UKC

Sounds of Mars wind captured by Nasa's InSight lander

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/07/sounds-of-mars-wind-capture...

I hope John Carter has got his down jacket handy.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6CoIwcJ-E&

I'm all for science but can't justify the expense of some aspects of these missions to myself. How will a better understanding of Martian seismology benefit us? Also, we've recorded a breeze on Mars, big wow, what a waste of money. Ploughing those billions into a more earth focused programme of sience would be more beneficial, it's not like we're not bereft of problems is it?

Does wind even make a noise?
Rather the effect of the air flowing past the microphone.
As Hex says, bollocks!

I once asked a an Astro physicist what they were looking for? They looked at me rather startled I had asked the question.

Because it's there...

It wasn’t someone who posts on here was it? If so, he doesn’t do simplicity. Perhaps Astro physicists are descended from an alien species that knows something that we don’t?

yes, but should the person working in Spar in Llanberis be paying be income tax to fund it?

Good point. I don't use most of the roads in the uk, any of the free museums in London or the army perhaps I should stop paying tax...

roads, you use some.

museums, your choice.

Army, they do defend you, remember 1914-18 39-45

Astro Physicist, now why should you, I or the person working in Spar pay for them to gaze through a telescope?

How much did the UK Space Agency contribute?
How much of that technology will be transferable to other projects that will make the UKSA a profit in the future? 

Yes. Otherwise it won't get done.

It just galls me that we (as humans) spend billions on these instruments then blast them off into the void. The old argument of accidentally discovering new technology as a consequence doesn't hold for me either (the moon landings and teflon for example), there would still be these discoveries with a more ethically focused programme of science.

Its just as well that you don’t have to justify the expense to yourself isn’t it?

A mars mission costs ~$7 per person in total in the USA. Their military costs ~$700 per person per year.

How do you justify spending your time on a forum when you could be focusing on Earth related problems?  One hour of work from you would offset that $7.

All work and no adventure makes Jack a dull boy.  No matter if Jack is a lone individual or a global effort.  

If you're looking for wasted tax spend to whinge about Mars missions are surely a long way down the list.

go on then, whats further up the list?

 Only just, I earn £8.05 an hour!

Why would an ethical approach to funding science be unadventurous?

Oh, how about foreign wars? subsidising poverty wages? tax payer funded incentives for environmentally destructive energy extraction? That do you for a start?

So if you were an American you’d be complaining about one hour of your time going to a Mars mission over ~33,000 hours of your time going to their military?

I’m just going by the hints in your posts...  The older I get the more I think the problems on earth are not in any way related to science funding and are down to politics, leadership and human factors.  So unless you intend to find super-advanced AI or Asimovian psychohistory I think it makes bugger all difference.  All better science will do is allow a larger number of people to live in whatever balance of conditions global politics facilitiates.  If I invent a magic energy device tomorrow, the population will expand globally until poverty and inequality is once again rife, just writ ten times larger.

You know that Rocket, all the smoke and flames, its not solar powered you know

That's pessimistic. You'd rather we blew our resources on a space exploratory extravaganza than even attempting to fix our earthly woes? I get what you're saying about military spending though this is a very good point.

Yes and foreign wars, that Assad , leave him to it, and Rwanda, nothing happening there keep on walking.

But we aren’t blowing our resources on space exploration.

Annual humanitarian funding is about the same as  20 headline Mars mission.  In reality there’s one headline Mars mission every few years - max.

I could pull another thirty examples out where vastly more money is spent helping people than on mars missions.

A Mars mission represents about 0.002% of what humanity can accomplish in a year.  I’d look to the other 99.998% before pulling out the worn-out tirade against funding space.

One day people will live and die on Mars.  There’s a lot about that with direct relevance to fixing earth - efficient closed loop living and efficient removal of carbon from atmospheric CO2 are two examples that spring to mind.  

With the future plans of the emerging next generation of launchers all converging on methane and liquid oxygen engines, the first solar powered launch is just over the horizon.  SpaceX will be very keen to demonstrate the viability of solar powered methane production from water and atmospheric CO2, because that’s how they plan to return ships and people from Mars.

Hell's bells, this thread has exploded!
Just to be clear, I'm 100% for space exploration, I just found 'listening' to the 'wind' a bit silly.

youtube.com/watch?v=e-rZv3hI76A&

A quick Google reveals that the UK Space Agency contributed £4 million to the project.
The London Olympics cost £9 Billion.
The Harry/Meghan wedding cost £32 Million.
HS2 will cost £403 Million/Mile.
Motorways about £10 Million/Mile.

The Queen?

We are leaving Assad to it. And the other stuff - are you deliberately obtuse? That's a rhetorical question.

Do tell me again how the wars were won. Was it endless blood shed or perhaps a little is owed to scientific discovery leading to advantages in the field... like nuclear weapons, rockets, radar, sonar, code breaking...?

What about her? I assume she generates a positive return on investment. Do you disagree?

Night night, its boo boos for me x

Why not? Exploration of space and other planets, helps us to gain a/broaden our perspective on our place 'within the grand scheme of things', which is arguably of benefit to any human who has an imagination, and the technology developed can later be used in other applications too. 

Now you put it that way I have to admit I agree with you. Whilst I can't see any direct benefits to me personally, I can imagine it is good for the benefit of the country as a whole...

You obviously seriously believe this.
But seeing as Martian gravity is about 38% of Earth's, we're going to end up being quite physiologically different from where we are now.

Well, that should make climbing things a bit easier at least...

I'll be bagging E6s on the Moon stopover on the way

I wonder if muscle strength would decrease inline with the strength of gravity?

If people in a weightless environment can experience muscle wastage, it seems potentially plausible that it might do. 

youtube.com/watch?v=-rvJYCbFzPQ&

We’re quite different from where we were back when we lived in the oceans.

We’re quite different now from when we all worked ourselves to death by our late 30s just a few centuries ago.

People survive a year with 0% of Earth’s gravity and an excercise regieme.  It’s early days for experimental results on fractional gravity however.   But it’s very hard to imagine that it will be worse than the effects of 0% of Earth’s gravity.

It does smack of fiddling while Rome burns. 

where's your thirst for knowledge and sense of adventure?

Another one - the budget for “Hollywood” is about 10 headline Mars missions per year.

All it does is pump out pap to make people think everything is rosy, that the good guys always win etc, and keep people busy without contributing to solving any of the worlds problems.

Space research on the other hand is - for example - a key part of how we understand so much about the weather and it’s interaction with climate.  Weather satellites are a massive, tangible result of space research.  The same people and laboratories design and build instruments for climate satellites, weather satellites, mars missions and astronomy.  

So money spent on mars contributes towards a wider industry with massive consequences for humanity.  Can you say the same about Hollywood?

You misunderstand me. I love learning and value adventure. Call me a philistine but dusty Mars must be the most uninspiring of planets. One question that intrigues me is is DNA found outside of our solar system or did it arise on Earth? Maybe we'll never know as we're pre-occupied with growing space yams on the far side of the moon and launching Tesla's into deep space.

Good point. And when you think we spend $265,000,000,000 a year on cosmetics there is certainly alot of unnecessary expenditure going on on planet Earth

Yes, by even a lax definition of “necessary” most expenditure is pretty pointlessly wasted.  There is the counter point that cosmetics is opt-in unlike tax, but a quite evil and determined corporate marketing machine has made it almost obligatory for half the population, as well as I think contributing to a lot of mental health issues by telling little girls they’re ugly and only look nice slathered in their crap, whilst under fed and gaunt.

I suppose the point is dusty Mars is very similar to earth (compared to the other planets in our solar system) and very likely once had surface water. In understanding Mars, especially the possibility that it may once have harboured life, we are better understanding our own place in the solar system. Sending robots to Mars is infinitely cheper than sending people.

It also had a magnetic field, which protected the atmosphere.  For some reason the core stopped generating this, and the solar wind stripped most of it away.  This is something of a problem for any sort of human habitation (because of the radiation from solar flares), let alone any futuristic terraforming.

It would be interesting to know why the core failed - maybe it was just too small to be stable.  Our magnetic field is due for a reversal which may cause a lot of problems in itself.  If it were to fail completely we wouldn’t need to worry about climate change...

You know we can actually do two things at the same time?   We all benefit from increasing the pool of human knowledge, and the obvious, eas things are all done.  I like early earth history - how much benefit in that ? - but again the sum of knowledge.  We have plenty enough music and art now, why waste money on new when we could spend it on wheelchairs or better roads ?

Also the  money argument is largely a nonsense - there isn't a finite limit, one pound spent there isnt  another gone from something else.  

The thing is, technological advancement doesn't work like you think it does.  If you get a bunch of clever people and put them in a room, and tell them they have to think up 'something that will improve life for the people of this planet' then not a lot will happen. 

An awful lot of the major technological steps forward happen as spin-offs when you have some other, perhpas not so obviously 'worthy' or 'ethical' thing to aim for.  Tim B-L wasn't trying to come up with a way for you to send pictures of cats around the world - he wasn't even thinking of a globally connected internet - he was trying to figure out a way to patch computers together to faster analyse proton-proton interactions in the LEP at CERN.  The Soviets weren't thinking they should lay down the first steps for a GPS satellite constellation when they launched Sputnik 1 - they were just trying to prove to the US that they were better at firing big heavy things into near earth orbit.  And to repeat the oft-quoted examples, NASA weren't trying to find a way to stop your eggs burning or to do your trainers up - they were trying to stick a man on the moon, just because it was there (well, also to show the USSR etc etc...).

Many of the advances we take for granted now were found, not because we knew we'd find them useful, but because they were solutions to problems created specifically by chasing apparently 'pointless' knowledge.

Nothing quite so specific as that - and in any case the various computers will have been networked together already. His idea was one of general 'information management': see https://cds.cern.ch/record/369245/files/dd-89-001.pdf for the original proposal.

I think I've read that the first working proof-of-concept was making the internal CERN phone directory available on-line.

Why is everyone getting their y-fronts in a twist when I put the words science and ethics together? One of the aim's you quote was to put a man on the moon, which they succeeded in doing and teflon (and velcro?) were born. So why not inject billions into developing bacteria that might hoover up CO2, as a by product, we might perhaps invent yoghurt that doesn't go off or new ways of fighting disease?

Because you seem to be advocating pulling funding from areas of science that don't fit your definition of 'ethical'.  Or possibly just 'not exciting enough'. 

Proportionally the amount we spend on Plantary Science or astrophysics research is laughable compared to the amount we spend on our military.

Its not fair to say the military serves a purpose but space exploration doesn't when their costs aren't equivalent at all.

Sure the military has a use. Does it have £40 Billion's worth of use?

Space exploration might not seem necessary but I think the UKs Space Agency Budget for 2015 was like £170 million.

If we were slightly to successful and lost control of them, we could trigger an extinction event that makes the last 10,000 years and the coming 1,000 look inconsequential.  Ethical science?

Yup, helping everyone live much longer is just what the world needs.  As it happens, vastly more money is already spent finding new ways to fight disease than is spent on Mars missions.

Thinking about this more, and going off on a serious tangent briefly, a friend who can struggle with certain self destructive urges said that she wanted to stay alive to able to see what happens next, to do with space exploration and where man ends up etc. It could encourage children to become scientists too. A friend with a PHD who is planning on part authoring a science book for young people was inspired by space related science and travel I gather when they were younger. 

In some ways Venus is more similar to Earth,

There’s a layer of the Venusian atmosphere where we could share a beer in our normal clothes, just wearing oxygen masks.  Half of earth sea level pressure, 28oC and very close to earth normal surface gravity.  We already know how to build airships for those conditions.

If we could induce a Great Oxygenation Event on Venus then it could be rendered habitable at surface level without having to find an atmosphere.  See me earlier post about runaway CO2 consuming bacteria...

The Soviets even managed to land a craft on the surface and return pictures.  The Americans failed dismally and I think are still sulking about it decades later so it’s all Mars this, Mars that these days...

If Rome is going to burn then the best chance we have of finding Constantinople rests with astrophysicists.

/overextended metaphor 

Put the fire out first. 

And didn't Rutherford encourage his students to pursue splitting the atom, because it was to learn more about the atom itself since the energy required to split it was orders of input greater than the potential output (or something like that)? In other words it was the search for scientific knowledge that mattered, not the potential application