31–40 of 42 posts
It's not really an "ocean" in the way we think of such things. In the outer solar system, ice is a rock in the same way granite is a rock. What Titan has isn't so much an ocean as an interior layer of molten ice --- just as our planet has an interior layer of molten rock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point#Other_triple_point...
It might have an exotic form of ice, of course.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe Columbus would have sent a robot. Sure, explorers would rather not die exploring, but generally, I don't think that not being there is an acceptable price. Would you send a robot to the top of a mountain if you could, or do you want to climb it yourself?
A subtle point is that the Spanish royalty funded and helped organize Columbus, but none of the royalty accompanied Columbus. Why? Back then class and "castes" had significant meaning. The decision-makers sent expendable people similar in spirit to the way we would send expendable robots. Our approach today is not unreasonable or atypical of past expeditions.
For better or worse, humans are narrative creatures. Note the recent talk of funding a Mars mission by treating it as a reality show.
Our approach is reasonable. But since people are unreasonable, the reasonable approach may not be the best one.
I just hope the first aliens we encounter are not plant based or they will take one look at us and our use of there dead relatives and it will not go well. Food for thought.
Please, can we now put a reasonable nuclear reactor in space, power a VASIMIR engine (or something equally adequate), and do it with humans instead of robots? We already proved we can do it with machines and who will make first contact with alien life in becoming a really important question. We are not a race of robots. People wonder why the general public lost interest with space exploration, but we need to look no…
If we spent just a comparably tiny bit more on science, I believe the advances would be absolutely huge. Science drives technology, which in turn drives the economy. It's a win-win for everybody and yet we keep putting our money into things that have proven not to work reliably in the past without a second thought.
(On a sidenote: I do tend to get quite angry when speaking about banks these days, please excuse that ;))
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Yeah, but the whole point of the mission, robots or no, is to benefit large hairless mammals. So if the hairless mammals think it's to their benefit to be on the ship, that's where the resources go, assuming they can get the resources together. Of course if that's not the goal of a given mission, then robots are more likely. Yes, humans make everything more complicated, but without them, there's not much point in doi…
I'd say this is completely wrong and this attitude is preventing us from advancing more rapidly in space. There's a lot to yet to discover in space. Developing better tools, robots for example, to explore our solar system will also benefit us on earth. At some point the costs will drop and it will become safer, or we'll discover something valuable that we'll want to bring back. If you look 100 years out, which route…
Have you seen the type of landing solutions they're coming up with for the robots? They're all going in a direction driven by the realization that since they're not humans, they can afford to take far higher risks and subject them to stress that would otherwise be completely intolerable, so they're explicitly not trying to address the complexities of bringing humans into space.
I'm happy for work on robot probes to go on, but that's no reason to not also invest more resources in the groundwork for cheaper human space flight.
I do wonder, if NASA said they found oil on another planet or moon what the reaction would be. After all it would be a sign of past life on that planet, though I feel that alot would see it as a opertunity to claim more oil. I just hope the first aliens we encounter are not plant based or they will take one look at us and our use of there dead relatives and it will not go well. Food for thought.
The reason oil is so popular is because it is so useful. Anything useful is in high demand. There's no need to get hysterical about it.
Please, can we now put a reasonable nuclear reactor in space, power a VASIMIR engine (or something equally adequate), and do it with humans instead of robots? We already proved we can do it with machines and who will make first contact with alien life in becoming a really important question. We are not a race of robots. People wonder why the general public lost interest with space exploration, but we need to look no…
It is entirely possible that our first contact with intelligent life will be with that life's robots. Just saying.
Robots are a cost-effective way to explore space. You can send them on missions that don't have to be hyper-controlled for the preservation of life. You can send them on one-way missions, vastly extending the distance that a mission can cover. With manned missions, by contrast, the loss of even one life is an unacceptable casualty. Ergo, you need to overengineer the craft, and also load it up with all manner of food, living space, life support, waste management facilities, sufficient fuel for a return voyage, etc. -- all of which add lots of mass to the craft, which adds enormous fuel costs, etc.
I agree that we should return to manned space exploration as soon as possible. That said, I don't find space exploration to be a zero-sum game between manned and unmanned missions. We should be using a diversified approach -- one that focuses on manned colonization, coupled with robotic deep-space exploration and surveying.
Please, can we now put a reasonable nuclear reactor in space, power a VASIMIR engine (or something equally adequate), and do it with humans instead of robots? We already proved we can do it with machines and who will make first contact with alien life in becoming a really important question. We are not a race of robots. People wonder why the general public lost interest with space exploration, but we need to look no…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe Columbus would have sent a robot. Sure, explorers would rather not die exploring, but generally, I don't think that not being there is an acceptable price. Would you send a robot to the top of a mountain if you could, or do you want to climb it yourself?
No, the guy 100 years before him would have. Meaning the first guy who had the robot. They would have measured how long it took, known the best routes, then tens of thousands of people would have followed shortly thereafter because a lot of the danger would have been taken out of the voyage.
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It's "liquid water" in the same sense that the molton rock inside the earth is "liquid rock". Here when we see water outside of it's natural state (liquid) it's frozen or evaporated. Out there ice (solid) is the natural state, so it's molten or (vaporized ???).
If it's subterranean, it's probably not vaporized. Thank the pressure.