I would tend to agree with him, and I also think that this is a good and necessary thing. Without someone threatening our space supremacy and thus, our national pride, we're won't be going back to the Moon for a very long time, if ever.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
quote:A theme park.
Tarquinn is attacking the darkness!
What do we want on the moon, right now, anyway?
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
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Karnaj had this to say about (_|_):
And it's an ideal place for testing technologies that will take us to Mars, as well as building them.
Yes, that came to my mind as well. Either practicing for a Mars-mission, or preliminary work for establishing a permanent presence there. Both things I am not quite convinced of that they need to be done right now (the next few years).
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Karnaj said:
And it's an ideal place for testing technologies that will take us to Mars, as well as building them.
Some people/scientists want a permanent settlement on the moon for the express purpose of launching missions from it, as its much lower gravity allows for much less fuel used.
Taking spacecraft up there in bits and assembling them en masse.
quote:The only real problem with that is that you use just as much fuel getting all the bits off the planet as you would getting the finished products off the planet. Unless components can be produced on the moon from raw materials mined on the moon, efficiency would actually go down.
Mortious is attacking the darkness!
Some people/scientists want a permanent settlement on the moon for the express purpose of launching missions from it, as its much lower gravity allows for much less fuel used.Taking spacecraft up there in bits and assembling them en masse.
On the other hand, the cost of operating a moon base might be less than that of operating orbital space stations.
Trampoline-room basketball on the moon.
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Check out the big brain on Mortious!
Some people/scientists want a permanent settlement on the moon for the express purpose of launching missions from it, as its much lower gravity allows for much less fuel used.....
This would be contingent on them finding suitable sources of fuel on the moon. Otherwise it would make just as much sense to build the ships on earth or in orbit. You are still paying all that boost to send the fuel up there anyways, why pay extra to send it to the moon and then pay to lift it out of the moon's gravity?
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Greenlit wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
Also for the WNBA. They'll finally be able to dunk.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Alaan fucked around with this message on 10-08-2007 at 12:21 PM.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Peter booooze lime pole over bench lick:
This would be contingent on them finding suitable sources of fuel on the moon.
The moon's surface is made in large part of magnesium, and NASA has stated that a magnesium fueled spacecraft is entirely feasible with existing technology
Never the less, I honestly see the moon as a complete waste of time and taxes. We have the multi-billion dollar ISS for zero-g experiments, and the people who think we're ever going to mine the moon and send resources back to earth honestly have no clue how expensive even simple space travel still is. Even an automated drone to transport small amounts of gasses would effectively add a multi-million-dollar-per-ounce tariff on anything brought back.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Naimah who doth quote:
The technologies developed to make that useless mining system work would be invaluable though.
No, really, they wouldn't. There's nothing out there in the solar system that we couldn't get or manufacture much easier and at a thousandth the cost right here on earth.
Maybe in a few dozen generations of resource depletion and advancing cheap propulsion technology we can turn our eye toward a way to ship significant amounts of material back to the motherworld - or maybe not, since our ability to stretch the resources we have keeps increasing, too.
We really have absolutely nothing to gain from a moon colony except maybe a low-g amusement resort for the ultra, ultra rich, but then all the "class envy" morons out there will just demonize it and use it as a talking point about the evils of capitalism.
I don't mean to piss on everybody's parade here, I think a moon base or at least seeing a few more american flag bearing buzz-cut dudes bouncing around up there would be fucking awesome too, but it's just not something we will benefit much from, and it's not something we need to be spending money on right now. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 10-08-2007 at 05:57 PM.
Who cares if we got to the moon, we got velcro out of the deal.
I can certainly understand that perspective, but really there isn't much that remains to be discovered by simple manned missions to the moon. A plethora of new gadgets may very well come from scientists grappling the problems of a full blown moon base, but in that event we're talking about a possible investment of trillions.
I'm all for scientific endeavor, but there's also the element of cost effectiveness to consider. We can make so much more headway with so much less cost right here on earth. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 10-08-2007 at 06:19 PM.
Because it's there. 
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Blah blah blah Maradon! blah blah blah...
Don't forget dehydrated ice cream!I can certainly understand that perspective, but really there isn't much that remains to be discovered by simple manned missions to the moon. A plethora of new gadgets may very well come from scientists grappling the problems of a full blown moon base, but in that event we're talking about a possible investment of trillions.
I'm all for scientific endeavor, but there's also the element of cost effectiveness to consider. We can make so much more headway with so much less cost right here on earth.
Like pills to enlarge your penis or improve your erection, rather than anything to combat the inevitable cancer rates of deep space travel.
Obviously something useful like that.
[/sarcasm]
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x--MortiousO-('-'Q) :
Why go anywhere?Because it's there.
Yeah but it doesn't cost a billion dollars to go most places.
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Delphi Aegising:
Like pills to enlarge your penis or improve your erection, rather than anything to combat the inevitable cancer rates of deep space travel.Obviously something useful like that.
[/sarcasm]
What the hell are you talking about
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Maradon! painfully thought these words up:
What the hell are you talking about
If we stay on earth and make no attempt to go outside LEO, companies will see no point in the massive startup costs of space travel that currently only goverments have funded thus far.
So all we'll end up doing is having things that make our existance on this planet easier when there's so much more to explore. And we'll never go anywhere. Ever.
How fucking boring.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Delphi Aegis booooze lime pole over bench lick:
If we stay on earth and make no attempt to go outside LEO, companies will see no point in the massive startup costs of space travel that currently only goverments have funded thus far.
They won't see any point if there isn't one - and make no mistake about it, there isn't.
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So all we'll end up doing is having things that make our existance on this planet easier when there's so much more to explore. And we'll never go anywhere. Ever.
Is that really such a bad thing? Life is far from perfect on this planet as it is and could use a great deal more investment to make it easier.
For that matter, do you know what the rest of the solar system is really like? It actually kinda sucks hardcore. Those pictures from mars? Yeah, that's what the entire fucking planet looks like. Rocks and dirt.
And if you've got cowboy bebop visions of oxygen billowing over the rim of a terraformed crater while people jet around in personal spacecraft - give it the fuck up. If we moved up there, maybe in five hundred years it'd be every bit as interesting as rural farmland.
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How fucking boring.
Being perceived as "boring" by sci-fi nerds is hardly justification for investing a respectable chunk of our GDP in what is probably frivolous science. All those researchers looking for a unifying theorum for the universe would enjoy that grant money, as would all the folks looking into stem cell research (adult stem cells anyway, fucking republicans) Maradon! fucked around with this message on 10-08-2007 at 07:03 PM.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
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Karnaj was listening to Cher while typing:
Actually, we need to get off this planet to survive. Establishing permanent settlements off this planet is the only way to guarantee that our species will survive a massive cosmic impact occurring on Earth. Even if it doesn't happen for 10,000 years or more, if we're still stuck on this planet and the event is cataclysmic enough, we're still dead as dogshit. Any step we take out into space is a step towards ensuring the long-term survival of the human species, and there is undeniable merit and necessity in that.
A base on the moon -- or any other planet in our solar system -- isn't sustainable without people on Earth sending in constant supplies. It wont be species survival, it will be species slow & painful death as everyone runs out of food & water.
Without some sort of massive speed boost of sci-fi proportions, we aren't going anywhere productive. And don't expect some sort of technology like that to come out of going to the moon again. That project doesn't require speed, and neither does a trip to Mars, it's all for show.
Money is better spent on unmanned research vessels. Those actually provide meaningful science to us. Then take the rest of the money and put it into theoretical sciences; to figure out how to get us to move a ship beyond 21,000mph.
Speed is absolutely everything; we already know the other planets in our solar system can't support human life, to do what you're asking requires extra solar travel.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Karnaj who doth quote:
and there is undeniable merit and necessity in that.
But not an immediate one. As indicated, these things can all wait until it's feasible to do them without crippling our economy and, by extension, our standard of life on this planet.
quote:If humanity is still around by then, we'll have had a better run than any creature in the planet's history. More than likely we'll also have incredible psychic powers.
Annarchae needs to hitch a ride with a Vogon constructor fleet.
There is one reason we would want to advance our space faring technologies, as eventually our sun will die. If humanity is still around by then, we will definitely want ships to get the hell out of here.
quote:We'd have better luck trying to deflect a texas-sized meteor than trying to survive en masse without Earth's ecosystem. Anything less than fully self-sufficient biodomes would be completely useless, and even if we had them, they'd need to house enough survivors to perpetuate the species. (Contrary to the biblical story of Noah's arc, it takes far more than two members of a species to perpetuate it.)
Roll the dice to see if Karnaj is getting drunk!
Actually, we need to get off this planet to survive. Establishing permanent settlements off this planet is the only way to guarantee that our species will survive a massive cosmic impact occurring on Earth. Even if it doesn't happen for 10,000 years or more, if we're still stuck on this planet and the event is cataclysmic enough, we're still dead as dogshit. Any step we take out into space is a step towards ensuring the long-term survival of the human species, and there is undeniable merit and necessity in that.
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Annarchae was naked while typing this:
There is one reason we would want to advance our space faring technologies, as eventually our sun will die. If humanity is still around by then, we will definitely want ships to get the hell out of here.
Well, since that timeframe is in the BILLIONS of years I'm pretty sure we still got some time to come up with something 
Also, this is the only assumption we can run on, because if our sun were to go nova before we manage to colonize other systems then we're all fucked anyhow and should concentrate on just having as much sex/drugs as possible before we die. If you're, uh, into that kind of thing. Inferno-Spirit fucked around with this message on 10-09-2007 at 09:47 PM.
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A sleep deprived Inferno-Spirit stammered:
If given that we will be annihilated before successfully colonizing planets outside of our solar system it will unquestionably be at our own hands, not by some cataclysmic event.Also, this is the only assumption we can run on, because if our sun were to go nova before we manage to colonize other systems then we're all fucked anyhow and should concentrate on just having as much sex/drugs as possible before we die. If you're, uh, into that kind of thing.
Our sun won't go nova, it'll just get really big for the last billion years of it's life and incinerate Mercury/Venus and boil most of earth then collapse to a white dwarf.
"Don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I am with you. I'll buy it for sure, it's just a matter of for how long I will be playing it..."
- Silvast, Battle.net forums
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There was much rejoicing when Stalwart Steve said this:
But you need vector calculus to get to the moon and that's hard
Chinese are good at math.
Americans just made computers that are good at math.
Our sun has five billion years left. The entire universe is only 14 billion years old.
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Maradon! had this to say about Punky Brewster:
Our sun isn't going to burn out for an amount of time so vast that it's completely irrelevant to the survival of our species.Our sun has five billion years left. The entire universe is only 14 billion years old.
Not to mention we went from living in caves to landing on the moon in a few thousand years. Assuming our species keeps advancing for a few billion more years; our level of technology should be that in which a supernova is only a minor annoyance.
