Trump to NASA: We're going back to the Moon - Page 6 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14871159
Rugoz wrote:You get water and other basic resources from the atmosphere.


Not from the Venusian atmosphere. Terraforming schemes I've heard of involve shading the planet to cool it then introducing bacteria to break up CO2, then adding hydrogen from jovians or elsewhere to mix with the liberated O2 to form water.
#14871160
starman2003 wrote:Not from the Venusian atmosphere. Terraforming schemes I've heard of involve shading the planet to cool it then introducing bacteria to break up CO2, then adding hydrogen from jovians or elsewhere to mix with the liberated O2 to form water.


Water can be extracted from the sulfuric acid. Carbon is obviously available and there's plenty of nitrogen.

I posted this link before:

http://www.science20.com/robert_invento ... ine-127573

Just for the record, I find space colonization silly, but it's fun to speculate.
#14871204
Potemkin wrote:We can find out what's out in space by sending unmanned probes or, once we've created them, machine intelligences to explore it - it's a lot cheaper and a lot more efficient. As for the human colonisation of space, the Antarctica analogy is completely appropriate. Antarctica is a lot more habitable than, say, Mars. Tell me, how many cities do we have in Antarctica? :eh:


Again, you make a logical case.
Again, Humans are not logical.

Ask 50 people on the street if they would rather go to Mars or Antarctica….you’ll be printing 50 tickets to Mars.

Now, would this be the case after we plant out flag on the red planet? Probably not.

Your assumption that machinery can do it all is false by the way. They can do what they are made to do/programmed to do.
#14871208
Your assumption that machinery can do it all is false by the way. They can do what they are made to do/programmed to do.

Which is why I said "machine intelligences" rather than just "unmanned probes". If we really intend to conquer and/or colonise the galaxy, then we should send out self-replicated von Neumann machines to explore the neighbourhood and assemble the infrastructure (living accommodation, life support systems, mining facilities &c) before we even think about going out there ourselves. Doing it any other way is grossly inefficient and just plain retarded. If we wish to inherit the galaxy, then we need to stop thinking like monkeys and start thinking like grown adult humans.
#14871214
Off topic but a fun scifi book series I've read called bobiverse is kinda a fun take on von Neumann probes. You might like it if your into sci Fi type stuff.

I absolutely agree. Unless we discover the magical phlebotinum that makes FTL achievable and practical we will not be sending human being anywhere without a few hundred more years worth of technological development and infrastructure building on distant world's by machines.

Frankly without particularly strong economic incentives we won't send anyone to the moon in the next few decades either, nor should we.
#14871329
Potemkin wrote:Which is why I said "machine intelligences" rather than just "unmanned probes". If we really intend to conquer and/or colonise the galaxy, then we should send out self-replicated von Neumann machines to explore the neighbourhood and assemble the infrastructure (living accommodation, life support systems, mining facilities &c) before we even think about going out there ourselves. Doing it any other way is grossly inefficient and just plain retarded. If we wish to inherit the galaxy, then we need to stop thinking like monkeys and start thinking like grown adult humans.



Scratch, scratch. Starts eating a banana...


Another matter of interest is why haven’t we detected aliens yet? This article argues we are the first sentient life form in the universe.


https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08448
#14871332
Humans are not advanced enough to detect aliens who are super advanced enough to travel across the vast expanses of space.

#14871411
Potemkin wrote:....we should send out self-replicated von Neumann machines ...


That idea has been around a very long time but I don't know if it'll ever work out in practice. Of course robotic explorers (self replicating or not) are still the way to go.
@Godstud: I agree, nobody has ever, to my knowledge, seen UFOs prior to arrival here. :)
#14877693
mikema63 wrote: Frankly without particularly strong economic incentives we won't send anyone to the moon in the next few decades either, nor should we.
I'd much rather see money spent on going to the moon than spent on more wars.
#14877781
mikema63 wrote:Frankly without particularly strong economic incentives we won't send anyone to the moon in the next few decades either, nor should we.

We won't know what the economic incentives are until we are there. IMO history will judge the American retreat from space since Apollo as one of the great historic failures of nerve and vision, like the Chinese retreat from maritime exploration in the 15th century and the Viking retreat from the New World in the 12th.
#14877947
Truth To Power wrote:We won't know what the economic incentives are until we are there.


The moon may be a good source of he-3 for fusion.

IMO history will judge the American retreat from space since Apollo as one of the great historic failures of nerve and vision,


And who or what is ultimately to blame for that? Democracy, and the masses it empowers. They won't accept even modest sacrifices for space. In one year about four times more was spent on tobacco alone than on NASA's budget.
#14877958
mikema63 wrote:Off topic but a fun scifi book series I've read called bobiverse is kinda a fun take on von Neumann probes. You might like it if your into sci Fi type stuff.

I absolutely agree. Unless we discover the magical phlebotinum that makes FTL achievable and practical we will not be sending human being anywhere without a few hundred more years worth of technological development and infrastructure building on distant world's by machines.

Frankly without particularly strong economic incentives we won't send anyone to the moon in the next few decades either, nor should we.


Is economics the only thing that matters?

It sounds particularly short-sighted to place everything into the terms of ROI. I'm old enough to recall the hysteria over Carter creating so many national parks in Alaska and thusly placing tens of millions of acres (if not hundreds of millions of acres) off limits to oil exploration and drilling. The Alaskans were incredibly upset . https://www.adn.com/commentary/article/ ... 013/12/01/

Today, it would be unthinkable to put a derrick in Glacier Bay or infringe on the lands around Mt. Mckinley.
#14877960
starman2003 wrote:The moon may be a good source of he-3 for fusion.



And who or what is ultimately to blame for that? Democracy, and the masses it empowers. They won't accept even modest sacrifices for space. In one year about four times more was spent on tobacco alone than on NASA's budget.


I blame the politicians. There is a time when you're the level that the voters use to move rocks and there are times when you are the rock... I guess the polling was something like 60/40 to shut down the Apollo program.

Image

Think about the 41% in 1979....That means that 59% were against it or 6 out of 10 people.

As a politician, do you really think that 6 out of 10 people just plucked off the street and asked "do you think it is worth it" could formulate an informed opinion--on the spot--of what was at stake in terms of economics (the Internet, worldwide instant communications), communication itself, data transfer so companies can work on projects all day every day, GPS for our troops and our ships at sea, the money we save by being able to see storms weeks in advance instead of days...etc...

I would say no--it would be hard to expect 6 out of 10 to have studied all of these things and arrive at that conclusion.

As a politician, you're supposed to have some elevated insight into the world at large. Not to mention the retarded (pun intended) effects the shuttering of NASA had on the scientific community in the nation. You don't see a shortage of kids trying out for the NFL or NBA. Why? Because at the very basic need of a human--a job--the jobs are there in playing, coaching, scouting, commentating, administration, etc... The money is there. The opportunity is there. You leave the space program in a robust trajectory and those who have the skills in engineering, mathematics, and the associated sciences can pursue the degrees with confidence that the jobs will be there.
#14877983
The moon landings were a pathetic and cowardly diversion from the task of fighting Communism. We have faced three serious totalitarian threats at the world level, since universal male suffrage became the norm in the Western democracies: the Nazis, the Communists and now the Muslims again. The Muslim threat temporarily receded after the second siege of Vienna. The rapid collapse of the Soviet empire was neither predictable or inevitable. The Americans failed to confront the Soviet Union in the ninety twenties and thirties. Americans failed to pull their weight in 1939. And they failed their British and French allies in world war II by conspiring to give the genocider Stalin Eastern Europe and East Asia.

The Moon landings were an act of puerile narcissism, when America should have been focusing its resources on defeating Communist terrorism in South East Asia.
#14877990
:lol: Wow Rich. That's a great load of bullshit you just shat.

The whole world benefited from the US getting to the moon. Your assessment of WW2 is sheer fantasy. :knife:
#14877998
Godstud wrote::lol: Wow Rich. That's a great load of bullshit you just shat.

The whole world benefited from the US getting to the moon. Your assessment of WW2 is sheer fantasy. :knife:


Do you believe USA has the right to go to the moon or even anywhere out of earth? We are talking about a country that had thrown 2 atomic bombs in Japan to test their toys and crown themselves the king of "no fucks given" . A country that is in war since it's conception might not be Earth's best representative in case they ended up finding a poor ET that will certainly be blown up just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Humans in general should be forbid to leave earth until we became actually civilized.
#14878000
Nobody owns the moon. Why can't the USA and any other country explore the universe? The rest of what you say is silliness.

Representative to ET? :roll: You've been watching too much bad TV. :knife:

Politiks wrote:Humans in general should be forbid to leave earth until we became actually civilized.
:lol: How far do you honestly think we're going to get for a few hundred years? What rubbish. Who's going to enforce this, and how?
#14878007
4cal wrote:I blame the politicians. ....... I guess the polling was something like 60/40 to shut down the Apollo program.


A majority just didn't relate to it well enough to find the expense worthwhile. They want their tax money to be spent on programs of direct benefit to them like medicare. In a democracy, politicians just have to do what the dummies want.

As a politician, you're supposed to have some elevated insight into the world at large.


Even if politicians didn't, by themselves, there were NASA advocates who mentioned the technical spinoffs. I don't think the problem was ignorance of the benefits among those in government. The politicians just knew a majority didn't want to see their money spent on space when there were other things they considered more important, especially themselves (everything from petty amenities to social programs).

You don't see a shortage of kids trying out for the NFL or NBA. Why? Because at the very basic need of a human--a job--the jobs are there in playing, coaching, scouting, commentating, administration, etc... The money is there. The opportunity is there. You leave the space program in a robust trajectory and those who have the skills in engineering, mathematics, and the associated sciences can pursue the degrees with confidence that the jobs will be there.


The masses whine about the impracticality of intellectual things, like learning more about other worlds via space exploration. Yet they don't have a problem with impractical nonintellectual stuff, which is ultimately downright useless. Again, what it boils down to is a lack of brains, translated into policy via our wonderful democracy. :roll:
Note that the USSR sometimes led in space despite having less wealth and technical know how, because it could ensure good priorities regardless of what joe blow wanted.
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