100 Bulldozers On Mars

[Nidio_Ohio]

A recent report at the U. Today website titled "Opportunity Discovers Most Powerful Evidence Yet for Martian Liquid Water" included some photos and someone had something funny to say about one of them: " They have finally found ruins of an ancient Martian building at last. See the second pic ".

I replied that "that can't possibly be since humans there disappeared many millions of years ago", but I was being serious, and I explained that I'd read about the matter in an old Theosophy book that had belonged to one of my grandfathers (R.I.P.). The joker turned out to be of the "hit-and-run" sort. He vanished. Two other people scolded me for bringing up religious matters on a scientific discussion forum. I told them that all I did was take up the challenge. One of them repeated the mainstream point of view on Theosophy: that its founder was an impostor.

I also said that, given the fact that so much time has gone by, any remains will be found buried beneath a lot of soil, so that "what we need on Mars is a big, simple, sturdy BULLDOZER that can search for possible macrofossils, not weak contraptions with complex minilabs that claw the soil like a chicken".

They've been sending those useless things ever since I was quite young, back in the early Seventies, and it has led them nowhere, so I'd tell them to try something else before another half a century goes by. Maybe there aren't even any germs anymore over there. Even if there was never any life on Mars, why not simply dig as deeply as possible and see what comes up? They could use explosives, as they do in the mining industry. This is such an obvious option that one wonders why the geniuses in charge of the space program haven't discussed it. Maybe they're not as bright as they're supposed to be, after all. Amateurs are bolder and far more creative.

My relative was neither a pathological liar nor a fool, and he wasn't crazy either. I inherited his outlook, which is more Eastern than Western, not whimsically, but because I know from experience that there are, after all, immaterial realms. I've been there, like so many others, especially those involved in violent traffic accidents (cp. "near-death experiences"). Many years ago I had a spontaneous "out-of-body experience" (OOBE). Clairvoyance and other "supernatural" skills (they're quite "natural", really) are authentic and the authors of books like the aforementioned one were seers.

The problem is how to go about convincing the people who work for the NASA that they should stop fooling around and start digging big, deep holes in several places all over the planet. Heavy-duty digging machines would be far cheaper and easier to put together and send than those ineffectual little testing stations. Since gravity on Mars is much weaker, they wouldn't have to be as heavy as those we use here --they could be made of strong, light materials like aluminium--, and besides, in order to make them even easier to deliver, they could be designed in such a way that soil and/or rocks could be placed on them, which would give them the necessary heft.

This is the official launching of my 100 Bulldozers On Mars project. If there are any people here who think it's a sound idea then maybe we should write a petition, sign it and send it over to the dull managers who control the space programs in several countries.

[Van Rijn]

I replied that "that can't possibly be since humans there disappeared many millions of years ago", but I was being serious, and I explained that I'd read about the matter in an old Theosophy book that had belonged to one of my grandfathers (R.I.P.).

You might seriously believe that, but it's not a scientific argument, and you shouldn't expect that others will automatically accept and agree with your beliefs.

They've been sending those useless things ever since I was quite young, back in the early Seventies, and it has led them nowhere, so I'd tell them to try something else before another half a century goes by.

Those "useless things" have been invaluable sources of information about Mars. Most of what we know about Mars today was learned through the Mars orbiters, landers and rovers. The challenge for anyone proposing an alternative to current missions is to provide a credible scientific argument that the alternative can provide more useful information and can do so at reasonable cost.

They could use explosives, as they do in the mining industry. This is such an obvious option that one wonders why the geniuses in charge of the space program haven't discussed it.

That might be obvious to you, but it certainly isn't obvious to me. Could you walk through how you'd expect explosives to be used? Keep in mind the mass constraints of hardware we send to Mars. The new MSL rover, Curiosity, is on the heavy side of what can reasonably be sent. If you have something like Curiosity, how would you expect it to plant and use explosives? How many charges do you think it could reasonably carry? What would be the mass and size of a charge? I'd expect the process would be very time consuming: Among other things, the rover would have to move off quite some distance to avoid possible debris, and would have to return after the explosion. And for all the problems and risks, what does it gain? If you just want exposed rock, old impacts and other natural processes provide options.

Maybe they're not as bright as they're supposed to be, after all. Amateurs are bolder and far more creative.

Or maybe they know more about what is feasible.

I've been there, like so many others, especially those involved in violent traffic accidents (cp. "near-death experiences"). Many years ago I had a spontaneous "out-of-body experience" (OOBE). Clairvoyance and other "supernatural" skills (they're quite "natural", really) are authentic and the authors of books like the aforementioned one were seers.

Then you should be able to demonstrate validity through objective, repeatable, and blinded research studies.

Is it fair to say that all of your argument about Mars (your dismissal of all that has been learned with the Mars missions, the argument that a digging program would turn up something important, etc.) is based on some person's claims of clairvoyance?

The problem is how to go about convincing the people who work for the NASA that they should stop fooling around and start digging big, deep holes in several places all over the planet. Heavy-duty digging machines would be far cheaper and easier to put together and send than those ineffectual little testing stations.

Walk us through your proposed design of a heavy-duty digging machine. How much, for example, is it supposed to mass compared to the MSL rover? How is it powered? Does it need more power than MSL? How does it dig? What does it do exactly besides digging holes? What science experiments does it have?

This is the official launching of my 100 Bulldozers On Mars project.

Do you realize that the MSL rover cost about $2.5 billion dollars? That's one rover, not a hundred, and it's not a bulldozer.

And why 100? Either you have a very good idea of what is supposed to be found and where to look (in which case you shouldn't need a hundred machines) or you don't (in which case a hundred probably aren't going to do much better than one).

[John Mendenhall]

First, I agree with Van's comments. Second, I suggest that for that kind of money, we can send a human to Mars. In ten minutes of walking around looking for a suitable rock to graffiti their name on, we'll learn more about Mars than all the robot explorers.

Plus, we might see the invisible elf.

[WayneFrancis]

Hi Nidio_Ohio,
It seems you either don't like the science that all of these missions have produced or are ignorant of the said science. Van Rijn has summarized it very nicely. Getting a "bull dozer" to Mars would be a huge undertaking for probably no gain in scientific knowledge. I'll point out something the Van Rijn didn't though. Your understanding of basic physic seems to be part of the problem here. The amount of gravity here on Earth isn't why we don't build bulldozers out of aluminium. It is that aluminium would not deal very well with the stress and abuse undertaken by bulldozers.

If you are looking for ancient settlements the last thing you want to do is bulldoze. Tell me how many archaeological sites do you know that they use bulldozers? When they do they are very careful and know precisely how far they are going to dig down before breaking out the hand labour to assure they don't destroy what they are looking for. Using explosives is also not a viable solution. All you'll probably end up doing is fracturing a small area around your bore hole again destroying anything you'd be interested in before even getting close to looking at it.

You know it isn't that the "geniuses" aren't " as bright as they're supposed to be" that is a problem here. It is more often than not that the "Amateurs" haven't fully thought through their ideas and think said ideas are the best option simply because said "Amateurs" often don't actually spend the time critically analysing their own ideas. I'm sure Van Rijn didn't spend much more time thinking about his post then it took him to write it and I didn't spend more then 2x the amount of time it took me to write this thinking about it but both of us have found some pretty serious flaws in your idea without even going into your metaphysical beliefs. As for your metaphysical beliefs more power to you if they help you get through the day but in the realm of science they've been shown to be lacking as a way of learning more about the physical world.

[Shaula]

I'm just trying to imagine the apoplexy you'd face if you said to any archaeologist that you were going to use a remote controlled bulldozer loaded with explosives to excavate potential sites.

And of course you miss a major point - without those flimsy little rovers how are you going analyse the remnants of what you have casually destroyed?

[KaiYeves]

I'm just trying to imagine the apoplexy you'd face if you said to any archaeologist that you were going to use a remote controlled bulldozer loaded with explosives to excavate potential sites.

And of course you miss a major point - without those flimsy little rovers how are you going analyse the remnants of what you have casually destroyed?

Heck, I'm just an archeology major and the idea freaks me out! There is a reason archeologists use toothbrushes, dental picks, and trowels.

[Shaula]

Heck, I'm just an archeology major and the idea freaks me out! There is a reason archeologists use toothbrushes, dental picks, and trowels.

Indeed. I did a bit of it as optional modules at Uni and have helped with surveying and stuff since then. So I have some inkling of how time consuming the process is and how almost every step is geared towards not damaging what you find - as context is generally more important than content. Just ploughing it up to see if anything is there... Maybe amateurs are bolder. But professionals tend to be more right!

[Strange]

And even if you could build some sort of "precision bulldozer" suitable for archeology (implausible) and get it there, where would you dig? It is a big place and if there had been any settlements they would be relatively tiny. You would probably want to start with something like a ground penetrating radar. However, there is no reason to even consider such a thing.

[Nidio_Ohio]

Greetings, Knights of the Order of Kilopi and lesser (?) forum members. I guess you're knighted here once you pile up a certain amount of comments, or maybe you won't ever be thus honored if your ideas are somehow out of place, no matter how many comments you make? I'd like to know.

"Then you should be able to demonstrate validity through objective, repeatable, and blinded research studies." (Van Rijn)

How can I be expected to repeat the experience before an audience??? I don't know how to make it happen since I don't know how or why it happened. It was involuntary. That was way back in the Eighties and it never happened again, nor would I want it to. It was disturbing. On the other hand, some people train themselves to do it at will.

"Is it fair to say that all of your argument (…) is based on some person's claims of clairvoyance?" (Ibid.)

Yes, it is so based. We all choose to trust some of the people we've had to share life with, but there's also our own experience to go by. Experience is the ultimate criterion if one is not out of one's mind. As Claude Bernard said, "If our senses deceive us, reason rectifies; if reason deceives us, experience rectifies."

I was brought up as an atheist and so I can understand the skepticism. In my early twenties something led me to reject my upbringing. That the turnabout was brought about by a scientist's claims would be contradictory if it weren't for the fact that many scientists know about the other, largely hidden, levels of reality. Not all scientists are Dawkinsists. Unfortunately all of you here do seem to belong to that school of thought . None other than Einstein made a colleague shout back, "Stop telling God what to do!" The latter was reacting to Einstein's saying that "God does not play dice with the Universe", in an allusion to the uncertainties of quantum physics. Some people might feel that poor Einstein was a crazy old Jew who inherited the outrageous world vision of a barbaric culture.

The scientist involved in the change in my frame of mind was not Einstein but John C. Lilly, the neurosurgeon who studied sensory deprivation in his "isolation tanks" or "sensory deprivation tanks". In an interview in "Psychology Today" (it could've been the Dec. 1971 issue) he described what had happened to him in one of those tanks. Someone approached and told him, "Now that you've learned how to get here you must teach others how to do it." Then the visitor turned around and walked away.

Dr. Lilly explained that he didn't know whether or not that person was "real", or a hallucination. Maybe when the brain is denied external stimuli, he suggested, it invents its own inner stimuli, and the outcome is an inner vision. Anyway, he went on to explore the yoga techiques and claimed to have achieved "samadhi". I chose to favor the former interpretation --that the visitor was real--, and was shaken out of my atheist slumber instantly, which was a reckless thing to do at that time because I was going on faith, but the personal experience already narrated corroborated the existence of alternate realities.

"Could you walk through how you'd expect explosives to be used?" (…) Walk us through your proposed design of a heavy-duty digging machine." (Ibid.)

Sorry. That's for the experts to figure out. I talk the talk, but I won't walk the walk. I can only make amateurish suggestions. I guess the lack of oxygen wouldn't be any problem as far as the explosions are concerned since the reactions involved are self-contained. If aluminium can't tolerate the stress, as W. Francis claims, then simply use something that will. Fiberglas ®? Carbon fiber? Titanium? Kryptonite?

"What does it do exactly besides digging holes?" (Ibid.)

How about "sending back images"? Maybe it should only dig and let a second contraption do whatever else has to be done. It could be assembled on Mars. As I said, it could have large compartments that a robotic arm would fill with soil in order to give it the needed sturdiness, so it won't roll over like a dog.

"Do you realize that the MSL rover cost about $2.5 billion dollars?" (Ibid.)

Do you realize that the wars in Vietnam, Afganistan and Irak cost such a monstruous amount of money, human lives and effort that maybe all those resources could've been enough to build an underground shopping mall on the Moon or Mars, complete will bowling alleys, movie theaters, restaurants and other facilities? The problem has never been a lack of resources but an ill use of the same. You've been led to believe that resources are scarce and poverty is inevitable. That's more or less the same argument that is ascribed to the founder of Christianity (maybe unfairly):

"To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor."

" (…) Ye have the poor always with you." (Matthew 26:8-11)

The coincidence seems to betray a Christian background, Sunday school and all. That's arguably the ultimate source of the scarce-resource mentality.

"And why 100?" (Ibid.)

Merely because it's a catchy number, as in "the 1,001 Nights" --it should've been 101--, and to convey the idea that the more, the better, because the chances of finding anything will go up with the amount of hardware involved.

"If you are looking for ancient settlements the last thing you want to do is bulldoze." (W. Francis)

"I'm just trying to imagine the apoplexy you'd face if you said to any archaeologist that you were going to use a remote controlled bulldozer loaded with explosives to excavate potential sites." (Shaula)

Yes, those methods would be like shoving a bull into a china shop through a window pane. They reflect the impatience of someone who's spent half a century hearing about germs in Mars that maybe aren't there anymore and seeing the money squandered for evil purposes and who wants the really deep, no-nonsense digging to start before he dies somewhere in the next few years…but I guess no one will ever pay attention. Frankly, I care less and less as the years go by. I'm ready to go. Someone show me the tunnel.

[Shaula]

They reflect the impatience of someone who's spent half a century hearing about germs in Mars that maybe aren't there anymore

Well the simple issue is that the evidence you found would be large scale stuff. And in finding it you would destroy context and destroy huge amounts of other stuff that you couldn't see remotely as you ploughed across the planet blowing stuff up. It is the attitude of a zoologist who knows a species is endangered but goes out to shoot a few anyway so they can dissect them. It is selfish and short sighted. In the case of archaeologists they sometimes partly uncover a site, decide that it is too fragile and recover it so they can come back later with better tools. It really is that important to excavate carefully. Because you really only get one chance at it, one chance to extract the most information out of it.

Edit: Kilopi is what you get called when you have posted 3142 posts IIRC. No adherence to mainstream is required, however frustration with our insistence on evidence and scientific method usually finishes off people who would flout those rules before they get to that point

[WayneFrancis]

Greetings, Knights of the Order of Kilopi and lesser (?) forum members. I guess you're knighted here once you pile up a certain amount of comments, or maybe you won't ever be thus honored if your ideas are somehow out of place, no matter how many comments you make? I'd like to know.

It is a name purely based on the number of posts. I'll give you 5 guesses as to how many you need to kilopi.

"Then you should be able to demonstrate validity through objective, repeatable, and blinded research studies." (Van Rijn)

How can I be expected to repeat the experience before an audience??? I don't know how to make it happen since I don't know how or why it happened. It was involuntary. That was way back in the Eighties and it never happened again, nor would I want it to. It was disturbing. On the other hand, some people train themselves to do it at will.

So you had a interesting mental experience? What makes you think it is really some other level of "reality". I'll admit that it is a "reality" to you but I'll challenge you or anyone else to show that it is some type of shared reality. So according to your logic we should listen to everyone who hears voices in their heads, takes lysergic acid diethylamide and has hallucinations because of it just as much as some expert in some field of study. Sorry I don't ascribe to that way of thinking. I don't mind listening to someone that has synaesthesia because those people can repeatedly show how their coopted cognitive pathways often lead them to have a better ability in the area the primary area that coopts another part of the the brain then the normal person. People like Daniel Tammet are a rarity but his abilities are still strongly rooted in a shared reality that we all have. IE when he uses synaesthesia to help him multiply two 8 digit numbers in his head without effort the results he gives is repeatedly verifiable by everyone. Unlike some experiences I've had where my brain has made me perceive things that where not their to try to make sense of what was happening to me but everyone else didn't agree with my perception of reality. I'll recite one such experience for you. I was in NCO School while in the USMC. We had about a half hour before our next class so I decided to go back to my cot, much like this, and took a quick nap. I fell asleep with one leg hanging off the cot and when a few of the guys woke me up to go to the class I promptly got up then just as quickly proceeded to collapse. Bit dazed I stood back up and quickly collapsed again. Wondering why I kept falling down I looked down and saw a very deep hole under my cot where my right leg kept falling into. I said out loud "who the hell dug a this hole under my cot?" and the others while still, laughing at me for falling, said stuff like "What are you talking about? What hole?" It took me another minute to realise there was no hole. I saw one. But it really wasn't there. In fact my right leg had fallen asleep from me having it hanging over the edge pinching off the blood supply to it. So when I put any force on it I didn't have the proper sensory stimulus to actually hold my weight. In response my brain tried to reason what was going on and thus created the vision of a hole under my cot to produce a "reality" for me that made sense. Sure my leg falling asleep is another, and better, explanation of a shared reality I and the other guys where experiencing but this isn't what my brain first gravitated to.

"Is it fair to say that all of your argument (…) is based on some person's claims of clairvoyance?" (Ibid.)

Yes, it is so based. We all choose to trust some of the people we've had to share life with, but there's also our own experience to go by. Experience is the ultimate criterion if one is not out of one's mind. As Claude Bernard said, "If our senses deceive us, reason rectifies; if reason deceives us, experience rectifies."

The problem is our senses often deceive us to fit our reasoning and past experiences. If we experience things that others don't but can't reliably use those experiences to relate and explain a shared reality with other people then such experiences, how ever real they may seem to be to you, are historically not a good idea to base future actions on. IE if you have a fear of clowns it doesn't mean most clowns are bad and evil people but if you have a fear of spiders or snakes it is more in tuned with a shared reality we all have where a fear of spiders and snakes has an evolutionary advantage.

I was brought up as an atheist and so I can understand the skepticism.

It has nothing to do with religion, religious belief or a lack their of. There are plenty of religious people that will tell you that if your "reality" doesn't mesh with the shared reality and it can't be verified then it is probably just a coincidence. People often alter their past experience to come in line with events that happen later to. Waking up in the middle of the night and thinking someone you love just got hurt to find out they actually did get hurt might seem very profound to you but I can tell you I have weird dreams all the time and remember them quite well and if even a fraction of them where true most people I know wouldn't be around including me. So if one night I dream that my best friend got hurt to find out they actually did I'll scratch it up to coincidence and not me having some type of psychic link to them because I know that most of the time my dreams are wrong...unfortunately I still can't fly in this shared reality we all have but on the bright side I didn't die when I got shot in the head in a dream.

In my early twenties something led me to reject my upbringing. That the turnabout was brought about by a scientist's claims would be contradictory if it weren't for the fact that many scientists know about the other, largely hidden, levels of reality. Not all scientists are Dawkinsists. Unfortunately all of you here do seem to belong to that school of thought . None other than Einstein made a colleague shout back, "Stop telling God what to do!" The latter was reacting to Einstein's saying that "God does not play dice with the Universe", in an allusion to the uncertainties of quantum physics. Some people might feel that poor Einstein was a crazy old Jew who inherited the outrageous world vision of a barbaric culture.

Ah the conspiracy of scientist. Many of them know these "hidden levels of reality" actually exist but don't say so. Honestly there are scientists trying to prove they do exist and many of those scientist do VERY good science but to date they have not come up with anything that is verifiable. You also shouldn't quote mine. Einstein may have been Jewish but being Jewish is a nationality as well as a religion and the two are not strictly tied together. Einstein did not believe in a personal "God" and his comments are often taken out of context. But you know what, it doesn't matter what Einstein's religious beliefs were because they have ZERO bearing on his greatest works of General and Special Relativity. To boot his comments are, like you say, about his beliefs about the nature of quantum physics which, while being a very smart man, where wrong and evidence, that is independently and repeatedly verified, has shown Einstein to be wrong on such matters. But that is ok because none of us here expects any person to be perfect.

The scientist involved in the change in my frame of mind was not Einstein but John C. Lilly, the neurosurgeon who studied sensory deprivation in his "isolation tanks" or "sensory deprivation tanks". In an interview in "Psychology Today" (it could've been the Dec. 1971 issue) he described what had happened to him in one of those tanks. Someone approached and told him, "Now that you've learned how to get here you must teach others how to do it." Then the visitor turned around and walked away.

Ok, well LSD does play a role in your beliefs. The problem is John Lilly's work on cognitive science are not all that great in the field. Much of his "works" have been shown to be difficult at best to replicate. He certainly isn't any Noam Chomsky.

Dr. Lilly explained that he didn't know whether or not that person was "real", or a hallucination. Maybe when the brain is denied external stimuli, he suggested, it invents its own inner stimuli, and the outcome is an inner vision. Anyway, he went on to explore the yoga techiques and claimed to have achieved "samadhi". I chose to favor the former interpretation --that the visitor was real--, and was shaken out of my atheist slumber instantly, which was a reckless thing to do at that time because I was going on faith, but the personal experience already narrated corroborated the existence of alternate realities.

What ever gets you through the day. But your personal reality doesn't have much bearing on my personal reality or the shared reality most of us have that science restricts itself to. Here at BAUT we leave the personal religious experiences out because pick 100 different people and you'll probably get 100 different personal religious beliefs and science is agnostic on religion. If there is something that can be proven then it isn't personally subjective and no longer metaphysical but part of a shared reality that can be verified and tested.

"Could you walk through how you'd expect explosives to be used?" (…) Walk us through your proposed design of a heavy-duty digging machine." (Ibid.)

Sorry. That's for the experts to figure out. I talk the talk, but I won't walk the walk. I can only make amateurish suggestions. I guess the lack of oxygen wouldn't be any problem as far as the explosions are concerned since the reactions involved are self-contained. If aluminium can't tolerate the stress, as W. Francis claims, then simply use something that will. Fiberglas ®? Carbon fiber? Titanium? Kryptonite?

Ah the "I've thought of a great idea but someone else needs to figure out how to do it" line. Well, sorry you haven't thought of a great idea. You've had an idea that you didn't think through and the idea has been shown to be faulty.

"What does it do exactly besides digging holes?" (Ibid.)

How about "sending back images"? Maybe it should only dig and let a second contraption do whatever else has to be done. It could be assembled on Mars. As I said, it could have large compartments that a robotic arm would fill with soil in order to give it the needed sturdiness, so it won't roll over like a dog.

So you want a bull dozer to rip up the ground and send pictures of that back? Don't you know the stuff we've been sending there send back pictures. What good are pictures of a bit of Martian terrain bull dozed?

"Do you realize that the MSL rover cost about $2.5 billion dollars?" (Ibid.)

Do you realize that the wars in Vietnam, Afganistan and Irak cost such a monstruous amount of money, human lives and effort that maybe all those resources could've been enough to build an underground shopping mall on the Moon or Mars, complete will bowling alleys, movie theaters, restaurants and other facilities? The problem has never been a lack of resources but an ill use of the same. You've been led to believe that resources are scarce and poverty is inevitable. That's more or less the same argument that is ascribed to the founder of Christianity (maybe unfairly):

"To what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor."

" (…) Ye have the poor always with you." (Matthew 26:8-11)

The coincidence seems to betray a Christian background, Sunday school and all. That's arguably the ultimate source of the scarce-resource mentality.

Again don't start with the religious lines it has no bearing to science related topics. The rover cost that much not because some person is greedy. It isn't that someone has made 2 billion dollars profit on a 500 million dollar probe. It is the fact that thousands upon thousands of people are involved and lots of naturally expensive resources are being utilised. Or perhaps you believe that everyone should work for free. Sorry but we don't live in a star trek world where everyone works for free and is provided their basic needs. We live in a world where people have to pay for food, health care, education and some luxuries. Funny enough many if not most of the people that work on these projects don't make nearly as much as they should for the amount of effort they put in. So leave out your personal political beliefs. If you have a problem with something's cost then itemise it. Show us where to much money is being spent on said product then we can address it.

"And why 100?" (Ibid.)

Merely because it's a catchy number, as in "the 1,001 " --it should've been 101--, and to convey the idea that the more, the better, because the chances of finding anything will go up with the amount of hardware involved.

Again here is your lack of knowledge coming through. Throwing 100 times the amount of resources at something doesn't produce 100 times the results. Being in the Marine Corps I learnt that it is better to use the appropriate amount of resources for the mission at hand. When dealing with your idea sending 100 or 1000 bulldozers up to Mars would probably just cost 100 or 1000 times the amount of money for little to no results.

[Van Rijn]

"Then you should be able to demonstrate validity through objective, repeatable, and blinded research studies." (Van Rijn)

How can I be expected to repeat the experience before an audience??? I don't know how to make it happen since I don't know how or why it happened. It was involuntary. That was way back in the Eighties and it never happened again, nor would I want it to. It was disturbing. On the other hand, some people train themselves to do it at will.

"Is it fair to say that all of your argument (…) is based on some person's claims of clairvoyance?" (Ibid.)

Yes, it is so based.

You made a claim that clairvoyance is real. If that is true, you should be able to demonstrate validity through objective research. Failing that, you haven't shown why anyone should take the idea seriously. Further, you are arguing for an expensive Mars program based on, apparently, some person's claim of clairvoyance. If you can't even show that clairvoyance is real, why should anyone waste their time considering a specific claim of clairvoyance?

I was brought up as an atheist and so I can understand the skepticism. In my early twenties something led me to reject my upbringing. That the turnabout was brought about by a scientist's claims would be contradictory if it weren't for the fact that many scientists know about the other, largely hidden, levels of reality. Not all scientists are Dawkinsists. Unfortunately all of you here do seem to belong to that school of thought [...]

Okay, I'm going to skip the rest of this because this stuff is utterly irrelevant to a discussion of Mars missions, even if there weren't rules here limiting discussion on religious topics.

"Could you walk through how you'd expect explosives to be used?" (…) Walk us through your proposed design of a heavy-duty digging machine." (Ibid.)

Sorry. That's for the experts to figure out. I talk the talk, but I won't walk the walk.

Well, that's a shame. Given your confident statements about these ideas, I expected you might have put some time into thinking what these things should do and how they could work. It really isn't up to anyone else to try to figure out what you're proposing.

"What does it do exactly besides digging holes?" (Ibid.)

How about "sending back images"? Maybe it should only dig and let a second contraption do whatever else has to be done. It could be assembled on Mars. As I said, it could have large compartments that a robotic arm would fill with soil in order to give it the needed sturdiness, so it won't roll over like a dog.

Sending back what kind of images? It still isn't clear to me what the point of all this is. You seem to have some vague idea of something or other that should be dug for somewhere, but I'm not seeing a lot of detail.

"Do you realize that the MSL rover cost about $2.5 billion dollars?" (Ibid.)

Do you realize that the wars in Vietnam,[...]

Uh, yeah. Look, whether or not I agree with you that the money shouldn't have been spent on the other things you listed, it still doesn't change the fact that you haven't justified that any money should be spent on your idea. If, for instance, we had a few hundred billion to spend for a Mars mission, why shouldn't we look into a crewed mission? Or if not Mars, how about a super space telescope to take high quality images of exoplanets? And so on. Why should we spend all this money on bulldozers that you haven't even explained in any detail?

[Swift]

<snip>
Do you realize that the wars in Vietnam, Afganistan and Irak cost such a monstruous amount of money, human lives and effort that maybe all those resources could've been enough to build an underground shopping mall on the Moon or Mars, complete will bowling alleys, movie theaters, restaurants and other facilities? The problem has never been a lack of resources but an ill use of the same. You've been led to believe that resources are scarce and poverty is inevitable. That's more or less the same argument that is ascribed to the founder of Christianity (maybe unfairly):

Careful. We have rules against politicial and religious discussion on BAUT, with very few exceptions. This and other comments you have made are very close, if not over the line. If you have not done so, I strongly urge you review our rules, particularly rules 12 and 13.

[Garrison]

"Could you walk through how you'd expect explosives to be used?" (…) Walk us through your proposed design of a heavy-duty digging machine." (Ibid.)

Sorry. That's for the experts to figure out. I talk the talk, but I won't walk the walk. I can only make amateurish suggestions.

So you want the people who know what their talking about to design things based on the concepts of someone like yourself who doesn't?

[WayneFrancis]

[continuation from last post]

"If you are looking for ancient settlements the last thing you want to do is bulldoze." (W. Francis)

"I'm just trying to imagine the apoplexy you'd face if you said to any archaeologist that you were going to use a remote controlled bulldozer loaded with explosives to excavate potential sites." (Shaula)

Yes, those methods would be like shoving a bull into a china shop through a window pane. They reflect the impatience of someone who's spent half a century hearing about germs in Mars that maybe aren't there anymore and seeing the money squandered for evil purposes and who wants the really deep, no-nonsense digging to start before he dies somewhere in the next few years…but I guess no one will ever pay attention. Frankly, I care less and less as the years go by. I'm ready to go. Someone show me the tunnel.

So you admit that your idea isn't practical but you are willing to waste money looking for something that most likely isn't even there. You seem to want some 2001 monolith to be found. A.C.Clark was a very smart man but his science fiction is very much that. Science fiction. Just like Paddy Chayefsky science fiction based on Lilly's work is just that ... science fiction.

People do pay attention. We here at BAUT pay attention. But don't mistake paying attention with agreeing. We pay attention and critically analyse things here.

Sure, most of us would like to see extra terrestrial life found in our life time. I'm not sure if it will or not for me but I'm also not willing to just throw money away based on half thought out ideas. I know blindly throwing 1,000 times the amount of money at any project thought up by any Tom, Dick or Harry will not have any more likely hood to finding life out there. In fact I think we have enough good ideas already in the pipe line trying to get funding as is. Personally while the science being done on Mars is great I'd personally like to see more work done on going to Europa but there are other political issues preventing that and those political issues are not for topics here on BAUT. There are other forums to go to if you want to discuss those.

Here we deal with ideas and the science and logic behind those ideas. I know when I bring up various scientific discussions here that I'll often be shown where I'm wrong and you know what. That is fine because at the end of the day if I'm shown that some idea that I had was faulty then I've learned something and I'm cool with that.

[Paul Beardsley]

The problem is how to go about convincing the people who work for the NASA that they should stop fooling around and start digging big, deep holes in several places all over the planet.

If there are any people here who think it's a sound idea then maybe we should write a petition, sign it and send it over to the dull managers who control the space programs in several countries.

A sound idea? It's a truly idiotic idea. (Note, I am not calling you an idiot, I am just attacking the idea, which needs bulldozing into a landfill.) In fact it heavily underscores the intelligence and wisdom of the people responsible for the far-from-ineffectual probes that have sent back a vast wealth of real scientific information.

[djellison]

They've been sending those useless things

Those 'useless' things - Viking 1, Viking 2, Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix - have taught us so much it's impossible to quantify. Combine that with the data from the Viking Orbiters, Global Surveyor, Odyssey, MRO, MEX etc, and we have an entire world we've begun to unpick - a multi billion year history of geology, climate, mineralogy and habitability.

Why do you call them 'useless'? Because they havn't provided evidence for the conclusion you have reached without exercising the scientific method?. That's not how science works - the evidence driven thru a hypothesis can answer questions and teach us about reality.

If you want to change the entire focus and thrust of the Mars program, you have to bring a solid scientific justification for it. Try it.

If you or a friend has genuine 'clairvoyance' then I dare you to take up the JREF $1M challenge. If it's real - if it's a genuine ability, then it can stand up to scrutiny and you can earn a MILLION DOLLARS. Imagine what you could do with that! If it can not, then it's a sham, a myth, and if you advocate and push it as real, you're either lying, or deluded.

[Drunk Vegan]

All I can say to this idea is... Earth first!

We'll destroy the other planets later.

[hypergreatthing]

The idea of sending bulldozers over to mars is flawed in the fact that you'd destroy anything that you're looking for. What's more important is to have a team of people over there who could possibly examine the sites, etc.
Sending an archeological team over there would be interesting, but there's so much to do before any of that happens.
Let me also put it like this. The moon is so much closer than mars. How much heavy equipment do you see on that? Heavy lifting capability just isn't there (from earth to space and beyond).

[John Mendenhall]

Where would you try first on Mars? Hm, maybe you should send an orbiting surveyor and a few surface robotic probes first . . .

[jashwood]

What kind of 'dozers are we talking? D9/D10? Caterpillar? You also need to elaborate on your method, are we piling into mounds or scraping away x inches of the surface?

Perhaps a similar excavation could be achieved by the detonation of thermonuclear warheads on the surface, the rims of the resulting craters providing remnants of searchable artifacts?? This is not far beyond current technology and you could even kill two birds with one stone - offer to detonate a North Korean nuke as both a nuclear test, and a scientific mission of discovery to mars, packaged up for one price.

There are no treaties or conventions that ban nuclear detonations on Mars are there? Or is there?

[John Mendenhall]

(snip)
There are no treaties or conventions that ban nuclear detonations on Mars are there? Or is there?

As I read it, banned by the 1963 (!) Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. A lawyer might quibble, but that's certainly the spirit of the Treaty.

[WayneFrancis]

What kind of 'dozers are we talking? D9/D10? Caterpillar? You also need to elaborate on your method, are we piling into mounds or scraping away x inches of the surface?

Perhaps a similar excavation could be achieved by the detonation of thermonuclear warheads on the surface, the rims of the resulting craters providing remnants of searchable artifacts?? This is not far beyond current technology and you could even kill two birds with one stone - offer to detonate a North Korean nuke as both a nuclear test, and a scientific mission of discovery to mars, packaged up for one price.

There are no treaties or conventions that ban nuclear detonations on Mars are there? Or is there?

Ummm yea...no...yea...no...that is so wrong on so many levels but first

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

Second if you detonate a nuclear bomb on the surface what in the ... errr what do you think would be left to investigate in the crater? Maybe a 2001 monolith but beyond that I'd be surprised for anything distinguishable to be left.

[Paul Beardsley]

Ummm yea...no...yea...no...that is so wrong on so many levels but first

I think the poster was being satirical.

[Jim]

Second if you detonate a nuclear bomb on the surface what in the ... errr what do you think would be left to investigate in the crater? Maybe a 2001 monolith but beyond that I'd be surprised for anything distinguishable to be left.

I think he answered that. "... rims of the resulting craters providing remnants of searchable artifacts ..."

(I also get the idea that jashwood is just joshing.)

[Shaula]

Perhaps a similar excavation could be achieved by the detonation of thermonuclear warheads on the surface, the rims of the resulting craters providing remnants of searchable artifacts??

No. All you would end with was pulverised remains of scorched and broken things that could possibly once have been interesting. Or they could have been rocks. You can't tell because they have been damaged so badly. Your best bet would be spectroscopic detections of the vaporised remains of what you were after. "Yup, think we just vaporised organic matter. Just think. That could have been the largest collection of burial grounds of the only civilisation that ever arose on Mars. Or a lot of fish. Or the remains of a carbonaceous meteorite. Another nuke to try to be sure?"

Crazy-bad idea.

[Nidio_Ohio]

"Those "useless things" have been invaluable sources of information about Mars." (Van Rijn)

"It seems you either don't like the science that all of these missions have produced or are ignorant of the said science". (W. Francis)

"Those 'useless' things (…) have taught us so much it's impossible to quantify. ? (…) Why do you call them 'useless'? Because they havn't provided evidence for the conclusion you have reached without exercising the scientific method?" (djellison)

What was meant was that they're useless from the point of view of someone who 1) suspects that Mars doesn't even have microscopic life anymore (or maybe deep down, underground, or beneath the polar icecaps, or in caves, out of harm's way in a planet with a lighter atmospheric armor to shield it from harmful radiation, and ditto particles [cosmic rays, solar wind]), and 2) would like to see a breakthrough in his lifetime, after waiting for decades for the extensive digging to start and the macrofossils to show up, or whatever might lay buried (why not a mummy, an arrowhead).

"It is the attitude of a zoologist who knows a species is endangered but goes out to shoot a few anyway so they can dissect them. It is selfish and short sighted." (Shaula)

"Ah the 'I've thought of a great idea but someone else needs to figure out how to do it' line. Well, sorry you haven't thought of a great idea. You've had an idea that you didn't think through and the idea has been shown to be faulty." (W. Francis)

"So you want a bull dozer to rip up the ground and send pictures of that back? Don't you know the stuff we've been sending there send back pictures. What good are pictures of a bit of Martian terrain bull dozed?" (Ibid.)

"Sending back what kind of images? It still isn't clear to me what the point of all this is. You seem to have some vague idea of something or other that should be dug for somewhere, but I'm not seeing a lot of detail." (Van Rijn)

"(…) why shouldn't we look into a crewed mission? Or if not Mars, how about a super space telescope to take high quality images of exoplanets? And so on. Why should we spend all this money on bulldozers that you haven't even explained in any detail?" (Ibid.)

"The idea of sending bulldozers over to mars is flawed in the fact that you'd destroy anything that you're looking for. What's more important is to have a team of people over there who could possibly examine the sites, etc." (hypergreatthing)

"You also need to elaborate on your method, are we piling into mounds or scraping away x inches of the surface?" (jashwood)

All right, so discard the dynamite sticks and do some careful bulldozing. You don't have to "rip up the ground". It can be done, thus: let the shovel skim the surface and lift one inch at a time. The bulldozer turns around, goes over the same stretch, removes another inch of soil, and so on. Back and forth, and back and forth, like a ping-pong ball, but gently. Maybe that's not "a great idea" if you insist on sending archaeologists to spend thousands of hours aboveground with their camel-hair (?) brushes as the harmful cosmic stuff pours down on them. That really is a foolhardy idea! At least the dynamite would destroy only inanimate objects, and maybe germs, but a manned mission to work on the surface would damage people, and anyway we've put aside the explosives after all the hollering out there. So there you have a more acceptable "modus operandi", albeit not quite up to terrestrial standards.

Why hasn't anybody said a single word about the bulldozer design with the compartments to be filled with soil so that the hardware to be lifted off the launch pad will weigh much less? Coming from an amateur, I think that's a brilliant concept. It's the Mars Soildozer ® (patent pending).

Van Rijn, what do you mean "send back what kind of images"??? Do you expect me to do some blind digging or what?

"Kilopi is what you get called when (…)." (Shaula)

"It is a name purely based on the number of posts. I'll give you 5 guesses as to how many you need to kilopi." (W. Francis)

Thank you for the information, and the warning about tolerating only like-minded people around. If you refuse to associate with those having very different views of life you will stagnate and lose the chance to discover new things. It's as though you were secretly afraid of being proven wrong. Am I being rude here, too? I hope not. It's just a piece of advice.


"So you had a interesting mental experience? What makes you think it is really some other level of "reality". I'll admit that it is a "reality" to you but I'll challenge you or anyone else to show that it is some type of shared reality. So according to your logic we should listen to everyone who hears voices in their heads, takes lysergic acid diethylamide and has hallucinations because of it just as much as some expert in some field of study." (W. Francis)

"(…) your personal reality doesn't have much bearing on my personal reality or the shared reality most of us have that science restricts itself to." (Ibid.)

You're talking about what modern philosophy calls "intersubjective" data, the kind of data you can share with everybody else. Most OOBE's and NDE's are not of that sort, but a few of them are, and they furnish proof of the intersubjectivity of the experience.

A TV hostess and actress here (Bogotá, Colombia, S.A.) had one of the latter kind. Her personal background is essential. She's Yaneth (Janet/Jeannette) Waldman, whose father is a Polish Jew and whose mother is a Colombian citizen with parents who are Russian Jews. Her obesity problem almost killed her. She was prescribed some pills, including amphetamines (they do away with the feeling of hunger), that caused an "electrolytic shock".

The shock led to her "clinical death" (absence of vital signs), she was rushed over to the hospital and, as they strived to save her life, her soul (surprise: there IS such a thing) slipped away and she found herself out on the street, or more exactly, hovering over them and hanging on to the lampposts. She saw her husband arriving at the hospital driving their car along the one-way street in front of the building, but in the wrong direction, because he was in a state of anxiety. This was later verified. She also saw all of her relatives fretting around her dead body, to which she eventually returned. I know of no other similar case.

That single case settles the matter, unless once again you choose to believe that you're being lied to by devious individuals. Why not look her up on the Net and see if you can talk to her and decide for yourself?

"Einstein did not believe in a personal 'God' (…)." (W. Francis)

The difference between "personal" and "impersonal" is irrelevant here. Either you believe in "the other world" or you don't.

"Ok, well LCD does play a role in your beliefs." (W. Francis)

Do you mean LSD? In that case, what role do you imagine LSD or any other psychoactive compound playing in anybody's beliefs???

"(…) because pick 100 different people and you'll probably get 100 different personal religious beliefs (…)." (Ibid.)

That number seems to be everybody's darling. They'll want to ask you too: why 100?

"The rover cost that much not because some person is greedy. It isn't that someone has made 2 billion dollars profit on a 500 million dollar probe. It is the fact that thousands upon thousands of people are involved and lots of naturally expensive resources are being utilised. Or perhaps you believe that everyone should work for free. Sorry but we don't live in a star trek world where everyone works for free and is provided their basic needs. We live in a world where people have to pay for food, health care, education and some luxuries. Funny enough many if not most of the people that work on these projects don't make nearly as much as they should for the amount of effort they put in. So leave out your personal political beliefs. If you have a problem with something's cost then itemise it. Show us where to much money is being spent on said product then we can address it." (Ibid.)

I wish I could discuss that but I got a warning not to go into political matters and you know it, so it's unfair to keep bringing up the subject. It's like kicking someone who's all tied up. If I were a moderator I would've banned you ipso facto.


"Throwing 100 times the amount of resources at something doesn't produce 100 times the results. Being in the Marine Corps I learnt that it is better to use the appropriate amount of resources for the mission at hand. When dealing with your idea sending 100 or 1000 bulldozers up to Mars would probably just cost 100 or 1000 times the amount of money for little to no results." (Ibid.)

No: the chances that ten bulldozers will find something are ten times greater than if you have only one, especially in such an alien environment. This is so elementary that one wonders what that Marine Corps is up to. At least we know what they or some other outfit are up to over in Pine Gap because the aborigines have been telling us about the underground rumblings and the secret weapons or aircraft zipping back and forth at what seems to be the speed of light. It's all in the public domain now.

"You made a claim that clairvoyance is real. If that is true, you should be able to demonstrate validity through objective research. Failing that, you haven't shown why anyone should take the idea seriously. Further, you are arguing for an expensive Mars program based on, apparently, some person's claim of clairvoyance. If you can't even show that clairvoyance is real, why should anyone waste their time considering a specific claim of clairvoyance?" (Van Rijn)

You're an armchair researcher. All you do is read this or that and discard whatever you choose not to believe. Do some fieldwork. Don't expect anyone to drop the proof on your lap. You'll reject anything I might care to tell you anyway. It's like a conditioned reflex (cp. Pavlov). Search out people involved in the matter, talk to them, befriend them, test them, then see if they're all impostors.

"All I can say to this idea is... Earth first!/We'll destroy the other planets later." (Drunk Vegan)

I'd like to know who's behind the Evil Space Alien Myth and what the purpose is. Maybe a team of alcoholic Vegans pretending to be clowns.

[Strange]

would like to see a breakthrough in his lifetime, after waiting for decades for the extensive digging to start and the macrofossils to show up, or whatever might lay buried (why not a mummy, an arrowhead).

Why would anyone (anyone else) expect such things to be found? Just because you think they are there? That is not much of a basis for investing millions of dollars (or euros or yuan).

[Strange]

That single case settles the matter, unless once again you choose to believe that you're being lied to by devious individuals.

Why would you assume the only alternative is that people are lying?

At least we know what they or some other outfit are up to over in Pine Gap because the aborigines have been telling us about the underground rumblings and the secret weapons or aircraft zipping back and forth at what seems to be the speed of light. It's all in the public domain now.

What?

You're an armchair researcher. All you do is read this or that and discard whatever you choose not to believe. Do some fieldwork.

So did you go out and check all the facts in Hyneck's book? Interview all the people he spoke to?

Don't expect anyone to drop the proof on your lap. You'll reject anything I might care to tell you anyway. It's like a conditioned reflex (cp. Pavlov).

Ah, the old "you are all so narrow minded" argument used by those with no evidence. Yawn.

Search out people involved in the matter, talk to them, befriend them, test them, then see if they're all impostors.

Again, why the assumption that the only alternative is that they are "imposters"? (Are you sure that is the word you want? Who are they pretending to be?)

[John Mendenhall]

[B] (snip)
No: the chances that ten bulldozers will find something are ten times greater than if you have only one, especially in such an alien environment. This is so elementary that one wonders what that Marine Corps is up to.
(snip)

No, the probability is NOT 10 times greater. Having castigated others for armchair research, you may want to look at a good elementary probability text. Hint: the probability of find nothing in ten trials will not go away.