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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Again we are not monolithic organisms and your immune system isn't a result of, or necessarily regulated, by human cells. There is no viable scenario for long-term, independent habitation in space or on another planet. Optimism and dreaming are fabulous, but the realities associated with the viruses, phages, bacteria and fungi essential to human life just don't travel as well as we do.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Never heard of anyone dying due to lack of virus, worms, fungi or such other micro-organisms.
Did you hear about joe?
Yeah man what a shame.. he became uninfected and died.
Ok all BSing aside I am curious about your hypothesis.
Seriously
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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It's not a hypothesis, you exist and are co-regulated by your symbionts and would quickly die without them.
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wbw
Trad climber
'cross the great divide
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5. Why not? We spend way more money on things that destroy us than it would take to do the project.
6. Adventure brings out the best in our race. We need more BEST.
Very well said.
I posted a link (sorry, guess I don't have the skilz to post a picture from the Web) on a different thread of some of the pictures coming back. Mars may have good bouldering, but it definitely has big mountains.
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krahmes
Social climber
Stumptown
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Putting that nuke lab car on the surface of Mars was a great achievement of understanding and follow through, inspirational in my book. Far more than anything I see at the Olympics. Ground breaking? Time will tell.
First more than a few echoes on this thread of this sentiment:
Space exploration should take a backseat until we find a way to consistantly feed the millions of starving children on this planet. imho. I thought this as a ten year old while watching the lunar landing and believe it today.
Let me put forth that in 1969 the world population was 3.6 billion and the USA population was 203 million. In 2012 the world population is 7.0 billion and the USA population is 314 million. I believe by any historical measure we live in the bloom of human consciousness. We feed the poor, reduce infant mortality, extend life expectancy, and fight less murderous wars than we ever have as species. The richest ten percent get to live the life of Riley; flying across the sky, powered by stored energy of the planet’s dead to eat mangos by beach, to marvel at the new normal of the North American west or move to California to hang out on the east side and drive up 395 in 4 lane air conditioned comfort and bemoan Columbus coming to the new world. The individual human numbers bear out a simple fact we live in a remarkable time.
Let us leave aside my belief that this moment of human culture will end in seed, thorn, and dried husk; or that our demographic gain comes at a great cost to other species of this planet; and marvel that it is a remarkable achievement we have made as a species and what has made it possible was technology and technology is dependent on understanding. And what the Mars mission does is very similar to what the Hadron collider does and that is to add to our understanding. I have an understanding of relativity, evolution, quantum mechanics, genetics, and deep time all because people with a mastery of subjects have made this information available to me. I am not a master of these subjects, but my limited understanding of the results of untold years of human work and mastery informs my life and gives me a glimmer of the world beyond the veil. I am grateful for this incomplete understanding. I have a far different world and universal view than what either of my grandfathers had and I would hope that those that come after will build a better world of this knowledge and understanding.
The Mars mission has moved forward in part because the data so far has been tantalizing and yet ambiguous. The current hypothesis that in a brief window in the evolution of the solar system when the sun burned hot and the thermal gradient of the Mars was higher there was brief blooming of life on Mars is a culmination of the all missions to Mars up this point. That this life may still persist, as evidenced by the methane atmospheric anomaly would be amazing. Confirmation of life on Mars in the past or present would be game changer in human understanding.
Better my tax money and the creations of the FED’s balance sheet goes to a Mars mission than bailing out bankers or paying the pensions of government employees/drones so they can pay their mortgage on their second home (and yes I understand that this project is a function of government). Mars exploration is a great endeavor and I hope it continues if the USA can’t find it in its modern destiny to continue to fund space exploration I’m sure China, Corporations, or some other player down the road will. And if the great burn comes and some survive; that the understanding those with mastery gather now will inform the better world that those who inherit create out of those ashes. imho.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Joseph is most likely correct. Based on current technology, humans don't have the means to take with them the environment they'd need for long trips in space. Zero gravity and radiation can to some extent be prepared for, but keeping our own internal biota happy would be a huge challenge.
Perhaps a human trip to Mars would be feasible, even if with some negative health effects? Humans regularly spend six months or more on Mir and now the space station, and the effects are fairly well known. And even if there are significant risks, there are people who'd volunteer for it.
A trip to Mars would probably be 18 - 24 months, with six months in the middle on Mars, at about half Earth's gravity. Probably more radiation (possibly fatal, or cancer causing), more time away, much of it in low or zero gravity. Sustaining our internal and external ecology would be the question.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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It's not a hypothesis, you exist and are co-regulated by your symbionts and would quickly die without them.
Yet I have never heard of anyone dying from this cause.
So it would seem that these symbionts are
A. Vastly more resilient than we are.
B. Capable of living well off the nutrition we feed ourselves and them.
C. Not really an important factor in our health
D. So ubiquitous in our environment that they are never in short supply. Like Oxygen only more so since people do die from lack of oxygen.
E. I just havn't heard of this cause of death and it is relatively easy to occur...which would prove something obvious, I don't know everything.
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Personally I'll just go with Mesners aproach to the quasi-scientific limits of human physiology ..
I'm pretty sure we can find a way to do it..
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BooYah
Social climber
Ely, Nv
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Damn good post, Krahmes.
Something to think about, surely.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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As just a tidbit about the diversity of your own microbiome, the bacteria in all your armpits is more similar to those in my armpits than to the bacteria behind your own knees. It's funny business that lingering Victorian, post-WWII industrial, and many religious mindsets are having a difficult time reconciling with even today, but it is now way beyond dispute.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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"you exist and are co-regulated by your symbionts and would quickly die without them."
So I didn't build this?
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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And again I say that armpit bacteria.. it's either tougher than I am and therefore irrelevant or just basic irrelevant since I never heard of anyone dying without it.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Again, 9/10th of the cells which make up your body are not human. You haven't heard of anyone ever dying without them because there is no such thing as being without them because no one exists without them. But get them out of balance and there is hell to pay - it is quite likely we will find going forward that many disease conditions and cancers are the result of imbalances in our microbiomes as they play a major role in managing gene and epigenetic expression in our human cells.
We are also finding we can do functional metagenetic analyses of human microbiomes and group people similar to the way we group them into blood types and those microbiome groups similarly span all racial groups.
They are irrelevant in the same way breathing and eating are. In fact, they play a strong role in what you like eating.
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Delhi Dog
climber
Good Question...
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"Damn good post, Krahmes."
+1
cheers
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 7, 2012 - 01:38pm PT
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MADNESS! Exactly! Which is why we have to try!
Can you imagine Dingus, just for a moment, if MADNESS in mens' minds didn't exist? We'd still be picking at termite larvae in the great rift valley.
We're all parasites Dingus. Some more than others. For our species to survive long term we have to "invade" other worlds.
Human outposts on the moon and Mars will be fraught with peril. Just providing the basic essentials of life to our soft pink frames will be MADNESS!
Why climb that huge cliff over there? There's no reason to. You could walk around. It's MADNESS!
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Sagebrusher
Sport climber
Iowa
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Mars is the future.
"In the long term, the greatest changes in the Solar System will come from changes in the Sun itself as it ages. As the Sun burns through its supply of hydrogen fuel, it gets hotter and burns the remaining fuel even faster. As a result, the Sun is growing brighter at a rate of ten percent every 1.1 billion years.[95] In one billion years' time, as the Sun's radiation output increases, its circumstellar habitable zone will move outwards, making the Earth's surface hot enough that liquid water can no longer exist there naturally. At this point, all life on land will become extinct.[96] Evaporation of water, a potent greenhouse gas, from the oceans' surface could accelerate temperature increase, potentially ending all life on Earth even sooner.[97] During this time, it is possible that as Mars's surface temperature gradually rises, carbon dioxide and water currently frozen under the surface soil will release into the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect that will heat the planet until it achieves conditions parallel to Earth today, providing a potential future abode for life.[98] By 3.5 billion years from now, Earth's surface conditions will be similar to those of Venus today.[95]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
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Space travel is ego driven.
We construct these devices that polute the moon and stars, then pat ourselves on the back for our 'great achievement'.
What is the benefit of landing on mars again?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Pud - its a secret and we can't tell you.
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