[extropy-chat] 10th Planet Discovered

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Tue Mar 16 15:24:28 UTC 2004


On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:06:24AM -0500, Rik van Riel wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Brent Neal wrote:
> 
> > Absolutely. The next logical place to put humans is Mars, to cut down

The next logical place to put humans is the Moon, obviously. (Orbit is not a
place, it's absence of such).

> > the communications delay to industrialization efforts in the asteroid

Czech this out: http://www.martinreddy.net/pubs/pdf/ECS-CSG-36-97.pdf

As I said, the Moon is barely within reach of decent telepresence
processivity. It will need some adjustment on side of operators. Here's a
good place to introduce autonomy at reflex level, advancing to planning and
execution of tasks.

> > belt.
> 
> Ironically Mars is further away from most of the asteroid
> belt than the Earth is.  This because at any given time,

If you're talking manned spaceflight, you have to address safety, transfer
time in microgravity, reaction mass, life support. Distance per se means
very little, delta vee a lot more.

> half of the asteroids will be "on the other side of the
> sun" from Mars, or at least at another point in the orbit.

If 500 ms is degrading for hand-eye coordination, how degrading is 12 min? An
hour? A day?
 
> Transportation from Mars to the asteroid belt and back

There's no need for "back" with automation.

> may be faster than with Earth though, due to being further
> out from the Sun's, not as deep inside the gravity well.
> 
> > Plus, we actually have a decent chance of terraforming Mars. Added
> > bonus.
> 
> Good sunlight is definately an important factor, indeed...

Indeed. Look up solar constant in Earth orbit/Moon and Mars.

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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