Susano Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space But we're already in space. It's a good place to be. People make money. In the future, they'll make more money. What the poster is implicitly arguing for is "miracle now now now now!" Well, maybe there'll be a miracle. We'll dig up an old UFO, invent an antigravity gadget, contact aliens. More likely, we won't. And it will all develop more slowly. You want a hero? There's two down the street, both working, short of sleep, raising the third kid that they can't really afford. Instead of dreaming that we can build Moonbase Alpha tomorrow, as opposed to fifty years from now, go get them a pay raise. It'll bring Moonbase Alpha closer in the bargain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulcan Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Yeah, those 'heroes' raising a third kid they can't afford? I have two words for them. Birth. Control. A heck of a lot cheaper than that third kid. Personally, I see that neat little cartoon as saying "Don't give up!" rather than "NOWNOWNOW!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Yeah' date=' those 'heroes' raising a third kid they can't afford? I have two words for them. Birth. Control. A heck of a lot cheaper than that third kid.[/quote'] If the kid isn't their own biologically but is emotionally and in all other ways, oh yes they're heroes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnaskar Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Everyone's a Hero. Just thought I'd point that out. But yes, Space Nownownow isn't the way to go. But on the other hand, neither is The Governments Keep The ISS Floating 'Til 2020, Everything Else Is The Private Sector's Job. We should have some new goal in space that was made this millennium (love how I can correctly apply that term to everything older than twelve years). The Space Shuttle is dead, Constellations is gone, the ISS has another 9 years before it burns, Virgin Galactic has been saying "by the end of this year" for the last 4 years, and that's it for our current manned space flight projects. Whatever happened to "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.", to "Boldly going", or to the "too small and fragile a basket"? Last century was epic, but we're not really doing anything towards outdoing it this century. We done nothing to justify "the twenty-first century is when everything changes. And you've got to be ready." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted January 7, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Escafarc Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things' date=' not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.[/b'] Yeah but none of our current leaders could hold JFK's jockstrap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmjalund Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Yeah but none of our current leaders could hold JFK's jockstrap.or would want to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmjalund Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Well' date=' maybe there'll be a miracle. We'll dig up an old UFO, invent an antigravity gadget, .[/quote']or find Doc Brown's hoverboard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I just want to get there before someone else does and they start dropping rocks on me. ~Rex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I've already said in a different thread here that certain things done in the earlier space program were not just heroic, they were superheroic. That remains true not just in the mythic Project Apollo era, but well into the Shuttle era: the repair of Hubble Space Telescope, for example, was another achievement of technical brilliance, and the beyond-wildest-dreams successes of the Voyager probes to the outer Solar System and the Opportunity and Spirit rovers on Mars make that old legendary Greek, Odysseus, look like a stay-at-home momma's boy. Those are examples of things the United States can do right when nobody else has the guts to even think about trying, and so help us God, we will do them again. I would like to see us decide that it was politically important to have a manned presence in space, and I would like that decision to be correct (as in, based on rational reasons, not just a d*ck-size contest with the Soviets, which is what the race to the Moon was). I want the leadership of that work to be technical, not political, because politicals are, to the last man and woman of them, Dilbertian pointy-haired imbeciles. The reason the Soviet moon effort failed was because its guiding genius, Sergei Korolev, died after surgery in January 1966; his successor was not as brilliant (or as adroit in getting resources from the politicians) and it all went to Hell in political intrigues. The N1 rocket (their Saturn V equivalent) failed all four tests in 1969, the second of which was catastrophic enough to destroy the launch complex. Overhauling NASA may be necessary to mount a viable manned space effort, but the NASA centers are predominantly in southern Red States now and I cannot see the current House leadership cutting their districts' cash cows now matter what their rhetoric might be. Relatively small segment of the Federal budget though it is, it is so visible that it has been paralyzed by political attachments. It'll take someone with more imagination than me to see a way out of that hole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RexMundi Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I'd be down for some more money going to the Un-Manned stuff as well, especially if we could trashcan some of the more restrictive rules we folow for some reason. ~Rex....thinks about something exploratory....with a real power plant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmjalund Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space un-manned only makes long term sense if it helps us with future manned missions IMO. After a point it can be a crutch, as the discoveries become less and less relevant to the general populace and only relevent to a smaller and smaller group of scientists and spaceophiles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Onassiss Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I'd like to go into space and find a planet that doesn't suck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amanojaku Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I'd like to go into space and find a planet that doesn't suck. Dude. earth doesn't suck. It's a lot of the people on it that suck. What you want is a planet that doesn't allow people who suck to emigrate there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Onassiss Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Dude. earth doesn't suck. It's a lot of the people on it that suck. What you want is a planet that doesn't allow people who suck to emigrate there. I don't know... the place where I live now hardly has any people at all, so I can't really blame it on sucky people. But yeah, once we find a planet that doesn't suck, it'll be important to keep it that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulcan Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space If the kid isn't their own biologically but is emotionally and in all other ways' date=' oh yes they're heroes.[/quote'] All right, I'll give you that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeropoint Posted January 9, 2011 Report Share Posted January 9, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I say someone should break into a few art museums, steal the ten most beloved works of art, carefully pack them in an environmentally stabilized and shock proof container, and shoot them to Mars. You want to see the Mona Lisa again? Go and get it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 9, 2011 Report Share Posted January 9, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I say someone should break into a few art museums' date=' steal the ten most beloved works of art, carefully pack them in an environmentally stabilized and shock proof container, and shoot them to Mars. You want to see the Mona Lisa again? Go and get it![/quote'] Replace "works of art" with "$50 billion in bearer bonds" and you've got something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amanojaku Posted January 12, 2011 Report Share Posted January 12, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Replace "works of art" with "$50 billion in bearer bonds" and you've got something. 50 billion dollars to go to mars? That's chump change, stop thinking so small! You want a reason to go into space? How about twenty trillion of 'em? Read it and drool, brothers. A small, typical asteroid may contain up to 20 trillion dollars (say that number a few times. Twenty trillion dollars. Doesn't it just feel good to say it?) worth of metals, including metals that are vital to high tech and are getting harder to find on earth, like the so-called 'conflict metals" that are beginning to cause some concern among those with social consciences. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 12, 2011 Report Share Posted January 12, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space And the backwoods of British Columbia have a trillion gazillion dollars of ores ready to exploit. (Note: made up number!) There's even more in the Triangulum galaxy. All you have to do is come up with a way to sell them on the open market for less than it cost to extract them. Look, once again, the issue here is not that there's not money to be made in space. The issue is that you're walking up to a Neolithic sailor who thinks that it is daring to be trying to take his sewn plank canoe from Calais to Dover in September (September!) and telling him about how profitable the Antarctic whaling industry is going to be in 6000 years time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amanojaku Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Byt we've already reached the asteroids, and we've even landed probes on them, the first to do so wasn't even built or designed to land on an asteroid was not intended to, and they landed it literally on a spur of the moment idea when the mission was over! We can reach the near earth asteroids, the rest is just engineering details that can be worked out if we try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lawnmower Boy Posted January 13, 2011 Report Share Posted January 13, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Sadly, the engineers are a bunch of slackers, always talking about how hard stuff is, and how long its going to take to develop this and that. Maybe we should shoot some, just to motivate the rest? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Miles Posted January 14, 2011 Report Share Posted January 14, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space I'd like to go into space and find a planet that doesn't suck. Then how would we keep from flying of into space? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Onassiss Posted January 16, 2011 Report Share Posted January 16, 2011 Re: Why We Should Go Into Space Then how would we keep from flying of into space? Uh... wait, I got it! Everybody gets one of these: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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