RedRalph
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2007
- Messages
- 20,708
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
No, but I have designed a prototype of a device I call evil-o-meter. It's very scientific![]()
So you're saying space travel is a non-starter technologyman 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
Maybe we can combine it with my Priest-o-gauge and create a device more powerful than the Czar Bomba
So you're saying space travel is a non-starter technology![]()
Oh come on, even under ideal conditions we're not terraforming Mars in the next 30 or 40 years.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.
But then human society collapses and the project comes to nothing.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.
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.
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.
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)
In relative terms, it has been declining for the last... 20 years or so.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.This knowledge can be used either to avert 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?or it can be used by a handful of the least damaged countries to maintain technological civilization and to rebuild Earth after the collapse,
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.(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.