No, not a movie, but the real thing. CNN (of course) had this article posted, and while it was an interesting read, I was more interested in the poll they had on the sidebar. So far the results were interesting: some 40% wanted no smokers in the base, and 35% wanted no politicians in the base!!! Is a dictatorship not far in the future???

Hmm... I could understand the desire for no smokers on a lunar base (consumes much too oxygen, and increases strain placed on air recycling systems), but as for politicians, I wouldn't worry; There's ALWAYS a politician in ANY isolated group. If there isn't one, one becomes one. That's what leadership does. Anyway, I imagine the first lunar base would be something like the instalations on the surface of Antarctica; small, and primarily scientific. I don't see any Civilian use of an extra-terrestrial base/instalation (aside from space stations) until at least 2100; my guess would be closer to 2300-2400.

I want my mars base NOW dadgummit!

I estimate it will also be another millenium before the human race begins "gating" expirements, sorry.

Er, it would still be possible to set up some form of base on Mars. It would be Total Recalish

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/quantum/quantum.jsp?id=ns99991888

what's this 'we could get hit by an asteroid in the next 400 years' crap? we could get hit by an asteroid tomorrow...

It would be very wise to have a no smoking lunar base. That just makes sense.

I'd fully support similar policies on Earth. A full on ban on cigarettes would be preferable, but that isn't economically viable as the government is reliant on tax money from cigarettes. With some clever long-term policies slowly reducing the amount of smokers, the government can probably wean itself off of that tax money.

I can't imagine that people will still be puffing cancer-sticks in 400 years time anyway.

Type I in 15-80 years.

Perhaps they know something...it seems rather suspicious.... >_>

If an asteroid was going to hit us tomorrow, we'd know. Trust me.

In 2020, I'll be 34. I hope I'm not too old!

Well, at least someone would know. Whether or not they tell us is questionable.

Actually, depends. We could not even know there was one coming until around 12-24 hours beforehand, depending on how fast it was going.

*cue crappy aerosmith song*

Lets send a drilling team up there with nukes to blow it up!

Do you have to disagree with everything I say just for the hell of it? That's the most ridiculous disagreement I've ever seen. Do you realize that even if it was travelling the speed of light (yeah right) we'd probably have it detected days in advance if it was big enough to do any damage?

Bah... how can we set up a base on the moon when we haven't even landed on the moon yet...

Great, now the conspiracy theories kick in....:eek:

Hell yes. But just wait until type II.

because you're such an authority on the subject?

Facts about NEO (Near Earth Objects) Impacts


From CNN


And from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything -

Interesting, but thta's merely an expiriment that allows for the possibility of teleportation, and that's not "gating", which would be more like a theorietical wormhole.

As for the NEOs, a startlingly large ammount are undetected as of now. Fortuantely, the larger the NEO, the higher percentage are known. As for blasting such a object into oblivion, that would taek a lot of explosive power; modern nuclear weapons are either too weak (even a 1,000Kt Polaris ICBM wouldn't destroy a solid rock 200-foot asteroid), or too bulky (Something like the 50Mt Tsara-Bomb would be too large for a space shuttle to safely transport). Of course, destroying such an object wouldn't be necessary; with how great distances are in space, a slight difference in trajectory or speed would turn a direct hit into a complete miss; a small nuclear bomb could acomplish such a task, though there is the concern of getting such nuclear devices out far enough in enough time to hit a dangerous NEO, which could be traveling as fast as 1 million miles (1.6 km) per hour; where it would take a full day for a modern spacecraft to reach an object at a distance equal to our moon, an asteroid at that speed would reach Earth in 15 minutes or less.

Clearly, what we need is Milla Jovovich to go to an ancient Egyptian temple and shoot a beam of light out of her mouth. That has enough power to stop a huge asteroid even right before it hits the earth.

Uhh... No. Something travelling at the speed of light would be detected how, exactly? All the light reflecting off it would reach us at the same time as the asteroid itself... And if it's moving at the speed of light, asking if it's "big enough to do any damage" is really a moot point. Of course, no asteroid actually moves that fast...

I concur with maevie. Everything I've read in the astronomy mags I read on the subject make it clear we'd have to be relatively lucky to spot an incoming asteroid despite the advances we've made in recent decades. There's just simply so many unmapped ones of dangerous sizes.

Type IV. The only disadvantage will be the rather empty night sky.

cute analogy made in A Short History...

ain't that a fun fact? :p

The way I see it, there are some things we simply cannot prevent or prepare for. We do such a good job of killing eachother anyway, why worry about something we almost certainly could have no control over?

Also (I'm just gonna keep taking stuff from this book, it's really good, read it!) life is amazingly hardy. The Manson crater, (which was thought for a while to be the one which killed the dinosaurs, then discovered to be too small and too early) which is 24 miles in diameter with an impact that would have released about 2.2 x 10^ 21 Joules of energy and killed almost all animals instantly for about 600km. Bearing in mind that that's only the early devastation, and there would be much more to come, not a single species extinction was associated with it. Sooo... individually we may be fragile creatures, but life on a large scale is pretty hard to quell. Not being religious, this seems like an odd phrase to come out of my mouth (luckily I don't have to say it out loud, so I'll just look away from the screen while I'm typing), but I reckon if life's supposed to make it, it will.

hopefully, human life won't.

My uncle works for NASA, and he says that they may or may NOT detect things that far in advanced. He was the one that told me this.

So please, back the **** off. I wasn't even disagreeing with you for the sake of it, I was correcting you. I didn't do it nastily either.

Thanks for the backup maevie.

I was going to add some stuff about the planet probably needing a break from our existence, but I've got a party to go to tonight, I don't want to tempt fate... :p

"..They may or may not detect things..."

Wow, thanks for covering every possible option there.

You know what I mean, I should hope. It was 12 in the frellin morning when I posted that, I was the tiredness. For those of you that may NOT know what I mean, quite simply--they may detect the "projectile", or may not. If they do project it, it will be a long, long ways off or on top of us. Very doubtful it'll be in the middle (unless it's pure luck)

You do realize that you're saying absolutely nothing right?
"They may or may not detect it, but if they did it would be far away, near by, or somewhere in the middle. Ergo, I'm right and you're wrong."

Sheesh people, calm down, you all know what he's trying to say!

And if not, read my bloody sources.

Person #1: The sun is hot.
Person #2: No, my uncle works for the sun and he says the sun is either very hot, very cold, or somewhere in between so STFU.

Well, IMO, the most exciting phase will be the transition between type II and III. Think of it... Construction of huge linear mass drivers in orbit around different stars that shoot spacecraft out at nearly the speed of light, exploring new planets and possibly detecting life elsewhere in the galaxy, etc.

Once we get to type IV, won't that be somewhat boring? We won't have anything left to learn.

"Man has not set foot on the moon's surface since 1972."

Hmm. Really?

Anyway, with the lower gravity, age starts to "accelerate." So I guess, the moon wouldn't be a place for mankind for long, long years.

To be perfectly frank, I don't think we'll have anything left to learn by around the middle of the transition between Type II and Type III. I figure you'd have to know just about everything about the nature of the universe in order to achieve velocities high enough to make the transition.

Most asteroids aren't hurtling in a perfectly straight line toward earth since their inception. We would compute its orbit and know it's coming from that.

How?

Very doubtfull. One probably will. Most of the ones that actually make it to the surface are about the size of a marble.