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OM
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 Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:51 am Post subject: Re: Squabbles at The Planetary Society |
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On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:17:41 GMT, "Martha Adams" <mhada@verizon.net>
wrote:
[quote]Titeotwawki
[/quote]
....This is ancient Mayan for "I do not know how to trim my quotes" :-P
OM
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Pat Flannery
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| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:51 am Post subject: Re: Squabbles at The Planetary Society |
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Martha Adams wrote:
[quote]
I certainly want to thank Master Navia for the catalog he has
provided of the errors one must commit to believe the kinds of
things he seems to believe. I really do feel he can read --
really! But I think most of what he finds, washes over him
like water over a stationary rock. Oh, well....
[/quote]
Hey babe...chill... and get into the totally cool groove of the bonobos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo
Dig it.
It>s pure Good Karma.
Pat |
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Martha Adams
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| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:52 am Post subject: Re: Squabbles at The Planetary Society |
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"jacob navia" <jacob@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:gga2q9$sr4$1@aioe.org...
[quote]Martha Adams wrote:
Navia>s "100% certain" recipe which he mentions a few messages
up this thread, is only a good recipe for a complete halt to
Mars settlement.
Exactly. My position is that only automatic unmanned probes can
be sent until we know for certain that either there is no life
in Mars or that life in Mars can handle contact with us and
vice versa.
Contrary to Mrs Adams, I want to avoid xenocide, and I want to
avoid any risk to the human biosphere with a non planned
contact that could be disastrous to us or to them, if they exist.
If we do that, then someone else gets to Mars
-- and *gets* Mars.
This kind of mentality is completely ridiculous. Even if the
U.S. establishes some colony on Mars, it will not own Mars
in any way. Other people will be able to go there in much
the same way as the US did, and live there if they want to.
Further, Navia seems to have neglected
his reading, for he apparently fails to recognize how much is
to be said for going to Mars *and staying there* rather than
going and returning. This idea has been around for some years,
it is getting serious development.
Yes, I do not consider that kind of suicide mission a good
way to go to Mars.
It is possible that once the biological problems solved, humans
could go to Mars for extended periods of time, but it will be
surely NOT the first expedition to arrive there that will do
that. In any case, the plans of Mrs Adams are way beyond what
the U.S. can do in the next 30-40 years.
o There are no technologies of human survival (the life support
system)
that has been tested in deep space without constant human
intervention. Look at the international space station. It needs
constant supply of oxygen, water, food, and spare parts to maintain
the outpost just running a mere few hundred kilometers from the
surface of the planet. And that is the best we can do now.
o A trip to Mars even when Mars is the closest to Earth is a whooping
56 Million kilometers, surely a trip of 8 to 10 months. Then, to
make
the trip worthwhile the humans would stay for several months, let>s
say 1 year, then they return making something like a 2 year in deep
space (in the best conditions, it could be much longer if we
consider
that earth and Mars approach themselves every two years only).
There is no life support system that can handle 2 years in space
without failure as yet. The problems appearing in the ISS give us a
very good view of the stand of the life support engineering today:
oo space suits that fail
oo electrical systems breakdown
oo problems with the oxygen recycling
and an incredible long list.
Mars has no oxygen, water is difficult to find and may need mining
and purifying, food is unavailable and nobody knows if plants can
grow in Mars with temperatures in summer around the Antarctica
temperatures on earth. There are not many plants in Antarctica
as you may know...
Obviously Mrs Adams has thought about this and has found all the
necessary solutions, but besides science fiction, there are TODAY
and for the next 30-40 years not any technology that can bring a
life support system needed by a few humans into the planet Mars
and making it work there.
-------------------------------------------------------------
What is interesting also when reading Mrs Adams prose, is this
central sentence:
quote
Navia>s "100% certain" recipe which he mentions a few messages
up this thread, is only a good recipe for a complete halt to
Mars settlement. If we do that, then someone else gets to Mars
-- and *gets* Mars.
end quote
In the mind of Mrs Adams, the U.S. must get there to extended the
Amrican Empire before other people (obviously hostile since they
are not US citizens) get there first.
This is completely idiotic. Any expedition to Mars is such
a big effort that no country in the earth can manage it alone.
It will be a international effort supported by all people of
this planet, not an expedition to put the flag somewhere!
The idea is this: if you go to Mars you need to fetch along
major hardware to get back. Further, the return journey is
more dangerous than the outgoing journey, because you>ve used
up most of your hardware and supplies resources. But if you
rather use that hardware weight to bring along an industrial
base for survival on Mars, and having set down there you stay
there and get busy building your settlement, this is *far,
far* more progressive and productive than returning to Terra
and leaving everything you did on Mars, back on Mars.
To this, only two words suffice:
life support ?
As for the cross-contamination Navia seems frightened of,
does he know researchers *today* have a large collection of
rocks in hand, known to have come to here from Mars? I
haven>t heard of any of these researchers turning green or
purple, or developing extra heads, nor any else of that.
Fossilized remains of Mars life have been found. Yes.
And as everyone knows, after thousands of years in space
there wasn>t any risk of contamination at all. This is
obvious to anyone but to Mrs Adams... apparently.
Another, completely different thing is to make contact
with those beings IN MARS when they are not fossils but
alive.
Navia, it>s good you>re thinking about some of this stuff,
but did you know, other people are doing that too?
Yes, I knew that. :-)
To
much better effect than you have accomplished so far? ??
Well Mrs Adams, I could say the same. Specifically I would like
to know how the people you send there will
o find oxygen to breathe
o find water to drink
o find food to eat
o find a repair store for the ALL the hardware they carry,
together with the repair technicians and tools needed
to replicate the tools that break down, fail, etc.
o Note that they will need also tools to repair the repair store
that will also fail!
What you fail to understand in your romantic dreaming about
"living off the land" is that Mars is another planet... Not
any earth. It is completely different!
--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32
[/quote]
I certainly want to thank Master Navia for the catalog he has
provided of the errors one must commit to believe the kinds of
things he seems to believe. I really do feel he can read --
really! But I think most of what he finds, washes over him
like water over a stationary rock. Oh, well....
Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2008 Nov 23] |
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OM
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| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:52 am Post subject: Re: Squabbles at The Planetary Society |
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On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:15:32 -0600, Pat Flannery <flanner@daktel.com>
wrote:
[quote]and although they were
slated to self-destruct after landing and completing their missions via
internal thermite charges,
[/quote]
....Pat, this is a new one to me. Can you cite source for this for
further reading?
OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let>s face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
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Pat Flannery
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| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 8:52 am Post subject: Re: Squabbles at The Planetary Society |
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jacob navia wrote:
[quote]Martha Adams wrote:
Navia>s "100% certain" recipe which he mentions a few messages
up this thread, is only a good recipe for a complete halt to
Mars settlement.
Exactly. My position is that only automatic unmanned probes can
be sent until we know for certain that either there is no life
in Mars or that life in Mars can handle contact with us and
vice versa.
[/quote]
BTW, you do realize that the two Soviet Mars landers that preceded
Viking _weren>t_ sterilized before heading there, and although they were
slated to self-destruct after landing and completing their missions via
internal thermite charges, there>s no guarantee that they ever did that.
So that sort of kisses pristine Mars goodbye, doesn>t it?
Pat |
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Martin Postranecky
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| Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject: Jodrell Bank telescope 'was secret nuclear missile warning s |
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21 Nov 2008
Jodrell Bank telescope 'was secret nuclear missile warning system'
------------------------------------------------------------------
The giant space telescope at Jodrell Bank was secretly modified to track
incoming Soviet nuclear missiles during the Cold War, its creator has
disclosed 50 years later.
By John Bingham
Sir Bernard Lovell, who founded the renowned Cheshire observatory at the
end of the Second World War, has told how the facility was adapted on the
orders of military chiefs to provide a "four-minute warning" of an
impending attack.
Now 95, Sir Bernard has also disclosed for the first time how Russian
spymasters sought to persuade him to defect during a scientific visit to
the USSR in 1963.
The 250ft Lovell Telescope was lampooned by the press and politicians as a
costly white elephant during its construction in the mid 1950s.
But unknown to the public, part of the reason for the over-run was because
changes had to be made to design to track intercontinental missiles.
Scientists at the site were also unwittingly working alongside plain
clothed defence officials, with only Lovell Sir Bernard and his superiors
aware of their true identity.
The celebrated astronomer and physicist has told how he was approached by
the Chief of the Air Staff while the telescope was being constructed.
"He told me we had the only instrument in the world that could detect a
Soviet missile. I simply wanted to come back and to do research, but
events wouldn>t allow me to," he recalled.
"During the building of the telescope I made two vital changes in the
design - one of which was to make it possible to detect missiles. Against
my wishes I had been pulled back to the defence network of the country.
"The air ministry had agreed to pay the cost of modifying the telescope,
but when they came to pay the bill someone said that no two government
departments could fund the same project and we were already receiving half
the money from the department for science."
During the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962 the telescope>s dish was turned
toward the USSR on the orders of the Cabinet to provide an early warning
of attack.
The observatory>s secret military role finally came to an end in 1963 with
the creation of the dedicated RAF Fylingdales warning system in Yorkshire.
Sir Bernard also spoke of how suffered a mystery illness following a visit
to the USSR as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Science that same year.
"They took to me to an enormous facility on the Crimean Black Sea coast,"
he said.
"I apparently was the first foreigner to be showed this place.
"They obviously expected me to stay. But I wanted to leave and told them
'Look, I>m a British citizen, I demand to be returned to
England'."
He added: "The evidence is that the Soviets did try and to keep me in the
Soviet Union. I was extremely ill when I came back."
But he added that he had written a full account of his time there which he
wishes only to be published after his death.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5209138.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/3496572/
Jodrell-Bank-telescope-was-secret-nuclear-missile-warning-system.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1088252/
Soviet-spy-chiefs-tried-make-defect-Jodrell-Bank-pioneer-Sir-Bernard-Lovell-reveals.html |
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OM
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| Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 8:35 am Post subject: Re: Jodrell Bank telescope 'was secret nuclear missile warni |
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On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:28:37 -0600, Pat Flannery <flanner@daktel.com>
wrote:
[quote]He obviously ate their food, you have no idea how bad some of their food is.
[/quote]
....Probably the borscht. About that time in the history of the Evil
Soviet Empire, there was almost an epidemic of disentery caused by bad
beets used for borscht. According to my Rossia Yazik prof, his uncle
and two cousins almost died from it, and they contracted it about the
same time as this guy did. Ergo, he probably *did* get sick, and the
KGB made a jump at the opportunity, albeit to no avail.
....The use of the JB dish for that 4-minute warning, tho, makes a hell
of a lot of sense. At the same time, the bit about some Limey law that
prohibted two organizations to fund the same project was one of those
bureacratic tricks that the military used to pull to get out of
promised crisis funding. You couldn>t complain publically about it
because that would be considered a breach of security and an act of
treason. The best you could hope for was to get the ear of the PM and
get the equivalent of an "executive order" passed to allow for a
one-time waiver and allow the funding. That didn>t happen all that
often, which is why academicians over in Englandland were always so
reluctant to work with the military. Most of the time they>d wind up
footing the bill themselves.
OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let>s face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
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Pat Flannery
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 8:35 am Post subject: Re: Jodrell Bank telescope 'was secret nuclear missile warni |
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Martin Postranecky wrote:
[quote]
"They obviously expected me to stay. But I wanted to leave and told them
'Look, I>m a British citizen, I demand to be returned to
England'."
He added: "The evidence is that the Soviets did try and to keep me in the
Soviet Union. I was extremely ill when I came back."
[/quote]
He obviously ate their food, you have no idea how bad some of their food is.
I ate a chunk of cheese while I was over there, and had diarrhea inside
of a hour.
His story has the smell of BS about it.
Pat |
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