/sci/ - Science & Math

Funding the research of aliens with Kickstarter.

With the successful landing of Curiosity, we saw a real media and public attention to science and specifically space exploration, as #MSL and #Curiosity were the 2nd and 3rd trending thread on Twitter.
Another remarquable topic was #FundNASA, which started with a TechCrunch blog post, asking the Government to let NASA funds its projects with the help of the general public.
On average, every american paid 7 to 8 dollars for the Curiosity mission. And people kept saying that they would love to pay much more for that kind of interesting mission.

So what’s next? NASA announced they were going again on Mars in 2016. But their mission is just not sexy at all. They want to send a static lander on the surface to drill to 5 meters, and oh, the lander won’t have a color camera. (Viking lander anyone?)

This won’t help us find out wether life exists or existed in our solar system. What kind of missions should we do to find it out?
We have mainly two possibilities:
Opportunity and Spirit took pictures on Mars of rocks really looking like fossils. And what did NASA do with them? They just said they were artifacts or that they didn’t know what it was. And that’s it. The Mars Sample Return project is a great project, but it won’t get funded.
So here’s our first option: sending a rover and a lander on Mars, capable of collecting these «fossils» and returning them back to Earth. What’s the cost of this ? Less than the Curiosity mission.

To be continued

>One day, Earth will be a pale shadow of its former self and humanity will number in the trillions; most of which will live in confined, utilitarian space habitats. That will be the state of humanity from that point on. We will live on the foreign shores of alien worlds longer than we were hunter gatherers in Africa. And all the while humans will search the sky for a blue dot and wonder what it must have been like living on the world you evolved on, the world you were born for; to be able to walk through fields of grass that share your genetic code, grass that you are related to; to live on a world that doesn’t require constant supervision to maintain habitability, a world that takes care of you…

>Don’t get me wrong, I’d love nothing more than to walk across the surface of Mars. I’d jump at the chance to take a one way trip to the red planet if it was offered to me. I love space! However, just because space is amazing and just because humans are not exploring it doesn’t mean the age we live in isn’t just as amazing.

One day, Earth will be a pale shadow of its former self and humanity will number in the trillions; most of which will live in confined, utilitarian space habitats. That will be the state of humanity from that point on. We will live on the foreign shores of alien worlds longer than we were hunter gatherers in Africa. And all the while humans will search the sky for a blue dot and wonder what it must have been like living on the world you evolved on, the world you were born for; to be able to walk through fields of grass that share your genetic code, grass that you are related to; to live on a world that doesn’t require constant supervision to maintain habitability, a world that takes care of you…

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love nothing more than to walk across the surface of Mars. I’d jump at the chance to take a one way trip to the red planet if it was offered to me. I love space! However, just because space is amazing and just because humans are not exploring it doesn’t mean the age we live in isn’t just as amazing.

>>4707757
One day, Earth will be a pale shadow of its former self and humanity will number in the trillions; most of which will live in confined, utilitarian space habitats. That will be the state of humanity from that point on. We will live on the foreign shores of alien worlds longer than we were hunter gatherers in Africa. And all the while humans will search the sky for a blue dot and wonder what it must have been like living on the world you evolved on, the world you were born for; to be able to walk through fields of grass that share your genetic code, grass that you are related to; to live on a world that doesn’t require constant supervision to maintain habitability, a world that takes care of you…

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love nothing more than to walk across the surface of Mars. I’d jump at the chance to take a one way trip to the red planet if it was offered to me. I love space! However, just because space is amazing and just because humans are not exploring it doesn’t mean the age we live in isn’t just as amazing.

>>4407878
>Oil? On other planets?
On other MOONS.

There are literal seas of hydrocarbons.

>Earth runs out of fossil fuels
>Earth invades Titan for its seas of methane
Problem solved.