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Space Exploration


ChillPenguin
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I was on another forum and some idiot who didn't know what he was talking about was ranting about how space exploration is evil and how it's a waste of money and how everyone who believes in aliens is an *expletive* idiot who believes in fairy tales like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. So I ask you this, what do you think of space exploration? I think it's wonderful, I also feel as though more money should be put towards it, as it is the most important government agency there is, in my opinion. I also feel as though we should broadcast more messages into space, instead of just listening for signals. We need a heavily funded space agency that isn't afraid to take risks, and we may even have to combine all space agencies in the world for more adequate funding, personnel, and joint research efforts.


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SolCommand
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Well, in my eyes, whoever believes space exploration should slow down is a retard. All the planet's resources are being depleted faster and faster, from where can we get others if not from asteroids or other planets ... and how will we do that without pumping more money into space programs ? Just saying 🙂


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ChillPenguin
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SolCommand wrote:
Well, in my eyes, whoever believes space exploration should slow down is a retard. All the planet's resources are being depleted faster and faster, from where can we get others if not from asteroids or other planets ... and how will we do that without pumping more money into space programs ? Just saying 🙂

/Agree


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DarkOne
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We need to do like in freelancer and launch some big colony ships into space and make them all go to different systems and start making new civilizations.


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ChillPenguin
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Darkone wrote:
We need to do like in freelancer and launch some big colony ships into space and make them all go to different systems and start making new civilizations.

We need to research cryogenics first.


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DarkOne
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Think its like 20+ yrs to get to pluto. Think we should go after faster engines first because I doubt we could freeze ourselves for 20+ years without issue.


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s2odan
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Space Exploration, yes I believe it has a lot of worth. You never know what you will find around the next parsec... 😉

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We need to research cryogenics first.

This is old, but its still interesting none the less: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 197339.stm

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A Japanese man has survived for 24 days in cold weather and without food and water by falling into a state of "hibernation", his doctor has said.

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SpaceRider
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ChillPenguin wrote:
So I ask you this, what do you think of space exploration? I think it's wonderful, I also feel as though more money should be put towards it, as it is the most important government agency there is, in my opinion. I also feel as though we should broadcast more messages into space, instead of just listening for signals. We need a heavily funded space agency that isn't afraid to take risks, and we may even have to combine all space agencies in the world for more adequate funding, personnel, and joint research efforts.

Hi ChillPenguin,

I totally agree. Putting money on research is never wasted, but putting money on war and destruction, dictatorship and self glorification is always. We do need space research for creating and testing new materials, finding exoplanets and exoplanetary life and developing new space vehicles, engines and technology. Of course there are other important goals in our current age like fighting and preventing hunger in this world, deseases, genocides, natural desasters ... but space exploration, the hope of mankind to find other worlds of civilisation, to boldy go where noone has gone before, to be on progress, should never be stopped.

Regards

SpaceRider


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SpaceRider
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Darkone wrote:
Think its like 20+ yrs to get to pluto. Think we should go after faster engines first because I doubt we could freeze ourselves for 20+ years without issue.

That is right, but what do we want with Pluto? It is an icy rock and planetoid, not even a planet :). I think we should first go to Titan (the only moon with atmosphere), and Europa (expected to cover an ocean below its ice shield). These moons could become the first permanent place holders for human space ports! However, there were still around 10 years to go to this destination and another 10 to go back ... much too long. Hopefully a more effective energy form will be found soon to decrease these long time travelling problems. It is a shame to admit that we even do not have rechargable batteries yet providing energy for an entire day. In that way, we are still close to stone age ... okay, bronze age to be fair ;).


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Geraldine
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Space exploration is essential to us as a species. We have covered just about every habitable area on Earth and all the while resources are dwindling. However, it wont be the quest for new territory or knowledge sadly, that will provide the impetus, but the quest for more money. Until the big corporations get interested in space, there is little chance of there being a political willingness on the part of the governments around the world to really get involved. World governments are simply too small minded; more concerned with what is happening to their own little patch of the planet.

Basically, economics rather that politics will always be more important.......that is until there is a major ecological disaster, which again hurts the world economy. In such a scenario, it would make sound business sense to move your production off world, where a board of directors has much more control of the production process, including the "rights" of their workforce.

Not what many of us (me included) might imagine we would like space exploration to be like. However it does seem more realistic. More exploitation rather than exploration.


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DarkOne
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I know we need some type of new energy source.... whether it is nuclear or something else. Because we are resource limited, saw this quote online for the fuel burn for the space shuttle:

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The Solid Rocket Boosters each burn 1,100,000 lbs of fuel. The main tank which contains essentially a liquid oxygen/hydrogen mix burns a little less than 1,200,000 lbs. A little is reserved for maneouvring in space.

Whats it cost 10-20 million to just get the thing into orbit...?

Resources is a huge factor and money... you would think with all the brilliant minds on the planet that we couldn't come up with a energy source that doesn't cost a lot of money to distribute and maintain. Its unfortunate that only wars spur technology. Wonder if we will ever adopt the Star Trek way of thinking for the betterment of mankind 🙂


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Geraldine
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Darkone wrote:
Wonder if we will ever adopt the Star Trek way of thinking for the betterment of mankind 🙂

That would be great if it could happen Darkone, but I fear human greed will always be a factor.


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cultist
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DarkOne
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Guess we have a long way to go before we even hit Type I civilization.

There has to be a way to make nuclear power more efficient and less expensive to implement. We may see a fusion reactor someday in like 2040-2050 depending on how we advance in this area.


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robske
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Here are my thoughts on the topic:

About power: Ever heard of LFTR? If not, it could be the temporary solution to the majority of our energy problems. China is building upon western technology to make this viable, while the western nations who pioneered the technology have stopped investing into it since the cold war. LFTR has its risks, but the energy output is far greater and the risks far smaller when compared to standard Uranium-powered Nuclear Power Plants. It could be a great intermediate step before Fusion Power. And once we have fusion power, we'll be closer to the next step.

About space flight: I think that Space Exploration should be our secondary goal. Primary: Welfare of the people. Secondary: Space Flight & scientific advancement. And then after that comes the rest. As welfare has already been mostly taken care for in most western nations, we should promote scientific and societal advancement. One of the main goals could be space flight. While space flight might seem something 'prestigious' for most people, I think it's critical for our survival. As mentioned before, our resources are running out. To solve that, we'd need scientific advancement for whatever direction we'd take. Stupidly enough, I see most western nations impoverishing their educational systems more and more. This is something I STRONGLY OBJECT. Here in The Netherlands, they enacted a law a year ago which makes it for 40% of the students too expensive to study. This is a great killer for education, and something which I strongly oppose.

Another reason why I think that space flight is critical for our survival, is a reason from the past. Remember what happened to the dinosaurs? What happened to them, could happen to us at any day. Our monitoring capacity isn't sufficiënt to monitor all big rocks flying around, and we discover dangerous asteroids on a monthly, if not weekly, basis. If one would strike, civilization as we know it would be gone. Even a 1km sized asteroid would be disasterous. Even if it weren't for some big evil rocks from space, we have the Earth below us which could prove to be hazardous. What would happen if Yellowstone would explode? Worldwide Volcanic Winter, the entire US being decimated and rendered uninhabitable, large areas of Europe or China could become toxic, depending on wind directions. And this is not some simple lunatics story. Its a story which is going to happen within now and 400 years. For newborn people currently, there's a 25% chance that they have to go through this.

So yeah, I think the universe hates us, since we can't just enjoy all our days calmly on our home planet. Well, fuck you universe, we hate you back. And we're gonna terraform all of your planets, to make them like our homeworld, spreading like a plague across the universe. And if we ever encounter a sentient species and it doesn't like us, we'll always have thermonuclear and thermobaric weapons to teach them a lesson 😈


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JamesCoote
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Actually there was an interesting radio program I listened to earlier this year on BBC Radio 4 about different nuclear reactor designs. A lot of what they were saying about LFTR and other alternative reactor designs was down to economic factors. Basically they know how to make the type of reactors currently used, and it takes so damn long to build a reactor (like 10 years) that no one wants to go back to the drawing board, design something from scratch, which will take years in itself, then take another ten years building it, and after all that have the risk it doesn't work out how they expected

In the US, there have been no nuclear reactors since 3 Mile Island, whilst in the UK, the government is trying and failing to encourage companies to invest in nuclear. Germany and Japan are now ditching their nuclear reactors, whilst developing nations like China and India are only in the last few years seriously looking at nuclear. So no one has really been building reactors for a while. If you take en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant and the 3rd reactor they are building there, it was the first new reactor in 15 years in Europe and is already years late and way over budget

The risk of not getting a return on your investment in space exploration is so high that only those willing to never see a return do it. It is a hobby project for countries like China and India, or the super rich like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. People who actually try to turn a profit like Russia or Esa can't take the risk of doing things that probably won't have a direct, tangible paycheck at the end of it

In the case of the USA, they spend a lot more on space exploration than they make on putting satellites in orbit or other commercial space activities. The argument goes that spending that money on other things such as education, healthcare, etc has a much higher return, you get a lot more bang for your buck

It would hurt American pride a lot to suddenly ditch those loss-making exploration missions. The country that won the space race would be forced to accept that they only did so by pumping unsustainable amounts of money into space for a limited time (and that time has come to an end). That and the pride in being a country rich and prosperous enough that it can choose to spend money on essentially frivolous things

Yes, spaceflight is important long term, in the same way climate change is important long term. CEO's of big corporations are only in charge for 2 years and in that time, they just want to push the shareprice as high as possible to get as big a payoff as possible. The people who own the big corporations are pension funds and hedge funds who all own shares in each other. As shown by the crash of 2008, none of them really care for the long term or even the medium term sustainability of what they are doing, because personally, it is of no benefit to them

Politicans suffer the same short term outlook. The minister for space or minister for finance is only going to be in the job for the next 2 years before there is a cabinet reshuffle and they are posted to another ministry. In that time, they have to 'radically reform' everything, to make their mark and show how great they are, and certainly don't want to finish off the radical reforms of their predecessor and give them all the credit

Remember as well, these people have probably taken 20 or 30 years to get to the top of the pile. When you start talking about projects that take decades, they're thinking at the back of their minds "I'll be long retired by then..." and their eyes glaze over

So the current socio-economic system does not encourage and foster long term, large scope projects like space exploration. Changing social, cultural, economic models takes decades, much unseen hard work in the background and a surprising amount of money. Our efforts would be better spend changing the system. Then we can think realistically about space exploration


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robske
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JamesCoote wrote:

*SNIP*

So the current socio-economic system does not encourage and foster long term, large scope projects like space exploration. Changing social, cultural, economic models takes decades, much unseen hard work in the background and a surprising amount of money. Our efforts would be better spend changing the system. Then we can think realistically about space exploration

Totally agreed. I think that's already in progress, with the Pirate Parties around the world, together with several other groups. In the close future, they're going to make "sustainability" a core policy. This means that things like stripping the earth of all resources to fuel an unsustainable economy will be thing of the past if this group gets enough influence. They're also very pro scientific advancement, and use solid argumentation instead of emotions in their discussions. I've been keeping an eye on this movement for the past 4 years, and I see them currently as the only major organization capable of changing the outlook of society on sustainability, long term projects and more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirateparty


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Potsmoke66
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That would be great if it could happen Darkone, but I fear human greed will always be a factor.

geraldine you pointed it out right!

hard to work with people on this task, if most still live for themselfes.

i see we are all one here, we feel it's important and we feel also that certain things have to change, else we naver made it to space.

it's the biggest challange to humankind to manage that, once we get the curve everything will be only a matter of following steps.

actually mankind is like a wagon where all horses pull to different directions, that won't work and the wagon will be torn apart soon.

the conquering of space is not only important to fill up our resources, no it's important to unite mankind.

from my point of view it doesn't matters if we made it at all, but the will to do it and the will to be one people is the goal now.

but how can this be reached?

with people such divided?

if i see all the crap on TV and think about that so many waste their life with weird useless things like fortune-telling and with whatever they try to blind our eyes.

or some still only get fed by their own vomited...

i really lose hope sometimes and start to think; "no, we never will made it and we are even not worth to do it".

there are so many things which ties people down, greed, as geraldine stated, in first degree.

religions which still cover the spirit with absolute darkness, but promising light or to tell it right, preaching water and drinking wine.

while many of the movements aren't intentionally bad, but again vanity strikes through that.

overall you could say, vanity is the major evil, that's not new, solomon noted it already a long time ago.

talking about unuseful movements, also the wrong sight to space exists, i do believe we have to make it to space, but aliens?

first, there is no real evidence for them to me,

second, i really think life is very rare, extremely rare, just think of what have been must set to generate life as we know.

it needs much more then only the green belt, that's only 1/1000 of it.

third and finally, whatever might be the truth, if i think about that and what is the problemetic of waiting for some aliens (or gods) that will come to help us, it's simply hindering. we have to made it and even if they would exist, i tell you, i would hide myself from beeing noticed by us, perhaps i would watch, but didn't act before we changed some things. or do you think a lifeform that can't handle ethnies right is ready for space?

a lifeform where some differ only by something primitive like money, race, origin or family?

even education is not a reason to sort people by, that's very primitive in my eyes and a person who thinks that he is better because of education or "intelligence", can't be really intelligent. like wise people who differ themselfs from other by ther origin, which is unfortunatly still widely practiced.

"i am, this and that", how stupid, how blind!

education is another good example, as long as it's controlled by origin, money or something that is widely accepted in a community, like sports.

even when it's not possible to get a degree in switzerland exept in sports with sports, it's still a fact that children get sorted by that.

if you arn't good in sports, you won't made it? what a ****

if you are a proletarian you still get handled as a primitive lifeform, while wealthy still think they have earned the right to have intelligent children? evil, really evil.

such can start already in your own family, i noticed that often, my first girlfriend thought she's stupid, only because the family handled her as stupid. well after a short time it get's into your blood. but you can lift people out of darkness, it's easy, just show them that they are precious and have talents and you will awake a giant.

perhaps i'm very intelligent, seems like i belong to the upper ten percent (measured with standard methods, which isn't really reliable), but i don't give a damn about that, that's even better then being the most intelligent.

ok, i stop by now, else it get's to long and even i hate to read long posts.


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Potsmoke66
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let's start to build a generation ship, RIGHT NOW!


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Dalkeith
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I reckon what might be cheaper than a generation ship right now might be some kind of pan spermia ships. Thousands of them. Don't have to be large but they go out ahead in front at as many targets. Filled with some likely biological glue that might be able to survive in some pretty inhospitable environments that hopefully will reproduce and make any place just a small bit more hospitable for us when we do eventually arrive. Its going to be decades before we get round the solar system and probably millenia before we get out of the solar system.

Always barring FTL drives. That would change everything.


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