M. A. R. S. Mars, bitches! Orion's first flight a success.

Szlia

Szlia

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Mist_sl said:
Starting to developing the technology to realistically spread off of earth NOW is extremely important. (Climate change + rising population + dwindling resources) / 1*Earth is a math problem with no other solution. If we wait until the coming crisis is readily apparent it will be far too late.
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My questions then are: How bad must the climate become for it to be worse than Venus, Mars or Europa? Why would rising population be a problem if you are able to have self-sustaining human communities? What resource can dwindle and be readily available away from Earth?



As for other projects, I assume one can find big projects in the fields of energy, food, transportation or fundamental physics. Build a super high energy particle accelerator in orbit around the moon or something...

About asteroid mining... wouldn't bringing from a space a gigantic lump of platinum just make the value of the metal plummet, royally pissing off the people involved in the traditional mining of platinum?
 
Mudcrush Durtfeet

Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Kaines_sl said:
Name one.
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Two:

Fusion power.

Self-replicating mining and industrial robots that can be used on asteroids or the moon (or mars) to build things and make fuel.

Both of these things would lead to easier to make colonies or bases on the moon/mars/wherever.

But going to mars first? Not quite so useful imo.
 
Kuro

Kuro

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Szlia_sl said:
About asteroid mining... wouldn't bringing from a space a gigantic lump of platinum just make the value of the metal plummet, royally pissing off the people involved in the traditional mining of platinum?
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You just have to be hush-hush about it! Sell all the platinum at once at different places around the world so no one notices until you've got your money and can pay off the money spent on getting the Plat!
 
iannis

iannis

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That's one of those problems that would be nice to have.

Honestly, if you find 20 million metric tons of platinum floating around in space, drag it to some sort of far orbit around the earth, and proceed to mine it I expect what would happen is not the bottom would fall out of platinum but that a cartel would emerge like it does with diamond.
 
ZyyzYzzy

ZyyzYzzy

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I don't get Szila's argument. There is plenty of resources (money and human) to pursue a ton of projects that will push the bounds of capabilties and force us to expand them. Why not a manned mission to Mars? It is one of those that appeal to the masses and would fulfill one of the most romanticized human dreams, walking on another planet.

Does this project preculde humanity from researching anything else? No. What does is the unwillingness and short-sighted view a lot of people have to pursue prjects that push and require us to invent new technology.
 
Mario Speedwagon

Mario Speedwagon

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Szila's posts, to me, basically sound like "I can't conceive of the long term benefits of this right now so let's just never do it". Space exploration is the single greatest endeavor that mankind can embark on. The implications of advanced space travel are limitless.
 
Tuco

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Szlia_sl said:
About asteroid mining... wouldn't bringing from a space a gigantic lump of platinum just make the value of the metal plummet, royally pissing off the people involved in the traditional mining of platinum?
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Yes. And it's possible that bringing back asteroids chock full of heavy earth metals like plat, iridium, gold, rhodium, osmium and ruthenium would also have incredible benefits to our technology by lowering the price of them such that we could use them more frequently.

I'm not a metallurgist or electronic materials engineer so I don't know exactly what the real-world effects would be of halving the cost of palladium, but I can only assume that it'd be beneficial as a whole.

As for profitability, there is a supply vs cost relationship where if we find a cost effective way to wrangle asteroids and chuck golden whiffle balls at the earth we'll increase the supply of gold and drop its price. But as we do that we also drop the cost of asteroid mining also and much more dramatically. I feel like if asteroid mining ever becomes profitable (which might never happen!) it'll be profitable for the rest of human existence.

The other aspect of asteroid mining is that if we can extract goods in asteroids in space we can use it in space and avoid the incredibly high costs of moving materials into orbit. Just being able to park an icy asteroid by the ISS and having a solar powered water miner would reduce the costs of operating the ISS. Is it plausible to move an asteroid into LEO and keep it there? I dunno.
 
Abefroman

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Mist_sl said:
Large scale hydroponic farming on an ocean colony would be a good endeavor too here on earth, but in addition to space exploration.

These programs are all so cheap compared to the trillions we waste on things that are net negative, like wars.
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Wars actually have brought about a ton of advancment in many fields. Sadly we just don't seem to ever have money for shit unless it requires killing people.
 
kaid

kaid

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Honestly just the spin off discoveries that tend to happen when pushing to the very edge of human capability tends to be worth the cost. Just look at all the stuff that spun off from the original space race.
 
lurkingdirk

lurkingdirk

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Space.

Anything like this and I get giddy. I so hope that I'm able to be in space before I die. I'd go to Mars if they asked me.

giggidy
 
Void

Void

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lurkingdirk_sl said:
Space.

Anything like this and I get giddy. I so hope that I'm able to be in space before I die. I'd go to Mars if they asked me.

giggidy
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This is exactly how I feel. They are going to have to step up their game a lot though if I'm going to make it.
 
I

Itzena_sl

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Kedwyn_sl said:
Cool. Can't help but feel we've spent the last 40 years and the next 20 years in neutral though.
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That's because the shuttle was a Bad Idea done moderately well. It wasokayat carrying people into low orbit (except when it wasn't), it wasokayat supply runs for the ISS, it wasokayat launching satellites into LEO. Rocket+capsule would have been better at the first two, and unmanned rocket far better for the third.

Also M.A.R.R.S. has two "R"s:
 
Kaines

Kaines

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Itzena_sl said:
That's because the shuttle was a Bad Idea done moderately well. It was okay at carrying people into low orbit (except when it wasn't), it was okay at supply runs for the ISS, it was okay at launching satellites into LEO. Rocket+capsule would have been better at the first two, and unmanned rocket far better for the third.
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All true. But we needed a "spaceship" to sell to the people who write the NASA checks so that they wouldn't scrap the whole idea of manned space missions after we decided the moon no longer interested us. And the space shuttle did that for several years. Now the people who write NASA's checks are so disinterested in anything that doesn't get them re-elected I'm surprised NASA has lasted as long as it has.
 
iannis

iannis

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Itzena_sl said:
That's because the shuttle was a Bad Idea done moderately well. It wasokayat carrying people into low orbit (except when it wasn't), it wasokayat supply runs for the ISS, it wasokayat launching satellites into LEO. Rocket+capsule would have been better at the first two, and unmanned rocket far better for the third.

Also M.A.R.R.S. has two "R"s:
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I think it wasn't such a bad idea exactly because it was versatile. There were better ways to do any one particular thing that it did but there was not a better way to do ALL of the particular things that it did.

So instead of needing a new program any time you want to launch a satellite you schedule a load on the shuttle instead. That's EXTREMELY practical, if not the most efficient.

And it kept some focus once we decided that the Moon is basically just a big rock and no longer worth the money. That's really important too. It could have easily been 40 years with no manned presence at all. We easily could have decided, politically, "Let the russians do it. Who gives a damn. We've been often enough that we see there's not much reason to go back. If they don't believe us... meh."

And I might be wrong about this (seriously I'm guessing), but I don't think they could have retrofitted the hubble with a 1-shot craft. I think they actually needed a platform like the shuttle for that.
 
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