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BrainChemistry
Captain Obvious



Registered: 06/19/07
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: mofo]
#8947594 - 09/18/08 01:10 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Some problems are insoluble. Technology has been advancing at a good clip for the past few centuries but there is no reason to assume that that will continue another thousand years or even another hundred.
I could not disagree with you more on this statement.
Its impossible to imagine what we will discover because we haven't discovered it yet.
Yeah right, like humans are EVER GOING TO FLY??? That is totally absurd. It will never happen.
You're one of those types.
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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Annom
※※※※※※




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Jupiter's and Saturn's moons are much more interesting to explore than our own moon. We all want to find life, don't we?
I'm writing an essay for a mechatronics course about an ice drill/melter robot that could be send to Europa; melting through the 5-25km ice layer and dropping a submarine in the (possible) liquid water ocean underneath the ice. Such a mission is very costly, risky and takes very long, but we need these missions if we want to find life before I die.
There are some practical things we could do at our own moon though. One cool thing that we can do on our moon is build a very large telescope (or more than one for interferometry). That would be a great mission.
Sending humans, instead of robots, to our moon does have benefits. We just shouldn't care so much about the safety of astronauts, that will make it much cheaper. You can save more lives with the money you save anyway. Sending humans, instead of robots, to Jupiter and beyond is stupid imo. It's takes too long and it is almost impossible to let a human survive in the Jovian radiation environment.
I want space money to go to Earth observation, unmanned planetary exploration and new telescopes. Not people on our Moon or Mars unless it really serves a good science mission.
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MisterMuscaria



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: mofo]
#8948128 - 09/18/08 06:46 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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We need to cut millitairy spending and put it towards space exploration.
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Hematite
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: mofo]
#8948177 - 09/18/08 07:22 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Solved in theory, yes. Actually building such a ship is something else. It would need to be massive, and given the amount of money NASA and the European Space Agency are spending on other ways of combating bone loss in space it doesn't appear to be regarded as a practical solution.
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Hematite
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Sleepwalker]
#8948185 - 09/18/08 07:27 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Oweyervishice said: Life spreads to fill it's container, where possible. That container is a lot bigger than just our planet.
"where possible" is the key.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Hematite]
#8948220 - 09/18/08 07:46 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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> It would need to be massive
I don't know if this is what you are referring to, but radiation is one of the biggest problems yet to be overcome. The shielding needed to protect human life in space is massive, and it takes a lot of money to put mass into space. The main thing that limits time an astronaut can spend on the space station is radiation exposure.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Hematite
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: BrainChemistry]
#8948229 - 09/18/08 07:50 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
BrainChemistry said:
Quote:
Some problems are insoluble. Technology has been advancing at a good clip for the past few centuries but there is no reason to assume that that will continue another thousand years or even another hundred.
I could not disagree with you more on this statement.
Its impossible to imagine what we will discover because we haven't discovered it yet.
Yeah right, like humans are EVER GOING TO FLY??? That is totally absurd. It will never happen.
You're one of those types.
I don't deny the possibility of anything happening, just the certainty. Someone who 150 years ago claimed that humans will learn how to fly would have been almost as foolish as someone who denied the possibility, perhaps more foolish because they merely would have been parroting an optimism about technological progress that was as conventional then as it now is. Trends that have continued through our lives and through a few generations before us will not inevitably continue into the future, however permanent and unstoppable they may seem now.
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lIllIIIllIlIIlIlIIllIllIIl
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Annom]
#8949083 - 09/18/08 12:05 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Annom said: Jupiter's and Saturn's moons are much more interesting to explore than our own moon. We all want to find life, don't we?
I'm writing an essay for a mechatronics course about an ice drill/melter robot that could be send to Europa; melting through the 5-25km ice layer and dropping a submarine in the (possible) liquid water ocean underneath the ice. Such a mission is very costly, risky and takes very long, but we need these missions if we want to find life before I die.
There are some practical things we could do at our own moon though. One cool thing that we can do on our moon is build a very large telescope (or more than one for interferometry). That would be a great mission.
Sending humans, instead of robots, to our moon does have benefits. We just shouldn't care so much about the safety of astronauts, that will make it much cheaper. You can save more lives with the money you save anyway. Sending humans, instead of robots, to Jupiter and beyond is stupid imo. It's takes too long and it is almost impossible to let a human survive in the Jovian radiation environment.
I want space money to go to Earth observation, unmanned planetary exploration and new telescopes. Not people on our Moon or Mars unless it really serves a good science mission.
This is exactly how I feel on this issue. But the fact is they canceled the unmanned probes to Jupiter's moons while at the same time many nations are supposedly locked in a moon race to send a man to the moon...
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BrainChemistry
Captain Obvious



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Hematite]
#8949908 - 09/18/08 03:06 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Hematite said: Someone who 150 years ago claimed that humans will learn how to fly would have been almost as foolish as someone who denied the possibility,
I would have simply called this person an optimist with faith in human creativity, not foolish.
Quote:
Annom said We just shouldn't care so much about the safety of astronauts, that will make it much cheaper
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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Hematite
Newbee



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: BrainChemistry]
#8950290 - 09/18/08 04:32 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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It would not have been foolish to think that heavier than air flight was likely, only to argue that it definitely was or wasn't going to happen. There are no laws governing technological change and no way of knowing that any particular technological barrier will be broken until it is broken, or at least until a clear and practical path through it has been charted.
In the case of space travel, there is no particularly good reason to suppose that the problems that make manned travel much past Mars impossible today will be solved in the future. They might be, but who can know? Faster than light travel appears to be about as close to impossible as you can get; just getting up to speeds that would make travel to nearby stars or even the outer planets would require energy sources that there is no good prospect of our ever harnessing.
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BrainChemistry
Captain Obvious



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Hematite]
#8950507 - 09/18/08 05:07 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Well, in my opinion, I think mankind will break those barriers, given enough time and evolution of our species.
Call me an optimist, call me foolish, but thats just what I think.
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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Hematite
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: BrainChemistry]
#8950557 - 09/18/08 05:17 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Or I could call you a pessimist. I'm not sure that that kind of power would be good for us.
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BrainChemistry
Captain Obvious



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Hematite]
#8951261 - 09/18/08 07:35 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Worried we might go after all the little aliens out there?
-------------------- Word to your mom.
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RuNE
bomberman



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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: BrainChemistry]
#8952410 - 09/18/08 11:01 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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BrainChemistry said: Worried we might go after all the little aliens out there?
Humans are a pathetic race. We'll destroy ourselves long before we destroy another civilization.
-------------------- ~Happy sailing~
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DieCommie


Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: RuNE]
#8952573 - 09/18/08 11:36 PM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Pathetic maybe, but certainly very, very fit from a biological perspective.
Even if there is mass extinction many times over, I think we have a good chance that a viable population will survive through them for quite a long while.
We have already been around for nearly a million years, I see no reason to assume we wont be for a few million more, at least.
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lIllIIIllIlIIlIlIIllIllIIl
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: DieCommie]
#8953222 - 09/19/08 02:23 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Perhaps we could evolve into a space faring species over a million years?
But looking at the present situation... a human can live, what, 4 seconds exposed to space? To make interstellar travel viable we should be able to exist in the radiation, temperature range and vacuum we would expect to find in space, indefinitely.
That would require some serious modification of the human body... maybe over a million years it could be done. I am guessing the time would be a million years but it could be more or less.
In the meantime we have robots that are perfectly suitable to the environment of space... ie they are space faring robots... and they exist now, not a million years from now
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DieCommie


Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 29,258
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Ha, we wouldn't need to evolve all that. We are sea faring right now, doesn't mean we can live and breath underwater indefinitely.
Anyway, Im not advocating interstellar travel. But the solar system is right here, so well explore the hell out of it in the next few million years. And maybe off shoots of the human race will develop new traits in their new environments. A little proactive genetic engineering would certainly take place as well like maybe feet being replaced with hands for people in low gravity environments. Man I wish I could see the future!
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lIllIIIllIlIIlIlIIllIllIIl
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: DieCommie]
#8953299 - 09/19/08 03:13 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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We are not truly sea faring... we travel on top of the sea. This is also a very efficient way to travel, which means we don't really need to go underwater to travel from point A to point B.
If we did have to travel under the surface of the ocean for decades or even hundreds of years, then yes it would be a lot simpler our bodies could survive exposed at tremendous pressure and continuously exposed to salt water.
I mean could you imagine traveling around in a submarine, underwater and unable to surface for 100 years? It would be a lot simpler to design such a submarine if it was at equal pressure inside and the human occupants were totally at ease underwater.
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Hematite
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: BrainChemistry]
#8958345 - 09/20/08 10:28 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
BrainChemistry said: Worried we might go after all the little aliens out there?
No, worried about us. I assume that any little aliens we may encounter in space will be more than able to take care of themselves.
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Hematite
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Re: Priority... explore our own moon or Jupiter's moons? [Re: Seuss]
#8958445 - 09/20/08 10:57 AM (15 years, 7 months ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said: > It would need to be massive
I don't know if this is what you are referring to, but radiation is one of the biggest problems yet to be overcome. The shielding needed to protect human life in space is massive, and it takes a lot of money to put mass into space. The main thing that limits time an astronaut can spend on the space station is radiation exposure.
I was thinking of the minimum size a spacecraft would have to be to create a useful layer of 1g workspace through spinning. It would help nothing to have your toes exposed to 1 g while your arms float. To keep of the loading needed to maintain skeletal mass your entire body would have to be exposed to 1 g, not just your feet.
Standing in your spinning spacecraft your feet would be pressed against the outer wall, while your head would point toward the center of rotation. To have your head and feet exposed to similar gravity, your head would have to be rotating around a circle with nearly the same circumference as your feet. The rotational radius of the outer wall would have to be large enough that the radius 6 feet or so in from the outer wall was at least, say, 80% as large, which would be 30 feet. So the spacecraft would have to be at least 60' across, which is huge. Even so, you'd feel like you were in an amusement park ride: you would be aware of the rotation every time you stood up or sat down because part of your body would have change its acceleration to match its new position. To reduce this effect to a bearable level would require a much larger rotational radius. Our middle ear is so sensitive to this kind of thing that I Imagine that even the 1% gravitational gradient through the workspace that you'd have with a 1200' spacecraft would be enough to cause severe vertigo.
Edited by Hematite (09/20/08 11:01 AM)
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