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NASA Postpones Shuttle Launch
Mictian writes "NASA has decided to postpone Discovery's upcoming Return to Flight (STS-114) by a week to May 22. This is done in order to give the agency more time to finish paperwork, analyses and reviews of safety changes made. The delay came as no surprise, since the original May 15 date was always considered preliminary. The current launch window extends from May 15 to June 3."
Concerns about shuttle safety have been largely responsible for 22 major changes in the orbiter's design and as many as 40 more minor changes. "All of the redesign is complete," with a few exceptions, said Wayne Hale, deputy manager of the space shuttle program.
Last minute code release! Always a smart move....
The Custom Mary
that it launches on June 2nd/3rd
I mean, true, we really do need to get back to our normal routines of spaceflight, but we also need to make sure it's safe and that we're not going to lose any more shuttles due to microfractures or falling ice or whatnot.
Of course, this is also why I think that more effort needs to be put into commercial space vehicles, so as to make spaceflight more commonplace.
that the next shuttle to launch will be Atlantis
They have to wait because the Google website logo with the little space shuttle in it wasnt ready yet.
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
NASA is just waiting for their paycheck to clear so they can afford to fill up that gas hog. That Shuttle makes a Hummer look like a Prius when it comes to MPG!
Always delays... what are Nasa doing? I mean come on, it's not rocket science...
This is done in order to give the agency more time to finish paperwork
WTF is it with paper these days? I mean really! We spend more time doing paperwork then we do anything else. Is it REALLY that important to document every little tiny fact of a pointless job? All I hear from the police is "We need more people or we need less paper work" and it seems it applies to everyone.
Would you rather NASA spent hours and hours filling out paper saying how many pins they heard drop this week and how many screws they may have put in the test models or would you rather they spent that time improve technology so we can all bugger off this planet?
I like muppets.
Google day yesterday.. Nasa Day today... Sco tomorrow?
The technology created by NASA over the years has saved many lives. Going into space and leaving this planet is the only way mankind will survive the next billion years.
"NASA is super bloated and the shuttle is the biggest waste of tax payer money!!! Ohh with all that money spent on the shuttle, we could have had 20 cures for AIDS and 42 for Cancer!"
That's an even worse waste! What were those other 60 teams thinking?
PHB: "Hey, let's cure AIDS/Cancer"
Bod: "Sir, that's already been done!"
PHB: "STFU, we've got Space Shuttle money to spend!"
Have you ever heard the expression "I'm no rocket scientist..."? Well, I'm not, and more importantly either are you. Seriously people, try to remain within the realm of your expertise. Trust that the people at NASA are more intelligent than you, and taking necessary precautions and following necessary protocols.
I'm glad to see we're heading back to space. I hope they can start working on more exploration now... like maybe we can send some people to the moon for the first time in my lifetime. The space program needs to really take off (no pun).
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Photos of the shuttle from boingboing.net's article on it.
They were all hung over from the Apollo 13 ground crew party!!
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
As annoying as it is, that paperwork is important. We cannot make another saturn V because some of the paperwork has been lost. Of course if you wanted to create a new Saturn V you would start from scratch because you want modern technology, but still it would be helpful to know how any why the Saturn V was done the way it was, and what problems they had to work around.
Even when the paperwork is obsolete it is useful to get a picture of where you were.
Paperwork is your checklist. Many times in my life I thought everything was done until I went through the checklist. If you don't do the paperwork you don't know if you checked everything. It would be really a bummer to find that the main fuel tank was never filled, only "topped off" to replace evaporation/leakage while waiting on the pad. (that is just enough fuel to get off the pad, but not enough to get into space) Only by running through a checklist can you be sure that step was done.
Remember the saturn Moon probe of a few months back where they forgot to put turn the radio on in the checklist? The radio wasn't turned on. There are plenty of major mistakes that only doing the paperwork (annoying as it is) can prevent. Of course doing the paperwork won't find problems that aren't in the checklists. The sheare volume of things that need to be done mean that for minor things you sometimes hope someone did it, but live with it when someone forgets.
As far as I'm concerned, nasa does not really have a good track record for safety, despite all their efforts.
Before challenger blew up, the engineers tried to scrub the launch citing a possibility of the o-rings leaking. Pressure at the highest levels made sure it went as scheduled because before then, they had a flawless record and it was just a possibility and they had their image to maintain.
Of course, there was the investigation and they ultimately had to go lick their wounds. Years later and especially 9/11 later with budget cuts and the space program being scoffed at due to being essentially a money pit when it could be 'better spent', it's not surprising that a few years ago columbia vaporized on re-entry.
It may very well be damaged heat tiles by sheets of ice falling off the main fuel tank during launch which is the official story, but (...dons tin foil hat...) what might not be official is that due to such cuts and possibly a bit of politicking, pressure was put on all sectors of the space program including the 'garage' that inspects and repairs the heat tiles. If it's possible that the garage was under enormous pressure to get the aging columbia ready on time, they might have let a few suspect tiles go which they might not normally have let got and had they been replaced properly, they might have withstood the impact of the ice falling.
The russian space program seems to take the licking, learn from it and move on. Nasa to me seems to shuffle their feet for a while saying to themselves, 'how can we stop *THIS* from happening again?', but should instead ask the question, 'How can we stop accidents from happening again?'.
next billion?
2 questions: why does mankind have to surive the next billion years, or rather, why is it the job of an agency of the US governement to assure such a thing?
2) since multi-cellular organisms didn't really take off until almost half that amount of time ago (600million years ago), primates didn't walk on 2 feet until 4 million years ago (1/250th of that billion years), what in the world^H^H^H^H^H universe makes you think humankind will be around a billion years from now? Whatever is around then will be well beyond our capability to understand or predict. I mean, our species is only 50k years old (1/20,000th of that billion) and already in that span of time has evolved *considerably*. We don't even look like we did 200 years ago, much less 2,000. Do you really think we'll be anything like this 50,000 years from now, and that we'll be even remotely the same *species* as this a million years from now (1/1000th of that billion years). If not, who are you to dictate what their survival will require? Maybe within the next few thousand years we'll finally start doing population control, for instance. There's an idea. All other species seem to do just fine...we should be able to figure it out too, being "smarter" than them.
Really, we need a mod option for "-1, Indecipherable Nonsense"
I hope we can evolve into something else within the next thousand that allows us to not need fragile, biological bodies. Imagine the possibilities - instead of being in a spaceship you could BE the spaceship. Transfer the mind to a new machine, and then you can be the rover.
It's probably the only way we'll actually have a life off this planet.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
... is what doomed the Columbia. The carbon-carbon composite leading edge structure of the wings is not really "tiles", and it has been determined for virtually positive certain that a hole knocked into the carbon-carbon structure on the leading edge of the wing is what caused the disaster since the aluminum and stainless steel framework inside the wing melted and burned from within. The only thing that would do that is the superheated plasma gasses being let inside the wing, and the burn patterns of the inner wing components recovered from the wreckage have now revealed that the plasma gasses came straight at the interior structural parts from an angle that could only have come from a hole knocked directly into the leading edge. The unusual nose-left yaw exhibited by the craft right before the total loss of directional control which cause the craft to tumble out of control and break up, also is indicative of a hole in the left wing leading edge.
Don't get me started on Federal money pits. How many strictly local projects in their home districts do the Congress Critters add to the budget each year?
we can't do such a thing, since we are our biological bodies.
;) yet, instead of it being for nefarious purposes, the humans could in theory still be in control of it and aware, and instead simply send out probes to other planets that they can interact through as if they were actually there.
;)
We can though perhaps create highly-developed AI's, program/train them in our mores, and then set them loose - thereby creating a wholy seperate type of existence. But evolution is a biological mechanism, and (at least, in just the next thousand years) won't allow us to stop being biological.
What you're talking about could happen easily enough in a VR system, though...imagine humans in little pods, fed efficiently, with equiptment connected directly to their brains so that they can think they're experiencing certain things...
Or, maybe we should get metaphysical about it, and just become balls of energy
I find it amusing that at the same time everyone is hand-wringing over the safety factors of the pending shuttle launch, Soyuz is flying to ISS again without fanfare.
I think that says everything there is to say about the US space program.
We're putting a lot of effort to put a lame duck platform back in orbit that is going to be decommissioned in 5 years or so anyway with no clear successor and we just kind of ignore the fact that Russia has a time-tested (but not glamorous) platform with a far better safety record.
Its called EVE-Online :-)
Or Isaac Asimov's stories of the far far far future =)
the scary part is that it wouldn't be that hard to keep a body perfectly healthy for a very very long time, if in a perfectly controlled environment. We are already somewhat close to being able to fix a lot of things through GE methods; imagine if you ate the most perfect, healthy food at the precisely perfect times, had your health monitored 24/7, were given only the cleanest air at precisely the ideal mixture of oxygen and other gases, and never had to worry about car wrecks or other such things? The human body is actually designed to age on purpose, for various reasons...and the mechanisms for that are becoming known (and might be stopped, unfortunately)
The good old sun will continue to burn for quite a while and good old earth would also be able to support us for quite a bit longer. There is really no reason to start to evacuate to other planets any time soon. The problem is that menkind still hasn't even learned to live happily on this one planet, we extingt species, polute the air, wreak havok the eco system, start major wars every few years. If we continue that way menkind will have itself extingt much before sun even starts to cause throuble.
Space travel is still important and should be continued, but the SpaceShuttle as is is really for most part just waste of tax payers money.
About a hundred shuttle launches, and only two failed. That's not a bad record if you ask me. The space shuttle is one of the most complicated things people have ever done, both technologically, and politically. The fact that it ever flew at all, much less 100 times, is pretty amazing to me.
Not to say that there hasn't been some silly mistakes (you can make a pretty good argument that the basic design of the shuttle wasn't very practical), but I think NASA's safety record is something for them to be proud of.
The political nonsense and bureaucratic mess has certainly made NASA far less useful than that large a group of intelligent engineers should be. There's plenty to criticize them on, but their safety record is pretty darn good.
Your last paragraph doesn't make any sense. They can stop accidents from happening again by shutting down. Other than that, you're going to have to accept that when you're firing rockets up into space, it's dangerous. There's a lot of trial and error on the forefront of technology. How many planes crashed before the Stealth Bomber was developed? A whole lot more than wrecked space ships.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
### But evolution is a biological mechanism, and (at least, in just the next thousand years) won't allow us to stop being biological.
Evolution has for most part already slowed down a lot or stoped for humans, so I wouldn't expect any major change any time soon anyway. What however will happen sooner or later is that we ourself construct our future development. We are already growing organs (just little pieces of skin, but its a start), transplanting organs and constructing mechanical prosthesis, its just a matter of time until those things will not only be used as inferior replacments for lost or damages organs or body parts, but will be used to enhance humans with specific abilities. Its also quite possible that computer based AI will take over, not necessary here on earth, but sending out some clever AI todo space exploration isn't that unlickly. All this will not happen in the next few years, but in the next 100 or 1000 years some major advancements isn't that unlikly.
The problem is that somewhere there is an asteroid with your name on it. Get "happy" and evolve all you want. Cure all the diseases. It can all be wiped out fast. The shuttle is expensive but I would not call it a waste. The US is the only country willing to put money into human space travel. Why haven't the other countries done more?
Complexity is no excuse. The Concorde is the most complex airliner ever flown, to this day. That aircraft flew for over 30 years(!) without a single crash. NO other vehicle of any type has ever accomplished that. The engineers expected Challenger to be destroyed on launch. They were off by a little over a minute. Management overruled them. In addition to that, Reagan wanted to have a civilian in space to talk about during the State of the Union Address. The delays were becoming intolerable. Politics destroyed Challenger directly. It stank from the beginning. It did so a little lees directly with Columbia with the very nature of its design. Better designs were rejected due to budget constraints.
What?
From the CAIB Report, Volume I, Chapter 5, page 104:
That aircraft flew for over 30 years(!) without a single crash. NO other vehicle of any type has ever accomplished that.
Actually, be for they retired the Concorde there were crashes, at least three if I remember correctly.
I think complexity is a pretty darn good excuse. The concorde is another impressive engineering feat, no doubt, but I think there's at least one order of magnitude of difference between it and that space shuttle.
I'm not arguing that NASA hasn't made any mistakes. Not even that they haven't made really foolish mistakes. But I think, that overall, the fact that more people haven't died in the space program is rather amazing.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
The political nonsense and bureaucratic mess has certainly made NASA far less useful than that large a group of intelligent engineers should be.
I'd hoped people would see that being my point to begin with. I wasn't trying to say that space launches were inherently safe or unsafe or anything like that.
As for the first disaster, my memory of challenger was that when the dust settled, it was the top dog who said "launch" when the engineers said "don't launch". I wasn't entirely sure about the second, but last I heard of it, it was the heat tiles and if it was I suggested the possibility that it might have been yet some other bureaucratic mess.
There was an airplane whose cockpit window blew out and the pilot got sucked out. The cockpit crew managed to hold on to him long enough to get on the ground, which he miraculously survived. What ultimately caused that was the mechanic who had to work on that windshield, was under enormous pressure to get that plane out that night. In his haste he used bolts that looked the same but were not rated with the same strength. When the first one failed, they all popped like dominoes until cabin pressure blew out the windshield.
Accidents do happen, and it is unrealistic to overreact preventing it from happening in the first place (Although I could have an accident today, I should not drive to work. But then I could be on the bus and the bus could crash into a pole, so I should just stay home).
What I find inexcusable is the political nonsense that goes on in any industry. Crysler for example continued to sell their minivans knowing there was a flaw in the rear hatch latch and months later a kid was killed because that and another flaw caused the back seat he was in to be launched out the back. I can cite example after example of how some PHB sits in his nice ivory tower and works out how much a life is worth in lawsuits and will only fix foreseen problems when that outweights what it would cost to fix the original problem.
If I make a widget that breaks down and I knew it would break down ahead of time, as long as that flaw did not or could not cause loss of life, big friggin whoop, the only thing at stake is my reputation. When people are strapped onto a rocket like wile-e-coyote, the people who make or assume responsibility for said rocket, in my opinion, need to accept political fallout for playing it safe if there is sufficient cause for alarm for safetly.
After all, how much is a life worth anyway? Aparently, a fixed amount or something tangible in most industries.
Maybe within the next few thousand years we'll finally start doing population control, for instance.
Simple population control is not a good idea. I just saw a news story about the declining population in Europe. In the future, that will include the total population, including the immigrants. If we are to survive as a species, we must infest the entire galaxy. We need as many people as possible. The planet can easily sustain 20 billion people. With proper use of technology, there will be no shortages. This will provide us the needed brain power for getting off the planet with little hassle. Remember, we are parasites. We are a virus. We need a host to survive. If we kill the host, we kill ourselves.
What?
BBC coverage of the year 2000 Concorde crash most likely caused by rubber tire fragments (from tire blown by part which fell off another aircraft) rupturing the fuel tank.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
slowed down? It's gone *insanely* fast. Keep timeline in context; life started 3.5 billion years ago. Humanity's first written language was only 6k years ago - .5Millionth of life's entire time.
There's considerable difference between how we were 50k years ago, and how we are now. That we're the same species means ONLY one thing - that we could reproduce with them, and that our offspring could in turn reproduce with either of us. Horses and donkeys (and Zebras) are not the same species because while they can preproduce and make mules and hinnys (and zedonk/zebrass when a donkey and zebra combine), mules and hinnys can't reproduce in turn. However, a miniture toy chihuahua and a newfoundland can can produce fertile offspring (assuming the mother is the newfoundland, and is artificially inseminated...a chihuahua as the mother would just die before birth or something).
Look at those two dogs...same species, their gametes line up at least...why are they so different though?
They were genetically modified. Someone wanted a small dog, so they selectively bred them until they had the insult to nature that is the chihuahua. Sure, it was old-school genetics...but it was genetic modification none the less (aka "selective breeding").
We can do the same to ourselves, but worse - we're already genetically engineering all sorts of organisms, and GE humans have occured in rogue labs. In far less than 100 years, they'll be commonplace...so if you want a 7' tall blonde haired, blue-eyed son with fair skin, that has an extra stomach and a 6-chambered heart...that's not terribly far off, when we're talking about the spans of years in this discussion. I've already been part to making regular bacteria into super-bacteria through splicing and modification, and I'm just a normal guy. Really smart people, in 100 years, will be doing much more.
It's still evolution, though - darwin would still accept it, I'd wager. Dogs evolved, after all - even if we forced them to.
while Europe might be declining in pop (I disagree that it is, but it's not important) two countries will have growth in the next 20 years that will make up for it by themselves.
Scratch that...the growth they'll have will be more than the entire population of Europe at it's most populous point.
We're just shifting, we're not declining as a species.
I'm comparing the Concorde to other much less complex aircraft, which crash quite regularly. Usually due to human error. But even with a mechanical problem, that would be due to human(the mechanic or designer) error also. You can bet that part of the Concorde's safety record was due to political pride also. They were super careful with it. Same goes for NASA. The whole world watches ever little move it makes. Nobody wants their name on the next accident.
What?
I hear the astronauts were refusing to fly until they find out how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader.
This would not be a problem except members of the crew have already taked the "spoiler free" pledge.
Despite Initial protests from Mission Control, they decided that they rather watch fake spaceships blow each other up instead of blowing up another real one.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
Speaks six languages. Played with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (one of the foremost in the world). Commercial pilots license. More scholarships and honourary degrees than you can shake a stick at. Diver's license, and deep-sea diving operator. CAPCOM op. Fighter pilot.
And she's damned cute on top of it all.
With the original launch date, I wasn't sure whether I should watch the launch, or go see Revenge of the Sith.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
He was saying that our own scientific meddling will take the place of natural evolution, and to a large part he's right.
The basic reason for evolution: a lack of resources such that members of a species with a distinctive genetic advantage will have a greater chance of surviving long enough to generate offspring.
By that logic mankind no longer does this. We break down work into categories. If you aren't good at growing or gathering food you can do OTHER things that allow you to survive. Even for the people who can't provide for themselves we have created social welfare programs that will help them even though naturally they would starve out. In essence, once a species reaches a level of civilization evolution more or less grinds to a halt, because the forces that drive it are no longer valid.
If we were to place random plants and (nonhuman) animals on a planet and wait a couple million years, we might see something interesting. You put modern humans on that same planet and wait the same amount of time though and all you'll find are modern humans who have better technology (assuming they didn't kill each other).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
### slowed down? It's gone *insanely* fast. Keep timeline in context; life started 3.5 billion years ago. Humanity's first written language was only 6k years ago - .5Millionth of life's entire time.
Cultural evolution of course has gone insanely fast, biological evolution on the other side doesn't seem to have made much changes for quite a while and I don't see how it ever should in an industrial nation, after all your survival and your reproduction has little or nothing todo with your genes. Humans might of course one day adjust their genes to fit the job, but thats not something I would call evolution.
it has a lot to do with genes; while not all of intelligence is genetic, a good portion of it is. There are all sorts of traits that make it more likely that someone will have both the financial resources, and the inclination, to create GM kids. Those kids will be the next step in our evolution.
That, and it's silly to say we're not evolving anymore, because we're industrialized or something. What part of "we're only 50k years old..." is hard to grasp? It took 600 million years for the multi-celled orgs to get to what you are today. Give evolution a little bit more of a chance than just what you've seen in your lifetime.
That, and look at the skeleton of someone from 10,000 years ago - we're different. We're much bigger, and our brain cavities are larger. We're definately still evolving.
wrong. Social welfare is a recent invention, and it's already losing ground.
And...we're still evolving. Just don't expect to see changes in 20 years - evolution of complex species takes a little longer than that. Check back in 10k years and see where we're at.
Social evoltuion is different than biological evolution. There's no real evidence that we're biologically different than our pre-tech ancestors of 10000 years ago. Nutrition and culture account for some amazing changes.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yes, there were some significant management problems, but it's delusional to belive that the engineers are without a share of the blame. (Especially since two years before management had paid the engineers to study the issue of o-ring erosion, and the engineers had concluded that since the backup o-ring had not failed - even though the primary did quite often there wasn't a problem.)
More tinfoil hat nonsense. Even a cursory study of the NASA budget, and the Shuttle budget in particular, show that it went *up* in fiscal 2002, and again in fiscal 2003.Umm... No. This is yet more tin-foil hat nonsense. They tested both flown RCC tiles and new RCC tiles, and both sets failed the impact test.Important considering that using any reasonable metric; the Russian program has had far more accidents and incidents than NASA.Maybe because NASA lives in the real world and knows full well accidents are not 100% preventable.There's no real evidence that we're biologically different than our pre-tech ancestors of 10000 years ago. Nutrition and culture account for some amazing changes.
Hmm...if there's no evidence, then why did you write that last sentence?
As I've already stated, we're quite different than we were 10k years ago. Bone structure, brain size...even silly things like skin color. All sorts of things have changed.
### while not all of intelligence is genetic, a good portion of it is.
The problem (feature?!) with evolution is that doesn't care if you are intelligent, it cares if your genes spread and intelligence doesn't seem to help all that much with that any longer. Current brith rate in germany for example is ~1.6 per female, meaning we will be extinct sooner or later if it continues that way. It doesn't mean we are not intelligent or that we all die a early, it simply means that our culture evoled into a state where having children isn't considered necessary and carrer is often considered more important. In other much less developed countries in the world the birth rate on the other side is much higher, there genes spread, ours don't.
So yes, evolution still takes place, but it doesn't really go into the direction of some very intelligent advanced human.
There's no evidence of biological change. The evidence is that the change is not biological. The evidence is that the changes, instead of being biological, is due to changes in nutrition and culture.
There's no difference in bone structure, brain size in the last 130,000 years. There's very little difference in brain size between modern humans and Homo Erectus (some Homo Erectus skulls are a normal size for a man), which goes back over 1 million years.
We are indeed quite different that we were 10000 years ago, but biological evolution is much slower than that, amd the difference are caused by other factors.
Quick summary.
More accuracy and detail.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It IS recent. But recent makes no difference. We're not arguing about things that happened in the past. We're talking about things that will happen in the future. If something started YESTERDAY it could be the determining factor.
Look at the troubles we face today. Point out ANYTHING that would cause natural selection to take place. It doesn't exist for a modern society. In essence, by the time a species is smart enough to realize the concept of evolution, they'll have stopped evolving.
And trust me, in 10k years we'll be virtually exactly the same as we are now, just as we were almost exactly the same 10k years ago. To start seeing major differences in human physical structure you've got to go back nearly 100k years.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I doubt that availablr brain power has anything to do (well, maybe slightly) with number of people available....unfortunately :/
One that hath name thou can not otter
One more thing to point out is that perhaps technological advances can be seen as evolution of humans, which has shifted from us to the "extensions" of our bodies
One that hath name thou can not otter
I was happy when they said that they were going to restart the shuttle program... But I think it's more efficient to spend the tax money on a nonobsolete way into space. You know, spend money on cheaper way into space and if we use that way long enough then it pays back.
You have been warned.
You know, assuming that inteligence = you've got higher social position means that the people that are less inteligent leave more offspring. And the differences in our ancestors from 10k years ago can be caused by availability of food, that we don't have to work that early (for example: my generation is MUCH higher overall than the previous ones, which grew up during harsh years after WW2), etc.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I wouldn't call it on purpose; more like: it's the unintentioned effect of evolution (most of our ancestors didn't live long enough to really begin to age, so the good condition of body past, say 40 years, wasn't preffered in evolutionary race)
One that hath name thou can not otter
### Point out ANYTHING that would cause natural selection to take place.
Birth rate in germany is currently ~1.6 per female if I remember correctly, if we continue that way we are extingt in around ~500 years if my math is right. One might call that evolution, but it goes in quite another direction than expected, since wealth has little todo with how far once genes spread these days.
"There are all sorts of traits that make it more likely that someone will have both the financial resources, and the inclination, to create GM kids. Those kids will be the next step in our evolution."
GM kids.
you shouldn't assume that intelligence="higher social standing"
almost all of the greatest minds throughout history have either been complete recluses, or at the very least not at all socially or financially ambitious.
"higher social standing" simply means one is ambitious.
I'm not talking about the we as in those of us alive now: but say, some time in the future, a 'cyborg' is created by instead of using AI for the machine, they grow human brain tissue connected to the right interfaces that can be connected to various useful machine body parts. Eventually, that cyborg may down the line create new versions of itself that are entirely machines once technology has advanced in such a way you can make the brain of the machine out of something other than meat.
These machine intelligences, since they don't need all that messy life support, can be sent on space missions. If they also have the equipment to build new versions of themselves - well, essentially they are life, but not as we know it. But they are related to humans - maybe not by DNA - but by the new genetics of digital information.
Bam, asteroid wipes out old fashioned meat humans, but mankind's machine offspring can continue. Essentially, they have out-evolved the meat humans.
There's nothing really sinister about it either, and it's almost inevitable so long as we don't wipe ourselves out through war or ecological collapse first.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
No - we just changed the rules. Assuming that society doesn't collapse, I'm sure we'll be able to comprehensively control our genetic makeup. That will have a huge impact on what the human race looks like.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
That's one way of looking at it but a lot of thing that could keep us alive longer where removed because having 1/10th of a % chance to hit 200 is less usefull than increasing your chance of hiting 40 by 1/10 of 1%. Geting older has a lot to do with managing how much to repare the body vs let dammage acumulate. Think of it this way if you start having kids at age 3 then fighting canser as hard as we do is a waste but if you start having kids at age 300 then you need to fight canser a lot harder.
I think the simplest way to increase lifespan would be to prevent anyone from having kids before 30 thus increasing the value of living longer. You then keep moving that age up till you can't start having kids till your well over 200. Now this might take well over 10,000,000+ years but it can still work. On a side note having a population that's stable can work just as well if 1/2 the population dies before having kids and the other haulf has twice as many kids to make up for that fact thus creating a balanced society and promoting evolution vs having everyone bread as soon as they feel like it.
PS: I don't realy think this is a good idea just taking an idea a little to far.
You shouldn't assume that great mind = high intelligence :P More seriously (jus a little...), ambition isn't everything. And don't forget that I was simplyfying things in the first place - but overall, it's safe to assume that "dumb" (please notice the " before commenting...) people leave much more offspring.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Nah, I don't look at it this way - we mostly weren't dying for "natural" reasons after all. As for increasing lifespan...hmm, idea worth thinking about...after all parents who would be "better" in giving offspring in the late age, would have more of it (since children of mothers with complications would have to be stronger to survive pregnancy) - evolution would start again for us ;) (One might also wonder if it would translate to higher max age...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
It's on topic. It's ABOUT the topic, dumbass.