191–200 of 342 posts
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Just an FYI. In Star Trek at least the warp system works like this: warp-1 is the speed of light and it then increases exponentially with warp-10 being infinite velocity. Source: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor
Doesn't sound exponential to me!
I had a conversation a few years ago with Buzz Aldrin. He was talking about his idea for a Mars Cycler which would travel continuously between Earth and Mars. I told him that I thought it was a great idea (especially as it would be investing in 'permanent' space infrastructure instead of a single-shot mission) but that I thought it was unlikely that the government would allocate enough resources to build it. He seeme…
Basically it came down to special interest groups that really determine how our money is spent. If we want to not have 15-20% of the budget going to Helmand province, we have to start working against the lobbyists of private corporations who benefit from that...
Or instead of solving the problem, we could allow military contractors to fleece us for EVEN MORE money for developing Mars travel infrastructure. If we gave them a way to transition to a more profitable business maybe they would voluntarily make the shift.
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Space probes may be cheap but they are slooooowwww. Most of the research done by spirit, opportunity and curiosity could have been done by a trained astronaut in an afternoon. As an example, in its 2623 day mission, spirit traveled less than 5 miles. Rovers are great for low budget exploration, but if you want to kick things into high gear, there's no substitution for trained humans. Some of you may be thinking, 'Hol…
NASAs manned space efforts have devolved into a scam to divert funds into the state of Alabama. It literally can't build any manned space systems unless they are gold plated and cost 20 times what they should.
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This. Land-based missiles are far cheaper and more effective.
Recently I've seen this quote: "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." - Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC And exactly this thing seems to be the major problem with essentially every space-related weapons platform other than ICBMs. Simply almost every such proposed system uses some expendable ammunition that is significantly more expensive to deploy or even just manufacture than what it is suppose…
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Humanity is at an incredibly high extinction risk. We have all sorts of incredible new technologies that could, at the very least, knock us back to pre-industrial society. They might just kill us outright. We've already used all the easily accessible high-energy fuels, so if our current industrial society falls apart, we will probably never build another one. If we don't get to space now , we will probably never get…
Insurance against what? Lets assume a self supporting mars colony today, and that the asteroid hits earth tomorrow making humans extinct. Will the mars colony get off mars in time to avoid their asteroid? It seems to me that we need to get to a few earth like planets before we can assume survival.
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There is still an amazing amount of coal in the ground. Check out the Powder River Basin in the US which, for one example.
While true, it's also crazy expensive to extract.
Oil on the other hand. That might be a problem.
In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!
"Politics could save us from an alien invasion!" I'd rather hope in the opposite.
I'm a bigger fan of putting a semi-permanent ISS 2.0 on the surface of the moon vs. boots on Mars. I don't work directly in exploration systems, but I'm not the only one at NASA who feels this way. But more than anything I think we and the other executive agencies would take any strong commitment on an exploration and human spaceflight direction from congress that survives across presidential administrations over any…
Yes this is the kind of thing I am thinking also. Why do we have to do one "big trip" to mars? It would be better to set up the infrastructure in space and on the moon etc to support future missions further out. Basically, why can't we get to mars incrementally on the current budget? Things like putting a base on the moon, landing supplies on mars, putting a lander in orbit around mars...
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Humanity is at an incredibly high extinction risk. We have all sorts of incredible new technologies that could, at the very least, knock us back to pre-industrial society. They might just kill us outright. We've already used all the easily accessible high-energy fuels, so if our current industrial society falls apart, we will probably never build another one. If we don't get to space now , we will probably never get…
Insurance against what? Lets assume a self supporting mars colony today, and that the asteroid hits earth tomorrow making humans extinct. Will the mars colony get off mars in time to avoid their asteroid? It seems to me that we need to get to a few earth like planets before we can assume survival.
In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!