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SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#51
post #47
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigating the open seas used to be tricky. Settling new land used to be tricky. Have faith. :)

There used to be a time when a single person mastered X% of humanity's technology anf knowledge. Packing up 100 people on some boats meant you could start a viable colony across some seas. Can you still do that today?

Colonies don't subsist in isolation, they require trade to survive. See Jared Diamond's Collapse for the pop science version of what happened to a few isolated colonies (Greenland, Easter Island, etc) when trade stops.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? To say we are somewhere else that looks like the Atacama but infinitely more difficult to get to? It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to ki…

Yea, I think a good demonstration is Antarctica. Antarctica is both much more accessible and much more hospitable than Mars. But there's very little human activity there. It's hard to imagine there's an economic case for Mars or the Moon while Antarctica remains undeveloped.

Colonizing Mars and others is not about the economy. It is about survival of the human race.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#54
post #52

> No astronauts or humans were on board the maiden flight, which completed the initial link to the ISS about 5:51 a.m. Eastern time. Is there a difference?

First astronauts where animals. https://www.space.com/17764-laika-first-animals-in-space.htm...

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#55
post #4

Congratulations to the team at SpaceX! They are opening the hatch right now on the stream if anyone here wants to watch along https://youtu.be/21X5lGlDOfg

I really hoped they would hide a rubber face hugger next to Ripley, but I doubt it. Such a missed opportunity.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#56
post #18

I'm sitting on my couch, just idly watching live footage of some people doing stuff 200 miles above me. Above the place I will spend the entirety of my life. Watching them do complicated things that, if we're lucky and don't destroy ourselves first, will ensure our species becomes multi-planetary. Maybe even space faring someday. Life is weird.

Might want to focus on that "don't destroy ourselves first" part.. And consider all the other things on the planet & maybe it's a good thing to save those too. Just because, when is the last time we discovered another planet with intricacy and diversity of Earth?

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soyuz takes people to the space station every few months, has done for years. Why is this specific mission new?

The commercial crew missions by both Boeing and SpaceX are new and interesting for a number of reasons: - This will be one of the first vehicles developed by a private entity to launch people into space, rather than a nation. That represents a huge step "down" the ladder of who has access to space. First, it's only nations. Later, it's large companies and entities. Down the line a little bit medium-sized companies wi…

Isn't your first point the natural development of things? As example: Which tank or fighter jet is NOT produced by a private entity today?

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#58
post #6

Fantastic, very impressive. But somewhere inside (my little star-wars/trek spirit), I wish that it was not so tricky. That we all could just travel and explore the universe. Everybody always talk about how difficult it is in space and how much better earth is. Wish the debate would be more about all the possibilities in space or on other planets. What can we do with zero gravity? For all the bad things with living on…

I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? To say we are somewhere else that looks like the Atacama but infinitely more difficult to get to? It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to ki…

If we all wait to start anything in Mars when it is too late for our planet, well... humans won’t be around anymore.

Think about Mars as redundancy site for the human race.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#59
post #6

Fantastic, very impressive. But somewhere inside (my little star-wars/trek spirit), I wish that it was not so tricky. That we all could just travel and explore the universe. Everybody always talk about how difficult it is in space and how much better earth is. Wish the debate would be more about all the possibilities in space or on other planets. What can we do with zero gravity? For all the bad things with living on…

This is how we get there. That kind of space flight would be the end result of hundreds of years (probably) of space flight development. Compare polynesian canoes with modern powered ships.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#60
post #18

I'm sitting on my couch, just idly watching live footage of some people doing stuff 200 miles above me. Above the place I will spend the entirety of my life. Watching them do complicated things that, if we're lucky and don't destroy ourselves first, will ensure our species becomes multi-planetary. Maybe even space faring someday. Life is weird.

Well said.
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