At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
The moon is several thousand years of dedicated travel away? Then how did Buzz Aldrin manage to do this not that long ago?
Nearest star is several thousand years of dedicated travel away. We all know the moon is such a valuable resource like the Americas were - all the countries of the world are scrambling for their slice.
Oh wait, they're not. Cause it's a large rock.
So we shouldn't build a moon base because Alpha Centauri is far away. That...makes sense?
moniker on
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Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
Completely off topic, but no one other than uneducated peasants maybe would have thought that Colombus was going to fall off the edge of the Earth. They thought he would run out of supplies long before reaching China based on the rather accurate circumference calculated by the Greeks. No one really counted on there being another different continent in between the two.
Thank you. Yes, Columbus was seen as a mad-man because he insisted on an insane gambit based on data known to be incorrect about the circumference of the earth. Even though none of the right goods were available and he never found eastern civilization, he went back again and again, believing on his deathbed that he had made it to the pacific. Not exactly the model for human exploration.
Donkey Kong on
Thousands of hot, local singles are waiting to play at bubbulon.com.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
The moon is several thousand years of dedicated travel away? Then how did Buzz Aldrin manage to do this not that long ago?
Nearest star is several thousand years of dedicated travel away. We all know the moon is such a valuable resource like the Americas were - all the countries of the world are scrambling for their slice.
Oh wait, they're not. Cause it's a large rock.
So we shouldn't build a moon base because Alpha Centauri is far away. That...makes sense?
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
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Thousands of hot, local singles are waiting to play at bubbulon.com.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
Who? Google yields something about some dude during the US civil war.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
Who? Google yields something about some dude during the US civil war.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
Who? Google yields something about some dude during the US civil war.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
Who? Google yields something about some dude during the US civil war.
The only practical use for a moon base would probably be if we could find enough minerals to set up manufacturing for satellites and such. Getting stuff out of the moon's gravity well would be a lot easier than getting them out of Earth's gravity well, so building space stuff on the moon might prove cheaper than doing so on Earth assuming you could get the other costs of habitation down far enough.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
Who? Google yields something about some dude during the US civil war.
In conclusion: I'm being called a cynic/skeptic for not liking the idea of interstellar/interplanetary sub-light speed travel and needlessly expensive projects to populate the moon if they don't have tangible benefits.
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
But what happens when all those dead bodies get possessed by demons?
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
Didn't you hear? They discovered not only water on the moon, but Jimmy Hoffa frozen inside a massive block of ice with Elvis and Heath Ledger.
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
But what happens when all those dead bodies get possessed by demons?
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
But what happens when all those dead bodies get possessed by demons?
Hiding the dead bodies of your murdered victims on the moon is more secure than dumping them in the Hudson with a pair of concrete shoes. No one's going to think to look for those bodies on the moon!
But what happens when all those dead bodies get possessed by demons?
It would be a dream come true for me.
Must....kill....space zombies.
Sure, it's all good fun until someone realizes that they are the demons.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
That's... not really how science or technology works. The most important discoveries are often made on accident while researching something different. Nobody at NASA said, "Okay, we're going to head to the moon, but on the way we have to make sure we invent cordless tools, plastic, and the modern computer."
You set your goal as "Let's go to the moon." On the way, cool shit happens. That's how we advance.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
That's... not really how science or technology works. The most important discoveries are often made on accident while researching something different. Nobody at NASA said, "Okay, we're going to head to the moon, but on the way we have to make sure we invent cordless tools, plastic, and the modern computer."
You set your goal as "Let's go to the moon." On the way, cool shit happens. That's how we advance.
Yes, we've gone to the moon. Now if they want to put a moonbase there they should say: okay so we're designing a moon base - what do we want to do with this base and what experiments would work best in the moon's particular environment.
Building a base just for the hell of it is rather nonsensical. Going to the moon was mostly a dickwaving contest between the US and Russia anyway. They could probably quite easily build a moonbase for one where a guy could live alone for a year. It'd also be completely fucking useless and a waste of time/money/resources so you shouldn't do it.
comparison: architects don't just say "yay I'm building an office building! okay, let's do that" then put up some walls, a roof and in-door utilities. They define what the purpose of the office building is going to be and under what circumstances it will be used. Then design/build after those objectives.
Yes, we've gone to the moon. Now if they want to put a moonbase there they should say: okay so we're designing a moon base - what do we want to do with this base and what experiments would work best in the moon's particular environment.
Building a base just for the hell of it is rather nonsensical. Going to the moon was mostly a dickwaving contest between the US and Russia anyway. They could probably quite easily build a moonbase for one where a guy could live alone for a year. It'd also be completely fucking useless and a waste of time/money/resources so you shouldn't do it.
We went to the moon as part of a dickwaving contest. The result was a pile of excellent technology that we nowadays pretty much cannot live without.
Therefore, setting another goal without a strong list of objectives will result in nothing good because X.
I'm curious as to what "X" is, here.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
That's... not really how science or technology works. The most important discoveries are often made on accident while researching something different. Nobody at NASA said, "Okay, we're going to head to the moon, but on the way we have to make sure we invent cordless tools, plastic, and the modern computer."
You set your goal as "Let's go to the moon." On the way, cool shit happens. That's how we advance.
Yes, we've gone to the moon. Now if they want to put a moonbase there they should say: okay so we're designing a moon base - what do we want to do with this base and what experiments would work best in the moon's particular environment.
Building a base just for the hell of it is rather nonsensical. Going to the moon was mostly a dickwaving contest between the US and Russia anyway. They could probably quite easily build a moonbase for one where a guy could live alone for a year. It'd also be completely fucking useless and a waste of time/money/resources so you shouldn't do it.
What would you have us do? Say plainly: "nothing worthwhile is within reach", then cut the space program entirely and never ever leave the earth except for maybe low earth orbit to do zero-g experiments? Is that what you think we should do? That's shit. We don't know what we don't know, and if we want to chip away at that, we have to do SOMETHING. If that something is a moon base until we figure out something better and more productive, then so be it. That's why NASA is a government enterprise not bound by having to make sense or make profit.
Donkey Kong on
Thousands of hot, local singles are waiting to play at bubbulon.com.
Yes, we've gone to the moon. Now if they want to put a moonbase there they should say: okay so we're designing a moon base - what do we want to do with this base and what experiments would work best in the moon's particular environment.
Building a base just for the hell of it is rather nonsensical. Going to the moon was mostly a dickwaving contest between the US and Russia anyway. They could probably quite easily build a moonbase for one where a guy could live alone for a year. It'd also be completely fucking useless and a waste of time/money/resources so you shouldn't do it.
We went to the moon as part of a dickwaving contest. The result was a pile of excellent technology that we nowadays pretty much cannot live without.
Therefore, setting another goal without a strong list of objectives will result in nothing good because X.
I'm curious as to what "X" is, here.
Because you can't get past the wishful stage without defining what you want to do. This is usually a list of things you need/hope to achieve and then you can get to designing solutions to them.
You can't actually solve anything without defining the problem and what you want to do with it.
Goal: Get 3 people to the moon and home again.
What we need:
-A rocket to send them away in capable of:
>Exiting the atmosphere
>Navigating to the moon
>Landing on the moon
>Sustaining breathable atmosphere
>etc
They had objectives alright with that dickwaving contest. They just happened to have to invent a ton of new shit to be able to achieve them that has since been adapted for cool shit on Earth. The reason to get to the moon was on the other hand godawful.
If scientists can say "okay we want to build a moonbase so we can research these areas of physics/biology/whatever and it'd be best to do on the moon where there is less gravity/special resources/better solar radiation/no atmosphere to distort observations" and then outline what they need to build a moonbase and get to it I have no problem with it.
Building a moonbase cause "omg nobody's ever done it before and it'd be totally awesome" is a terrible reason. Well, nobody's set their pants on fire while opening their parachute in a free fall from a plane loaded with a nuclear bomb set to go off five seconds before you hit the ground - this doesn't mean it's a very good expenditure of your time and resources. Although for all we know this combination might create a wormhole that can teleport you to the other side of the universe.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity?
Nope. It exists so we can have international dickwaving contests where we repeat the experiments the Apollo missions did(seeds germinating, IN SPACE), and pretend to be working on zero-G materials manufacture so that once we've ruined the earth we can go fuck up all the other celestial bodies. Which we can do on Earth anyway.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
That's just sad.
Yes, I imagine that the majority of the human race will be stuck on Earth for the rest of its life and that "stepping out into the wider void" is suicidal and at best a very slow, boring and ultimately pointless exercise.
That is unless we get reliable (or any kind really) FTL which would be fucking awesome - but I'm not counting on it and space travel will be incredibly fucking boring without it.
Yeah. And exploring the New World was dumb, too. I mean, who the fuck wants to sit on a boat for three months just to explore entirely new vistas rife with unimagined possibilities? Stupid Europeans. They should've just waited until we had Concordes. Anything you can't get to in under ten hours isn't worth the trip, I say.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
You're not thinking about this hard enough, or you don't understand what you're talking about. We can reliably say we'll be able to breathe air during the entire trip just as previous explorers could reliably say they'd have food to eat or water to drink—in fact, we have much greater certainty nowadays than sailors did centuries ago. We have a reasonable idea of what it's going to be like once we get there.
Also, you're thinking of humanity as native to the Earth. That isn't the case. We're native to a small part of northeastern Africa. Everything else was a forbidding, unknown, uninhabitable wasteland in the distant past. Explorers had to come up with new technologies just to survive there. I live in Colorado—a land that is very literally uninhabitable without technology. We've learned to make clothing, build shelters, and grow new crops (some that we have created), but before that the place I now call home was just as deadly as Mars is to us now.
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RaakamToo many years...CanadalandRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
I think building a base on the moon to know that it can, in fact, be done is a pretty big goal in and of itself. If we can't maintain a sustainable research laboratory this close to Earth, then we need to figure out how to do it.
This isn't science-fiction. At some point, even if it is in the far future, we will most likely deplete this planet, or exceed its population capacity, or we will make it somehow unlivable via pollution or whatever man-made or natural disaster. The ultimate goal of mankind is to survive and propagate itself. Even after I die, part of the human in me doesn't want to see the end of my species. While on the surface it may sound way overly dramatic, I really believe that at some point, there will be a need to explore and colonize other planets.
Even if it takes 100 years to get there and they can't even talk to people on Earth, the ability to get out of here and ensure the survival of some humans is better than not having the option. I believe that starting with a self-sustainable moon-base (not necessarily something huge) could go a long ways towards giving us the information we need to make viable space-travel a possibility.
Raakam on
My padherder they don't it be like it is but it do
comparison: architects don't just say "yay I'm building an office building! okay, let's do that" then put up some walls, a roof and in-door utilities. They define what the purpose of the office building is going to be and under what circumstances it will be used. Then design/build after those objectives.
Not really, unless you are fortunate to get a very specific type of project with dedicated needs and future expectations. Such as a library, religious structure, or hospital. Otherwise the goal is to make things more universal rather than dedicated towards meeting certain specific objectives. Which is how you have adaptive reuse. Otherwise everything would have to be torn down immediately after its function became obsolete and you'd need a new building for what replaced it.
And you'd be amazed at what constituted construction documents not even a century ago.
Also, you're thinking of humanity as native to the Earth. That isn't the case. We're native to a small part of northeastern Africa. Everything else was a forbidding, unknown, uninhabitable wasteland in the distant past. Explorers had to come up with new technologies just to survive there. I live in Colorado—a land that is very literally uninhabitable without technology. We've learned to make clothing, build shelters, and grow new crops (some that we have created), but before that the place I now call home was just as deadly as Mars is to us now.
Yeah, I'm finding it funny that going into space is completely alien to human beings but floating in the middle of a 5000 mile wide ocean for three months is just what humans were designed for.
The middle of the ocean during the fifteenth century was every bit as inhospitable as the moon. Moreso, because if shit went wrong on the open sea, there was no hope of rescue, because nobody would know. Shit goes down in a space ship, and you can contact Earth and maybe something can be done about it. At the very least, you're not any worse off then you'd be on a Rennaissance-era ship.
As far as a well-defined goal? Well, I mean we'd have some concrete objectives, obviously. It's not like we would make a big-ass rocket, fly it to the moon, and then just sort of wing it from there. It would be something like, "Fly to moon, construct base, live there for 20 days, return to Earth."
Honestly, Daxon, some of your complaints are getting silly.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity?
Nope. It exists so we can have international dickwaving contests where we repeat the experiments the Apollo missions did(seeds germinating, IN SPACE), and pretend to be working on zero-G materials manufacture so that once we've ruined the earth we can go fuck up all the other celestial bodies. Which we can do on Earth anyway.
There's a whole bunch of new experiments that get done on the ISS, and a recent one that I remember getting told about is some weird chemistry one - you start with a homogeneous mixture that reacts slowly, but if you leave it in a petri dish in zero G you get a gradient of colour due to the crystal structure varying along it and it's not really understood why.
And everyone that's saying science for the sake of science or that we're not going to learn anything from setting up a moon base, read this.
Also: it's a fucking colony on the goddamn MOON. What part of that does not scream fuckawesome?
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
That's... not really how science or technology works. The most important discoveries are often made on accident while researching something different. Nobody at NASA said, "Okay, we're going to head to the moon, but on the way we have to make sure we invent cordless tools, plastic, and the modern computer."
You set your goal as "Let's go to the moon." On the way, cool shit happens. That's how we advance.
I once attended a lecture by a famous physicist on the history of this in science. He gave quite a few examples of scientific breakthroughs that happened both with and without focused research. So while some breakthroughs, like Penicillin, happened completely by accident while working on something else, there's also been a lot of breakthroughs that went like "We wanted to do X. After 10 years of researching X, we finally succeeded". The Wright brothers are probably the best example of that sort of research.
So I'd say it's beneficial to have some research that is very focused, as well as some that is very general.
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
That's... not really how science or technology works. The most important discoveries are often made on accident while researching something different. Nobody at NASA said, "Okay, we're going to head to the moon, but on the way we have to make sure we invent cordless tools, plastic, and the modern computer."
You set your goal as "Let's go to the moon." On the way, cool shit happens. That's how we advance.
I once attended a lecture by a famous physicist on the history of this in science. He gave quite a few examples of scientific breakthroughs that happened both with and without focused research. So while some breakthroughs, like Penicillin, happened completely by accident while working on something else, there's also been a lot of breakthroughs that went like "We wanted to do X. After 10 years of researching X, we finally succeeded". The Wright brothers are probably the best example of that sort of research.
So I'd say it's beneficial to have some research that is very focused, as well as some that is very general.
Which is the interesting thing about NASA (and DARPA) because they generally have both going for them in the process of 'building cool shit in space' or 'blowing those people over there up' respectively.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
Look, as I said in the Chat thread, this can only mean one thing:
Coca Cola Moonshine.
Pepsi will probably follow suit afterwards with Moonsi.
Wasn't that how the movie Mac and Me started? Aliens addicted to cola?
Oh...my...god..
Tell me mac and me was that et follow up wanna be movie way back in the 80s that had that infamous Wheelchair scene with him careening off a cliff at breakneck speed and was basically a mcdonalds and skittles commercial? Fuck I loved that movie, I can still watch it in a just awed fact that this movie was actually made.
Look, as I said in the Chat thread, this can only mean one thing:
Coca Cola Moonshine.
Pepsi will probably follow suit afterwards with Moonsi.
Wasn't that how the movie Mac and Me started? Aliens addicted to cola?
Oh...my...god..
Tell me mac and me was that et follow up wanna be movie way back in the 80s that had that infamous Wheelchair scene with him careening off a cliff at breakneck speed and was basically a mcdonalds and skittles commercial? Fuck I loved that movie, I can still watch it in a just awed fact that this movie was actually made.
I still need to see that movie with some friends. It sounds awesome.
Posts
So we shouldn't build a moon base because Alpha Centauri is far away. That...makes sense?
Thank you. Yes, Columbus was seen as a mad-man because he insisted on an insane gambit based on data known to be incorrect about the circumference of the earth. Even though none of the right goods were available and he never found eastern civilization, he went back again and again, believing on his deathbed that he had made it to the pacific. Not exactly the model for human exploration.
They should build one if there are tangible benefits of a moonbase over a space station (that we already possess) or if there are specific conditions present on the moon that cannot be duplicated on Earth (for the science). They shouldn't build it cause it'd be cool to have a moonbase cause there's like water there and shit and omg.
Going to Mars seems, to me, like a really whimsical idea - plans to go further are in the realm of ridiculous and dumb.
edit: Also one kind of have to draw up a list of clear objectives one would like to achieve with research - politicians aren't stupid enough to just think "oh scientists say we should have one of these so they can science, let's just go let them do that". Cause that'd be dumb.
A working moon base would be a benefit in itself, showing that it is possible.
You dont go straight from space stations around Earth to getting bases at the next star. Baby steps, and getting experience is key.
Also, Science!
Ok, Captain Nicholl.
whaling
Who? Google yields something about some dude during the US civil war.
Read Jules Verne.
That's really not helpful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_earth_to_the_moon
In conclusion: I'm being called a cynic/skeptic for not liking the idea of interstellar/interplanetary sub-light speed travel and needlessly expensive projects to populate the moon if they don't have tangible benefits.
I can live with this.
Well not until you went and blabbed.
But what happens when all those dead bodies get possessed by demons?
Didn't you hear? They discovered not only water on the moon, but Jimmy Hoffa frozen inside a massive block of ice with Elvis and Heath Ledger.
Then we break out the chainsaws and BFGs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzI7DLR0DPU
It would be a dream come true for me.
Sure, it's all good fun until someone realizes that they are the demons.
That's... not really how science or technology works. The most important discoveries are often made on accident while researching something different. Nobody at NASA said, "Okay, we're going to head to the moon, but on the way we have to make sure we invent cordless tools, plastic, and the modern computer."
You set your goal as "Let's go to the moon." On the way, cool shit happens. That's how we advance.
Yes, we've gone to the moon. Now if they want to put a moonbase there they should say: okay so we're designing a moon base - what do we want to do with this base and what experiments would work best in the moon's particular environment.
Building a base just for the hell of it is rather nonsensical. Going to the moon was mostly a dickwaving contest between the US and Russia anyway. They could probably quite easily build a moonbase for one where a guy could live alone for a year. It'd also be completely fucking useless and a waste of time/money/resources so you shouldn't do it.
comparison: architects don't just say "yay I'm building an office building! okay, let's do that" then put up some walls, a roof and in-door utilities. They define what the purpose of the office building is going to be and under what circumstances it will be used. Then design/build after those objectives.
We went to the moon as part of a dickwaving contest. The result was a pile of excellent technology that we nowadays pretty much cannot live without.
Therefore, setting another goal without a strong list of objectives will result in nothing good because X.
I'm curious as to what "X" is, here.
What would you have us do? Say plainly: "nothing worthwhile is within reach", then cut the space program entirely and never ever leave the earth except for maybe low earth orbit to do zero-g experiments? Is that what you think we should do? That's shit. We don't know what we don't know, and if we want to chip away at that, we have to do SOMETHING. If that something is a moon base until we figure out something better and more productive, then so be it. That's why NASA is a government enterprise not bound by having to make sense or make profit.
Because you can't get past the wishful stage without defining what you want to do. This is usually a list of things you need/hope to achieve and then you can get to designing solutions to them.
You can't actually solve anything without defining the problem and what you want to do with it.
Goal: Get 3 people to the moon and home again.
What we need:
-A rocket to send them away in capable of:
>Exiting the atmosphere
>Navigating to the moon
>Landing on the moon
>Sustaining breathable atmosphere
>etc
They had objectives alright with that dickwaving contest. They just happened to have to invent a ton of new shit to be able to achieve them that has since been adapted for cool shit on Earth. The reason to get to the moon was on the other hand godawful.
If scientists can say "okay we want to build a moonbase so we can research these areas of physics/biology/whatever and it'd be best to do on the moon where there is less gravity/special resources/better solar radiation/no atmosphere to distort observations" and then outline what they need to build a moonbase and get to it I have no problem with it.
Building a moonbase cause "omg nobody's ever done it before and it'd be totally awesome" is a terrible reason. Well, nobody's set their pants on fire while opening their parachute in a free fall from a plane loaded with a nuclear bomb set to go off five seconds before you hit the ground - this doesn't mean it's a very good expenditure of your time and resources. Although for all we know this combination might create a wormhole that can teleport you to the other side of the universe.
edited for missing words
Nope. It exists so we can have international dickwaving contests where we repeat the experiments the Apollo missions did(seeds germinating, IN SPACE), and pretend to be working on zero-G materials manufacture so that once we've ruined the earth we can go fuck up all the other celestial bodies. Which we can do on Earth anyway.
Also, you're thinking of humanity as native to the Earth. That isn't the case. We're native to a small part of northeastern Africa. Everything else was a forbidding, unknown, uninhabitable wasteland in the distant past. Explorers had to come up with new technologies just to survive there. I live in Colorado—a land that is very literally uninhabitable without technology. We've learned to make clothing, build shelters, and grow new crops (some that we have created), but before that the place I now call home was just as deadly as Mars is to us now.
This isn't science-fiction. At some point, even if it is in the far future, we will most likely deplete this planet, or exceed its population capacity, or we will make it somehow unlivable via pollution or whatever man-made or natural disaster. The ultimate goal of mankind is to survive and propagate itself. Even after I die, part of the human in me doesn't want to see the end of my species. While on the surface it may sound way overly dramatic, I really believe that at some point, there will be a need to explore and colonize other planets.
Even if it takes 100 years to get there and they can't even talk to people on Earth, the ability to get out of here and ensure the survival of some humans is better than not having the option. I believe that starting with a self-sustainable moon-base (not necessarily something huge) could go a long ways towards giving us the information we need to make viable space-travel a possibility.
they don't it be like it is but it do
Not really, unless you are fortunate to get a very specific type of project with dedicated needs and future expectations. Such as a library, religious structure, or hospital. Otherwise the goal is to make things more universal rather than dedicated towards meeting certain specific objectives. Which is how you have adaptive reuse. Otherwise everything would have to be torn down immediately after its function became obsolete and you'd need a new building for what replaced it.
And you'd be amazed at what constituted construction documents not even a century ago.
Yeah, I'm finding it funny that going into space is completely alien to human beings but floating in the middle of a 5000 mile wide ocean for three months is just what humans were designed for.
The middle of the ocean during the fifteenth century was every bit as inhospitable as the moon. Moreso, because if shit went wrong on the open sea, there was no hope of rescue, because nobody would know. Shit goes down in a space ship, and you can contact Earth and maybe something can be done about it. At the very least, you're not any worse off then you'd be on a Rennaissance-era ship.
As far as a well-defined goal? Well, I mean we'd have some concrete objectives, obviously. It's not like we would make a big-ass rocket, fly it to the moon, and then just sort of wing it from there. It would be something like, "Fly to moon, construct base, live there for 20 days, return to Earth."
Honestly, Daxon, some of your complaints are getting silly.
Coca Cola Moonshine.
Pepsi will probably follow suit afterwards with Moonsi.
Wasn't that how the movie Mac and Me started? Aliens addicted to cola?
There's a whole bunch of new experiments that get done on the ISS, and a recent one that I remember getting told about is some weird chemistry one - you start with a homogeneous mixture that reacts slowly, but if you leave it in a petri dish in zero G you get a gradient of colour due to the crystal structure varying along it and it's not really understood why.
And everyone that's saying science for the sake of science or that we're not going to learn anything from setting up a moon base, read this.
Also: it's a fucking colony on the goddamn MOON. What part of that does not scream fuckawesome?
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I once attended a lecture by a famous physicist on the history of this in science. He gave quite a few examples of scientific breakthroughs that happened both with and without focused research. So while some breakthroughs, like Penicillin, happened completely by accident while working on something else, there's also been a lot of breakthroughs that went like "We wanted to do X. After 10 years of researching X, we finally succeeded". The Wright brothers are probably the best example of that sort of research.
So I'd say it's beneficial to have some research that is very focused, as well as some that is very general.
Which is the interesting thing about NASA (and DARPA) because they generally have both going for them in the process of 'building cool shit in space' or 'blowing those people over there up' respectively.
The part that's not going towards starving african paraplegic kittens. 8-)
The moon colony will need guinea pi-er, colonists.
Oh...my...god..
Tell me mac and me was that et follow up wanna be movie way back in the 80s that had that infamous Wheelchair scene with him careening off a cliff at breakneck speed and was basically a mcdonalds and skittles commercial? Fuck I loved that movie, I can still watch it in a just awed fact that this movie was actually made.
Because technological advancement never improve/save the lives of people. Nosiree.