29 replies to this topic

[Catamount]

Xhaleon, on 04 January 2012 - 08:26 AM, said:

There is absolutely no reason to build anything on Luna right now. For anyone to consider doing it, there has to be a justifiable return on investment, and there is simply too little to gain from having a moonbase right now.

You want to develop the solar system? Start by making a tug-ship to bring an asteroid to Earth, then using it as a counterweight for an orbital elevator. Or skip the boat part and construct an orbital station from scratch.

Either way, the cost of pushing materials into space with rockets will only make space colonization impractical. But with an orbital elevator, shifting materials up and down could be economical, and (possibly) profitable ventures like asteroid mining operations could begin and thus justify its upkeep. Baby steps, people.

And then we can all play the IRL RPG about turrists blowin up mah obbital elahvatahs.

THANK YOU


People are acting like the world's space agencies are turning their nose up at the moon out of some conspiracy to avoid space exploration, as opposed to the much less exciting truth of the matter: there's nothing ON the moon that makes it worth it to go there, not unless really good evidence of a valuable resource is found.


In the meantime, the thing to do is look toward asteroid mining, because no matter what, it's the venture with the most promise for a return.


I liked David Brin's idea on the subject. He proposed sending up ships with supplies and equipment to that area now, so that we not only have a little bit of infrastructure to make that process easier, but also as an investment out there to incline us to pursue that part of the solar system.

[Catamount]

Tifalia, on 04 January 2012 - 08:24 AM, said:

NASA has done nothing but sit on their hands and changed the goal from space exploration and colonisation to researching how the universe started and that elusive 'god particle', I put little faith in any kind of space exploration to take place well in my life time.

NASA doesn't own the LHC, silly

(nor the Tevatron)

Quote

I have to ask: Is anyone serious interested in the origins of the universe? Or the 'experiments' that NASA continually carries out?


I put to them this: if they keep coming out with claims that they can colonise other worlds in the next 5-10 years, then why not DO it, instead of stuffing around with experiments that have no real purpose other than wasting billions of dollars a year on experiments like the big bang when all of the results, while fascinating, have no impact on how we live today.

Get to the stars, NASA or stop writing papers on how we can do so!

Consider, for a moment, how useless the studies of the nuclear atom, or quantum mechanics, were a century ago. Rutherford, Bohr, Einstein, Planck, by your standard here, were all doing 100% useless and "uninteresting" work.... that just happens to be the basis for a solid chunk of the technologies you take for granted today, and many of the most valuable up and coming technology being promised in the coming decades.



Actually, if it wasn't for all the "uninteresting", and, as you insinuate, generally worthless science for the sake of science being the pursuit taking up the time of many of history's brightest people, about the only think we'd know beyond sharpening sticks and stones (which is exactly where we'd be still) would be finding volume, since, apocryphally, Archimedes was ordered to undertake those experiments by his ruler.


In fact, we wouldn't even be debating space travel right now, because aside from the fact that modern computers and the internet wouldn't exist, we wouldn't have space-based technologies, because we wouldn't have had the foundation of centuries of astronomers getting us as far as they did on understanding our solar system before attempting to venture into it, and we'd still be scrambling to figure out how geocentrism worked (not even realizing it was wrong)... or rather we wouldn't, because we wouldn't have the interest.



So please, natural sciences may not interest you, but couldn't you be a little kinder to them? You owe them so much.


NASA has long been a scientific body, not just a bunch of crazed engineers building really sturdy capsules and sticking really big explosives underneath them, and the reason is because that doesn't happen in the first place without a whole lot of "uninteresting" science.

Yes, NASA should have a bigger budget for space exploration, but scientific research is no less lacking for funding in the US right now, and it's certainly no less valuable, quite the contrary. NASA should have more money for both (just like NOAA, the NSF, the USGS, the USFWS, and half a dozen other agencies should have WAY more money to do what they do), but they don't, so for the moment, they're juggling things as best as they can, and frankly, I think they're doing a great job of spinning gold out of hay, doing vast amounts with very little money (and giving us more per dollar returns than almost any other venture, public or private, in US history).

Edited by Catamount, 04 January 2012 - 09:04 AM.

[Evgeny Bear]

Xhaleon, on 04 January 2012 - 08:26 AM, said:

There is absolutely no reason to build anything on Luna right now. For anyone to consider doing it, there has to be a justifiable return on investment, and there is simply too little to gain from having a moonbase right now.

You want to develop the solar system? Start by making a tug-ship to bring an asteroid to Earth, then using it as a counterweight for an orbital elevator. Or skip the boat part and construct an orbital station from scratch.

Either way, the cost of pushing materials into space with rockets will only make space colonization impractical. But with an orbital elevator, shifting materials up and down could be economical, and (possibly) profitable ventures like asteroid mining operations could begin and thus justify its upkeep. Baby steps, people.

And then we can all play the IRL RPG about turrists blowin up mah obbital elahvatahs.

Well if you keep the idea of an orbital Elevator. Which hell of material do you want to take as "cable" huh? there is no such material strong enough to withstand all the force impacting on them. So this Elevator Idea is not very promissing the next few years.

And yeah... why do everyone pick up the Nasa Oo there are several more agencies than just this one,
especially when the US is not quite done yet with their fincanical crysis right now.
(I mean I'm not american, so sometimes I am a bit bothered that noone is realizing that other agencies do important work too)

Edited by Andar89, 04 January 2012 - 09:06 AM.

[Catamount]

It is true, there are other space agencies out there. NASA shouldn't be expected to bear the entire burden themselves.

Shouldn't the ESA be doing something constructive along these lines as well? The EU's economy is no smaller than ours, afaik. And what about China? They keep going on about these grand plans for space, well why don't they spend more than 1/30th of NASA's budget, and actually get serious?

This should be a global venture.

Quote

Which hell of material do you want to take as "cable" huh? there is no such material strong enough to withstand all the force impacting on them. So this Elevator Idea is not very promissing the next few years.

Nano materials?

[Evgeny Bear]

well I read in a novel something about nano carbon tubes to be one the only promesing material, but noone was able to create a string strong enough to endure this kind of usage.

[Andrew Osis]

I think some of you would be very interested in reading: The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill. He was a college of Carl Sagan and a major contributor to NASA as a sceintist back in the day. The book is a great read explaining how we could have acheived all this with technology from the late 70's.

[Cong Min Voronkov]

xxxCROMxxx, on 22 December 2011 - 05:08 AM, said:

We would already be on the moon if it was not for the politics.

Basically we only went to the moon in the first place because of politics.

[Andrew Osis]

Thats stupid as hell Cong. We went to the moon for the same reasons people cam to America. A lot of you are idiots in this thread because like most people you only give 2 ***** about yourself. We have to goto space, soon. No question there. Resources are becoming extremely limited and space could provide both natural colonies such as the moon and mars but more practically we could create entirely self sufficient space colonies orbiting the Earth at the La Grange points. You people act as if resources are EXTREMELY limited, especially water, oil and food. These problems are due to OVERPOPULATION. The only thing to do is either start the 4th reich and eliminate **** tons of worthless poor people in crappy countries like most of europe and asia and africa OR more humanly try to evolve and move out into space. We face MANY many dangers here on earth and something can be said for not having all your eggs in one basket. The only reason we havent dont more in space isnt because of the governments, Its because noone wants to take the initiative to make the dream a reality. Wait 50 years and then tell me expansion isnt a good idea when your waiting for water rations. Anyone who knocks progress, science and expansion is a complete ******, please kill yourself because your actually just consuming resources for no reason without contributing at all to mankind, not society, MANKIND. The goal is to leave something behind thats usefull for future generations. Im 26 and I can see that. You people only care about your ****** lives and yourselves. You dont even deserve to live. If most people with IQ's under 90 would just die and go away we wouldent have to expand anywhere for a few more centuries prob. Within 50 years civilization as we know it inlcuding sewers/water, electricity and the flow of information(internet) will be a thing of the past. Without a serious decrese in population or expansion in some direction mankind will be right back where he was 4000 years ago.

[Andrew Osis]

Just some really pathetic responses in this thread I went off a bit. Seriously though how could you argue against progress, you people act as if those resources will be allocated elseware, for what "defense" what a joke. They told Chris Coloumbus the same **** and look where we are today as a result of that. Imagine how horribly overpopulated europe would have been without colonial expansion. Arguably expansion was one of the factors that ended the dark ages. It could do the same now, put millions to work and unite countries and races all in one fell swoop. I cant believe people on a BT board would be against this. Lastly there are plenty of resources on the moon, it is thought to be a large chunk of the earth so its likely to contain a lot of similar elements once you get down in it a few feet. More or less the moon would be a facility to help with asteroid mining rather then having to take flights from earth. Once a basic infastructure is established in the earth sphere our range will be much furthur not to mention the endless innovations bound to accompany such an era.

[Cong Min Voronkov]

AndrewOsis, on 11 January 2012 - 03:06 AM, said:

Just some really pathetic responses in this thread I went off a bit. Seriously though how could you argue against progress, you people act as if those resources will be allocated elseware, for what "defense" what a joke. They told Chris Coloumbus the same **** and look where we are today as a result of that. Imagine how horribly overpopulated europe would have been without colonial expansion. Arguably expansion was one of the factors that ended the dark ages. It could do the same now, put millions to work and unite countries and races all in one fell swoop. I cant believe people on a BT board would be against this. Lastly there are plenty of resources on the moon, it is thought to be a large chunk of the earth so its likely to contain a lot of similar elements once you get down in it a few feet. More or less the moon would be a facility to help with asteroid mining rather then having to take flights from earth. Once a basic infastructure is established in the earth sphere our range will be much furthur not to mention the endless innovations bound to accompany such an era.

AndrewOsis I admire your passion but all I said was that the primary reason for the Apollo moon program was to get to the moon before the “evil” Russians did.
I’m also old enough to have seen the first moon landing on television as it was happening. It seemed like the entire world was holding its breath as the eagle was landing on the moon.
Unfortunately there was no foreseeable profit at the time to keep going, so after Apollo 17, we stopped going ( much to my dismay ).
I would be OVERJOYED if we could get a real moonbase going but I’m afraid the same old human nature we’ve always had will get in the way again.
It would take an astronomical amount of money to get it started and still very sizable amounts of money for years perhaps decades to keep it going until it becomes 100% self-sufficient.
Whenever such a moonbase becomes profitable and starts shipping resources back to Earth EVERY country will start to demand their “fair share”, even if they contributed NOTHING to the establishment of the moonbase.
Of course the average tax-payer will not be to happy with all the start-up cost to begin with, they would rather have free cell phones ( made possible by space technology ) or something else that they can use RIGHT NOW rather than wait for a future benefit.
And some politicians wanting to get re-elected will cater to that.

BUT…

There’s always hope.

until then you may want to give this a read.

http://www.amazon.co...a/dp/0345328590

Edited by Cong Min Voronkov, 12 January 2012 - 08:02 AM.