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5 Years of Habitation on the ISS
An anonymous reader writes "The International Space Station has marked five years of continuous human habitation. People started living on the station on November 2, 2000. In five years, the station has hosted 97 people from 10 countries, including 3 commercial passengers. It survived through the Columbia accident and the suspension of shuttle flights. The station is a testbed for long-duration missions to live and work on the Moon and Mars."
Slashdot and a space station are almost indistinguishable.
"It survived through the Columbia accident"
You don't generally notice space stations disappearing when a shuttle explodes. You generally see them stay right where they are and continue to be space stations. Very few people would go "oh lets just knock it out the sky, who cares?" when it's the only space based human colony (small though it is).
I like muppets.
I disagree with you, but this is just my opinion: :D
1) Our population is increasing almost exponentially. If we dont get started researching permanent rehabitation now, we may not be able to sustain ourselves in the future
2) assume a cataclysmic event happened on Earth. If we have people in space when it happens (like, colonizing mars or something) then we may survive as a species to see another day
there are more reasons. If I missed some, reply with more
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I'm trying hard to find a solid list of scientific accomplishments for the mission. So far, I'm finding a handful of research articles on microgravity-related changes in human physiology. Hopefully there's more.
I hope the major accomplishment of the ISS isn't just keeping it in orbit.
"The station is a testbed for long-duration missions to live and work on the Moon and Mars."
How is it a test bed for that? Sure, the structure is still up there... I'm pretty sure that isn't the hard part about getting to Mars, or even the moon. The hard part is keeping a human alive in there without resupply, in-gravity exercise, etc. None of which the station helps with.
-Daniel
Jeez... What's taking so long. Five years and it's not done yet. Here is a better article:d _iss_fifthyear.html
http://space.com/businesstechnology/051102_techwe
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Did you just buy a DVD box set of SeaQuest DSV?
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
yes, that money should go to the homeless!
Well, that or they should put the homeless in the space station at least. I mean, with all this research how has nobody thought of testing the effects of zero g on the homeless?
5 Years of Habitation on the ISS
Its this slashdot or what? WOW! I thought they would scrap it right after they spend my taxmoney on it!
The news these days. Can't wait for Scuttlemonkey with his FUD...
That comes out around a cool $1 Billion per visitor. And so much has been accomplished. Such a deal.
Because sooner or later a Outside Context Problem will turn up.
l em
"Most civilisations encounter an OCP in the same way that a sentance encounters a full stop."
(Iain M. Banks)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_Context_Prob
Yes, it's fictional. Doesn't make it any less true.
We can build the most perfect society we can, and assuming nothing else gets us first, the sun will eventually burn out. We *must* go to the stars.
I think that if humans don't destroy themselves first something will happen to Earth naturally. Maybe the government already knows what is going to happen and isn't telling anyone. Maybe the sky will start to fall. The movie deep impact comes into mind.
Exploration is key to survival. You never know what we'll find or how many aliens we'll talk to ;-)
Plus, living on the moon could get expensive, especially if you have to lease the land from some old fart that bought their kids land on the moon and actually demand payment for land use. http://www.lunarregistry.com/
Obama = Socialism.
Ask yourself this, when you think of the ISS are you filled with pride, satisfaction, or a general, meh. Yep, it is the most expensive "meh" in history.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I'm trying hard to find a solid list of scientific accomplishments for the mission.
How about accomplishments outside of the scientific domain?
People of all colors, gender and race from more than a dozen nations have floated above our heads like biblical angels in peace and harmony.
Achieving nothing.
3) The moon has great asset value for a host of purposes.
A) Mineral Mining.
B) Space Observation.
C) Space (well moon) station for resupplying and launching missions into deeper space.
D) Other.
But realistically you don't want to "live" on the moon any more than you'd want to live in a submarine, but sometimes its nessesary.
More feasible, but in the event of a catastrophic meteor that causes magma to boil the oceans, the human race will likely die.
The earth is a semi-closed system. If we would really want to ensure the survival of our species need to survive outside of it. First moon or Mars, then we need to leave the solar system.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Yes, I agree, NASA does cost a lot of money, however I disagree that it's a waste of my money.
Why would someone build an entire city under sea level knowing full well the ocean might someday come in and destroy it? Ask the residents of New Oreleans.. Any my tax dollars are going to help clean that up.. b.s.
Why would someone continue to give money to the homeless for years and years and the homeless situation not improve? I'm sorry, but if you're still homeless after 2 years of us trying to help you then you should be deported to Canada. Let them deal with your sorry butt instead of my tax dollars.
Why should you keep a person on death row for 30 years before putting them to death? I'm sorry, but their needs to be a time limit on that. Again, why waste my tax dollars.
At leased we have something to show for the space program unless the thousands of other programs that are just draining our system.
Yes, I know.. I'm gonna get bad Karma for this.. Not all people are equal, not all choices are correct, we need to help our fellow man(woman), we need to balance the budget. Remember, the USA wasn't built on political correctness, it was built on us kicking out the brits.
Obama = Socialism.
"Let's fix the oceans and live in them, that's more feasible than the moon and mars."
Assuming the planet isn't destroyed by asteroids, global warming, or a nuclear war, this would be an awesome idea.
"Derp de derp."
Let's fix the oceans and live in them, that's more feasible than the moon and mars.
Yep, a coat a paint and a new rug and that ocean is in move-in condition!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
When the Sun goes supernova, all you water suckers are going to be boiled to death, and us space rats will just freeze to death. How do you want to go? I'd rather be frozen than boiled alive myself.
Actually population growth is slowing quite dramatically and there is an expectation that the world population will hit a maximum of about 9 billion people (only 50% higher than today). The easiest/cheapest way to deal with over population is to educate women in the third world. Then the next best way would be for humans to populate the arctic and oceans (more than 2/3rds of the world surface)
Think of all the "space-age" technology you have today. Your cell phone, compact radios, great insulation, etc etc. All that was developed from technologies made for the original moon-shot. Expecting benefits from pure research and development in 5 years is insane. Although the station does suck allot of money, it will pay off in the future in new synthesis technologies, habitat sustainability, launch, and commumication technologies.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
There is absolutely no realistic way that "space colonization" will help with the worlds population problems, at least not in the forseeable future.
Once robots are ubiquitous (definitely in the forseeable future) and "the singularity" (not M$'s) happens, I think humanity will become more like benign pets anyway.
The next replier, who mentions the Moon as a mining source, hits the nail on the head. Also, scientific research in zero-g is the way to go. Thats really what any space station should be about.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I vote for Frozen... after all, maybe some alien will thaw me in 10 million years.
Obama = Socialism.
I think the Rooskies should rename the station the ISSR. It's basically theirs now anyway.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Ahoy there mateys!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
a) We need to learn to use other planets as resources so that when the population of earth is say... 16 billion people and the average life expectancy is say 5 times higher than it is now or even the possibility of death being a thing of the past, that we can ship people off into the universe like its no big deal.
b) Diversify, diversify, diversify. Right now we keep all our eggs in one basket. One meteor, one huge earthquake or mega volcanic eruption could wipe out anywhere from 25% to 95% after all of the side effects are taken into account (i.e. tsunamis and climate changes). By living on other planets the chances of our extinction as a species becomes much smaller.
c) Exploration and knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Sure we can do most of that stuff with robots, but what fun is that... and while living in space we may learn a thing or two about the robustness (or lack thereof) of our bodies and ability to adapt. Perhaps new methods of farming or food creation will become the norm. There are many other benefits but I won't list them now.
d) Like it or not, not only are we an intelligent species, but a moral one. The intelligence factor leads us to dominating our surrounding environment, the problem is we are smart enough to not be happy with what we have and instead modify it to our needs (I see nothing wrong with this, we are a part of nature, whatever we do is natural despite however many animals may die, even if we do it in a viral manner). As a result of this extra level of comfort we tend to take up more space and consume more resources. We also tend to live longer and longer... eventually reaching the point of no death according to many in the sciences. This is where the moral part kicks in... we won't enforce population control, we won't just start killing people for the sake of killing people. Therefore our population is bound to spiral out of control at some point within the next century or so.
Any one of those points is worth sending civilizations into space.
Regards,
Steve
It is so much cheaper to colonize Antartica than the Moon or Mars, and so much more practical. Plus, after global warming, it may actually be comfortable.
They tried to shut Meh down on MTV but it feels so empty without Meh.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Hey! I wonder if PBS will have a show in 50 yrs or so called "This Old Space Station". Just imagine the tools that the Norm counterpart will have! Mmmmmmmm, power tools.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Let the rich folks pay for their ticket to the moon and mars. When hell hounds earth, I bet I won't be invited on the vessel out; why should I as a taxpayer have to fund this ludicrous idea of transplanting 'humanity' to another planet? They don't care about the poor of the Earth right now let alone when a catastrophy is about to hit.
"Hey human, how about some money so I can buy some Oxygen?"
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
What's funny is that I initially read the headline as "5 Years of Inhabition on the ISS". I was thinkin, "man, the project must be being run by UC Chico". NASA will be pissed to find out that they've been using cooling hoses and o2 tanks as beer bongs and leaving used condoms on the $50mil experiments.
Actually, wasn't it built on talking the French into doing most of the fighting for us?
Just splitting hairs here.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Hell, who wants to live in the ocean and be near that annoying little bastard Spongebob!
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"When hell hounds earth, I bet I won't be invited on the vessel out; why should I as a taxpayer have to fund this ludicrous idea of transplanting 'humanity' to another planet?"
A. Because it would be the sort of forward thinking move that would make it virtually impossible (improbable?) for the human race to go extinct.
B. When any of what I mentioned happens, if it happens, you're shit out of luck. When we can transplant humanity, you'll have at least a chance of going somewhere safe. The more work that's done, the more people that can be sent, etc.
C. They care quite a bit about the planet. But besides the potential tragedies I described, there's also the matter that we'll eventually run out of resources. We'll need to go get more. 'Caring' and recycling will only go so far.
A much better question is: "Why wouldn't we want to plant the seeds to ensure the long term survival of our species?"
"Derp de derp."
"International Space Station has marked five years of continuous human habitation."
And I bet it smells like it too.
You need to pay for space research now so that when shit hits the fan you have a cheap japanese-built spaceship in your garage to get you out of Earth, and some terraformed planet or cheap-housing space habitat to go to.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
let's look at those values...
A) Mineral Mining --> Excellent. So long as we don't need to get the mined product back to Earth, or anywhere else other than the moon's surface.
B) Space Observation --> Cool idea - an Earth-orbiting telescope. Like the Hubble. Except stuck to the moon.
C) Space (Moon) Station --> 4 words: "Are we there yet?" And 4 more words: "Damn. There's no Cinnabon."
D) Other --> ??profit??
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Clearly the French are less gullible than they used to be!
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
It's the subject of the only Tom Cruise movie you can admit to watching, that uber-kewl 3D IMAX documentary.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Nah, we space rats will simply move away when the Sun grows to a red giant - it won't explode, it's too small for that. After the gian phase passes, the remains of the Sun - a white dwarf, later a red dwarf - will continue to give significant amounts of warmth and heat for a hundred billion years, altougth the amount will of course get lesser in time. After all, it takes a long time for a Sun-sized object to cool down.
Or we could just develop nuclear fusion and make our own power sources using hydrogen from the outer planets, and later interstellar gas.
Or we could figure out how to reduce the total entropy of the universe, thereby breaking the second law of thermodynamics, allowing us to rejuvenate the Sun when needed and keep all of this unpleasantness from happening in the first place.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think maybe part of the underlying "meh" to the ISS is the fact that it is so fragile. People think of space stations as self sustaining settlements in space and the fact that people are staying over night in space is not enough to fulfill that image. If you are feeling down, just realize that the ISS is a necessary step to that dream of the self-sustained space city.
5 years? Big deal? Chris Kraft (former "Flight" in the early days of NASA) summed it up in his autobiography: the space shuttles, the space stations, they are all a cop-out and pretty much a waste of time. We should be on the moon, on Mars, not wasting time in low orbit! We already know how to stay in orbit with a zillion satellites and launches under our collective belts. We need to get back to the hard stuff.
Give me a f***ing break. From Wikipedia, the "it ain't necessarily trustworthy, but it's readily available" reference:
"Teflon is the brand name of a polymer compound discovered by Roy J. Plunkett (1910-1994) of DuPont in 1938 and introduced as a commercial product in 1946. It is a thermoplastic fluoropolymer."
And...
"The photovoltaic effect was first recognised in 1839 by French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel. However it was not until 1883 that the first solar cell was built, by Charles Fritts who coated the semiconductor selenium with an extremely thin layer of gold to form the junctions. The device was only around 1% efficient. Russell Ohl is generally recognized for patenting the modern solar cell in 1946 (US2402662, "Light sensitive device"). Sven Ason Berglund had a prior patent concerning methods of increasing the capacity of photosensitive cells."
And no, NASA didn't invent Velcro, either.
"a) We need to learn to use other planets as resources so that when the population of earth is say... 16 billion people and the average life expectancy is say 5 times higher than it is now or even the possibility of death being a thing of the past, that we can ship people off into the universe like its no big deal. "
Or we could learn to be more efficient in our use of resources.
"b) Diversify, diversify, diversify. Right now we keep all our eggs in one basket. One meteor, one huge earthquake or mega volcanic eruption could wipe out anywhere from 25% to 95% after all of the side effects are taken into account (i.e. tsunamis and climate changes). By living on other planets the chances of our extinction as a species becomes much smaller.
Why is survival of the species necessary? If it's time to go, it's time to go...
"c) Exploration and knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Sure we can do most of that stuff with robots, but what fun is that... and while living in space we may learn a thing or two about the robustness (or lack thereof) of our bodies and ability to adapt. Perhaps new methods of farming or food creation will become the norm. There are many other benefits but I won't list them now. "
It's interesting that you say knowledge for the sake of knowledge... but then switch tracks to talk about uses of such knowledge. But, I think this reason is valid... probably the most valid.
"d) Like it or not, not only are we an intelligent species, but a moral one. The intelligence factor leads us to dominating our surrounding environment, the problem is we are smart enough to not be happy with what we have and instead modify it to our needs (I see nothing wrong with this, we are a part of nature, whatever we do is natural despite however many animals may die, even if we do it in a viral manner). As a result of this extra level of comfort we tend to take up more space and consume more resources. We also tend to live longer and longer... eventually reaching the point of no death according to many in the sciences. This is where the moral part kicks in... we won't enforce population control, we won't just start killing people for the sake of killing people. Therefore our population is bound to spiral out of control at some point within the next century or so.
We won't need to enforce population control. Starvation and disease will take care of that all by itself. Space exploration and colonization will not provide us the resources we need... competition for limited resources will continue to limit our population.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Lets assume that we want to remove 6 billion people from the face of the planet into space. We'll give a timespan of 20 years. That is 300,000,000 people a year. About 800,000 people a day, over 34,000 an hour, 570 people a minute, or 9 people a second.
9 people a second, day and night, for 20 years. That is a lot of bandwidth, even for a group of space elevators.
Other infrastructure scales up about as poorly.
If we look at the timeframe, we probably won't have a working space elevator in 20 years. :( Its probably more likely that a space elevator is 30 - 50 years down the road.
Well if you end up in the vacuum of space, you still die of suffocation. Therefore it is about the same length of suffering anyway.
And what is wrong with sharks? I will take a quick shark-bites-head-off death over drowning any day!
Too bad that the ISS is in the wrong orbit to be useful for much manned exploration of the Moon or Mars. It doesn't look like Nasa is thinking about doing anything about this, it wouldn't be an easy thing to change but far cheaper than building a new station.
Too bad it's due to burn up in our atmosphere and such if it isn't pushed into its correct orbit again..
Money wasted on the space station in no way advances any of the things you are concerned about. Being in LEO and constantly resupplied from the ground, it provides no information on how to build a Martian or Lunar colony, or how to support a crew on a years long mission to Mars.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I dunno about you, but I'd like to think that folks somewhere, be it Luna, Mars, or maybe Ceres and Vesta, are still rocking out to that good old rock & roll long after I'm gone, and after a planet busting asteroid destroys this greasy blue marble we all live on.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
(I think that link will sadly be relevant to every NASA discussion in the future.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I know I'm going to get mod down, but because I said I'm going to get mod down, moderators will feel obligated to prove me wrong, and mode me up stream. :)
I hate it when people say they are going to get mod down, all the while secretly hoping they'll get mod up.
Wasn't there a leap year in there somewhere?
I could see the truth if I was blind.
... manned space travel vehicles work!
And the ISS is alive thanks to them.
I also think communism doesn't work, but if they've done that with a bad economic system, well... even worse for NASA, huh?
Anyway, private space vehicles will probably redefine launcher cost effectiveness from now on.
8-|
About option "A", mineral mining is fine on the moon. Either fission or solar power to run refinaries, etc. So long as the value of the finished and/or intermediate goods you are going to send back to the earth (or mars, or whatever) is greater than the cost of production and transportation, then it is worth it. If it is possible to move near earth asteroids and such to a parking orbit around the moon, where it can be "chunked" and dropped into the gravity well for a landing, you can harvest vast ammounts of mineral resources.
I know the arguments against a lunar base (mostly pertaining to the gravity well), but it has some real benifits as to radiation shielding, and gravity on human phisiology that makes it worth it.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Is there such a set? More importantly, is there a torrent? God I loved that show.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
I don't usually reply to trolls but this has to be the most incoherrent, random and completely confusing post I've ever seen.
It was built on kicking out the Native Americans? Sorry, no. The end goal of American colonization was not kicking out the native americans. You could make the argument that it was built, at least in large part, by kicking out native american populations or strongly discouraging them from living as they did (or even inadvertently making their lifestyle irrelevant in a modernized context), but to say that somehow the reason 'we' came to America was to displace the poor red men is patently absurd. If you want to argue over westward expansion, the jeffersonian ideal, and Manifest Destiny, fine. Indian-kicking was a side effect of a political enaction of the supposed Dominion Mandate from Genesis, among other things. It was not a goal in itself.
Being more efficient will only get us so far. And as far as continuing the species goes... the only reason you were born was to continue the species. Its what you are designed to do, everything else you do in life simply supports that goal. The only reason anything is born it to continue the species. Animals don't adapt so they live longer, they adapt so that they can effectively give birth and ensure the security of their species. If one of the side effects of that is a longer life span then so be it. Regardless, when it comes down to it, your whole existence is for nothing but the contiuation of the species. Humans being capable of intelligent thought are redefining that a bit, but in any other animal that is life. Not to metion, its only time to go when we say so. If we are successful in avoiding a catastrophe, then it obviously wasn't our time. There is no such thing as fate, we are in control of our destiny. Methods are being researched for mass food production, and we have a better handle on disease than ever before. In the next few decades you'll see nanobots and other technologies start to let humans self heal, and quickly. With most of the advances that science is making right now, in a few decades we'll be pretty well off. Don't be selfish and just sit around waiting for our species to die off... I'm sure the billions of unborn children would hate to know that people think like that.
Regards,
Steve
that would have been a scary article! *sheesh*
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
"Its what you are designed to do, everything else you do in life simply supports that goal. "
;)
What do you mean designed?
I happen to disagree with you, since I don't really believe that I am just a member of a species. I am a symbiotic relationship of many species -- maybe my purpose is to propagate my mitochondria, or my gut bacteria, or something else.
One of the effects of my life may be to propagate the species -- but I don't think you can ascribe that as a purpose, for then you are suggesting the presence of a higher power.
"If we are successful in avoiding a catastrophe, then it obviously wasn't our time. There is no such thing as fate, we are in control of our destiny."
This is a contradiction -- saying 'it wasn't our time' is saying that we do have a fate.
Also, animals don't adapt in order to ensure the success of the species -- that's ascribing a motive. Species adapt because some kind of mutation provided a selective advantage. The selective survival of the species caused the adaptation, rather than the other way 'round.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Getting to space with a fuel to cargo efficiency of 100:1?
That's just a huge waste of fuel. Then what space exploration can there be?
Space exploration = nuclear engines or better.
... the whole is a massive waste of time and money.
Except there's spinoff - literally and figuratively.
Yo, peep dis: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
US airlines move about 600 million passengers around the US every year. (source)
Long haul trains move far less, but it is concievable that eventually rockets could be as common as aircraft are now.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Heh, coincidentally, season one will be available on December 26th. Check Amazon.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
me too...
It's weird. Someone else said the same exact thing last week. I have no idea where people got that idea. NASA doesn't even claim that they did. Aparently they did create some odd material that contains teflon. I know because I looked it up on the NASA spinoff's site. Hopefully even more trustworthy than wikipedia.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
But when the airplane was new, it was within the realm of reality to go build one yourself. "Pilot's license" ... A what? If you look at the history of aviation, it's full of half-crazed poineers who built their own craft, sometimes dying in the process. But the DIY opportunity existed. It still does, though highly regulated by the gub'ment.
... a major cost being the insurance that's required. "Small" spacecraft are typically 500-1000 kg, and cost millions to get into orbit. The test and acceptance procedures are draconian. They're also in place to reduce the risk that your mission will hose the launch vehicle and impact all the other paying customers.
Fast forward a half a century, and you'll see a bunch of folks doing experimental rocket launches. Many are privately funded. Lots of folks did dangerous things. Some were successful.
Nowadays, we're completely risk-averse. Launches are prohibitively expensive
I'm depressed at the amateur and university efforts. Everyone seems to launch a Mode-J repeater or a camera or the same old and tired missions that have been accomplished in LEO for the last 20 years. Yeah, it's more affordable to launch a Cubesat payload, but most of those fly hacked digital cameras or hacked hand-held radios. Let's face it - LEO is boring.
Dammit. Now I just rambling. Getting back on-topic, it's virtually impossible for average folks to participate in space exploration with the same opportunities presented by aircraft. Space travel is difficult, but we've put up legal and cost barriers to prevent widespread participation. Yes, crashing a rocket into your neighbor's house is a bad thing, but so is flying your homebuilt aircraft into your neighbor's house. I strongly suspect that NASA needs to control space flight opportunities, or it will cease to exist (or worse, become the red-headed stepchild of the FAA.) The politics have gotten in the way of progress. Beyond that, we're going to need to invent new propulsion technologies to make spaceflight more common. You can't negotiate with the physics - there's an energy cost associated with getting to LEO. It doesn't matter what fuel you use, you need to have a delta-V of about 7km/s to maintain orbit. How you do that is up to you, but right now it's really expensive.
In any event where true humans leave earth and settle the moon, another planet, or any place that has conditions different from earth(different gravity, longer/shorter solar day/year), it is likely that a new specie of homo sapiens will arise. So yes, the few 'humans' living on other planets would remain if earth was destroyed, but in 100 or 1000 years, it is extremely likely that they will have adapted to their environments, and would not be able to copulate with other Earth human offshoots.
I expect the Moon does pretty well when you're on the dark side, but when you're on the sunny side I don't think it offers any radiation shielding. No magnetic field, no ionosphere.
Please correct me if I'm wrong...
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
At first I was a little skeptical that moon mining would yield anything worthwhile, so I went looking and found this:
n emoon.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunar/school/near_earth/mi
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Is that really 5 years of continuous habitation? I seem to remember not too long ago that it was temporarily closed and then reopened by a crew that checked the air etc. Is this a phantom memory or is somebody having fun with revisionist history? Doesn't the definition of continuous require a warm body to be there constantly?
name a country that can actually get to it? was getting to it ;)
so RSS it it... USA been slaking off in the development to replace shuttle - come on, lets get those rockets converted...
not sure how will they (US) launch bigger cargo.
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
So, what you're saying is 'God plays dice'?? :0p
"five years of continuous human habitation"
;)
Is it really continuous if the occupants left the station? I guess hanging off the outside counts.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
No. The French provided a lot of support, but until the last few years, they weren't involved militarily in the US revolt. They did delivery at crucial times (eg, aiding by helping bring in talent to train and lead the American troops and imposing a naval blockade at Yorktown to force a British surrender) and were a key reason for the success and relatively short duration of the war (the British couldn't focus on the revolt due to French interference elsewhere).
Oh yeah, the day after christmas. Good move, faceless DVD company.
*mopes*
So what's "poor" about the scaling? If we can cram 100 people on a big, dumb rocket at your desired rate, then that's 3 million rocket launches per year or a bit less than 10,000 such launches per day. It's a hefty demand for global industry and it'd mess up the environment a lot, but I don't see a real obstruction here. You probably could set up several dozen or even several hundred heavy lift space elevators to push cargo and passengers up that way. My point here is that if you're willing to put in the resources to move 6 billion people, a lot of the technologies scale well enough.
I expect the Moon does pretty well when you're on the dark side, but when you're on the sunny side I don't think it offers any radiation shielding. No magnetic field, no ionosphere.
Please correct me if I'm wrong...
Lunar regolith could potentially be quite useful for radiation shielding.
At the risk of being flamed: do you expect that we would move the poor into space?
"Golf Clubs: A material designed for the space station aided in the development of Zeemet, a proprietary, high-damping shape memory alloy for the golf industry. The Nicklaus Golf Company created a new line of golf clubs using Zeemet inserts. Its superelastic and high damping attributes translate into more spin on the ball, greater control, and a solid feel."
I for one, support the ISS wholeheartedly, now that it has proven its usefulness!
The French provided a lot of support, but until the last few years, they weren't involved militarily in the US revolt.
Sounds like the US in WWII. Doesn't stop plenty of Americans trying to claim all the glory.
How big is the ISS (International Space Station) ?
What can be done there?
* Can you go shopping?
* Do you have internet access?
* Can you listen to music or watch TV and watch DVD's?
* Can you play sports such as soccer or tennis?
* Can you swim in a pool and have access to SPA?
* Are there any bars or dance floors?
* Can you eat at restaurant?
Or do you basically go up to space and do absolutely nothing and bore yourself to death for 5 years?
We have the technology to build towers that extend into the upper atmosphere, where its just a matter of 'throwing' things into orbit.
Heck, we've build bridges longer than the required height of this tower.
Couldn't they use this money to restart projects that got shelved when NASA's bugdet got cut? Take Hubble, for example. The thing is constantly churning out useful scientific data. Redirect these funds to someplace they can be used to further our understanding of the cosmos rather than a relatively useless project hosting space tourists and caretaker astronauts. It's like we have a financial black hole in orbit around Earth.
Bring on the asteroid
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There are no such things as "Native Americans." They just came over a lot earlier than the Europeans (and there is even some debate about that).
And it's not like they were so saintly, or the Europeans so evil, either. The "Native Americans" spent a good deal of time fighting with each other long before Columbus sailed (and practiced some pretty damn gruesome forms of torture, too). And Europeans treatment of them varied greatly depending on the tribe, European country, time, locale, etc.--from friendly trading relations (France in much of what would become the Canadian provinces), to suspicious indifference (the New England colonies and much of the middle and Southern English colonies), to active oppression (Spanish colonies in central and south America).
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I never said NASA invented Teflon. I said have you ever used them? That technology was used for the first space suits that walked on the moon. NASA invested a lot of money into Teflon development for those space suits.
Obama = Socialism.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well, for what it's worth, the US started kicking supplies to England well before they entered the Second World War. The similar "Land-Lease" programs to the USSR and China appears to have been very helpful (though how helpful, I'm not sure). And the US did most of the work in beating Japan. Even though the USSR did the lion's share of the fighting with Germany, Britain and the US helped a lot by bombing German-controlled industrial centers and opening additional fronts of war.
3) The moon has great asset value for a host of purposes.
[...]
B) Space Observation.
I saw plans for a liquid mirror telescope on the moon in a permanently-dark north pole crater (several candidate sites have been identified)
the idea is that you get a reflective liquid and spin it on a dish to give it a perfect parabolic shape... much cheaper and more precise than ground-glass reflectors.
On earth you need expensive bearings to isolate from vibrations (natural and man-made), and exotic chemicals to avoid using toxic materials (mercury) that might end up in the environment one day.
On the moon the operational logistics are quite a bit simpler...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
In case either of you two who responded to me come back and read this, here's a basic response. To the first objection, I understood "was built on" to mean the thing that most helped america become what it is today, not "the purpose of colonization," which also was not "kinking out the brits" (obviously). To yours, eric, please, calm down. "Native Americans" is the term for them. If you want to be a pedantic asshole, there are no such things as "native" people to any area, as once upon a time, their ancestors lived elsewhere: in the oceans. I assume you realize that you sound like an asshole when you say this shit, but if not: You do. And there are lots of people who like to say that the genocide of the native americans by spain/england/america(yeah, it still was happening after 1789!) by pointing out that they weren't all saints. Oh well, if it's cool to kill anyone who's not a saint because you want your land, let me know where you live, and I can expand my assets!
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
I have a stack of the annual results a half a foot high on my desk going back to the 70s.
Stack up all the economic pluses generated in companies by the advances that have come out from NASA, divide by what the missions cost, I believe you get a number greater that 1.
And yes, include the golf clubs.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."