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A rough guide for going back to the Moon

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Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#141

Post by adrian_b »

m4rtink wrote: post #124
bluGill wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fail to comprehend just how large space is. Almost all of space is well out of reach. There is zero reason to think we will ever be able to overcome the laws of relativity, which in turn mean we will never be able to reach the stars. I know, this negative comment makes you mad, but there is every reason to think it is the case. A SciFi generation ship could maybe do that to the closest stars before it fails compl…

Well, the solar system itself is ridiculously huge - saying "lets don't bother" because interstellar flight looks cumbersome with current technology ? Seems like quite the premature optimization.

Yes, while for now there is no known method for useful interstellar flight, spaceships with nuclear reactors could reduce the time required for traveling through the Solar System to acceptable values.

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#142

Post by bryanlarsen »

WalterBright wrote: post #107
bryanlarsen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, the Germans don't claim that first for obvious reasons, leaving the Russians able to claim the first achievement.

It doesn't matter what they claim. It's a documented fact.

Bragging rights are about bragging, not about facts. Facts make the bragging easier, but they are secondary.

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#143

Post by bluGill »

avmich wrote: post #109
jiggawatts wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just made a comment in another thread that Cape York, a huge chunk of northern Queensland has a mere 18,000 inhabitants. It's more sparsely occupied than northern Alaska by nearly a factor of two. Why? Because it is low-value land due to monsoons turning the dirt into mud, and that dirt doesn't have enough minerals in it so agriculture is too difficult to bother with. It has free oxygen. It has 1g gravity. You can…

The desire to fly to space can be compared with such for going to Everest, the place less hospitable than Cape York, yet having quite an interest from all sides. However, exploration of space could be way more practical than conquering the highest point on Earth - it serves scientific goals, and after science often come applications. There are many useful technologies which grew from space exploration and particularl…

I looked into going to Everest - it is possible for a normal person to go - you need to save up a lot of money ($10-20k) which is within reach of most people if you really want to go. However even if you are filthy rich you still shouldn't: there is a lot of litter on the mountain because it is almost impossible to make the whole trip without leaving things behind. Combine with the danger and you really should not make the trip. Instead a have few photographers and scientists (who have real science to do up there - I'm not sure what there is) make the trip, or better yet a robot - and then look at pictures/videos and read their reports.

The moon is unlikely to be self sustaining - gravity is too low. In turn that means that earth will forever be polluting the earths atmosphere (CO2!) to supply it.

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#144

Post by pfdietz »

m4rtink wrote: post #140
pfdietz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "moon landings didn't happen" conspiracies are, of course, inane, but they come from an understandable place. If moon landings really did happen, how could they just have stopped? There's a disconnect between the event and the consequences. The resolution is to realize that Apollo was a dead-end stunt, not some universe-altering historical event. The lack of consequences was an inevitable result of the structure…

Yeah, if you read a bit into the the pre-lunar-Apollo era, the plans were sensible - LEO space stations, space shipyards and orbital assembly, lunar space stations, eventually a landing and a surface stations & resource usage. All gradual sustainable infrastructure building. Then all that went out the airlock & the whole thing devolved into a long-term unsustainable race. :P

Those plans were only sensible if launch costs could be greatly reduced.

It ended up that the government-contractor axis wasn't able to reduce launch costs, not due to technical reason, but political and institutional ones. There had to be a different approach, as pursued by SpaceX.

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#145

Post by wat10000 »

m4rtink wrote: post #132
wat10000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge variety of tools and technology that billions of people use daily. What did we ultimately have to show for the money poured into Apollo? I'm a big fan of space exploration but putting twelve people up there for a few days at a time is pretty small potatoes compared to, say, the creation of smart phones or vast improvements in solar power and batteries or a thousand other things that have been done since 1972.…

The Appolo Guidance Computer was one of the first applications of silicone integrated circuits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Logic... "Following the use of integrated circuit (IC) chips in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) in 1963, IC technology was later adopted for the AGC.[17] The Apollo flight computer was one of the first computers to use silicon IC chips.[4][8]" A lot of mon…

I don’t think that’s the sort of thing that’s meant by someone writing about “innovation” in scare quotes and complaining about no more moon landings.

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#146

Post by bluGill »

GMoromisato wrote: post #110
bluGill wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans are going to walk on the fucking moon! How can you not be excited about that? Been there done that. Last happened in 1972, there is nothing exciting about it anymore. I have other things in my life that are exciting - things that really are exciting.

Please share what you think is really exciting. Maybe I'll have something new to be excited about.

I'm taking my local scouts camping this weekend. Should be an experience (it is expected to rain all weekend).

I just finished helping my local high school marching band's annual event - I got to hear a lot of great music which I find exciting.

I slept in the zoo next to the fishes with the girl scouts not long ago.

You can guess by the above the ages of my kids - which in turn implies a lot of other excitement.

There are plenty of other things as well. My local town art festival is exciting to a lot of people even though I didn't care enough to attend this year. There are a lot of museums, parks, concerts, ... in my local area to be exciting about. I have a shop full of tools for my various hobbies that I'm excited about. If you can't find a lifetime of things to be excited about withing walking distance of your bedroom you need to learn to enjoy your life more. (with apologies to the disabled who can't leave their bed)

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#147

Post by bluGill »

tempfile wrote: post #120
WalterBright wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean all previous innovations which were supposed to allow working less somehow never materialized in working less, and the quality of life improvements are greatly questionable, The bone evidence of pre-Columbian Indians in America is one of periodic starvation. For the colonists, the bone evidence is one of extremely hard labor and short lives. America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings…

You could enslave someone and yet give them a greater standard of living than a medieval king. That would not mean that it is acceptable, or even better.

I suspect most of them would find being my slave better. By modern standards it would not be acceptable or better, but all evidence I've seen suggest most people in medieval days would consider then loss of freedom not that big of a deal (partially this is about how little freedom many of them had)

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#148

Post by m4rtink »

pfdietz wrote: post #144
m4rtink wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you read a bit into the the pre-lunar-Apollo era, the plans were sensible - LEO space stations, space shipyards and orbital assembly, lunar space stations, eventually a landing and a surface stations & resource usage. All gradual sustainable infrastructure building. Then all that went out the airlock & the whole thing devolved into a long-term unsustainable race. :P

Those plans were only sensible if launch costs could be greatly reduced. It ended up that the government-contractor axis wasn't able to reduce launch costs, not due to technical reason, but political and institutional ones. There had to be a different approach, as pursued by SpaceX.

Yeah, but I think it is all related - there were various programs to reuse the Saturn and other rockets, there are pictures of them dunking engines in the sea & studying what it does to them or even the rather insane concept for a giant helicopter for catching the first stage of Saturn V. Reading the early space program history it really looks like the consensus was "of course we will reuse those rockets, it would be insane to not do so".

But then as time pressure set in & money was suddenly not a problem, all that went to the wayside. And by the time Apollo was over, it seems the mindset that rockets are expensive and expandable set in. If it was just inertia or also business interests of the by then entrenched launcher contractors is hard to tell.

Re: A rough guide for going back to the Moon

#150

Post by bluGill »

tempfile wrote: post #114
Exoristos wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is a good.

Why is involuntary work a good?

Nobody is talking about slavery here. You need to do something to feed yourself, otherwise you are making somebody else a slave to feed you. As a society there are some very disabled people we can accept this for, but when someone isn't supporting themselves that is enslaving someone else.
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