Saturn V

[Byron In Exile]

The only vessel carrying human beings that escaped earth's gravity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GllmG7aZHb4

We soared... for a moment...

 

[Byron In Exile]

The contrast between then and now is so amazing.

There was no money to be made in putting men on the moon. None. It was a dream. A concept.

Could it be done now? Yes, much more easily, but where's the money in it?

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

cooo...

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

The contrast between then and now is so amazing.

There was no money to be made in putting men on the moon. None. It was a dream. A concept.

Could it be done now? Yes, much more easily, but where's the money in it?

If we could figure out how to ship ³He back to earth from the moon without costing a fortune we could get serious about nuclear fusion reactors to produce power without all of that pesky radioactive fuel.

-OR-

Use it to fuel a moon base / jumping off point to the stars.
We're rapidly outgrowing Earth, we need to start looking for alternatives.

 

[StrangeLife]

We soared... for a moment...

And then we dropped the ball...

 

[mark_j]

The only vessel carrying human beings that escaped earth's gravity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GllmG7aZHb4

We soared... for a moment...

Actually it was the sat 1b on the third stage that did it.. the sat 5 just got the whole unit into low earth orbit.

 

[cleaver]

say hey hey, re-run!

what's hap'nin now?

linkety
linkety
linkety
linkety
linkety
linkety


yeah...
that last one was conjecture...

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Use it to fuel a moon base / jumping off point to the stars. We're rapidly outgrowing Earth, we need to start looking for alternatives.

If on the remote chance you actually believe that, it would surely rank as the dumbest thing you've ever said.

Here's why:

http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/nasa_spaceflight_future_government_robots/

Let me add yet another discouraging word that Lind barely raised. Time. If your "viable" colonizing alternatives do not include the moon or Mars (which, realistically speaking, they should not for the reason Lind mentions) then you need not bother looking outside this solar system for a suitable home in another solar system for the simple reason that the closest of such systems harboring a "new" Earth are dozens, if not dozens upon dozens, of light years away. That's light years. Do you need to be reminded of the very real limitations and implications of accelerating mass to a speed that only pure energy can achieve?

Of course, it has been suggested that a fusion rocket could reduce a trip to Mars to merely 30 days and perhaps could achieve a top speed of 7% of the speed of light. Even at such a blistering pace, attempting to colonize a planet 20 or 30 light years away would make the Mayflower look like a jet ski by comparison.

It isn't happening. You have far better odds of surviving Armageddon in your basement bomb shelter. And those aren't too hot either.

 

[neci]

The contrast between then and now is so amazing.

There was no money to be made in putting men on the moon. None. It was a dream. A concept.

Could it be done now? Yes, much more easily, but where's the money in it?

prisons and trash.

 

[StrangeLife]

Do you need to be reminded of the very real limitations and implications of accelerating mass to a speed that only pure energy can achieve?

Unless you can warp space.

 

[Phelia]

The only vessel carrying human beings that escaped earth's gravity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GllmG7aZHb4

We soared... for a moment...

This is my favorite video in the galaxy.

I still have a dream. I want to claim Phobos. I have a soft spot for potato-shaped moons. Canada was gunning for it, but it looks like they pooped out. It is up to me. I'm just waiting on quantum vacuum plasma thrusters.

 

[doctor_insanus]

The contrast between then and now is so amazing.

There was no money to be made in putting men on the moon. None. It was a dream. A concept.

Could it be done now? Yes, much more easily, but where's the money in it?

Exactly. No less an expert than Neil deGrasse Tyson dismisses the commercialization of spaceflight.

"It's not possible. Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise."

http://www.examiner.com/article/nei...ate-business-will-not-open-the-space-frontier

We've lessened as a nation since Apollo. These days, the only dreams that matter are shareholders' dreams of avarice. There's more money in shooting rockets at this world than in sending them to others.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

If on the remote chance you actually believe that, it would surely rank as the dumbest thing you've ever said.

Here's why:

http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/nasa_spaceflight_future_government_robots/

Let me add yet another discouraging word that Lind barely raised. Time. If your "viable" colonizing alternatives do not include the moon or Mars (which, realistically speaking, they should not for the reason Lind mentions) then you need not bother looking outside this solar system for a suitable home in another solar system for the simple reason that the closest of such systems harboring a "new" Earth are dozens, if not dozens upon dozens, of light years away. That's light years. Do you need to be reminded of the very real limitations and implications of accelerating mass to a speed that only pure energy can achieve?

Of course, it has been suggested that a fusion rocket could reduce a trip to Mars to merely 30 days and perhaps could achieve a top speed of 7% of the speed of light. Even at such a blistering pace, attempting to colonize a planet 20 or 30 light years away would make the Mayflower look like a jet ski by comparison.

It isn't happening. You have far better odds of surviving Armageddon in your basement bomb shelter. And those aren't too hot either.

The author, and you by extension, seem to be pessimistic about the ability of human beings to overcome obstacles. Many of our day to day activities were once deemed 'impossible' or 'magic' yet here we are talking to devices that track the minutiae of our lives and depending on hardware that we have placed in orbit around the planet to lead us from one place to another. You speak of existing technology as if it had reached its zenith, that no more advances will be made. I disagree, and do so whole-heartedly.

If believing in the nearly limitless ability of the human mind to innovate and push the limits ever farther is dumb, then I am guilty as charged.
For every innovation that's been made there were experts that said that it couldn't be done. That it was impossible.

 

[about_average]

Actually it was the sat 1b on the third stage that did it.. the sat 5 just got the whole unit into low earth orbit.

S-IB was the first stage of the Saturn B-1 (atop which Chaffee, Grissom and White died). The Saturn V third stage, used for trans-lunar injection, was the S-IVB.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

The author, and you by extension, seem to be pessimistic about the ability of human beings to overcome obstacles. Many of our day to day activities were once deemed 'impossible' or 'magic' yet here we are talking to devices that track the minutiae of our lives and depending on hardware that we have placed in orbit around the planet to lead us from one place to another. You speak of existing technology as if it had reached its zenith, that no more advances will be made. I disagree, and do so whole-heartedly.

If believing in the nearly limitless ability of the human mind to innovate and push the limits ever farther is dumb, then I am guilty as charged.
For every innovation that's been made there were experts that said that it couldn't be done. That it was impossible.

You seem to be among the confused body of folks who apparently believe that simply because MANY obstacles have been overcome, ALL obstacles can be overcome and, thus, inevitably WILL be overcome and that, once conquered, will then be repeatedly bested with impunity.

History proves otherwise.

Believing in the "nearly limitless ability of the human mind to innovate and push the limits ever farther" is NOT dumb. But believing in a human capability to bring to reality ANY AND ALL of the wildest dreams which the mind can conceive is, to put it charitably, a wee bit arrogant.

Double Eagle II, piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, became the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it landed outside Paris on August 17, 1978 -- five years and eight months after Apollo 17 departed the lunar surface, and decades after fixed wing aircraft had conquered transatlantic flight. Double Eagle II also succeeded where 13 other attempts had failed at a cost of five lives.

There are many good reasons why man has not returned to the moon or has declined in great numbers to follow the trail blazed by Abruzzo, Anderson and Newman. The fact that some of those reasons are economic does not contradict their rational foundation. The calculus of the cost of discovery and the cost of the realistic leverage of that same discovery is different and understandably produces different results.

Long before Double Eagle II successfully touched down, we obviously had the ability to "do the math" and confidently predict that lighter than air craft posed no commercial threat to transatlantic flight routinely performed by fixed wing aircraft. Similarly, as Lind observes in the previously linked article, "if humanity had the technology to “terraform” the surface of Mars, it would have the power to make the ruined surface of a dead Earth habitable again, making the colonization of Mars unnecessary."

Lind has done the necessary calculus and has arrived at the obvious rational answer governing the future colonization of space. When the dreamed of ability to colonize other moons or planets is finally made possible, it will most certainly NOT be rationally leveraged as a practical alternative to "outgrowing Earth" by choosing worlds far more difficult and costly to reach and inhabit than those closer by, including the one we inhabit now.

Believing otherwise IS dumb. Really dumb.