Posted on 09/24/2007 10:41:14 AM PDT by Names Ash Housewares
NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037, the administrator of the US space agency indicated here Monday. This year marks the half-century of the space age ushered in by the October 1957 launch of the Sputnik-1 by the then Soviet Union, NASA administrator Michael Griffin noted.
In 2057, the centenary of the space era, "we should be celebrating 20 years of man on Mars," Griffin told an international astronautics congress in this southern Indian city where he outlined NASA's future goals.
The international space station being built in orbit and targeted for completion by 2010 would provide a "toehold in space" from where humanity can travel first to the moon and then to Mars, Griffin said.
"We are looking at the moon and Mars to build a civilisation for tomorrow and after that," Griffin added in his remarks at a conference session attended by heads of the world's space agencies.
President George W. Bush in 2004 announced an ambitious plan for the US to return to the moon by 2020 and use it as a stepping stone for manned missions to Mars and beyond.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1901548/posts
The research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Louisiana Board of Regents, Arizona Proteomics Consortium, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center, National Institutes of Health and the University of Arizona and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
bump for later read
Ah, but what makes it less likely today, might make it more likely tomorrow, so I stand by my statement. If it doesn't prohibit reproduction its not "bad".
Recessive traits do not become dominant. Mutations create new traits, some will be recessive and some dominant, some will be "bad" and some "good".
They become dominant (in the sense that all members have them) when the existing dominant traits become extinct. How else to explain blond blue-eyed populations of people and dark skinned brown-eyed people?
Many "bad" traits make reproduction much less likely regardless of environment.
A bit of open conjecture. By that line of thinking, one can make any trait bad by simply hypothesizing that a better trait could exist, and indeed it could. And of course, there could always be worse.
If such a "bad" trait is recessive, it will only be expressed if it is reinforced by a matching trait from the other parent. If the "bad" trait is dominant, it will be expressed regardless of the trait inherited from the other parent.
And back to my previous point, recessive traits win out and become common when there is a shortage of parents with the dominant trait. This is the nature of designed breeding in animals.
If a strongly "bad" trait is always expressed, it is quickly weeded out of the gene pool. Only when these traits are recessive, can they "hide", to pop up from time to time as they are reinforced. The result is that most "bad" traits, which continue in a gene pool for many generations, are recessive. This, by the way, is one of the simplest predictions and reproducible experiments of evolution.
Totally non sequitor. There is no prediction of evolution, only of dominant and recessive trait survivability. You aren't proving evolution, you are demonstrating that one of the proposed mechanisms functions as predicted. But even here, you are making a subjective decision that something is "bad" because it does not survive, and you prove that by showing that it does not survive. Your experiment does not allow for a good trait not surviving, because you've already rigged the criteria to prohibit such a result.
Indeed, in evolution, most major changes would have to begin with a dominant trait that served no useful purpose. Say the earliest nubs of wings on an insect. Then that dominant trait would have to continue over countless generations, somehow dominating in the gene pool, until it finally became something of use. Until this point of usefulness, it would actually be a hindrance (a bad trait).
The problem that most people have, in understanding evolution, is that they are simply not good enough at math. Of course, many also have beliefs that would prevent them from understanding it, even if they did understand the math.
I think the problem that most smart people have with evolution is that they don't accept the survival of the fittest explanation for the creation of new traits. Wings on an insect being a good example. Its easily understandable how wings can be a good trait, its just not understandable how non-functional stubs can be a good trait. Then you find yourself inventing more an more reasons "why" it had to be a good trait.
It far simpler to simply accept that we have no idea why insects developed wings, nor really that it is better, only that they did develop and that they aren't prohibitive to continuing the species.
The laws of mathematics predict everything that we know about evolution, just as surely as they do with common games of chance.
You can't claim prediction when you start with the answer. Correctly predicting where a super ball will come to rest when tossed from the top of the Empire State Building is completely different than explaining how a super ball balanced on top of a light pole got to be there.
Keep in mind that even long after it was accepted that the planets orbited the sun, the Earth centric calculations were the only ones that produced predictable results. Why? Because they were based on known outcomes. Thus, whatever was incorrect in the assumptions didn't matter, because the error had become the correcting formula.
I nominate Al Gore.
The grandson is 6 months old right now. Might be the right age and experience in 2037 to ride on this mission.
I believe the first person to walk on Martian soil is alive today.
Only as long as everyone continues to agree on it. The whole point of the treaty was to keep the U.S. down while the other countries caught up because it would be “unfair” otherwise. The minute some other country with the tech and the means decides not to abide by it, all bets are off.
What sort of financial commitment? Are you volunteering to commit a couple of billion dollars?
Like what?
If they find one oil or gold field they’ll accelerate the program and be there in a month.
So let me get this straight:
The Chinese are going to hurl rocks at the rest of the world from Mars at the cost of who-knows-how-many-trillions, but can only do it once every 18 months (when the orbits of Mars and Earth line up) and even then have to wait 10 months for the rocks to actually make it to earth?
Sounds like a brilliant idea for a weapon!
The proof is in the pudding. If the risk/benefit ratio were even remotely manageable, corporations would already be there. They aren't. There's a reason for that.
That’s a fascinating study. Thanks for linking to that! I learn something every day.
I have an MP3 of an Apollo 11 commemorative recording that included transmissions from Houston reading the top news headlines to the crew.
I think Agnew said that we should put a man on Mars by 2000, "...but a spokesman for the administration said the VP was not speaking for them..."
I can only conclude that your "Masters degree" is in sociology, education, theology, women's studies, or some other field of "learning" that requires no rational thought.
They only have Starbucks.
At the rate we’re going maybe the Chinese can give him a ride to Mars earlier than 2037?
I've already refuted you and I could easily do it again, but it is clear you can't understand higher thought processes. There, does it sound just as witless when I use that tactic?
I can only conclude that your "Masters degree" is in sociology, education, theology, women's studies, or some other field of "learning" that requires no rational thought.
But of course you must, because otherwise you are robbed of your warm fuzzy, everyone that is anyone thinks like me, neo-science security blanket. There is nothing more common, nor disappointing than intellectual thumb sucking. Original thought is the least common product of PhD programs, and original thinkers are the most isolated and rejected in academia.
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