I've heard that "weapons of mass destruction" would make great interstellar traveling systems.

How could mining other plants have any relevance to ethics? You're making something out to be sacred just because it's large, which is erroneous. And really, in the grand scheme of things, galaxy systems are insignificant. You might as well angst about the exploitation of an atom.



Yes, but my point is that you be hard pressed to find something that could not be recycled for thousands of times less cost and energy than it would take to mine it in space.

Well, you can get an insane amount of thrust out of a system based on exploding nuclear weapons, but there are lots of problems with it. Can't be launched from the Earth's surface, obviously, due to radiation. Even from orbit the EMP from each blast would knock out satellites. Constructing it in orbit and pushing it out of orbit using conventional rockets would work, but you lose almost all the benefit of having a better propulsion system.

What it would be great for is a "last resort" technology that could quickly be used in the face of global annihalation/alien invasion/etc. to get a bunch of people off the planet.

You don't think that the technological prerequisites required for interplanetary space exploration have other commercial applications? Hell, the one example you gave - a fusion rocket - is a cornucopia of the most-demanded new technologies for terrestrial use.

Ah, the "Field of Dreams" theory of economics.

You're trying to lead a horse but you don't have a carrot. You can build the most amazing "presence" in space imaginable, but nobody is going to visit because:

- The very act of establishing yourself in space has increased demand for consumables to the point where space travel is unaffordable for all individuals except possibly Bill Gates,
- Corporations are obligated to return the maximum amount of profit to their shareholders, so they will not go into space unless there is a business case for going into space. There isn't one.

Don't believe me? Just take a drive around North America some time. Count all of the ghost towns. If the mines are empty, people stop coming to visit.

Yep! Fortunately because we understand how capitalism works we understand that, eventually, market pressures will make space mining economically viable. However, because the initial investment is so enormous, this will probably take a long time.

What logic did you use to arrive at this conclusion? One of the basic prerequisites for interplanetary travel is an advanced water recycling system. The very technologies that would allow you to mine extraterrestrial ice are making your business case obsolete.

This isn't Eve Online.

Sure. NASA has (in some form or another) been around since 1915, and they've always done some pretty valuable work from a purely scientific perspective.

The problem I have with NASA is that most of their budget gets eaten by the bureaucracy. The sprawling bureaucracy, full of idiot civil servants who only got the job through flagrant nepotism and certainly not due to any sort of credentials, wasting their entire budgets down to the last penny just so they don't get a budget cut next year.

Example: Skylab, the "affordable" space station. The original mission for Skylab was to study gravitational anomalies in neighboring solar systems; a mission that was delayed due to lack of interest by the plebeians. The original plan was to use a Space Shuttle to tow Skylab into a higher orbit, but - of course - the Space Shuttle was delayed so Skylab burned up on re-entry. Bam. Billions of dollars down the toilet.

Know what's even better? They built two of them even though they knew they could only afford to launch one! Billions of dollars used to build a high-tech jungle gym for Kennedy Space Center.

The best part of all? NASA is doing it again! They plan to de-orbit the ISS in 2016! $150 BILLION DOLLARS wasted! Russia is already making plans to dismantle the space station and build a new one using their modules, because they aren't stupid, damaged people and don't want their hard work to turn into a meteor because a bunch of suited mongoloids want a pretty light show.

Kyle90, your biggest problem is that you are trying to impose some kind higher meaning on an understanding of the universe that makes such meaning absurd. You act like our long term growth and survival as species is some kind of worthy ideal which only seems fair and right for us to be able to attain. However, in a universe were we came into existance only by chance, adapting to the container in which we began, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect the laws of reality to preclude our long term viability. All is chaos. We are nothing but an infinitesimal spark of unusually low entropy which flares up in one moment and dies the next, lost in the great unfathomable cacophony of the cosmos.

Other than Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, right?

Hey, I wonder why Boeing never tried to get the first X-Prize. Probably because it wouldn't have even paid for the launch of one of the space vehicles they've been building since they renamed NACA.

Know what would work better as a "last resort" technology? Using those weapons directly against global annihilation/alien invasion/etc.

If aliens don't have the technology to keep up with (or overtake) a nuclear pulse propulsion rocket, they probably don't have the technology to defend themselves against cleansing nuclear hellfire.

It is.

The problem nobody is acknowledging is, if we wanted to establish a colony outside of the solar system (so not all humans can be wiped out by a single catastrophe), we could beat them to their destination by waiting for a more advanced vehicle. The sooner you start the later you finish.

Maybe they are like the aliens in Independence Day, which come all this way and attack this tiny populated speck instead of just mining the rings of Saturn, or Jupiter, or something.

Why? If it happens, it happens, if not it doesn't. It's meaningless. Reality isn't going to conform to the dreams of kids who watched to much Star Trek.

Aliens are dicks.

It's a little bit meaningful to us since it's us who would all die.

We'll all be dead hundreds if not thousands of years before it happens anyway.

humans have very little choice but to develop technology to travel to new worlds in order to survive long term. Pretty much Gospel

Space exploration is VITAL..... but **** it, opinions are opinions, and none of you are major players in politics, science, or religion. So lets all leave the thread, play some computer games, and have a nice wank.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Really? I didn't know you could predict near GRBs. That's a pretty neat trick!

Edit: Nevermind, Ruthven.

Yeah, you're right. I'm going on vacation to California in a week. Once I leave, I'll just start a wildfire and burn most of it to ash, since, you know. I won't be there, so it doesn't matter.

Just because it doesn't affect me doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Daft Punk would make great interstellar traveling systems

weird, i dont know how you would pronounce "5tory," "5ecret," and "5ystem."

fivetory, fiveecret, fiveystem

I was taking about us in this thread, not humanity.

I don't think you understand what I am saying.

Any time.
No warning.

The dinosaurs had like 60 million years to get off this rock and they didn't. Can you really expect us to do it in a few thousand?

Well, I guess a GRB burst could kill us all at any time, but that's not in any way relevant. You took what I said an turned it into an absurd absolute.

Perhaps I poorly worded my point, or left some things out. My apologies. If the planet is a 'living' body, then the exploitation of the planet and the possible ruination of its environment just for the soul purpose of shipping all of the mined resources back to Earth, is ethically questionable. However, if it is a planet or other body that lacks life, it wouldn't be that questionable.


Where did I say that? I didn't. Perhaps you don't entirely understand what I was getting at. It would be best to ask for my reasoning, instead of making leaps with little logic and reasoning.


Yes... but what is, then? If galaxy systems are insignificant, then star systems are. If star systems are insignificant, then planetary systems are, also. Going further with your argument, using this logic, everything becomes insignificant, be it job, life, love, reproduction, socializing, education, whatever.

... Unless, I guess, if you put a god into it.


No offense, but it sounds as if you fail to understand what ethics are in the definition and concept. This is only but a single point to reinforce this.

It's not water recycling that's the problem. It's the hydrogen and oxygen gases that are not easily recycled.

FYI, it had nothing to do with my logic, but the fact that they were looking for ice on the moon for exactly this same reason.

[edit] Found quote:

"The LCROSS mission will help us determine if there is water hidden in the permanently dark craters of the moon's south pole," said Marvin (Chris) Christensen, Robotic Lunar Exploration Program (RLEP) manager, and acting director of NASA Ames. "If we find substantial amounts of water ice there, it could be used by astronauts who later visit the moon to make rocket fuel," Christensen added. [/i][/b]



Government contracts don't count because that's paid by taxpayers. I'm talking about companies such as Virgin Galactic, Bigelow Aerospace, and others.

I would like to round up everyone who thinks colonizing Mars is a good idea and ditch them in the Gobi Desert.

I came here hoping to see theories about interstellar travel, so the golden guitar phallos was a bit of a downer. The lack of technological means aside, I don't think we're ready for interstellar travel. We can't sort our own crap out, so possible contact with other sentient species can be catastrophic. Insurgents on random extrasolar planet number three, little space bunnies are being opressed by the bloodthirsty cosmic walruses! NATO to the rescue!

Give the chances of us finding a planet with an eco-system on it I doubt that would be an issue, so I didn't even consider it, but even if it did, how would that be ethically questionable?



I was thinking in terms of it being an empty rock. Size is really the only difference important difference between an empty plant and an asteroid.



I was just pointing out the absurdity of using size as a measure of significance.


Again, talking about scale.

Wrong. Water recycling (and recovery) is where the magic happens in a modern ECLSS.

Average human losses of oxygen to:
H2O - 2.84 kg / day (80%)
CO2 - 0.73 kg / day (20%)

Well, for starters, the waste byproduct of using hydrogen is water, and it's pretty easy to electrochemically reduce water into hydrogen and more oxygen.

Secondly, it's fairly easy to electrochemically reduce CO2 as well, it's just difficult to integrate into space vehicles at the moment. I'd say it's about 5 years away, if not sooner.


They're looking for it on the moon because it will make bootstrapping a new colony cheaper, not because it's clear gold.

They don't count because the government buys their products?

They can recycle water now on the ISS. So how was I wrong?

...or do you just like telling people they're wrong?

What's your point? I mean, other then taking what I said out of context so that you could try to make yourself look smarter?


...which is what I said, to off set the costs. Mining minerals would be extra cost, where as the ice would be used to directly offset the costs. I never said anything about it being gold. Again, do you enjoy taking what people say out of context so you can try to make yourself look smarter?

...the government buys their products with taxpayer dollars, as i already said. So yes, they don't count because it's part of that $40 Billion budget. If a company wants to privately fund space ventures, then that's much different.

Jon, I'm trying to be nice. However, I have to know, why did you even bother responding to my post?

You're wrong because you said: "It's not water recycling that's the problem," but - in reality - water recycling is the method of conserving oxygen on modern space craft. I also provided numbers that you're more than welcome to look up for yourself: oxygen losses to water flux make up 80% of the total loss.

The remainder is in metabolic byproducts (mostly CO2) which are currently just scrubbed out and vented into space.

My point is obviously that your plan to mine water from the asteroid belt will never make sense.

It's called an analogy. Little hint for you: when people talk about 'black gold' they aren't saying anything about gold either.

Mining the moon for ice makes sense for the reason we apparently agree upon. Mining distant asteroids for ice does not make sense for reasons that I refuse to believe I need to explain to you.

So it doesn't count at all... even though it's a private company, designing and constructing functioning space vehicles? Vehicles that anybody could commission them to make if they had the money to pay for it?

What the ****?

Jesus, Alco, you're a petulant child. You're wrong, and I'm explaining why. Suck it up and pay attention.

Here's an idea: maybe no one gives a **** that you think you're god's gift to humanity. Half the time you get on someone's case it's because you're stroking your intellectual ego, not because what you're doing is in any way helpful.

You're the intellectual overlord who never errs and we are just hopless plebeians. We get it already. Find a new act.

This thread delivers.

it does.

I'm glad that this thread is generating some good discussion! Now for some more pretty pictures.

The Hubble Deep Field:


Three generations of Mars Rovers:


Andromeda Galaxy in infrared:


Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator (aka SPDM, aka Dextre, aka "Canada Hand") on the space station:


Jupiter's Great Red Spot:


Wernher Von Braun and the first stage engines on the Saturn V:

Hey look, it's Freelancer's sole contribution to any discussion.

Hey Freelancer. How's it going?

You're kind of proving his point

What point?

I tend to steer clear of the drab, detail-obsessed "discussions" of which sort you commonly involve yourself. It's nothing personal, Jon.

freelancer is a poopsicle

Free tends to stick to the infinitely more vibrant "No YOU are" variety of discussion.