Mark Warner opens the door a little wider on Mars exploration

[wyldwolf]

A company hoping to pursue flights through the atmosphere of Mars is expanding its facility in northern Virginia, Governor Mark Warner announced today.

Aurora Flight Sciences plans to invest 5 (M) million dollars to expand its facility at the Manassas Regional Airport and create 100 new jobs.

The new engineering and development facility will help to create an unmanned aerial vehicle that is designed to fly in the Martian atmosphere.

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3697296

[benburch]

1. Good...

A UAV is all we shall likely ever have there.

Human beings are not likely to get there and back without dying of radiation poisoning from cosmic and solar radiation.

And there is no shielding that is possible because we can barely afford to send the men, much less tons of lead, to Mars.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Depleted uranium is much denser than lead... maybe the best

thing to do is send it to mars rather than spread it all over our gd planet.

[benburch]

5. Yes, but enough shielding would weigh just as much as lead.

And then there is the radiation from the U itself. "Depleted" just means "not good for bombs", not harmless.

[Maple]

3. Humans will walk on Mars

They just won't likely be American

[benburch]

4. I doubt it.

Unless we invent a magic radiation shield.

[Maple]

6. I can guarantee it

but with that outlook...it's even more unlikely to be Americans.

[benburch]

8. Have you ever had radiation-safety training?

I have.

I know the consequences of 180 days in solar space.

In order of the amount of exposure;

- Cataracts.

- Leukemia.

- Bone marrow collapse.

- Death. (And your eyes liquify and your flesh dribbles off your body before you expire.)

Not pretty.

We'll not get there until we can manage it in 20 days or less, or have a magic radiation shield, or can afford the luxury of heavy shielding, or all three, and that will take a nuclear rocket, and a BIG one.

Do you think anybody is going to stand by as a nuclear reactor of large size is launched on a rocket that has a 1 in 50 chance of blowing up or malfunctioning?

[Maple]

9. Nuclear-biological-chemical

training...yes indeed.

However, we'll find a way, don't worry.

First of all though, you have to be willing to look.

[benburch]

10. I did the A-Model system for a couple of reactors...

And yes, you have to look. But I find it unlikely that we will be able to solve this problem.

We are MUCH better off conquering the MOON.

[Maple]

11. People have always said things like that

In 1894, the president of the Royal Society, Lord Kelvin, predicted that radio had no future. The first radio factory was opened five years later. He also predicted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Today, there are more than one billion radio sets in the world, tuned to more than 33,000 radio stations.

Irish scientist, Dr. Dionysius Lardner (1793 - 1859) didn't believe that trains could contribute much in speedy transport. He wrote: "Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers ' would die of asphyxia' ."

In 1894, A.A. Michelson, who with E.W. Morley seven years earlier experimentally demonstrated the constancy of the speed of light, said that the future of science would consist of "adding a few decimal places to the results already obtained."

[benburch]

12. Yes, I know that.

And I use Lord Kelvin in arguments all the time.

But do you know how much energy is in some cosmic rays???

Even a sizable magnetic shield (as has been proposed) would not stop the worst of them.

And a magnetic shield is a bad thing for a ballistic vehicle; The solar wind and solar magnetic field will change your velocity and direction significantly if you have enough of a shield.

[wyldwolf]

13. Well, enough cosmic rays would produce...

[Maple]

14. Well just give up and stay home then

"I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years ... Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions." Wilbur Wright, 1908

Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.

Albert Einstein, 1932
There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.

U.S. Secretary of Navy, December 4, 1941
No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.

[benburch]

15. Not saying go home OR give up.

Just saying that we need to develop really, really good robots.

[Maple]

16. No, not robots. Humans.

Humans will walk on Mars...indeed live on Mars.

And many other places.

'Here there be no dragons.'

[benburch]

17. When that day comes.

We will BE the robots.

[Maple]

18. Nonsense

Mars is just next door.

Wait till we actually go into space...or even transhumanism.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. We already have one built in.... we just don't fuel it up enough.....

1: J Agric Food Chem. 2005 Jul 27;53(15):6151-5. Related Articles, Links

Antioxidant activities of phenolic acids on ultraviolet radiation-induced erythrocyte and low density lipoprotein oxidation.

Hsieh CL, Yen GC, Chen HY.

Department of Food and Nutrition, Hung-Kuang University, 34 Chungchie Road, Shalu, Taichung 43302, Taiwan. [e-mail]

The exposure of mammalian cells to UV light induces various deleterious responses. Some of the major harmful effects are DNA damage, cell membrane peroxidation, systemic immune suppression, and aging acceleration. Reactive oxygen species and free radicals are believed to be largely responsible for some of the deleterious effects of UV upon cells.

Typical administration of antioxidants has recently proved to represent a successful strategy for protecting the cells against UV-mediated oxidative damage. The objective of this study was to investigate the inhibitory effect of phenolic acids (caffeic acid, ferulic acid, gallic acid, and protocatechuic acid) on oxidative damage in human erythrocytes and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) induced by UVB radiation.

The results revealed that the thiobarbituric acids reactive substances induced by UVB were decreased from 2.78 to 0.12-0.89 nmol MDA/mg protein in erythrocyte ghost and from 0.72 to 0.14-0.43 nmol MDA/mg protein in LDL by the addition of phenolic acids (100 muM). Caffeic acid, ferulic acid, and gallic acid exhibited over 85 and 60% inhibitory effect toward UVB-induced oxidation in erythrocytes and LDL, respectively.

Phenolic acids, especially gallic acid, could maintain the normal glutathione levels and glutathione peroxidase activity in hemolysate from erythrocytes that were exposed to UVB radiation in comparison with untreated control. The results indicate that the antioxidant activities of caffeic acid and ferulic acid play a potential role in protection against UVB oxidative damage to human erythrocytes and LDL.

PMID: 16029010 [PubMed - in process