Why is space so unpopular!!!

Its been an interesting thread this one... lots of different views.  As an adult (43) modeller, I know why I dont, and probably wont, make space-related models.... I just dont find them interesting from a historical perspective.  My stash has a little of everything, aircraft/armour/ships/autos/figurines, but a space-related subject just doesnt get the juices flowing I guess.  Each to their own ?

"It's people like this that keep the world in stagnation.... wimps and whiners that do not have the Courage to move onward, who can't see past there own nose."  "Sheepeople?" 

what total nonsense...too much Star Trek mentality out there.."hey we can fly in spaceships and visit other worlds "  I said in my original post that we should use robots and now Im a troll

 Even though I agree that we are natural born travelers with immense curiosity,the fact is there will NEVER be deep space travel with humans. Flying back and forth to Mars is a lofty goal and we will do it. But leaving the Solar System is for the robots of the future and not humans.

 

Michael Withstand wrote:

About your comment: That the 'thing' (due to its ugliness) sends pictures that we can never touch is probably one of the main reason so few are interested in outerspace. We don't even have spaceships yet. The spaceshuttle flies to the outerspace thx to its super huge rockets. Hardly advanced in innovation. Put simply our technology is not really up for the outerspace exploration. Wait a few centuries or millenia after the invention of a new propulsion system. The current space technology makes the greeman mock the humankind evrytime they see one of our satellite/probes.......I'm sorry i don't mean to humiliate anyone. I'm sure NASA haas the top brains in the whole globe but even that is still not enough. The human race needs a breakthrough in propulsion system technology otherwise we could only see pictures that we can never touch in reality. So what's the point? Besides every other scientists are busy perfecting machines of war. Our tech development comes mainly from the defense industry........   Have your fingers crossed that the Martian would chose humankind as their ally sometime soon......then we'll see....SPACE....

 

I don't think the technology is as far behind as you think. NASA is already designing and doing limited testing on "exotic engines" such as ion power and even anti-matter engines. Limited testing only due to the fact they are not ready to be tested in space yet.

Even as recently as 500 years ago people still believed the earth was flat and that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth. 

There was a time when everyone in the world believed that the earth was the center of the universe.  Funny how millions have been proven wrong. 

(I really wish people would have to take some sort of "social skills" and "civil discussion class" before they are allowed to post in the forums.... )

espins1 wrote:

(I really wish people would have to take some sort of "social skills" and "civil discussion class" before they are allowed to post in the forums.... )

Auntie Matter wrote:

"It's people like this that keep the world in stagnation.... wimps and whiners that do not have the Courage to move onward, who can't see past there own nose."  "Sheepeople?"  what total nonsense...too much Star Trek mentality out there.."hey we can fly in spaceships and visit other worlds "  I said in my original post that we should use robots and now Im a troll  Even though I agree that we are natural born travelers with immense curiosity,the fact is there will NEVER be deep space travel with humans. Flying back and forth to Mars is a lofty goal and we will do it. But leaving the Solar System is for the robots of the future and not humans.

No, you're a troll because you call people names and make fun of artificial limbs. The simple fact is that more people die in a day driving cars than the entire space program has "killed", and I don't care if you think my analogy is flawed, or not.

I quite agree that deep space travel is nearly impossible. However, near space travel is not only possible, but Mankind has already visited our moon. Going to Mars is merely a mathematical and statistical equation.

But note I said nearly impossible. With our current technology we certainly can't reach the next star system, but at one point we couldn't cross the ocean, or fly airplane, or walk around talking on a phone without the cord getting in the way. Technology has a habit of turning magic into reality. It wasn't that long ago that the best and brightest thought traveling faster than 32MPH was impossible, as the air would be sucked out of our lungs. It was also "impossible" to build buildings over ten stories. There are plenty of things we do on a regular basis that used to be impossible. "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

I'm convinced that every astronaut that has died in the call of duty wishes we would continue, so as not to make their deaths meaningless. 

Instead NASA has forsaken any space travel, but sub-orbital missions, and only then rarely. For crying out loud, if we stopped airplane or ferry traffic each time there was an accident, our economy would stop dead. 

espins1 wrote:

Even as recently as 500 years ago people still believed the earth was flat and that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth.

 

I think popular history has cloned around a little too much with the notion of how stupid and ignorant we had been before.   Educated people of much of the old world had known that the earth was spherical since 2000 years ago.   One should not use the superstitions of the ignorant to define the state of knowledge of an era.   If we apply such a standard evenhandedly, then because there are still plenty of people today who believe the earth is flat and was created in 7 days, we must conclude that we've made no progress since 500 years ago.

 

 

Chuck Fan wrote:

espins1 wrote: Even as recently as 500 years ago people still believed the earth was flat and that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth.   I think popular history has cloned around a little too much with the notion of how stupid and ignorant we had been before.   Educated people of much of the old world had known that the earth was spherical since 2000 years ago.   One should not use the superstitions of the ignorant to define the state of knowledge of an era.   If we apply such a standard evenhandedly, then because there are still plenty of people today who believe the earth is flat and was created in 7 days, we must conclude that we've made no progress since 500 years ago.

While many ancient cultures knew the Earth was round (and long before 2000 yrs ago), the Dark Ages was a time where we forgot much of what we knew, or at the very least a suspicious and paranoid church kept the information to itself for their own agenda. Please note that the preceding sentence is not a condemnation of any church or religion today. Educated people 500 years ago also knew the Earth was round (though loathe to admit it in fear of retribution from Holy Rome, ask Galileo!). Sadly, they were the minority. 

For all of our technological advances, we still exhibit many traces of an ignorant and backwards society, much to my chagrin. The progression you refer to has been very slow, except for the past one hundred years. Our maps may no longer show vast white spaces where "here there be monsters", but our ignorance of other cultures, at times, appalls me. It is equally true that if we apply the even-handed standard based on the Stephen Hawkings amongst us, one could conclude that Utopia has finally been realized.

Rumsfield was laughed at when he said it, though I knew immediately what he meant by "We don't know what we don't know". And that is especially true of space, for that is the remaining place where there might be monsters. Deep space travel may very well prove to be impossible, but we need to test that theory by conquering near space. We need to get past our fear of the monster known as ignorance.

 

Chuck Fan wrote:

espins1 wrote: Even as recently as 500 years ago people still believed the earth was flat and that Columbus would fall off the edge of the earth. I think popular history has cloned around a little too much with the notion of how stupid and ignorant we had been before.   Educated people of much of the old world had known that the earth was spherical since 2000 years ago.   One should not use the superstitions of the ignorant to define the state of knowledge of an era.   If we apply such a standard evenhandedly, then because there are still plenty of people today who believe the earth is flat and was created in 7 days, we must conclude that we've made no progress since 500 years ago.

The point I was trying to make, which seems to have been missed, was in reference to one individual in this thread stating emphatically, without a doubt, that we will never send humans into deep space.  I can sight thousands of examples of this sort of thinking being proven wrong time and time again throughout the ages as technology and our understanding of physics and the universe continue to expand. 

Many people (including the educated) didn't think humans would ever fly....... 

Many people (including the educated) didn't think humans would ever make it into space.....

Many people (including the educated) didn't think humans would ever walk on the moon......

I think it is fair to say that, although human interstellar travel could hold many theoretical rewards for us, we are not currently in a position to strongly support either side of the argument about whether the human civilization, in a form we humans who are alive today would recognize, is strongly favored to actually achieve it with a live astronaute.  

I think we can make a good argument for the position that the overall capability of a technological civilization evolve in a style best characterized as a puncturated equilibrium.    For long periods, civilizations makes routine technological advances that gradually improve its capabilities in detail, but does not facilitate fundamental increase in its reach.   Then, when the foundation laid by multiple technical advances, each conceived at a different time and for a different, unrelated purpose, eventually fall in place, the civilization experience a sudden rapid period of expansion.  This expansion eventually exhausts the potential of its original foundation and the civilization settle back down to another period of long, slow, steady progress.

I think evidence argues that late 19th and first half of 20th century had been a period when the foundation of a quantum leap in human reach had fallen into place.   Hence from an era when men moved about the earth pretty much as he had done since the chariot age, perhaps modestly faster, men progressed to the air age, and the space age in one life time.   But since the 1960s, nothing new has encouraged us to believe that there is more potential in the  scientific technological base that facilitated this phenomenon is capable of continueing to sustain this rate of increase of human reach indefinitely.   In fact, we seem to have essentially exhausted the potential of further increase.   NASA is redoing Apollo, and the Chinese decided Soyuz is as good as manned space capsule design can get.   We've exhausted the potential of the technological foundation laid since the 1600.  Steady, slow improvements will continue, but quantum leap in our reach now requires the  separate maturations of whole collection of new technologies and techniques, some of which is perhaps not even in incubation yet.   

Because I think we've reached something of a brick wall in our fundamental technological reach, I suspect that one human lifetime from now, we will still be stuck on earth, with trips to mars a rare excursion only to be undertaken for pressing geostrategic prestige reasons. 

But perhaps in another 300-400 years,  something like the time that elapsed between Galileo and Wright Brothers, when human reach expanded from circumnavigation in 3 years to circumnavigation in 80 days, we'll suddenly make another quantum leap in reach similar to the one that which took us from sailing ships to Apollo 11 within one life time, and that new expansion resulting from several centuries of steady progress would let us expand our reach from trips to Jupiter, to trips to Alpha Centauri, to trips to the Galactic core within one life time.   Whether human civilization can sustain itself in a form recognizable to us today in order to bring us there in 300-400 years is another question.

 

 

   

 

 

 

Chuck Fan wrote:

I think it is fair to say that, although human interstellar travel could hold many theoretical rewards for us, we are not currently in a position to strongly support either side of the argument about whether the human civilization, in a form we humans who are alive today would recognize, is strongly favored to actually achieve it with a live astronaute.   I think we can make a good argument for the position that the overall capability of a technological civilization evolve in a style best characterized as a puncturated equilibrium.    For long periods, civilizations makes routine technological advances that gradually improve its capabilities in detail, but does not facilitate fundamental increase in its reach.   Then, when the foundation laid by multiple technical advances, each conceived at a different time and for a different, unrelated purpose, eventually fall in place, the civilization experience a sudden rapid period of expansion.  This expansion eventually exhausts the potential of its original foundation and the civilization settle back down to another period of long, slow, steady progress. I think evidence argues that late 19th and first half of 20th century had been a period when the foundation of a quantum leap in human reach had fallen into place.   Hence from an era when men moved about the earth pretty much as he had done since the chariot age, perhaps modestly faster, men progressed to the air age, and the space age in one life time.   But since the 1960s, nothing new has encouraged us to believe that there is more potential in the  scientific technological base that facilitated this phenomenon is capable of continueing to sustain this rate of increase of human reach indefinitely.   In fact, we seem to have essentially exhausted the potential of further increase.   NASA is redoing Apollo, and the Chinese decided Soyuz is as good as manned space capsule design can get.   We've exhausted the potential of the technological foundation laid since the 1600.  Steady, slow improvements will continue, but quantum leap in our reach now requires the  separate maturations of whole collection of new technologies and techniques, some of which is perhaps not even in incubation yet.    Because I think we've reached something of a brick wall in our fundamental technological reach, I suspect that one human lifetime from now, we will still be stuck on earth, with trips to mars a rare excursion only to be undertaken for pressing geostrategic prestige reasons.  But perhaps in another 300-400 years,  something like the time that elapsed between Galileo and Wright Brothers, when human reach expanded from circumnavigation in 3 years to circumnavigation in 80 days.  we'll suddenly make another quantum leap in reach similar to the one that which took us from sailing ships to Apollo 11 within one life time, and that new expansion resulting from several centuries of steady progress would let us expand our reach from trips Jupiter, to trips to Alpha Centauri, to trips to the Galactic core within one life time.   Whether human civilization can sustain itself in a form recognizable to us today in order to bring us there in 300-400 years is another question.

 

Only because at present the public and business do not see the value of space exploration, and they forgot or don't relize the things we take for granted every day that came from the space program(ie the Pc as an example). If something were to change that advancements would be pushed forward.

An example of this would be if life was found to exist or have existed on Mars

Seeing the value of space travel would make no quantum difference for this generation or the next.    10 time more expenditure in space travel or 10 times more capablility to undertake space travel would not make any order of magnitude difference in our ability to increase our reach into space in my lifetime or perhaps my grand children's lifetime.   It is not the absence of technological or engineering investment that keeps us rooted on the earth.   It is the fact that our civilization's basic science foundation still falls far short on all fronts such that, at this time, I don't give us good odds of guessing correctly exactly how we should allocate our basic sicence investment in order to bring interstellar travel nearer than it would arrive naturally.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for maximum investment in all fronts of basic science so we can elevate the broad platform that forms the basis of any space venture.   But I see the difference is between achieving interstellar travel in 500 rather than 1000 years, not 20 rather than 50, or 100 rather than 200 years.   Captain Kirk will not arrive in the 23rd century.   

Discovery of life on Mars would be an infinitely fascintating side show.  It might advance our state of biological sciences.   It might prompt faster incremental technological improvement in our space exploration technology.   But it can not bridge of orders of magnitude gap needed to popularize interplentary travel to the status of the routine, and its effects would certainly will be but a blip next to what it takes to bridge the yawning, comprehensive technological gap that stands between us and interstellar travel on a board front. 

 

The value of intersteller space travel is so far into our future that 500 or 1000 years is a moot difference. On the other hand, innerspace travel has immediate benefits. The ability to place dangerous manufacturing into near Earth orbit, or even on the far side of the moon, is obvious. The potential of nearly limitless power generation through the building of very large solar arrays, and by the mining and manufacturing of hydrogen is boundless, and is what I believe to be the very thing that has any chance of saving our planet. The benefits of mining the asteroid belt, rather than mining deeper and deeper into our planet's crust, should not be ignored.

I quite agree that opening a travel agency for trips to Betegeuse or Alpha Centauri is a poor business plan. It is the absence of innerspace capability which has me bothered. This ability was close at hand in the late 60s, and was lost in the bureaucracy of NASA.

Bgrigg wrote:

It is the absence of innerspace capability which has me bothered. This ability was close at hand in the late 60s, and was lost in the bureaucracy of NASA.

Mmnn, NASA/USA achievments have been incredible. Milestones have been reached. Technology has been advanced and shared with mindblowing results. The USA taxpayers have been shown their "Bang for a Buck", Results! in the 60's and beyond. Yet human loss is always a tradgedy that is hard to overcome.The hardest part of that is NASA had to achieve a goal that dealt, and deals with untested technology in aircraft/spaceship design,extreame loads and enviromental demands, return to earth capibilities and creature comforts. I think those gains were rapidly produced. Yet we have discovered that repeated "round trip" travel in any means, with a production level airframe(even com. air & auto) has it's limits. The sad thing that comes to my mind and has an arguement towards the robot idea is, and Golf and its tech has come up in this thread.... is Golfer Pawyne Stewart, He was flying back or to a tournament in his Learjet(owned,leased or) the jet lost cabin preasure @ +-35,000agl and all aboard died in a matter of seconds....seconds....00.08 sec. The plane continued on coarse NW into Wyo. Autopilot engaged the plane flew at level and speed with soles on board. The Air force scrambled F-16's to intercept, what at that time was a aircraft in distress with unknown Mayday call. Close inflight recon determined the cabin preas. failure.The A.F. command then had to decide weather or not to shoot it down to avoid furthur threat to human life if it crashed into a populatted area. Long story short.. that is what can go wrong in what we consider a safe use everyday airplane. My hat is off to the men and women that design,build and fly the rigs there puttin' into Space. NASA/USA  JPL and all the companys involved in the future of our quest into space.

gulfstreamV wrote:

Bgrigg wrote:  It is the absence of innerspace capability which has me bothered. This ability was close at hand in the late 60s, and was lost in the bureaucracy of NASA. Mmnn, NASA/USA achievments have been incredible. Milestones have been reached. Technology has been advanced and shared with mindblowing results. The USA taxpayers have been shown their "Bang for a Buck", Results! in the 60's and beyond. Yet human loss is always a tradgedy that is hard to overcome.The hardest part of that is NASA had to achieve a goal that dealt, and deals with untested technology in aircraft/spaceship design,extreame loads and enviromental demands, return to earth capibilities and creature comforts. I think those gains were rapidly produced. Yet we have discovered that repeated "round trip" travel in any means, with a production level airframe(even com. air & auto) has it's limits. The sad thing that comes to my mind and has an arguement towards the robot idea is, and Golf and its tech has come up in this thread.... is Golfer Pawyne Stewart, He was flying back or to a tournament in his Learjet(owned,leased or) the jet lost cabin preasure @ +-35,000agl and all aboard died in a matter of seconds....seconds....00.08 sec. The plane continued on coarse NW into Wyo. Autopilot engaged the plane flew at level and speed with soles on board. The Air force scrambled F-16's to intercept, what at that time was a aircraft in distress with unknown Mayday call. Close inflight recon determined the cabin preas. failure.The A.F. command then had to decide weather or not to shoot it down to avoid furthur threat to human life if it crashed into a populatted area. Long story short.. that is what can go wrong in what we consider a safe use everyday airplane. My hat is off to the men and women that design,build and fly the rigs there puttin' into Space. NASA/USA  JPL and all the companys involved in the future of our quest into space.

Yes. Travelling and exploration has its inherent risks, whether it is driving to work, flying to a vacation spot, crossing the Atlantic, flying to space, and many others.

But over the years, mankind have worked so hard to the point that these risks were minimized to the point that it is almost 100% safe (well almost).

In everything we do, there are risks, no matter how significant, or insignificant these risks are, which when they appear, can set fear to those who witnessed it, and experienced it.

But mankind have shown that through creativeness, hard work, and perseverance, we can rise from those accidents and disasters and find ways to prevent them, and in some cases, eliminate them (but not completely).

I think the same can also apply to human spaceflight. True we've lost dozens of lives, but through those tragedies, the people involved with the space program have taken into account those events and turned it into learning experiences from which they can improve existing systems and hardware to make them even safer for people to ride again.

Human Spaceflight is still in its infancy. And like our earthbound transportation systems during their early years, and today, will still witness countless trials and errors, from which, loss of life is expected.

Robots and similar hardware have been very useful to us, and their worth is getting greater with each passing year. But I believe its very wrong to say that robots should do all the work.

Yes, robots are handy at many tasks that requires the precision and resistance that no human could ever match. But I believe its very much wrong to assume that robots are the only ones who should do those things.

To Auntie Matter;I believe that your opinion is influenced by your thought that we have enough lives to lose with this endeavor, and that you believe that human spaceflight was just created for the purpose of just getting into space, and for national pride, and for the sake of human curiosity... but the thing is, Human spaceflight is not concerned with just that.

You also said that there's too much star trek mentality here, but you know what, its that same mentality (I'm not literal about star trek here) that gave us the capability, and the convenience that we enjoy today.

I think, and I believe many also think that the space program is not just for that, but rather to improve our lives on Earth, and to find ways to improve it further, and to preserve it when the time comes when earthly life is mortally threatened.

Lets face it, our earth will die in the future, and many people don't want life to just be gone with a bang (or by other means), and, as I'm a Catholic (actually any religion will say this), it is our holy duty to save lives, big and small. So we have to continue what were doing right now. And I think that's also on the minds of the people who sacrificed themselves for their work, because they believe in what mankind can do, what we can do.

For me, God IS the greatest modeler. And as a scale modeler, I know what it feels like when my creations get destroyed. (I know, I've cried many times over them)

So it is up to us to save his creations.

So for me, human spaceflight is an indispensable program for us. And whether we like it or not, we are going to leave earth and practically, the entire solar system, no matter how dangerous it is, in order to survive. 

And if were going to just let robots alone to do all the work for us, then its only a matter of time before mankind; and all life on Earth from which our Lord has painstakingly created, will be extinct in the vast darkness of space...

In the end I leave you this phrase:

"Learning is not just "seeing" it, but, more importantly, "feeling" it"

 

"Is the risk worth it? I think so..."

- Dr. Peter H. Diamandis - President: X-Prize foundation

How much that was science fiction when Star Trek first came out is today science fact.

grandadjohn wrote:

How much that was science fiction when Star Trek first came out is today science fact.

I have to admit, I'm no Star Trek or Star Wars fan (I didn't like their stories much), but what fascinates me is that, slowly, many of the concepts introduced in those films are now coming into being...

And now physicists are more and more considering the possibilities of previously fictional concepts like worm holes and warp drives etc.

I believe that mankind will develop these radical forms of technology in the future, its just the question of when...

but until that time comes, space would only be popular in science-fiction films and stories...

Hans Christian M. Ben wrote:

And now physicists are more and more considering the possibilities of previously fictional concepts like worm holes and warp drives etc.

 

Thoughts of going to the moon using rocket power had crossed some people's mind during the 1400s.   But it took a broad fronted elevation of all fields of science, chemistry, biology, physics, mathematic, optics, engineering, etc, etc over 500 years to bring it into reality.   Almost all of the innumerable critical advances in these fields that were required to eventually bring about space travel were brought about for totally unrelated reasons.   Only when these things fortuitiously clicked into place did the possibility of space travel become real.    If you were a wise and rational futurist during the 1400s, you too might be excited about this new fangled notion of going to the moon by rocket.  Afterall, rocket is such a new and excited innovation.   But if you had control of reserach allocation, could you have reasonably foretold which fields you should specifically pour your money, and in what projects, in order to bring about actual rocket based space travel any sooner?  You probably could not.   Indeed, if you were a futurist of 1400s, and you did not have the benefit of hindsight from 600 years into the future, would you have even recognized that rocketry was indeed the key to space travel?   If a contempoary of yours had written about a giant kite that will bring man to the moon, knowing what you could in 1400s, would you not have been more excited about advancements in kite technology than the dirty, dangerous, and very crude rocketry thing?

 

 

I have to admit I'm giving Sci-Fi a second look.  One of our clubmembers brought in a very nice Romulan Warbird that was just gorgeous!  Makes me want to build one! 

But the point is that they were striving to meet that goal. Today we are not. We have the capability of reaching Mars, but we only send probes. We have the technology to build a base on the moon, but we have not. We rely on the Russians for a space station, and I fear that the official language of the moon will me Mandarin or Cantonese. We lost the space race, not because we didn't have the technology, but because we didn't have the will. The Saturn V is a memorial, and the shuttle is thirty years old. NASA's budget (as bloated as it is) is less than American women spend on makeup per year.

I will say it again (for the third time this thread). I remember the first man in space. I never thought I would see the last.

Bill

Bgrigg wrote:

We have the capability of reaching Mars, but we only send probes. We have the technology to build a base on the moon, but we have not.

There's literally nothing on the moon except dust and rocks. The same is true for Mars, the possibility of ancient microbes notwithstanding. Now, I might suffer from an idealism deficit, but I see no value in exploring those.

As for the beyond... Well, that's where we come to a problem, which is the nature of our physics. We can't engage the warp drive and whizz off into the wild blue yonder. Nor can we dive into a black hole to emerge on the other end of a wormhole. Real physics can't be ignored like that, by narrative causality or otherwise. A lot of very complex physics rotates around the topic, using phrases like the "chronology protection conjecture" or "closed timelike curve". Perhaps their research will prove that the universe is queerer than all of us can suppose. Personally, I doubt it, doubly so for my own lifetime.

When I look at the night sky, I don't see possibilities. I certainly don't see the future of Mankind. What I see is an oppressive, gargantuan expanse of nothing, stretching from here to infinity, and ourselves in the middle of it, on what might very well be the only speck of life in all of its infinite vastness (and even if it weren't, it might as well be, thanks to the distances involved).

Space is dead. It's not like the ocean, which is just as hostile to our fragile shells, yet full of amazing, fantastic life. Space is the antithesis of life, a wasteland of nothingness so colossal that travelling from one star to another over the vast tracts of night would take a thousand lifetimes.

Space is despair. Despair that Mankind is doomed to this one ball of earth, until the day the Sun finally flares into a red giant, sweeping into nothingness all we've ever accomplished, all that's ever been done, ever been said, ever been seen. And there will be nobody left to shed a tear. For me, space is the symbol that in the end, nothing matters, but that here and now, we are alive. Going there serves no purpose, however. You can outrun destiny or deny fate, but you cannot ignore the nature of the universe.

Agamemnon wrote:

Bgrigg wrote: We have the capability of reaching Mars, but we only send probes. We have the technology to build a base on the moon, but we have not. There's literally nothing on the moon except dust and rocks. The same is true for Mars, the possibility of ancient microbes notwithstanding. Now, I might suffer from an idealism deficit, but I see no value in exploring those.

 

Who said explore? I said MINE THEM. Put dangerous and polluting manufacturing on them. Stop raping and pillaging our own planet and start using ones that aren't being used by anybody.

I'm afraid I can't share your despair about space. Since we know next to nothing about it, how can you state it's dead? At one time "leading experts" agreed that Columbus would sail off the edge of the world to his (and his crew's) doom, since there was nothing there, not even dust and rocks. Instead he found life, rich and vibrant life.

Agamemnon wrote:

Bgrigg wrote: We have the capability of reaching Mars, but we only send probes. We have the technology to build a base on the moon, but we have not. There's literally nothing on the moon except dust and rocks. The same is true for Mars, the possibility of ancient microbes notwithstanding. Now, I might suffer from an idealism deficit, but I see no value in exploring those. As for the beyond... Well, that's where we come to a problem, which is the nature of our physics. We can't engage the warp drive and whizz off into the wild blue yonder. Nor can we dive into a black hole to emerge on the other end of a wormhole. Real physics can't be ignored like that, by narrative causality or otherwise. A lot of very complex physics rotates around the topic, using phrases like the "chronology protection conjecture" or "closed timelike curve". Perhaps their research will prove that the universe is queerer than all of us can suppose. Personally, I doubt it, doubly so for my own lifetime. When I look at the night sky, I don't see possibilities. I certainly don't see the future of Mankind. What I see is an oppressive, gargantuan expanse of nothing, stretching from here to infinity, and ourselves in the middle of it, on what might very well be the only speck of life in all of its infinite vastness (and even if it weren't, it might as well be, thanks to the distances involved). Space is dead. It's not like the ocean, which is just as hostile to our fragile shells, yet full of amazing, fantastic life. Space is the antithesis of life, a wasteland of nothingness so colossal that travelling from one star to another over the vast tracts of night would take a thousand lifetimes. Space is despair. Despair that Mankind is doomed to this one ball of earth, until the day the Sun finally flares into a red giant, sweeping into nothingness all we've ever accomplished, all that's ever been done, ever been said, ever been seen. And there will be nobody left to shed a tear. For me, space is the symbol that in the end, nothing matters, but that here and now, we are alive. Going there serves no purpose, however. You can outrun destiny or deny fate, but you cannot ignore the nature of the universe.

  Bertrand Russell "all the labor of the ages.."   Ag you are 1000% on the same page as I am. Righton,brother...or sister

"I can sight thousands of examples". sorry I have no social skills  to be sure....because its "cite" not "sight" and a "thousand" examples is an exaggeration. 

Why post in this thread if you don't like space?

Auntie Matter wrote:

Agamemnon wrote: There's literally nothing on the moon except dust and rocks. The same is true for Mars, the possibility of ancient microbes notwithstanding. Now, I might suffer from an idealism deficit, but I see no value in exploring those. As for the beyond... Well, that's where we come to a problem, which is the nature of our physics. We can't engage the warp drive and whizz off into the wild blue yonder. Nor can we dive into a black hole to emerge on the other end of a wormhole. Real physics can't be ignored like that, by narrative causality or otherwise. A lot of very complex physics rotates around the topic, using phrases like the "chronology protection conjecture" or "closed timelike curve". Perhaps their research will prove that the universe is queerer than all of us can suppose. Personally, I doubt it, doubly so for my own lifetime. When I look at the night sky, I don't see possibilities. I certainly don't see the future of Mankind. What I see is an oppressive, gargantuan expanse of nothing, stretching from here to infinity, and ourselves in the middle of it, on what might very well be the only speck of life in all of its infinite vastness (and even if it weren't, it might as well be, thanks to the distances involved). Space is dead. It's not like the ocean, which is just as hostile to our fragile shells, yet full of amazing, fantastic life. Space is the antithesis of life, a wasteland of nothingness so colossal that travelling from one star to another over the vast tracts of night would take a thousand lifetimes. Space is despair. Despair that Mankind is doomed to this one ball of earth, until the day the Sun finally flares into a red giant, sweeping into nothingness all we've ever accomplished, all that's ever been done, ever been said, ever been seen. And there will be nobody left to shed a tear. For me, space is the symbol that in the end, nothing matters, but that here and now, we are alive. Going there serves no purpose, however. You can outrun destiny or deny fate, but you cannot ignore the nature of the universe.   Bertrand Russell "all the labor of the ages.."   Ag you are 1000% on the same page as I am. Righton,brother...or sister

I feel so sorry for both of you.

You live a life devoid of any hope, without any magic of discovery, lost in perpetual bleakness.

You see only one blade of grass in a field of green. I hope one day that you will widen your vision, and see the entire painting before you.

c3po wrote:

Auntie Matter wrote:  Agamemnon wrote:   There's literally nothing on the moon except dust and rocks. The same is true for Mars, the possibility of ancient microbes notwithstanding. Now, I might suffer from an idealism deficit, but I see no value in exploring those. As for the beyond... Well, that's where we come to a problem, which is the nature of our physics. We can't engage the warp drive and whizz off into the wild blue yonder. Nor can we dive into a black hole to emerge on the other end of a wormhole. Real physics can't be ignored like that, by narrative causality or otherwise. A lot of very complex physics rotates around the topic, using phrases like the "chronology protection conjecture" or "closed timelike curve". Perhaps their research will prove that the universe is queerer than all of us can suppose. Personally, I doubt it, doubly so for my own lifetime. When I look at the night sky, I don't see possibilities. I certainly don't see the future of Mankind. What I see is an oppressive, gargantuan expanse of nothing, stretching from here to infinity, and ourselves in the middle of it, on what might very well be the only speck of life in all of its infinite vastness (and even if it weren't, it might as well be, thanks to the distances involved). Space is dead. It's not like the ocean, which is just as hostile to our fragile shells, yet full of amazing, fantastic life. Space is the antithesis of life, a wasteland of nothingness so colossal that travelling from one star to another over the vast tracts of night would take a thousand lifetimes. Space is despair. Despair that Mankind is doomed to this one ball of earth, until the day the Sun finally flares into a red giant, sweeping into nothingness all we've ever accomplished, all that's ever been done, ever been said, ever been seen. And there will be nobody left to shed a tear. For me, space is the symbol that in the end, nothing matters, but that here and now, we are alive. Going there serves no purpose, however. You can outrun destiny or deny fate, but you cannot ignore the nature of the universe.   Bertrand Russell "all the labor of the ages.."   Ag you are 1000% on the same page as I am. Righton,brother...or sister I feel so sorry for both of you. You live a life devoid of any hope, without any magic of discovery, lost in perpetual bleakness. You see only one blade of grass in a field of green. I hope one day that you will widen your vision, and see the entire painting before you.

 

well said sir...

 

to auntie matter and Agamemnon

No offensement but...

these kinds of people are the ones who are going to be extinct...

having a closed mind is a sure way to die folks (I nearly lost my life with that attitude once)...

oh well... I think we had enough convincing these two people...

they have no hope of improving their points of view...

Why journey beyond the horizon? You will just fall off the edge of the Earth when you get there!

Geez, those Wright Brothers were such morons. Wasting all that time and money when everybody knew man can never ever fly!

Agamemnon wrote:

There's literally nothing on the moon except dust and rocks. The same is true for Mars, the possibility of ancient microbes notwithstanding. Now, I might suffer from an idealism deficit, but I see no value in exploring those. As for the beyond... Well, that's where we come to a problem, which is the nature of our physics. We can't engage the warp drive and whizz off into the wild blue yonder. Nor can we dive into a black hole to emerge on the other end of a wormhole. Real physics can't be ignored like that, by narrative causality or otherwise. A lot of very complex physics rotates around the topic, using phrases like the "chronology protection conjecture" or "closed timelike curve". Perhaps their research will prove that the universe is queerer than all of us can suppose. Personally, I doubt it, doubly so for my own lifetime. When I look at the night sky, I don't see possibilities. I certainly don't see the future of Mankind. What I see is an oppressive, gargantuan expanse of nothing, stretching from here to infinity, and ourselves in the middle of it, on what might very well be the only speck of life in all of its infinite vastness (and even if it weren't, it might as well be, thanks to the distances involved). Space is dead. It's not like the ocean, which is just as hostile to our fragile shells, yet full of amazing, fantastic life. Space is the antithesis of life, a wasteland of nothingness so colossal that travelling from one star to another over the vast tracts of night would take a thousand lifetimes. Space is despair. Despair that Mankind is doomed to this one ball of earth, until the day the Sun finally flares into a red giant, sweeping into nothingness all we've ever accomplished, all that's ever been done, ever been said, ever been seen. And there will be nobody left to shed a tear. For me, space is the symbol that in the end, nothing matters, but that here and now, we are alive. Going there serves no purpose, however. You can outrun destiny or deny fate, but you cannot ignore the nature of the universe.

Wow.  This kind of view of space amazes me.  I am not sure if I should laugh, cry or be angry about it. But, as an astrophysicist in real life, I find it disturbing on many levels.

The moon is nothing but dust and rock?!?  Do you have ANY idea of what that dust and rock contains?  Alumimum. Silicon. Iron. Magnesium. Calcium. Helium-3 (something that will be EXTREMELY important once we develop fusion power).  Oxygen (the moon is more oxygen than anything). Hydrogen. Some of the lunar basalts (rocks) are extremely rich in Titanium. Etc.  It is a veritable storehouse of natural resources beyond the scale of anything we have on Earth.  The farside of the moon offers research possibilities for deep space beyond anything on Earth too, with it's radio-shadow and nearly 14 days of continous complete night.  With 1/6th the gravity and an escape velocity of about 2.4km/s (as opposed to the 11.2km/s of Earth), launching manmade materials into space for various destinations is exponentially cheaper than pushing it up from Earth surface.

Space is dead?  Pray tell!!!  Where do you think the amino acids that form your RNA and DNA chains come from???  Molecular clouds, comets, interplanetary dust particles...all contain some degree of the basic building blocks of life. Without this *stuff* in space, we wouldn't exist.  This is true locally as well as broadly throughout the galaxy (and other galaxies as well).  Space is not the antithesis of life, it is the reason it exists!

When I look into the night sky (which I am wont to do on a very frequent basis), I see everything that is, everything that was, and everything that can be!  It is beautiful beyond compare, so immense it is beyond comprehension and it calls to me as a curious mind to come and find its secrets. They are there, waiting for us to unravel their clues and use them, as once we did with simple minerals on Earth that now are processed and formed into our behemoths of engineering marvels or the simple tools we use to eat our food with. 

We came from space and we shall return to space.  It is our birthplace as well as our grave. 

Those ancient microbes on Mars....they might just be our very distant ancestors.  There are tantalizing clues and interesting bits of evidence that suggest the possibility of trans-planetary life.  For a taste of that, check out the evidences and debates of the meteorite known as "ALH-84001".

Space is despair?  No. Space is the Ultimate Challenge of mankind!  You are right that when the day comes that the Sun consumes itself and destroys Earth that all we were will be erased from the Universe - unless our distant descendants move to a new world.  Doing so is not only possible it is doable now.  We may not have warp drives - yet - but we have the technology to travel between the stars, albeit very slowly (at this time).

And going there serves no purpose?  It most certainly does!  It serves the purpose of satiating our inherit curiosity and sense of adventure; to build, to touch, to explore and to learn about. 

Beyond that, our being in space has many practical applications as well.  Let's face it, if the dinosaurs had a space program, we might not be talking right now.......

-Rowen