Author Topic: Space. The Final Frontier.  (Read 75459 times)

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Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #200: June 06, 2012, 02:44:33 PM »

It's politics- republicans blindly support defense spending because the world is evil and democrats blindly support defense spending to prove they aren't communists


Yeah, I unfortunately get the how and why. But it just doesn't make sense how we continue to let it happen. Finding out they spent tens of billions on two telescopes we know about, never to use them. Then they are "gifted" for the benefit of mankind instead of death and destruction. And we don't have the money to even just launch and retrofit them, when they could answer fundamental existential questions and generate trillions in discoveries they make on dark matter, dark energy, and finding life elsewhere in the universe.

It's more like realizing that they are given two superior Hubble telescopes, that are going to go to waste, when they were all upset over losing the Hubble and the uncertainty of the JWST... It's totally, fully realizing we are never going to make any efforts in space travel or discovery in my lifetime, and all the dreams of extra planetary travel, discovering dark matter, dark energy, gravitational waves, WIMPs, etc.., I'll never live to see any of those things answered if we can't even launch two superior Hubbles gifted for free. Hell, the US Govt might never launch another man into space sans private industry in my lifetime. It's just depressing to fully realize how little people care about such fundamental and life enriching technological discoveries.


Offline MarquisDeSade

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #201: June 06, 2012, 02:57:00 PM »
Without defense spending a lot of people in San Diego, DC, Norfolk, and Groton would be freaked.

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #202: June 06, 2012, 03:03:58 PM »
BRAC has already freaked other communities (Charleston, SC lost an enormous Navy presence, same with Mobile), but it can also work in a city's favor- San Francisco got a crap load of prime real estate that just needed a little super fund attention. The funny thing is, the biggest hawks are usually the same people who rail against reliance on government

Offline MarquisDeSade

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #203: June 06, 2012, 03:17:39 PM »
The irony is thick at times, no doubt.  It's really too bad I hate CT, working at Groton would be pretty bad ass.

Offline The Chief

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #204: June 06, 2012, 04:03:48 PM »
This is not the politics thread.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #205: June 18, 2012, 07:04:10 PM »
First of all, read this article. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/18/nasa-voyager-1-spacecraft-nears-interstellar-space/

I'm an astrophysics geek, but I don't understand how a human can read that and then say "damn them sciency types burning money in space."

Now for my nightly rant. Launch five or six probes with a plutonium reactor and toss it in hibernation with intermittent readings of interstellar space. Send them the four to six LYs to the nearest stars. Our kids kids might be rotted bones. But they will reach the nearest stars, and we can build them to last the centuries long journey. When they get there, it'll take four to six years for the data to get here. But as someone who knows the field, I'll burst some bubbles and say faster than light travel is BS. Wormholes will never happen, even if they are possible. The energy required to keep one open is staggering, if possible. But just like manifest destiny, this is our destiny. There's a good chance humanity is gone by the time these probes reach Alpha Centauri and company. That alone is enough reason to send them, a momento we were here. And if we are still here? Holy crap, it would be unimaginable.

But we can't even explore our solar system. I was part of the fight for New Horizons, the Pluto and Kuiper belt explorer. It got canceled at first, mainly because we didn't want to waste the money and it was an unimaginably long journey. Guess what? Twoish years from now, we will have photos of the surface of Pluto. Things like that, unimaginably long journeys, you launch them now, because the results are decades and centuries away. If we do develop faster than gravity assist fly bys, then awesome. We won't. But the time to launch a probe to the nearest stars is now.

Then again, we get two free Hubble successors and they go to waste... Maybe China will do it for us as they make us look like the dying, lazy, greedy, selfish culture we are. But really, how freaking cool are the Voyager probes and interstellar exploration?

Offline Nathan

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #206: June 18, 2012, 07:56:58 PM »
Can't afford the Hubble replacement?  The cost is what was spent for 1 month in Afghanistan.  The bank bailout was MORE then the ENTIRE 50 YEAR RUNNING BUDGET OF NASA!


Online Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #207: June 18, 2012, 08:05:54 PM »
Can't afford the Hubble replacement?  The cost is what was spent for 1 month in Afghanistan.  The bank bailout was MORE then the ENTIRE 50 YEAR RUNNING BUDGET OF NASA!

NASA & Federal Budget - Neil deGrasse Tyson[url]

And the Hubble replacement would benefit us ... how? What's wrong with the telescope they put up their in the first place.

Offline Nathan

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #208: June 18, 2012, 08:08:38 PM »
Oh I forgot, there have been no advances in technology in the past 22 years :roll:

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #209: June 18, 2012, 08:12:44 PM »
Even if you hate NASA, they waste money in the hundreds of millions, DOD manages to blow it in the hundreds of billions

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #210: June 18, 2012, 08:27:06 PM »
And the Hubble replacement would benefit us ... how? What's wrong with the telescope they put up their in the first place.


If we are talking James Webb, it is over budget and destroying NASA. If we are talking the two Hubble replacements I mentioned, they were given free by the spy agencies, are built and taking up warehouse space. NASA can't afford to launch them into space and slightly retrofit them. But they are built and cost NASA zero but launching and retrofitting, and they admit they can't even afford that. But to repeat, there are two more powerful than the Hubbles built, sitting in a warehouse, wasted money by spy agencies.

Online Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #211: June 18, 2012, 09:42:47 PM »
Oh I forgot, there have been no advances in technology in the past 22 years :roll:

What advances in technology has the Hubble telescope given us?

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #212: June 18, 2012, 09:52:04 PM »
What advances in technology has the Hubble telescope given us?

Uhh... I'm sure manufacturing Hubble, it advanced technology quite a bit. If nothing else, creating such a large mirror has tons of applications in glass and mirror/lense refinement. And Hubble's replacements are to investigate Dark Energy/Matter both. What we could harness if we understand what they are, if they exist, is beyond imagination. The practical uses once we A discover dark energy and matter, and then begin to understand it? A force that acts against gravity leading to the expansion of the universe, which Hubble helped discover, is scary to think about under human control, and what technologies could come from it.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #213: June 18, 2012, 09:57:11 PM »
Here's one article quote to give you an idea...

Quote
Construction of the telescope took many years to complete because the proposed technology for the telescope was so advanced.  According to Zirker, the expectations of the telescope were very high: “Every aspect of the telescope would push the envelope of technology. The optics would have to be nearly perfect. The pointing accuracy would have to be unprecedented, certainly in space. Satellite control, data handling, electronics, and solid-state detectors – all these would have to be improved or invented to fit the needs of the unique observations (pg. 108)”

We as laymen don't know all the advances building Hubble led to, but it was cutting edge at the time and clearly did push technological advancemebts used in dozens of industries forward that might not have occurred for several more years.

Online Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #214: June 18, 2012, 10:10:43 PM »
And what were done with those supposed advancements? Oh NASA just gave then away?

Technology and the space industry will advance far more rapidly now that its in the hands of the commercial sector. They'll actually want to make a profit. Unlike the government who will spend crap tons of money on it, give the technology away that was developed by it, and then spend another huge sum to buy back the technology for future projects.

Space industry will advance technology more in the next ten years than NASA has in the past thirty

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #215: June 18, 2012, 10:19:35 PM »
ever heard of the concept of a public good- something that people can not effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others (ie light houses, environment...)- basic science research tends to fall here. Then again, maybe you want to government to profit from that advances it sponsors- an internet use fee maybe?

Online Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #216: June 18, 2012, 10:32:40 PM »
ever heard of the concept of a public good- something that people can not effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others (ie light houses, environment...)- basic science research tends to fall here. Then again, maybe you want to government to profit from that advances it sponsors- an internet use fee maybe?

They already are. You pay for internet right? That gets taxed. Just like tv.

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #217: June 18, 2012, 10:36:34 PM »
ever heard of the concept of a public good- something that people can not effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others (ie light houses, environment...)- basic science research tends to fall here. Then again, maybe you want to government to profit from that advances it sponsors- an internet use fee maybe?

Exactly. Some things are without economic value. That's obviously a difficult concept for some to understand, and the reason we are a greedy, selfish, lazy culture on the decline. First the Hubble has no economic value, then when shown technological advancements came from it, we just "gave them away". Some things are without value to begin with, they are priceless. The knowledge and stunning pictures we got back from Hubble fall under that category. They are for the good of humanity. Money is a human construct, a way of buying and selling our time basically.

Private industry is all well and good, and maybe more commonly used advancements come from privatization of space. But private industry will not send probes to understand the universe or discover other life, sentient or not. The advancements that come from this, intentional or accidental, are often exponentially more advanced than private industry space tech because what they discover is unknown and unexpected. Private industry won't search for the unknown or unexpected, because there's no obvious money to be made.

If money is the bottom line over science and understanding the universe, we are a sad species indeed, and it's a happy coincidence that insane advances in technology and this quality of life often result from this purely scientific research. But some things, like, oh, I don't know, knowledge and understanding the universe are priceless and for the benefit of us as a species and life form. Reducing it purely to dollars is both sad and a step back for us as a culture and a world, and the reason the US is on the decline. Now that that is all that matters, we are on the decline. Coincidence? I don't believe it is.

Online Slateman

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #218: June 18, 2012, 10:38:59 PM »
That is the exact arguement that DoD contractors have been telling Congress for decades.

Online HalfSmokes

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #219: June 18, 2012, 10:42:42 PM »
They already are. You pay for internet right? That gets taxed. Just like tv.


I pay a miniscule amount for my phone and cable, my internet adds nothing to those fees (Universal service and PEG grant, 9-11 fee, and a VA public rights fee plus state communications tax). Compared to the value of the invention, you'd think a for profit would charge a bit more for licensing rights

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #220: June 18, 2012, 11:05:33 PM »
Recently read "The Idea Factory" (history of Bell Labs)...the telephone industry probably did more to drive the US economy (and war effort) from the 30s to 50s than any other sector (including automobiles, shipbuilding, and heavy manufacturing).  Amazing how voice transmission is  essentially a freebee these days.   

Offline Coladar

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #221: June 19, 2012, 12:15:55 AM »
Recently read "The Idea Factory" (history of Bell Labs)...the telephone industry probably did more to drive the US economy (and war effort) from the 30s to 50s than any other sector (including automobiles, shipbuilding, and heavy manufacturing).  Amazing how voice transmission is  essentially a freebee these days.   

Well, voice over lines, yeah. The infrastructure is all built and has been for decades, now it's all support and maintance, so costs plummet and it's pure profit. Likewise, now we are building our wireless infrastructure, and it's expensive as crap. Fifty years from now, and the towers have all been built, it'll drop in price to nothing too. It's all about paying to establish the initial beachhead. After that, it costs next to nothing. Same with space flight really. If we ever really get off earth it'll be crazy expensive, then once things have been built, space stations or moon bases or whatever, it'll be crazy cheap.

Offline MarquisDeSade

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Re: Space. The Final Frontier.
« Reply #222: June 19, 2012, 09:35:47 AM »
Does NASA have a SBIR program?