http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2008/11/25/memories_of_the_space_age Comments On: Memories of the Space Age by Charles Mudede en-us Copyright 2009 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0800 Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:15:00 -0800 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss There was a time when experts thought anyone sailing beyond the horizon would fall off the earth. And going faster than 20 mph in a car would kill you. It doesn't make sense to predict the future based on current information. Just remember, every thing you think you know to be true is wrong. Life is more fun that way.
Posted by crazycatguy]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:02:32 -0800 The Stranger
Stupid, stupid dinos.

As for Antarctica being the resource-rich cornucopia you imagine, well for one thing, aside from ice - and lots more ice, there's no hard evidence pointing to significant quantities of other exploitable resources, aside from a bit of coal, and any speculation as to the existence of such is just that - pure speculation.

There MIGHT be vast quantities of mineral resources hidden miles beneath the surface ice, but even IF it does exist, accessing it would require the utilization of technology for locating, extracting, and transporting it to somewhere it can be refined on an order that frankly, would make the space program look like child's play.

And even IF it were feasible from a technological and economic standpoint, we'd still eventually use it all up, leaving us back at Square One, at which point we'd have to turn to extraterrestrial resources again anyway, but in the meantime we'll have wasted a lot of time, money and energy that could have been used to develop technologies that would allow us to exploit the near limitless potential of asteroids, comets, and other resource-rich artifacts beyond earth.

And I'm NOT the one "writing us off", rather I'm the one arguing that, by expanding our reach, extending our habitable environment to include space, we in fact ENSURE our survival - and that we CAN do that, not by WAITING for evolution to catch up, but by directing our own evolution to include adapting to places where we are not, as you claim "currently biologically designed to live in".

That's what makes us different from those poor dinosaurs, you know - we have the capacity to change ourselves; they didn't. That's why, after 160 million years, they didn't survive the Big One, and why, regardless of how long it takes, we CAN survive the Next Big One.

We only have to decide to do so, is all.
Posted by COMTE]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:03:11 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Original Monique]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:36:07 -0800 The Stranger
You're going to need it, to find more resources than you figure are available in Antarctica. It's actually slightly less a wasteland than space, in the same way that the center of a nuclear explosion is a bit hotter than room temperature.

I'm not curling up and dying, thanks; I have two kids. I plan to live a nice, long life and hope to enjoy grandchildren and great grandchildren, the way my own grandparents did. I hope and would imagine that you can do the same. I don't see humanity going extinct any time soon.

Our species has only been around for an eyeblink -- the dinosaurs had the run of this planet for 160 million years before they were (presumably) wiped out by a space rock. Do you see humanity lasting that long?

We've been here only 6 million years, and you've written us all off unless we find a way to live in places that are utterly unlike anyplace that we are biologically designed to live in. I stand by my prediction that the entire concept of manned spaceflight becomes a wacky 20th century anachronism people will eventually look back on and laugh at.

On the other hand, I do in fact support 100% exploring space via robotic probe and would even say that our robotic and optical observation of other stars and worlds is one of the crowning achievements of our species, so go figure.
Posted by yup]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:12:06 -0800 The Stranger
Well, if you do evolution the old-fashioned way, and just sort of hang out waiting for natural selection to stumble onto some advantageous adaptations, then yeah, it's going to take a few million years.

But, we're pretty smart for apes - we don't have to wait for nature to take its course seeing as we already have ability to create the tools needed to survive in inhospitable environments that a few centuries ago would have been strictly off-limits to homo sapiens sapiens. Heck, give us a century or two and we'll probably be able to manufacture biological, or, cybernetic adaptations that will allow human beings (or more accurately, homo sapiens commodo to survive and thrive in these environments much more effectively than is currently the case.

Why wait for slow, old nature to randomly provide the gills, when you can have them surgically installed - or even grown in vitro? Sadly, we won't be around to see it happen, but unlike some of you, I have a lot more confidence in our ability to make it happen - if that's what's required to ensure our survival as a species.

The rest of you apparently, are quite content being space-wasting bags of meat. Good luck with that.
Posted by COMTE]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:09:31 -0800 The Stranger Posted by blue barberpole]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:04:55 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Catman]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:00:30 -0800 The Stranger
That's a completely specious argument: we don't live at the bottom of the ocean, because for the moment at least - we don't HAVE to. I'm sure though, that if things topside get bad enough, that will become a viable option - in fact, a few intrepid folks are already giving it a go.

Antarctica is even more of a wasteland than outer space: aside from air and water, there's very little there in the way of exploitable resources - and it's all about the resources, baby, or haven't you been paying attention?

Yup, why don't you just lay down, curl up and die right now? Doesn't sound like you have much to look forward to, propagation-of-the-species-wise, anyway.

As for me, well, I'll stick with the forward-stepping crowd...
Posted by COMTE]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:39:55 -0800 The Stranger
Let's show off our evolutionary skills and take responsibility for our planet instead. For a worst case legacy, we can chisel space-visible words into our glassy crust: "DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME."
___

That said, let's chill out on the manned space program until we actually have useful things for people to do up there. We've been lofting people for 60 years, and we still don't have a better reason than PR to be launching them.

What we gotta do is push for more robust and cheaper launch vehicles, while better controlling our orbital waste. Right now launches are so expensive we can't afford to mass produce satellite technology. Thus, everything is over-engineered, costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and a single human error can still doom a 1-off mission.

Once launches are cheap and reliable enough that we can actually loft up-to-date critical infrastructure (our weather satellites are still 1980s tech) and do remote robotic repair...

... then I'd have no problem with sinking funds on manned space, just for the lark. Till then, it's a bloody waste.
Posted by opticsdoug]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:27:05 -0800 The Stranger
Like how Kevin Costner grows gills in Waterworld, right?!

Our species takes way too long to evolve for that to be a solution to the problems of overpopulation and insufficient resources. Colonizing outer space is not a realistic option for survival. Sinking more money into such a program would be fucking stupid. Just give everyone comprehensive sex-ed & free birth control instead.
Posted by SpecialK]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:20:07 -0800 The Stranger STS Enterprise at the Udvar-Hazy Center outside DC. I reluctantly visited a couple of years ago, thinking, "space shuttle?...meh..." But when you actually stand next to it, the sheer scale of the thing is pretty awesome.

BTW, this has to rank as one of the least snarky retarded threads at the Slog in a while. WTF? Is everyone gone for the holidays already or something...
Posted by To The Stars!]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:02:39 -0800 The Stranger
Two thirds of the earth is underwater -- why aren't we living there? Oh, right, enormous water pressures and unfeasible engineering requirements, the need to get supplies down to the seafloor constantly.

Hey, nearly an entire continent is empty of life at the southern pole -- why isn't it teeming with colonies? Oh, that's right, it's a blasted, icy Hellscape where we can't survive outside for more than short periods of time.

Fuck, I'd wager most SLOG posters wouldn't be able to eke out a living east of the Cascades, and would opt to give up instead.

I hate to spoil the ending, but the human race isn't relocating off world. Enjoy this time now; don't worry about WHEN our species WILL go extinct.
Posted by yup]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:01:26 -0800 The Stranger
It's called EVOLUTION, and the overriding imperative is: "Adapt - or DIE". Sure, taking care of things down here sounds nice and all, but it's not like most of us are running out to do much in the way of anything practical in that regard - at least not sufficiently to have more than a marginal impact. And that doesn't even count the fact that, sooner or later we're going to face looking down the business end of a large chunk of space-rock capable of initiating another mass-extinction event.

Yes, short-term it costs a lot to climb up out of the gravity-well, but once accomplished, the cost diminishes almost logarythmically; and there are just oodles of natural resources out their waiting to be exploited, certainly far more than are available to us down here.

So, unless you want to argue in favor of reducing the human population by 60 or 70%, our current rate of consumption and resulting befouling of our own nest eventually is going to necessitate looking elsewhere for resources to sustain our existence - and "out there" is the only other where in the neighborhood.
Posted by COMTE]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:43:03 -0800 The Stranger
That's possibly the stupidest thing I've ever read.
Posted by greg]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:29:31 -0800 The Stranger
We have to expend ridiculous amounts of energy to get clear of our gravity well, and to take the required mass and bulk of supplies we require to survive up there for short periods of time. Every resource we need to live has to be lifted at enormous enormous expense along with us, and even then, we are exposing ourselves to bombardment by huge amounts of lethal particles and radiations if we leave the safety of our planet's magnetosphere while also having our skeleton, circulatory system and musculature slowly atrophy.

We are not designed to survive in the extreme conditions outside our world, and if only from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint of lifting all that mass, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. It would be like spending a ton of effort to try to build vehicles for soap bubbles to ride in, so that they could survive without popping in a hurricane. A pointless, doomed endeavor.
Posted by yup]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:24:01 -0800 The Stranger Posted by crazycatguy]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:14:12 -0800 The Stranger
"It makes little or no sense to put people in space anyway"

Except of course, for the glaringly obvious fact that, if we continue to fuck up things down here on earth at the rate we're going, humanity's only chance for long-range survival is going to depend directly on our ability to live in outer space.
Posted by COMTE]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:03:56 -0800 The Stranger
And FWIW, yes STS, in the configuration that was eventually adopted turned out to be much more complex to maintain, and therefore more expensive to operate than anticipated - blame in part Nixon's general ambivalence toward NASA, and political "sticker shock" over the more ambitious, fully reusable configuration NASA originally proposed - with the result that cost-per-pound never came close to the ratios predicted, nor did the number of flights ever achieve the dozens per year originally envisioned.

But blaming the "retardation of the American Space Program" solely on STS indicates woeful naivete and ignorance of the socio-political pressures brought to bear on NASA in the post-Apollo period. Frankly, this retardation began long before STS, at about the same moment Armstrong was taking his first steps on the moon. The Space Race had been won, and public interest began to wane almost immediately thereafter. Without public support for continuation of NASA's mission, political interest evaporated, resulting not only in the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar missions, but a drastic reassessment of long-range national goals in the arena of manned space exploration. And the result? Lunar base: gone. NERVA: scrapped. The US Air Force's "dyna-soar" reusable space vehicle: axed, along with the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.

While admittedly STS never fully fulfilled its original intent, it's disingenuous to say that it has been the cause for the general laggardness in the development of manned spacecraft technology and systems, when the truth is, the U.S. public had already lost interest in manned space exploration long before. In fact, it may well be that development of STS, at least initially prior to the Challenger explosion, actually made a significant contribution to a renewal of interest in space exploration.
Posted by COMTE]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:01:02 -0800 The Stranger
The Ares has had proven to have some fairly serious oscillation problems lately as well.

Factor in that the US economy is in freefall, with the credit bailouts to date already eclipsing the cost of NASA's entire budget history, including the moon landing program, and it's easy to imagine the whole manned space program getting delayed and delayed for more pressing domestic matters until, you know, it's cancelled for good.

It makes little or no sense to put people in space anyway, but that's another discussion.
Posted by yup]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:57:42 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Vince]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:38:34 -0800 The Stranger Posted by elswinger]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:30:30 -0800 The Stranger nasa.gov.
Posted by Everybody has an opinion, few have done any research.]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:25:21 -0800 The Stranger Posted by yup]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:12:17 -0800 The Stranger