Obama just cut all funding to NASA??? WHAT??? That's the last straw... I'm officially against ALL politicians now!!!
Speed vs. Weight - long distance space travel requires tons of food, water, oxygen, and fuel. All of these things have weight. The more weight there is, the more energy it takes to move the spaceship (and the more energy you need, the more fuel, and the more fuel gives more weight, which means you need more fuel) There is no solution for this. The best idea so far is to use solar power to cut down on the amount of supplies you need to take (but you can't stay within the range of a star while leaving the galaxy or the solar system for that matter)
Speed vs. Time - There is no way to travel faster than the speed of light, it would take an infinite amount of energy. Humans have about 70 useful years of life where they can operate the spacecraft, meaning if you go slow, you can't make it out of the galaxy in the lifetime of a human. Cryogenics is a long way off, despite what anyone tells you, but that's the best hope we have.
Let see...
Gravity : what about huge ship with rotating part... simply the centrifuge forge who replace the gravitation force... problem solved !!!
Speed vs weight : in fact, it is the acceleration who need energy... once you have reach the desired speed, you can stop the motor and you will continue to flight in the space at the same speed... for between star energy, why not a nuclear reactor ? Actual one based on the fission or future potential one based on the fusion... About food, water and oxygen, it is only a scale problem... something big enough can host a full mini ecosystem... remember, in chimie, all is about stranformation, nothing is created or dissappear... human transform oxygen in CO2 but plant transform CO2 in O2 and carbone... we can eat plant and our toilet residu can be used for feed plant... Urine is already recycled now for make drink water... problem solved...
Speed vs. Time : again a size problem... a ship big enough with enough people can reach any place in the universe... don't need to be the same people at the arrival that these at the departure... nothing stop human to procreate in space... the future of space is not cryo but more some generation ship...
Point is that for interstellar travel, we need to see it big... very big... so ship will be impossible to launch from earth due to the mass... best way and the more economical is to build in space and use material from the moon ( due to low gravity, it is cheaper to launch something in orbit )...
Machine are not a solution for far exploration... first, there is the delay for give them order... same at the speed of light, it already ask a lot of time for communication between the moon and the earth... so, difficult to give a real time human reaction when needed...
So, what is needed is not a new landing on the moon but a permament base on the moon... a industrial base who extract material and build what is needed for explore other planet and maybe later, explore the galaxy...
In fact, explore planet is only a preparation stage of the galaxy exploration... some can say that it is not needed, some other will say that robot can collect the needed info... when in fact, the real goal is to colonize other planet outside our own solar system... if humanity don't destroy itself, soon of later our planet can be hit by a huge asteroid who destroy all life on earth... people living on Mars will be the only survivor of the humanity... more, a sun is not eternel... if humanity wish to survive, soon of later, we need to escape our solar system and find a new homeworld before our sun is not more...
About the "70 useful years of life where they can operate the spacecraft"... i forgot to mention that time is not something fixed... more fast you go, more the time dilatation is affecting you... by example, if a ship travel around the earth at very high speed ( near the light speed ) during 10 year ( time on the ship ), for a observer on eath it can be 100 year passing or more...
A little quote :
Time dilation would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. That is, the ship's clock (and according to relativity, any human travelling with it) shows less elapsed time than the clocks of observers on Earth. For sufficiently high speeds the effect is dramatic. For example, one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel as far as light has been able to travel since the big bang (some 13.7 billion light years) in one human lifetime.
Funny, 1g acceleration resolve the problem 1 and 3 directly !!!
About speed, high speed can be reach too... actual ion motor have very little trust ( acceleration ) but can work a very long time with very little use of energy... same with a little acceleration of 1 m/s, a motor working one year will lead to a final speed of 31536 km/s... and since the escape velocity of the milkyway is only 525 km/s...
I guess we're just gonna have to sit here & fry.
This whole thread is based on a faulty premise.
Obama is proposing a funding INCREASE, but simply cannot allocate enough resources needed for Bush's Lunar Program. Considering Bush underfunded it to begin with, and we need something to replace the space shuttle fleet so that we aren't bumming rides off from Russia on the Soyuz forever, I would say putting MEN on the moon is a silly thing to do. I'd rather send some machines to prep the surface or something before we send another team of men to it.
Thanks for ruining my day, to think I thought he actually cut something...
Why would we want to cut spending just now? No thanks, Mr. Hoover.
actually if the reps. had done with one of the give me programs everyone would be screaming about the huge cuts they had made. and how they want kids and old folks to starve to death.
That is because you are limited by your logic. Clearly I said nothing about traveling at the speed of light or any fraction thereof. As those are just the things that an unimaginative person would think of first. And perhaps you have not heard of teleportation. And the fact it does exist (albeit on an atomic scale).
I clearly gave no suggestions on how it would be done, as I do not know. I only know that the only limitation on man is when he stops imagining what could be because of what is.
Short sighted to call space exploration and development "a waste". It is genuinely the next frontier and absolutely will generate a return in industry and resources--if anyone ever lays the infrastructure for these things. Budgetwise, its a drop in the bucket. The eight billion we are spending on a high speed rail connection would fund the shortfall in NASA's plans for the next three years.
As to the poor and needy...a weak US economy is not helping any of them. In fact, why don't we all eat less and buy fewer things, stop driving cars and give the trillions it would save every year to those poor?
One moderate asteroid could yield the equivalent of an entire nation's precious metal ores. One comet could yield enough ice to fuel a fleet of space ships for years. Just going to the asteroid belt has enough potential. Solar power from space is an actual feasibility now and being in space can help us be more prepared for events like an incoming major asteroid impact (instead of pretending those sort of things only happen in scifi stories). Bases and flights to the moon and Mars give us the beginning steps to do these sort of things. Drug companies invest billions in research knowing it may not pan out. Yet the return when it does makes it worth it.
Creating a genuine national aerospace industry generates tens of thousands of jobs and increases the demand for a better educated populance. You could take ten percent of any major US government program right now and fund every major project NASA has planned for the next several years.
You invest in a future or you don't have one. We have billions available for beautification and the like but not to expand our reach and availability of resources we need for economic growth and survival in the long term?
And the last but perhaps most important part is when people become centered on problems and needs only--on survival--hopes and dreams take a back seat along with success and growth and the willingness to learn and discover and take risks. A pretty dull world that is and all the poorer than it is now if we end up there. You could argue in a like manner that wasting money on troop morale in the militray is pointless becasue the money could be better spent on more bullets. Try it and see what sort of organization you end up with. Same with a nation. I was a child when the first moon landing happened and the entire world stopped what it was doing to watch in awe--even countries that hated us. Is that worth anything?
The problem is a policy of always giving NASA just enough money to do a little but never allowing them to do a lot. No risk, no return. That isn't a lack of practical potential in space--its a lack of willingness in us.
I'm actually working in the real space business, and I must say it's a very good decision to stop the constellation program. Why? Because Constellation means the only thing humanity would have done in space for the next 30ish years would have been to go back to the Moon. Yes, what we already did in the 60s. Not that exciting, no.
So, now Obama is freeing up money badly needed to even continue sending Americans into space at all (shuttle cancelled soon ...). And freeing money to do some real exploration sooner than in 20 years. The track we might go now, called Flexible path, seems to be rather towards the asteroids, maybe the moons of Mars, and then to Mars itself.
Personally I want to see astroanuts on Mars in my lifetime - I don't know about you.
By the way NASA is expected to get increased fundning of over a billion dollars a year, not any drastic cut.
Sorry, but Bush did not do anything good for space, because constellation was just an underfunded fantasy dream, why it's being cancelled now by more responsible people. Yes it was nice by Bush to say we'll go to the moon and beyond but since he didn't come up with the money (that he spent on his wars instead), it was just an unsustainable dream. Politicians like him love to promise and then leave the problems for their successors.
What I hope the most is that Obama will soon say: Yes we can, go to Mars!!!
You will not in your life time see Obama say, "Let's go to Mars.". Period.
The Constellatiion program was a bloated technocratical debacle from its inception but its "there" now and that wasteful rocket is exacly the thing you will need for a Mars mission.
I'd much rather see a small lunar expedition than watch a Challenger accident on Mars where people suffocate or starve to death because we did it as an experiment for "Wow" rather than build up to it as part of an actual move into space. MArs is just a mega-lunar landing that we will do and then say, "Good enough". There is nothing on Mars other than geology that we cannot learn on the moon and for a dollar return, the asteroids make a heck of a lot more sense. Unmanned probes on Mars do the job quite well and could do more if funded. Investing in earth-orbit solar power has tremendous potential and has been doable since 1998 (and which by the way has been limited in practicality due to the lack of dedicated heavy lifters).
So NASA is out a heavy lifter that it was a miracle they managed to get funded at all and will take years to replace--and future missions needing one will have to fund not only the missions but the lifter too--good luck on funding that project.
But again, my own bottom line is "Cut NASA, we'll save cash and no one will care.". It's the emphasis and importance that is taken away from space exploration as a whole. I like NASA lean--it makes them be creative but I don't like economic amputations done for political capital--and that's what this is. How about some of those "stimulus" dollars for the space prgrams (you know--the over trillion bucks they gave away)...oh, wait...they are fixing footbal stadiums and gardens with that--we really need NASA's $15 billion.
Nothing personal there and the above made a good point. It comes down to: Is there a future in space as part of a growing technological economy or not? We are playing a scince fiction game here but not eveything about space is fictional. The US is espcially in a position to be the first nation to build a working economy there but politics in the dirt will keep that from ever being given as an option...that's why you will never see Obama say, "Let's go to Mars!". [fyi--I'd love to see it too]
teleportation is limited in distance and if it weren't you wouldn't want to teleport into someplace you have never been. and for now we would need gen. ships to get to another system. something along the size of that ship from independence day.
I try hard to kill impulses to bigotry when I have them, but sometimes it is very hard not to make rude generalizations about Californians. Other times, they really do leave me wondering if they're more crazy-like-foxes than they are just plain crazy. I don't know what to make of the news that their official historical commission has designated a bunch of trash at the Apollo XI site as "protected resources."
I tilt my head one way, and it's obviously going to end up on the Comedy Central News Hour. With a different tilt, I can imagine super-rich people taking family vacations on Luna and going to the Tranquility Base Museum...
so now some california police officers is going to have to patrol the moon to protect these histric aritifacts(this trash)
I'm afraid you're right. But you can always hope of course ... And considering the current situation of the US economy I can even understand why it's not the right moment ...
Eh, did you smoke something lately? - no seriously, Mars is a completely different story from the moon. It is scientifically much more interesting. Geology, yes definattely, but also the atmosphere, magnteic field, it's past very actie history etc. I have to point out that it is open if there is life on Mars and not at all imbrobable that there once was when Mars was wet. You don't find such things to explore on the moon, and by the way we still have to do even a first Mars sample return, which was done a number of times for the moon ages ago. So it's not at all only about prestige. Heck, even Europe is willing to invest and that means it's for the scientific benefits and not national prestige since the countires do it on the European level and not nationally.
You're right a heavy launcher will be needed but the fact is that a moon program, especially witj a base on the moon like Bush wanted, would become a money eater ten times worse than ISS for the next decades. And you don't need a moon base to do a Mars mission safely. There will always be risks, of course, but that is inherent in exploration. And maybe, just maybe the Obamas are smart enough to realise it would be much cheaper and quicker to develop a Mars mission in real international cooperation...? Or am I dreaming. Then the US could quickly build the heavy launcher while ESA, Roscosmos, Jaxa and maybe even the Chinese could build other elements. It could fly much more quickly and the costs be bearable for each partner.
You must not have read the article. The move by the commission appears to be self-consciously rhetorical, a gesture of support for the idea of getting Tranquility Base on the World Heritage List.
no, i didn't read it all. i stopped when it got too stupid to finish. so instead of a cali. officer it will be a complete un squad.
NASA under Obama is slowly moving away from space exploration and reprioritizing according to demand. One of those priorities is global warming. Monitoring Earth temperature, CO2 levels and atmospheric disturbances is now deemed more important than space exploration. All this was brought to light during the recent global warming scandal being investigated. If anyone here disagrees with the president's decisions then write to your elected official.
After the last NASA audit the director made a comment that if the public knew the true size of NASA's budget they would riot. Maybe NASA really has become fiscally obese. Other factors include the rise of corporate space programs boasting higher efficiency, effectiveness and innovation than NASA programs. The best ones always get bought out by the space giant however.
Your ignorance is typical, that's the part I worry over.
The budget under Hoover went from $3.1-4.6 billion, Krugman is just a lying piece of shit. Hoover never cut spending single year, he was too stupid to do something so intelligent. What he did do was cut taxes, supposedly a stupid move. The flaw in that theory is that revenue went up the following year, significantly. It was because he was a colossal fuckup and let congress bust the deficit, send the debt level up to 40% of gdp, that things didn't turn around quickly. He then compounded the errors in judgement with two bills jacking up the cost of labor beyond a sustainable level. He removed competition from the government labor market with the Davis-Bacon Act, and gave unions protection from injunction with the La Guardia Act. This led to further losses in employment, and increased costs in all those big government projects he started. He also placed tarrifs on foreign goods, which was of course reciprocated by the foreigners.
The previous depression, which no one talks about, happened in much the same way. This time, government fucked up in a monumental manner. Government spending increased from $1.9 billion in 1917to $12.7 billion in 1918. Everybody wave to their money. So, there went the recession of 1918, and the depression of 1920 when they jacked it up to $18.5 billion for 1919. At this point they realized they were fucking morons and dropped spending back down to an obscene level, only $6.4 billion for 1920.
We then had the roaring twenties start a few months into 1921 and federal expenditures went back down near the $3 billion mark where they stayed till shit tard Hoover screwed us further into the ground when the Federal Reserve contracted the money supply too far and caused a recession.
Nothing sucks like a Hoover, and we've got one in office now. Falling reciepts and rising expenditures proceeding a market crash caused by the government in the first place. Bush was a lot like Hoover too. Progressives are all the same really, economically stupid.
I know. Like the old folks that eat canned cat food because they can't afford vastly cheaper canned people food...
With Nasa's budget an average of 0.25 of 1% of the budget, even at the height of manned exploration (Apollo program) the returns have been immense. Computers, solar cells, handheld calculators, instant beverages, freeze dried food stuffs, and on and on. None of this would be possible without manned exploration. Sending out only robotic explorers yields is fine does not yield any advances except those that maybe benefit the next robotic mission. Only manned exploration will yield benefits to man. After all, if in the past manned exploration was not done then America would still be undiscoverd and advancements in sailing would not have happened.
When the money exists in the first place, I'll be more than happy to see a ten fold increase in spending for space exploration.
As it doesn't exist, I'm not going to get excited over the lack of exploration...
Not neccesarily. I thought it could be enlightening to realize those electromagnetic spheres probably HAVE (no known "natural" phenomenon can produce this; highly probable conclusion:artificial) already crossed.
Now this is a pretty hot potato for a topic so i usually tend to let the data speak for itself.
Lets just consider this data is what it looks like... what is that telling about the universe? Build a EM telescope and point it in random directions and SUCESSFULLY recive something? Considering the size of the (known) universe that is either the most unlikely stroke of (bad?)luck ever OR we are seriously underestimating the amount of "traffic" out there.
sorry i blame dems for this one. since all they want to do is increase taxes
Do you need to read that line a second time? You might have missed it.
i guess i should have read the whole thing sorry.
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