Will it be possible to have a 'telephone'(type) chat with a fellow human on Mars? Will the pause between transmission and receipt make conversation impractical?
2007-08-17 09:10:20 · 7 answers · asked by kiltie_nanaimo 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Whether we could string a telephone line, fiber-optic line, or use radio, the speed of light is the limiting factor.
Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation, the same as light (albeit a much lower frequency), and travel just as fast (a bit over 186,000 miles per second).
At that speed, a one-way trip for radio could take 10 - 20 minutes (or longer, depending upon how far Mars is from Earth. There are two different orbits to consider and the distance to Mars varies a *lot*.
I've included a URL which you may find interesting.
Hope this helps ;)
Best regards,
Jim
2007-08-17 13:53:13 · answer #1 · answered by Jim H 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Robots do not need food, water, or air. They can stand cold and hot and radiation that would kill a person. Also, no robot has ever come back. They use all their fuel getting to Mars. And they are quite small and light weight, smaller than a car and weigh only a few hundred pounds. All the extra tons of stuff needed to keep a person alive long enough to make the 9 month trip to Mars, plus more for the time they are on Mars, plus more for the trip back, plus enough rocket power and fuel to get back, plus making it big enough to hold several people with enough room to move around, is just WAY to heavy to be launched with any rocket we have. The full round trip would take about 2 years. Even if we had a big enough rocket, or used many rockets to send up parts to be assembled in orbit, no manned space craft or space station has even been able to operate that long without resupply from Earth. Either it runs out of water or air or food or some key equipment breaks down and they need spare parts sent up or something. Making it big enough, reliable enough, safe enough, has never been done for any manned space craft. Not even close.
2016-05-21 22:12:37 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Between 5-20 minutes,depending how far the planets are no each other in their respective orbits.I kinda doubt U could have a mutable conversation with that kind of delay!
2007-08-17 10:28:26 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
there would be about an 8 min delay between accuming that it was not nessary to use satlites to bounce the signal in the right direction.
2007-08-17 09:14:42 · answer #4 · answered by zspace101 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
nice question, the distance between earth and mars varies a lot, so the time will vary alot too.
2007-08-17 20:22:47 · answer #5 · answered by Uncle Under 5 · 0⤊ 3⤋
At a minumum, about 18 minutes. Max is about 1/2 hour. You couldn't really have a conversation.
2007-08-17 09:14:53 · answer #6 · answered by quantumclaustrophobe 7 · 1⤊ 4⤋
radio waves travel slightly slower than the speed of light and mars is about 12 light-seconds away i think. so maybe around 15 seconds. it wouldnt be impractical but it would be annoying.
2007-08-17 11:11:32 · answer #7 · answered by sam m 3 · 0⤊ 8⤋