John Glenn: 1921-2016

[Disgustipated]

People have been living in space, continuously, for 16 years.

I really shouldn't have to explain what I meant to you.

 

[cleaver]

Unless there's a viable solution to folks living in space or another planet or whatever, the Space Program is a futile clusterfuck of a money drain.


Also, McGriff the Crime Dog came to our school so there.

disagreed....

even if you simply intended to mean
the manned space program

nonetheless,
despite your position... manned spaceflight will continue
until and unless some factor(s) determine
that that environment cannot be tolerated for a long enough term
to either get to a "there"
or progress past those factors...

the science gathered during the iss twins study
( the bulk of which has yet to be disseminated )
may have some interesting issues to address.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

I would hardly call virtually no activity towards a lunar base in 44 years a "crash program".
You've, for the most part, not misconstrued what I meant. I would really hope the human race survives. Me personally? Not so much. My survival chances with either "solution" are pretty much none to infinitesimal.


I don't think we'd have developed better terrestrial navigation solutions if everyone had refused to sail until we'd invented the sextant.
A pretty good number of invented solutions used for space travel problems were invented because of the issues faced in space travel.
IMO saying we shouldn't do something because we don't have a solution for a problem we might encounter would lead to very little ever getting done.

I'm NOT suggesting we "SHOULDN'T do something because we DON'T HAVE A SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM." I'm simply arguing FOR YOUR philosophical approach to human space travel which you just said I haven't misconstrued -- namely that it is evolutionary by nature. Reasonably restated, that evolutionary process can be expressed as "DOING SOMETHING like SOLVING PROBLEMS is primarily justified in response to satisfying PRIORITIZED NEEDS.

That's how evolution works. It's why Darwin called it "natural selection." Man doesn't steer it. It steers man.

Certainly man did not postpone navigation by water until the development of the sextant. But neither did man take to the sea for the purpose of developing bragging rights to more advanced navigational technology. We invent technology to take us places we NEED to go. We don't typically go to immediately non-compelling places to develop and demonstrate superior technology.

The race to the moon against the Russians was a notable exception to that evolutionary principle. I think it was justified given the tenor of the times. As a kid I was very much in favor of it.

As I grew older, I realized it was simply a pretty stupid reason to keep doing it indefinitely. More natural motivations for living and working in space had to present themselves. And they have. Weather, communications and geo-imaging satellites are ubiquitous because of compelling need. Hubble, the International Space Station and the Mars rovers all make far more sense from a strict research standpoint than going back to the moon.

King Orfeo in an earlier post sagely identified the lack of sufficient profit motivation as an impediment to human space travel. But then he crossed over into "la la land" when he called for a massive government R & D program on the scale of the Manhattan Project to find the suitable profit motivation (or create one) to incentivize human space exploration. That's literally exchanging places with the cart and the horse. It's nuts, and the farther out one travels in search of "profitable" space travel (and the sexy flag plantings associated with first landings) the harder and nuttier it gets.

The necessary maturation of human space travel will take care of itself over time as it now should, in the same way that we didn't (and still don't) have to replicate the Wright Brothers' progress from bicycles to wings to fly to Chicago or invent a supersonic commercial air transport system....which no one has anymore because.....well, you know.

 

[Disgustipated]

disagreed....

even if you simply intended to mean
the manned space program

nonetheless,
despite your position... manned spaceflight will continue
until and unless some factor(s) determine
that that environment cannot be tolerated for a long enough term
to either get to a "there"
or progress past those factors...

the science gathered during the iss twins study
( the bulk of which has yet to be disseminated )
may have some interesting issues to address.

I would be interested if there was some X-Files type conspiracy shenanigans going on.

 

[OldJourno]

I think it would have been better for John Glenn to go to the moon base when he was 78.
The space station is huge. A better investment would have been a moon colony. That would really create buzz (and empty taxpayer wallets).

 

[cleaver]

...(your last post - in the spirit of conserving pixels)...

the profit motive (i.e trade) spurred seafaring
just as the profit motive has spurred the commercialization of LEO...
( satellites - recon, comm, gps, weather, resupply of the iss et al )

each spurred innovations to the modus;
inspiring further opportunities
as costs came down and capabilities rose...

mars ( for example) provides opportunity v the risk
( if not only as the romantic lifeboat)...
there are untapped resources and - more immediately importantly -
the geo-political opportunity and necessity
for powerful adversaries to come together with a common goal.

the iss is both a scientific laboratory
and essentially, an international embassy...
(just as antarctica had become... a generation before)
mars provides a common peaceful goal that...
may well eventually provide profit...

along the way, there are untold (eventually commercial) breakthroughs
that will benefit people on this planet
and in providing service to further pushing forward...

i could pull up any number of sites
that herald the tangible benefits of the moon race alone...
i won't here. it is a given.
(the device you are using to read this very post is evidence enough)

the profits are and will continue to be
both immediately commercial
as well as esoterically intellectual...
and... hopefully, to some extent, geo-politically stabilizing

and... the manned part of it -
yes, the expensive part of it -
greases the ever living shit out the mechanism's continued general support...

the greed impetus is not just measured by lucre, either...
there is a greed for wonder, stimulation,
and good old fashioned human entertainment...

by $$$$$$s alone... your argument is very valid....
there is more to the manned space venture than that alone

 

[Christobal]

Oh dear lord. A basically good man died. Yep he had faults. Anyone like to compare their life to his and say they did better?

 

[about_average]

I'm NOT suggesting we "SHOULDN'T do something because we DON'T HAVE A SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM." I'm simply arguing FOR YOUR philosophical approach to human space travel which you just said I haven't misconstrued -- namely that it is evolutionary by nature. Reasonably restated, that evolutionary process can be expressed as "DOING SOMETHING like SOLVING PROBLEMS is primarily justified in response to satisfying PRIORITIZED NEEDS.

That's how evolution works. It's why Darwin called it "natural selection." Man doesn't steer it. It steers man.

Certainly man did not postpone navigation by water until the development of the sextant. But neither did man take to the sea for the purpose of developing bragging rights to more advanced navigational technology. We invent technology to take us places we NEED to go. We don't typically go to immediately non-compelling places to develop and demonstrate superior technology.

The race to the moon against the Russians was a notable exception to that evolutionary principle. I think it was justified given the tenor of the times. As a kid I was very much in favor of it.

As I grew older, I realized it was simply a pretty stupid reason to keep doing it indefinitely. More natural motivations for living and working in space had to present themselves. And they have. Weather, communications and geo-imaging satellites are ubiquitous because of compelling need. Hubble, the International Space Station and the Mars rovers all make far more sense from a strict research standpoint than going back to the moon.

King Orfeo in an earlier post sagely identified the lack of sufficient profit motivation as an impediment to human space travel. But then he crossed over into "la la land" when he called for a massive government R & D program on the scale of the Manhattan Project to find the suitable profit motivation (or create one) to incentivize human space exploration. That's literally exchanging places with the cart and the horse. It's nuts, and the farther out one travels in search of "profitable" space travel (and the sexy flag plantings associated with first landings) the harder and nuttier it gets.

The necessary maturation of human space travel will take care of itself over time as it now should, in the same way that we didn't (and still don't) have to replicate the Wright Brothers' progress from bicycles to wings to fly to Chicago or invent a supersonic commercial air transport system....which no one has anymore because.....well, you know.

As far as "need", Hawking believes otherwise. I'm not saying we should do something just because he says so, but he's probably worth at least listening to.

I'm also not suggesting we expand the space program for the reasons we had the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs.

I question whether going to Mars makes more sense as the first next step. It's only slightly more inhabitable than the moon (SF terraforming aside). Lifting materials from the earth to orbit is a lot more expensive than from the moon to orbit. Even though initially the cost would be similar, the moon has a lot more resources that can be exploited that would eventually reduce the amount of heavy lifting needed to get to Mars, and beyond.
Well, provided we didn't end up with a Space 1999 scenario.

 

[JohnnySavage]

I remember the last time we had a moon base. The waste dump exploded and blew the moon clean out of orbit! That shit played havoc on the tides. And left Bill O'Reilly even more confused.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

As far as "need", Hawking believes otherwise. I'm not saying we should do something just because he says so, but he's probably worth at least listening to.

I'm also not suggesting we expand the space program for the reasons we had the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs.

I question whether going to Mars makes more sense as the first next step. It's only slightly more inhabitable than the moon (SF terraforming aside). Lifting materials from the earth to orbit is a lot more expensive than from the moon to orbit. Even though initially the cost would be similar, the moon has a lot more resources that can be exploited that would eventually reduce the amount of heavy lifting needed to get to Mars, and beyond.
Well, provided we didn't end up with a Space 1999 scenario.

I would be happy to listen to Hawking on the practicality of human space colonization if he could speak to the subject as intelligently as he does on other matters of astrophysics. So far I've heard nothing other than his general advocacy for the proposition. That's not good enough, and frankly I was shocked when I first heard Hawking was a passenger on this nutty bandwagon.

The best odds of preventing ecological catastrophe for Earth over the next 1,000 years is perfecting the capability to intercept and destroy or deflect an asteroid on a collision course with us. Beyond that, it is simply a matter of not destroying our environment simply by living in it.

Besides, as you've previously pointed out, space colonization wouldn't do a damn thing for the 99.999999% of the people left behind.

Oh, the humanity.