the NEXT page of exploration

12/16/2011 8:52:37 PM

THE FINAL FRONTIER: PAGE 2

12/16/2011 9:02:08 PM

Quote :

"The lull in scientific and exploratory advances would be unusual."

We're going to continue to find more earth like planets, probably some closer to earth too.

The push to explore more will only increase as time goes on, and probably increase a lot.

If the private space ventures don't end up sucking, that will help peoples' imaginations, and those private companies can cut more corners to send a man to moon or to accelerate the development of a space-based (or moon based) launching platform.

I predict a bright future for both the US and space travel.

12/16/2011 10:04:35 PM

i skimmed but i didnt see anyone mention the fact that humans only develop the way we do (bone/organs/skin/etc...) because of our atmosphere and earth gravity. i'm not saying we shouldn't head out into space but be prepared to see something that is far from resembling "earth" human.

12/16/2011 10:32:50 PM

Quote :

"The parallels between the Roman empire and the American empire are too numerous to be dismissed. Progress is not a given."

As the Roman Empire and Europe collapsed into the Dark Ages, Muslim and Chinese scholars were keeping progress going pretty well. Before that, the progress of Greek technology slowed dramatically -- when that country was taken over by the Romans, who kept moving right along. I didn't say it would always be America that led the way.

Of course, I also didn't say that a lull in advances would be unthinkable or impossible. I said "unusual" and I meant it. Presumably, the human race could be set back by nuclear war, major pandemic disease, or some other mode of societal collapse. All of these things could happen, but they'd be fucking unusual.

12/17/2011 12:55:34 AM

Really? I would say war, famine, disease are much more historically prevalent than times of peace and innovation.

12/17/2011 2:24:25 AM

War, famine, and disease are not by themselves obstacles to innovation. Famine encourages new developments in agriculture. Disease encourages new treatments, and promote innovation in other ways -- the Black Plague was instrumental in bringing about the Renaissance. War encourages all sorts of things, not just weapons but multipurpose inventions -- since we're talking about space exploration, we might as well consider the enormous leaps made in rocketry and jet propulsion during WWII, to say nothing of nuclear power. All of which we would have developed in time otherwise, but which we put together pretty goddamned fast under the pressure of conflict.

War, famine, and disease are commonplace not only in the sense that they are regular occurrences, but also in the sense that most of them are, well, commonplace. The sort of conflict that would be necessary to put a dent in innovation, this day in age, would have to be huge without precedent: basically, a nuclear holocaust. A disease that set us back noticeably would have to be worse than anything we've seen in many lifetimes -- even the Spanish Influenza didn't slow down the march of progress very much. And famine would have to reach inconceivable levels to slow us down.

The point I'm trying to make is that for a cataclysm to seriously impede human progress, it has to be very potent and very global. The collapse of the Roman Empire was potent, but it left China and the Arab world alone, and they continued to make important developments. The Spanish Influenza pandemic was global, not not potent enough to do much. Disasters, in short, are common. Disasters big enough to put the brakes on technological development are rare.

---

Of all the comments I've made here, I have to say the response to this one surprises me the most. I had thought that the exponential increase of technological development was more or less a given, especially after the industrial revolution and most especially after the development of computers.

12/17/2011 2:44:55 AM

As far as space travel is concerned, I don't think we really have exponentially increased our ability. Other tech like cell phones, computers, etc...yes.

We haven't made any significant leaps in putting a man in deep space in the past 30-40 year. Sure we can put a man in low orbit and keep him there for years, but we've been doing that since Skylab essentially. Hell, we are at a point now, where the US gov't cannot put a man in LEO without buying a seat on a rocket from the Russians (and eventually a private company)

We went from first flight of a heavier than air machine to landing on the moon in 67 years...that's incredible, where will we be in 2036 (67 years after moon landing), maybe if we're lucky, a guy on Mars?

12/17/2011 3:57:18 AM

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-breakthrough-double-solar-energy-output-20111216,0,3897047.story?track=rss

Solar already cheap at $1 a watt? Try 50 cents per watt per panel. A few more breakthroughs like this and it doesn't make sense to build a home without them. Not to mention permanent space colonies or probes.

Quote :

"Chemistry professor Xiaoyang Zhu and his team discovered that an organic plastic semiconductor could double the number of electrons harvested out of one photon of sunlight. Yep, plastic."

Somebody was talking about "exponential" I believe?

[Edited on December 17, 2011 at 12:01 PM. Reason : quote]

12/17/2011 11:55:20 AM

Quote :

"We haven't made any significant leaps in putting a man in deep space in the past 30-40 year. Sure we can put a man in low orbit and keep him there for years, but we've been doing that since Skylab essentially. Hell, we are at a point now, where the US gov't cannot put a man in LEO without buying a seat on a rocket from the Russians (and eventually a private company) We went from first flight of a heavier than air machine to landing on the moon in 67 years...that's incredible, where will we be in 2036 (67 years after moon landing), maybe if we're lucky, a guy on Mars? "

I think this is because there haven't been any "goals." Our unmanned probes, i would say, have increased exponentially in their capabilities.

We're well on our way to knowing what we need to know about mars to have a mission there.

12/17/2011 2:34:47 PM

yeh this huge fucker is definitely a leap '2x' above hubble. let's not kid ourselves

12/18/2011 10:56:09 AM

Quote :

" It costs $10,000 per pound to just put you in near Earth orbit over the planet. That is your weight in solid gold. To put you on the Moon costs roughly $100,000 per pound. And to put you on Mars costs roughly $1,000,000 per pound, or your weight in diamonds. "

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/16/opinion/michio-kaku-life-2100/index.html

12/18/2011 5:25:13 PM

^subtle jab at obesity. hahaha. i approve.


i had a nice read here about realistic possibilities to build long range space ships

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/realdesigns.php

[Edited on December 18, 2011 at 6:48 PM. Reason : link]

12/18/2011 6:46:38 PM

Ahaha, the Webb Telescope is a horribly over budget/mismanaged project.

[Edited on December 18, 2011 at 7:44 PM. Reason : b]

12/18/2011 7:44:18 PM

^ it's still pretty awesome.

12/18/2011 9:28:36 PM

It is a really impressive piece of technology, there is no denying that. However, whether or not it actually gets off the ground and works is iffy. Right now, I think it's schedule to go up by 2018, also, keep in mind, it'll be at the L2 point if NASA screws up and there is something wrong, game over. We can't fix it with a shuttle like the Hubble.

Spirit and Opportunity were much more impressive to me than the Webb telescope. Cheaper, efficient, very well managed program.

12/18/2011 9:33:14 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oxTMUTOz0w&feature=related

12/18/2011 10:33:48 PM

^ "Islamic fundamentalist destroyed the enlightenment era of the Middle East"
I just don't feel there is any threat to our ability to explore and grow at this point. (Unless we let some extreme violent islamic sects get nukes and ignore when radicals flare up)
Hopefully we are establishing a world where we can finally not have to deal with some of that and peacefully evolve and explore. There's always going to be a hitler/osama bin laden that comes around every so often. Hopefully because of the internet and media we'll destroy that shit before they get any real momentum.


^^yeh man. i hope they learn from their mistakes. either way, the possibility to actually get images of the big bang and pretty decent imagery of planets/blackholes/whatever else they find, somehow makes it priceless

:/ just my2cents



[Edited on December 18, 2011 at 10:44 PM. Reason : ,]

12/18/2011 10:37:18 PM

^

Why waste time explore when the rapture is coming and the return to the kingdom of heaven is near?

12/18/2011 10:54:45 PM

Quote :

"it'll be at the L2 point if NASA screws up and there is something wrong, game over"

That's the plan. Same as with that Mars Science Lab thing. So far it's on track, but we'll have to wait a few more months to find out if the precision landing goes to plan.

Every mission is a risk, and not just a small one, but there is a major % chance of failure, as the history of our space program shows. I think that with Hubble we learned a good lesson, which is to design missions that we can allow to fail, otherwise the unplanned costs will be more than the original upfront costs.

The complexity of our robotics will increase over time, but so far, there's no reason to believe that this correlates to a higher chance that the missions go kaput. The fact that James Webb is much more complex is entirely expected. But its chance of failure depends only on the evolutionary technology advancement process.

Hubble is only one of many space missions that failed. The problem with Hubble is that it continued to fail over and over again. It succeed after that but it might not have been worth it.

The investment in the JWT is a decision based entirely on our degree of commitment to space. As a mission it has merit, and the risk is the normal kind of risk for this stuff.

[Edited on December 18, 2011 at 11:10 PM. Reason : well, it might not be at the L2 point if somethin breaks, we don't know that]

[Edited on December 18, 2011 at 11:11 PM. Reason : ']

12/18/2011 11:10:15 PM

^^So exploration shouldn't be done until the jews/christians/muslims/hindus are eradicated and only big bang / no possibility other than atheism theorists exist like yourself. cool. enjoy your boring life waiting for that to happen.... more power to you man.


^The L2 point is brilliant. Esp if it can rotate with it's solar panels constantly facing the sun to produce energy while shading the mirrors on the top from solar photons interfering with the images. i guess that's the idea there.


^yeh speaking of risk, the russians have tried to land/orbit/pass/simply 'get to' mars/venus around 50 times. almost every single one of them has been a colossal failure. and they were 'religion free' for the majority of those tries too somehow flying right in the face of CaelNCSU's theory


[Edited on December 19, 2011 at 3:15 PM. Reason : ,]

12/19/2011 2:51:03 PM

I'm totally fine with religious people doing space exploration until one of them references the Bible for the value of Pi

Quote :

"^ "Islamic fundamentalist destroyed the enlightenment era of the Middle East" "

Zuh? Sarcasm? The exact opposite is the case. In both Europe AND the Middle East, religion was the principle motivator in scientific research right up to and during the enlightenment. Christian monks made it a point to "Understand the mind of God" when studying astronomy, while Muslim scholars came up with advanced calculus, geometry and architecture to exalt God in their creations while avoiding direct depictions or graven images.

The pendulum swings both ways, religion can bolster science or hinder it, and whether it does varies over time and even within the same religion. Now that science has become an institution in and of itself, more religious groups seem to be act more like they're threatened rather than inspired by it...

[Edited on December 21, 2011 at 3:15 PM. Reason : .]

12/21/2011 3:10:48 PM

^

Islam was taking route at the tale end of the Golden Ages, while other factors may have given them a hiccup I think there is a reason out of a billion people there are only a handful of Noble Prizes...

12/21/2011 3:48:10 PM

Quote :

" Islam was taking route at the tale end of the Golden Ages, "

What Golden Age are you talking about? There's a historical period called the Islamic Golden Age that started around the 8th century, 200 years after Mohammad, and enjoyed heated scientific advancement for more than 8 centuries. Abu Ali al-Hasan practically invented the scientific method plus a host of methods in geometry, physics, mechanics, and astronomy. Seriously, read up on the guy, you'll be impressed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhazen. Without him, we'd have no Newton, who directly referenced him in Principia

Quote :

"while other factors may have given them a hiccup I think there is a reason out of a billion people there are only a handful of Noble Prizes..."

I think that might have to do with the Nobel Prizes starting in 1901, being mostly an in-group European competition. By the time it was truly global, the Muslim world had pretty much been crushed by the dissolution of the Ottoman empire and subjugation by British and American imperialism. Along what you were getting at, though, this was also around the time some Islamic scholars started forbidding corpse desecration, which kinda holds back medicine (This was the case in Europe for hundreds of years until around the 17th century), as well as making a few other natural sciences taboo. However, this was a new development, Islam had previously enjoyed an 800 year reign as global science champs (Having taken the crown from the Chinese) during which Europeans were muck-farming and trying their hardest to remember what the Greeks and Romans had figured out (most of that knowledge was last with the fall, although much of it had transmitted to the Arab world beforehand).

Just like how Christianity used to be the principle funder of science, now it's one of the prime opponents as scientific results increasingly challenge its dogma. Times change. I get that you guys don't like Muslims, but that doesn't entitle you to just invent history and downplay their actual achievements.


[Edited on December 21, 2011 at 4:05 PM. Reason : .]

12/21/2011 3:57:00 PM

Once again, Neil deGrasse Tyson explains:

http://youtu.be/6oxTMUTOz0w

12/21/2011 4:09:10 PM

Quote :

"Just like how Christianity used to be the principle funder of science, now it's one of the prime opponents as scientific results increasingly challenge its dogma. Times change. I get that you guys don't like Muslims, but that doesn't entitle you to just invent history and downplay their actual achievements."

I don't think anyone was trying to downplay Islamic scientific achievement. As you note, times change, and when the times did change it was the religious belief that held back previous scientific achievement. That the religious didn't have this problem before doesn't it wasn't their problem when it appeared.

Catholics believe in Evolution but Creationists don't. Grumpy would tell you that this means that the Creationists religious beliefs has nothing to do with their lack of belief in science but of course this is as ridiculous as claiming religion had and has nothing to do with the suppression of science in the Islamic world.

12/22/2011 8:56:20 AM

there's a few other religion threads around the corner---->


NASA building a program to take man out of LEO

Design specifically built to handle a fully fueled departure stage for manned flight beyond orbit.



Maiden flight planned in 5 years. 2017.

12/22/2011 2:18:04 PM

"planned"

12/22/2011 2:39:21 PM

Hey at least a date is set. That's usually half the battle.

12/22/2011 5:13:35 PM

what happened to that entire deal about privatizing space travel? I thought NASA wasn't going to be doing this stuff.

12/22/2011 5:18:46 PM

If that's the same project i'm thinking of, isn't it not yet fully funded?

12/22/2011 7:17:31 PM

Quote :

"Grumpy would tell you that this means that the Creationists religious beliefs has nothing to do with their lack of belief in science"

Swing and a miss.

But I like that in a thread in which I stood firmly with human scientific achievement and progress and predicted that it would continue to develop at an increasing rate, eventually sending man throughout the solar system and universe, you tried to put me in bed with the Creationists.

12/22/2011 10:08:32 PM

since i was completely ignored earlier:

Quote :

"i skimmed but i didnt see anyone mention the fact that humans only develop the way we do (bone/organs/skin/etc...) because of our atmosphere and earth gravity. i'm not saying we shouldn't head out into space but be prepared to see something that is far from resembling "earth" human."

this whole thread is about technology, no one is mentioning the biology of it. we haven't even gotten over the stigma of weird mutations on earth, i find it hard to believe we will just embrace whatever we "turn" into once the real radiation + breeding kicks in

12/23/2011 12:01:36 AM

I think the reason we're not mentioning it is that you're putting the cart well before the horse. Permanent human settlements and several generations of people born and raised in those settlements will have to happen before serious deviation from terrestrial norms becomes apparent.

There's also the fact that replicating Earthlike conditions is obviously a prerequisite for expanding beyond the planet or solar system. With concerted effort, we can replicate a lot of those things now (atmosphere, temperature, etc). Effective radiation shielding is probably also within our "easy" grasp. Recreating our gravity is a more difficult prospect, especially on settlements on fixed bodies; my understanding is that we could simulate it reasonably well on spacecraft through rotation, though I won't claim to know much about the physics of all that.

In the initial phases of extraterrestrial colonization it also seems likely that self-sustaining generations of people would not exist. With the moon and Mars, I'd think the path would involve sterilization or, pending research into the effects of space travel on pregnancy, immediate return to Earth. That would mitigate some of the effects.

In the long term? You're absolutely right. Even if stringent restrictions on reproduction exist for a while, Jeff Goldblum had it right in Jurassic Park: "Life finds a way." Or rather, human horniness well. People will fuck and get pregnant so often that either we'll start ignoring it or some will get through in spite of our best efforts.

Lastly, I think that by the time all of these things come to pass, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will have returned to Earth in His glory and started the rapture so it won't be an issue. ( to disco_stu) Seriously, though, my gut says that if we haven't figured out how to get over differences in people by then, we'll have all killed each other. And if we have figured it out, nobody's going to freak over giant Martian people or blue Ionians or whatever the fuck else comes about.

12/23/2011 1:26:39 AM

Quote :

"Permanent human settlements and several generations of people born and raised in those settlements will have to happen before serious deviation from terrestrial norms becomes apparent."

Why? A couple generations to way too short for any genetic changes to take place. As such, whatever changes we do see will occur with the very first child to be born there.

That said, experiments have been done breeding animals in orbit with only minor changes observed. Sure, a human born and raised in space will look different, perhaps taller and most definitely a lot less bone and muscle mass, but they will not be blue or anything close to the differences observed between the different races born right here on earth.

12/23/2011 7:53:20 AM

For one thing, like I said, we're going to take great lengths to make settlements as Earthlike as possible. So while changes will exist from the start, they might not be apparent.

Also, I took the thrust of GoodLock's post to be aimed at the eventual development of a separate "race" of extraterrestrial people, which would involve a genetic component requiring generations to develop.

12/23/2011 11:11:20 AM

Something tells me that's going to take a few thousand years (if done naturally)

seems like we are on pace to cracking the human software OS and being able to produce a species that is right for the job. i give it about 75 years until we are building other types of chemical human lifeforms to do the manual labor of exploring the cosmos and finding suitable replacements for earth to allow for natural reproduction as well.

12/23/2011 1:24:33 PM

build space elevator with superduper nanocarbonmagic fiber tech, cost of space shit goes down, get rid of that no-nuke in space treaty shit, start making project orion style kinect plate nuke bomb ship things, get to proxima cent in a lifetime. improve that shit or make a hydrogen sucking magic ship or a nuclear fission deal and get to a high percentage of speed of light and BOOM relativity means ship time of <50 years and u can travel to the edge of the universe but buzzkill everyone u ever knew is dead and the earth is charred shit. or fuck it wormholes idk.

12/24/2011 1:28:32 AM

^^

12/24/2011 7:38:01 AM

Quote :

"build space elevator with superduper nanocarbonmagic fiber tech, cost of space shit goes down"

again with the space elevator banter! You're talking about the price of something going down that we've never built on a macroscopic scale, right?

This is the same as proposing that building ITER will drive down the cost of making fusion power. We've made small amounts of fusion power before, so clearly the rest is an engineering inevitability. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are energetic limitations that will blow the idea in the case of a space elevator too. Although the real issue that blows the space elevator are the alternatives. If we had the technology to economically build a space elevator we wouldn't need a space elevator.

12/24/2011 9:37:08 AM

youre not looking at the big picture just drop that bad boy in geosynch orbit and anchors away you cant afford NOT to have an elevator then the cost goes down you got to spend money to make money trust me i know what im talking about its simple economics

12/24/2011 5:29:12 PM

when we stop laughing at it, it becomes a reality

12/31/2011 9:42:13 AM

No way we could get to alpha cent. In 50 years. We Can't travel nearly at the speed of light. It would take more like 5,000 years.

1/1/2012 4:04:40 PM

At .1c it would take ~40 years.

1/1/2012 5:30:22 PM

.1c is a tall order

1/1/2012 5:55:35 PM

Theoretically doable with current tech

1/1/2012 7:05:52 PM

we have current designs that would allow us to reach 0.33% of the speed of light.

it's just nobody has the care to invest in it. i'm sure we will soon

1/2/2012 2:24:42 PM

Actually, given how absurdly useful Voyager has been to science, I'm surprised that we don't do more of that.

I think it will be a long time before we can fly a probe that will be a precision flyby of Alpha Cent.

But since the interstellar neighborhood is of such interest, why don't we send out probes in several directions just to sniff out the parameters of space? Keep in mind, this has a time premium. It takes so long to travel that distance that it behooves us to start soon.

Voyager 1 is traveling at 0.006 % of light speed by the way.

We're going to send out a lot of lemming-like probes to empty interstellar space before we can do a flyby of Alpha Cent or any other star.

We will do a flyby of another star looong before we capture orbit around another star. And all of this will be small robotic probes. Autonomous is a given since we're talking light-years away.

A flyby requires 1/4th the propellant of a rendezvous mission, if I have the kinematics right.

1/2/2012 2:44:39 PM

^
I'd like you to meet, New Horizons...



current location:

1/2/2012 3:01:12 PM

Quote :

" Keep in mind, this has a time premium. It takes so long to travel that distance that it behooves us to start soon"

It is so far that anything we send off would get beat by probes with future technology. If we send something that could get there in 100 years today, 50 years from now we will have something that can get there in 50 years and 75 years from now we will have something that can get there in 25 years so theres no point in sending the "old stuff" of today.

1/2/2012 3:28:14 PM