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Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes
Fallen Kell writes: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has crashed. "'During the test. the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of the vehicle,' the company said in a statement. "The WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft landed safely. Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this time.'""
ABC says one person is dead, and another injured. This was the craft's fourth powered test flight, and its first since January.
No offense, but "the goal" was achieved decades ago. These people died for the profit of shareholders, not some "goal" of space flight which has been going on for half a century.
The guys (and woman) who died in Challenger were heroes. The casualties from this crash were like the people who died building the Empire State Building.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Commercial manned spaceflights add nothing here. The ultimate goal being profit for shareholders and find a new way to waste money for the wealthier in exchange of something nobody else can buy, do. But at the end, it does not contribute anything to make this planet better. No, colonisation of space is not an option, neither a feasible at all anyway. The amount of resources needed to do colonisation on a scale large enough to make it viable provided the rest of the story is possible (I mean, autonomous life on Mars or travelling to other stellar systems), are just too large it would be unethical to deprive the humanity from it for the stake of a few. No, I am not ready to die for my neighbor to live in space or elsewhere.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Commercializing space flight is a good thing?
Explain why. Be very detailed, because I'm sure a lot of us would like to know how it is beneficial to spend so much resources just so that a few rich folks can have a better view than the rest of us when flying.
People have left behind the good Christian religion in favor of the religion of Science. It's like when L. Ron Hubbard wrote all that scifi stuff, and some crazy people made a religion of it; we came up with the Scientific Process, and now the unwashed masses who fancy themselves intellectuals bow down and worship Science as if it were some sort of religion, right down to attacking others for their false gods.
People want space flight because space flight is sciencey. They'll talk about colonizing Mars and saving ourselves from extinction, but that's really fancy talk. They want to live in Star Trek, end of story.
It's why, when I point at our limited resources and say we could shift some of NASA's budget away to a socialized medical research institute, people stamp their feet and claim NASA is integral for developing future innovations like satellite television, cool Nikes, and Tempurpedic beds--all things the private sector would have developed, save for satellite TV (which the military probably would have developed anyway, by way of spy satellites). Joint cooperation for a space station has been useful; a lot of everything else has been.. mosty a circle jerk.
The truth is NASA is the ultimate image of a public effort to develop new techie gadgets. Nobody cares about space; they just want space ships that can take them to the ISS for a pointless and non-productive vacation tour.
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Crying over their Space Age propaganda, clutching their copies of The Case For Mars and The Millenial Project, yelling about the species.
Maybe you can 3D print some rocket key chains or something?
The meth head is glad that not everyone shares the viewpoint that drugs are bad. That doesn't make taking meth a good idea.
No, it's not a zero sum game. But that doesn't mean the game is what many people think it is - because this game, this technology, isn't Tesla. There isn't a straight line funded by wealthy adopters from a rich man's toy to a game and world changer for the commoners. Absent several technological breakthroughs that are each tantamount to magic - this technology doesn't scale to cheap, useful, access to space. It's pretty much limited to being a thrill ride.
Yes, I know how progress works. You just repeat tripe in a cargo cult like fashion and with no more comprehension of the meaning than that possessed by the coffee cup at my elbow.
The difference between the current state of the technology, and that required to scale into cheap useful access to space requires what amounts to magic - and it doesn't matter whether it's in a bunch of small advances or One Great Leap. It's the difference between the Wright Flyer and Concorde either way, and not very likely due to the cumulative size of the change.