The thread for space cadets!

[hobbsyoyo]

Trump nominated Joe Bridenstine to run NASA. Joe has no relevant managerial experience, is not a scientist, is a global warming denier and has spent much of his career in Congress blasting NASA for launching Earth-science missions.

The only thing you can say in his defense is that overall, he actually is passionate about the space industry and hasn't seemed to take a major stake in the private space industry lobbying wars.*

*There is a contingent of congressmen who, despite being Republicans who care about business, do everything they can to subsidize their local aerospace companies and protect them from competition while simultaneously trying to hurt companies in other states.


Also, Mike Griffin, who was the disastrous leader of NASA under GWB, has been nominated to oversee defense department acquisitions. On that front there are few people who would actually be worse to have that position. This government is a joke.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I expected him to nominate a "Flat Earther" who believes that all science is heresy ... not that this is much better.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I do have to say that it really is a good thing that Bridenstine is passionate about space policy. He's legit not a jackass sycophant that wanted a cushy top-level government job that could be spun into a lucrative private industry career like so many of Trumps appointees. Well of course he could still do that but I do think he genuinely is a space nut given his background while in Congress. He was heavily involved in crafting space policy during his time in Congress and he's not even from a big aerospace state that would require such activity (Oklahoma). And as far as his anti-global warming stance goes, it wasn't any more extreme than the typical Republican from an oil and gas state's stance. That doesn't excuse him but there is at least a chance he's not going to go after Earth science with a raging hard on the way a Scott Pruit would.

Mike Griffin on the other hand is indefensible. He saw the wholesale gutting of much of NASA and massively mishandled the Constellation program which limped on into the sorry SLS program. He's partially responsible for how this mess has dragged on at the tune of tens of billions of dollars that have resulted in two test flights of incomplete prototypes, one of which was cancelled in entirety before it even flew (the Aries I booster).

It's bad enough that he bungled those programs and gutted NASA departments but his mismanagement was shown to be at its worst when it came to dealing with defense and aerospace contractors.... you know, the very same thing that is the exact job description of his new position in government. This is about as bad as if GWG had appointed Scooter Libby to the Supreme Court.

 

[trader/warrior]

Looking at the Trump administration from a pure space point of view, the gutting of climate and earth science is obviously horrible, but I was hoping the one thing that might be good would be pushing for some kind of "prestige" mission that Trump would love to look good from, probably involving humans and/or the moon well within two or even within just one presidential term. I dunno, I'm not so optimistic about that anymore. I've been watching the videos of the National Space Council meetings where Ted Cruz and then VP Pence have headed them and nothing much seems to be happening, and the questions seem to always be just gloating about american industry and jobs in aerospace as well as deregulation for the private enterprises.

SpaceX currently seem to at every possible opportunity basically dare the government to make some kind of open competition to Lunar based missions at low cost and short timeframe as an in-between to their mars goal and I really hope something like that happens, but my optimism on that is steadily declining even though the tech and capabilities seem better than ever to do it on a short timeframe. Maybe private customers like the (supposed) upcoming circumlunar Falcon Heavy Dragon spaceflight is a more realistic hope for soonish moon missions and that's stretching it IMO.

 

[Berzerker]

saw a docu describing how we can move the Earth away from the sun when it expands during its red giant phase...we just need to fling a 60 mile wide asteroid around us a few (million) times while not getting hit

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Looking at the Trump administration from a pure space point of view, the gutting of climate and earth science is obviously horrible, but I was hoping the one thing that might be good would be pushing for some kind of "prestige" mission that Trump would love to look good from, probably involving humans and/or the moon well within two or even within just one presidential term. I dunno, I'm not so optimistic about that anymore. I've been watching the videos of the National Space Council meetings where Ted Cruz and then VP Pence have headed them and nothing much seems to be happening, and the questions seem to always be just gloating about american industry and jobs in aerospace as well as deregulation for the private enterprises.

SpaceX currently seem to at every possible opportunity basically dare the government to make some kind of open competition to Lunar based missions at low cost and short timeframe as an in-between to their mars goal and I really hope something like that happens, but my optimism on that is steadily declining even though the tech and capabilities seem better than ever to do it on a short timeframe. Maybe private customers like the (supposed) upcoming circumlunar Falcon Heavy Dragon spaceflight is a more realistic hope for soonish moon missions and that's stretching it IMO.

The administration is too distracted to do anything big other than continuing to feed the SLS Juggernaut. At the same time, just standing up SLS and Orion are taking so much money there is very little left to do interesting things with that platform. It looks like it will launch once (unmanned) and then will likely get axed. I just don't see the political will to do anything else given the administration is fighting for it's life and obsessed with blowing up the defecit to fund tax cuts.

Also some members of the administration are downright hostile towards SpaceX and Blue Origin. There is already a contingent of Republican lawmakers in Congress who actively try and hurt those companies to protect their local space companies but it appears a few of them are actually in the administration itself.

It's a sad development actually and could set back space policy.

saw a docu describing how we can move the Earth away from the sun when it expands during its red giant phase...we just need to fling a 60 mile wide asteroid around us a few (million) times while not getting hit

I would think by the point we need to worry about this we will have moved on from this rock.

 

[Lexicus]

I would think by the point we need to worry about this we will have moved on from this rock.

We're going extinct in a thousand years. Just couldn't swing it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We're going extinct in a thousand years. Just couldn't swing it.

Carrington Event-level solar storm, asteroid impact, climate change, nuclear exchange, take your pick. The odds are not good.

The common thread all of those threats have is that their solutions depend on space technology in part or entirely. Space is the literal and figurative high ground for our species. We don't all have to move off-world to survive but the efforts that go into moving just some of us off-world provide real hope for everyone in the form of new technologies and resources.

 

[Lexicus]

Carrington Event-level solar storm, asteroid impact, climate change, nuclear exchange, take your pick. The odds are not good.

I'll take climate change for 500. "What is destroying the biosphere after failing to break the fossil fuel addiction?"

The common thread all of those threats have is that their solutions depend on space technology in part or entirely. Space is the literal and figurative high ground for our species. We don't all have to move off-world to survive but the efforts that go into moving just some of us off-world provide real hope for everyone in the form of new technologies and resources.

The solution to climate change is to end the dictatorship of capital over the world. I'm not sure I want us going offworld when we can't even take care of this world.

 

[uppi]

I'll take climate change for 500. "What is destroying the biosphere after failing to break the fossil fuel addiction?"

I would say, even in the worst-case climate-change scenario, Earth will be much more habitable than Mars.

 

[Lexicus]

I would say, even in the worst-case climate-change scenario, Earth will be much more habitable than Mars.

Quite true. That's not a very encouraging bar, though, is it?

 

[uppi]

Quite true. That's not a very encouraging bar, though, is it?

Exactly. The height of this bar shows that the number of scenarios in which colonizing anything in the solar system would prevent extinction of humans is actually quite small.

 

[red_elk]

But colonizing Mars would help in case if epidemy on Earth turns all people into zombies.

 

[Lexicus]

Exactly. The height of this bar shows that the number of scenarios in which colonizing anything in the solar system would prevent extinction of humans is actually quite small.

How do you reckon? I thought you meant that even in worst-case climate scenarios, the most we could do on Earth is exterminate most complex life. I doubt we could actually sterilize the planet, even if we tried. Bacteria will outlast us. Earth with bacteria, though, is more habitable than lifeless (or, apparently lifeless) Mars.

 

[Cutlass]

How do you reckon? I thought you meant that even in worst-case climate scenarios, the most we could do on Earth is exterminate most complex life. I doubt we could actually sterilize the planet, even if we tried. Bacteria will outlast us. Earth with bacteria, though, is more habitable than lifeless (or, apparently lifeless) Mars.

Thing is that climate change, epidemic disease, nuclear war, even most scenarios of asteroid impact, will not make the human race extinct. They'll kill a lot. They won't make the species extinct. So colonizing another planet isn't really much gain in that regard.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It doesn't really matter how we want to divvy up the body count for all the scenarios, my basic point is that striving into space will bring us solutions and mitigation strategies to a lot of these problems. The thing is that these efforts don't have to be geared toward preventing Earth catastrophe; these efforts will spin off a ton of knowledge and technology.

When we first started probing Venus, for example, we weren't doing it to form better theories of climate change and global warming but we got them (in part) because of that effort.

People trying to grow things on Mars will feedback to food production on the Earth. Learning to spy on adversaries from orbit has substantially reduced the risk of nuclear war. Overcoming the limitations of computational assests in space craft helped grow our massive IT infrastructure. The list goes on and on. I don't think space has all the answers for every problem but it has enough to make it a central policy goal of the entire species, in my opinion.

@Lexicus - On destroying capitalism:
When we learn to harness the resources of outer space, our global economy will shift into something totally unknown. It will be the true beginning to a post-scarcity society. I have no qualms blowing up uninhabited (even by single-cell life) rocks to extract resources from them. I do not see that as 'messing up' space the same way we've messed up the Earth. And for the worlds we won't strip mine, I see it as our obligation as the protectors of life in this system to spread it throughout the solar system wherever we can.

 

[r16]

musk in Ankara , visits Anıtkabir , tweets of the broken ribs and the punctured lung as Kemal commands the long dead Army at Sakarya (in pain) , gets 500 hundred thousand likes . Man , ı understand people really have no idea on whom they are supposed to impress , but this ? The whole rocket thing is based on being cheap to get business and if cheaper than Ariane and what not , warum nichts ? This about the next TV satellites' launch . And ? Gah , ı know people who know people who love their Teslas , never minding the whole business model pertaining . But at a time when poor lonely Elon is like totally oppressed by the might of bigwigs in Washington ? It's house cleaning time within Jihadist ranks hence the Saudis pushing for their own people anywhere and much "bad" in country with the coming November 27 trial in the US that might get the PM to become like "wanted" . The Last Prime Minister sent to DC because Trump will not receive phone calls and the like after the Kurdish debacle and because the last time something like this happened , the former head of the Goverment (aka the Little Imperialist) looked like garnering support and the PM like had his head , to stop the Little Imperialist from isolating him in office . See , the billionaire extraordinaire is just a tool of the US foreign policy , as the Last Prime Minister is kept waiting in the Central Park or whatever as Pence is juggling to find a slot in his demanding schedule to meet ... And then the visit to Anıtkabir , which every single US official avoids religiously , despite the 100 percent clear notion that the New Turkey can never s_domize them for , now it's actually America that makes the Counter-revolution tick . Like for a decade now . Do you want to know how it sounds ? "Here, here... Respect to your false prophet and pharoah." No American is ever required to be there, nor will be , even if A-K-P itself is conducting its own trip on this Anniversary of Atatürk's death , because if it goes pearshaped after November 27 , they might need any silly stupid idiotic loser fan of Kemal in whatever capacity . As if America would replace the Party with anything . Yours idiotly wraps this up at night and oh my , the likes become a million by the morning newspaper goes to print , to his average 150 000 per message . Getting and keeping contracts , in case merit comes back to Turkey as a decisive factor in anything , surely depends on merit , not stealing whatever the evilly smelly Turk apparently stands for .

 

[Karpius]

Anyone know when global warming started?

 

[Lexicus]

Anyone know when global warming started?

This question doesn't even make sense.

 

[Karpius]

This question doesn't even make sense.

Why not? I was simply looking for some context as to when the earth started to get warmer.