Which more feasible: Manned flight to Mars or Raising The Titanic?

[scotpens]

exploration outside our galaxy

you mean star system, surely? don't go all Hollywood on this board and mix your terms, people won't accept that shite. not with all these nerds around!

Yep, I assume everyone here knows the difference. At 100,000 light-years across and with 100–300 billion stars, our own Milky Way galaxy is plenty big enough!

. . . Re: legalization of marijuana, I reckon that's probably going to happen at some point in the next twenty years. Its prohibition is just too damaging, for me to imagine it continuing indefinitely.

Don’t be so certain. Lenny Bruce once said that pot would have to be legalized within the next ten or twenty years, because so many of today’s law students were smoking it! That was 45 years ago.

 

[Gryffindorian]

As much as I like the idea of space travel, a Mars mission is overrated. It's just too "been there, done that" to me. Besides, it will be hundreds, if not thousands of years, before Homo sapiens develop the technology to do faster-than-light travel, let alone colonize the moon or other planets.

What do you mean it'll be hundreds if not thousands of years to develop FTL, "let alone colonize the moon or other planets". You make it sound like FTL is going to happen before lunar or planetary colonization of a place like Mars. That's backwards.

I meant exactly what I said. It'll take a very long time before humanity achieves either FTL travel or colonization of other worlds.

 

[Myasishchev]

. . . Re: legalization of marijuana, I reckon that's probably going to happen at some point in the next twenty years. Its prohibition is just too damaging, for me to imagine it continuing indefinitely.

Don’t be so certain. Lenny Bruce once said that pot would have to be legalized within the next ten or twenty years, because so many of today’s law students were smoking it! That was 45 years ago.

I dunno. In our time, we have state governments actively opposing federal prohibition. Plus, Bruce probably underestimated how long it would take social conservatives to die off.

Although there's something to be said about the difficulties of getting potheads to polls.

 

[Gil T.Azell]

Mars, like others have pointed out the Titanic would crumble if moved, its already falling apart.

BTW this thread could use a poll.

 

[John O.]

As much as I like the idea of space travel, a Mars mission is overrated. It's just too "been there, done that" to me. Besides, it will be hundreds, if not thousands of years, before Homo sapiens develop the technology to do faster-than-light travel, let alone colonize the moon or other planets.

What do you mean it'll be hundreds if not thousands of years to develop FTL, "let alone colonize the moon or other planets". You make it sound like FTL is going to happen before lunar or planetary colonization of a place like Mars. That's backwards.

I meant exactly what I said. It'll take a very long time before humanity achieves either FTL travel or colonization of other worlds.

"let alone" usually means "and the next thing I'm going to say is even more"; i.e., it will take "even longer" for (presumably intrastellar) colonization to take place than it will for FTL to become possible. That's just backwards. FTL is a fictitious technology we don't even know if is possible, something we have to invent completely new physics to produce; planetary colonization is just an engineering problem, but it's completely feasible.

 

[Squiggy]

Besides the fact that Titanic is in two pieces...yeah, it would crumble if you touched it. The only reason it's still around is because there's no current down there.

We could go to Mars if we really wanted to today. It would just be insanely expensive and the crew might not get back.

 

[TheSeeker]

Superman's a dick though.

Indeed he is.

 

[MANT!]

Mars..we had the technology in the late 60s all lined up for a manned Mars flight by 1983..only blockage was cost...

http://astronautix.com/fam/martions.htm

http://astronautix.com/craft/vonn1969.htm


Colonization of other planets..Colonizing the moon is actually feasible RIGHT NOW..but horrendously expensive...All the technology exists to start lunar colonies

http://astronautix.com/craft/lesrbase.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon

Again, it's simply a matter of political will...(something no one seems to have these days)...

 

[CaptainStoner]

Mars will crumble if it's moved...

I think bigger and better orbital stations, or moon bases, are a better focus than manned flight to Mars. The Spirit rovers were a huge success, why not build on those designs?

 

[Shatnertage]

I really don't get the Titanic fascination. There's a Titanic artifacts exhibition at Luxor that, combined with the Bodies exhibition, is a double-header of ghoulishness. But people like it, I guess. Seems creepy to me.

I think we're more likely to see Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis headlining Star Trek: U.S.S. Titan on CBS's primetime schedule than seeing the Titanic raised. Why wouldn't you use those resources to actually build something or solve a problem?

 

[RJDiogenes]

Either is feasible, but there would be no real interest in raising Titanic and a lot of opposition if anyone proposed it. I think a more likely endeavor would be to attempt to preserve it.

However, Arthur C Clarke once wrote an interesting book about raising the Titanic, called The Ghost From The Grand Banks. It was written before the wreck was located, though, and discovered to have split in two. It was also the book that introduced me to the Mandelbrot Set.

I meant exactly what I said. It'll take a very long time before humanity achieves either FTL travel or colonization of other worlds.

FTL will almost certainly never happen; the colonization of other worlds will happen easily in the 22nd Century.

 

[scotpens]

. . . In our time, we have state governments actively opposing federal prohibition. Plus, Bruce probably underestimated how long it would take social conservatives to die off.

Although there's something to be said about the difficulties of getting potheads to polls.

“Hey, dude, is this where I vote?
The election was last week? Oh, shit, man . . .”

 

[Squiggy]

Guys...raising Titanic is impossible.

 

[Gepard]

the colonization of other worlds will happen easily in the 22nd Century.

[Citation Needed]

 

[Mutara Nebula 1967]

This thread inspires the mental image of the Titanic being raised, retrofitted with giant booster rockets, and used to fly to Mars.

Now that, my friends, would be real human ingenuity.

Meh. They will probably change its name to Argo or some shit.

For the OP, I don't really get the fascination for the Titanic. A big ship sunk, lots of people died. Sad, but nothing really extraordinary. So, for me it's Mars. The technology is more or less here, what is missing is the economical and political will to do so.

You don't understand the fascination of the TITANIC? It's probably the most famous shipwreck in world history. An epic tragedy with so many interesting stories around it...like the one about a book called THE TITAN dealing with an ocean liner shipwreck amost EXACTLY like the TITANIC righit down to its name written a decade before the sinking. If you have to ask what's so special about the TITANIC well

 

[The Green Mushroom]

The boat sank, I got over it. Let's go to Mars.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Guys...raising Titanic is impossible.

It's not impossible, it's just ridiculous.

the colonization of other worlds will happen easily in the 22nd Century.

[Citation Needed]

The Colonization Of Other Worlds Happened Easily In The 22nd Century, RJDiogenes et al, Chrononet Press, 2261.

 

[ShamelessMcBundy]

Guys...raising Titanic is impossible.

Why do you hate America?

 

[Captain Ice]

This thread inspires the mental image of the Titanic being raised, retrofitted with giant booster rockets, and used to fly to Mars.

Now that, my friends, would be real human ingenuity.

That's been done. Dr. Who Christmas special a few years back...and it managed to crash again.

I think a mission to Mars will happen before someone raises the Titanic. First, it's a known graveyard amd, secondly it is disintegrating even as it sits without doing anything that will further stress the structure (like lifting it)

BTW, why the Titannic? you could just as easily have asked this about the Lusitannia or the Andrea Doria?

 

[scotpens]

You don't understand the fascination of the TITANIC? It's probably the most famous shipwreck in world history. An epic tragedy with so many interesting stories around it...like the one about a book called THE TITAN dealing with an ocean liner shipwreck amost EXACTLY like the TITANIC right down to its name written a decade before the sinking.

The book was called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan.

I think a mission to Mars will happen before someone raises the Titanic. First, it's a known graveyard and, secondly it is disintegrating even as it sits without doing anything that will further stress the structure (like lifting it)

BTW, why the Titanic? you could just as easily have asked this about the Lusitania or the Andrea Doria?

The wreck of the Andrea Doria isn’t in such great shape these days, either.