50 years ago, 12 April 1961...

[Irbis]

Yuriy Gagarin become first man in outer space.

Huh, I don't know if it was short, or long period of time, but as predicted in Space Odyssey: 2010 we were supposed to have commercial Terra/Luna and Terra/Mars flights. Why we can't buy a ticket yet? :smallfrown:

[Gaelbert]

We're starting to get commercial flights into space-ish. You have to start somewhere.

[arguskos]

Because our leadership has set their sights on more... terrestrial targets. More than that, I can't really say without shattering board rules really terribly, something I'm loathe to do.

Suffice to say, I'm sad about it too. :smallfrown:

[Trog]

The dude once lived in a mud hut too from what I hear. You never can tell where life will take you.

[Irbis]

The dude once lived in a mud hut too from what I hear. You never can tell where life will take you.

...you know, if you say that, you should also say why it supposedly happened, as it wasn't exactly his (quite successful) family's choice :smallsigh:

[Jallorn]

We're starting to get commercial flights into space-ish. You have to start somewhere.

It's not that cost effective to do anything commercial with space. When there's money in it, then there will be a huge expansion of everything related to it.

[Irbis]

It's not that cost effective to do anything commercial with space. When there's money in it, then there will be a huge expansion of everything related to it.

Eh, we could've made space travel far more economical years ago.

Sadly, burning trillions of dollars on pointless exercises seems to be more important/popular these days :smallfrown:

[Yora]

Yuriy Gagarin become first man in outer space.

Huh, I don't know if it was short, or long period of time, but as predicted in Space Odyssey: 2010 we were supposed to have commercial Terra/Luna and Terra/Mars flights. Why we can't buy a ticket yet? :smallfrown:
What would you say about monochrome monitors that go rataratarataratarata as the next page of text appears? :smallbiggrin:

[Irbis]

What would you say about monochrome monitors that go rataratarataratarata as the next page of text appears? :smallbiggrin:

Eh, that wasn't true even 50 years ago :P

Still, I don't know if I wouldn't trade LCD screens for a trip to Olympus Mons :smallyuk:

[AtlanteanTroll]

Eh, that wasn't true even 50 years ago :P
Because the technology didn't even exist yet.
...

[Ravens_cry]

Yeah, that's one thing almost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe)no science fiction writer predicted, the absolutely massive computer network we call the the Internet and the both completely mundane and miraculous uses for it and the computers connected to it. The Internet and personal computers verses cheap space travel and moon cities, that's a tough one.

[Irbis]

Yeah, that's one thing almost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe)no science fiction writer predicted, the absolutely massive computer network we call the the Internet and the both completely mundane and miraculous uses for it and the computers connected to it. The Internet and personal computers verses cheap space travel and moon cities, that's a tough one.

Eh, I read that, and the parallels to internet and PCs of this were... vague to say the least.

Plus, you make it sound like it was /or choice, while we had the possibility to make it /and, and squandered it :/

[Amridell]

Politics, my friend, politics. You see, there aren't little green aliens saying "GET OFFA MAH LAWN!", there are, however, much closer, easier targets in range (of most countries, but then agian, North America is probably a bit different than Europe). It's the attitude of choice for today's world: Why do something exponentially harder for a only a little more reward? Now, call me cynical, but the thing is, countries are a lot EASIER to conquer, give only a little less reward (98% less landmass, so maybe a little isn't the right word...), so they are BETTER to conquer. Why get up to change the channel when you can just use a remote?

To say more, I would I either fill a page, or grossly violate the forum rules. Even so, a mod MIGHT want to close this, as it could get political. I hope not, because I like the idea of space travel.

[Tengu_temp]

Huh, I don't know if it was short, or long period of time, but as predicted in Space Odyssey: 2010 we were supposed to have commercial Terra/Luna and Terra/Mars flights. Why we can't buy a ticket yet? :smallfrown:

Because of advanced computers and the internet - all the scientific progress that'd otherwise go into space flight and exploration went into them. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

[Crossblade]

Because our leadership has set their sights on more... terrestrial targets.

{scrubbed}

[H Birchgrove]

Yuriy Gagarin become first man in outer space.

Huh, I don't know if it was short, or long period of time, but as predicted in Space Odyssey: 2010 we were supposed to have commercial Terra/Luna and Terra/Mars flights. Why we can't buy a ticket yet? :smallfrown:

Because a majority of the people living in USA (France etc) aren't that keen on space travel. Remember how soon people got tired of the Apollo program/the manned lunar landings.

BTW, money (stagflation and energy/steel/shipyard crisis in the 70's, unemployment during the 80's, real estate crisis in the 90's, current crisis now, etc).


Because of advanced computers and the internet - all the scientific progress that'd otherwise go into space flight and exploration went into them. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

That's not how it works. Besides, the Internet was developed from Arpanet which was originally a military project. The WWW, IIRC, was thanks to CERN. Space travel didn't hurt the atom-smashing business in the 60's.


We're starting to get commercial flights into space-ish. You have to start somewhere.

We have to compare the space program(s) with the first oceanic journeys to India and the Americas; they cost a lot of money back in the day, were extremely dangerous and it took a lot of time until those projects paid off.

[Ravens_cry]

Eh, I read that, and the parallels to internet and PCs of this were... vague to say the least.
Yes, but consider this: when it was written the word computer was generally for a job description rather then a machine. That should give some perspective.



Plus, you make it sound like it was /or choice, while we had the possibility to make it /and, and squandered it :/
Nah, it wasn't, though I think we could have gotten a bit closer if we were willing to spend a bit more and take a few more risks. It was more a case of asking which world would you rather live in, the one predicted or the one we got.

[Sacrieur]

Yeah, that's one thing almost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe)no science fiction writer predicted, the absolutely massive computer network we call the the Internet and the both completely mundane and miraculous uses for it and the computers connected to it. The Internet and personal computers verses cheap space travel and moon cities, that's a tough one.

See: Isaac Asimov.

He predicted the internet before computers even had silicon.

[The Extinguisher]

Because the only way we have to get into space is rockets, and rockets are very, very, very cost inefficient.

[Irbis]

Because a majority of the people living in USA (France etc) aren't that keen on space travel. Remember how soon people got tired of the Apollo program/the manned lunar landings.

That's not how it works. Besides, the Internet was developed from Arpanet which was originally a military project. The WWW, IIRC, was thanks to CERN. Space travel didn't hurt the atom-smashing business in the 60's.

We have to compare the space program(s) with the first oceanic journeys to India and the Americas; they cost a lot of money back in the day, were extremely dangerous and it took a lot of time until those projects paid off.

This. Three times.


Yes, but consider this: when it was written the word computer was generally for a job description rather then a machine. That should give some perspective.

Nah, it wasn't, though I think we could have gotten a bit closer if we were willing to spend a bit more and take a few more risks. It was more a case of asking which world would you rather live in, the one predicted or the one we got.

It was written in 1947. Certain Konrad Zuse made a computer in 1941 - he would be a father of information science, if not certain war, that pushed him into obscurity. Then, came certain A. Turing, but he also ended sadly (seriously, his fate was one of the grandest crimes in history) - and the development of computers was slowed by 20 years. We could have had internet as it looks today 1996.

The same thing happened to rockets... but I'm not talking about rockets, but about alternative methods, much cheaper and more efficient.

What we're looking at today is the proverbial Spanish monarch who drinks his money away instead of investing it into Columbus :smallannoyed:

[Worira]

Well, yeah. Because Columbus was an idiot who would have gotten himself and his crew killed if it weren't for blind luck.

[Solaris]

{scrubbed the original, scrub the quote}

{scrubbed}


What we're looking at today is the proverbial Spanish monarch who drinks his money away instead of investing it into Columbus :smallannoyed:

Columbus was a hack who couldn't do basic geometry. The reason nobody wanted to invest in his expedition was because the size of the planet had been known for a good long while, not because they thought the world was flat and he was going to fall off. Columbus thought the world was significantly smaller than it actually is.

[Haruki-kun]

See: Isaac Asimov.

He predicted the internet before computers even had silicon.

IIRC, so did Orson Scott Card, right?

And of course, Jules Verne predicted a lot of things, didn't he?

[H Birchgrove]

Well, yeah. Because Columbus was an idiot who would have gotten himself and his crew killed if it weren't for blind luck.

Well, there's Bartolomeu Dias, Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook...

Besides, Columbus having a different hypothesis doesn't make him an idiot, even if he was wrong. The decision to use space shuttles instead of rockets-and-capsules may have been wrong, but it doesn't make NASA "idiots".

If science shall progress, then it needs a few persons who come up with seemingly ridiculous ideas.

[chiasaur11]

We got lappies instead.

C'est la vie.

Looking at history, as weird as it is, there's one moment (one) which sent us off the Buck Rogers path and hurtling towards cyberpunk.

Cancellation of Project Orion.

Of course, I'd love if NASA was able to pull a Mars mission or something, and I think more being done on that front would be swell, but it's fascinating to see how much the world can turn on such small things.

[SMEE]

I ask kindly that we avoid discussing real world politics here.
Let's just stick to the topic at hand.

[RS14]

What would you do on the moon? :smallconfused:

[Worira]

Well, there's Bartolomeu Dias, Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, James Cook...

Besides, Columbus having a different hypothesis doesn't make him an idiot, even if he was wrong. The decision to use space shuttles instead of rockets-and-capsules may have been wrong, but it doesn't make NASA "idiots".

If science shall progress, then it needs a few persons who come up with seemingly ridiculous ideas.

When his hypothesis is "I bet the earth is actually really tiny, and all those scientists and sailors and people with a basic knowledge of geography are just big mean poopyheads", then yes, having a different hypothesis makes him an idiot.

[The Glyphstone]

Build a moon laser, and write my name across the landmass of any country that displeased me.




What?:smallconfused:

[Tengu_temp]

That's not how it works.

I know. That was a joke.

[Irbis]

When his hypothesis is "I bet the earth is actually really tiny, and all those scientists and sailors and people with a basic knowledge of geography are just big mean poopyheads", then yes, having a different hypothesis makes him an idiot.

Could you please, provide a citation? See, every time I see claims that people really knew the Earth was round all along, I ask myself why you usually ended in prison (if lucky) 150 years later for claiming just that. Heck, I ask myself why "Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al Mondo" caused such a shock, that Pope asked his best astronomers to explain it to him in detail.

Also, as the only known record of calculating Earth's size (by Eratosthenes) was lost along with the Greeks/Romans, why they needed to rediscover it a few centuries after Columbus, by re-calculating it independently, it if it was known before Columbus? :smallconfused:

[Trog]

...you know, if you say that, you should also say why it supposedly happened, as it wasn't exactly his (quite successful) family's choice :smallsigh:
I'll pass on explaining it as I'm sure the curious can find it in a web search or what have you. I just found it to be an interesting juxtaposition of life events.

[Irbis]

I'll pass on explaining it as I'm sure the curious can find it in a web search or what have you. I just found it to be an interesting juxtaposition of life events.

Yeah, but you made it sound like he was some caveman or something, not more like equivalent of crafty businessman who is homeless because someone set fire to his house and workshop :smallsigh:

[chiasaur11]

Build a moon laser, and write my name across the landmass of any country that displeased me.




What?:smallconfused:

Too small scale. A fleet of atomic death rockets sound better?

Because America came this close. (http://www.atomic-robo.com/2010/11/03/a-little-more-on-orion/)

[Trog]

Yeah, but you made it sound like he was some caveman or something, not more like equivalent of crafty businessman who is homeless because someone set fire to his house and workshop :smallsigh:

Well he had to live, for a short while anyway, in squalid conditions. *shrug* It's an interesting breadth of experiences is all.

Besides, we've all lived in a cave at one point or another, right?

>>
<<

*puffs Coffin Nail™*

[RS14]

Could you please, provide a citation? See, every time I see claims that people really knew the Earth was round all along, I ask myself why you usually ended in prison (if lucky) 150 years later for claiming just that. Heck, I ask myself why "Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al Mondo" caused such a shock, that Pope asked his best astronomers to explain it to him in detail.

Also, as the only known record of calculating Earth's size (by Eratosthenes) was lost along with the Greeks/Romans, why they needed to rediscover it a few centuries after Columbus, by re-calculating it independently, it if it was known before Columbus? :smallconfused:

Just reading Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Geographical_considerations), it sounds as though it were widely known among scholars that the earth was round. It's not clear that Columbus was an idiot, but rather that he trusted sources which happened to be wrong (and suffered from unit confusion--sound familiar, NASA?). Without reading more on what those sources contained and what arguments they put forth, I'm not inclined to believe he was an idiot (though certainly reckless for setting off on such a voyage when the distance was not accurately known).

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_sphaera_mundi

Who was imprisoned in the 1640s for claiming the earth was round? You're not confusing this with heliocentrism, are you?

[Wreckingrocc]

To be fair, though, Columbus also mutilated the natives of the Caribbean because they didn't bring him to their secret gold stashes. I don't think "idiot" is quite the right word; I think "chaotic stupid" more accurately fits his archetype.

Regarding space again, I'm going to wager with the whole "rockets are inefficient" The Extinguisher shed light upon. We haven't found significant mineral sources which are close enough to harvest profitably, and there's not really a point to living on the moon. It's cold, unsuitable for life, and more or less without an atmosphere. It'd take a lot of money to fix it up for tourist life, not just in rocket fuel and stations, but also in shipments of oxygen, biotic life, water, nitrogen, argon (if the trace amounts are necessary for life; I haven't really done my research here), ozone, soil, and building materials for the stations there. Plus a lot of time- considerably more than the 50 years most sci fi writers predicted.

[factotum]

Besides, Columbus having a different hypothesis doesn't make him an idiot, even if he was wrong. The decision to use space shuttles instead of rockets-and-capsules may have been wrong, but it doesn't make NASA "idiots".


Using space shuttles was actually a brilliant idea, right up until the US military got their hands on it. The original Shuttle design called for a much smaller orbiter mounted on top of the external fuel tank--that would mean no Columbia disaster for a start (no way for debris from the tank to damage the wing) and considerably fewer problems with heat tiles and the like, meaning shorter turn-round times on the ground. We really could have had a cheap, easy method of getting smaller loads into space! Unfortunately that design of the Shuttle wasn't capable of lifting large military satellites into orbit, so they had to make the orbiter bigger...

[pendell]

It's not that cost effective to do anything commercial with space. When there's money in it, then there will be a huge expansion of everything related to it.

You can't make space economical until you're doing something there first. Which means someone is going to have to bite a truly humongous bullet to get us there first.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[H Birchgrove]

Using space shuttles was actually a brilliant idea, right up until the US military got their hands on it. The original Shuttle design called for a much smaller orbiter mounted on top of the external fuel tank--that would mean no Columbia disaster for a start (no way for debris from the tank to damage the wing) and considerably fewer problems with heat tiles and the like, meaning shorter turn-round times on the ground. We really could have had a cheap, easy method of getting smaller loads into space! Unfortunately that design of the Shuttle wasn't capable of lifting large military satellites into orbit, so they had to make the orbiter bigger...

Good point. Still, I think the Apollo project should have continued, at best combined with NERVA (the nuclear rocket engine). It's telling that France, Japan and China have given up on shuttles. BTW, I read somewhere that the space shuttle was meant to be combined with a nuclear "shuttle" that would go between the Earth and the Moon. :smallfrown:

[Irbis]

Technically, we already have means to provide cheap lift of materials to orbit, even if we exclude things that need undiscovered/unproductable for now materials to work. One of this could be launch loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop). Or, space fountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain). Proposed cost (10 bln $) seems high until you realize that at current transport rates, it would pay for itself in seven months, and that last year alone, humanity spent 1700 bln $ on purchase of arms.

What good would that do? What good GPS, satellite observation, wireless internet and TV do us today? Meteo sats? Imagine world where all these things don't rely on a few dozen stallites, but on a few hundred, or thousand, if need be, completely eliminating need for groundside infrastructure and opening the previously unknown areas of life for development. It would be greater revolution than internet and cell phones combined. Resources, too - Hel3 from the moon, cheap resources (as we're starting to run out of a few crucial elements) virtually on demand.

And yet, people prefer to literally burn heaps of money four orders of magnitude greater for no reason at all. A shame, if you ask me.

[RS14]

Technically, we already have means to provide cheap lift of materials to orbit, even if we exclude things that need undiscovered/unproductable for now materials to work. One of this could be launch loop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop). Or, space fountain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain). Proposed cost (10 bln $) seems high until you realize that at current transport rates, it would pay for itself in seven months, and that last year alone, humanity spent 1700 bln $ on purchase of arms.

What good would that do? What good GPS, satellite observation, wireless internet and TV do us today? Meteo sats? Imagine world where all these things don't rely on a few dozen stallites, but on a few hundred, or thousand, if need be, completely eliminating need for groundside infrastructure and opening the previously unknown areas of life for development. It would be greater revolution than internet and cell phones combined. Resources, too - Hel3 from the moon, cheap resources (as we're starting to run out of a few crucial elements) virtually on demand.

And yet, people prefer to literally burn heaps of money four orders of magnitude greater for no reason at all. A shame, if you ask me.

You understate the difficulty of implementing both projects.

The Space Fountain proposed requires a pair of 100km tall airtight tubes. To put this in perspective, the tallest structure in the world currently is 0.8km and cost 1.5 billion USD, in a country where labor is not treated nor paid fairly, to put it mildly. The proposed Space Fountain uses several novel techniques, requiring enormous airtight tubes, which will be exceedingly difficult to service in place, reliable, high-efficiency launch systems, precise alignment of a hovering station (in atmosphere during parts of construction). Construction requires the ability to launch pellets at very high velocities in rapid sequence, while eating the energy cost of doing so in atmosphere. Any failure of the system will cause collapse, and so scheduled downtime for maintenance must be limited to a few hours at most, a difficult proposition for something of this complexity. Attaching and accelerating the payload will also be nontrivial.

Lofstrom does not attempt in any serious way to estimate the cost of the Launch Loop--see page 30 of his paper. Rather he calculates cost/kg resulting from various capital costs. 10 billion USD is laughably low. Recall that Boston's Big Dig project is expected to reach more than twice that for a 5km tunnel. The Space Shuttle project cost 170 billion USD (~160 billion, subtracting launch costs). It took 13 years from beginning until the first launch. And this was building on existing rocket designs and a decade of spaceflight experience! The personnel costs of the Launch Loop alone will be staggering, particularly considering the number of top engineers who will need to be hired for this period. Additionally, the experimental costs will be substantial, as so many elements of it will need to be developed from scratch.

That's not to say that these projects are impossible, but rather that we have not yet developed the technology to go out and build them. Development of the Space Fountain idea basically amounts to a few scientists talking and saying "hey, this isn't impossible!" And not to disrespect Lofstrom, but he's an electrical engineer proposing a tremendous cross-disciplinary construction project. It may work, sure, neither has it been developed to the point of being current technology.

[Irbis]

The Space Fountain proposed requires a pair of 100km tall airtight tubes. To put this in perspective, the tallest structure in the world currently is 0.8km and cost 1.5 billion USD, in a country where labor is not treated nor paid fairly, to put it mildly. The proposed Space Fountain uses several novel techniques, requiring enormous airtight tubes, which will be exceedingly difficult to service in place, reliable, high-efficiency launch systems, precise alignment of a hovering station (in atmosphere during parts of construction). Construction requires the ability to launch pellets at very high velocities in rapid sequence, while eating the energy cost of doing so in atmosphere. Any failure of the system will cause collapse, and so scheduled downtime for maintenance must be limited to a few hours at most, a difficult proposition for something of this complexity. Attaching and accelerating the payload will also be nontrivial.

First issue - height - is apples and oranges. You compare free-standing, supporting itself building of enormous weight to structure that only needs to withstand tearing stress, as it does need not support its own weight in big part. It's difference between pillbox and a tent.

Second - yup, it will be difficult. It will consume large sums of money. But, so did project Apollo. Without it, the would be no satellites, GPS, precise weather monitoring, google maps, and lots of other things we take for granted, which save human lives and enormous amounts of money. The returns on any kind of elevator would have been a hundred times larger. Even if they were not, I'd still prefer it to a pile of bombs and guns.


Lofstrom does not attempt in any serious way to estimate the cost of the Launch Loop--see page 30 of his paper. Rather he calculates cost/kg resulting from various capital costs. 10 billion USD is laughably low. Recall that Boston's Big Dig project is expected to reach more than twice that for a 5km tunnel. The Space Shuttle project cost 170 billion USD (~160 billion, subtracting launch costs). It took 13 years from beginning until the first launch. And this was building on existing rocket designs and a decade of spaceflight experience! The personnel costs of the Launch Loop alone will be staggering, particularly considering the number of top engineers who will need to be hired for this period. Additionally, the experimental costs will be substantial, as so many elements of it will need to be developed from scratch.

Ok, it is low. But, even had it costed 100 billion, it would have been worth that. If humanity can afford to spend 1700 billion on pretty much pointless stuff, we should be able to spend 5% of that sum on something useful.

By the way, Space Shuttle is very poor comparison, as the project was seemingly engineered from the start to be as wasteful and pointless as possible, yet, despite costing more than the elevator, and achieving fraction of what it would, it brought immense return of the investment.


That's not to say that these projects are impossible, but rather that we have not yet developed the technology to go out and build them. Development of the Space Fountain idea basically amounts to a few scientists talking and saying "hey, this isn't impossible!" And not to disrespect Lofstrom, but he's an electrical engineer proposing a tremendous cross-disciplinary construction project. It may work, sure, neither has it been developed to the point of being current technology.

Really? The same could have been said in 1961 - we don't have the technology. Instead, Korolew pushed for funding and now, it turns out, we now have technology, and we developed it for a bit.

Doing what you imply - sitting on doing nothing until we have technology means we'll probably never have it, or have it 100 years later than it would have been possible had we actively tried obtaining it.

[Trekkin]

Well, there's a significant difference between lacking a single solution to make a given endeavor feasible and needing a plethora of new technologies to even begin drafting plans for constructing it. The latter usually needs some intermediate product to fund the development of more of the component technologies, or a need sufficiently pressing need to ignore that the project won't return anything for far longer than normal (if at all) especially since the possible points of failure usually increase exponentially with the number of novel technologies employed in a given system-- or at least that's been the experience of my engineer friends.

So perhaps a space fountain could be engineered, but it'd be a titanic engineering challenge, and it would need a titanic lure, if you will. I just don't know where an incentive of sufficient magnitude might be found, although He3 fusion might be sufficiently attractive eventually.

[factotum]

You know, I was just looking at that Space Fountain thing, and I really wouldn't want to be anywhere within 100km of the base if the power ever failed on the pellet stream keeping it upright!

[nedz]

The trouble with space flight is that there isn't anywhere worth going to yet.
The moon is a large chunk of real estate, sure, but its quite boring and VERY high maintenance. Public interest in Apollo sagged when the pictures turned out to be gray rock.
Venus is far too hot, Mars is too cold and has no atmosphere to speak of. One day we may be able to terraform these, but thats some way off.
As for intersteller travel: its still quicker to wait for the technology to improve than to set off now. Energy generation is the main problem, though there are many other issues. We don't even know where we'd like to go yet; though recent work with the space observatories is starting to provide that information.
Space is very useful, but we can stick things in orbit, or even further out, economically with chemical rockets.

[Dr.Epic]

Why we can't buy a ticket yet? :smallfrown:

You don't know the right travel agents.

[neoseph7]

The trouble with space flight is that there isn't anywhere worth going to yet.
The moon is a large chunk of real estate, sure, but its quite boring and VERY high maintenance. Public interest in Apollo sagged when the pictures turned out to be gray rock.
Venus is far too hot, Mars is too cold and has no atmosphere to speak of. One day we may be able to terraform these, but thats some way off.
As for intersteller travel: its still quicker to wait for the technology to improve than to set off now. Energy generation is the main problem, though there are many other issues. We don't even know where we'd like to go yet; though recent work with the space observatories is starting to provide that information.
Space is very useful, but we can stick things in orbit, or even further out, economically with chemical rockets.


While we're on the subject of locales in space. There happens to be this giant ball of plasma continously undergoing nuclear fusion launching tremendous levels of radiation in all directions. Mars (too cold), Venus(spinning too slowly), and the Moon (too small) do not have the requisite electromagnetic fields that protect us, such as here on earth. So if we could get to these places, we'd have to live deep underground. We could do that here for a fraction of the cost.

The benefits to living in zero 'G' are pretty minor. It's even harder to stay in shape for us fatties, and if you had a medical condition that would be vastly mitigated by a microgravity environment, you'd be too fragile to survive the trip.

In short, while governments could improve the infrastructure to get us into space, there's nothing for us to do once there. Living in space is a nightmare. Working in space is largely useless. The demand just doesn't overcome the cost. No matter how cool it would be.

[nedz]

While we're on the subject of locales in space. There happens to be this giant ball of plasma continously undergoing nuclear fusion launching tremendous levels of radiation in all directions. Mars (too cold), Venus(spinning too slowly), and the Moon (too small) do not have the requisite electromagnetic fields that protect us, such as here on earth. So if we could get to these places, we'd have to live deep underground. We could do that here for a fraction of the cost.

The benefits to living in zero 'G' are pretty minor. It's even harder to stay in shape for us fatties, and if you had a medical condition that would be vastly mitigated by a microgravity environment, you'd be too fragile to survive the trip.

In short, while governments could improve the infrastructure to get us into space, there's nothing for us to do once there. Living in space is a nightmare. Working in space is largely useless. The demand just doesn't overcome the cost. No matter how cool it would be.

Yep.
There are a whole host of problems: No Food, No Water, No Air to name but another three. There is a lot of real estate though, actually that something of an understatement, and there are a lot of things we can learn.

[Flickerdart]

Yep.
There are a whole host of problems: No Food, No Water, No Air to name but another three. There is a lot of real estate though, actually that something of an understatement, and there are a lot of things we can learn.
The Japanese have looked into growing bacteria as a food source on Mars. I'm not sure what the results of that research were though.

[ZombyWoof]

Could you please, provide a citation? See, every time I see claims that people really knew the Earth was round all along, I ask myself why you usually ended in prison (if lucky) 150 years later for claiming just that. Heck, I ask myself why "Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al Mondo" caused such a shock, that Pope asked his best astronomers to explain it to him in detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_On_the_Sizes_and_Distances
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_astronomy#Hellenistic_astronomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

Spherical earth is relatively simple to demonstrate with moderately basic geometry. Assuming that the sun is not an infinite point of light away and is in fact in a fixed location (or even just a location) one can do, well, what this man did:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Eratosthenes.27_measurement_of_the_Ea rth.27s_circumference



Also, as the only known record of calculating Earth's size (by Eratosthenes) was lost along with the Greeks/Romans, why they needed to rediscover it a few centuries after Columbus, by re-calculating it independently, it if it was known before Columbus? :smallconfused:
From what I can understand it's very, VERY unlikely that the work was lost because it was highly regarded as brilliant. But if you can provide a link proving that the work was lost sometime before Columbus then sure.

As for Columbus being an idiot: he should have had a far better idea of how large the earth was and didn't bring nearly enough supplies. He also didn't even discover the continent as the Vikings had been there and done that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Ericson) some 400-500 years before.

[Joran]

Second - yup, it will be difficult. It will consume large sums of money. But, so did project Apollo. Without it, the would be no satellites, GPS, precise weather monitoring, google maps, and lots of other things we take for granted, which save human lives and enormous amounts of money. The returns on any kind of elevator would have been a hundred times larger. Even if they were not, I'd still prefer it to a pile of bombs and guns.


I'd argue that Apollo did none of those things; Manned spaceflight did none of those things. It's robotics and satellites. I'd argue that manned spaceflight is important, but the reason we don't launch people into space as often is because we don't need to. It's cheaper and more efficient to send our robotic minions to gather data for us.



Really? The same could have been said in 1961 - we don't have the technology. Instead, Korolew pushed for funding and now, it turns out, we now have technology, and we developed it for a bit.

Doing what you imply - sitting on doing nothing until we have technology means we'll probably never have it, or have it 100 years later than it would have been possible had we actively tried obtaining it.

The U.S. had rockets in place too. Goddard and Von Braun were both working for the United States and building rockets. It was known technology, the V2 rocket was proof. Heck, Goddard launched his first liquid rocket in 1926.

Sputnik was launched in 1957. Manned spaceflight required a couple more innovations: a sealed capsule, a larger rocket, and a re-entry system all of which used known tech.

BTW, astonishing fact. Your cell phone has more processing power than the entire Apollo mission.

[Irbis]

Um, before I respond to latest few posts from this thread, I only wanted to say this strip (http://xkcd.com/893/) (and alt text behind in) sums my feelings perfectly :smalltongue:

[Joran]

Um, before I respond to latest few posts from this thread, I only wanted to say this strip (http://xkcd.com/893/) (and alt text behind in) sums my feelings perfectly :smalltongue:

And? Yes, it sucks that in a bit of time we won't have any living people who've walked on the Moon. We have two Rovers who've run around Mars for years. We've flung out probes to almost every planet. We have people living in Space, as we speak.

The greater shame is the lack of funding for SETI. Yes, it's a freakin' longshot, but for $2.5 million dollars, it's not a large amount of money.

Likewise, I'd wish we'd spend more money on near Earth asteroid detection, because those could ruin our lives/civilization/species.

[Irbis]

Um, that's why I think the hidden alt text provides so great point to the ending of the strip :smallwink:

[Joran]

Um, that's why I think the hidden alt text provides so great point to the ending of the strip :smallwink:

We still have time. What, we have another 2-3 billion years left of usable life on the Sun?

110 years ago, we couldn't even fly, except in hot air balloons. Heck, maybe in a few decades, we'll have two superpowers trying to one-up each other in technology and national pride and be on Mars next.

[factotum]

We still have time. What, we have another 2-3 billion years left of usable life on the Sun?


What does the Sun have to do with it? A whopping great asteroid could hit the Earth tomorrow and largely destroy human civilisation. The supervolcano under Yellowstone could let go with similar effects. Fact is, we have difficulty feeding the population as it is--add a few years of "nuclear winter" due to asteroid strike or whatever and we'll be in deep trouble!