New Planet Found in Our Solar System

We had a debate on state funded space programmes a while ago. It would be interesting to have it again now, in today's economical problematic World.

I'm for space programme, but not now. It's an expense that we can ill afford and there are many more important things 'at home'. I'm glad there are more private companies around who are seeking to exploit space. It can only be a good thing in my eyes.

I would rather see other things cut, aren't most of the programs quite long term so it's a large amount of expenditure over a long period or do they pay the fee upfront?
 
We had a debate on state funded space programmes a while ago. It would be interesting to have it again now, in today's economical problematic World.

I'm for space programme, but not now. It's an expense that we can ill afford and there are many more important things 'at home'. I'm glad there are more private companies around who are seeking to exploit space. It can only be a good thing in my eyes.

This is essentially what I think, but I'm not sure what useful technologies space flight would actually (and realistically) bring in the short / near future.

It's not like we are suddenly going to master warp jumps within the next 30 years.

And even so....

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:eek:
 
Can we live on it....................................NO
Can we reach it by space travel................NO
Is it on a collision course with earth...........Probs NO
Is it home to little green men and women....Not likely
Is it made of cheese...............................NO
Can we send Katie price and Bieber there...Worth a shot i say

Otherwise i am not too bothered about it :)
 
Disagree, space exploration is vital. And lucrative. We allready have a huge space sector which continues to grow, it needs to be growen. So we can reap the rewards in a couple of decades. We are on the cusp of a private funded space race. We need to be at the forefront. The Skylon project for example has the ability to basaicaly kill off all other launch pads/rockets over night. if we (uk) own it or keep it in our borders. That is huge amounts of profit and thus tax.
 
Disagree, space exploration is vital. And lucrative. We allready have a huge space sector which continues to grow, it needs to be growen. So we can reap the rewards in a couple of decades. We are on the cusp of a private funded space race. We need to be at the forefront. The Skylon project for example has the ability to basaicaly kill off all other launch pads/rockets over night. if we (uk) own it or keep it in our borders. That is huge amounts of profit and thus tax.

Yeah it's vital, question of if it's worth making long term investments at this time. It's important but if it was this being cut or disability care it would be a hard choice.
 
We need a space elevator, that's the real game changer. With that we're in space whenever we want. The hyper expensive stuff with rockets has always seemed like propaganda to me - I do accept there's been clear value from it, but sending people isn't that important.
 
Got to spend to make, no investment no future profit and we would be worse off. Plenty off money in the pot. It's just wasted by incompetence and scroungers.

There's thousands of inventions that come from space travel that work there way down.
 
We need a space elevator, that's the real game changer. With that we're in space whenever we want. The hyper expensive stuff with rockets has always seemed like propaganda to me - I do accept there's been clear value from it, but sending people isn't that important.

Skylon would do for the moment
paper studies, the costs per kilogram of payload are hoped to be lowered from the current £15,000/kg to £650/kg (as of 2011

Just hope the tests. Ring done at the moment on the hardest and most vital part (cooler) work. We'll know by farmborough airshow. That's when they want to make a statement to secure more private funding for the next stage.
 
I think really, what is it that determines our solar system - At what boundaries does our solar system finish?
Personally I would have stopped it at Pluto and said, right that's it then, or are we just going to keep looking for more "things" which orbit our sun and say that's in our solar system in which case it has the possibility to be never ending.
 
I think really, what is it that determines our solar system? At what boundaries does our solar system finish?
Personally I would have stopped it at Pluto and said, right that's it then, or are we just going to keep looking for more "things" which orbit our sun and say that's in our solar system in which case it could be ever expanding.

Isn't it just bounded by where the furthest away planet directly orbits it?
 
Skylon would do for the moment

It's well, maybe. I suppose if we get a space elevator it's going to be 40 years away, so in the mean time we'd be able to better prepare ourselves with Skylon... I just (without real reason) feel their figures are too optimistic....

If it works as it says on paper it'd be a fantastic stopgap.
 
I think really, what is it that determines our solar system - At what boundaries does our solar system finish?
Personally I would have stopped it at Pluto and said, right that's it then, or are we just going to keep looking for more "things" which orbit our sun and say that's in our solar system in which case it has the possibility to be never ending.

The magnetic field of the sun, I think is the official boundary. Some bizarre stuff happens there with light.

More info
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/09jun_bigsurprise/

Frothy Magnetic bubbles :D voyager1 is due to leave are solar system any time know.
 
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Wonder what more information they may have on this.. Such as if it has an orbit path and what it's trajectory is.. Will be pretty interesting to see if there is this info ^^
 
I asume you'd bound the solar system by gravitational influence.

Theres a ton of debris in deep space around our solar system that are extremely hard to map due to the sheer scale involved and how much light from the sun has dropped off reducing things like infra-red index and so on.
 
It's well, maybe. I suppose if we get a space elevator it's going to be 40 years away, so in the mean time we'd be able to better prepare ourselves with Skylon... I just (without real reason) feel their figures are too optimistic....

If it works as it says on paper it'd be a fantastic stopgap.

Even if they are you can still increase by factor of ten and still undercut everyone by a massive amount.
Saving all those tons of fuel makes a huge difference as does making it reusable.
 
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