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Does space matter to you?

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Sand
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20 May 2011, 10:24 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Sand wrote:

Without the government initiating basic work in electronics, communication, nuclear energy and particle physics, astronautics, and several other basic areas rocketry would be still concerned with the celebrations of the Fourth of July and New Years.


Robert Goddard and Werner v. Braun were making rockets without the government.

The basic principles of guidance and cooling were found by private efforts.

The electric light bulb and the generating systems that make them glow were developed without the government.

The transistor was invented at Bell Lab, without government oversight.

Automobile and Diesel engines were invented and developed and sold without the government.

The Wright Brothers developed a working flyer with $1200 of their own money.

Langley produced three -failed- airplanes with a $50,000 grant from Congress one year before the Wrights developed a successful flyer with their own money.

and so on and so on and so on.

ruveyn


It's really amazing to me that a well informed technically adept guy can be so stuffed with BS as to deny what his nose must be rubbed in continuously. To not see how vital government has been in the development of technology and ideas and in the immense finance government has been and is still donating to the advance of science and technology is to demonstrate plain outright blindness and stupidity. Ruveyn knows better than that and I wonder what twisted mental perversion has infected him for such obvious psychosis.



MDD123
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20 May 2011, 10:49 pm

Sand wrote:
The incredibly amusing and totally impractical concept that space is a reasonable solution for the population problem is one of the fantasies of someone lost in one of the idiotic dreamlands of science fiction. The price of putting even one individual in space is overwhelming and over the half century of the development of space technology the costs have remained monstrously high. At best a millionaire or two may enjoy a few minutes of being tossed into the edge of space and safely dropped down into the safety of our planet.
Space is a killer and all sorts of very basic physiological problems become apparent when an Earth born creature leaves the planet on which it has evolved. Perhaps in the next few centuries, if civilization lasts that long, ( The current prognosis is not favorable) biological engineering can develop a specialized form of human that can endure the difficulties of life away from Earth but this creature will certainly not be what we now call human and certainly will not be the solution to the enthusiasm people demonstrate to reproduce.


You're right when you say that putting people into space would be impractical, simply moving people halfway around the globe is impractical from a logistical standpoint, but who's to say we need to send individuals into space to make exploration profitable? Automation technology is always improving, I don't think an automated mining operation is unfeasible in the near future, and in space, resources that we don't have a lot of on earth are abundant and unclaimed.



Sand
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20 May 2011, 11:05 pm

MDD123 wrote:
Sand wrote:
The incredibly amusing and totally impractical concept that space is a reasonable solution for the population problem is one of the fantasies of someone lost in one of the idiotic dreamlands of science fiction. The price of putting even one individual in space is overwhelming and over the half century of the development of space technology the costs have remained monstrously high. At best a millionaire or two may enjoy a few minutes of being tossed into the edge of space and safely dropped down into the safety of our planet.
Space is a killer and all sorts of very basic physiological problems become apparent when an Earth born creature leaves the planet on which it has evolved. Perhaps in the next few centuries, if civilization lasts that long, ( The current prognosis is not favorable) biological engineering can develop a specialized form of human that can endure the difficulties of life away from Earth but this creature will certainly not be what we now call human and certainly will not be the solution to the enthusiasm people demonstrate to reproduce.


You're right when you say that putting people into space would be impractical, simply moving people halfway around the globe is impractical from a logistical standpoint, but who's to say we need to send individuals into space to make exploration profitable? Automation technology is always improving, I don't think an automated mining operation is unfeasible in the near future, and in space, resources that we don't have a lot of on earth are abundant and unclaimed.


I agree absolutely. Developments of autonomous robots to overcome the time lag in interplanetary information transmission is a basic necessity and progress is being made. It may not be long before robots construct their own civilization on other planets of our solar system and beyond as an auxiliary to human civilization on Earth. Perhaps another century or so if the maniacs now in power can be dumped and a rational human civilization can be established.



Oberoth
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20 May 2011, 11:12 pm

Bone demineralises in space. so unless we can find a way to overcome this, we're staying on earth as a species.



Kon
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21 May 2011, 12:06 am

Sand wrote:
It's really amazing to me that a well informed technically adept guy can be so stuffed with BS as to deny what his nose must be rubbed in continuously. To not see how vital government has been in the development of technology and ideas and in the immense finance government has been and is still donating to the advance of science and technology is to demonstrate plain outright blindness and stupidity. Ruveyn knows better than that and I wonder what twisted mental perversion has infected him for such obvious psychosis.


His taxes went up?



Sand
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21 May 2011, 12:11 am

Oberoth wrote:
Bone demineralises in space. so unless we can find a way to overcome this, we're staying on earth as a species.


Beyond that, I read a report yesterday that the entire immune system becomes more vulnerable in space.



Pyrrho
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21 May 2011, 12:17 am

I don't give a s**t. It's never going to work in my life time. Especially since it's monopolized by socialist agencies.



ruveyn
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21 May 2011, 3:25 am

Pyrrho wrote:
I don't give a sh**. It's never going to work in my life time. Especially since it's monopolized by socialist agencies.


Do you have a GPS device? I do. Space works for me.

ruveyn



ValentineWiggin
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21 May 2011, 5:08 am

I think maybe we should focus effort and monetary allocation to the fact that the majority of people live in abject misery and die of easily-preventable illnesses before we start engaging in mouth-breathing Trekkie orgasmia.



Raptor
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21 May 2011, 7:05 am

A lot of on-orbit (zero gravity) research and experimentation has been done with space station, spacelab before that, and orbiter mid-deck over the years that has benefited science significantly. That's something we need to continue but in all reality manned space exploration much past earth's orbit and colonizing isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future.



ruveyn
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21 May 2011, 8:44 am

ValentineWiggin wrote:
I think maybe we should focus effort and monetary allocation to the fact that the majority of people live in abject misery and die of easily-preventable illnesses before we start engaging in mouth-breathing Trekkie orgasmia.


Have you ever considered letting them die?

ruveyn



Sand
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21 May 2011, 9:41 am

ruveyn wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
I think maybe we should focus effort and monetary allocation to the fact that the majority of people live in abject misery and die of easily-preventable illnesses before we start engaging in mouth-breathing Trekkie orgasmia.


Have you ever considered letting them die?

ruveyn


Since you're fond of the idea, it would only be just if you were the first volunteer.



Raptor
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21 May 2011, 9:55 am

ValentineWiggin wrote:
I think maybe we should focus effort and monetary allocation to the fact that the majority of people live in abject misery and die of easily-preventable illnesses before we start engaging in mouth-breathing Trekkie orgasmia.


I guess I'm not part of that miserable majority (knock on wood) nor have I observed it.
Are you talking about diverting funds to medical research (some of which is done on orbit) or suggesting that health care should be at the expense of the taxpayer and space sciences scrapped?



iamnotaparakeet
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21 May 2011, 10:15 am

ruveyn wrote:
Sand wrote:

Without the government initiating basic work in electronics, communication, nuclear energy and particle physics, astronautics, and several other basic areas rocketry would be still concerned with the celebrations of the Fourth of July and New Years.


Robert Goddard and Werner v. Braun were making rockets without the government.


Werner v. Braun actually had his expertise in rocketry hijacked by the nasty government of the land where he was born, and was almost executed once for refusing to turn rockets into weapons. He wanted spaceflight, not weapons. If it weren't for the government of that land going insane, space could have been industrialized by now perhaps.



ruveyn
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21 May 2011, 10:16 am

Sand wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
I think maybe we should focus effort and monetary allocation to the fact that the majority of people live in abject misery and die of easily-preventable illnesses before we start engaging in mouth-breathing Trekkie orgasmia.


Have you ever considered letting them die?

ruveyn


Since you're fond of the idea, it would only be just if you were the first volunteer.


I think not.

ruveyn



MDD123
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21 May 2011, 10:38 am

ValentineWiggin wrote:
I think maybe we should focus effort and monetary allocation to the fact that the majority of people live in abject misery and die of easily-preventable illnesses before we start engaging in mouth-breathing Trekkie orgasmia.


Even though there are other people in these same regions who are perfectly capable of taking care of these problems?