Soldato
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Or until the planet is damaged beyond repair or has no resources left and we NEED to go further into space... Then it will be too late...
Why don't we pump more money into space exploration?
- Thread starter Sleeve
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Or until the planet is damaged beyond repair or has no resources left and we NEED to go further into space... Then it will be too late...
Soldato
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So what if the Russians decide to be stupid like the Americans and give up their manned LEO capacity?
Oh yeah we have come quite a way when it comes to probes but think what we could do if these agencies like NASA actually got some decent funding? I mean the Curiosity rover program had a shoestring budget.
What we need is for the Chinese to put a man on the moon. That would ignite the old space race and we might get somewhere. However, like I said above I think private companies will take over from government agencies.
tons and tons of earth rare minerals in space
the only problem is getting them down to earth the potetial returns are enormous for the first country to manage it
also 50 light years from earth there is this bad boy
a diamond that is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/9295/astronomers-find-a-huge-diamond-in-space/#ixzz289159yn0
Well as you say the cost of getting them down is the issue along with the time it takes to get to the asteroid and back. Even if the cost came down to rival earth mining then the time taken to reach the minerals and bring them back would make it infeasible, even if the speed of space travel increased towards the theoretical limits.
The big diamond you posted completely goes against your argument. Even if we could improve the speed of space travel several orders of magintude it would take thousands of years to mine the asteriod and bring it back to earth, besides there is plenty of diamond on earth and even though its price is kept artificially high by the De Beers cartel it does not cost that much to buy.
Have you looked at the world economy?
Mars Rover Curiosity - $2.5 Billion
Watching people running around in circles (London Olympics) - $14.8 billion
Slapping stupid Muslim peasants for ten years - $1,380 billion
Humanity - braindead...
Mars Rover Curiosity - $2.5 Billion
Watching people running around in circles (London Olympics) - $14.8 billion
Slapping stupid Muslim peasants for ten years - $1,380 billion
Humanity - braindead...
These figures disgust me.
There is still a lot more to learn and discover on this planet, without having to gamble billions of pounds.
What if we did have a major space program, and it found nothing of interest or value? Total waste of money, there are far, far, more important things to spend our money on at home that have a benefit to the population or create wealth.
What if we did have a major space program, and it found nothing of interest or value? Total waste of money, there are far, far, more important things to spend our money on at home that have a benefit to the population or create wealth.
We're too busy fighting eachother, or submitting to false gods to see the benefits of working together as a species to explore space, understand it further, prevent possible catastrophies, seek out new life, perhaps establish a real presence and harvest resources, etc.
Soldato
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There is enough Helium-3 on the moon to provide clean power for us for hundreds of thousands of years. Enough natural resources in the near earth asteroids to solve the shortages on earth.
However, above all this is the simple fact we have all our eggs in this one very fragile basket. Getting people off-world solves that and provides the single biggest advantage - the continual survival of the human species.
Never mind anything else of value. That enough is reason it should be done.
Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair said:
Soldato
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Nah it's not space or the exploration of it that'll do it, but the 1st encounter we have with tribbles they'll be our downfall!
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We still haven't touch the bottom of the deepest ocean yet so sending people into space is only a way one trip plus there is no point when the technology needs to evolve before we can even think about that far into space.
There is enough nuclear fuel on earth to provide clean power for hundreds of years. And Geothermal and Solar energy to last millenia.
Yes we are all on the earth but it's not going anywhere, we're better off spending our energy ensuring the stability of Earth rather than getting everyone off it. Realistically barring human error (see previous sentence) the Earth will be habitable until the end of the life of the sun which is way to far off to even contemplate.
All depends how long you want to be alive (as the human race) on this planet.
Firstly, the way our economics is currently working, we will start to run short of stuff on Earth fairly rapidly (in the grands scheme of things).
Secondly, the way we are, we're probably quite likely to start killing each each other rapidly once important stuff becomes scarce enough. We do that already and always have done. There's a fairly decent chance, considering the weapons we already possess, that one day, most of us will be wiped off the surface of the Earth anyway, so having a steady population in another place(s) is probably a good idea in terms of the survival of our species.
Thirdly, no matter how much we learned to live in harmony with ourselves and the planet, eventually, we'll need interplanetary travel, because Earth will not be around forever.
Fourthly, curiosity and the desire to explore is a fundamental part of the survival instinct of humans and the human race. The idea of never (as a species) travelling and settling on other planets makes me feel quite claustrophobic.
i was just using that as an example asteroids full of rare minerals pass by earth all the time
you dont need to go light years
Soldato
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above food, shelter and happiness? really? what about the fact we are running out of fossil fuels?
i agree its worth looking into but at the moment Nasa etc are working on warp drive technology. the thing is unless you can get at least 10x the speed of light you arent going to get anywhere in less than 50 years.
all the exciting planets are many light years away and even with warp10 (10x speed of light) it will still take decades to reach these places.
i say its pointless to even think of deep space exploration until we discover a way to travel much faster than we currently can. or we find some magic like worm holes.
at the moment the world is crumbling financially, so anything that doesnt help the lay man isnt high up on our priorities. kids are starving, old people die because they cant afford to heat themselves.