss of any one person won't sink a line of research"

http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?149200-NASA-and-Privte-Industry-Space-Exploration

For those of you who want depots
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Tests_New_Technologies_for_Robotic_Refueling_999.html
http://www.space.com/24689-dangerou...ic-satellite-refueling-ground-test-video.html

If we ever have anything remotely like the scenario we saw in the movie Gravity, it won't be from some ASAT test or geosynch junk--it'll be some "Safe Is Not An Option" type private depot coming apart in LEO.
 
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