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However, I personally have yet to see a solid explanation to the problem of how the 'ingredients' of the Big Bang. Space is expanding, and is expanding from a central point. I can roll with this, but the only examples of those things that I've seen have been things like balloons, where the balloon can expand because it is pushing the air on the outside out of the way. [if there's no air on the outside, the balloon expands even faster] Is there something outside the universe that is being pushed out of the way (what is it?) [we're still figuring that out - there are some interesting 'marks' on the universe that may (or not) be evidence of a collision] or not (so then, space is continuing to get 'created'?). [more that space is continuing to get 'stretched' - if it helps, imagine 'space' as the surface of the balloon, not the air inside] From where did all the original energy come from? [possibly a self-reinforcing fluctuation, literally a spontaneous order arising out of chaos, though an omnipotent being could make it happen too] I've heard of the oscillating universe theory, in which case the heat death of the universe will cause the universe to once again contract into a singularity, but to me that sounds like "turtles all the way down". [currently looks like there's not enough gravity for a big crunch, but there's other maybes starting around 10^10^56 years from now] The 'spontaneous' transition from energy to matter-and-energy - what was its cause? [temperature is inversely proportional to volume, so as the universe expanded, the former dropped sufficiently for energy to form stable states - this happened more than once] Were there Newtonian/Einsteinian/Quantum physical laws that caused it? [yes] Was there 'time' when that happened? [yes] These are just a handful of questions that I've yet to find solid answers for in a model of the universe that precludes a Creator, some of which start to stretch the definition of being scientific themselves because they, by definition, are very difficult to observe, measure, or repeat.

Part of the problem is that... hmm... well, it's that we're just barely smart enough to sometimes realise just how stupid we are. So we devote our incredibly tiny lifespans to building on the work of those who came before, figuring out (maybe) how this universe of ours began and formed - and then somebody else comes along and complains when an elderly scientist can't explain, let alone "prove", their life's work in the time it takes to leisurely consume a cup of coffee and a doughnut.

Want to know something? It's incredibly frustrating for the scientist too.

But if the scientist doesn't live long enough to condense the work, some other scientist does, so that others can further the work, and then that gets condensed, and eventually some artist can grasp enough to make a story out of it, one that we can read over that beverage and pastry, and give us merer mortals a glimpse.

I rather like this one, notwithstanding the fictional liberties and an ignorant comment afterward.

I suppose one of my problems with many Creationists isn't the idea of God as an omnipotent being, it's that their idea of God isn't omnipotent enough . They want God to fit in a box, and their blueprints don't include nearly enough infinities.

Just in case Disney needs any inspiration on how to make Starwars worse, there was a discussion-thread on alternatehistory.com about how Star wars Episode 1 could have been made worse - http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=236784. Some of the suggestions are truly inspired. One of them being introducing some subtle racism and making Jar-Jar Binks a stereotypical black person who only talks in Jive. Also by not hiring John Williams to do the score, we'd end up with Jar-Jar's leitmotif being some early 20th century Jazz.

http://www.allyngibson.net/?p=2169

http://www.amazon.com/1945-Newt-Gingrich/dp/0671877399

http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=74249

It would be nice to read the sequels, Newtster.

A computer related example from Alternatehistory.com....

http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=49668

There's a reason or two Orion spacecrafts weren't actually that great an idea...

But heaven is hotter than hell!! Or not, according to the really humorous refutation presented on the same page :P

To all the people who keep citing Orion: Medusa has been determined to be better in almost every respect (lighter, can be made smaller, more efficient, less radiation exposure, smoother acceleration, etc - it uses a large sail ahead of the craft instead of a pusher plate behind it). Note that Orion/Medusa doesn't get you off the surface of Earth, or even out of LEO. See problems with the Orion project.

I think a revolutionary step would be if we could create very *dense* power generation (inertial electrostatic confinement fusion could possibly pull this off, if we could get it to work).

I ran some numbers on a test MPDT thruster. The thruster weighed 20kg and could consume 7.1 MW of power to produce 90N at 3,100 sec (3 mg/s of argon at 34000 amps). That's 0.45g, for a *lab model*, and not necessarily being run at its limits. It's not hard to picture that with lighter material and process refinement getting several G's of acceleration on an engine of that size (or even more if it scales up better than linearly). The problem is, the *engine* weighs 20kg. Its power source would weigh many tons with current tech.

It is conceivable that if we could have very dense power generation, we could directly lift off Earth with MPDT thrust. Sadly, we're not even close to that power density present-day.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/orion.htm

Seri ously, this is very interesting. It reminds me of the spacecraft that Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle used as the saviour of the human race in "Footfall," which used a similar series of controlled atom bomb explosions underneath a spaceship, in order to propel it.

A pretty good website on the history and science behind the Orion proposal can be found here.