Well I for one find Mars a lot more exciting, since it's probably easier to build up an atmosphere so people don't have to walk around in pressure suits, then to blast an atmosphere into space...

Besides, as the sun gets older it will only get hotter, and Venus will get progressively worse, while Mars might getting warmer is a good thing.


What really excites me though is people having to live in an environment where science plays a key role in your survival - we'll hear none of that new age and other hysterical, irrational religious mumbo-jumbo in places like that.

Don`t be overexcited, the religion is like a virus - eventually it`ll go there too. I`m always fascinated by the fact how the people tend to invent gods from the stuff they don`t quite understand yet. God of the fire, god of the storm/thunder... It`s like an excuse "I`m not stupid, because I don`t understand it. There must be a god behind all this.".

It might get out at some point, but in an environment where being irrational can kill you quite fast it'll be hard for it to take roots.

I'm guessing though that if people living away from earth will get spiritual, it'll be more about transcendence and contemplating the relationships of people and the universe, rather then inventing mythical creatures and space daddies. Which will be a massive improvement.

What do you mean you won't worship the Red Rock God when you get there? :hmpf:

What about the sand storm spirits? you must sacrifice a rock to please it.



...

On a serious note, any new settlement usually starts with religion. Missionaries are usually the first to arrive, traditionally. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the very first human colony in mars, there'd be a church in there too, although it's a completely useless (logically speaking) construction.

Excuse my ignorance, but how do you go about building an atmosphere without the sufficient planetary atmosphere to hold it all together?

3 billion years till that happens mate, I wouldn't hold my breath. Humans probably wont even exist by then, or if we did we'd be a race of brown genetically modified super humans.

I'm pretty sure nasa has its fair share of religious people, hell the states is a predominantly religious country that somehow manages to balance out beliefs and science. Not sure what the relevance of your point was apart from being a blind stab.

SG -> Ok, they exist, but a church on Mars? Evangelicals tend to hunt people down on their luck, and short of martians down on their luck... No, the scientists that are religous tend to keep it to themselves for the most part (or so goes my personal experience, had a senior lecturer who I found out after 3 years was a devout christian)

iirc mars' mass is too small to keep an atmosphere. (i think i heard once that it used to have one but lost it :( )
so it would probs make more sense to live under domes there than to cry and create an atmosphere for the whole planet.

Mars' gravity is sufficient to hold an atmosphere, the problems with it are different.

First, it was too small and cooled to quick and it didn't have plate tectonics, so there is no carbon cycle there, meaning the gasses from the atmosphere wound up closed up in rocks and minerals and weren't released, recycled back into the atmosphere.

Second thing is, somewhere in it's history Mars lost it's magnetic field (either do to it's core solidifying, or a massive impact), now it has loads of smaller, scattered fields, meaning it's atmosphere got blasted off into space by solar winds. That's a process that takes millions of years though, so if we manage to emit enough green house gasses into the atmosphere, and keep doing that, we don't have to worry about it being blasted away again.

The religious types in NASA where, from what I've seen, mostly the astronauts that came from air-force test pilots - people with "the right stuff", the administration staff etc. With the scientists the low percentage of religious people is the same low amount as with the rest of the scientific community.

And the people who go en masse at first will be scientists and engineers.

I'm not sure where you get the info from, but in the recent years they're having a harder and harder time at striking a balance between rationality, science and the religious masses.




On the terraforming of mars read these fine books:
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Martian Trilogy
Robert Zubrin - The Case for Mars


Latest photo:
http://i.imgur.com/BOCIF.jpg

If we are to terriform I suspect it will be via GM plants and bacteria.
In the meantime living in underground domes near icesheets would make more sense.

Barely :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSLRH0xBFD8

Curiosity drops it's heat shield ^.

Speaking of which, here's that pic of Venus russians took in the 80's:

http://i.imgur.com/oXw6r.jpg

Cool image - "defying gravity" clearly used that reference when they did their Venus landing.

Woops, I meant to say sufficient planetary mass/gravity >< just reread my post...

interesting to know:)

I sort of agree with that sentiment. I find my own departure from being religous to have been inspired by world events, and inherent injustice in how the world operates. But i maintain something and despise atheist supremacist sentiment. Just as ego driven as religious supremacy.

Thats a shooped version, original didnt have a view of the sky (camera mount broke, it was aiming at the ground and you could barely make out a tiny bit of the sky)

http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

Here's probably all the pics, that one from Venera 13 is among them.

Then one where you only see bits of the sky is apparently from Venera 14.


Regarding "atheist supremacy" :p I'll comment later on.

There were two successful ones? I'm a little confused, why didn't the BBC series I watched mention this :p

And Venera 9 apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_9

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...43_946-710.jpg

Pics!
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ms.../pia16032.html

360 degree colour panorama!

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/wh...ws&NewsID=1299

Next up: a four mile trip.

Loads of raw pics from the rover:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

USB DNA Sequencing device $900:

http://www.gizmag.com/minion-disposa...quencer/21513/

Every doctors going to have that in 10 years, if not 5.
Wow.

what mars is made of :
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...43_946-710.jpg

At least, one bit of one rock.

This is cool:
http://www.youtube.com/user/PhysicsCentralAPS

A youtube channel from a scientist on the ISS. Zero-G experiment fun!

Earth size planet found around Alpha Centauri!!!

http://www.space.com/18089-earth-siz...-centauri.html

It's too close to the star, but there's hope there are more!

Wow, that Drake equation just gets more and more positive numbers to put into it :D

Cool Robot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=FFGfq0pRczY

It actually wears shoes!
I was not aware that robots are already able to move like this :eek: