Re: Space exploration for the rest of us

James Nicoll wrote:
In article <451aef9f$0$27386$ba4acef3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jacob navia <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Atelus wrote:

Sure there is no immediate return on your investment in human
exploration of space, but you cannot negate the fact that sending
humans to Mars, or space, would give us more information than a couple
of robots. The fact remains that in order for anyone to get to go to
space someone has to do it first and while robotics are a good start we
cannot understand the entire human factor without sending a human.

Do not get me wrong, I am an advocate for robotics research as well
but if you ever want to go from sitting in front of your computer to
space I suggest appreciating human space flight a bit more.


You want to send humans everywhere?

To Venus, with its 450 Celsius?


On the surface. 50 km up, it's comparatively temperate.

Well, in space is even beter.

No Sulfuric acid clouds, quite difficult to have something last
for some months in there.



To Jupiter with its crushing gravity? A human would
be crushed dead in a few minutes by the huge gravity.

Same of Saturn.


Interestingly the only planet in the Solar System whose surface
or cloud top gravity is multiples of Earth's is Jupiter. The others are
roughly comparable or less. Saturn's density is so low that the cloud
top gravity is only 90% of Earth's, despite having 95 times as much mass.

Some equatorial cloud top gravities, plus Earth's surface gravity for
comparison


Planet Gravity Gravity/Earth's

Jupiter 22.9 m/s/s 2.3

Saturn 9.1 0.9

Uranus 7.8 0.8

Neptune 11.0 1.1

Earth 9.8 1.0



This is a very informative table. You have a point here.
Thanks for the info.

Another "work around" would be to live in a liquid
(water). Floating in water, we could stand higher
gravity wells without being crushed.

But you will agree that this would slightly explode
NASA's budget for the time being...

:-)


How would you keep a human alive for long in Titan, with its -170 C ???


In Canada, we have a technology we call "insulated clothing"
and "heated buildings".


Ahhh but Titan is no Canada... No oxygen means no burning. Only
nuclear power would do. Add to the horrible cold perpetual obscurity,
no oxygen to breathe and you start (maybe) getting the size of the
problem of keeping humans there.

All supplies must be sent from earth in an 8 year trip.

A robot could withstand that with no serius consequences and
could return information in this decade if we wanted to.

Humans?

Forget it.
.

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