Slap Shot
I got nothing
Wrong. We are nowhere near by a factor of thousands of having the technology necessary to colonize even the moon much less Mars or any other body in space.
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Elon Musk the 21st century Edison??
- Thread starter joecct
- Start date
"we're soooo close to colonizing Mars. All we're really missing is a teleportation device, and we'll be there!"
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
On the other hand, our feats are impossible until shortly before they are fact.
From the Wright Brothers' first flight to the Moon Landing was 65 years and 8 months between December 17, 1903 and July 20, 1969. Less than one lifetime.
You are not listening.
We will have physical facilities on and in orbit around the moon, Mars, some asteroids, and some of the outer planet moons, eventually. They won't be manned because any questionable value add could never justify the expense, risk, and PITAssery of it.
It isn't within 10 years, but it's easily within 100. Other stars aren't within 100 but, assuming it is EVER in any way possible, it is within 1000. Once you have stars you'll get other Earth-like environments, and then we're set. We have had a world where reason was preferred over superstition for less than half that time.
Even assuming 90% of the species never evolves beyond primate-with-club-hurr, we are on our way. We may even be halfway towards freeing ourselves from them. Just keep your nose to the grindstone and work for it. It is the only thing humanity has ever tried to do that is worth it.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
Mother Nature isn't going to destroy mankind. The worst conceivable confluence of man-made and man-triggered events might kill half of us. So, 14th Century Europe.
Wages will go up. We won't even be missed. The survivors will say a few nice words and Get On With It.
I for one welcome a world that is entirely irradiated except for sub-Saharan Africa. Back to our roots.
Fear of a Black Planet: Kepler-452b.
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FadeToBlack&Gold
Microlot Marxist
By "we" you mean China, because NASA isn't doing shit.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
My money's on Nigeria, but whatevs. Homo sapiens. The rest is administrivia.
MichVandal
Well-known member
FWIW, comparing the first flight to landing on the moon is not a good relative step- as they share almost zero relationship or hard technology.
Flight is understanding aerodynamics and using it to make forces to fly in air. Space flight is about rockets, power, and energy storage.
Going to the moon had some aerodynamic issues, but they were over within 30 seconds of take off. The bigger problem was the earth's gravity, and escaping that. Which is the core problem with space flight- energy- using potential energy and turning it into motion to escape multiple bodies of gravity. That's why even with the massive 6,200klb Saturn V, it was just a 33klb ship that landed on the moon, and only 1/3 of that left the moon. None of which actually returned to the surface of the earth- that was a small portion that didn't even land on the moon. The majority of the mass of a Saturn V on the launch pad was fuel.
The fact that elmo wants to land a huge craft on the moon for ego reasons kind of explains how he's hardly the modern Edison.
Going and coming back to Mars takes considerably more energy because of the distance and the mass of Mars.
Looking at the recent history of crashed landers on the moon- it should remind all that it's incredibly hard to get there and land. Meaning actually having a livable structure there is going to be hard- especially since you have to have a pretty beefy power system- one that can last in the dark for two weeks.
Is it possible? Sure- someone may invent a Mr Fusion that can power everything for nothing. But the odds of it is pretty remonte.
BTW, the only real "advantage" that Mars has over the moon is that the days are closer to earth days. Other than that, the tiny atmosphere there is pretty useless, and there's zero chance that a real atmosphere can be made there. We'd have a better chance converting Venus to a real atmosphere than making one on Mars.
Musk says things that that his cult will give him more money. That's it. He managed to find a bunch of smart people who made what SX is today, but all of them have left, and the remaining smart people are going to work for all of them. It's aggravating that somehow he got Artemis pushed aside when it's actually had a craft orbit the moon when his hasn't even gone around the earth once.
Slap Shot
I got nothing
I didn't say we won't advance, but to be able to actually inhabit another body besides our own?
Sorry Elon Musk, colonizing Mars is a horrible idea
The authors of a new book say “space is terrible” and that living in the cosmos would mean disgusting food, awkward sex and anarchy.
nypost.com
10 Reasons Colonizing Mars is a Bad Idea
Although Space-X President Elon Musk has big plans for settling the red planet, boasting of big rockets, nuclear explosions, and an expansive system capable of transporting hundreds of thousands of people off-world, he may have to rethink those plans. Key figures at NASA (such as Wernher von...
www.toptenz.net
dxmnkd316
Lucia Apologist
Right but the cost per lb of payload for virtually every destination has gone down and significantly so. Fuel ratios run up against physics, sure. But that’s irrelevant if we can produce fuel for free (to take it to the extreme) then it really doesn’t matter how much of the launch weight is fuel. Pretty much only the cost of capex and political capital is the limit.
So like, if it took $8k/kg in adjusted dollars for the Saturn V, Falcon Heavy is only ~$1.5k/kg. Not a perfect comparison because one was destined for the moon and back, the other is various EOs. The shuttle, OTOH, was like $55k/kg.
My point being, Mars isn’t out of the question because of the ideal rocket equations. it’s out of the question because it’s just not a priority right now.
dxmnkd316
Lucia Apologist
And landing on the moon in recent days has been a failure because it’s not nation-states attempting it as a national priority. It’s commercial ventures and underfunded government programs.
They’re all trying to do it for bargain rates. I guarantee SLS would have gotten there with the success rate of Saturn V. But we decided to kill that program and watch Musk and SpaceX attempt to drunken wander their way back.
They’re all trying to do it for bargain rates. I guarantee SLS would have gotten there with the success rate of Saturn V. But we decided to kill that program and watch Musk and SpaceX attempt to drunken wander their way back.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
Musk is a ketamine-fueled Barnum & Bailey pitch man. He's not my focus.
I can't imagine we successfully terraform anywhere for so many eons it doesn't bear thinking about. Colonization doesn't make sense unless you have a livable environment. So I am thinking about relatively simple small scale artificial structures with part time small crews.
Are you saying it is insufficient gain to be farther out of the gravity well of the Sun? Would communications, resupply, and repair stepping stones through the solar system not be worth setting up and maintaining? I won't argue that any given brick and mortar (steel and graphene?) structure off world will be any more valuable than any given cell tower, but a vast cloud of them on rocky surfaces and as satellites out to the Neptune orbit sounds like a necessary first step to making us spacefaring.
Nice coincidence rangefinder, too.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
Fair, but now STFU. It's a striking comparison we can use to make the morons cough up some dick pill money for space.
MichVandal
Well-known member
Unless someone figures out how to fire up the core of Mars to produce a magnetic field around the planet, it will never have an atmosphere so never be a place to live.
As for going out farther, for what reason?
MichVandal
Well-known member
While it's considerably more efficient, that does not escape the physics. The concept of making your own fuel is still a concept, so we can't live on that concept. People keep bringing that up as if it's something we have as a tool right now. All we have is that we *think* we know where water is. How do you extract enough that you then can take it apart and load it onto a ship (which are two very different things to do).
Mars may not be out of the question, but why should it ever be a priority? There were millions of people protesting the moon effort when people in the US were suffering- which would you rather have, healthcare or putting a handful of people on Mars? Clearly can't have both these days. Either that, or we are all paying way, way, way too much to get stuff to space, electric cars, space wi-fi, the large south American river, and Whole Foods. How can we complain about the cost of stuff and even consider that either the US or private companies should have the resources to go to Mars? Makes no sense.
BTW, the note about all the crashes on the moon is to remind is that space travel is hard. Even places that had resources to do it multiple times has taken multiple times to get one right.
MichVandal
Well-known member
The comparison should be from Goddard or Von Braun's first launch to landing on the moon, which is actually shorter.
unofan
Well-known member
Because at some point there will be a cataclysmic event on this rock, and not having all of our eggs in one basket is necessary to ensure survival of the species.
Beyond that, you're falling into the GOP trap of "we don't have enough money for everything, so let's do nothing." One, we have more resources than most people realize, we just utilize them extremely inefficiently. Two, it's a false dichotomy that we have to choose between space flight or healthcare.
MichVandal
Well-known member
No, I think it would be better if we spent the money to prevent the cataclysmic event on this planet. Let alone the money would be better spent on healthcare and education.
Especially given that all of the local alternatives are a no go for many thousands of years, if ever. At least for enough people. What you suggest is that a handful of people move to a place that has no chance of supporting more than a few thousand people at a time to save the billions of humanity. It would be far better to work on saving all of humanity than trying to pick a tiny fraction of that to struggle to live someplace else.
It's cool and all to go to the moon again and Mars, and for sure we will advance as a technological society for it. But is it really worth sacrificing people for it? And I'm very much not talking about the astronauts who will die.
Handyman
Hug someone you care about...
Except in this case...we dont have the money. This is not the GOP saying it this is just a fact. We have blown our wad and with a downturn coming we won't have the money to be able to do it for quite some time. We would need to bring back the old tax rates and sit for quite a few years and if you think that is happening I have some oceanfront property in South Dakota to sell you. I would rather the use the money here on the people who need it. Not on some BS hypothetical that is likely centuries away.
And sorry but Mars is not the answer to what is coming for this world. That is Elon Musk lies and BS. In the lifetime of your grandchildren we won't have a habitable situation on that planet. Same with the Moon, and those are the only options unless we decide to make space stations. Even if you want to pretend the world could even possibly fund such an endeavor the time it would take, the resources that would need to be repatriated and well, the sacrifice that would need to be made is just not happening. Even if we could find a way to set up colonies on the Moon (we will leave Mars out of this because...NOT A CHANCE) there is no way they could set up a permanent living situation for all of humanity there so billions will have to die (if Earth is becoming uninhabitable) or choose to stay behind and help everyone else survive elsewhere to make it happen. There is no way to grow enough food or have enough resources to make it livable so you are still dependent on Earth many generations into the colonization...its just not a good solution. Maybe if we hadn't cut the Lunar Program in the 1970s we could be on our way to having the Moon be a short term answer for some things...but now? I am not taking that bet.
So who gets to go and who gets to stay?
The Space Program is needed and important, but it aint going to save us. The Earth is going to kill us long before we figure out how to colonize somewhere else. Humanity is killing itself and instead of trying to fix the mistakes we made we just go with more Manifest Destiny and hope we can ruin some place else. Just pure hubris.
You guys are trying to have it both ways:
“We need to be able to colonize other worlds to save humanity!”
Um, yeah, but that’s impossible within our current understanding of physics and economics.
“That’s okay, we’ll just do small things instead”
Then how exactly does that save humanity?
Self-sustaining breeding population on another world or it doesn’t count.
This whole discussion is like someone in New Jersey who wants to grow his own tomatoes deciding that clearing the weeds out of his perfectly functioning window boxes is too hard, so clearly his best path forward is to fly back and forth to plant and tend a garden at the bottom of Death freaking Valley. No. Weed your fucking window boxes, moron
“We need to be able to colonize other worlds to save humanity!”
Um, yeah, but that’s impossible within our current understanding of physics and economics.
“That’s okay, we’ll just do small things instead”
Then how exactly does that save humanity?
Self-sustaining breeding population on another world or it doesn’t count.
This whole discussion is like someone in New Jersey who wants to grow his own tomatoes deciding that clearing the weeds out of his perfectly functioning window boxes is too hard, so clearly his best path forward is to fly back and forth to plant and tend a garden at the bottom of Death freaking Valley. No. Weed your fucking window boxes, moron