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Space travel. Is it necessary? Do you support it?

Do you support the continuation of the US space programme?

  • Yes

    Votes: 47 85.5%
  • No

    Votes: 2 3.6%
  • Only the continuation of the research

    Votes: 5 9.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 1.8%

  • Total voters
    55
You're not going to do most of that, especially the moon mining, so keep dreaming. Most other things, especially crystal production can be done on earth. Anything dealing with mining in space will not happen in our lifetime, nor is it really worth the effort since the money and resources would cost more to get something that could launch and mine in space and send back material than you would make on the mining itself.

There are plenty of substances that are rare enough on earth that it could be cost effective to get them from space. As we keep consuming resources, it only makes space extraction more and more viable. Rare earth elements used for high temperature super-conductors available in quantity would be extremely useful. Using robots to mine asteroids isn't inherently that expensive, and dropping them back to earth is cheap.

Furthermore, we already have to put up satellites and maintain them today, so we are going to need some kind of spacecraft regardless.

I mean, if we want to just list pipe dreams, sure. The space program could allow us to swim with space whales on Io. But I think we need to think practically when we talk about the usefulness of NASA. There are some uses there, I would say primarily in astronomy and astrophysics. I wouldn't exactly nix NASA, but I wish people would quit thinking Star Wars and Star Trek and think about the practical applications of NASA.

Nothing that Scarecrow mentioned is science fiction at all, all of it reasonable. Not everything may end up being cost effective or useful, but don't confuse innovation for fantasy. The things he mentioned ARE practical applications.

The whole "humans colonizing the solar system" crowd are the ones you need to look out for.
 
It's one of the few government programs I support 100%

No. NASA sucks.

NASA totally trashed the American heavy lift launch vehicle program, ie, Apollo, because they wanted to use the argument that without HLLV, they absolutely had to have the POS shuttle to get men into orbit.

Then they screwed the shuttle design into it's bastard configuration that's cost two birds and killed two crews.

NASA is a gigantic government bureaucracy, and clearly that's not the best way to get anything done.
 
You're not going to do most of that, especially the moon mining, so keep dreaming. Most other things, especially crystal production can be done on earth.

Oh? Really?

How do you propose we do zero-g crystal manufacturing at the bottom of a 9.84 m/s^2 gravity well?
 
You're not going to do most of that, especially the moon mining, so keep dreaming. Most other things, especially crystal production can be done on earth. Anything dealing with mining in space will not happen in our lifetime, nor is it really worth the effort since the money and resources would cost more to get something that could launch and mine in space and send back material than you would make on the mining itself. I mean, if we want to just list pipe dreams, sure. The space program could allow us to swim with space whales on Io. But I think we need to think practically when we talk about the usefulness of NASA. There are some uses there, I would say primarily in astronomy and astrophysics. I wouldn't exactly nix NASA, but I wish people would quit thinking Star Wars and Star Trek and think about the practical applications of NASA.

The only people who think about the Star Trek and Star Wars science-fiction are those who do not work for NASA, nor do they really understand what NASA does.
Very very very few candidates are selected to undergo the training that the astronauts are required (usually peak fitness levels are required). The rest of the payroll are those who are fixing the problems that arise for billions of dollars worth of equipment and being able to find solutions.

If you don't think finding a solution to keep a human safe while re-entering the atmosphere is not practical (i.e. materials that are highly resistant to extreme temperatures and pressure), then I don't know what you consider applicable research.
 

Are you saying I don't support it 100%? :confused:

Otherwise, saying "no" in response to my quoted statement makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Although I will add that your opinion of NASA has been registered, and it has subsequently been filed in my "I don't give a ****" box.

Anything else you'd like to add so that I can not give a **** about it?

;)
 
Are you saying I don't support it 100%? :confused:

No, I meant it as saying I don't support NASA 100%. And then explained why. Sorry for the confusion.

Although I will add that your opinion of NASA has been registered, and it has subsequently been filed in my "I don't give a ****" box.

Anything else you'd like to add so that I can not give a **** about it?

;)

You need to talk to a doctor to get full information on the health hazards of never giving a ****. Your eyes turn brown and you swell up.
 
No, I meant it as saying I don't support NASA 100%. And then explained why. Sorry for the confusion.

Gotcha. That makes a lot more sense after being clarified. Although saying "Well I don't" probably would have made more sense than "no" did and it would have prevented any such confusion since I didn't ask a question or seek support for my stance. ;)



You need to talk to a doctor to get full information on the health hazards of never giving a ****. Your eyes turn brown and you swell up.

It's too late for me!!! Save yourselves!!!! :lol::lol:
 
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I voted for "Only the continuation of research" for now. Space travel will one day become very promising...but right now, the costs are just too prohibitive, the distances too large, the risks too high, and the rewards too low.

Right now, there is nothing that can be learned from humans exploring other worlds that can't be achieved more safely, easily, and cheaply by robots exploring the worlds instead.

Space travel at the present time is hopelessly impractical. Now don't get me wrong...I don't have a problem with a few baby steps like the ISS...but if we're talking about actual travel to other worlds, the answer is no. That money would be much better spent here on earth.

When we have nuclear fusion, a space elevator, and mature nanotechnology...then we'll talk.
 
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NASA takes credit for a lot of things that already existed, or were under development, or would have been developed anyway.
The Space Program keeps a lot of scientists and engineers very busy, not to mention more than a few thousand PR types. They keep a lot of public relations and marketing geeks busy blowing the NASA horns.
People who believe the propaganda coming out of NASA deserve to pay higher and higher taxes to get almost nothing back, dollar wise.....
If the return is more than a dime on a dollar, I would be surprised...
 
Kind of cool how a Democratic president was the one who pushed so hard for us to get to the moon, then, huh? I guess they're not all taskmasters or loafers.
Compare Queen Elizabeth I of England to her sister Queen (Bloody) Mary.

They were both obviously royalists, and from the same family, more or less.

This would be similar to comparing John Kennedy to the current crop of Democrat elected officials.

You should also know that the only thing that will ever end the usefulness of a Doomsday clock, is Doomsday itself. Man will always be a war making creature.

As for Fermi's Paradox, the lesson it teaches is to accept that we are alone in the Universe.

But to assuage your sadness, here is a L.G.M. for you: :mrgreen:


Of course, without public schools we're not going to have many educated colonists, but that's a whole other ball game. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin both graduated from public high schools.

Good grief, the public schools produce mostly semi-literates and worse now. I didn't say I'd be willing to see education end, just an inherently flawed system. Getting to know home schooled kids has put the final nail in the coffin of public schools for me. It's far past time to privatize education.
 
Its like a monty python sketch when people talk about wasting money on space programmes.

What has it ever done for us except- cellphones ,sat nav GPS,satellite tv/radio, cordless tools ,smoke decetors ,protective paint, military intelligence being able to measure the effect of climate change and further our knowledge of the cosmos.
You left out medical telemetry!
 
There are plenty of substances that are rare enough on earth that it could be cost effective to get them from space. As we keep consuming resources, it only makes space extraction more and more viable. Rare earth elements used for high temperature super-conductors available in quantity would be extremely useful. Using robots to mine asteroids isn't inherently that expensive, and dropping them back to earth is cheap.

Furthermore, we already have to put up satellites and maintain them today, so we are going to need some kind of spacecraft regardless.



Nothing that Scarecrow mentioned is science fiction at all, all of it reasonable. Not everything may end up being cost effective or useful, but don't confuse innovation for fantasy. The things he mentioned ARE practical applications.

The whole "humans colonizing the solar system" crowd are the ones you need to look out for.

Space mining is currently science fiction, and completely impractical to boot. There may be rare elements more common in space, but the technology, money, resources, man power, etc, necessary to get those will all outweigh the means. Maybe at most, moon mining; but even then don't hold your breath. The asteroid belt can't be mined in any efficient means anytime soon, this isn't Armageddon here; there's a lot left to do and the energy requirements to get there are going to be so cost prohibitive in and of itself as to make companies not want to go through with it.

Satillites and things of that nature are completely separate from the title of this thread which was about space travel in and of itself. That is not practical, nor at this time can the US alone develop means for long ranged, human space travel. Again, I think people get caught up in how "cool" something would be without thinking of the practicalities of the problem. And then in the zeal for cool, you end up doing more harm than good. As stated before, I wouldn't get rid of NASA completely, I think manned space flight is fantasy at this point and the money and resourced necessary to develop it are better spent on other scientific research.
 
I fully support the exploration, exploitation, and colonization of space and other planets and moons.

Having said that, I think we're going about it a bit bass-ackward. Priority One needs to be a better (safer, cheaper, more robust) means of getting to and from orbit with people and payloads. I'm still intrested in the Scramjet concept, and wonder why the Delta Clipper never seemed to generate much intrest.

Once we've done that, then we need to fully develop one or two of the high-efficiency deep-space propulsion systems we've looked at but not developed: ion drives, arc drives, solar sails, mass-drivers, etc.

If we absolutely had to, I'd be willing to suspend nonessential space activities for 20 years to put the money into basic research on these two items, THEN we could go about the business of mastering space with far greater effectiveness, IMO.

G.
 
Space mining is currently science fiction, and completely impractical to boot. There may be rare elements more common in space, but the technology, money, resources, man power, etc, necessary to get those will all outweigh the means.

One old-fashioned Apollo mission could put 24,000 pounds in lunar orbit. For Apollo, most of that mass was devoted to returning the astronauts back to earth.

For mining the moon, we could hard-land those twelve tons on the moon, assuming we designed the cargo pod for that, call it a three-g touch down or so. Easy and cheap. This cargo would include a solar operated bull dozer, a pay loader, gear like that, each remotely operable from the comfort of an earthly air conditioned office building. With a three second communications lag, remotely strip mining the lunar soil for exotic isotopes such as He3 is feasible and, assuming the utility of He3 in successful fusion plant works out as predicted, it becomes a commercially viable commodity.

Other places are too remote for effective remote operation of vehicles more complex than little roving samplers, and men will have to be moved to the job.

Asteroids are small enough that many can be moved here, then stripped of valuables.
 
We don't have the technology currently to get people onto the moon. So that has to be developed. Getting **** into space is one thing, we have that. Getting humans onto planets and natural satellites is another.

The moon mining may be something achievable eventually...maybe. As I say, don't hold your breath because a lot of **** has to be researched and developed to make that go. It's not cheap, no matter how much you wish to make that claim. Mining asteroids will not happen. Pure fantasy.
 
We don't have the technology currently to get people onto the moon. So that has to be developed. Getting **** into space is one thing, we have that. Getting humans onto planets and natural satellites is another.

The moon mining may be something achievable eventually...maybe. As I say, don't hold your breath because a lot of **** has to be researched and developed to make that go. It's not cheap, no matter how much you wish to make that claim. Mining asteroids will not happen. Pure fantasy.

Actually there is a concept that has been looked at by NASA, of using a possibly-unmanned robotic craft to intercept a NEO (near earth asteroid), attach a long-thrust motor to it (like an ion rocket), and move it to Earth orbit where it could be more easily mined of rare elements and valuable minerals. I got to look at the plans and schematics one time...very intresting, and it could probably be done at a profit, given an asteroid of the right composition in a suitable orbit.

G.
 
Actually there is a concept that has been looked at by NASA, of using a possibly-unmanned robotic craft to intercept a NEO (near earth asteroid), attach a long-thrust motor to it (like an ion rocket), and move it to Earth orbit where it could be more easily mined of rare elements and valuable minerals. I got to look at the plans and schematics one time...very intresting, and it could probably be done at a profit, given an asteroid of the right composition in a suitable orbit.

G.

So they're going to make robots that can fly through space and attach thrusters to asteroids (ion rockets won't work, those are low force long time duration devices, you'd need to be able to exert more control over an asteroid particularly when it comes closer to the Earth's gravitational field than can be generation with ion thrust) and move those asteroids into an orbit around the earth that won't, you know, degrade and crash into the earth long enough for people (or I guess robots at this point) to mine the asteroid clean of all it's valuables and jettison the rocky carcass away from earth and all this won't have any negative side effects. K. Let me know when you get to this.

BTW, I think it's a very poor idea to move asteroids closer to earth. If anything, we should push them away.
 
It's been a long time since I looked at the plan, I may have forgotten some of the details, like whether ion motors were involved.

Agreed that there are some risks, and that it isn't something we'd want to do without careful consideration of all ramifications...just saying that it was considered do-able by some Nasa engineers.
 
It's been a long time since I looked at the plan, I may have forgotten some of the details, like whether ion motors were involved.

Agreed that there are some risks, and that it isn't something we'd want to do without careful consideration of all ramifications...just saying that it was considered do-able by some Nasa engineers.

Yeah...I think I'd rather fund medical technologies, base science, and some other engineering than that. It seems to me that those areas will yield results which have a much better probability of positively affecting my life.
 
Yeah...I think I'd rather fund medical technologies, base science, and some other engineering than that. It seems to me that those areas will yield results which have a much better probability of positively affecting my life.

Which gets funded all the time. NASA's budget is minuscule compared to say, the defense departments?
 
We don't have the technology currently to get people onto the moon. So that has to be developed. Getting **** into space is one thing, we have that. Getting humans onto planets and natural satellites is another. .

How can we not have the technology to get people to the moon when we have already landed people on the moon. I am extremely confused...
 
It's been a long time since I looked at the plan, I may have forgotten some of the details, like whether ion motors were involved.

Agreed that there are some risks, and that it isn't something we'd want to do without careful consideration of all ramifications...just saying that it was considered do-able by some Nasa engineers.

I have read about this as well. In addition to nano tech robots such the Pluto Express

NASA - NSSDC - Spacecraft - Details
 
Which gets funded all the time. NASA's budget is minuscule compared to say, the defense departments?

Odds of NASA having to fend off an alien attack, next to zero.....
Odds of us needing our defense department to "export democracy" to a "grateful" third world country with oil, very high....:roll:
 
First, it is logical that we repair, and up-grade travel here on earth..It 's a mess and can be improved...., but this may not happen until more intelligent people are in the right places...
 
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