[ckaihatsu]

While I don't want to agree with Antonov, this time he's right.

If we're going to get out of this, we will need NASA.

But there's one thing that may not have been mentioned, the cost. We will need to make an international agreement to build the Moon base that will be needed to construct a station at L5.

The cost will be out of this world, so to speak. But once built, we can start getting real about Space. There is wealth out there that makes Bezos look like he ought to apply for welfare. But it will take some serious investment.

We will need those resources.

- Where?


- L - 5.



= )

[BeesKnee5]

You were doing the usual reactionary bit, that has been around since the late 1970s, about how we should take care of our problems here instead of fooling around in Space. I find that really annoying.

My position isnt that we shouldn't explore space, seeing as I'm qualified in astromony that would be a very bizarre position to take. It certainly isnt the case that I think monitoring the Earth or space exploration isn't valuable, but it is a distraction from the issue of climate change.

NASA has only one of it's advanced GW satellites in orbit. Yes, there are others, but they are not nearly as advanced as that one.

Every new satellite is more advanced than the last, whether it's from ESA, JAXA or NASA.
Their output is available on Worldview
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?l ... 3A07%3A54Z

NASA does stuff nobody has ever done, poop happens. They also work with suppliers, most companies don't tell you about all the problems they have with suppliers, you'd be shocked if you knew, again, poop happens. A lot of time starting with someone new would mean going over the same stuff they just went through with the guy that screwed up.

Frankly, their track record is beyond amazing. Don't ignore the thousands of things they have done brilliantly due to the occasional (and inevitable) screwup. Btw, a lot of those screwups are the result of not having enough money to do it right.

Btw, I don't approve of any of the private launch vehicles. The difficulty in making 100% reliable multi-use vehicles is an order of magnitude harder than single use. We're just not ready, and people will die because of it.

These days NASA are primarily just the people handing out the contracts, it's been commercial for decades. Multiuse vehicles are already with us thanks to Falcon and Dragon. With the falcon rocket being the most used and currently the safest launch vehicle available.

[ckaihatsu]

Mars has two moonlets, trillions of tons of derivable oxygen and hydrogen from them. Later on mass drivers and lifts can haul materials into orbit from Mars surface. Even later endless resources can be shipped for cheap in zero g from inner asteroid belt which has 3x earths resource base just sitting there.

Moon is easy from start, all needed materials can be derived from surface and launched into orbit for cheap, given the low surface gravity.

Treating earth like some venerable permanent fixture will ensure our extinction. Stop being a bunch of troglodytes. Progressive environmentalists my ass...

Endless resources, bro.

[ingliz]

@Igor Antunov

A colony on Mars by 2050?

Extreme electrical events, perchlorate poisoning, lung disease, cancers, etc., etc. We haven't got the technology to put more than a few dozen people on Mars, and 30 years will not be long enough to solve the myriad of technical details that will surely kill them.

So there will be a few dozen dead people walking for a time on Mars - So what?

[ckaihatsu]

Can't we find *something* that will bridge the class divide and distract people just a little while longer -- !


= D

[late]

A colony on Mars by 2050?

Extreme electrical events, perchlorate poisoning, lung disease, cancers, etc., etc. We haven't got the technology to put more than a few dozen people on Mars, and 30 years will not be long enough to solve the myriad of technical details that will surely kill them.

So there will be a few dozen dead people walking for a time on Mars - So what?

We are centuries away, possibly several centuries, from being ready to do a colony on Mars. But a scientific mission or two, that is entirely doable. There's a lot of things I want to do before that, but a well equipped mission, that sounds intriguing.

[annatar1914]

@Igor Antunov is the voice of Faustian man, @annatar1914, and proud of the fact.

And cosmic fantasy and misanthropy go together like eggs and bacon. After all, if you hate humanity then what else is left to you except cosmic fantasy?

@Potemkin , you've got an excellent point.

I have to admit though, that I was prone to some heavy Space Adventure reading back in the day, in my childhood. There was a man named Edmund Hamilton (who was married to the writer and Hollywood script writer Leigh Brackett) who churned out some really good sci-fi adventure yarns, stuff that would make far better movies than most of the Sci-Fi films out there;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hamilton

His ''Star Wolf'' stories, about the adventures of an orphaned pirate and mercenary raised on a heavy-gravity world (but whose dead parents were from Wales) of bandits, is truly excellent stuff;

The Weapon from Beyond (1967)
The Closed Worlds (1968)
World of the Starwolves (1968)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwolf_(novel_series)

[colliric]

I always thought star wars was shit. Not so much science fiction as fantasy. I'm more about The Expanse. See that show if you want to see the possibilities (minus the intergalactic portals and fancy space virus).

It's plot was based mostly on Lord Of The Rings, a fact modern millenial Star Wars nuts fail to remember. It's like they can't ever fathom a time period when Peter Jackson's Trilogy didn't exist.

Star Wars has always been mostly pure fantasy. George Lucas understood that, unlike Jar Jar Abrams and Ruin Johnson.

Most young people who watch Star Wars don't bother to watch anything Lucas himself loved. They don't even know he himself is a TOS Trekkie. Most haven't ever watched 59's Ben-Hur("The Emperor is fucking displeased!"), that WW2 dogfighting film he loved or Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress.

[Gardener]

This is terrible. Most people will die within 100 years !
Really ? How unusual.

And then there are the droughts, fires, and rain. Umm... won't they kinda cancel each other out ?

[AFAIK]

tl;dw- send some robots like the rovers that are currently collecting rock samples that will be returned to Earth and analysed for signs of life.

[Steve_American]

This is terrible. Most people will die within 100 years !
Really ? How unusual.

And then there are the droughts, fires, and rain. Umm... won't they kinda cancel each other out ?

Someone or many step forward to deny the truth. How unuasal.

Could anyone have predicted this?
Well, yes. easily.
.

[B0ycey]

@Igor Antunov on space colonisation for an answer to climate change.

Read Ingliz posts clearly Igor. Apart from on television, realistically humans cannot survive outside Earth simply due to biology. Astronauts cannot even spent a long time on the ISS without suffering health complications on their return. Not to mention Earth contains all resources to get into space and their isn't a known other Earth in our Solar System. What you think Mars and the Moon are acceptable? Neither have an atmosphere ffs. I heard once the moon has a lot of Helium3 which might be useful as a fuel source for the current uninvented fusion power but even so, not much use for survival is on the Moon. I would say being carbon neutral is a more realistic hope than Space Porn.

[B0ycey]

We are centuries away, possibly several centuries, from being ready to do a colony on Mars. But a scientific mission or two, that is entirely doable. There's a lot of things I want to do before that, but a well equipped mission, that sounds intriguing.

Late you have lost it. @BeesKnee5 didn't ask for NASA to be cancelled. He suggested that making sure that the Earth remains habitable is better than colonising space. Not only is it better, it is the only option. I think people seriously don't understand that we have evolved on Earth and those conditions need to not only be mimicked but have to be EXACT. So not only are we talking about resources and maintainance and transportation and R&D and basically every other challenge we have to conquer space, you are also talking about overcoming biology. Not possible. Any lunar space station or Mars station in the future (and both timelines are realistically beyond when Climate change will be a major factor anyway) will never be for extended use. They will be treated the same as the ISS with trained personnel doing specific jobs for a limited time before coming home.

[Igor Antunov]

Let me sum up the silliness in this thread:

Our planet is dying, the climate has spun out of control. Using 19th century technology we have terraformed our world and made it uninhabitable in just a couple of centuries.

vs

We can't possibly build off-world colonies. Sure, people already live and work in space for months at a time, and we've sent robots to mars and the moon, we can convert water into fuel and air, we can grow food in space, but we can't build colonies on the moon or mars-totally impossible. We have to undo our terraformed earth-that's totally possible. But not build space colonies, nope. Never.

Uhuh. Tell me more geniuses.

[colliric]

It's a sad sorry state of affairs when Musk, Branson and Bezos care more about getting back to the moon than NASA does.

[B0ycey]

We can't possibly build off-world colonies. Sure, people already live and work in space for months at a time, and we've sent robots to mars and the moon, we can convert water into fuel and air, we can grow food in space, but we can't build colonies on the moon or mars-totally impossible. We have to undo our terraformed earth-that's totally possible. But not build space colonies, nope. Never.

Uhuh. Tell me more geniuses.

You need to actually respond to Ingliz problems. You aren't just moving to the moon, but you are building infrastructure projects bigger than what we do on Earth in SPACE. Also, creating oxygen from a compound such as water is VERY resource heavy. It doesn't come in cans or breaking rocks into two. You need other elements and a reaction. Sci-fi is science fiction for a reason. It certainly isn't a blue print for the future given the limitations of the human body amongst the size of the projects your asking for. And all this before Climate Change is a major problem? You are asking for colonisation of the Solar System by a hundred years when the race just to get to the Mars is barely moving at snail pace.

[Igor Antunov]

but you are building infrastructure projects bigger than what we do on Earth in SPACE.

Not even close. We build entire cities here for millions of people every decade consuming more resources than the entire space program has done since it came into existence. In space just a few hundred people could make a viable colony. Just keep making those.

[B0ycey]

Not even close. We build entire cities here for millions of people every decade consuming more resources than the entire space program has done since it came into existence. In space just a few hundred people could make a viable colony. Just keep making those.

Eh no. You would need to build a vacuum intense biodome and retain that with resources and power on a MASSIVE scale if you are talking about everyone moving to the Moon. And you haven't even addressed the biological issue in any case.

[Igor Antunov]

Eh no. You would need to build a vacuum intense biodome and retain that with resources and power on a MASSIVE scale if you are talking about everyone moving to the Moon. And you haven't even addressed the biological issue in any case.

The beauty of generating energy in space and on airless planetary bodies is multifaceted.

No need to lose so much energy to inefficiencies such as day/night/weather or power dispersal regarding photovoltaic/solar generation. Any crappy solar plant on the moon would be +5x more efficient than any good solar plant on earth. And you could beam the energy directly into orbit and then reflect from satellites back to the surface using microwaves - no air to get in the way, no nothing but sweet efficiency. You could get it even more efficient by putting the solar plants directly into orbit and skipping the power relay constellations. Beam directly down to a core settlement. And it could all be built from silicon-which the moon has in spades.

This also applies to mars, as its atmosphere is only 1% that of earth.

Everything is just so much easier in space. One man can move many tons with his wrist. Zero G is a major advantage.

[B0ycey]

The beauty of generating energy in space and on airless planetary bodies is multifaceted.

No need to lose so much energy to inefficiencies such as day/night/weather or power dispersal regarding photovoltaic/solar generation. Any crappy solar plant on the moon would be +5x more efficient than any good solar plant on earth. And you could beam the energy directly into orbit and then reflect from satellites back to the surface using microwaves - no air to get in the way, no nothing but sweet efficiency. You could get it even more efficient by putting the solar plants directly into orbit and skipping the power relay constellations. Beam directly down to a core settlement. And it could all be built from silicon-which the moon has in spades.

This also applies to mars, as its atmosphere is only 1% that of earth.

Everything is just so much easier in space. One man can move many tons with his wrist. Zero G is a major advantage.

Although all you have written is understatement, solar panels are rubbish at generating energy anyway on a large scale. You might as well just use fission for sustainability. And yes, radiation, another human limitation. You still haven't addressed biological limitations and keep repeating your pipe dream.

As for mining, how easy do you think that is in a spacesuit? And who are the miners. Barry from the jobcentre who isn't fit enough for space? Not to mention the investment just to mine is perhaps more resources and energy than the worth of the silicone (which would be in rock form) you are digging. This is sci-fi. It is great on paper and not in reality. You remind me of an astronaut discussing the film Gravity once. He was annoyed on how unrealistic it was and yet it is regarded as one of the more realistic space movies made.