50 years of space travel - should we be further ahead?

Tefal said:
the moon has he3 though which may be very important, the asteroids don't iirc.

also i think they found water in the moon which could reduce costs of other bases if you could farm it there and move it to the asteroid stations/mobile stations easier and cheaper than from earth.


atm mining metals from asteroids is a huge waste of time and would result in a product thousands if not millions of items more expensive than the earth mined stuff.

it would only be viable when we're building things in space as it would be easier than shipping it up, or when metal becomes so scarce we're recycling 100% of scrap and it's still not enough.
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I should have elaborated, mining asteroids makes commercial sense when the materials are going to be used for spaceship construction and in the case of rare and useful elements, i.e. iridium, osmium, platinum ... etc. Makes more sense to build ships in orbit, maybe only chip manufacturing would be trickier.
 
there are bigger priorites atm such as dealing with recession etc, and space travel is stupid atm because of cost/benefit. However research on means of space travel should continue.
 
Yes but that's not a technical reason. I'm sure a joint adventure could get an exemption. why would UN block a multi national space mission.

Here we go 44years, I knew I posted about it in pretty much ever space thread
Later studies indicate that the top cruise velocity that can theoretically be achieved by a thermonuclear Orion starship is about 8% to 10% of the speed of light (0.08-0.1c).[1] An atomic (fission) Orion can achieve perhaps 3%-5% of the speed of light. A nuclear pulse drive starship powered by matter-antimatter pulse units would be theoretically capable of obtaining a velocity between 50% to 80% of the speed of light.

At 0.1c, Orion thermonuclear starships would require a flight time of at least 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri, not counting time needed to reach that speed (about 36 days at constant acceleration of 1g or 9.8 m/s2). At 0.1c, an Orion starship would require 100 years to travel 10 light years. The late astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that this would be an excellent use for current stockpiles of nuclear weapon
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Totally agree, we have thousands of the things and not much to do with them. start shipping them to space.
or do the original orion project which uses nukes on earth as well, to launch a 6000 ton starship, the fallout is very low indeed. Far less taht what we have already done.
 
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silvercut said:
there are bigger priorites atm such as dealing with recession etc, and space travel is stupid atm because of cost/benefit. However research on means of space travel should continue.
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The global priority should be to look for new ways to create wealth, new resources and new enterprises, without causing excessive damage to natural resources. Do let engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs come up with models and strategies for the industrialisation of the solar system.
 
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silvercut said:
there are bigger priorites atm such as dealing with recession etc, and space travel is stupid atm because of cost/benefit. However research on means of space travel should continue.
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It's not sometihng you can switch off and on at will. If you cancel a project such as Orion that's money down the drain and you have to start over.
 
AcidHell2 said:
Heating, cooling, food is sorted.
water can be got from docking with astoriods. It all depends how long you are talking about and how big you build the ship. Weightlessness can be of set by spinning the craft, to introduce artificial mavity.

radiation depends on which way you are going and how long for, you can you mass of the ship to block it, again depending how big the ship is and what orientation you have.
we can already navigate, look at probes doted around numerous locations in our solar system.

Propulsion again is sorted if you have the money, nuclear bomb propulsion. Or ion engines/rocket maybe possible for some missions. Depends how far we are going. rockets are more than capable of reaching mars.
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JRS said:
NASA had a Venus flyby mission plan worked out as part of the Apollo Applications program. They seemed to think that was more than possible with Apollo-era technology. It would have launched on 31st October '73, began the flyby of Venus on the 3rd March '74 and gotten home 1st December '74.

All that stopped it was money, and NASA's re-focusing of priorities on the Earth-orbit Skylab missions and the effort to build the Space Shuttle.

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Which implies that you do believe the other half of the nonsense....



So, what have you heard or seen that would lead you to question the Apollo landings happening? Because every theory I've ever seen that labels the landings as a hoax holds about as much water as a sieve.
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That is all well but still there doesn't exist a working example that covers all the basics. No doubt when they do they will realize that they missed a lot of basic things that are unseen from todays preceptive.
 
joemo13 said:
No, its obvious that when CT's say things about missing cross-hairs or no other stars in the pictures that there are simple explanations for them. I just find it hard to believe that man managed to get to the moon and back and survive with the technology that they had.

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Reading back through, I sound almost as bad as the people who thought CERN would create a black hole and destroy the earth, I'm just saying I have my doubts!
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Your doubts are not the science you claim they are. They're a result of being accustomed to a higher level of technology and thus seeing the lower level as being excessively primitive. It's the same sort of thing that results in people believing that aliens built the pyramids/Stonehenge/etc.

Take a look at Roman aquaducts for a good comparison. Hard to believe they were built ~2000 years ago when the most advanced building technology was a pole with chains hanging off it (groma). Wholly artificial canals dozens of miles long (the longest was over 100 miles) with a consistent slight incline the whole way regardless of terrain - elevated hundreds of feet above ground or tunnelled through solid rock. We have to believe it because the evidence is right in front of us in a completely obvious way. If it wasn't, no doubt some people would doubt that aquaducts ever existed and some people would think that aquaducts must have been built by aliens.
 
silvercut said:
there are bigger priorites atm such as dealing with recession etc, and space travel is stupid atm because of cost/benefit. However research on means of space travel should continue.
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The future of mankind has a greater benefit than just about anything else. Stopping exploration of space especially getting a permanent manned presence off world is stupid. Mind numbingly stupid for such short term problems as the current financial situation.

Politicians can't think long term. Mostly because it won't get them re-elected rather than cost.
 
Orcish-Horde said:
That is all well but still there doesn't exist a working example that covers all the basics.
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A working example using...what, exactly? The shuttle can't do it, Congress and the White House have neutered everything else....how can they have a working example of anything when their budget is being outstripped by your average bank CEO's bonus....

The Apollo Applications Program had designs, flight plans and burn profiles for damned near every eventuality, mission hierarchy, the whole bag of mashings worked out. There were three phases - a test of the wet workshop concept with a Block II CSM and the S-IVB stage of the Saturn V, a long duration test in a higher Earth orbit with an updated CSM and the rest of the hardware required, and then the final mission. And it could well have worked. We'll never find out now.
 
Problem really comes down to the fact that the whole space program is just a big science project, done by a relatively tiny fraction of humans, the fringes of our existence.

Untill we have a much larger proportion of our species collaborating for this endeavour, a true "space age" if you will, we will never get anywhere far.

Fact is most of us are wasting our potential by living for livings sake.
 
Rainmaker said:
:D

I'm torn on this, tbh. While I applaud and encourage the idea of space exploration and the widening (and deepening) of the current projects, I find it hard to moan about not spending more on space stuff when there are people starving to death and freezing cold/homeless down here...

But that's a perennial problem. One could just as easily say if we scrapped the pointless wars, stopped spending millions on MPs' luncheons and diplomatic soirées then we could use that money instead and the fully fed and clothed mankind could explore space without worrying about where the next meal is coming from.

But that's just me. :p
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Thats their own fault mostly:
http://www.cvgs.k12.va.us/digstats/Images/wp.gif

If they wouldn't stick their willy so much in a particular hole, there'd be far more resources per person...

Ihmo, all the foreign aid spent by Europe the past 50 years, would have been far better used for space exploration. We need to go forward, not be stuck at the undeveloped area's of earth. Unless you castrate a lot of people on birth, population will keep growing in the poor regions...
 
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Angilion said:
If it wasn't, no doubt some people would doubt that aquaducts ever existed and some people would think that aquaducts must have been built by aliens.
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I see where your coming from, and it is a marvel that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids with their technology but the shear amount of manpower they had would get the job done eventually whereas that approach can not be taken to space travel. The calculations must be done correctly or the mission would fail. I recall a Mars rover crashing because someone didn't convert an imperial measurement to metric. Something similar on one of the Apollo Missions would have killed everyone on-board.
 
It's a shame we haven't done more in space, but maybe that's because there is currently very little benefit, and there might not be any benefit to doing more space stuff for quite some time. After all, however cool a moon base might be, it doesn't really provide any benefit other than national pride at the moment.

Chinas future in space seems particularly promising to me not only because they are on track to have a massive economy, but because of their system of government. It allows them to spend ridiculous amounts of money on stuff like their Olympics that would have been protested against in the UK. They could provide massive funding for space programmes without the need to justify it to the public in the same way our government tries to. Then again, China is changing fast and this may not be the case in 20 years.
 
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With hopefully 100's of millions of years left of human life on earth, as long as we don't ruin the planet or destroy ourselves, I think we have progressed outstandingly well in the last 50 years. Think where we may be in another 1000 years!
 
I feel that manned space exploration for now isn't the best way to invest in science. Very little science was undertakn on the Apollo missions; but of course they were exciting and inspiring.

I would be very happy if more funding was diverted to nuclear fusion research as this too will not only be inspiring (almost limitless, very very clean energy) but will genuinely make a difference to potentially everyone on the planet.

Back to space though, so much quality science is being done with unmanned probes/orbiters and even ground telescopes that we simply don't need to send people up there (besides to service Hubble and other instruments).
 
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