Let's talk about Mars.

[Trendkilla254]

It is hard to dismiss Paul Hellyer. It is hard to dismiss Steven Greer. It is hard to dismiss Scott Kelly. It is hard to dismiss Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. It is Hard to dismiss Scott Carpenter. It is hard to dismiss Major Gordon Cooper.

Those are just a few names. There are many more.

I can't say I have any proof myself

 

[AngelG]

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Unfortunately, as glorious as Capitalism may be, it will be our undoing if the elite in charge (that is the oil cartels, banking cartels and "shadow governments") don't wake up and realise we need a massive paradigm shift in how we live to ensure our survival. Although I'm skeptical of the "man made climate change" argument, you don't have to be a genius to know that industry is increasing faster than the rate of natural greenery and large areas of forest.
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Our air quality will continue to get worse and natural resources will continue to be exploited as long as the current system goes on along with war, espionage etc. If we are to survive this all has to change - not only that, but dragging this kind of political douchebaggery out into the wider solar system or even to another altogether would be incredibly shitty of us. One has to consider that we are in a world where many (all?) of the major world powers operate a policy of peace by MAD - mutually assured destruction. Basically the premise that if country A nukes country B, country B will have fired in retaliation and mutually destroyed that who fired upon it. How sad that we've come to this stage - and they say the cold war is over??
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I find it interesting to talk about our dreadful future and the "shadow governments". Nowadays the capitalism is going to turn into something different, I'd say weird. First, I don't find it that glorious. I lived in Socialism for a while, and it didn't feel that glorious too. But it tried to be. The main problems with the old-school Capitalism are that the things are NOT made to last. They are being made to be replaced often, to support the money flow. As result, the resources of the Planet are being exhausted at much higher rate to support this constant overconsumption. There are huge piles with old Smartphones...
Now for the modern one:
The Capitalists started to buy politicians to take easier the government money. They begun using the television to manipulate the society (btw just as in the Socialism). They decided that they need to take on the World. The new kind of Capitalism was born - TNC - (trans-national). A new way to take the money from the people: produce the goods where the labor is ~ 100 times cheaper and to sell them @ home 3..10 times cheaper. This way, the local business will die or also use the same receipt. And the people would support it - they want these cheaper goods (while losing their jobs).
TNC needed access to all markets and to all workers, e.t. everybody to buy from them, everybody to work for them. No small business shall exist. When you have huge amount of money, you can enter in every country and wipe their local business (who can resist this superpower?!).
My biggest fear is that they either prepare mass extinction or mass slavery. The surveillance is already there. There are nanobots developed also. Once when there is a world superpower which owns all markets, all jobs, produces all goods (it has bought all smaller companies), then you have no where to run but on Mars:crackup:....
What was wrong wit the Socialism: I'll tell you only if sbd is interested.

 

[Razako]

Mars is somewhat of a dead end IMO. It's just a cold and dead world with no magnetic field and weak gravity making it unsuitable to long-term colonization. I think a robotic mission to Europa to look for life in the subsurface oceans would be much more interesting overall. I can see a mission to 'put boots on the Martian surface' just so we can claim to have landed humans on another planet. Long term colonization seems unlikely though. There's no economic incentive unless Mars inexplicably has huge stores of precious metals right below the surface.

 

[Benm]

If that many people suddenly died you can be sure that many more will as well. Our society right now is dependent on numbers, we need skilled labourers preparing and distributing food, we need electricity and fuel for heat and transportation, we're basically useless alone. I don't think we have created long lasting food supplies as you say. At most some canned goods in store shelves can last maybe ten years. Starvation or cold will kill off the remaining few before long, in the case of a near-extinction event.

First of all, expiry dates on canned foods only mean that the manufacturer believes that the food will taste/smell/look acceptable if you open the can before the date stamped on it.

Canned foods that last long to begin with (like a year or more) will not become unsafe to eat as long as the can is not compromised. You could safely eat a can of tuna, pineapple or spam 100 years from now if you keep it from rusting. There is no real known limit to the safety exipiration on these things, we cannot measure them but know that the first properly produced canned foods are still safe to eat today. They might last 1000 years,
there is no reason to believe otherwise, but no proof that they do either.

There would also be a LOT of stuff. If 99.999 of people just randomly died right now, the population of my city would be reduced from 400.000 to 4. There is enough stored food in the city to last 4 people several lifetimes.

But you rightfully put forward that we do rely on infrastructure like electrical power, heat and running tap water to survive. Given my geographical location it would be wise to move south to a point where it doesn't freeze over in winter. This could mean driving from holland down to the southern end of europe, as in portugal or spain.

Can you drive there with fuel stations inoperative? Sure - there are now about 50.000 cars per person available, and you could just take the next one when running out of gas, or alternatively take a diesel tanker truck and drive that down on it's own contents.



Mars or the moon provide none of this, not even breathable air. No shielding from cosmic particles, little proven mineable resources, and probably no way back when in comes to mars settlement.

Building a base on the moon and constantly supplying that is certainly possible, but one big question would be 'why'. While the moon might actually have some usable substances to mine (like lithium for fusion power) there is no reason to send manned missions.

Saving humanity as a species is not a good reason either, as such colonies would not stand a chance without constant resupply. If most humans on earth died for some reason that supply will not be coming any longer.

Looking at alternatives like Europa would be interesting, though i'm not sure it could support earth-based life considering the distance from the sun and tiny mass (it's lighter than our own moon). I'm all for sending probes over to establish if life ever formed there and perhaps still is present beneath the surface.

 

[AaronT]

I think we need a large station in a lunar orbit. Fuel could be mined and processed on the Moon and brought to the station more efficiently than from the Earth to low Earth Orbit.

The vessel going to Mars should also be in itself a large station with at least two landing craft.

Park the station in Mars orbit and ferry supplies to the surface, also mine and process fuel on Mars for any return mission.

This could all be done unmanned before sending colonists.

IMHO if your going to go, go to stay but why not have the ability to return home at any time.

 

[Alaskan]

Well, there are some who think there is already a base on the dark side of the moon, closely guarded.

Also if there really are aliens working within NASA like is told through some disclosure videos I have seen, (see Boyd Bushman videos on youtube) Then It might be possible to goto Mars sooner rather than later, but is the Earth people ready for such an endeavor? I don't think so within 20+ years. But that may also be why NASA projected 2030 as their Mars timeline, because they have this external knowledge available to them which gave them more optimism about it becoming a reality.

I would want to wait and see some success stories for sure and be sure that all the kinks are ironed out for safety before even considering such a thing.

Personally? Hell no I won't go

Bingo, that's why I think we will be able to come and go between Mars and Earth much easier, if we haven't already been doing so.

 

[Benm]

One downside of this theory is that there is no dark side of the moon.

The moon's spin is tidally locked with its orbit around earth, so we only see one side of the moon (a bit more given parralax), so there is a significant part of the moon we can never see with an earth based telescope.

On the moon itself though, all sides get about the same amount of light on average. When we see (or rather don't see) a new moon, the far side of the moon is fully lit by the sun.

This is fairly important for any such conspiracy theory. There is no shortage of countries that have at least sent orbiters or done flyby's that imaged the far side of the moon. These include russia, japan, india, china and european missions.

Something like that would be a sizeable conspiracy and seem very unlikely to me.

Building a base on the moon would be preferable on the earth facing side for communications purposes and such.

There is no need to build it on the far side to hide it from amateur astronomers on earth, it's not possible to see something a kilometer square using a telescope that fits your house.

For that matter, even if you turned the hubble telescope at the moon you'd get details in the order of 100 meters. Too low to see any small structure. Also it would be fairly easy to camouflage large structures by putting some lunar dust on them.

 

[Jhop]

Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Moon expert :shhh: I wasn't really implying I believed it, just had heard it before

If there is anything built anywhere on the moon and its hush hush I would like to think it would be camouflaged in some way, or underground, using whatever advanced alien tech they have

 

[Trendkilla254]

...If there is anything built anywhere on the moon...

Yeah "If"... Have you seen the pictures released by NASA that have unidentifiable "artifacts" with odd shapes or distinctly blurred out areas?

Again, not saying I 100% believe it... but only because I have not seen anything first hand. I'm definitely open to the idea though.

 

[AngelG]

Actually, after 5 bilion years, when the Sun explodes as a Red Giant, the closest place where the creatures (who did not blew up the Earth in a thermo-nuclear war until then) might survive is probably Mars or some of the moons of Jupiter.

 

[Alaskan]

AngelG where are you originally from, Bulgaria?

 

[trencheel303]

The moon's spin is tidally locked with its orbit around earth, so we only see one side of the moon (a bit more given parralax),

I think you mean libration, rather than parallax?

/nitpicking

edit:

lunar libration used to fascinate me as a kid, and I would observe it as nights went on. sometimes you could really see noticeable changes, and as an (at the time) seasoned moon watcher I could spot it with the naked eye. It was also fun watching the phase change over the night. It could go from slightly less than quarter moon to slightly over quarter in only a few hours. /nerd

 

[Benm]

Both i presume, really... never given than much thought to the details behind it.

There definitely is parallax at any given time as you can see slightly different parts of the moon depending on where you are on earth. I suppose liberation is a larger effect given some time to observe.

In general it just comes down to that we can observe a bit over half the lunar surface from earth, but that all of the lunar surface it lit at some point in time.

IF there was any suspicion of something being secretly constructed on the moon it would probably be visible from lunar orbit sats at some point. Unless they just slapped a cloaking device on it (all aliens have those!), which would make a good case for simply building the darn thing on earth (just shoot anyone that gets close to the boundary of the cloaking device, then drag the body in).

Then again none of this would be required as there is plenty of space on earth to build huge things without anyone looking at it. You could probably build a square kilometer sized structure in the western sahara and paint it bright pink and still have decades before it's detected (and probably deemed an error or artefact since it's just darn unlikely to be actually there).

 

[AngelG]

AngelG where are you originally from, Bulgaria?

Yes and it is far from Mars despite what most people may think. I do not look like Marsian either (unless they're caucasian type) . I'm sure that though Benm is from Netherlands, he is also far from Mars . Infact, we're from Europe.
But this could cause confusion that we're near Jupiter, because Europa is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet....

 

[trencheel303]

^ :crackup:

 

[Benm]

Hehe, be careful booking trips if you plan on it... in many european countries europe is called/spelled 'europa' in de local language (dutch, german, polish, spanish to name a few, and afaik even in romanian).

Then again a trip around europe might actually be quite interesting to do if you're from elsewhere in the world, and probably last the rest of your life spending a fraction of the budget to book a trip to the jovian moon of similar name