Slashdot Mirror
Audacious Visions For Future Spaceflight
New submitter nagalman writes "There is a very powerful video out that takes the audio of words from Neil deGrasse Tyson, receiver of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and meshes it with powerful images of the history and successful outcomes of NASA. Through Penny4NASA, Dr. Tyson is pressing for the budget of NASA to be doubled from 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget in order to spur vision, interest, dreams, public excitement, and innovation into science and engineering. With Kansas stating that 'evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution,' and North Carolina's legislature circulating a bill telling people to ignore climate science, maybe it's time we start listening to experts who have a proven record of success, rather than ideology that has only been 'proven' in the mind of elected politicians."
Great video. I'm not sure what it has to do with Intelligent Design though. It strikes me that Intelligent Design is compatible with Natural Selection. The two theories diverge when it comes to the ultimate source of life which Natural Selection says evolved spontaneously as a single cell life form from which all other life evolved, and ID suggesting that our DNA may have come from elsewhere. It seems to me that expanding the exploration of space is key to discoving where we come from and the answer may be something which would be considered very unscientific at this point in time. Until we encounter other intelligent life in the galaxy or prove there is none and that under the right conditions life can evolve spontaneously in a previously sterile environment it would be short sighted to deny that life may have originated elsewhere.
Oh what the hell, it's like pissing on a house fire of bias and closed minded rhetoric. Here goes anyway.
Part of the reason there are so many folks who still believe in these things is just as threads above stated. Experts and professionals still only possess limited fallible reason and one tends to follow what they know or believe to be true first and foremost. Other compelling reasons likely happen at the genetic level. Tearing ourselves from disciplines of Astronomy and Physics for a second and focusing on the bit of Anthropology atheists prefer to ignore; man has ALWAYS believed in a higher power. We have scientific evidence of this. We know that abilities and quirks that we EVOLVE with are there for a reason. We can only theorize and therefore fork, but not discount at this point, Creationism as a possibility.
We cannot, however discount Creationism on the standard arguments of the various differing viewpoints of the interpretations of scripture by various sects who believe everything from literal translations to analogous parables of what they have read. Atheists tend to make the same erroneous mistakes as "Christians" gathering data for arguments. Does this mass example of relativity discount any possibility of truth? No. It keeps it in the realm of faith as it is designed to do. We can understand from what we know of the Bible that faith is required of man who is given free will. Gods purpose in this is to find who will voluntarily love him and reflect his will.( not something usually seen in the average "Christian" in the wild ,admittedly)
Well, do you want someone to voluntarily love you or be programmed by evidence to love you or else!?
Now we can decompile this problem by eliminating the chaos of the foreground and concentrating on the background in order to show that while you can not prove creationism, neither can you disprove it. While we only have what is said to interpret, we can also make note of what is not said.
7 days of creation to get from single cells to modern man. We invoke relativity here. Gods function of time is not relevant to mans salvation so far and therefore not included in his word to man. We can theorize that one who invented time and space, has mastered it. 7 God days could be Billions of our years. For all we know, he can turn a speed control if it is his will. Dinosaurs, Cavemen? We have no proof in the Bible of HOW God decided to create.
I'm going to theorize a complex system like this was created evolutionarily. Prototypes perhaps, necessary cogs. It also could explain the lack of a diverse gene pool previously thought about the Adam and Eve inbreeding theory. Early "Man" wound up breeding with manlike creatures to get us where we are today. No proof, but a plausible explanation to an old problem. Dinos, same story, they were HOW present day animals were created. Not included in the Bible as not relevant to the purpose of faith. We could go on and on, following events and people up to the point, we begin finding Archaeological clues and evidence of various things mentioned in the Bible, but then , this would just be onerous and by now, you get the point.
There , a meta-view of the problem shows that Creationism and Evolution could follow 3 forks. Creationism, Evolution, and Creation by Evolution.
This is Einsteins God. The one he couldn't believe didn't create all. This makes Atheism and Christianity, taken as popular cultures, just as full of shit as any Pop-culture and subject to dismissal as superfluous shouting and wringing of hands. Leakey, with his recent statements on religion and his findings is to be chastised as being biased and net very scientific. But then, if you sell Chevys, you are going to bag on Fords, probably without applying any unbiased rational, reason to it. I won't detract from what he has done scientifically, but I will point out his lack of scientific det
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Why does everything have to be measured by how well it serves "science"? What makes science so special? Fuck science. Seriously. If you want to perform some boring experiment that no one would care about besides someone in your field then pay for it yourself. Or get your university to pay for it. Those $50,000/year tuitions should pay for something. Of course if you happen to work for a private company then you can probably guess who I think should pay for it. Especially when any engineering that results from the science is immediately patented and the results are withheld behind an absurdly expensive pay wall.
IMO, NASA shouldn't be about science. We already have the NSF and god knows how much grant money for tax-funded science. NASA should be about space exploration and I'm disappointed with their progress in this regard. I would happily donate more than I pay in taxes for a truly sexy space mission. Particularly one where I could see recent video footage from a helmet-cam or from ship mounted cameras and see interviews of the astronauts etc. For a geek all of that is high entertainment. On the rare occasion that NASA actually does something interesting.
What do I consider interesting?
1. Anything involving a mission to Alpha Centauri. Even just early paper planning.
2. A manned mission to Mars would be nice. Especially if the aim is to do the groundwork for building a habitat there. They might even carry building and life support supplies and start setting up a skinned geodesic dome or whatever. Eventually we really should send humans there or at least a robot with something close to the ability of a human. And not just to walk on Martian soil, but to stay for a while exploring. Sorry. I keep using that dirty word.
3. The Jovian moons. Manned or unmanned we should be spending more time there. Now that would be exploration. How about a long lived RTG powered rover on Titan and Io and Europa and Ganymede. And how about a plan to keep the rover powered and exploring for decades? NASA should have a website that streams all of the different rover video live, or as close to live as you can get with that kind of distance.
Once we have explored and visited all of the interesting places in our own system we should switch gears into interstellar mode and spend 100% of NASA's funding toward that end. What would that involve?
1. A permanent manned lunar base complete with its own nuclear and solar generators.
2. Lunar mining and a lunar smelter. Perhaps using a solar furnace to at least get aluminum to its melting point and hopefully iron as well.
3. Some kind of more cost effective Earth-Moon launching system. Or at least more research into possibilities like that Heinlein-esque rail-gun launcher that we all read about not too long ago.
4. An Earth-Moon Lagrange point base for final assembly and launch of prototype and scale model craft. An excellent place to continue Freeman Dyson and Ted Taylor's excellent work on nuclear pulse propulsion with Earth-made and hopefully some lunar-made parts.
Actually, I wouldn't mind if we just skipped all the interplanetary stuff and started immediately on humanities first step to the stars. Our species has walked on the moon which used to be just a light in the sky. In the next few centuries I hope we can find the will to start building toward finally seeing what another sun looks like and possibly a whole new set of planets to explore. You never know. We might even find something interesting. Artifacts or fossils or even some form of life, but not as we know it.
OTOH we could all just stay home and watch American Idol. Space exploration is too difficult and expensive and dangerous for cowardly and lazy homo sapiens. If aliens ever do land here I can only imagine the contempt they would feel for our pathetic efforts at space exploration. "You haven't even traveled further than your own moon?"
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.