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Space Exploration: Yay or Nay.

Space Exploration: Yay or Nay?


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    53

Timeless

Playnerd
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First off I just want to say I'm not in debate mode, as all I want to do is step out myself and hear other perspectives and view points on this matter:

Especially if you're strongly for it or against it.

I know where I stand in this subject. I'm for it.

Anyways, give me all the reasons why it's interesting, or not, worth it, or not... shoot everything you can think of.
 

JocktheMotie

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I'm for it, but the technical hurdles are rather extreme. I don't see any huge advance until Fusion power is developed.

There are a lot of problems we have now that demand our money and attention though, unfortunately :(
 

EcK

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There are always more short term issues to deal with, but the sort of ressources the exploitation of, for example, the asteroid belt could bring would allow for an economic environnement congruent with the basic principle of capitalistic societies and all the pros they brought us, meaning of course, substained growth. That's not possible in the quasi closed system we call earth (except for sunlight which locally counteract entropy rise and so allows for homostasic organism to go through evolution and give rise to metacognition, tool creation and use and therefore civilisations)

It'd be sort of a waste to end the whole thing because feeding bank accounts the easy way for a few years was more important than the long term wealth and development of the species.

anybody with half a brain should see this as obvious, it's simple math, not philosophy.
 
P

Phantonym

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Yay! Go for it! :static: I'd love to live long enough to see something really interesting happening with all this.

There are a lot of problems we have now that demand our money and attention though, unfortunately :(

Oh, wait, yeah, I forgot about that. :doh:
 

EcK

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If they ever find some way to give important life extension to us rich folks the banalisation of the tech, socioeconomical and political issues arising from it, geopolitical polarisations, fear of population pressure and people feeling concerned by long term thinking for once would accelerate / allow the whole process to get started.
 

nozflubber

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Explore which part(s) of space and how?

I'm for it as long as we try to keep it within our solar system. I think we should colonize and terraform Mars ASAP. But as jock mentions, it's damn near impossible to explore space outside our little corner here due to technical problems. Even with fusion engine reactors, we still only could reach a fraction of c. Break c somehow and i'd say Go Nuts!
 

disregard

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As far I'm concerned with our space program in the US, those billions would be better spent on rejuvenating the economy of the nation from which they were generated (borrowed).
 

EcK

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Look, we're not talking about breaking the C limit, an universe with causality implies a limit to C (absolute speed).
What's needed are engineers. And you don't even need to go fast to get started. As long as u set up a continuous flow Who cares if the ressources arrive 10 years later if they arrive every month. And with the sort of growth allowed by arrival of ressources on earth and around it you could easily boost research for new space related stuff along with the average confort of living of the planet (i said average, i won't go into north vs south talks)
 

EcK

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As far I'm concerned with our space program in the US, those billions would be better spent on rejuvenating the economy of the nation from which they were generated (borrowed).

You can only take so much out of one hat.
 

nozflubber

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ten years? what I have seen suggests it'll take more like 1,000 years to send anything to alpha centauri(the closest star system to us) at the speeds of our fastest shuttle/probe.

so yeah we could start sending stuff off that'll get there in 1,000+ years, but like..... why? we'd need to cryogenically freeze people, or else we would be sending a series of shipments containing nothing but robotic equipment to explore a possibly empty solar system.
 

ajblaise

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I definitely support publicly funded space exploration. Using manned spacecraft can be a waste of money though, unmanned exploration is a lot cheaper.

There isn't much of a profit motive for much of the research NASA does, so we need organizations like this. People like Ron Paul would rather sell off NASA's assets to private entities and scrap our space program.

There are a lot of problems we have now that demand our money and attention though, unfortunately :(

NASA's budget is really hardly even a drop in the bucket. We got it.
 

EcK

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I'm for it, but the technical hurdles are rather extreme. I don't see any huge advance until Fusion power is developed.

There are a lot of problems we have now that demand our money and attention though, unfortunately :(

If you look at the possible viable 'timelines' you can either have substained growth via space exploration or stagnation, heavy reduction of population etc. But the difficulties are at least as important as the exploitation of the solar system for ressources and growth.
You'd need major sociological change and most probably an united earth governement, and i'm not even mentioning that the human beings have a natural tendency to explore and grow (I mean, Nietzschean Will to Power to be summarize via 'pop culture')

+ there's the whole issue of having all ur eggs in one nuclear basket, which by itself create tensions that can lead to dissentions and go all 'self realising prophecy' on your ass. You could argue the contrary with the 'space exploration' scenario, saying that nuclear strikes would be more plausible if earth is not the only place we have, but then again most issues arise from the very nature of earth as a closed system with limited ressources (again, appart from sunlight)
 

JocktheMotie

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I definitely support publicly funded space exploration. Using manned spacecraft can be a waste of money though, unmanned exploration is a lot cheaper.

There isn't much of a profit motive for much of the research NASA does, so we need organizations like this. People like Ron Paul would rather sell off NASA's assets to private entities and scrap our space program.



NASA's budget is really hardly even a drop in the bucket. We got it.

While this is true about the budget, the increase in resources the space program needs to really attract great minds and get to the level that we desire can be higher than I think some people would want.

It's also hard to justify when things locally aren't exactly ship shape. People are going to ask, why spend 10 billion dollars to study some space rocks when you got this going on across the pond:

vulture-child1.jpg
 

nozflubber

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just doing some quick calculations

alpha centauri estimated distance - 4.3 light year(ly). 1ly = 9.3 x 10^12 km. The fastest probe we've sent out, helios, is upwards around 250 x 10^3 km/h. divine, we get like 4 x 10^9 hours or 1.3 x 10^8 days, or around 3.3 x 10^4 years. like 3 thousand years at our best speeds.


We CAN go faster, however. The problem is, if i remember my modern physics right, is that the energy it takes to accelerate closer and closer to c increases exponentially the faster you get.

so if we get a manned spacecraft going 1/2 of c, we COULD get it in there in ten years give or take, is that what is assumed?


Someone find a physics book plz, i'm not at my apartment :( find the energy it takes to accelerate to relativistic speeds, think that's why we would want fusion reactors like jock said.


edit: found it: E (kinetic) = (m c^2)/ (1 - (v/c)^2) - m c^2
 

EcK

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While this is true about the budget, the increase in resources the space program needs to really attract great minds and get to the level that we desire can be higher than I think some people would want.

It's also hard to justify when things locally aren't exactly ship shape. People are going to ask, why spend 10 billion dollars to study some space rocks when you got this going on across the pond:

vulture-child1.jpg

Because the many outweight the few, and the fact that the 'many' are not born yet isn't an excuse when we're talking about major timeline altering choices on mind boggling scales.
Feel good solutions only take you so far, and even without accounting for the extremism of the example you used I think it selfish to make that choice if it only leads to more suffering in the end once you're dead and buried.

1. It's not like we're spending trillions on dollar on the poor african kids already and that the mean space agencies are going to take the bread out of their mouthes.
2. Ever heard of the parable of the talents?
3. As I said before, I'm not talking about 'moral choices' or whatever, we're talking about hard facts. If you don't want space exploration, then you have to accept heavy population reduction, and in countries where people just won't listen and 'll keep at making kids it can only lead to hunger, death and wars.
4. It's borderline stupid to try to force people to go against human nature (growth, expansion etc.) when the most logical solution allows for our natural tendencies to exist and florish.
5. (logical consequence of 4) The other solution (timeline), so no space exploration and stagnation would pretty much mean an unique totalitarian regime with heavy use of morals, sociological 'solidification' etc.
 

Antimony

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While I do care about what is going on in other countries, I think in general our money needs to be better spent. I think space exploration is a wonderful thing, and we should cut costs on the stupid things, rather than on something like space exploration.

I think we should cut out the stupid things, and be able to spend money on space AND helping other people.
 

ajblaise

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While this is true about the budget, the increase in resources the space program needs to really attract great minds and get to the level that we desire can be higher than I think some people would want.

It's also hard to justify when things locally aren't exactly ship shape. People are going to ask, why spend 10 billion dollars to study some space rocks when you got this going on across the pond:

vulture-child1.jpg

NASA-funded scientists would argue that the US is already lagging behind in science as it is. So they can point to NASA accomplishments that helped push science forward and say they contribute to retaining American superpower status. You can also say keeping America ahead of the game in science and technology does benefit us economically and pays back dividends, which could make it easier to do more humanitarian support.
 
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