Well maybe, but they must be doing something right because they have a vibrant economy and you don't. You can suggest they stole the technology but in reality you gave it to them along with your industries.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
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Well maybe, but they must be doing something right because they have a vibrant economy and you don't. You can suggest they stole the technology but in reality you gave it to them along with your industries.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Yes it's strange what government programs are good and what are bad. Spend tax dollars on more military technology that isn't worth it and that's OK but save a life and that's bad. NASA needs new blood, its thinking is out of date and if you read between the lines that is what BO said, How do you change the guard painlessly, you pull the plug on their pet programs. Suddenly this old thinking finds a home in the private sectorQuote:
Originally Posted by excon
Ex ,investment in science is a traditional acceptable role of government . You mischaracterize us by stating we don't think there is any role for government .
There is also of course a national security component in space exploration.
Clete ,the Chinese economy is a Potamkin village ballon waiting for the mother of all ballon burts .
Much of the American technology they have was given to them for campaign funds by the Clintonoids .But much was also stolen by outright espionage,intellectual property rights violations ,and patent violation.
There economy exists because of currency manipulation ,trade pact violation that creates trade imbalances suppression of freedom in their country that stifles consumerism and allows them to be a one sided export giant. They horde the money from foreign purchases rather than letting it be used for the purchase of imports their consumers want.
Right now they have created a massive real estate bubble to "make work " because consumer demand world wide has slowed during the economic downturn. But there is no occupancy for their real estate development .
Remember that massive Olympics construction that was done ? The whole thing is ready for bulldozing because it is unused .
Back to NASA.
The President did sort of promise to continue to fund research on heavy lift rocketry (you can't make it to an asteroid otherwise) ;but he kicked the can down the road and said that he would commit to a decision to which heavy lift plan to build in 2015 .(Well into the next President's 1st term).This could be the emptiest of his many empty promises .
I do believe that more of our problems on this ball of dirt can be solved by getting industry out where energy is perpetually free and raw materials are waiting to be mined and pollution is impossible than by "exploring inner space," whether that means oceanography or psychology.
Science fiction? Just like portable computers and television and microwave cooking and the internet, it certainly is.
The question here is who's going to fund it. I'd rather see GE or US Steel going into orbit than NASA or the People's Army.
Cats ,even when NASA was the lead agency in lunar exploration the agency was purchasing their technology from private industry. There is room for both a government role in research and scientific exploration as well as a private sector role .
Tom I get the idea you have never been to China, the real estate bubble is fueled by so many people suddenly experiencing prosperity, suddenly eveyone wants to get beyond a one room house and who can blame them, sure they are offered soviet style apartment blocks in new towns but it seems good to them, wide streets, town planning, super highways, massive bridges, shopping malls, it's the communist way, I wonder where else we have seen this phenominon.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
As far as NASA is concerned, all you guys are talking about is national pride. You can't be all things to all people and the GFC demonstrated that. NASA has been going nowhere for at least twenty years, if they were serious they should have had a manned mission to Mars by now, but all they have had is the shuttle program which is really a subsititute for doing nothing, forty year old space craft and nothing to show for it. What they have in fact demonstrated is the futility of a space program when you have neither the finances or the technology
What inner space means is solving the immediate problems we have right here. Climate change, carbon fuel dependence, food security, endemic poverty, endemic warfare.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Energy might be free out there but it is only if the technology has relevance right here that it will be developed. What is so hard about understanding that someone has to pay for the dream? Forget about mining minerals out there anytime soon, the costs of refining and shipment are prohibitive. The Moon might actually be made of a reactive material but how do you get it back here without a major calamity, It might as well be made of blue cheese for all the good it is to us and Mars might be made of aluminium or iron but what good is it to us? We can be like the Man of La Mancha and dream the impossible dream but one day we need to wake up and see that this is the space ship we have and we need to look after it. Now if we had a program focused on mining Moon rocks and generating energy here on Earth from them it would be both useful and fundable by private enterprose, they would be lining up, but what has NASA been doing, looking for our origins. No money in it but they have been doing it, so much for yankee ingenuity
Clete ;then the China housing bubble won't burst. But George Soros is betting it will. I don't have to visit the realize that when you continue to build when there is a 30% vacancy rate then something is terribly wrong .
How do you get it back? Been doing that for decades. Put your manufactured goods on a plane and land in the Outback, the Gobi, or the Mojave. Assemble the cars or washing machines and you're golden.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Solve your carbon fuel dependence? Stop using 45% of it to manufacture goods and improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells so you can make goods cheaper and carbon fuels will become too expensive for your SUV.
Global Warming will be solved in about eight more years regardless of anything humans do. The wheel turns, and has for eons.
Food security would be assured if ADM were allowed to go into orbit. We've had the technology to build orbital farms for 30 years. NASA's monopoloy on US space travel has left us dependent on politicians for funding for way too long.
Endemic poverty will not be solved. Somebody said "The poor are always with us." (Matthew 26:11)
War won't end until Religion ends. Funding Chemical Boosters or Magnetic Rail guns might detract from the amount of war material available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
I don't know where your getting your NASA information from but they have been far from a stagnent in their ventures. This is just a short list of contributions.
Ref:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/pdf/Shuttle_spinoffs.pdf
Is it in part national pride? I would hope so but the current administration doesn't seem to think so. NASA has been an important feature that goes well beyond the boarders of the U.S.
Cats there is a vast difference between transporting minerals on Earth and doing so in space and delivering them back to Earth. We haven't solved the problem of lifting large vehicles off Earth yet, or crossing the vast distances quickly, let alone delivering a heavy load back to Earth without it burning up. I would like to think it is as simple as flying it down but apparently it isn'tQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
So your solution is to remove the basis of economic activity in order to solve the need for fuel and to replace existing fuels with the most expensive subsititute. Do you have any idea of the environmental cost of refining silicon? How about obsoleting the SUV? Finding ways to remove the need for all the mad running back and forth we doQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Yes you may be right, it is a cycle, but there may be other issues, such as fresh water, ice, on the other hand we may not be here in eight yearsQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Not sure what ADM refers to. Is this a corporate? Back to my earlier comment such solutions rely on solving the little problem of how to get it up there and how to get it back. Politicians want us to be dependent on them, that is unlikely to changeQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
So if they are always with us let's forget them and get on with it, not a great solution and so we will continue to have mass migrations, famines, wasted resourcesQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Religion won't end anytime soon, and not all war has a religious base, some of it has to do with poor allocation of resources, or scarse mineralsQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
Build the Factories up there where the materials and energy are. Only the finished goods come down.Quote:
Cats there is a vast difference between transporting minerals on Earth and doing so in space and delivering them back to Earth.
It actually is just that simple.Quote:
I would like to think it is as simple as flying it down but apparently it isn't
Not remove, just move.Quote:
So your solution is to remove the basis of economic activity
Archer Daniels Midland = Agribusiness.Quote:
Not sure what ADM refers to
Again, getting it going requires still further investment in both time and money, which is why getting shuttle/taxi services into profit making hands now is a good idea. Spy satellites and weaponry and other classified payloads can then pay for space exploitation instead of space exploration paying for them.
I agree butQuote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
1, no viable world has yet been discovered
2, huge ships are required, we haven't got beyond a small plane at this stage 3. space is a hostile environment, prolonged weightlessness causes serious health problems and we don't have the technology for robotics on this scale. So all this is science fiction not science fact
.see aboveQuote:
It actually is just that simple..
.I thought that is what you meant, well BO has just thrown the door open so let them make the investment, all of it including transportation systemsQuote:
Archer Daniels Midland = Agribusiness..
Luna has sufficient gravity to avoid health problems. We need to be there permanently. Bring in a piece of ice from an orbiting comet and you've got water, fuel, and air.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Ships aren't required for anything but up and down. Everything else can be done with tugs.
The Outback is a hostile environment. Siberia is a hostile environment. Sealab is set in a hostile environment.
The technology is available. The research has been done. All it will take now is getting the funding away from Luddite vote-buying politicians or permitting private enterprise to stay private.
There is sufficient water on the moon to begin colonization already ;at least enough to support a base camp for further exploration . Gravity on the moon and Mars is sufficient to avoid the health concerns of weightlessness ;and advances have been made in that area with astronauts living in weghtless conditions for extended periods on ISS and MIR .Quote:
Bring in a piece of ice from an orbiting comet and you've got water, fuel, and air.
Construction of an explorer vehicle can be done in space .But what is still needed is heavy lift cargo rockets to get the components there . That is why the President's defunding of the Ares booster ,which would be capable of lifting 55,000 lbs to low earth orbit is short sighted .
I was thinking more of methane to be used for fuel. Much simpler than cracking water.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Good call .I had forgotten that NASA once considered the possibility of methane booster propellent and dropped the concept . This was a policy mistake they should reconsider .
But the methane boosters is still not fully developed and is conceptual whereas we know how to make hydrogen rockets .
I was thinking in the now ,because if it were me ;I'd give a Kennedy like hard deadline for a lunar colony .At a minimum we should establish a goal to beat the Chinese and India .
Of course to press on to Mars and maybe even Titan (where abundance methane ,nitrogen and water is available).. new technology has to be invented .Mars has plenty of methane ,so perhaps a flex booster system is the future.
To quote an author (Heinlein) - "It's raining soup" We need to build a bucket.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
Nasa already had one on the books for 2018. That was the starting point of a colony on the moon. The jumping off point was to take advantage of the lunar cycle and land in the south near the pole where the sun is in plenty and use inflatable rooms covered in Kevlar for protection. Also compounds on the surface can be reprocessed for radiation protection. Once everything was going and in place private enterprise can take over from there. On the moon there is plenty of realestate for solar farms that are unavailable from here on earth. One of the first export products can be electricity.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
I think you are forgetting that neither Luna or Mars has a viable atmosphere so as a hostile environment it is in a different league, Ships are required to preserve life during the trip and provide an habitable environment until a base is created. Whether they are self propelled, projectile, or tugged is incidential. You are talking about a level of sophistication we won't achieve in the next century if we continue at the pace of the last fifty years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catsmine
There is only one way to get the funding and that is create jobs in constituencies and realisticly there aren't enough to go around so there will always be competing alternatives. It isn't like an auto plant, it is specialist work. You have to solve other major issues before space will enjoy sufficient focus and will to get the funding. Industries "up there" don't benefit the folks back home much. I think BO has spelled it out, there are more important things to do right now. What we could do when we had 4,000,000,000 people becomes much more difficult when we have 7,000,000,000 or 9,000,000,000
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