What is the deal with all the astronaut stuff we are getting?

[CmdrShep2183]

Apple's "For All Mankind", Netflix "Away", and now this!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og0htvEVqJQ

What would it take to get the reality show watching masses to watch something with a spaceship in it?

Would it have to be devoid of any overly weird sci fi elements and be chock full of cheesy soap opera?

[Precure]

Probably an effect of Elon Musk's recent popularity.

[Tvtyrant]

Apple's "For All Mankind", Netflix "Away", and now this!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og0htvEVqJQ

What would it take to get the reality show watching masses to watch something with a spaceship in it?

Would it have to be devoid of any overly weird sci fi elements and be chock full of cheesy soap opera?

Did you really just use the term "masses" to refer to people whose show watching preferences are different from yours?

Here's the thing, space is boring. Those shows are basically soap operas in space anyway, or a fantasy story with gods and space elves, because space is inherently dull.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tvtyrant
Here's the thing, space is boring.

...space is inherently dull.

As someone who used to just about live at the Air & Space Museum, I find this terribly sad.

Space is the absolute opposite of dull. Just look up at the night sky, and start learning about what you see.

[Tvtyrant]

As someone who used to just about live at the Air & Space Museum, I find this terribly sad.

Space is the absolute opposite of dull. Just look up at the night sky, and start learning about what you see.

I know lots about what I see thanks. It's hard to make an interesting story about billion year long processes unless you do it as a Morgan Freeman documentary. Nearly all bodies of knowledge are interesting, it doesn't make them good for television or movies. Space is also 99.9999999999% near vacuum with some permanently out of reach bits that we aren't going to reach.

Ship crews slowly meandering through space for 2 years to die of a slight problem with their co2 removers when they are a week out from Mars is realistic, is that a good show? What about watching engineers spend 8 years arguing over food packet distribution?

People watch some space stories, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Martian. The stories are either focused on the people or on impossible speed exploration, actual space exploration is done by romote control robots from a command center.

Edit: Let me clarify so we can avoid the inevitable snippy fight. Human stories are overwhelmingly about people. Interstellar was about Love despite being visually about how crazy the cosmos were, Star Trek is about the crew not the ship, etc. The question is if space ship crews are still interesting after 100 years of exploring the idea, and the answer has been a resounding "eh."

Whether vacuum and gas clouds is scientifically interesting isn't really a factor into whether space ship crews are still interesting.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tvtyrant
...with some permanently out of reach bits that we aren't going to reach.

On this we'll have to agree to disagree.

And the rest as well.

[Tvtyrant]

On this we'll have to agree to disagree.

And the rest as well.

Sounds like a plan.

[An Enemy Spy]

{{scrubbed}}

[DavidSh]

Just addressing the question in the thread title, I think part of it is that last year was the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. (We all believe in the moon landing, don't we?)

[Rodin]

(We all believe in the moon landing, don't we?)

Sure, there's even a great documentary about it called Iron Sky.

[Fyraltari]

I know lots about what I see thanks. It's hard to make an interesting story about billion year long processes unless you do it as a Morgan Freeman documentary. Nearly all bodies of knowledge are interesting, it doesn't make them good for television or movies. Space is also 99.9999999999% near vacuum with some permanently out of reach bits that we aren't going to reach.

Ship crews slowly meandering through space for 2 years to die of a slight problem with their co2 removers when they are a week out from Mars is realistic, is that a good show? What about watching engineers spend 8 years arguing over food packet distribution?

People watch some space stories, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Martian. The stories are either focused on the people or on impossible speed exploration, actual space exploration is done by romote control robots from a command center.

Edit: Let me clarify so we can avoid the inevitable snippy fight. Human stories are overwhelmingly about people. Interstellar was about Love despite being visually about how crazy the cosmos were, Star Trek is about the crew not the ship, etc. The question is if space ship crews are still interesting after 100 years of exploring the idea, and the answer has been a resounding "eh."

Whether vacuum and gas clouds is scientifically interesting isn't really a factor into whether space ship crews are still interesting.
Good point, but have you considered:
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! SPACE! SPACE! SPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! SPACE! SPACESPACESPACESPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAACE! SPACE!

[Tvtyrant]

Good point, but have you considered:
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! SPACE! SPACE! SPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! SPACE! SPACESPACESPACESPACE! SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAACE! SPACE!

You make a persuasive argument, I withdraw my comments :P

[Caledonian]

Show types sometimes come in cycles - people have repeatedly tried to craft shows about the space program, and they never go anywhere. Movies have an easier job, because their inherent limits on duration both force them and allow them to tell stories with a definite arc and definite end. The space program has neither of these.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tvtyrant
You make a persuasive argument, I withdraw my comments :P

Now I wish I'd thought of that. :smalltongue:

[Fyraltari]

You make a persuasive argument, I withdraw my comments :P


Now I wish I'd thought of that. :smalltongue:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/515/694/3b5.jpg

[Ramza00]

Nostalgia cycles. If you were 5 to 20 at 1970 (actually July 20, 1969) it mattered to you.

If you missed those 3 key years of '69 to '72 then you realized that Space is boring even if you find some aspects of Sci-Fiction to be cool (aka it is more Star Trek than Landing on the Moon.)

-----

Note 5 to 20 at 1970 lines up pretty well with the Baby Boomer generation. Gen X is 1965 and later and thus they were too young to remember the moon landing from a first hand perspective.

Due to Demographics of who gets to greenlight shows, and trying to interest an existing market that is why we are seeing more astronaut stuff but it is a cycle and it will move past this temporary surge soon enough. (One reason for the recent temporary surge is people are wanting more hope in the last 10 years or so.)

[Caledonian]

I agree with everything just said, but - turning to the space program for hope? That seems... odd.

[Kitten Champion]

I don't even understand the premise of the thread.

I mean, yes, I understand it because it's the same thread this - whatever it is - always makes, but in this case the specifics allude me.



What would it take to get the reality show watching masses to watch something with a spaceship in it?

But, you just listed three series with spaceships in them made in the present year. Sure, they aren't magical spaceships that run on made-up physics, but why should they be?


Would it have to be devoid of any overly weird sci fi elements and be chock full of cheesy soap opera?

..but space operas are "chock full of cheesy soap opera" material. It's a genre of heightened reality and big emotions... that's the operatic part.

Also, why should "overly weird sci-fi elements" be a goal we want "the masses" to ingest? Like, those elements still exists - and an imaginative alternative history is pretty nonstandard in my opinion - but the same question could be asked "would the masses need 'splosions, lasers, CGI aliens, and non-scientific nonsense in general in order to watch any science-related fiction?"

Which, apparently they don't -- at least in the opinion of Disney, Apple, and Netflix.

[Ramza00]

I agree with everything just said, but - turning to the space program for hope? That seems... odd.

Two different things happen and these things happen in different people though I bet it is theoretically possible to have both energies in the same person.

1) There is a human cognitive bias for us to be nostalgia about things in the past. Furthermore we blunt the negative experiences while remembering fondly the positive ones during that time. Even when something was traumatic we do not "re-experience" the pain, we instead merely internalize a shortcut of "do not do that" and the pain is blunted. But not everyone has trauma and many people have fond childhood memories of 5 to 20 of that timeframe and due to the cognitive bias we block out the pain and enhance the positive.

More on this from a video that I adore.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Radg-Kn0jLs&vl=en

2) Some people see Space as an escape of their daily problems for somehow it would be different. Everything will work together with a goal and it will be mechanically elegant and you will simply not have problems once we go to space. Such ideas in the person mind are often highly individualistic or highly collective depending on their politics, so on and so on. (I love the Red Mars trilogy for Kim Stanley Robinson does a wonderful job eviseraterating this idea in his book about people who go to mars and later terraform it.)

[Caledonian]

It's just that, in the real world, the space program has pretty much been a dead end.

When I was in college, some overly optimistic administrator decided it would be a good idea to recruit 'inspirational' people and get them to live in the dorms with the students. They got a local guy who became an astronaut and spent some time in the ISS.

As far as I know, no one ever spoke to him.

One day I was in the laundry room, reading a textbook and waiting for my laundry to finish. He walked in, I barely noticed. Suddenly he said "Excuse me, would you like to know what it was like to go into space?" I said something like "No, not really." And he walked out.

No one cared.

I believe he joined the local school board.

[Mechalich]

It should be noted that a handful of shows on a similar topic released as a similar time does not a trend make. We are currently in the middle of an absolute deluge of content due to the combination of the pandemic, and the "Streaming Wars," between more services than can successfully exist over the long term. Currently Disney, Netflix, Apple, HBO, CBS, NBC, and a variety of marginal or niche services (Quibi, etc.) are all competing for subscribers to the point that they are producing content in the full and assured knowledge that lots of it will never recoup its costs, just so they can constantly keep announcing new and exciting sounding stuff in order to keep people from clicking 'unsubscribe.'

A small cluster of grounded, non-sf, space exploration vehicles is merely a statistical anomaly at this point, not any sort of real trend.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Caledonian
No one cared.

This isn’t the fault of the space program, and says nothing about anything, other than the apathy of some college students.


Originally Posted by Mechalich
It should be noted that a handful of shows on a similar topic released as a similar time does not a trend make.

…A small cluster of grounded, non-sf, space exploration vehicles is merely a statistical anomaly at this point, not any sort of real trend.

I was just about to make this point. Two or three shows is not exactly a massive influx, so the thread's initial premise is flawed.

[Caledonian]

This isn’t the fault of the space program

No, it is. The actual science gets done with unmanned probes. The ISS was, and is, a complete waste of time and money.

[Ramza00]

No, it is. The actual science gets done with unmanned probes. The ISS was, and is, a complete waste of time and money.

The ISS was good for biology science not exploration or understanding our solar system science.

[Palanan]

Some physicists and astronomers get sore about human spaceflight, claiming it distracts from the "real" science, but long-duration spaceflight is every bit as valid a research topic.

More pragmatically, without human spaceflight there would be zero public support for funding any of those probes, in which case they wouldn't get off the ground.

That said, discussions about whether or not human spaceflight is worthwhile, and whether or not extrasolar missions are feasible, should probably be taken up in a separate thread.

[Rakaydos]

It's because "The Martian" did well.

[Caledonian]

It probably is that simple.

[Fyraltari]

It's just that, in the real world, the space program has pretty much been a dead end.

When I was in college, some overly optimistic administrator decided it would be a good idea to recruit 'inspirational' people and get them to live in the dorms with the students. They got a local guy who became an astronaut and spent some time in the ISS.

As far as I know, no one ever spoke to him.

One day I was in the laundry room, reading a textbook and waiting for my laundry to finish. He walked in, I barely noticed. Suddenly he said "Excuse me, would you like to know what it was like to go into space?" I said something like "No, not really." And he walked out.

No one cared.

I believe he joined the local school board.

This is weird to me. Like I don’t deny it happened but no-One was interested in what it was like to go to space? Really? No-one asked even the most basic questions about zero-gravity or the food up there?

[Yora]

"Stop the planet. I want to get off."

[Azuresun]

This is weird to me. Like I don’t deny it happened but no-One was interested in what it was like to go to space? Really? No-one asked even the most basic questions about zero-gravity or the food up there?

In Mike Massimino's autobiography Spaceman, he mentions that for quite a long time, space exploration did have a serious image problem--it went from the glamorous Right Stuff generation to being presented as very clever, very dull people fiddling around with rocks and ants. It's something that's been reversed recently, as it's possible to actually see what's going on up there, and there's been a push to actually get across how cool it is.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXv9AZl3fw4



I agree with everything just said, but - turning to the space program for hope? That seems... odd.

I'm going to be the one to say it, human space exploration is romantic (as well as being vital to our long-term future as a species) and that's a purely good thing, to push back against the jadedness and cynicism that's damaging our collective psyche. Yeah, I said it, I'm not taking it back, 1v1 me irl. Anybody who says it's a waste of money or that we should spend it on the environment of this world has no sense of scale with regard to how much gets splurged on finding a 2% better way to blow people up from the other side of the planet.

[Rakaydos]

I will say that, being plugged into the space program-nerd communities, 2022 through 2027 is going to be when a lot of cool stuff is going to happen. (having been planned for late the prior year, of course, because space programs dont even pretend to have deadlines, they have "no earlier than" dates.)

[dps]

Here's the thing, space is boring.

Yeah, that's why little kids never, ever dream about growing up to be astronauts. :smalltongue:

[Fyraltari]

I'm going to be the one to say it, human space exploration is romantic (as well as being vital to our long-term future as a species) and that's a purely good thing, to push back against the jadedness and cynicism that's damaging our collective psyche. Yeah, I said it, I'm not taking it back, 1v1 me irl. Anybody who says it's a waste of money or that we should spend it on the environment of this world has no sense of scale with regard to how much gets splurged on finding a 2% better way to blow people up from the other side of the planet.

Hear! Hear!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The ISS was, and is, a complete waste of time and money.

Yes, because before the ISS, we knew already exactly how to build and maintain things is space, and how those things deteriorate in those conditions, and how our bodies deal with being in space for long periods of time, plus what does and does not work when trying to ameliorate that. It clearly was not a massive successful learning experience absolutely necessary for long-term space exploration.

Oh, wait, no, my mistake: we didn't know any of those things, and having the ISS to figure it out incrementally, and close enough that if something went seriously wrong, we didn't just kill a bunch of people, has been priceless. The next incremental step - the lunar gateway or whatever is called, which is ISS, but around the moon, would also provide us with massive information so we could then move on to Mars, and so on down the line.

Grey Wolf

[Rakaydos]

“The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”

― Randall Munroe

[Grey_Wolf_c]

“The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”

― Randall Munroe

Agreed, but I'd even quibble with the "irrational" bit. The sheer amount of money that, say, satellites allow the economy to generate cannot be discounted. GPS alone is the cornerstone of endless economic activities that would simply not have been possible prior to it. It may not have made the US a single dollar directly, but the ROI on its development dwarfed the cost of putting it up & running it.

Grey Wolf

[Ramza00]

I'm going to be the one to say it, human space exploration is romantic (as well as being vital to our long-term future as a species) and that's a purely good thing, to push back against the jadedness and cynicism that's damaging our collective psyche. Yeah, I said it, I'm not taking it back, 1v1 me irl. Anybody who says it's a waste of money or that we should spend it on the environment of this world has no sense of scale with regard to how much gets splurged on finding a 2% better way to blow people up from the other side of the planet.

Why is this romanticism limited to space though?

(I am in the Space is Boring camp. Space to me is a Mirage, an Oasis one can not drink from.)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Why is this romanticism limited to space though?

I reject your premise. It is patently obvious there is romanticism in plenty of other avenues.

GW

[Fyraltari]

Why is this romanticism limited to space though?I reject your premise. It is patently obvious there is romanticism in plenty of other avenues.

GW
Who wants an underwater city? I want an underwater city!

Edit: Why, you ask? Because we can, that’s why!

[False God]

Man, some of the posts in this thread just make me sad.

[Rakaydos]

Why is this romanticism limited to space though?

(I am in the Space is Boring camp. Space to me is a Mirage, an Oasis one can not drink from.)

That's like saying the ancient seas were boring- it wasnt about the sea, it was about the places you could go.

Because you can absoutely drink martian water, if you brought enough equipment to otherwise survive, mine it, and remove the bits of rock in it.

Asteroid mines would be inconviently located, but would absoutely have resources that people could live off of. And there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Venesian Blimp-Cities, where breathing air is a lift gas.

It's the random spinning-ring space colonies you see in scifi that have a hard time justifying themselves. Low orbits have their uses, like for GPS or Starlink, but space just doesnt have useful crossroads the way we think of it on earth.

[Trafalgar]

Space is awesome as long as David Bowie is playing in the background.


https://youtu.be/UJ0mrFIaYy0

[Ramza00]

I reject your premise. It is patently obvious there is romanticism in plenty of other avenues.

GW


That's like saying the ancient seas were boring- it wasnt about the sea, it was about the places you could go.

Because you can absoutely drink martian water, if you brought enough equipment to otherwise survive, mine it, and remove the bits of rock in it.

Asteroid mines would be inconviently located, but would absoutely have resources that people could live off of. And there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Venesian Blimp-Cities, where breathing air is a lift gas.

It's the random spinning-ring space colonies you see in scifi that have a hard time justifying themselves. Low orbits have their uses, like for GPS or Starlink, but space just doesnt have useful crossroads the way we think of it on earth.

With how much it costs to put a human into space and maintain it, I think it is important to ask

1) What is the attraction in the first place? This is an entirely separate question from #2
2) Is the attraction worth the cost?
3 aka 1 repeated) With the attraction of space, is there substitute goods that provide the same type of attraction?
4 aka 2 repeated) Are the substitute goods worth the cost?

3 and 4 repeat until you can find a way to justify or not justify #2.

-----

Lets put it this way, on the earth, on the ground or at the ocean has someone made a self-sustainable biosphere yet that could be limited to the size of a few cargo containers? Until someone does so and do so for 2 years (in a successful fashion) I have to question people's dedication to space on a pragmatic level.

This is not to say stop developing rocket technology, rocket technology is important for Satellites are important, as are many other things to do with Space.

[Rakaydos]

With how much it costs to put a human into space and maintain it, I think it is important to ask

1) What is the attraction in the first place? This is an entirely separate question from #2
2) Is the attraction worth the cost?
3 aka 1 repeated) With the attraction of space, is there substitute goods that provide the same type of attraction?
4 aka 2 repeated) Are the substitute goods worth the cost?

3 and 4 repeat until you can find a way to justify or not justify #2.

-----

Lets put it this way, on the earth, on the ground or at the ocean has someone made a self-sustainable biosphere yet that could be limited to the size of a few cargo containers? Until someone does so and do so for 2 years (in a successful fashion) I have to question people's dedication to space on a pragmatic level.

This is not to say stop developing rocket technology, rocket technology is important for Satellites are important, as are many other things to do with Space.

Neccesity is the mother of invention. The ISS itself meets all your criteria for a self sustaining biosphere, except for being on earth, and not quite having food production sorted out yet. The one attempt to do something similar on earth, Biosphere 2, only failed because they made it out of concrete which continued to cure after they moved in, sucking oxygen out of the recycled atmosphere.

But that's an advantage to mars over a purely space base like the ISS- there's plenty of oxygen in the CO2 outside, you just have to compress it to earth pressures and strip the carbon from the CO2. There's metals just lying on the surface, remnants of meteors. We know how to grow things under lights in gravity- there's no reason we cant do that on mars as well as earth. We just have to bring the right equipment to make use of the local resources.

The problem is just getting there, with enough stuff to get all that started. And like the ISS, it will likely need resupply every opportunity for decades.

But in the grand scheme of things, decades is nothing. Eventually, we can give Mars what it needs to make everything the people living there need to survive... eventually even including replacement parts for those same machines.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

With how much it costs to put a human into space and maintain it, I think it is important to ask

1) What is the attraction in the first place? This is an entirely separate question from #2
2) Is the attraction worth the cost?
3 aka 1 repeated) With the attraction of space, is there substitute goods that provide the same type of attraction?
4 aka 2 repeated) Are the substitute goods worth the cost?

3 and 4 repeat until you can find a way to justify or not justify #2.

1) Did someone sit down and figure out if the Internet or GPS was "worth the cost"? And, if they did, did they get anywhere near the true worth of either? Or within, say, ten orders of magnitude of the actual number? Because as far as I know, the answer is "no" and "no". So there is no reason to need to do that for this particular step.

2) But sure, lets do the silly exercise: a single asteroid moved so it can be exploited would trivially pay back the entirety of what has been invested so far, multiple times over - for example, $4.5 trillion worth of platinum* in a single, tiny asteroid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8XvQNt26KI&t=321s

And that's before factoring in such advantages as moving heavy industry to space where contamination is not an issue, moving some of our eggs to a new nest, unknown and unknowable technological byproducts whose own ROI might be even better, etc, etc, etc.


This is not to say stop developing rocket technology, rocket technology is important for Satellites are important, as are many other things to do with Space.

That's like saying "This is not to say stop developing sail technology, sail technology is important for fishing is important, as are many other things to do with Sea" but not invest money in colonies. The potential ROI from establishing either off-planet or on low-G planets human bases to serve as stepping stones dwarves "rocket technology"'s ROI.

Grey Wolf

*So much wealth, of course, that the cost of platinum would probably collapse if it was fully exploited; but it would still pay for itself, for the entirety of the space race, and it's not the only asteroid out there

[ben-zayb]

Man, some of the posts in this thread just make me sad.Considering how much influence academia and research have in majority of my life experiences, I'd have to agree. Some of the posts here are saddening at best and disturbing at worst. Understandable, but disturbing nonetheless.

[Ibrinar]

I agree that space is boring once you look past it being romanticized. (Except for the scientific side, but if I had the power to teleport through space to distant planets or stars and survive without equipment but wasn't allowed to talk about it or bring anything back or collect scientific information or do anything else useful with , then I am pretty sure that how often I use it would steadily drop as the novelty wears of. (Unless I encounter life of course.) Because space is big but non living things just aren't that interesting to me even if they are really big.)
But I also agree that it is an investment that will be worth it longterm. Grey_Wolf_c is quite right.

[Ramza00]

Neccesity is the mother of invention. The ISS itself meets all your criteria for a self sustaining biosphere, except for being on earth, and not quite having food production sorted out yet. The one attempt to do something similar on earth, Biosphere 2, only failed because they made it out of concrete which continued to cure after they moved in, sucking oxygen out of the recycled atmosphere.

But that's an advantage to mars over a purely space base like the ISS- there's plenty of oxygen in the CO2 outside, you just have to compress it to earth pressures and strip the carbon from the CO2. There's metals just lying on the surface, remnants of meteors. We know how to grow things under lights in gravity- there's no reason we cant do that on mars as well as earth. We just have to bring the right equipment to make use of the local resources.

The problem is just getting there, with enough stuff to get all that started. And like the ISS, it will likely need resupply every opportunity for decades.

But in the grand scheme of things, decades is nothing. Eventually, we can give Mars what it needs to make everything the people living there need to survive... eventually even including replacement parts for those same machines.

Personal stuff.

A) Me personally I have less of a problem with the ISS than the "manned mission to mars / asteroids / etc." You need to solve A, B, and C, you can't just skip to M. But precisely because ISS is reasonable for some tasks if the goal is more space flight you should also be funding lots of smaller and easier experiments that still need to get done on Earth that you could do on the ISS and also in a Cargo Container replicating a Biosphere. Do the things that must need Zero Gravity to test (aka the health stuff on the ISS) while parallel do the necessary legwork on A, B, C on the earth for many things Biosphere wise would be the same on earth or in space or on mars or a moon or asteroid etc.

B) Rakaydos mentions Oxygen, CO2, plants etc. I mentioned Red Mars Trilogy earlier. Note some of the stuff of that book is just flat out wrong, some of it is due to artistic license, but other stuff is due to new information that was not yet discovered when the books were written (this is why unmanned probes which are orders of magnitude cheaper and safer to human life are good things.) For example discovering Mars lacks a magnetic field did not happen till the mid 90s (I would have to look up the exact year, except when I say "lacks" it is complicated, yadda, yadda, yadda science stuff.) Thus many of the things about an external atmosphere if you perfectly terraform the planet is flat out impossible on Mars. Yes we could still lived on Mars but it would be domes, and most of the domes would be underground due to both retaining the oxygen and other gases we make but also due to needing to not die eventually due to radiation problems.

C) The question then has to be asked what is the purpose of a colony on Mars or an asteroid colony, etc? If we are going to be making machines to dig domes underground, why not first create that tech on earth, use that tech on earth and then do that Mars and Asteroid stuff later? Aka you reversed the order of operations is the complaint of C. Rakaydos points out that decades in the viewpoint of species propagation is a blink of an eye, but those decades are the lifespan of humans who are already existing who are borned already and are suffering not because we have problems with number of resources on earth, but instead about equal access to those resources for we produce more food than we need, we produce more shelter than we need yet people starve and people are homeless. What problems are you solving with setting your goal to Mars? And if your goal is Mars why not first develop the tech and implement the tech on Earth and unlock human flourishing of the current human people before we export it to a foreign shore beyond Earth's gravity well?


Pretty much I am talking about Clayton Christensen of Harvard's insight of the Value to innovation is an S-curve in the "innovator's dilemma." The first iterations of a new idea are crappy products, the Samsung Fold of 2019 was a bad phone and a bad tablet, it literally broke in most reviewers hands within a week of 7 days. Well Samsung just announced a new version of 2020 and it looks to improve most of its shortcomings yet it may still be an inferior phone in order to create this hybrid design. Furthermore even if it was an equal phone the phone costs $2k while comparable spec phones are $600 to $1400 so what are you getting extra? Eventually over various iterations in theory the price differential would shrink and the improvements would unlock. This is the "Value to Innovation is an S-Curve" insight, it is an argument for big corporations or big government to invest and do "industrial policy" for version 1 or 2 of the device may stink but 4 and 5 would be good.



Now Clayton Christensen of Harvard insight is the cost structures and specialities means it is often not big business who does this innovation but instead small startup companies with access to 3rd party capital who are the people who do innovation better. This is because existing big business are often selling comparable products and the value is just not there to do R&D. Leaner and Meaner small companies are able to shorten the innovation time from version 1 to version 2 and 2 to 3 while keeping the costs low. Thus Elon Musk's Space X is faster at getting rockets into space even though Boeing and Raytheon has been having this goal for decades, yadda, yadda, yadda. And yes I am dramatically simplifying the innovator's dillemina for there is several other facets like who is the business catering to with old customers vs new customers and new customers have different needs than old ones.


But back to Space. Industrial Policy does not need Space in order to exist, it merely needs a goal to organize around. Feeding the world so none of the 7 billion are hungry is a goal. Being more sustainable and learning how to make biospheres or dig under the ground is a goal. Subway tunnels is a goal, so on and so on.

And because those problems already exist on our planet we can start playing and figuring out how to build better drill bits to dig tunnels and so on, how to better do greenhouses to grow plants and so on. All we need to do is fund these endeavors. We do not need space to justify these goals, people are suffering already, and their problems are here on earth. Even stuff where people are fed and have houses but they have a 2 hour to 4 hour commute is a form of suffering. Mass Transit underground is a way to better use land (or there are dozens of other ways to solve density problems.) My point here is Space is a distraction instead of a clarifying force with #3. Innovation needs hands on trial and error, too far of a goal wastes money, wastes inspiration, you can't play around and tinker. You first need to create A, B, and C, you can't instantly skip to M.


1) Did someone sit down and figure out if the Internet or GPS was "worth the cost"? And, if they did, did they get anywhere near the true worth of either? Or within, say, ten orders of magnitude of the actual number? Because as far as I know, the answer is "no" and "no". So there is no reason to need to do that for this particular step.

This is not my argument so I will ignore it for this is not what I am arguing.


In fact I am arguing the exact opposite. I am arguing the problem of social coordination either with government or a business, and humans on mars may be one way to organize and coordinate but I think there are much better lodestones, much better north stars to organize around and form an industrial policy.


2) But sure, lets do the silly exercise: a single asteroid moved so it can be exploited would trivially pay back the entirety of what has been invested so far, multiple times over - for example, $4.5 trillion worth of platinum* in a single, tiny asteroid:

Economics and value do not work that way and we have known this for 200 years now.

The paradox of diamonds and water is what it is called in the economic field. It is a 240 year old thing that dozens of people like Smith, Ricardo, Marx, George (classical style) and people like William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, Léon Walras (the marginalists, sometimes called the marginal revolution) talk about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value#:~:text=The%20paradox%20of%20valu e%20(also,higher%20price%20in%20the%20market.

Water is useful up to a point, but after a certain point its utility diminishes according to the marginalists. Thus diamonds may have less utility in certain circumstances increase in value if you are merely to trade diamonds for water.

Platinum from Space is a good thing but once it becomes so abundant it would not cost $4.5 trillion dollars for we do not need to dedicate 1/20th of the world economy merely to have one specific metal or even any metal. The world economy is about 80 trillion per year, and 4.5 would be 5.625% of that 80. For comparison the top 40 mining and metal companies of the entire world only have 692 billion in revenue. They do not even make 1% of the total world economy.

Like I said earlier Rockets can be good in of themselves that is a separate question from man spaceflight to earth. Do we really need humans to mine space asteroids?


Separating the romanticism of space allows you to get a better sense of the real world economics of space. It may be good to mine space asteroids, but until specific techs are created it is not feasible, and if the goal is to create those specific techs first why not look to our planet and all its current problems both from a romantic perspective but also from a number and cents perspective. And I am saying this advocating for something that would take 20 years to do a return on investment or 10 years. But doing a 100 years ROI makes little sense when we have all these problems here with people that are currently alive and need those problems solved.

I repeat from an earlier post, is there a better way to solve the very REAL human need that romanticism feeds? Is there a better way to solve the very REAL human need that humans have needs and through science, tech, social structures, we solve these human needs?

Space is boring, solving for these human things is wonderful!

[Caledonian]

Space exploration is probably a good investment. Putting people into space simply isn't, even if we were engaged in trying to do that. What we *are* doing is putting people in a low-orbit space station that has no worthwhile scientific or economic purpose and bringing them back down again.

Yes, people did indeed look at the economic and functional returns of the Internet. It was made precisely because it offered return on investment. The current space program doesn't.

[Yora]

Human spaceflight is funded by the desire to live out childhood sci-fi dreams.

Unlike with fantasy, you can tell yourself that visiting aliens on other planets will be possible all day.

[Fyraltari]

Human spaceflight is funded by the desire to live out childhood sci-fi dreams.

I'd say it's deeper than that. Humans have never looked at a barrier without going "I wonder what's on the other side of that."

we're the crazy hairless apes who left the climate they were adapted to to settle all of the planet bare the antarctic with noting but stones, sticks and the remains of animals we've killed.

As a species, we're kind of nuts.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Like I said earlier Rockets can be good in of themselves that is a separate question from man spaceflight to earth. Do we really need humans to mine space asteroids?
AI is absolutely terrible at solving novel issues. Humans are significantly better at it. When it comes to fixing stuff that is going wrong, you will always need humans. And if those issues happen in space, you will need humans in space to solve them, because remote work only gets so much done.

Which is to say, yes, we really need humans to mine space asteroirds. And to build space barges. And to run fuel stations. And all the other adjacent jobs.


What we *are* doing is putting people in a low-orbit space station that has no worthwhile scientific or economic purpose and bringing them back down again.
You are wrong. In every particular and in every sense I can grasp the meaning of your words.


Yes, people did indeed look at the economic and functional returns of the Internet. It was made precisely because it offered return on investment. The current space program doesn't.

No, they did not. They built it so they could shoot missiles from anywhere, and so universities could communicate with each other. They did not calculate the ROI, and if you want to claim it, you need to do better than simply say so, because I no longer believe you know what you are talking about.

GW

[Caledonian]

No, they did not. They built it so they could shoot missiles from anywhere, and so universities could communicate with each other. They did not calculate the ROI, and if you want to claim it, you need to do better than simply say so, because I no longer believe you know what you are talking about.

Return on investment doesn't always mean money. The Voyager probes didn't return a nickel, but they had a massive payoff. I don't believe DARPAnet was ever expected to make money for anyone, other than some contractors, but it had a definite use, and more uses were found once it existed.

The manned aspects of our space program? Useless. They return nothing, neither economically nor scientifically. What we could learn about humans in zero-g, we've already learned, decades ago. The space station is just a boondoggle to keep certain industries and bureaucracies well-moneyed; it has no meaningful purpose beyond that. There is nothing it is doing that satellites couldn't do better and cheaper, and generally they already are.

[Ramza00]

AI is absolutely terrible at solving novel issues. Humans are significantly better at it. When it comes to fixing stuff that is going wrong, you will always need humans. And if those issues happen in space, you will need humans in space to solve them, because remote work only gets so much done.

GW

First I never mentioned AI. But whatever, let’s say we use AI to mine.

Second I do not grant the premise Remote Work is not effective.

It would take years to reach the asteroid belt and return. It is roughly 6x the distance between earth to mars depending on when you start and stop the journey due to the constantly changing orbits. Thus it would take forever to get there, mine stuff, and send it back. Literally we are taking 5+ years life commitment on the side of the miners.

If that is the goal, might as well figure out how to sustain life and do semi well sustaining the miners, so the miners are thriving if you are talking a 5+ year mission. (We after all need them to thrive to be smart enough to do the noble planning and problem solving, the human ingenuity you said we can not do via remote distance.)

To support people for a 5+ year journey and lifestyle we will need to figure out biospheres. Thus we need to figure out how to do those biospheres first on earth prior to any rockets and man missions.

[Caledonian]

The Moon is close enough to be explored and mined with telepresence probes. That would make an interesting series, and the cast wouldn't have to be portrayed as leaving Earth.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'd say it's deeper than that. Humans have never looked at a barrier without going "I wonder what's on the other side of that."

This, humans think this about barriers it is literally impossible to cross and survive (*cough* afterlives *cough*). People have been going to crazy places because they're there for thousands of years, because they're there and might have something interesting, or at least somewhere else to go to. We began with legs, and when our legs failed we built boats, and ever since we have been building better ways to get there, and coming up with more.

This is why FTL travel is so common in fiction, and why we have serious scientific takes on the subject. While not as efficient as we'd like we've conquered the space between planets with nothing more than robots and chemical rockets. We're starting to know every corner of our star system, even if not particularly well at this point, but we don't know what's beyond, what we'll find when* we fly through the interstellar medium.

At the same time we're pushing past the barriers to exploring the depths of the ocean (which is also exciting, but not my thing). And I'm sure if there was a jungle defended by a forty foot omnipresent dragon we'd be trying to get past it.

But the process of exploration is rather boring. We don't have series about a group of scientists remotely operating a Mars rover (but there's a sitcom for you), bit we also don't have series about a six month sail to the Americas to explore a bit, exploit the natives, and spend six months on a boat to return to Europe (but there are documentaries). I'd love a show where maybe six characters took a trip to Mars and we focused on their relationships with the occasional ship repair, but it's unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, I'm totally incorporating skyhooks into the setting I'm designing (alongside wormholes that, at the time of the story, still don't go anywhere interesting).


* I am optimistic here, I think humans will leave for other stars, although not for centuries to millennia.

[Ramza00]

This, humans think this about barriers it is literally impossible to cross and survive (*cough* afterlives *cough*).

You leave my Russian Cosmism alone!

The Plan to Resurrect Everyone Who Ever Lived
Russian cosmists believed that to form an equitable society we must have universal immortality and resurrection of the dead.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/akwx3k/the-proto-communist-plan-to-resurrect-everyone-who-ever-lived

Goes back to my X-Men for a Wizard on the Internet was mean to me!

[Androgeus]

I'd love a show where maybe six characters took a trip to Mars and we focused on their relationships with the occasional ship repair, but it's unlikely to happen.

I recall a series called Defying Gravity that was kind of like this. It was a trip all over the solar system rather than just Mars, and it had some alien artefacts that weren’t explained as it got cancelled after like 8 episode.

[Kitten Champion]

I recall a series called Defying Gravity that was kind of like this. It was a trip all over the solar system rather than just Mars, and it had some alien artefacts that weren’t explained as it got cancelled after like 8 episode.

Oh~ I remember that. Though the only thing I recall - for some reason - was that they came up with a in-story justification for why their hair didn't look like it was in zero-g.

Now onto another, more salient point that's been bugging me. What does it matter what your opinion on real-world space-flight is?

Whether it's the trials and tribulations of king Gilgamesh in ancient Mesopotamia, the rebellion against an Evil Empire in a nameless far-off galaxy in some murky distant past, or the struggles of those working in some hospital out of modern day Chicago -- the question doesn't go "how does any of this benefit me in immediate practical terms?" because it's fiction and the point of fiction isn't the same as the subject it's presenting.

Does the space program - or a reasonably similar fictional representation thereof - provide a basis for interesting stories?

Do the people participating in these programs make for potentially interesting characters?

Is there latent drama in the exploration of space?

That's the significance here. People like stories about bold people who face serious adversity in pursuit of their passions, and more generally the early space program was a fundamental turning point in human history with broad implications thereafter.

So, the point? Yeah, the argument about the viability of manned space-flight is a different topic. As much as you're opinion on modern warfare and geopolitics is on... say, the relevance or emotional impact of Saving Private Ryan or MASH as works of fiction.

[Rodin]

Defying Gravity illustrated the problem with writing a near-Earth space exploration TV series.

Almost all television runs off of human drama. People working against each other, having relationship problems, or not liking one another but still having to work together. This dynamic does not work very well for a group of astronauts, particularly a group that is expected to leave Earth's orbit and be together for several years. They all get psych tested. The team works together on Earth for a long time before launch to make sure that they function as a team. There's no human drama in a team of professionals working together in a well-oiled fashion.

There's a few ways to fix this.

1)Introduce outside elements. Star Trek does it by introducing alien species and wibbly-wobbly space phenomena. Human drama comes from the "visiting scientist of the week".

2) Insert an external threat. See: Alien.

3) Cause a disaster. The Martian and Gravity are good examples.

4) Make up some reason for the team to be dysfunctional. This is the route Defying Gravity took. There's a alien device influencing who is picked for the mission. It picks people likely to make for a good TV drama instead of the more qualified astronauts.


Space is amazingly interesting. However, it doesn't make for good TV.

[DeTess]

I wanted to make a quick comment regarding that statement that 'human spaceflight is irrelevant because all real science is done by robots or remotely controlled missions' I've seen some people make.

It is true that most science focusing on other planets is indeed done by unmanned missions, but this is because its the only option we have right now, not because it is a superior option (it isn't). A manned mission would be able to achieve far more in far less time because it isn't limited by things like bandwidth and communications lag. Heck, a manned mission to mars could do in a month what'd take a remote mission years without even landing, simply by being able to take far more direct control of one of the mars rovers.

However, we currently lack either the technology (for sending manned mission past mars) or the funding (though that is lowly being fixed) to send humans much further than low earth orbit right now. That's not a problem solved by giving up on human spaceflight altogether, though.

[Tyndmyr]

This isn’t the fault of the space program, and says nothing about anything, other than the apathy of some college students.


At ten years after the moon landing, NBC conducted a poll to see how people felt about it. The majority opinion was "the costs didn't justify it, so we shouldn't have gone"

It took until the 25 year mark to get opinions to get to an even split. That's, uh, not a lot of enthusiasm. One in three people in the US still can't even name the first man to walk on the moon.

A *lot* of people do not find space to be inherently fascinating. It's perfectly fine and wonderful to feel differently, but we can't reasonably deny that many people do not view space as particularly exciting.

So, bringing it back to why we're seeing more of it now...it's easier to film now. Sci-Fi stuff *used* to be notoriously expensive to film, but CGI has come a long way.

[Anonymouswizard]

Sci-Fi stuff *used* to be notoriously expensive to film, but CGI has come a long way.

Weirdly I liked the compromises expensive filming forced on sci-fi, particularly the slower pace and need to write around what they can show (and the consequences when they didn't).

[Fyraltari]

So, bringing it back to why we're seeing more of it now...it's easier to film now. Sci-Fi stuff *used* to be notoriously expensive to film, but CGI has come a long way.


Weirdly I liked the compromises expensive filming forced on sci-fi, particularly the slower pace and need to write around what they can show (and the consequences when they didn't).

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/a/ab/Zarbi.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20121111042122

[Tyndmyr]

Weirdly I liked the compromises expensive filming forced on sci-fi, particularly the slower pace and need to write around what they can show (and the consequences when they didn't).

Sometimes limitations make for good stuff.

Space Odyssey 2001, while not my favorite film, most definitely had some fairly impressive tricks used for the era. I have no idea how that movie would be filmed today, and I'm honestly not even sure that it could be made today, but you've definitely got to respect some of the sci fi accomplishments.

[Anonymouswizard]

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/a/ab/Zarbi.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20121111042122

Ah, classic DW. Sometimes I enjoy in the way it was intended (The Daleks), other times in unintended ways (The Web Planet). It's amazing how many convincing monsters you can make out of bubble wrap, foam, and good acting (heck, in the Troughton years they sometimes didn't even use the first two).

[Caledonian]

A manned mission would be able to achieve far more in far less time because it isn't limited by things like bandwidth and communications lag.

Manned missions are limited by other things, like the need for life support and the duration of radiation exposure.

Besides, we've done them. It was only on the very last mission to the Moon that they sent any actual scientists, and they didn't get to do much science. The majority of our scientific understanding of the Moon came from probes. The stuff the astronauts collected could have been collected by a telepresence probe far more cheaply and efficiently, and actual scientists could have done the selection - rather than military pilots given crash courses in geology. Sending people to Mars is out of the question unless it's accepted to be a one-way mission - currently, we could send people there and bring them back and the last of them would be dying of radiation poisoning as they returned.

[Anonymouswizard]

Maybe the 'possible life on Venus' hypothesis is going to lead to a space fiction boom? I guess it depends on how long people are talking about it for.

[Delicious Taffy]

I guess it depends on how long people are talking about it for.
Give it four days and nobody will be talking about Venus. It's a nothing story.

[Ramza00]

Maybe the 'possible life on Venus' hypothesis is going to lead to a space fiction boom? I guess it depends on how long people are talking about it for.

Have you seen the XKCD that is Venus relevant?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
At ten years after the moon landing, NBC conducted a poll to see how people felt about it. The majority opinion was "the costs didn't justify it, so we shouldn't have gone"

Public apathy is not a measure of the inherent value of anything.


Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
One in three people in the US still can't even name the first man to walk on the moon.

One in three people probably can’t name a lot of things in this country, but that’s a reflection of the dripping mess that’s our educational system, not of the value of human spaceflight.


Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Sci-Fi stuff *used* to be notoriously expensive to film, but CGI has come a long way.

CGI isn’t cheap. Look at the section for visual effects staff in the credits of any recent SF movie. They all need salaries and workspace, among other things.

And visual effects aren’t the only expense for a movie, no matter if it's set on Mars or Middle-Earth. Costumes, props, maquettes, concept art, countless other things. Simply using CGI in place of physical models doesn’t automatically make a movie less expensive.

[DeTess]

Sending people to Mars is out of the question unless it's accepted to be a one-way mission - currently, we could send people there and bring them back and the last of them would be dying of radiation poisoning as they returned.

Everything else you mentioned is a problem of the implementation of manned missions (life support tech, which people went, etc.) Not the concept of manned missions themselves.

I wanted to highlight the snippet above because I happen to know that it is incorrect. Several fairly feadible concepts for sending astronauts on a return trip without dying from radiation already exist. Of course you can't send them there with a dragon or soyouz capsule, but that doesn't mean we lack the technology to do so at all.

[Tyndmyr]

Public apathy is not a measure of the inherent value of anything.

We're not looking for some inherent value of the "worthiness" of spaceflight, we're asking why people do or don't make fiction about it.

Public apathy is highly relevant to that.

Cost to make something relatively to number of potential viewers is central to what films get made.


CGI isn’t cheap. Look at the section for visual effects staff in the credits of any recent SF movie. They all need salaries and workspace, among other things.

CGI has gotten significantly cheaper and better. Basic stuff like compositing can be done at home by an enthusiast, and is so frequently used in films now that it's not even really considered a special effect now. It used to require an absolute ton of work, and now you toss up a green/blue screen and chromakey the video feeds, it's trivial.

A lot of the money spent now is spent on things that simply could not have been done at all a couple decades ago.

[Caledonian]

We're not looking for some inherent value of the "worthiness" of spaceflight, we're asking why people do or don't make fiction about it.

Public apathy is highly relevant to that. Yes, but we've also seen that there's a small number of very enthusiastic fans of the manned space program. Maybe they're aiming for a niche audience.

[WinterKnight404]

I'm disappointed in most of you. There have been some exciting developments in the future of space flight recently and you think it's pointless and boring? I don't know where to begin... I'm not a huge NASA nerd and pretend to understand everything but I find all the developments fascinating.

Most recently:
Space X achieves the first manned commercial space flight to the ISS with it's Dragon capsule. It's the first manned space launch from the USA in decades...

More probes are making their way to Mars including one with a flying drone on board which would be a first for mankind to have a device in the air to map out terrain.

The search for other planets that could either support human life or an advanced alien civilization is ramping up epically with some scientists predicting that with our new technology we will find evidence of alien life within this next decade.

Trump created the Space Force. No matter how misguided his reasoning may be this is something we will eventually need. I doubt that this is really the time for it but hey, it's a start.

Why it's important:
The future IS SPACE. A new great space race is about to begin (or maybe has) between China, the US, Russia, UAE and the EU. Corporations will WANT to go to space to harvest raw materials. Space tourism will occur as space travel becomes safer and more commercial.

As others have said we need to get off of this rock to prevent an extinction level event from wiping out all of humanity and the more planets we colonize the lower that probability goes.

[Ramza00]

I'm disappointed in most of you.
Well I am disappointed in that people starve in a world of 7 billion people where we plant and grow enough food to feed everyone yet we do not have the will to distribute the food to everyone. Literally letting food "perish" with food waste, literally spilling milk on the ground for we decide we want a consistent minimum price on the part of farmers. So much disapointment.

But more seriously, if people have differences of opinion, and are strangers, you are not going to change their mind by telling them you are disappointed in them or that they should be ashamed of themselves (not something you did it is just a similar thing other people do from time to time.)



Why it's important:
The future IS SPACE. A new great space race is about to begin (or maybe has) between China, the US, Russia, UAE and the EU. Corporations will WANT to go to space to harvest raw materials. Space tourism will occur as space travel becomes safer and more commercial.

As others have said we need to get off of this rock to prevent an extinction level event from wiping out all of humanity and the more planets we colonize the lower that probability goes.

The future is people. Why do I care about Space Tourism that will cost at minum $200k for a week trick when I can't afford a house on this piece of earth? (let alone a trip to Disney-World on this earth?)

Selling me a dream that I can not cash, that most people in the United States can not cash. And the US only has 330 million people, how about the 7.3 billion other people (7.6 billion total) who also can't cash that check you are trying to "sell" with the idea of Space Tourism. What about them?

The future is people, it always has been people. The future is not more minerals, or some idea of exotic minerals. We have the tech to make our current world more sustainable yet it is not enough, why not focus on improvements of sustainable tech instead of the future which supposedly is Space Tourism.

[Fyraltari]

The future is people, it always has been people. The future is not more minerals, or some idea of exotic minerals. We have the tech to make our current world more sustainable yet it is not enough, why not focus on improvements of sustainable tech instead of the future which supposedly is Space Tourism.
We can do both. If you're looking at wated money/resources/manpower, the space program isn't it.

[Ramza00]

We can do both. If you're looking at wated money/resources/manpower, the space program isn't it.

Trying to sell me on the idea of Space Tourism is very much is the idea of wasted resources.

(As I explained before Space can be useful in dozens of ways, focus on those, stop focusing on Space Tourism.)

[Anonymouswizard]

We can do both. If you're looking at wated money/resources/manpower, the space program isn't it.

Yeah, the main problem with the space program is that it's long term investment, setting up a base on the Moon will take a decade, getting an asteroid into position for mining will take at minimum months (I suspect at least a year), and I've not no idea how long setting up a skyhook to make breaking the gravity well cheaper will take (or how much the thing will cost).

But as a long term investment that'll safeguard the future of humanity? The only thing up there with the space program is switching to renewable energy, and the space program has already seen massive returns. Maybe not enough to justify the cost of going to the Moon yet, but Helium mining could solve that.

What's at this point probably wasted manpower is attempts to get people to other planets, and convincing most people that it's worth their time to be excited about opportunities that they will never be able to afford (but if we stay on this topic we're in going to drift into not okay areas).

Maybe by the end of this century you'll be able to be one of the first residents on Venusian blimp cities, or living in a Martian dome. But nobody will have that opportunity if we don't invest in space, beer it at the end of this century or the end of this planet's life.

[Caledonian]

The problem here is that people are so excited about our ability to do things, like send humans to the Moon and establishing a hypothetical base there, that they don't actually bother with figuring out whether we should do those things.

What would we gain from setting up a base on the Moon? What benefit would we gain?

That's where thinking on the matter should begin. But space enthusiasts aren't asking those questions at all - they're starting with the conclusion they want to reach and then not even making ad-hoc justifications.

Space isn't the future. It's a dead-end.

[Anonymouswizard]

What would we gain from setting up a base on the Moon? What benefit would we gain?

Potential He-3, possibly some other resources, a place to refuel craft after they've spent lots of delta-v reaching it's orbit. Possibly access to some other rare resources, I forget because potential He-3 fusion is already a good reason to begin mining it.

[Ramza00]

Potential He-3, possibly some other resources, a place to refuel craft after they've spent lots of delta-v reaching it's orbit. Possibly access to some other rare resources, I forget because potential He-3 fusion is already a good reason to begin mining it.

With the moon being only 1.3 light seconds away do we even need human operators to mine He-3? Maybe we should be spending more money on boston dynamics, or rockets, or biodomes, etc. (The moon is so close it is an easy goal and will be much cheaper than mars, but also because it is so close what will the advantage of setting up a human base there since robots will be doing the mining anyway?)

[Anonymouswizard]

With the moon being only 1.3 light seconds away do we even need human operators to mine He-3? Maybe we should be spending more money on boston dynamics, or rockets, or biodomes, etc. (The moon is so close it is an easy goal and will be much cheaper than mars, but also because it is so close what will the advantage of setting up a human base there since robots will be doing the mining anyway?)

I think we certainly want a human or two while setting up the initial facilities, but we should definitely run the majority of it via telepresence and automated drones. Which leads to a temporary moon base until everything is up and running, followed by the occasional replacement bot and maybe very occasional human engineer to keep everything running smoothly.

Like, a permanent Moon colonisation will probably never happen, but that doesn't mean there won't be bases there for one reason or another over the coming centuries. Most space exploitation at this stage will probably be done the same way, an occasional human when you have to but mainly just robots.

[Caledonian]

There's a fusion pathway that creates He-3. Mining it probably isn't economically feasible. And using the Moon to send ships elsewhere presumes we have reason to send ships elsewhere - which we do not - and can actually send ships without, say, the crews dying due to radiation storms - which we cannot.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's a fusion pathway that creates He-3. Mining it probably isn't economically feasible. And using the Moon to send ships elsewhere presumes we have reason to send ships elsewhere - which we do not - and can actually send ships without, say, the crews dying due to radiation storms - which we cannot.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on fusion power, so the viability of 'mining' He-3 will depend on the relative energy cost as compared to fusing it. But honestly, space fans get excited about ideas that are centuries away, if it happens most space infrastructure development will be about exploit resources (and reducing environmental destruction as a nice bonus).

Staying on Earth is a dead end, it is a path certain to lead to the extinction of humanity as a species. But it's a read we can stay on for a long time, we've got about five billion years until the definite deadline for leaving this rock starts to loom, and and possibly many millennia after that until the actual deadline hits. By the time that happens we might have become Time Lords, or maybe the next superplague will have wiped us out already.

The key benefits to space development are the ecological bonuses we can get: potentially cleaner energy and stopping environmental destruction from things like strip mining. Now the first we should be working on by developing renewables on Earth, but that doesn't mean that there's no reason to develop space. Just no reason to build orbital habitats or have humans colonise other planets for billions of years.

[Rakaydos]

To return from mars, astronauts need to refuel their rocket on mars. The leading canidate for this refuing process involves using solar electricity, water ice, and atmospheric CO2, and turning it into Methane (primary component of Natural Gas) and oxygen.

If you DONT think this technoligy has applications for offsetting climate change here on earth, after they work the kinks out, I dont know what to tell you.

[Ramza00]

To return from mars, astronauts need to refuel their rocket on mars. The leading canidate for this refuing process involves using solar electricity, water ice, and atmospheric CO2, and turning it into Methane (primary component of Natural Gas) and oxygen.

If you DONT think this technoligy has applications for offsetting climate change here on earth, after they work the kinks out, I dont know what to tell you.

How would going to Mars make that tech easier to develop?

It is like throwing a person in a hole with no materials and tell them to invent a ladder. Why do you need to be in a hole to see the benefit of a ladder? How would being in a hole make this easier? Especially if there is no resources in the hole already?


Then person 2 in this metaphor will counter, there will be materials in said hole for after I throw person 1 in this hole I will also throw them materials to build a ladder. Person 1 who is now stuck then responds why did we not build the ladder before throwing me in here in the first place. Also I think my leg is broken for it hurts when I place weight on it. And since I am in a hole there is no doctor to repair it and make a brace.

[Caledonian]

Staying on Earth is a dead end, it is a path certain to lead to the extinction of humanity as a species.

ALL paths lead to the extinction of humanity as a species. ALL of them!


But it's a read we can stay on for a long time, we've got about five billion years until the definite deadline for leaving this rock starts to loom

Do you seriously imagine that humanity surviving until the sun starts to burn out is an actual possibility?

If you want to reduce environmental damage, take the money you'd spend on putting humans in space and invest it in recycling research.

[Rakaydos]

How would going to Mars make that tech easier to develop?

It is like throwing a person in a hole with no materials and tell them to invent a ladder. Why do you need to be in a hole to see the benefit of a ladder? How would being in a hole make this easier? Especially if there is no resources in the hole already?


Then person 2 in this metaphor will counter, there will be materials in said hole for after I throw person 1 in this hole I will also throw them materials to build a ladder. Person 1 who is now stuck then responds why did we not build the ladder before throwing me in here in the first place. Also I think my leg is broken for it hurts when I place weight on it. And since I am in a hole there is no doctor to repair it and make a brace.

The trick is, you tell someone that they are going in the hole -next- week, and to figure out what they need to bring with them in order to get out. Preparation is key.

The space program is a crucible. Because going beyond earth is so difficult, it is often assumed that off the self solutions will never work- either they fail because the enviroment is too hostile, or they are just "overbuilt" and weigh too much to be worth sending. Everything is a one-off custom solution that pushes the edge of standard engineering practice and beyond.

It's the "pushing past the borders of comfortable engineering" that creates new things. We have ladders, but if I can only bring a 2' long tube into the hole with me, I need to figure out how to make a fold-out ladder fit in a 2' tube.

Dont get distracted by ISRU. That's just the engineering solution of "It's harder to bring a ladder to that particular hole than it would be to just build one there." That's not a universal solution, but it will be a common one in spaceflight. But the particular ladder in question, sabatier-reaction methane production, does develop a technoligy that's been known about since the 1800s but hasnt been made into an industrial scale process, the way a company like SpaceX wants it to be.

[Ramza00]

The trick is, you tell someone that they are going in the hole -next- week, and to figure out what they need to bring with them in order to get out. Preparation is key.

The space program is a crucible. Because going beyond earth is so difficult, it is often assumed that off the self solutions will never work- either they fail because the enviroment is too hostile, or they are just "overbuilt" and weigh too much to be worth sending. Everything is a one-off custom solution that pushes the edge of standard engineering practice and beyond.

It's the "pushing past the borders of comfortable engineering" that creates new things. We have ladders, but if I can only bring a 2' long tube into the hole with me, I need to figure out how to make a fold-out ladder fit in a 2' tube.

Dont get distracted by ISRU. That's just the engineering solution of "It's harder to bring a ladder to that particular hole than it would be to just build one there." That's not a universal solution, but it will be a common one in spaceflight. But the particular ladder in question, sabatier-reaction methane production, does develop a technoligy that's been known about since the 1800s but hasnt been made into an industrial scale process, the way a company like SpaceX wants it to be.

I reject the principle of a crucible is necessary to do innovation.

It is merely industrial policy and a nation state or a way too rich billionaire deciding to do industrial policy. Then artificial crucibles can be more effective than actual crucibles, especially if space is way too hostile that you are not actually doing actual learning for it takes too long to set up even the first iteration of the experiment, especially a successful iteration of the experiment that will not kill the humans at the space station, moon base, mars base, etc.

I repeat what I said earlier. Pay people to set up "self-contained biospheres" on earth with cargo containers. Learn from those experiments, do hundreds of those experiments for a fraction of the cost than it takes to do one successful experiment in space, or on an asteroid, moon, mars, etc for there is a 100x cost due to how expensive rocket fuel is. It costs $10k per lb of stuff to put into space, and the Falcon Heavy brings it down to what? $1k per lb, other people think it is closer to $500 per lb ... I think the estimate is? (with the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 being in between the costs of those two.)

I am not against rocket technology (for rockets put cool satellites, probes, etc into space and they pay for themselves.) But lets get the biology stuff done pat prior to putting all that expensive stuff into space to support our meat sacks for I love my meat sack, I think most 7 billion people love their meat sacks, but it is so hard to use very little resources in space to keep our meat sacks in a health space, let alone other problems like keeping the atmosphere and so on the right balance to grow plants, keep our human selves, etc balanced. Biosphere 2 in the 90s was a [censored] disaster. The problem though with Biosphere 2 is we never iterated and did it on a more massive scale learning from individual successes, repeating it again and again till we figured it out.

Figure out how to do the stuff on Earth first prior to sending it into Space!

[Tvtyrant]

I reject the principle of a crucible is necessary to do innovation.

It is merely industrial policy and a nation state or a way too rich billionaire deciding to do industrial policy. Then artificial crucibles can be more effective than actual crucibles, especially if space is way too hostile that you are not actually doing actual learning for it takes too long to set up even the first iteration of the experiment, especially a successful iteration of the experiment that will not kill the humans at the space station, moon base, mars base, etc.

I repeat what I said earlier. Pay people to set up "self-contained biospheres" on earth with cargo containers. Learn from those experiments, do hundreds of those experiments for a fraction of the cost than it takes to do one successful experiment in space, or on an asteroid, moon, mars, etc for there is a 100x cost due to how expensive rocket fuel is. It costs $10k per lb of stuff to put into space, and the Falcon Heavy brings it down to what? $1k per lb, other people think it is closer to $500 per lb ... I think the estimate is? (with the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 being in between the costs of those two.)

I am not against rocket technology (for rockets put cool satellites, probes, etc into space and they pay for themselves.) But lets get the biology stuff done pat prior to putting all that expensive stuff into space to support our meat sacks for I love my meat sack, I think most 7 billion people love their meat sacks, but it is so hard to use very little resources in space to keep our meat sacks in a health space, let alone other problems like keeping the atmosphere and so on the right balance to grow plants, keep our human selves, etc balanced. Biosphere 2 in the 90s was a [censored] disaster. The problem though with Biosphere 2 is we never iterated and did it on a more massive scale learning from individual successes, repeating it again and again till we figured it out.

Figure out how to do the stuff on Earth first prior to sending it into Space!

Agreed. If self-sustaining habs are possible, they should be possible here. We are way better off focusing on the Outback, Tundra and the Sahara than on trying to make tiny space colonies. In the long run, once it is possible, we can move off world.

[Caledonian]

Those sound like good ideas. More good ideas include figuring out why we'd want to send humans to any particular spot in space. We've concluded that the Moon isn't a good place for mining because, due to the lack of tectonic activity, volcanoes, etc., substances aren't concentrated but are scattered more-or-less evenly throughout the Moon. So there aren't any veins of ore or similar resources worth mining. It would be cheaper and easier to find ways of extracting substances from unfavorable locations on Earth than to ever mine anything from the Moon.

[Rakaydos]

I reject the principle of a crucible is necessary to do innovation.

It is merely industrial policy and a nation state or a way too rich billionaire deciding to do industrial policy. Then artificial crucibles can be more effective than actual crucibles, especially if space is way too hostile that you are not actually doing actual learning for it takes too long to set up even the first iteration of the experiment, especially a successful iteration of the experiment that will not kill the humans at the space station, moon base, mars base, etc.

I repeat what I said earlier. Pay people to set up "self-contained biospheres" on earth with cargo containers. Learn from those experiments, do hundreds of those experiments for a fraction of the cost than it takes to do one successful experiment in space, or on an asteroid, moon, mars, etc for there is a 100x cost due to how expensive rocket fuel is. It costs $10k per lb of stuff to put into space, and the Falcon Heavy brings it down to what? $1k per lb, other people think it is closer to $500 per lb ... I think the estimate is? (with the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 being in between the costs of those two.)

I am not against rocket technology (for rockets put cool satellites, probes, etc into space and they pay for themselves.) But lets get the biology stuff done pat prior to putting all that expensive stuff into space to support our meat sacks for I love my meat sack, I think most 7 billion people love their meat sacks, but it is so hard to use very little resources in space to keep our meat sacks in a health space, let alone other problems like keeping the atmosphere and so on the right balance to grow plants, keep our human selves, etc balanced. Biosphere 2 in the 90s was a [censored] disaster. The problem though with Biosphere 2 is we never iterated and did it on a more massive scale learning from individual successes, repeating it again and again till we figured it out.

Figure out how to do the stuff on Earth first prior to sending it into Space!

Why are you setting up self contained biospheres, if spaceflight is not a priority?

You seem to think space is "get there, then figure it out." I am hard pressed to think of anything that COULD be further from the truth. Everything DOES get figured out here on earth before it ever goes into space, because getting to space is so hard in the first place. But it is the INTENT to go to space that leads to pushing the boundaries of engineering.

[jayem]

Ah, classic DW. Sometimes I enjoy in the way it was intended (The Daleks), other times in unintended ways (The Web Planet). It's amazing how many convincing monsters you can make out of bubble wrap, foam, and good acting (heck, in the Troughton years they sometimes didn't even use the first two).

And in the (insert punchline doctor) years they didn't use the last two

They did seem to have much more variety.

[Ramza00]

Why are you setting up self contained biospheres, if spaceflight is not a priority?

Numerous reasons. One of which is Spaceflight may be a long term goal but also things like greenhouses may be better way to grow food. Port in power from someplace else like the desert and then literally do vertical farming and so on. This in turn allow less farmland to be used and possibly allow us to recreate other ecosystems we may have destroyed such as forests and so on.


You seem to think space is "get there, then figure it out." I am hard pressed to think of anything that COULD be further from the truth. Everything DOES get figured out here on earth before it ever goes into space, because getting to space is so hard in the first place. But it is the INTENT to go to space that leads to pushing the boundaries of engineering.

Scientists and Engineers may get this, but the general public and politicians do not. Once you start making people realize Space is not about out there, but creating a better life here we may get the industrial policy and sustainability stuff that I crave. I also think it allows more Space out there for Space out there problem is partly cost (there are dozens of other reasons.)

But if you do not focus on how to make Space cheap then no industrial policy will occur, it will be seen as wasted money. We only spent 3 years and 5 months sending people to the Moon and touching the lunar surface. Of course we did far more than that, but lots of those stuff was trial runs, robots, etc. I am for science exploration, rockets, etc, but lots of those things should not require people and doing people just makes everything more complicated, more expensive, wastes money, and delivers little benefit.

If the goal is humans in safe, research biospheres. If the goal is to explore space then more rockets and more robots. I tire of magical thinking that is all. Lots of space advocates are really just male fanboys who engage in magical thinking.

[Anonymouswizard]

And in the (insert punchline doctor) years they didn't use the last two

They did seem to have much more variety.

Eh, I think my original punchline worked well. Troughton is pretty much the punchline Doctor for bad monsters, while the Hartnell years had some terrible moments with things like visible zips on the Sensorites and the Zarbi Troughton had stories where the monsters were invisible or some kind of invisible gas to help with saving money on costumes. Although at the same time his years brought us great effects work such as Ramon Salamander and apparently managing to make the rather silly Macra prop scary via angles, lighting, and mist. While I could punch at the years of my least favourite Doctors (*cough* new series Macra are much less scary *cough*) I find it's more enjoyable to poke fun at the shortcomings of some of my favourite years. 'They couldn't afford decent monsters, but could still sell it with the acting.'

[InvisibleBison]

ALL paths lead to the extinction of humanity as a species. ALL of them!

That depends on your definitions of "humanity", "extinction", and "path".

[Rakaydos]

Numerous reasons. One of which is Spaceflight may be a long term goal but also things like greenhouses may be better way to grow food. Port in power from someplace else like the desert and then literally do vertical farming and so on. This in turn allow less farmland to be used and possibly allow us to recreate other ecosystems we may have destroyed such as forests and so on.



Scientists and Engineers may get this, but the general public and politicians do not. Once you start making people realize Space is not about out there, but creating a better life here we may get the industrial policy and sustainability stuff that I crave. I also think it allows more Space out there for Space out there problem is partly cost (there are dozens of other reasons.)

But if you do not focus on how to make Space cheap then no industrial policy will occur, it will be seen as wasted money. We only spent 3 years and 5 months sending people to the Moon and touching the lunar surface. Of course we did far more than that, but lots of those stuff was trial runs, robots, etc. I am for science exploration, rockets, etc, but lots of those things should not require people and doing people just makes everything more complicated, more expensive, wastes money, and delivers little benefit.

If the goal is humans in safe, research biospheres. If the goal is to explore space then more rockets and more robots. I tire of magical thinking that is all. Lots of space advocates are really just male fanboys who engage in magical thinking.

Thing is, we know enough about biospheres for the medium term- not well enough for a perfectly sealed can with no resupply, but noone is planning perfectly sealed cans with no resupply for a long time. Apollo used big cans of powdered limestone, and that was enough to put men on the moon and bring them home, almost half a dozen times, plus several that didnt quite land. (8, 10, and 13, at least) The ISS goes months between resupply, and has a more elaborate system.

But what we can NOT test on earth is what not having an earth below us (or 70 miles of air above us, even if the pressure is right) does to the human body... and what can be done to mitigate that. And yes, we started with animal studies- dogs and apes, initially, before the first man ever went into space at all. There's mice expiriments in the ISS right now. But ultimately to find out what happens to people, you need to send people.

We now have decades of data on the human body in microgravity. The next question, is lunar and/or martian gravity. Like microgravity, we cant simulate that on earth. We can simulate it in LEO, but not in the same place we continue to test microgravity stuff. And ultimately, we need to test the difference between spin gravity and natural gravity.

But all that is science, not engineering. Science poses a question- what would happen if X, Y and Z? Engineering makes sure X and Y happens at Z and you can see the result... but if Z is space, you still have to go to space to do the science.

[jayem]

Eh, I think my original punchline worked well. Troughton is pretty much the punchline Doctor for bad monsters, while the Hartnell years had some terrible moments with things like visible zips on the Sensorites and the Zarbi Troughton had stories where the monsters were invisible or some kind of invisible gas to help with saving money on costumes. Although at the same time his years brought us great effects work such as Ramon Salamander and apparently managing to make the rather silly Macra prop scary via angles, lighting, and mist. While I could punch at the years of my least favourite Doctors (*cough* new series Macra are much less scary *cough*) I find it's more enjoyable to poke fun at the shortcomings of some of my favourite years. 'They couldn't afford decent monsters, but could still sell it with the acting.'
I'll be watching the Sensorites this week (on a much bigger screen than the original broadcast, and with a rewind button).
As you say it's mostly true and a compliment (to Troughton at least), so I took it as being played straight.
Which lead to wanting to poke fun with the easy inversion, but not want to accredit any specific actor with bad acting (I do like them all, really).

[Caledonian]

I think the Sixth Doctor is under-appreciated. Never got the chance to complete his development arc.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think the Sixth Doctor is under-appreciated. Never got the chance to complete his development arc.

We're just ignoring his time with Evelyn now?

[WinterKnight404]

There's life Jim! But not as we know it...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/venus-might-host-life-new-discovery-suggests/

[Eldan]

We're just ignoring his time with Evelyn now?

I was about to say. She's one of the best companions and he was pretty good in those stories.

[Anonymouswizard]

I was about to say. She's one of the best companions and he was pretty good in those stories.

My first experience with Colin Baker's Doctor was the audios. The first two with him weren't engaging, but by the second Evelyn story I was hooked, due to the mixture of him actually getting meaningful character development in them and Evelyn being an amazing companion and one of the few who isn't in awe of the Doctor. I actually started skipping other stories just for more Six and Evelyn.

Doctor Who really does need more companions in their fifties and older.

[Fyraltari]

I think the Sixth Doctor is under-appreciated. Never got the chance to complete his development arc.

The thing is, his TV run is legitimately bad. That’s mostly the result of behind-the-scenes shenanigans but it’s still true. The character has potential but wasn’t properly used on screen.

[Anonymouswizard]

The thing is, his TV run is legitimately bad. That’s mostly the result of behind-the-scenes shenanigans but it’s still true. The character has potential but wasn’t properly used on screen.

Colin Baker's doctor suffers from a variant of what happened to Paul McGann but arguably worse. McGann might be thought of as the guy who played the Doctor oncetwice, but he's agreed to be a good Doctor. Colin Baker had a bad TV run, due to both behind the scenes drama and only getting to play the first half (at best, a third or a quarter is more likely) of his planned character arc. And like McGann he's significantly more popular with people who engage in the EU because he gets legitimately good stories there as well as completing his character arc.

Colin Baker got the traditional dodgy first season shared by most Doctors, and then never got his vastly improved second season due to the Trial of a Time Lord and being booted off the show (and not agreeing to come back for a regeneration story, but given how he was treated who can blame him).

Then again, I also quite like the technicolour nightmare coat, so I might not be the best judge of quality (although it might have worked better if the rest of the outfit had been simpler).

[Eldan]

I don't know... I listened to a lot of the McGann audio stories, and his doctor never really clicked with me. I don't like him. Also, he has some utterly terrible stories. (Zagreus)

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't know... I listened to a lot of the McGann audio stories, and his doctor never really clicked with me. I don't like him. Also, he has some utterly terrible stories. (Zagreus)

I've not listened to all of them, but they certainly clicked for me. But that wasn't my point for him, my point was that for people who only watch the TV series he's pretty much a footnote, having appeared in the Movie and Night of the Doctor but not anything else, whereas if you're into the EU there's a whole host of audios and novels starring him, I hear the books even give him a boyfriend! For him it's less about quality and more about prominence, to many he's the actor who 'played the Doctor once', although I have to admit to really quite liking the Eighth Doctor and Lucie stories.

Meanwhile Colin Baker did get a legitimately bad TV series run, but gets a quite frankly amazing run in the audios, at least partially due to his first audio-original companion being the best in any medium. It helps that there wasn't a need to build sets around the coat of many colours, but the Sixth Doctor audios tend to have the strong writing and engaging character development he needed (plus the Sixth Doctor gets Jubilee, one of the best DW serials ever).

[Androgeus]

Also, he has some utterly terrible stories. (Zagreus)

What? Zagreus is a glorious mess!

[jayem]

What came out of the Sensorite's (which I enjoyed), was how much the episodes from then, are like theatre (with recording breaks being 'expensive', and everything being week by week)

Audio wise I've liked the 7th Dr ones more, Protect&Survive breaks normalish Dr who and film conventions (not in unique ways, they are pretty much copying "where the wind blows" )
And Klein (with openly different motivations) & Rachel () are definitily different 'companions'.

Though I suspect that's more a question of which I've heard and when.

[DavidSh]

Has Dr. Who ever done any astronaut stuff? I mean, with astronauts from 20th or 21st century Earth human space programs?

[Anonymouswizard]

What came out of the Sensorite's (which I enjoyed), was how much the episodes from then, are like theatre (with recording breaks being 'expensive', and everything being week by week).

Yes, also much slower and action-light, which I personally enjoy.


Has Dr. Who ever done any astronaut stuff? I mean, with astronauts from 20th or 21st century Earth human space programs?

Yes. Although not always realistically, because Doctor Who is from the period where the 21st century was comprised of space years. So you've got stuff like The Wheel In Space where we've got space stations with artificial gravity in the 21st century and weirdly mention of disagreements like those in this very thread leading to sabotage. But at the same tone you've got stuff like The Waters of Mars bl using more realistic 20th century space tech.

This is because the Time War destroyed the Raygun Gothic twenty first century we have to have and replaced it with the current version, or something like that. And took our 21st century space catsuits with it.

[Fyraltari]

Has Dr. Who ever done any astronaut stuff? I mean, with astronauts from 20th or 21st century Earth human space programs?

There are episodes of the Second and Third Doctor's eras where regular astronauts doing normal astronaut thing stumble on alien stuff if that's what you're asking.

[jayem]

There are episodes of the Second and Third Doctor's eras where regular astronauts doing normal astronaut thing stumble on alien stuff if that's what you're asking.
The 1st Doctor's last episode is also spacey and very 'normal' for the first part.
The 4th Doctor also has at least one.
And some of the new ones ("waters of mars", "day of the moon" [historic], "kill the moon"[now you see why they don't do many... :grin: ])

Ironically as soon as we landed on the moon until we stopped the Doctor was earthbound... (with 4 or so Timelord shenanigans).

I think for most of the shows at the time, they were expecting to be now contemporary, it is Space 1999 and 2001 a Space Odyssey for a reason.

So back to the OP:
50 Year Anniversary (topical)
China,India&SpaceX missions give hope of new progress again, make it topical, and give need to Americanise the story

[Anonymouswizard]

There are episodes of the Second and Third Doctor's eras where regular astronauts doing normal astronaut thing stumble on alien stuff if that's what you're asking.

To be fair al to them, the first part of the Third Doctor's era was basically Doctor Who: the Quatermass years (I've not got to the Pertwee serials yet, still got an entire season of Troughton to go, but it's the clearest inspiration for the pre-Three Doctors Earthbound serials).

And yeah, The Tenth Planet is also a relatively realistic astronaut story (before the Cybermen show up), just focused on Mission Control instead of the astronauts themselves. But considering how many genres Doctor Who has dabbled in the lack of such a story would be more weird.

[CmdrShep2183]

Well I am disappointed in that people starve in a world of 7 billion people where we plant and grow enough food to feed everyone yet we do not have the will to distribute the food to everyone. Literally letting food "perish" with food waste, literally spilling milk on the ground for we decide we want a consistent minimum price on the part of farmers. So much disapointment.

But more seriously, if people have differences of opinion, and are strangers, you are not going to change their mind by telling them you are disappointed in them or that they should be ashamed of themselves (not something you did it is just a similar thing other people do from time to time.)



The future is people. Why do I care about Space Tourism that will cost at minum $200k for a week trick when I can't afford a house on this piece of earth? (let alone a trip to Disney-World on this earth?)

Selling me a dream that I can not cash, that most people in the United States can not cash. And the US only has 330 million people, how about the 7.3 billion other people (7.6 billion total) who also can't cash that check you are trying to "sell" with the idea of Space Tourism. What about them?

The future is people, it always has been people. The future is not more minerals, or some idea of exotic minerals. We have the tech to make our current world more sustainable yet it is not enough, why not focus on improvements of sustainable tech instead of the future which supposedly is Space Tourism.

You are entitled a house. Everyone starving on Earth is entitled to food.

But Disney vacations every year are where I draw the line.

For humanity to stop and ultimately reverse climate change it will have to make incredible sacrifices. Those sacrifices include giving up CO2 emitting vacations.

[CmdrShep2183]

One of the best documentaries I have ever seen!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpWwOHP3UkA

[Rakaydos]

The more money one has, the easier it is to make money.
Once basic needs are filled, additional money is little more than running up a score.
It is hard to find legitimate expenses that return that money back to the economy, especially since Regan eliminated the 90% tax bracket (and people like Sanders are called communist for wanting to restore the top bracket to 80%)

Space tourisim is something that can be done to offer billionares who have nothing else worth spending on, something not available for any lesser amount of money. The "vacation cost" pays for actual work being done by the company. It is not an advancement of science any more than going to an airshow advances the state of aeronautics design.

There is exactly one mars lander that has had any kind of serious design work behind it. The company making it is offering a joyride to a Japanese fashion designer billionaire and 11 of his friends, for extra money to develop their lander. They have also interested NASA in using a modified version of their mars lander on the moon, for the Artemis program. This has to be delivered by 2024.

[Tyndmyr]

You are entitled a house. Everyone starving on Earth is entitled to food.

But Disney vacations every year are where I draw the line.

For humanity to stop and ultimately reverse climate change it will have to make incredible sacrifices. Those sacrifices include giving up CO2 emitting vacations.

I dunno about you, but if your plan requires me to give up things like entertainment and travel and be content with food and housing, I'm not interested in it.

Life isn't about just barely surviving.

Space travel as entertainment isn't a bad thing. It may not be super popular or affordable now, but there's nothing wrong with people taking inspiration from it.

[Yora]

People in Bangladesh and on the Maldives are also entitled to a house and food. Our entertainment can't continue to come at the cost of their bare necessities.

[Rakaydos]

People in Bangladesh and on the Maldives are also entitled to a house and food. Our entertainment can't continue to come at the cost of their bare necessities.

{scrubbed}

After a certian point, (with "billionare" being considered a placeholder for that point, even if exact values may vary) "Trickle down" runs into problems where you're making so much money, you buy everything you could want, and still be making money with the remaining money. {scrubbed}.

One orbital tourisim flight pays the salaries of countless middle class engineers, out of the pocket of someone who literally has more money than they know what to do with. {scrubbed}

[Anonymouswizard]

Uh, we may want to tone it down.

Whatever the pros or cons of space tourism, the desire for it might lead to more efficient planetbound travel.

[Tyndmyr]

People in Bangladesh and on the Maldives are also entitled to a house and food. Our entertainment can't continue to come at the cost of their bare necessities.

Poverty is always a problem, and while it's a wonderful thing to work on, the idea that we shouldn't work on other things until then is a curious one. Science, learning and even entertainment can help people, even in an imperfect world with poverty. Rich and poor alike enjoy and benefit from things like knowledge and entertainment, and sometimes things learned in one area are applicable to another.

Space research has a whole list (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358) of things that have benefited folks at large.

Addtionally, people are inspired to do different things. Someone who is good at research or making entertainment maybe isn't good at building houses or farming food. We have a richer and better world when people pursue the things they enjoy. If helping the poor is your passion, go for it! But it's not reasonable to expect everyone to have the same skills or interests.

[Ramza00]

Poverty is always a problem, and while it's a wonderful thing to work on, the idea that we shouldn't work on other things until then is a curious one. Science, learning and even entertainment can help people, even in an imperfect world with poverty. Rich and poor alike enjoy and benefit from things like knowledge and entertainment, and sometimes things learned in one area are applicable to another.

Poverty is not an inherent problem of the human condition it is a technology and a distribution / logistical problem.

And the technology to solve growing enough food to feed everyone has been solved for a 100 years now, and especially been solved since the dwarf rice and dwarf wheat creation of the Green Revolution Dwarf Varieties of Wheat and Rice (more food per plant, less "useless" stalk for the plant, there were also other innovations such as some plants getting two harvest seasons per year, more resistant to pests and insects, etc) literally Norman Borlaug saved over a billion people with his work from the 1940s to 1960s.

Likewise we have the tech to do the distribution and the logistics, it is now just a problem of money and creating the infrastructure (aka taxes and government stuff.) There is no reason whatsoever to not be able to feed all 7.6 billion people, providing housing etc. It is a question of will and are we going to utilize the technology and logistics we are capable of and make that reality "emerge" from all our cool stuff? Or do we care more about other things?

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Fix those problems first, Space Tourism is a distraction. I am willing to have my mind change on this. Feed everyone and solve the problems of "deprivation" first (deprivation is not the same as scarcity) and then I will be more open to spending resources to make a person have an awesome 72 hour tourist trap in space.

[Rakaydos]

Feed everyone and solve the problems of "deprivation" first (deprivation is not the same as scarcity) and then I will be more open to spending resources to make a person have an awesome 72 hour tourist trap in space.

False premise. No tax dollars are going toward a tourist trap in space. All space tourisim groups are privately funded, believing they can milk rich people for all the costs and more to send those rich people to space. These private groups have no obligation to solve global hunger. That the goverment's job.

[Ramza00]

False premise. No tax dollars are going toward a tourist trap in space. All space tourisim groups are privately funded, believing they can milk rich people for all the costs and more to send those rich people to space. These private groups have no obligation to solve global hunger. That the goverment's job.

If the rich has no other place to put their money into besides Space Tourism then taxes are way too low on the billionaire rich.

It is our obligation as a people to care more about the millions of people starving than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos to have a 72 hour joy ride in space that will cost 10 million dollars (500k if the goal is to simulate weightlessness for a few hours.)

How many people died in the US because they can not afford insulin and thus they are rationing it?

[Rakaydos]

If the rich has no other place to put their money into besides Space Tourism then taxes are way too low on the billionaire rich.

It is our obligation as a people to care more about the millions of people starving than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos to have a 72 hour joy ride in space that will cost 10 million dollars (500k if the goal is to simulate weightlessness for a few hours.)

How many people died in the US because they can not afford insulin and thus they are rationing it?

The last time I agreed with that, the moderator came by and removed it.

[Tyndmyr]

Poverty is not an inherent problem of the human condition it is a technology and a distribution / logistical problem.

And both space research and entertainment have pushed technology forward. Sure, not every advance will directly help with poverty, but look at how vital, say, GPS is to logistics and distribution. Plus, being poor would suck a lot more without entertainment. Sometimes people enjoy getting their minds off the real world for a bit. Entertainment isn't bad.

I mean, you're literally on a forum based a wee bit around D&D, and where we're talking about media. Pretty much everyone here is getting at least some value from entertainment.


And the technology to solve growing enough food to feed everyone has been solved for a 100 years now, and especially been solved since the dwarf rice and dwarf wheat creation of the Green Revolution Dwarf Varieties of Wheat and Rice (more food per plant, less "useless" stalk for the plant, there were also other innovations such as some plants getting two harvest seasons per year, more resistant to pests and insects, etc) literally Norman Borlaug saved over a billion people with his work from the 1940s to 1960s.

That tech is wonderful, but rice and wheat alone, while they help, don't even entirely solve hunger(because humans are best served by a more diverse diet), let alone the many other problems of poverty.

It's fine to celebrate the progress that we've made, but it seems quite obvious that we cannot yet declare that we're done with the technology part.


Likewise we have the tech to do the distribution and the logistics, it is now just a problem of money and creating the infrastructure (aka taxes and government stuff.) There is no reason whatsoever to not be able to feed all 7.6 billion people, providing housing etc. It is a question of will and are we going to utilize the technology and logistics we are capable of and make that reality "emerge" from all our cool stuff? Or do we care more about other things?

Pursue that if you wish. However, saying "its just money" or what not is sort of trivializing it. Money is ultimately just a proxy for goods and labor. Im going to avoid the government portion, because that feels like it's going towards politics, and simply talk about morality/practicality.

At the end of the day, you want people to grow food, build houses, or transport goods instead of working on entertainment.

People are not interchangeable cogs, though. The guy who makes great movies is probably not a skilled carpenter or farmer. Even if it's something he can do, it may be something that he doesn't find inspiring. I grew up on a farm, but the idea of living on one now seems soul crushing.

Burning down one industry won't necessarily improve another one.

[Ramza00]

I repeat for you do not follow me saying this several times in earlier posts. Space is good, machine exploration is good, human space flight and exploration is not worth the expense under current tech, bring down the cost of tech first with cheaper rockets and learning how to create self sustaining environments here on earth. And space vacations will always be a waste of resources.

Literally you can not make the case for space vacations on a money / taxes front, nor on a good and services front. Space vacations is property destruction there is circular flow and then it ends, building roads to feed people is not property destructive, likewise planting food, cell phone towers, satellite* cellphone towers, etc.

*(like I said earlier Space is Good, man in Space is Bad with current tech.)

[Tyndmyr]

Humans in space can be useful. Even if it's tourism, for PR, etc. It's inherently going to involve some technical development, and it's going to give us more data about humans in space.

[Ramza00]

Humans in space can be useful. Even if it's tourism, for PR, etc. It's inherently going to involve some technical development, and it's going to give us more data about humans in space.

This is just blind optimism, which is a form of survivor bias. When I say turn your attention to the people suffering here, that they may not thrive, that they may die (and millions will since we are talking 7.6 billion.) You respond we should be optimistic that magically more space money will always produce usable and useful new tech that will pay for itself.

That is now how reality works, there are things called “dead ends” the species may survive but individuals and the possibility of those individuals having kids die due to bad ends. The future is a garden, it must be tend to, it is not an ever advancing spiral like a rocket.

[Rakaydos]

*(like I said earlier Space is Good, man in Space is Bad with current tech.)

Yet how is tech to improve, if there isnt a goal to work toward?

And the tech IS improving. SpaceX is laboring in Boca Chica, Texas on a new rocket that carries an order of magnatude more mass than most current rockets, for an order of magnatude less money per flight. (that's a hundred times cheaper on a per ton basis, for those at home) But the reason this rocket is being designed is because SpaceX has a goal- people, on mars- and you NEED that kind of capability for that low of a price, to make their goal a reality. And not just one rocket- no, they're designing a manufactuing line that can pop out a new super-rocket every month.

They still are working out the kinks in the design. But the next 5 years are going to be amazing.

[Caledonian]

How are they intending to get people on Mars and bring them back unharmed?

[Rakaydos]

How are they intending to get people on Mars and bring them back unharmed?

By throwing mass at the problem. Call it 450 tons of cargo in cargo rockets for every 20 people who go, when they start, and that doesnt count the crewed rockets themselves having extra supplies.

Edit: none of the rovers we've sent have even been 2 tons. This is a MASSIVE operation they're working on- not just the size, but the affordability.

[Tyndmyr]

How are they intending to get people on Mars and bring them back unharmed?

Primarily by making spaceflight cheaper. Reusable boosters, more efficiency overall, cheap launchpads that float at sea. They're basically trying to cut costs so they can launch more.

It is fairly difficult to imagine how any reasonable mars colony could be made otherwise. People and all the stuff they need to live, particularly that far from resupply, is going to weigh quite a lot. It's not going to happen without making spaceflight far cheaper, and a far larger industry capable of lifting a *lot*.

If you pursue a path of doing small budget rover missions only and avoid all the above, it isn't clear how that could ever possibly lead to colonization of other worlds.

[Rakaydos]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opnk-cPOM50&feature=youtu.be

[Caledonian]

You are entitled a house. Everyone starving on Earth is entitled to food.

What, do you think food grows on trees?

[Rakaydos]

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1319338436801761280

No NASA money is going to cheap space tourisim, nor is it going to commercial mars programs. There is no "beg the goverment for money with unrealistic goals" angle here. The goals may still be unrealistic, but they're internal, not dreamed up by marketing. (and from my reading, they got something like 3 years leeway in that 10 year schedual)

[Yora]

What, do you think food grows on trees?

"Wait, it does! Then why is it so damn expensive!"

[Rakaydos]

"Wait, it does! Then why is it so damn expensive!"

Because people confuse laissez faire with free markets. Unregulated markets isnt capitalism, it's despotism with extra steps.

Real capitalism believes that economies are too large and complicated to be run centrally, so a government should regulate such that corporations have to fight each other for the privilege of running their corner of the economy. The early/cheaper/better bird gets the worm.

But it falls apart in sectors "not worth fighting over." What's the margin in growing rice for africans when you can be growing almonds for the chineese, after all? If underdeveloped nations want to play, they need to pull themselves by their bootstraps and make something worth trading for! Without an outside organization to mandate or subsidize it, there are other places to compete, leaving those areas still underdeveloped, unable to join modern society.

[TommyJo]

The thread began with a discussion of how to show the spaceship in the show. And it grew into political and economic discussions.
If you answer what happened at the beginning, then there is something simple.
Tom Cruise with his team, SpaceX, and NASA are planning to shoot a film on the ISS. This will be a great option to see what happens.

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Astronauts that spend more than 45 days in space are at risk of death and subsequent necromancy, which is the stuff of horror movies.