Obama explains his new plan for NASA

[RedRalph]

No, but I have designed a prototype of a device I call evil-o-meter. It's very scientific

Maybe we can combine it with my Priest-o-gauge and create a device more powerful than the Czar Bomba

 

[ParkCungHee]

man landing on Mars. My personal guess is that it won't happen until after 2040, probably after 2050. By then the Earth's civilization will be collapsing due to overpopulation and complete environmental exhaustion

So you're saying space travel is a non-starter technology

 

[Winner]

Maybe we can combine it with my Priest-o-gauge and create a device more powerful than the Czar Bomba

No, it's serious.

We know from reliable sources (Hollywood movies) that holy water reacts violently with all kinds of evil things, therefore this reaction should be measurable as a change of temperature (or acidity - it seems holy water causes burns which suggests some kind of exothermic reaction). All we need is to measure any changes that occur after the water comes in contact with the person whose evilness we're measuring. If we're lucky, the changes in the water will occur without any physical contact at all - sheer proximity to evil should be sufficient.

Of course we need very concentrated holy water for this. I believe that an extract of abused altar boys' tears mixed with water from selected Catholic shrines sanctified by the Pope himself should suffice.

So you're saying space travel is a non-starter technology

No, I am saying we need to rapidly expand our presence in space, because the window of opportunity is closing fast.

 

[ParkCungHee]

No, I am saying we need to rapidly expand our presence in space, because the window of opportunity is closing fast.

Oh come on, even under ideal conditions we're not terraforming Mars in the next 30 or 40 years.

In fact, it sounds like the window closed sometime in the Victorian era.

 

[Winner]

Oh come on, even under ideal conditions we're not terraforming Mars in the next 30 or 40 years.

How on Earth could you possibly have made the jump from my "human presence in space" to "terraforming"? Proper terraforming is not a matter we'll deal with in this century.

We should establish self-sufficient or semi-self-sufficient bases on the Moon and Mars at the very least. Entirely doable in 50 years with entirely non-prohibitive budgets.

We should have the knowledge and ability to obtain minerals, propellant and energy from space so that if the need arises we can proceed rapidly.

In fact, it sounds like the window closed sometime in the Victorian era.

No.

 

[ParkCungHee]

How on Earth could you possibly have made the jump from my "human presence in space" to "terraforming"? Proper terraforming is not a matter we'll deal with in this century.

We should establish self-sufficient or semi-self-sufficient bases on the Moon and Mars at the very least. Entirely doable in 50 years with entirely non-prohibitive budgets.

We should have the knowledge and ability to obtain minerals, propellant and energy from space so that if the need arises we can proceed rapidly.

But then human society collapses and the project comes to nothing.

 

[Winner]

This knowledge can be used either to avert the collapse, or it can be used by a handful of the least damaged countries to maintain technological civilization and to rebuild Earth after the collapse, or (in the worst case) it can be used by the people living outside of Earth to survive after their links with the homeworld are severed.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

NASA provides several advantages over... whatever else these engineers might otherwise be doing. The first is that space travel encompasses a wide range of fields. If these engineers all changed work to airline companies, we would get better aircraft, but there would be very little tangible benifit in other areas.

I fail to see how space travel encompasses a wider range of fields than any other pursuit. Besides it would be much more worthwhile to have better aeroplanes than better space craft for obvious reasons.

Second, NASA has specific goals. For example NASA needs new alloys that can soak up the heat of entering and leaving the Earth's Atmosphere. This allows very devoted research towards areas. A bunch of misc reseachers at many different universities lack this drive towards one goal, so things waver and can fall off track.The third is funding. NASA gets government money, so their are fewer budgetery concerns (for the individual), people aren't going for the most cost effective solution they go for the best.

Being deliberate inefficient is a BAD thing. Putting money into NASA means taking away money from somewhere else. We WANT cost effective solutions because resources are limited.

Even if you discount the massive amount of hyperbole and the fact that this would instantly kill off all of earths population, this is still massivly untrue. Ever read Sci Fi? Many of the authors detailing earth/moon put a lot of effort into research (True many don't, but many still do), and there are another of potential terraforming ideas. In addition, what happens if something does destroy earth? Personally I'd rather see humanity survive. (It is worth noting that the asteroid threat is blown massivly out of proportion. The time between large enough impacts to have a terminal impact on our race is measured in millions of years for a reason)

I hope you realize Sci Fi means science fiction. And that was not hyperbole. You severely underestimate the importance of things like proper gravity, air, atmospheric pressure, protection against solar winds, food, water, clothing etc. Even if we could terraform other planets that would imply we could terraform the Earth even if we screwed it up. Even if we lived in pods on another world it would be much better and easier to live in pods on Earth in the almost completely uninhabited places such as Antarctica, the Sahara, or the bottom of the oceans.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

In relative terms, it has been declining for the last... 20 years or so.

That's only because our politicians have spending money like it grows on trees(or cotton) for the past 20 years. It is lunacy to justify wasting more money on the space program just because we have wasted even more elsewhere.

Yeah, they'd waste their skills and potentials doing some mundane stuff that doesn't really help us move forward. And you know, there are scientists too, who need engineers to do their jobs. Oh, and many of these engineers went to engineering because they we're inspired by the advances in space exploration. If it wasn't for it, they'd do something else, something potentially much less productive (like being lawyers, business executives or financial advisers at Goldman Sachs).

They would waste their skills on mundane things that actually have a practical purpose which is much more productive. And lol, even Winner becomes a central planner to defend his beloved space program.

That's so not the point. Space exploration is an investment in the future. True, Earth will remain habitable no matter what we do. Of course there will be no resources to sustain a technological civilization there.

Sooner or later, we will have to look for key mineral resources in space. The environmental and economic benefits are enormous. Therefore, humanity should steadily push deeper into space, even though it doesn't really bring benefits right now or in the short term.

If the economic benefits were enormous than you wouldn't need the government to fund space exploration. And how the heck does the space program help the environment?

Could there possibly be a more stupid comparison? Anyway, this isn't an argument against space exploration, it's an argument for it. How do we make space resources more accessible? By kneeling and praying to God that he frees us from gravity? The only way is to develop better and better technologies which will eventually make space viable economically.

We have to consume resources to get resources. If it takes more resources to do something than you get out of it, we don't do it. For some reason people think this does not imply when it comes to resources in space but it does.


And to put a side a misconception, technological progress will not stop or slow if the space program ends. The only thing that will happen is that technological progress will improving in areas that are useful.

I don't even know how to respond to sheer ignorance like this. Even if it was just for the knowledge we gain, it would be totally worth it compared to the other activities human waste their money on.

Oh I agree waste far more for far worse reasons but that doesn't justify it.

 

[warpus]

was unsustainable under the current budget, yes. Or more precisely, it wouldn't do the things it was supposed to do by the deadlines that were set, so in other words, the programme would get delayed. But (!!), the increases needed to speed things up were not really unrealistic and even the Augustine committee which reviewed the US space programme concluded that with a relatively modest increase in budget (3 billion a year - nothing against the huge increases in military spending) it would be back on track. Of course there could be compromises - less money, more delay, it's a sort of direct proportionality.

According to my sources Constellation would cost a TON a year even after all the development was complete. It would have been insanely expensive to maintain, once it was up and running.

This would mean that NASA would probably not have much money left over for other projects. Like, you know, doing science, which is why they exist.

Obama had to cancel this thing.

 

[ParkCungHee]

This knowledge can be used either to avert the collapse,

Oh yes, I'm very interested to hear how not only will space travel to other planets be feasible in forty years, it will be profitable.

or it can be used by a handful of the least damaged countries to maintain technological civilization and to rebuild Earth after the collapse,

So society is going to collapse, but we're going to maintain our space programs? Then why not just explore the solar system after society collapses?

(in the worst case) it can be used by the people living outside of Earth to survive after their links with the homeworld are severed.

Hence the 'Terraforming' assumption. Theres no way that we're going to be able to build perpatually self sustaining colonies on Mars in forty years. It's just not going to happen.