In case that's a burning question in your mind. Yes they are.

i'd invest in an asteroid-mining venture right now, but mars is still a ways off, imo. still it might be fun to buy some shares of something like that

okay maybe i changed my mind. might buy into the mars thingy, if i can.

it's not a bad idea to look forward and keep an open mind,. after all, back in the day they said this would never work....

interesting. that little lander thingy crashed on mars, maybe it needed better shielding from the strangely twisted magnetic fields on mars?? probably gonna need billions to get this project through

http://phys.org/news/2016-11-millions-europe-mars-mission-esa.html


http://phys.org/news/2016-11-mars-ionosphere-crustal-magnetic-fields.html#nRlv

NASA will get boots on the ground after they get through arguing on whether or not it's best to send robotic devices, and then decide that finding life takes presidence and that robots aren't effective enough for such a task.


It does seem the concensus is moving away from the idea of leaving people on Mars to die. The more time that passes and the closer the reality comes, the thought becomes more distasteful for most. I don't think Mars One is actually going to happen but they are spurring the international communities because a lot of their projects are successful enough to generate deeper interest from the powers that be that make a mission to Mars much more real.


Astro-mining turns out to be a bigger problem that needs more testing, but I think that hinges more on what other countries are doing, I don't think it's big on NASA agenda. Mars and Enceladus are the targets I hear about the most.

morningsong said:

NASA will get boots on the ground after they get through arguing on whether or not it's best to send robotic devices, and then decide that finding life takes presidence and that robots aren't effective enough for such a task.


It does seem the concensus is moving away from the idea of leaving people on Mars to die. The more time that passes and the closer the reality comes, the thought becomes more distasteful for most. I don't think Mars One is actually going to happen but they are spurring the international communities because a lot of their projects are successful enough to generate deeper interest from the powers that be that make a mission to Mars much more real.


Astro-mining turns out to be a bigger problem that needs more testing, but I think that hinges more on what other countries are doing, I don't think it's big on NASA agenda. Mars and Enceladus are the targets I hear about the most.

maybe us earthlings should focus on making robots that can build our domed cities on mars and terraform the interior for us prior to our arrival. that way the basic will be in place when we arrive.

but here's a game-changer: in other news, NASA is rumored to have developed a warp drive...

.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/nasas-warp-drive-engine-works-and-it-could-take-humans-to-mars-in-weeks/news-story/757094f568430af8139264e60b3a9d2f
.

The findings appear to be good news — that the new technology that could fly spaceships to Mars, put men on the moon in four hours and make flying cars possible actually works in theory.

The much-anticipated review of EmDrive space propulsion was not supposed to be released until December according to the International Business Times.

But it was leaked into the NASA Spaceflight fan forum on Saturday before it was swiftly deleted by the organisation — but not before sci-fi fans had caught a glimpse of it.

It is not quite the same as Star Trek’s Warp Drive which would get a spacecraft to the moon in less than a second but could get it there in an almost as impressive four hours.

The long-awaited review probed the theory behind EmDrive — a technology invented by British scientist and engineer Roger Shawyer.

The leaked info said researchers said the EmDrive system is “consistently performing”.

Mr Shawyer has been working on a “thruster” rocker engine which is capable of huge speeds but simply uses liquid hydrogen and solar power.

.

continued at link

^ I thought that was through solar sails.

While not asteroid mining, getting closer. Of course it's going to freak people out.

Okay, they're doing more than arguing about robots.

I wonder if they'll do this again?




Learn the basic science needed to survive on Mars

This free online course will introduce the key scientific concepts needed for humans to survive on Mars, where there is no air to breathe, no water to drink and no food to eat. The course will also examine interdisciplinary skills and meticulous planning required to sustain human life in such a hostile environment. Case studies and insights from leading experts in the field of Chemistry, Astronomy, Physics and Geology will demonstrate the basic science and problem solving skills you can use in everyday life.

Explore essential science and problem solving skills

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• apply basic science to explore possible ways of producing water, oxygen, food and energy on Mars

• describe possible solutions and outcomes to problem-based scenarios.

Learn from leaders in the field of science

The course is based on the approaches that lead educators, Tina Overton and Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway, deliver to their science undergraduate students at the Monash University Faculty of Science – a vibrant, dynamic and world-renowned community in Australia at the forefront of innovation and discovery.

CREATED BY

SHARE

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START DATES

• 24 Oct 2016IN PROGRESS, WEEK 3 OF 4
• TBADATE TO BE ANNOUNCED

EDUCATORS

Tina Overton

Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway

[Edited 11/10/16 12:40pm]

These Mars folks have been watching too many movies. The reality is the risk to humans is too great. They might not survive the trip there. Weightlessness over a long period of time has devastating effects on the body.

What's funny after what I've read; as difficult getting to Mars, with all the food, water, radiation and debris problems and surviving on Mars with all it's craziness; getting back on this planet alive in one piece is many times more difficult. Which is why this organization wants a one-way trip, because of all the problems of a trip back, they figure it's easier just to keep people alive on Mars once they get there. As thin and frail as it is our atmosphere is no joke. Getting out of it is so easy compared to getting in it.

morningsong said:

I wonder if they'll do this again?




Learn the basic science needed to survive on Mars

This free online course will introduce the key scientific concepts needed for humans to survive on Mars, where there is no air to breathe, no water to drink and no food to eat. The course will also examine interdisciplinary skills and meticulous planning required to sustain human life in such a hostile environment. Case studies and insights from leading experts in the field of Chemistry, Astronomy, Physics and Geology will demonstrate the basic science and problem solving skills you can use in everyday life.

Explore essential science and problem solving skills

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• apply basic science to explore possible ways of producing water, oxygen, food and energy on Mars

• describe possible solutions and outcomes to problem-based scenarios.

Learn from leaders in the field of science

The course is based on the approaches that lead educators, Tina Overton and Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway, deliver to their science undergraduate students at the Monash University Faculty of Science – a vibrant, dynamic and world-renowned community in Australia at the forefront of innovation and discovery.

CREATED BY

SHARE

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share by email

START DATES

• 24 Oct 2016IN PROGRESS, WEEK 3 OF 4
• TBADATE TO BE ANNOUNCED

EDUCATORS

Tina Overton

Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway

REQUIREMENTS

This course is designed for anyone who wishes to learn more about the basic science required to survive on Mars. You’ll be able to use any scientific knowledge you bring to the course, but this is an introductory course and anyone can enjoy it without prior knowledge of the subject.

[Edited 11/10/16 12:40pm]

cool. gonna check that out..

Ron Howard takes us to 'Mars' (and it's a bumpy ride)

National Geographic Channel's big new techno-colonial docudrama "Mars" has gained unexpected timeliness.

The six-part series, which premieres Monday, describes the campaign to settle humans on our nearest and most hospitable — yet still pretty inhospitable — planetary neighbor. This “Mars” is half aspirational documentary, half speculative fiction.

Among the contemporary, real-world commentators (in the two episodes available for review) are America's astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson; Scott Kelly, who spent a year in the International Space Station to test the effects of long-term space flight on the body; and mogul Elon Musk, whose SpaceX corporation is determined to make Mars habitable. Musk — who believes we need to become a "spacefaring" race because we're going to throw away this planet like a used tissue or be fried by the sun in about a billion years — is the apparent model for the series' fictional visionary entrepreneur, leading an international coalition of space agencies and private industry.

Okay not about Mars but still...

The first commercial mission to harvest resources from asteroids could be launched within five years, as Luxembourg's government works on joint missions with two US space research companies to hunt for water and minerals in outer space through robotic missions. CNN's Richard Quest went to Luxembourg to find out more.

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2016/11/14/luxembourg-asteroids.cnnmoney/index.html

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a project to create a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes and combining data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around the Earth. The aim is to observe the immediate environment of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* with angular resolution comparable to the black hole's event horizon.

Each year since its first data capture in 2006, the EHT array has moved to add more observatories to its global network of radio telescopes. The first image of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, could be produced in 2017,^[8] and it will also test Einstein's general relativity at the extreme.

Data collected on hard drives must be transported by jet airliner (a so-called sneakernet) from the various telescopes to the MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts, USA, where the data are cross-compared and analyzed on a grid computer made from about 800 CPUs all connected through a 40 Gbit/s network.

Some contributing institutions are:

• ALMA
• APEX
• Academia Sinica Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Arizona Radio Observatory, University of Arizona
• Caltech Submillimeter Observatory
• Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy
• European Southern Observatory
• Georgia State University
• Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
• Greenland Telescope
• Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• Haystack Observatory, MIT
• Institut de Radio Astronomie Millimetrique
• Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE)
• Joint Astronomy Centre - James Clerk Maxwell Telescope
• Large Millimeter Telescope
• Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie
• National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory
• National Science Foundation
• University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Onsala Space Observatory
• Perimeter Institute
• Radio Astronomy Laboratory, UC Berkeley
• Radboud University
• Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO)
• Universidad de Concepción
• Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
• University of California - Berkeley (RAL)
• University of Chicago (South Pole Telescope)
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• University of Michigan

morningsong said:

What's funny after what I've read; as difficult getting to Mars, with all the food, water, radiation and debris problems and surviving on Mars with all it's craziness; getting back on this planet alive in one piece is many times more difficult. Which is why this organization wants a one-way trip, because of all the problems of a trip back, they figure it's easier just to keep people alive on Mars once they get there. As thin and frail as it is our atmosphere is no joke. Getting out of it is so easy compared to getting in it.

This won't happen for 500-1000 years.

uPtoWnNY said:

morningsong said:

What's funny after what I've read; as difficult getting to Mars, with all the food, water, radiation and debris problems and surviving on Mars with all it's craziness; getting back on this planet alive in one piece is many times more difficult. Which is why this organization wants a one-way trip, because of all the problems of a trip back, they figure it's easier just to keep people alive on Mars once they get there. As thin and frail as it is our atmosphere is no joke. Getting out of it is so easy compared to getting in it.

This won't happen for 500-1000 years.

Maybe to leave this Solar System or travel the Milky Way and actually make it somewhere and back within a human lifetime, but just to Mars, nah.

When the first humans go on a #JourneyToMars the food they bring with them needs to not weigh much, but has to pack a ton of nutrition...plus, they have to taste good! Our food scientists are working to develop a variety of food bars that astronauts can eat for breakfast during their spaceflight missions. Take a look: http://go.nasa.gov/2fPbh61