Slashdot Mirror
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Urges America To Challenge China To a Space Race
An anonymous reader writes: According to a Tuesday story in the UK edition of the International Business Times, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the celebrity astrophysicist and media personality, advocates a space race between the United States and China. The idea is that such a race would spur innovation and cause industry to grow. The Apollo race to the moon caused a similar explosive period of scientific research and engineering development. You might prefer the Sydney Morning Herald piece on which the IB Times article is based.
How about collaboration, a team can do more than single entity
We actually cant afford not to. How much longer do you think this planet will be able to support the exponential growth of the human population? Clean water, land, food, they are all going to start costing more soon, and maybe have to be rationed. Just because we may not see it does not mean we should put it off for our descendants to deal with when we know it is coming and we are a major contributor of it. If we could stop starting wars and cut the military we could easily afford it.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
How much longer do you think this planet will be able to support the exponential growth of the human population?
If present population trends continue, including both the first and second derivatives, the population will peak at about 9.5 billion between 2050 or 2060, and then begin to decline.
Clean water, land, food, they are all going to start costing more soon
In nominal terms, they will, but not as a proportion of people's total income. So they will cost more, but be more affordable. Resource consumption has increasingly become decoupled from economic growth, as technology improves efficiency.
If we could stop starting wars and cut the military we could easily afford it.
A more realistic option would be to fund space travel by selling ice cream made from unicorn milk.
I still find the Apollo Program amazing and audacious considering the technology of the time. Now a race would be just a question of political will and funding, not nearly as exciting.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Respectfully, I call complete and total bullshit on this.
Even if mankind had the capability to warp off to some other star system capable of supporting life, how many humans would make the journey? Hundreds? Thousands? Consider the energy requirements to lift a significant portion of humanity out of earths gravity well. How many rockets are required to lift just the people into low earth orbit? The reduced headcount of those people who would leave earth would do NOTHING to curb the current population growth! So the remainder of humanity on this planet would still suffer the same fate you predicted if we didn't find another planet. And while we're going through this mental exercise, here's another one for you: What type of person is going to be capable of chartering a flight off this rock? The wealthy, that's who. So in a way, earth will be renamed to "Detroit" where the rich can afford to move away and leave a rotting infrastructure for those unable to escape. Meanwhile New Earth will be populated only by the families and friends of the ultra wealthy, with no reason to look back. Ironically, for all the religious hate that goes on around /. religion has a better chance of saving all of humanity than science does... at least if we're talking about leaving this planet for a better place.
WE are the invading insectoid aliens who have depleted all of the resources of our planet and are invading other planets... there's a reason science fiction has written those kinds of invaders as the villain... because they're assholes.
This is the future that your scenario brings.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Manned missions are expensive, risky, and provide very little of value for the money other than knowledge of space's impact on the human body.
Manned missions also take money away from robotic missions, which have proven to be far more scientifically valuable per dollar spent. I'd rather see a Titan boat probe and a Europa submarine probe than a manned near-orbit asteroid sampling mission.
I believe other technologies have to catch up to make humans-in-space practical, such as automated dwelling construction and mining, and automation of space-based manufacturing and repair. It requires a lot of labor to make a self-sustaining colony, and space-suits make such impractical and risky. We need better helper robots first. Otherwise, we are just spinning our wheels. These problems will NOT be solved by yet more manned missions alone.
Robotic probes are highly effective and efficient, while humans-in-space is currently very clunky, wasteful, risky, and expensive at this point in time. We are doing it wrong. Let other tech catch up first.
Table-ized A.I.
ISS is worthless. Proponents of the status quo (democrats) want a program that looks down at our warming, miserable planet. George W. Bush wanted a program to explore space, the Moon, asteroids, Mars. Today's democrats are a far cry from Kennedy. They choose to do things because they are easy.
Bush wanted a plan to explore space, the Moon, asteroids, and Mars when it was a nice speaking point on his state of the Union addresses, but he never even allocated any money to NASA to begin such programs. Year after year, he said we were going to Mars but had nothing but words to back that up. Their budget had a hard time keeping up with inflation. Additionally, if we were really going to Mars, not only would we need the ISS, we'd probably have to build another one to do all additional research needed for a Mars mission that couldn't get done there. Normally, I wouldn't reply to an AC troll who doesn't know what they're talking about, but the above was always a sore point with me.