Space Is Not a Void (slate.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: When President Kennedy announced the Apollo Program, he famously argued that we should go to the moon because it is hard. Solving the technical challenges of space travel is a kind of civilizational achievement on its own, like resolving an interplanetary Rubik's Cube. The argument worked, perhaps all too well. As soon as we landed on the moon, humanity's expansion into the cosmos slowed and then stopped (not counting robots). If you were to draw a graph charting the farthest distance a human being has ever been from the surface of Earth, the peak was in 1970 with Apollo 13. With the successful moon landings, we solved all of the fundamental challenges involved in launching humans into orbit and bringing them back safely. The people watching those early feats of exploration imagined we would soon be sending astronauts to Mars and beyond, but something has held us back. Not know-how, or even money, but a certain lack of imagination. Getting to space isn't the hard part -- the hard part is figuring out why we're there. Sure, we can celebrate the human spirit and the first person to do this or that, but that kind of achievement never moves beyond the symbolic. It doesn't build industries, establish settlements and scientific research stations, or scale up solutions from expensive one-offs to mass production. Furthermore, as five decades of failing to go farther than our own moon have demonstrated, that kind of symbolism can't even sustain itself, much less energize new activity.

Comments

A lack of imagination?

[barakn]

Or is it that it's very expensive and extremely dangerous?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[rogoshen1]

I don't know, the fact that there is not a single sci-fi franchise based on space exploration absolutely implies a complete lack of imagination.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye problems, muscle tissue problems, bone marrow problems, radiation, the list goes on. There are many reasons why long distance space travel is not possible at this time. Sound like some Millennial at Slate decided to write a blog post out of complete ignorance for any of the science involved. Humans already figured out that long distance travel is not worth the cost to the health of the travelers at this time and therefore have focused on robots and satellites to do the exploration. A far better investment of tax payer money if you ask me. Leave suicidal trips to private adventurers.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[jellomizer]

That hasn't stopped people from doing dangerous and expensive things before. It really comes down to lack of real leadership. Ever since Nixon, the connection between the trust of the people and its leadership has eroded. Such grand initiatives to go to Mars, or further will bring up naysayers who are now concerned about the motivation. Bringing up problems that should take more focus.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Applehu Akbar]

Or is it that it's very expensive and extremely dangerous?

Which is why human space missions have had to wait until private entrepreneurs got involved. Because of the high political costs of failures involving human life, governments can be adventurous in space only if some military imperative is involved. This was precisely how JFK pitched the Apollo missions.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Applehu Akbar]

These are all problems we have found in zero-G, which is what the ISS was designed to test. Now we can try simulating gravity to characterize how much gravitation is required to offset what medical effects.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

not so much

There were very ambitious plans for deep space exploration, moon bases, etc... as a follow-on to Apollo

Unfortunately President Nixon decide to kill the Saturn V launch system in favor of YUGELY overblown expectations for shuttle performance (one launch a week was the break-even point for shuttle vs Saturn V).

This was all about setting up the shuttle contractors to make a mint, and it KILLED the US space program

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Rick Schumann]

Yes, it's about the most expensive thing that our species has ever done. Even putting satellites into orbit is supremely expensive, not even counting the payload itself. If it's not cost-effective, if there's no profit to be made from putting humans on, say, Mars, then you're not going to get funding to do it, or private industry interested in doing it. The only way that happens is if there's actual profit to be made (literally, above and beyond the costs associated). So far, no dice. That, plus it'll take generations to even build a viable colony and industry on even our own Moon; I defy you to try to get the general public to stay interested in something like that for that long.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sound like some Millennial at Slate decided to write a blog post out of complete ignorance for any of the science involved

At least one of the authors of the article is GenX. But yeah, sounds like a millennial, right? Take your generational bullshit elsewhere, granddad.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[swb]

Until not that long ago it was extremely dangerous and expensive to travel more than 100 miles from home and in many places it still is. With that kind of logic, humans would never have left their village let alone their continent.

Yet to this very day there are people who take incredibly perilous journeys willingly even though they know that where they are going life will (at least initially) be very hard and the environment will be hostile, perhaps even fatal.

I think the biggest value of the manned space program isn't the space travel, really, but the sense of inspiration it provides, the notion that humanity is actually going somewhere and somehow progressing in the process.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's an idiot. We don't go exploring space because we literally can't do it. We simple don't have the technology or knowledge of reality to be able to do more than perhaps send a person to Mars.

There are very good reasons for space exploration. First, you'll never get there if you never start. Second, all sorts of new technology and industries will spring up due to inventions and discoveries made for space exploration. Finally, if humanity doesn't want to get wiped out, either by each other or due to a natural catastrophe, its going to need to exist on multiple worlds.

I'm afraid it is the people who are against space exploration who have no imagination or ability to see beyond today.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was good congresscritters ON BOTH SIDES!

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Sique]

It does not come from a lack of leadership. It really comes down to a big Why we should?

When people went to the Moon, we thought we would need people to set up experiments on other moons and planets. But since the mid-1970ies, automated space probes proved us wrong. They could get to Venus, Mercury and Mars at a fraction of the cost than having space ships going there. They could be smaller as they didn't need to house humans. They didn't need any life sustaining technology. They didn't need to come back. They could sustain accelerations in swing-by maneuvers no human would survive. And they had patience. They can fly three decades without going nuts. They could deliver the same measurements again and again with constant quality. And we could have them fly risky maneuvers because when they got lost, it was just damage to a machine.

There is not much scientific value in having humans flying to other space objects. And there is no business case yet. Thus we don't.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[higuita]

yep, at the Age of Discovery, many Portuguese sail boats departed, but only a few returned usually... Later Spanish navy had a high rate of death and the Magellan travel is a good example, only one boat returned with very few people from all boats.
Travel required took a few months to near locations to 3 years.

Exploring was always a risky business, in the past, human lives might have been less important, but it was always a lost

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

sustain accelerations in swing-by maneuvers

A spacecraft/vehicle/occupant does not experience any acceleration in it's own frame. It's free fall all the way.You're correct in all other points.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[SWPadnos]

I think your post was a perfect example of lack of imagination.

1) You don't imagine any reason other than profit for going into space.
2) You don't imagine anyone wanting to spend the generations (you claim it will take) to set up a colony on Mars.
3) You don't imagine the general public can be interested in space travel for long enough to matter.

This isn't meant as a personal attack, I'm just pointing out that the desire for short-term profit is an unimaginative reason to do anything.

According to the Wikipedia page on The Apollo Program ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), the total cost in 2016 dollars is about $219 B. This is roughly equivalent to the federal budget item for interest on the national debt in 2015 ($229 B, https://www.nationalpriorities... ). Just a little perspective on the "most expensive thing ..." comment.

Personally, I would love to go into space. I might chicken out at the last minute*, but for now I think I'd do it. I read Science Fiction and I want to make it Science Fact. I would like to harvest asteroids for materials, use micro-gravity manufacturing techniques, be able to see an eclipse any time I like, perform scientific experiments with better precision than Earth-bound instruments. I'd like to go *because it's there*. In the society we've given ourselves, that boils down to money, which is just depressing as hell.

* I'm thinking about it a bit like bungee jumping - sounds cool, but when you're standing up there wondering if the cord is the right length for your weight, maaaaybe this isn't such a good idea after all.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[angel'o'sphere]

They could sustain accelerations in swing-by maneuvers no human would survive.
The human inside of the space ship is accelerated with the exact same rate like the space ship around him: ergo he is in free fall and does not experience any acceleration at all, a no brainer.
And then again, a swing buy maneuver does not have such great effects anyway.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Hognoxious]

You don't know what a swing-by maneuver is. You don't know how to use apostrophes either.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

how much gravitation

Why would we have to worry about determining a specific quantity of gravity? Why would the budget for 1G versus 0.5G reflect a significant difference in cost?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[bluefoxlucid]

1) You don't imagine any reason other than profit for going into space.

Well, yes.

Today, we work 40 hours per week. We get paid, and what do we do with the money? We buy things. We go into debt to buy, and then inflation makes our dollar-wages higher while not making our dollar-debt higher: it shrinks our debt back down. Corporations profit, banks profit, and we sort of fold some of the buying power back into worker hands.

When we improve technology, we make more for the hours we work. We still swap dollars at the exchange rate--I take home $20/hr, you cost payroll $10/hr, I work one hour to induce you to work two--and we get more for that time we put in getting those dollars.

Now imagine humans do a bunch of work and then burn the things they made.

We still work 40 hours, but a quarter of what we make gets tossed in the trash and incinerated for no purpose. Essentially, we work 40 hours and get paid for 30 hours. We're poorer.

That's what sending a bunch of crap into space for no reason does. That's what going to war does. That's what anything not really profitable does. Oh, sure, we can take a loss on paper doing drug research, and that might even be a loss for the world if the drug is useful for like 10 people a year but costs $3 billion to come up with; but we can also expend $100 million to, say, import a low-cost generic, research it, and FDA approve it, with no capacity to make a business profit. In both case, we as a society bear the cost; yet in the latter case, we get access to a low-cost drug like Bromantane, and can now treat depression (and maybe ADHD?) more-effectively with a $10/month prescription.

Profit isn't just a matter of a business surviving; it's a matter of society as a whole getting out more than it put in. Neither of these outcomes guarantees the other is also happening, and the latter one is the important one in long terms (thus why we have welfare).

Re:A lack of imagination?

[crunchygranola]

Or is it that it's very expensive and extremely dangerous?

Especially the "expensive" part.

It is notable that the article mentions "money" only once, to brush it away as irrelevant ('Not know-how, or even money').

The cost of space travel, in other words the relative share of Earth productive resources, required is staggering for many reasons. Slashing launch costs still leaves those costs at "staggering" (though a smaller stagger), and does not touch the other costs - the extremely high cost of space hardware, the ground support required, etc.

Couple that with the point it does bring up - what is the actual value of putting humans there in practical terms? - and the reasons for the 'failure' to do more than what we are doing (we do have the ISS in space, which isn't nothing) are obvious, and compelling.

The cost relative to the value returned is crucially important.

The current cost of keeping one person in space is about one billion dollars per year. Launch costs are an important of that, but they are not overwhelming dominant. Slashing the launch cost still leaves manned spaceflight as extremely expensive, hundreds of millions a year per person. Only very limited operations can ever be supported at present.

We need to have far more advanced technology, and much higher economic productivity, for space flight to be affordable for more than an occasional few leaving Earth.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Johnson killed Saturn V.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[crunchygranola]

They could sustain accelerations in swing-by maneuvers no human would survive.

Others point out that swing-by maneuvers are free-fall, but there is another reason there is a limitation for this with humans. The radiation field of Jupiter. The probes that used sling-shot maneuvers with Jupiter experienced many times lethal levels of radiation exposure. And long-term radiation exposure in space is a problem anyway.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[sconeu]

3) You don't imagine the general public can be interested in space travel for long enough to matter.

Well, I believe that history has proved this out. Even by Apollo 13, interest was down. 13 only got interest because of the accident.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Tenebrousedge]

Now we can try simulating gravity to characterize how much gravitation is required to offset what medical effects.

Not without space based manufacturing or a much larger heavy lift vehicle, we can't. Rotating habitats need to be rather large in order to avoid various nasty side effects.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[crunchygranola]

Pointing out essential hard facts is not "lack of imagination". Imagination is grand, but it needs to be coupled to what is feasible.

It is common in SF to make a parallel with the Age of Exploration (by Europeans), or possibly prehistoric oceanic colonization of lands, and space exploration. But in neither case were the 'costs' to the parent society consistently negative. Exploration voyages and settlement were expected to turn a profit, and did fairly quickly. Prehistoric colonization cost parent societies nothing (in fact ridding themselves of surplus population may have been a key driver).

All humans-in-space exploration is a pure loss economically, and it is not even an effective way to do science. How much can we spend on symbolism alone?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Applehu Akbar]

Not for testing. You could accomplish it with two small habitats connected by a long cable. The amount of gravity we find we need will have a major impact on teh design of a large habitat, so we need to find out the optimum amount before we design anything big.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[dryeo]

There will be tidal affects, probably negligible in any swing by maneuvers that we're likely to do in the fore-see-able future but tidal affects are real

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone measures value in dollars. And you can't even predict dollar value from enterprises exactly. For example, say your $3bn drug cures 3 of those 10 people and one of those 10 people figures out cheap, effective teleportation. I would bet that cheap, effective teleportation would at at least $100bn to wealth worldwide.

You sound like one of those people that continues to slash the R out of R&D budgets, not realizing that every time that happens society gets wealthier at a slower rate.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eye problems, muscle tissue problems, bone marrow problems, radiation, the list goes on."

Apollo missions proved none of those are problems. Why does no one take Apollo missions seriously?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Rick Schumann]

You're confusing my evaluation of what most people think about the subject with what my personal opinion of space exploration, is -- and I haven't expressed my personal opinion in the least, therefore I haven't bothered reading your comment past the first line (all the "Yous" in it).

I think, and have said in the past, that we should develop a permanent colony on the Moon, build industry there, especially space industry, and use it as a 'jumping off' point for the rest of our solar system -- and perhaps the rest of our galaxy, if we manage to solve certain riddles like FTL travel. Furthermore the Moon would be a much better place to perform certain experiments that otherwise would be hazardous here on Earth.

Where's your 'lack of imagination' now? No need to post an apology.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for testing. You could accomplish it with two small habitats connected by a long cable.

Jesus but people on Slashdot come up with some stupid fucking Wile E Coyote engineering ideas.

Cable breaks, someone gets irretrievably launched into space.

The really bad arm-chair engineering around here is ridiculous.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Arzaboa]

I'll add on to what you said, cuz I agree. It does come down to a basic lack of imagination.

When everyone is constrained by the thought's of a shorter life, uncomfortable, there is no profit, it seems to me like we will hardly do anything. It still boils down to the "save the children" argument, or "we must keep the heart moving as long as its physically possible for a machine to do", or pick one of those.

When it comes to exploration, its going to take us a while as humans to move on. Until we ship a propagating human population into the stars, we won't know. While we will run into all sorts of things that would make it difficult to come back to earth, and star children who can't step onto earth for a multitude of reasons, I for one don't see these as reasons we shouldn't go and do this.

If folks are sitting around saying that we should be living as long as we can on earth, we are already changing this environment.

Once people start going out into space, as long as we can live 20 or so years, that means we can reproduce enough generations to go forever. DNA will change, we'll adapt, and we'll figure it out. Sure, life spans will be different, but a short life span doesn't mean it is not an important life. For those that are religious, its not about longevity of life, its about a good life, yes? For those that believe in reincarnation, aren't they still alive through their families on ships traveling through space? For those that don't care about the end, then isn't it exploration for exploration sake? If it's about health, then these people shouldn't leave their homes, should have treadmills sent to their homes, air purified, and bubbles put around their homes, which in the end, they'll still die, and probably be boring anyhow.

As for the economy and profit, its not about that. If you get people into space, an economy is created. People come first before an economy and amazingly people tend to forget that.

As for profit, there are many reasons to travel and expand. Take bacteria as an example. They expand into everything. What lives, lives, what dies dies, what adapts adapts. It seems straight-forward, but I think many people get lost in this simple truism. To expand as a population, we can't all live to die hooked up to a machine, on morphine in a nursing home.

Imagination can be stifled by many things. Fear of everything is our biggest problem. My feeling is that if people want to go, lets put them in rockets and let them tell us whats happening. The science can then be done on them to figure out how to extend their lives from that point.

--
"If one day, my words are against science, choose science." Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Elon Musk

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. This is not correct. robotic landers of the time were up to the task, and required much less mass than did sending humans.

The scientists of the time were planning on only sending robotic explorers, it was politicians that made the decision that humans must go. At first the plan was that humans going would only be one way trips, then the politicians decided that would be bad publicity for them and amount to career suicide for the politicians, so they decided it would have to be round trip.

But that's okay, you just keep on telling these lies, no one else will notice.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[angel'o'sphere]

Lets assume a sphere of 100m diameter.
How many milligrams of "force" would there be on a human somewhere inside?

We are not talking about a swingby at a black hole ... but about a body in the solar system.

I doubt we have instruments fine enough and cheap enouh and small enough to put them into a 100m diameter ship to measure the slight tidal effect on a human inisde ...

Re: A lack of imagination?

[GameboyRMH]

This, as bad as it is for our sci-fi boners, it's pointless to send people at this time, sending robots just works better.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[dryeo]

As I said, negligible but I'd think we have small sensitive scales that would measure the difference in weight between both ends of a 100 metre ship or just observe a 100 metre cigar shaped ship rotate so one end points at the planet it is swinging by.
The calculations are basically the difference in 2 orbits a 100 metres apart.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[randallman]

I'm a certified mechanical engineer and I think it is a good idea. Before reading your comment I already assumed you'd have redundant cables and propulsion systems capable or correcting or reestablishing rotation.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[dryeo]

The natives around here (Pacific NW) used to travel the few hundred miles into the interior by foot to trade and go to Hawaii to get laid. Somewhat dangerous but not expensive when living off the land (sea). Really the big dangers was other people and getting lost.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite clear that the Spanish and the Portuguese intended the "new world" voyages to be profitable. Columbus himself is said to have exaggerated the amount of gold available in order to drive interest in financing more trips.

Why were the American Natives nicknamed "Indians"? Because the explorers were trying to find a shorter route to the country of India, and mistook the new lands for existing ones. Why India? Because at the time it was a massive new market for Europe, providing new goods (spices and tea) at low costs.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[CanadianRealist]

The radiation problem is not related to zero-G. No amount of gravity, simulated or otherwise, is going to solve that.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[shadowrat]

definitely a millennial. look at their benchmark of "the farthest a human's made it was set in 1970". that's looking squarely at the issue from the perspective of "this record wasn't set in my lifetime".

From the perspective of human history though, we were just on the moon a fraction of a second ago. We've barely stepped off the moon!

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of technological hurdles, i.e. costs, that are keeping outer space from being viable. But the point is profit = revenue minus costs. If the costs are staggering, but the revenue is more staggering, then people will race to make it happen.

As soon as someone finds a 10-mile radius asteroid of pure iron, you'll see the space race ignite. Concepts like property rights, ownership, claims have yet to be legally fought in space. To be sure, any scarce element on earth found in abundance would alter the economic balance. Old "establishment" industrialist corporations will be swept aside, and new ones will appear, like what happened in the 1800s.

What if I could mine a Lithium asteroid and a Cobalt asteroid, throw it all to an orbiting battery factory where everything runs in a vacuum without oxidation ruining everything? Maybe even pre-charge them from orbital PV satellites, and drop them to earth. Unlimited power storage could transform society forever.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[lgw]

Why is this modded troll? Science Fiction of the sort I grew up reading has almost vanished. I'm not sure what the new Star Trek is, but it's not a voyage of discovery, misleading name aside. Everything SF seems to be dystopian now - hardly an inspiring vision of the future.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[lgw]

? Why would the budget for 1G versus 0.5G reflect a significant difference in cost?

Maybe 0.1 g is enough? But even if it's just half, that's half the structural weight of the rotating part of the ship, so half the cost of that part of the mission.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Arzaboa]

I can't agree with your premise, that profit is why we live or do anything.

Even a business that doesn't make any profit for itself, is still a good endeavor if people can feed themselves and be happy. When I say happy, I mean that they feel good about themselves and what they are doing, and enrich their souls.

Sometimes as a species we must give a little bit to grow, and that is called investing, whether it be time, or energy. Not every investment returns an immediate profit. Some may never return a profit measured in dollars, as people may fail, but trying is what counts. We will have the knowledge forever, and that is profit.

Many societies on the planet never cared one bit about profitability. As long as the generations were alive and surviving, that was all they needed.

While you are right if a measure of being happy is looking through the lens of how much I have in the bank, and making the end of year statements not have parenthesis around them, but that isn't living and that isn't what makes most people happy.

Everyone does have different needs, but when we put profitability above all else, we are missing the entire point. I wasn't put on this planet to make a profit, that is a social construct. And to answer the question... I have nothing wrong with companies and people making profits, its just not the end all be all. I also certainly am not railing against any of our constructs, but I don't want our constructs to box us in so that we never do anything as a species.

On a final note, people come first, economies come later. If you put people in space, they will develop an economy among themselves. At that point, we can judge that and figure out how to optimize that. Until then, we are fear mongering as we go over all the reasons we can't do it.

--
"Throw all of the tea over!" -- Samuel Adams

Re: A lack of imagination?

[silverdirk]

Youre swinging the clue-bat the wrong direction. The difference between an F16 and a gravitational slingshot is that the F16 is being accelerated by air pressure from the outside, while the ocupant is accelerated by external contact as well. It requires the structure of the vehicle and occupant to withstand the forces. When gravity is performing the acceleration it accelerates all molecules of the entire body equally* so the bodies feel no external stresses at all.

*aside from tidal forces etc mentioned by the other posters.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[rogoshen1]

because one persons's delightful and witty sarcasm is another person's trolling attempt? :( for sadness.

Re: A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is people thinking being against manned space exploration is the same as being against space exploration.

It's been true for some time that machines are the answer CURRENTLY, and that's fine. And we have been sending machines to places we've never been with amazing results.

It's just stupid to argue we should've sent humans on all those missions.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you just rotate the whole ship. Why rotate only half?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right until you look up the actual authors and realize, no actually, not a millennial. http://csi.asu.edu/people/ed-f...

But hey why deal in facts when you can make baseless assertions?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[r1348]

Much longer space sojourns on the MIR and ISS have proven that they are indeed major problems. Apollo 11 lasted 8 days launch-to-splashdown, a mission to Mars will imply more than a year in space.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[liquid_schwartz]

Sound like some Millennial at Slate decided to write a blog post out of complete ignorance for any of the science involved.

If we ruled that out there wouldn't be much left of Slate. Slate exists only to make HuffPost look good by comparison.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[lgw]

Depends on how the ship is constructed, but you probably don't want to rotate the fuel tanks, or the communications antennae/dishes, or deployed solar cells, or that sort of thing.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[ls671]

The radiation problem is not related to zero-G. No amount of gravity, simulated or otherwise, is going to solve that.

Are you sure about that? Gravity from a black hole will eat any radiation. So, problem solved! Just carry a black hole with the ship...

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Tablizer]

There are many reasons why long distance space travel is not possible at this time.

I'm not sure I'd claim that. A multi-generational nuclear-powered ship is perhaps within our reach if Earth collectively spent trillions of dollars on it.

By the way, what happened to the EM-drive? I've heard almost no news either way (pass/fail). China was allegedly on the cusp of testing it on a manned mission last year.

In general, it's a bummer there's no commercial reason to leave Earth orbit. A commercial reason would fuel new space technology and cost savings lessons. Around-the-moon tourism for the rich may be viable soon, but that's not sustainable: there's not enough billionaires.

Re: A lack of imagination?

[c6gunner]

The EM drive is going much the same route as Cold Fusion, which is no surprise to anyone except the cranks.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Pfhorrest]

Even a business that doesn't make any profit for itself, is still a good endeavor if people can feed themselves and be happy.

That's what profiting is. Money is an abstract representation of value, where value is something that makes you feel happy and enables you to do things like feed yourself. When we say there's no profit in something, it means it's unrewarding work: you put effort into it, and don't get anything you value out of the process, so you're just wasting time and energy for nothing.

As it happens, right now there's not a lot to be gained by sending people to space, compared to what it takes to do so. It's like taking a bunch of time off work to train and compete in a marathon, that you win, but you end up missing your next rent check because of it. You get a warm feeling of accomplishment, but it costs you a warm place to sleep. Is it really worth that?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

A multi-generational nuclear-powered ship is perhaps within our reach if Earth collectively spent trillions of dollars on it.

No fucking way. Going to the next closest star would take like 75,000 years with current technology. Also consider the massive size the ship would need to be for hundreds of generations of people to live on and to store large amounts of backup supplies. If *anything* goes wrong over the millennia, everyone aboard dies.

There is no way a mission like that could be a success with current technology.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[mysticgoat]

What you are describing is wealth, not profit. The entire monetary system, including "profit", is an ancient and decrepit, highly abstracted, model of wealth.

Great wealth is what you've got when you've got everything you need to lead a good life, with leisure time to enjoy it. Wealth is whatever you have that moves you toward that state.

An antithesis to wealth is the insurance industry, which sucks up huge amounts of money and hours of people's time while producing nothing with any intrinsic value. Insurance sucks wealth out of everything it touches.

There are ways of creating wealth that have nothing to do with money. FOSS is a form of gift economy that is cashless, and it works very well in its arena. Most of the software I use is FOSS and that has enriched my life tremendously. Today's Internet would not exist if it were not for Apache that powers most of the servers and Apache is FOSS through and through.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[thinkwaitfast]

we should develop a permanent colony on the Moon, build industry there, especially space industry

One quarter of all slashdot stories anymore are about how no one is going to have a job in ten years because of robotics. Why won't the same thing apply to the moon? Are we just going to ship hundreds of people there to consume air as they sit around watching automation do all of the work just as they would be doing if they were sitting on Earth?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Namarrgon]

So if you agree that pure research and long-shot investments can be worthwhile, despite no immediate prospect of profits, why do you feel that "sending a bunch of crap into space" is done for no reason?

Apart from the many ancillary benefits of space research (spinoff technologies, entertainment prospects etc), the science we learn in space and on other worlds is often clearly applicable to our own world, or at least could well be in the future.

And for human space travel, there's no denying the enormous inspirational boost that society gets when humans achieve something as epic as travelling to a different world. How many of today's terrestrial scientists and engineers, valuable and productive members of society, were inspired by their childhood memories of Apollo?

Then there's the prospect of vast resources in the asteroid belt, the longer-term objective of habitat redundancy for the species, general ongoing growth and expansion etc etc - all clearly beneficial to society, at least at longer time scales.

Re: A lack of imagination?

[wellingj]

I've seen that creepy movie. Pass.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[execthis]

With the successful moon landings, we solved all of the fundamental challenges involved in launching humans into orbit and bringing them back safely.

No we didn't. People lost their lives back then, and people lost their lives afterwards.

I know it bruises the pie-in-the-sky techno-utopia-delusionists, but sending wetware into space (except maybe to LEO) is a bad idea, a huge waste of resources, and an inexcusable risk to precious human life.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's a bummer there's no commercial reason to leave Earth orbit. "

Imagine that. There's no commercial value for a radiation-blasted vacuum. Who'd have thunk it.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Tablizer]

If *anything* goes wrong over the millennia, everyone aboard dies.

Have 2 medium ships instead of 1 big one.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[KeensMustard]

Or neither: perhaps subjective inspiration is just that: subjective. Initiatives that expensive require an objective good to call upon in order to be sustained. In other words, we were excited by Apollo, but that excitement fell away because the hard fact is, human space travel hasn't demonstrated a universal, objective value that can't be more readily achieved via other means.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[KeensMustard]

Until not that long ago it was extremely dangerous and expensive to travel more than 100 miles from home and in many places it still is.

And not so long ago people had no choice but to physically travel in order to do things that we now do remotely without even thinking about it.

With that kind of logic, humans would never have left their village let alone their continent.

And now, we achieve far more, without leaving our village or continent, because like every clever generation before us, we recognise the value of building things that do what we want, better than our limited fleshy bodies in order to push beyond the limits set by the flesh. Why we would insist that space travel be limited by our flesh bodies, forever confining us to one or two nearby planets? That is simply bizarre - unthinkable! We don't limit our mining to what we can dig with our hand. We don't limit our transport to what we can physically lift with our puny arms. Why would we treat space travel and the possibilities it contains, to such contempt?

No, we've already broken that bound. Machines have gone in our place, to Saturn, and Jupiter and Pluto, places we could never go in the flesh: and achieved far more than we could if we went in person.

I think the biggest value of the manned space program isn't the space travel, really, but the sense of inspiration it provides, the notion that humanity is actually going somewhere and somehow progressing in the process

What inspiration? What progress?

Some people might well enjoy the spectacle of humans in space, like we enjoy a steam train passing by, or the sight of a biplane. What about this spectacle has to do with actual human progress, rather than nostalgia?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[UnknownSoldier]

You DO realize that money is completely artificial, right?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[AmiMoJo]

The point of sending humans, apart from just because we can climb that mountain, is to stop us being dependent on the Earth for the survival of the species.

At the moment we are one asteroid away from extinction. And we know it's happened before.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

On a final note, people come first, economies come later. If you put people in space, they will develop an economy among themselves. At that point, we can judge that and figure out how to optimize that. Until then, we are fear mongering as we go over all the reasons we can't do it.

That's the dumbest piece of Pollyanna nonsense I've heard in a very long time. Your display of economic ignorance is really quite astounding. Where to begin? This planet and the people living on it are subject to resource constraints of all kinds. We have limited capacity to fully or even partially satisfy or needs and wants. This means that not everyone can do or have everything they need or want because of scarcity. That's really what economics is, the science of scarcity. The fairest and least bad way that humans have devised to allocate scarce resources without killing each other on a massive scale is the market economy where resources are allocated to their most economically efficient uses by the profit and loss mechanism. Money is part of that system, but as others have pointed out, it's really just a convenient abstraction of the ability to command a share of the resources and thus what is produced by the economy. Billions of people deciding what to buy or sell and what not to buy or sell every day collectively in the aggregate guides what is produced by the economy. Think of it like billions of people voting billions of times per day for what should be produced. Collectively, we have thus decided that space travel is not a good or service that's worth producing in large quantities. You may not like that, but tough potatoes. You don't rule the world and cannot override the rest of us merely because you like to read science fiction and never quite grew out of childish fantasies. Fantasies are fine, but you'll have to finance them on your own dime. The rest of us are not so inclined and so we don't and there's nothing wrong with that.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

1970? That's just like yesterday man!

Re: A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be dissing Cold Fusion! It's the way of the future, and always will be!

Re:A lack of imagination?

[GNious]

Testing w/o humans

Getting to/from a setup of two boxes on a string, spinning, in space, would be nightmarish and error-prone.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[OneAhead]

You're right about the spelling but wrong about the physics. There's no inherent need to burn large amounts of propellant during a gravity assist maneuver - just a little bit for "aiming", so that one comes out of it with exactly the right position and velocity. Almost all the acceleration is due to gravity, which you won't even notice if you're inside the spacecraft; see also parabolic flight, microgravity in orbit etc... So it's entirely correct to say that a spacecraft/vehicle/occupant does not experience any acceleration in its own frame [of reference] (in a relativistic sense).

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Applehu Akbar]

Not if your shuttle dock were in the rotational center of the cables, with a crawling 'elevator' to transport people to/from each habitat.

Re: A lack of imagination?

[ls671]

Which movie? Honestly, I am curious.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Today, we work 40 hours per week. We get paid, and what do we do with the money? We buy things. We go into debt to buy, and then inflation makes our dollar-wages higher while not making our dollar-debt higher: it shrinks our debt back down. Corporations profit, banks profit, and we sort of fold some of the buying power back into worker hands.

Wow! You should teach economics.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a birthdate on that page. It does say he obtained his bachelor's degree in 2002, which would place him as a millennial (born in 1980-1981), since most people start college when they are 17-18.

Because you are a millennial I know you aren't good with maths or anything that makes you think, so I forgive your mistake, junior.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

So two smaller ships that wouldn't have the space for artificial lakes, to grow crops, raise livestock or provide enough room to prevent the people from going crazy with cabin fever while still not having enough space for backup parts and supplies?

I'm sorry, that's still not going to work. I know you really want to believe in it, but we do not have the technology to make that voyage. That's still a very long way away...if humanity even survives that long.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[imrahilj]

What you are describing is wealth, not profit. The entire monetary system, including "profit", is an ancient and decrepit, highly abstracted, model of wealth.

Great wealth is what you've got when you've got everything you need to lead a good life, with leisure time to enjoy it. Wealth is whatever you have that moves you toward that state.

An antithesis to wealth is the insurance industry, which sucks up huge amounts of money and hours of people's time while producing nothing with any intrinsic value. Insurance sucks wealth out of everything it touches.

There are ways of creating wealth that have nothing to do with money. FOSS is a form of gift economy that is cashless, and it works very well in its arena. Most of the software I use is FOSS and that has enriched my life tremendously. Today's Internet would not exist if it were not for Apache that powers most of the servers and Apache is FOSS through and through.

Many if not most FOSS code is written by people who are paid to do so. This is especially true of widely used business critical pieces of software like Apache. It's not cashless all the way down.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[bluefoxlucid]

why do you feel that "sending a bunch of crap into space" is done for no reason?

Because people would like us to repeatedly go to the moon or try to make it to mars for no other reason than because it would be cool.

Apart from the many ancillary benefits of space research (spinoff technologies, entertainment prospects etc), the science we learn in space and on other worlds is often clearly applicable to our own world, or at least could well be in the future.

If done under conditions where it is reasonable and where we have an idea of what we'd like to learn--or at least some of what we'd like to learn, and hope new and interesting things pop up as well--then, well, yes. If we're just firing rockets into space because we're space cowboys, then no.

Then there's the prospect of vast resources in the asteroid belt, the longer-term objective of habitat redundancy for the species, general ongoing growth and expansion etc etc - all clearly beneficial to society, at least at longer time scales.

Which we can't actually achieve yet, and won't get closer to achieving by actually sending missions to Mars. We get better at those kinds of things by sending probes (long-distance travel) and satellites (just getting out of the well is really, really hard)—things which provide real, useful, definable scientific and technological benefit.

At the point where it costs like $200k to put a satellite in geosync and we can reliably send robust probes with long lifespans (instead of the save-every-gram minimalist crap we barely hobble over to the next giant rock), we'll have tech that can actually put a colony on Mars for relatively-cheap. It'll cost tens or hundreds of millions, but we can heavy lift some materials up there, ferry them across, and put them on the planet. Then we have to figure out how to actually build a self-sustaining colony, but that's an easier problem. We don't get there (optimally) by just launching rockets because hell, we're not ready, it's not going to work, and we're going to learn nothing, but it screw it let's go!

You're looking at a $5,000 jackpot in asteroids and thinking, hey, I can just keep chugging along until I get it, and burning $700,000 and your wife along the way doesn't seem to be an unreasonable expense to get there. Spend the money on things that will produce an incremental return now, then go after the jackpot when it's going to cost $500 to hit it; you'll come out a millionaire in the end, and get there just as fast.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[bluefoxlucid]

Actually, fiat money represents labor time at an exchange rate. That is to say: you can't just print up some cash and make up some stuff and say "hey look, wealth!" You have to make things. Then you sell things. The economy essentially ends up representing those things in the money spent, and heads toward something resembling stable.

Money is essentially credit for working, and functionally is a portion of production.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[mysticgoat]

True enough; FOSS is now so important to so many corporations that the corporations are gifting livelihoods to some of the persons who are making FOSS products. This is still a gift economy; the corporations are not receiving a direct quid pro quo, nor are they directly influencing the development process. They are instead expecting a future gift in the form of something that will reduce their costs of operation or open new revenue streams in return.

The essence of a gift economy is that gifts are exchanged. The gift might be a gift card or a crisp new $50 bill. The return might not be delivered until some future birthday or holiday, and might have no relationship to the first gift.

This not only works in "primitive" societies that did not use money, it is now the dominant economy of the newest and most pervasive technology ever developed. If you use the Internet, you are benefiting from a gift economy. If you make your opinions known about which sites are good and which ones suck, you are participating in that gift economy.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[slashdot_commentator]

a mission to Mars will imply more than a year in space.

It doesn't have to. Our current presumptions about a Mars mission taking more than a year has to do with current (1960) chemical rocket technology. If you could thrust a habitation payload to a fraction of the speed of light, the trip would be much faster. The cap on maximal thrust has to do with the fact that all the fuel has to be moved into space from the Earth.

What could be done instead is invest in ion engine technology, where instead of a combustion reaction (in vaccuum) propelling the craft, particles are charged to significant energies, and then they are directed in a particular direction, providing thrust. The limitation here is not fuel, but energy generation to propel gaseous atoms.

With enough ionic thrust, it could take a mere 3 months to get to Mars, and may not even need to produce the materials needed to return to Earth.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Rick Schumann]

Consider this:

1. o So far as I can see, our species is not going to self-limit it's population; everyone will keep on cranking out babies until there's 10 billion of us, and we're fighting wars over basic resources like fresh water and arable land for food crops.
2. o Also so far as I can see, our species isn't going to do enough to limit climate change/global warming that we've caused, eventually making the planet uninhabitable (in the long term; in the shorter term, less and less usable land for us to live/farm on).
3. o This is all assuming we don't extinct ourselves outright with nuclear and/or biological weapons.
4. o Therefore: we need to start thinking about getting the hell off this planet. We've got all our eggs in one basket, the basket is getting full, and it's falling apart anyway. Get a new basket!
5. o Therefore: Let's start with the Moon. Build a permanent, self-sustaining colony there. Industry. And so on.
6. o Robots, you say? Taking our jobs? LOL, you actually are falling for that meme? Robots are not going to put our species out of work, so stop running around like Chicken Little screaming about the sky falling, okay? Will we use more and more robots to do things? Yes. Will they replace all humans? No, they'll allow us to avoid hazardous jobs and situations, and to focus on higher-level tasks. Why dig holes in the ground when you can get a machine to do that, while you plan where the best places to dig are? Get it?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[RonTheHurler]

And what was the profit for Faraday to do research into electromagnets in the 1840s, a time when the largest market for electrical gadgets was magicians doing parlor tricks? A far more profitable endeavor would have been better horse breeding techniques or faster looms.

Fast forward 150 years, and 90+% of our entire economy is based on the electrical foundations discovered by Faraday, distilled into equations by Maxwell (also without profit) and turned into countless products, most of which resulted in failed businesses and ended up in trash heaps. The minority of survivors changed everything.

Faraday wasn't the only one doing scientific research into useless things at the time. He just found the right paths.

That's the nature of progress. It's a trek into the unknown. We have no way to know which paths will be "profitable" and which ones will be dead ends. And if we don't explore them all, or at least as many as possible, we may miss the discoveries that build entire future economies. Without Faraday's and Maxwell's work, we'd still be living an 18th century lifestyle.

Who are the Faradays out there today? Will they be supported, or will we stifle them in favor of better horse breeding techniques and faster looms? Which one will give society as a whole the better future?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[angel'o'sphere]

Sure they are real, but no one in a swing by will ever feel them.

The difference in atmosphere presure between your head and your feet is 1000 times bigger than the difference in gravity if the moon is directly above you or on the other side of the planet.

You can calculate the difference, but hardly can measure it.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Methadras]

Well, when you now have a new movement of flat-earthers and moon landing deniers, it makes me scratch my head to wonder what 600 years of science was all about? I mean, to these people its as if those 600 years of science don't even exist. That the sacrifices of Galileo, Copernicus, et al. didn't mean a thing. You have a guy who built a rocket in his backyard for 10's of thousands of dollars who is going to ride in it to prove the earth is flat, when all he had to do is buy a southwest ticket for $49, hit 35k feet and see that it isn't. People are fucking nuts and we are entertaining them without beating them back. We are allowing the lunatic to run the asylum.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Methadras]

Sci-Fi and even fantasy writing as all been replaced by SJW feminist garbage. I was at a Barnes and Noble the other day and just happened to walk by the new releases for Sci-Fi/Fantasy and every single book on the cover featured a female-centric story. I'm not saying that sci-fi/Fantasy is a males-only distraction, but I can see the pendulum of re-programming occurring here.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Methadras]

The stresses on a ship to rotate it to acquire .5g or even 1g would be so enormous as to basically rip it apart. It can't be done with current materials or manufacturing techniques.

Re: A lack of imagination?

[dossen]

Event Horizon? https://io9.gizmodo.com/all-th...

Re:A lack of imagination?

[dryeo]

Tidal forces are a secondary affect from gravity. The important part is the difference in gravitational pull between the center, the near side and the far side. On the Earth, considering the Moon, that difference is 6.8%, which is easily observable if you hang out at the ocean. Even though the Sun has 175 times the gravity effect on the Earth, due to its distance, the difference between the near and far sides is closer to 0.017% leading to much less tidal affects, about 44%.
In other words, it is not only the amount of gravity but the gravity differential that causes tides. I'd think that a swing by of the Moon where the lowest elevation was 1 meter (1,700,000 or so meters from the center) would be noticeable on the 100 meter spaceship. Still wouldn't be much but objects in the ship would noticeably have a tendency to move to the ends of the ship.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not much scientific value in having humans flying to other space objects.

I have heard very few scientists make that claim. The amount of science a person could do on the surface of mars would 1,000's of times more than a super slow moving robot.

It is purely an issue of cost.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Namarrgon]

There's a heck of a lot more than $5k on offer as a jackpot for asteroid mining, when most potential targets offer billions in estimated profits (commonly 20-30% RoI) and some even reaching trillions. There are very good reasons for the dozen or so companies currently working towards this to believe their investments will pay off, and in a reasonable timeframe.

But I'm gathering that you're not really opposed to commercial space development or robotic research, just politicians declaring arbitrary manned-flight goals, which is perhaps understandable, even when it worked out pretty well with Apollo. There are certainly scientific reasons to put humans in space, even if only to learn about how it affects those humans and what we can do about that, but there's not many commercial cases where it's currently worth the effort.

Nonetheless, there's still the other reasons I mentioned, which you didn't address. It's undeniably inspirational to a lot of people (because it certainly is "cool", and epic pioneering journeys make damn good TV as they found with Apollo - the entertainment rights alone could pay for a sizeable chunk of the cost). And habitat redundancy is a species survival issue, something we do not want to ignore forever. Plus it's a lot more feasible than you seem to think - at least in the opinion of Musk and his engineers, who probably have a better idea of that than you or I.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even worse at the awards ceremonies. Hard scifi is dead and only women and minorities win scifi awards now. White males need not apply; and only fantasy stories disguised as scifi even get considered.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to be that big. You don't actually have to build a giant donut or an O'Neill cylinder. You can use a tethered counterweight.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for testing. You could accomplish it with two small habitats connected by a long cable.

Jesus but people on Slashdot come up with some stupid fucking Wile E Coyote engineering ideas.

Cable breaks, someone gets irretrievably launched into space.

To get 1 G at 3 RPM (which should be a quite comfortable rotation rate for most people), the habitat would be moving at about 112.5 kph (70 mph). At 2 RPM, it would be 168.8 kph (105 mph). That's not exactly what I would call a blistering speed when we're talking about space travel. Since it's such a tiny fraction of Earth escape velocity, it's basically impossible for that to cause the habitat to be "irretrievably launched into space".

The really bad arm-chair engineering around here is ridiculous.

That is absolutely true. The sad irony is that you don't seem to have been talking about yourself when you wrote this.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

The stresses on a ship to rotate it to acquire .5g or even 1g would be so enormous as to basically rip it apart. It can't be done with current materials or manufacturing techniques.

What is it about space-related discussions that turns people into such - and I'm sorry, but you are being one - idiots? The stresses of .5g or 1g are so enormous so as to rip the spacecraft apart? You do realize that you're talking about stresses equal to or less than it would experience just sitting in a hanger on Earth, right? You're basically arguing that planes and bridges and, for that matter, the bones in your own legs, can't stand up to the stresses they're exposed to constantly and they'll fail catastrophically in normal use.

I'm asking honestly here, is it something about space travel that makes you this bad at basic reasoning, or are you this bad at it when it comes to other subjects as well?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because people would like us to repeatedly go to the moon or try to make it to mars for no other reason than because it would be cool.

That's basically the only reason that movies are made. Hollywood spends nearly twice NASA's budget making those each year.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Sique]

So you have three zillion dollars to spend on space exploration. Do you build zilch space probes going everywhere and each doing dozens and hundred different automated measurements wherever they are, or do you spend it on a single mission going to a single place with limited range?

Re:A lack of imagination?

[angel'o'sphere]

No they would not, not even stuff floating in the air would move, the gravity difference is just to low.
But if you insist, I can calculate the value for you.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the one with the maths failure then. Most people start college aged 18-19, not 17-18, and given demographics of birth rates even if he did start in 1998, it's most likely he was actually born in 1979.

But hey, you guys are the ones that don't trust science, so why should you know anything about what you're talking about.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Census Bureau defines millennial as 1982-2000 births. See https://www.census.gov/newsroo... Of course, you're a boomer and get your information from more reliable sources than the official statistics for the country, like pulled out of your ass.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[MercTech]

"Why would we have to worry about determining a specific quantity of gravity? Why would the budget for 1G versus 0.5G reflect a significant difference in cost?"

Cost of continuous acceleration or rotation to attain the simulation of gravity.
Cost, not as in dollars, but cost as in resources that have to be expended for the desired result.

I learned that in a serialized Heinlein story published in Boy's Life magazine back when I was 8 years old.

        The big issue is loss of bone density under lower gravity.
        How much bone loss can be tolerated and be able to re-acclimate to a planetary gravity level in a reasonable amount of time. Are there any long term health effects from reduced bone density then returning to a full gravity field? Is there a threshold of lower gravity when bone density loss starts? ... some of the questions ISS produced data to answer.
        Ever hear of "isometric exercise"? That is a space program developed technique for mitigating loss of muscle tone in micro-gravity and cramped spacecraft.

    What is the point of a serious space program if you aren't working towards manned voyages? Without working towards that eventual goal; it is just expensive physics experiments.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[MercTech]

No. Johnson killed Saturn V.

Johnson was really miffed that certain Pork Barrel spying Senators got the planned launch vehicle engine refurbishing facility moved out of Texas. They never did get to refurbishing the ginormous Saturn V engines.

If traveling I-10 across the Louisiana/Mississippi line pay attention. If the rework facility is testing a launch engine at night; you can see a hell of a light show even as far away as the Interstate.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[MercTech]

1970? That's just like yesterday man!

Oh yell no. I refuse to wake up and be 13 again.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Tablizer]

Raise cattle? Um

Re:A lack of imagination?

[bluefoxlucid]

And what was the profit for Faraday to do research into electromagnets in the 1840s, a time when the largest market for electrical gadgets was magicians doing parlor tricks? A far more profitable endeavor would have been better horse breeding techniques or faster looms.

Would it have been more profitable for Faraday? Would it have been less-risky? Who funded Faraday's research, and what did they intend to get out of it?

More to the point, what is the profit for society to fund this scientific research, compared to other scientific research? What is the likelihood of doing so?

We have no way to know which paths will be "profitable" and which ones will be dead ends

We have ways to project which have more opportunity (risk) and less cost, thus to target those things which will pay off better. That allows us to make incremental progress rapidly, overall profiting more.

Imagine if governments decided to build railroads before the hot-blast furnace. It would have set us back hundreds of years. Not slowed--set us back: society would have had to give up many then-modern comforts to support the railroad system.

We're asking the same basic question about going to Mars and building a colony: should we do this today, or is it more worthwhile to keep building better rockets and putting things in orbit, send probes around the galaxy, and wait until we've advanced the technology to do that (it's expensive, so we very much want to do so--and now space tourism is turning into a thing) to the point where it's reasonable to try and push a Mars mission?

You'll notice the advancement doesn't stop if we don't go to Mars, and the immediate push to Mars doesn't create a new drive for technology. It's highly-likely doing so today would be a huge waste of society's labor resources.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[lgw]

Something like 85% of novel buyers are women, so while there's certainly some SJW nonsense happening, it's mostly just appealing to the broad market. I've heard it's almost mandatory for the past decade for any genre fiction to feature a strong female lead.

The big publishers are going the way of all mainstream media: everything appeals only to the biggest demographic, nothing ever for the niches. But self-publishing is now practical, and I figure it won't be long before we get a set of "indie publishers" that promote the few self-published works that aren't garbage. SF will return eventually.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[lgw]

That guy is doing science, so science is alive and well. What's changed is the loss of credibility of pretty much all establishments - everything got political, so nothing can be trusted.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[bluefoxlucid]

There's a heck of a lot more [wikipedia.org] than $5k on offer as a jackpot for asteroid mining, when most potential targets offer billions in estimated profits (commonly 20-30% RoI) and some even reaching trillions

23-meter-wide asteroid would cost $2.6 billion to haul into lunar orbit. 500 tonnes. $5.2 million per tonne. Nickel costs $11,600 per tonne, so a 500 tonne nickel asteroid would cost 448 times as much as terrestrial nickel.

That's just for the nearest candidate.

What do you suppose would be the costs of going to the belt? The belt is out between Mars and Jupiter. A Mars mission is expected to cost $1.5 trillion--that's a minimalist mission, not carrying heavy equipment. To mine the belt, you have to get heavy equipment up there—mining and refining, because you're going to want to bootstrap. Then, you have to get all this heavy metal back (or just use it on Mars, and not have a terrestrial market).

Each individual target requires somehow getting fuel off Mars--and possibly to Mars, since the planet probably doesn't have any oil fields, being that it lacks a rich organic history (although Io has plenty of methane)--but not the mining equipment, because you want to leave that up there in the belt. You're going to have to shuffle transport equipment up and down to Mars, though, or back and forth to Earth. There's an operating expense cost here in terms of keeping a city-sized space station operating near the belt, or else shuttling miners back and forth constantly, along with supporting the miners and their equipment.

So now how much is it going to cost to get ore from the belt to Earth?

But I'm gathering that you're not really opposed to commercial space development or robotic research, just politicians declaring arbitrary manned-flight goals, which is perhaps understandable, even when it worked out pretty well with Apollo. There are certainly scientific reasons to put humans in space, even if only to learn about how it affects those humans and what we can do about that, but there's not many commercial cases where it's currently worth the effort.

There you go: we can be in space on the IIS; we don't need to be in space around Mars. Is there a reason to go to Mars? Sure. Will we profit from the endeavor, as a society? Oh hell no, not today. When we go into orbit enough times that putting a satellite up costs thousands of dollars, we'll be ready to send a small city to Mars for billions (maybe hundreds of billions), and put down a self-sustaining colony. That might pay off.

It's undeniably inspirational to a lot of people (because it certainly is "cool", and epic pioneering journeys make damn good TV as they found with Apollo - the entertainment rights alone could pay for a sizeable chunk of the cost).

Not really.

The US GDP is $18.57 trillion. In general, we're at carry-capacity for our current level of technology, always: we can't make more than we make today, but only replace some production with other production. If it costs $10 trillion to do something, then that's the cost. If people are spending $10 trillion on entertainment, they're not spending $10 trillion on other things, and so they're poorer in regard to those other things.

It's not Sim Space Colony; people aren't spawned off-screen with some amount of money, and money has real backing in productivity. Think in terms of whole economics, not in entrepreneurial terms of getting other people's money for yourself.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Namarrgon]

You wouldn't go for the "nearest" candidate, you'd go for the asteroid that has the best combination of accessibility and return - probably 162173 Ryugu, an 850m closely-approaching asteroid which has quite reasonable delta-v requirements to get it here, and contains enough nickel & iron to turn an estimated $30B profit on $50-60B costs. We'll get even better estimates when Hayabusa 2 returns samples from it in 2020.

And of course I understand the money has to be diverted from other productive ventures - but a lot of the ventures people currently spend on are not particularly productive. Entertainment is a good example, and if we can divert even a small percentage of viewership towards a Mars mission then that has little real productivity cost elsewhere.

There's no denying the most compelling reasons to explore our solar system today are largely intangible. You're right that it's too soon to turn a guaranteed profit - but given that companies from Planetary Resources to SpaceX are already pursuing long-term plans to do exactly this, they clearly feel the benefits are sufficiently attractive to start investing immediately.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently it seems that a LOT of people are against us progressing to space, for whatever reason.They would rather we sit here multiplying exponentially and destroying our only planet until we go extinct, or have a dystopian future forced upon us, both of which are quite likely if we do not branch out at some point... perhaps sooner than later.

Re:A lack of imagination?

[bluefoxlucid]

Ah, you're not talking about mining the belt; you're talking about going up, mining a passing asteroid, and coming back.

Today, it costs $10,000 to put a pound of payload in Earth orbit. NASA's goal is to reduce the cost of getting to space to hundreds of dollars per pound within 25 years and tens of dollars per pound within 40 years.

An excavator weighs 30,000 pounds. That's $300,000,000 to put into orbit today. A two-person mission to the moon costs $1.5 billion, though, and that's only 300 pounds. Why?

Distance.

You have to lift the fuel, too. You have to lift supplies to keep the astronauts alive.

It may be feasible to mine 162173 Ryugu, if you can mine it out before it passes, and if you can transport the materials back, and if you can get sufficient equipment up there without sufficient costs. What's a space drilling operation weigh, in its entirety, and how much does the fuel to get there and back (with the payload) weigh?

Entertainment is a good example, and if we can divert even a small percentage of viewership towards a Mars mission then that has little real productivity cost elsewhere.

Careful. You start arguing that people's decisions about what they spend their labor producing are really pointless and better off in the hands of smarter people, you eventually get to arguing about who should breed. In a general economic sense, there is capacity; and social democracy focuses on providing welfare, at cost to the general productivity of the economy. Cherry-picking what things people spend that productivity on in the general economy (free market) as pointless and unproductive starts you down a dark path.

I see the otherwise-neutral point, though: if you can market it, people will stop watching Hollywood and start watching NASA. You're competing with the free market.

There's no denying the most compelling reasons to explore our solar system today are largely intangible. You're right that it's too soon to turn a guaranteed profit

My point is more that doing what is feasible today brings the advancement that allows some farther-reaching things--like Mars missions--to become cheaper and more-feasible tomorrow. That structure generates more net growth and thus ends in greater wealth--and wealth is wholly a matter of technological advancement.

What is that hard?

[SuperKendall]

the hard part is figuring out why we're there.

Good grief, why is that even a hard question? The answer is because it's not well explored, we as a civilization have always explored, and in the end have always ended up benefitting by doing so.

Untold riches await the explorer - either of the mind, or literal material riches.

The hard question is not figuring out why we are there, it's figuring out what the hell the delay is!

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't answer, you just said the answer is easy.

For now, we are in space where it makes sense....satellites. Going forward, there may be other uses, it looks like space tourism for the wealthy could be one.

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Individual people or small groups of people explore for the sake of knowledge, or a longshot gamble on fantasized riches. True, large-scale exploration is only ever done by large groups of people, companies or nations, in search of specific things of value. There is nothing like that in space. Basically, it has a lot of stuff to look at but not a lot that can benefit us in any meaningful way. The moon shots were a nationalistic competition; there's no reason to double-down on the insanity at this point.

Re:What is that hard?

[TheDarkMaster]

Businesses today are controlled by psychotic CEOs whose goal is solely to secure the golden parachute for the next victim, oops, next company. You need long-term CEOs for very long-term projects such as mining asteroids with billions and billions of dollars in metals and useful compounds (if you come up with a practical method of doing so).

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

America is broke. We can't afford frivolous expenditures like this. "Just because" is not a justification. You people won't be happy until we are 50 trillion in debt.

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

" The answer is because it's not well explored,"

Neither is the bottom of the ocean, ie 75% of the surface of this planet.

" we as a civilization have always explored"

Not really. For the vast majority of history, most people stayed right where they were born. What's stamped in YOUR passport, Mr Explorer? And who paid for it?

"Untold riches await the explorer"

The easiest way to become a space millionaire is to start as a billionaire. There are no riches, untold or otherwise, in a dead vacuum. In any case, the Periodic Table of the Elements is exactly the same down here as up there.

So go mine the ocean for dissolved minerals. Oh but then there's no spaceships like in your Saturday morning cartoons you watched as a child.

"The hard question is not figuring out why we are there, it's figuring out what the hell the delay is!"

That's only a hard question if you're a man-child with a toddler's grasp of reality.

www.distancetomars.com

Look at all those ... riches! That vacuum is worth ... pennies!

You're a Space Nutter and reality has left you behind.

Re:What is that hard?

[religionofpeas]

The answer is because it's not well explored

To be fair, there's not much to explore in a cold, dark vacuum.

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Untold riches await the explorer

Or, y'know, horrible death.

Re:What is that hard?

[geekmux]

the hard part is figuring out why we're there.

Good grief, why is that even a hard question? The answer is because it's not well explored, we as a civilization have always explored, and in the end have always ended up benefitting by doing so.

Untold riches await the explorer - either of the mind, or literal material riches.

The hard question is not figuring out why we are there, it's figuring out what the hell the delay is!

"Exploring" isn't what I would call going back to the lifeless wasteland we call the moon. If we want to explore something similar and save taxpayers a trillion or two, Death Valley would suffice.

And please feel free to elaborate what we truly got from visiting the moon other than the plant our flag there first. Seems we valued the rock collection so much that we've lost a good portion of it.

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know the answer to these questions, but they may be relevant:
How much money did Queen Isabella and Ferdinand back Columbus with, as compared to the GDP of their combined kingdoms?
How does this compare to the expected cost to travel to Mars, compared to the GDP of the countries interested in contributing to the effort?

One thing that has changed over time:
Most people in charge of large amounts of money are strictly conditioned to knowing everything that can be known about a project before committing funds (and we are used most things being knowable these days).
Compared to a monarch in the 1490s who could likely fund something on a whim (true, even Ferdinand and Isabella consulted a council, but they disregarded the recommendation of the council and funded CC anyway), most people or groups in charge of large amounts of money today seem more likely to be held answerable for what they use the money for. So these people today would understandably want a prediction of the proposed benefits in case anyone asks later why they spent that money on those magic beans.
The very hope of space exploration is that we will come across something unexpected or even disruptive. Not a very compelling argument for someone spending other peoples' money.

Something else that has changed since that time:
How much money does it cost to economically feed every man, woman, and child in the world?
This is something that we can actually estimate now (since the population of the world and the cost of anything is a lot more known or knowable than in the the late 1400s), and feeding every person in the world is something we actually have the technology to do (political differences aside).
How does the cost to feed the world compare to the expected cost to travel to Mars?
I might also point out that we still have people starving to death on earth

I know I am oversimplifying things, but in the USA, 2 outspoken groups seem to have control of most purse strings.
The capitalists (currently in control of the federal government) need more than vague ideas that previously unknown discoveries will somehow benefit them before they will agree to fund something to the cost of billions of dollars.
The humanists (very influential of anyone with money on the political left) are focused on whatever worldwide political forces continue to allow people to starve here on the earth even though human kind as a whole has the means to feed everyone.
 

Re: What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Military expenditure broke you. Nasa gets a pittance, and could do amazing things with a few more pittances.

Re: What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's neither cold nor dark. The sun is brighter above the atmosphere.

Re:What is that hard?

[Jason Levine]

Has that ever held back people, especially when there was money to be made? Travelling to the "New World" was dangerous. You could drown as you boat sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but people still went there. If you went, though, you could get in on the ground floor of some great new trading opportunities. Going west during the gold rush took months and wasn't a guaranteed journey. It was hard and dangerous, going through some unfriendly territory. But people did it because they might find gold and become rich.

In the asteroid belt alone, there's a ton of potentially valuable materials to mine. It wouldn't take much advancement from our current technology to send ships there to identify good targets, mine the asteroids, and then bring the materials back to Earth. Yes, it will be very dangerous, but the possibility of untold riches will drive people to risk their lives. (Yes, much of this could be done with robots, but a human on board would be valuable for making on the spot judgement calls.)

Re:What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking why we would go there is the same as asking what the meaning of life is. How did that escape your notice?

The universe is literally the creator of everything and everyone and you're saying it's not important enough to learn about. Fuck off you sad, myopic, little boy.

Re:What is that hard?

[religionofpeas]

It wouldn't take much advancement from our current technology to send ships there to identify good targets, mine the asteroids, and then bring the materials back to Earth.

Except that it would cost more than mining it right here on Earth.

Re:What is that hard?

[higuita]

Stop funding weapons and wars and you will find that you have a lot more money available
Tax rich people, specially if they try to avoid taxes!! Close the tax heavens and financial loop holes.

Re:What is that hard?

[Rob Y.]

Of course, the New World was quite capable of sustaining life - and even had its own life forms to explore (and cultures to dominate).

What amazes me are the people that say we need to colonize other worlds for when we render this one uninhabitable. Well the worlds we could conceivably reach with our 'proven space travel technology' are far less inhabitable than this one will be - even after we're through with it. That doesn't mean we should stop looking for interesting targets and developing new technologies that may someday make practical space travel possible. But to argue that it's possible now - just because we know how to send a projectile with a short-term human-supportable environment to the moon - is absurd.

Re: What is that hard?

[religionofpeas]

It's neither cold nor dark. The sun is brighter above the atmosphere.

A light, warm vacuum isn't very exciting either.

Re: What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's definitely worth exploring a slightly brighter light. Let's get on that right away.

Re:What is that hard?

[crunchygranola]

In the asteroid belt alone, there's a ton of potentially valuable materials to mine. It wouldn't take much advancement from our current technology to send ships there to identify good targets, mine the asteroids, and then bring the materials back to Earth. Yes, it will be very dangerous, but the possibility of untold riches will drive people to risk their lives.

"Untold riches"? This is either hype or fiction. It be better to tell of the riches. Currently the richest space resource identified by science is platinum group metals (PGM) in certain types of asteroids. The total value of these comes to $3/kg of asteroid in the richest type. It would take radical advancement in technology to be able to retrieve such asteroid material profitably, and processing the ore in space is far harder.

The entire world PGM market demand is $40 billion a year and represents an effective ceiling on the value of space mining for this resource. Sure if you could do it for less than what it costs on Earth (i.e. reduce the value of that ore to below $3/kg), you could expand the use of these metals, but that does not mean that the size of the market would expand appreciably, in fact there are solid economic reasons to think that would not occur.

Top put this in perspective the value of the global satellite industry is $260 billion a year. So automated space operations currently far exceed the prospective value of the most plausible asteroid mining scenario.

(Yes, much of this could be done with robots, but a human on board would be valuable for making on the spot judgement calls.)

We have yet to ever see a case in space exploration where this is true. This is the sort of claim that was common in the 1960s before we had much (or any) of an experience base. It is an unsustainable claim today.

What sort of judgement calls cannot be made from Earth using the exact same sensor data the human-on-board would be using? We can use sophisticated software to conduct "real-time" operations (with response times far faster than sluggish humans), and a one hour round trip for human consideration is not really a problem.

Re: What is that hard?

[fisted]

It's still dark if there's nothing around you to reflect and diffuse the light. Plus it's still dark if there's nothing to see at in the first place.

Re:What is that hard?

[Whorhay]

The one singular advantage that I can think of for mining resources in space is that it would keep the pollution for those activities off our planet and so outside of our ecosystem. There would have to be some tipping point though where the cost to clean up the pollution of mining the resources terrestrially out weighs to cost of developing, implementing, and maintaining a space mining operation.

Re:What is that hard?

[Arzaboa]

What did we get when we went to the moon? We obtained knowledge. The human spirit was invested in, and proven to be alive and well. It has driven NASA, SpaceX, Boeing, and the list goes on as far as companies. The insights into our own minds and bodies have driven entire other industries. What we 'got' is immeasurable, as we are still getting.

People live in boxes already, all day with fluorescent lights, or if they're lucky, a window office. They drive in a box on wheels to get home. They complain its too cold or hot, so they turn on a machine to change the condition of the air. It is not hard to believe that people would be just fine living in a box in space instead of one on earth.

For people that call themselves explorers, it's done "because it is there." For those that don't understand that, it is impossible to explain why one climbs to the top of mountains and the bottom of holes. It's like telling an explorer why they should need a lawyer and an accountant to navigate life.

Wealth is only measured in dollars by those that limit its definition to that.

--
I didn't do it. - B. Simpson

Re:What is that hard?

[jezwel]

America is rich beyond belief. The US government is not trying hard enough to get access to those funds. For some reason, spending vast sums on the MI complex propping up non-US territories for access to resources is seen as a better strategy than developing your own access to uncontested resources in space.

Re:What is that hard?

[Pfhorrest]

Thank you, I've been saying this for a while now. The technology required to enable permanent human settlement on any other known celestial body would also enable us to preserve Earth's habitability in the face of pretty much any disaster we're afraid might befall it. Climate change, nuclear winter, meteor impact? None of those will result in a world anywhere near as uninhabitable as Mars or Venus. If we could turn Mars or Venus into a habitable place, then we could much more easily restore Earth to habitability in the face of any such disaster. The entire world could be turned into the Sahara, or Antarctica, or entirely submerged under the ocean, and it would still be more habitable than any other planet we know of. So by the time we can settle other worlds, we won't need to. And until we're habitually settling the Sahara, Antarctica, or the seafloor, we clearly aren't ready to settle any of the even-less-hospitable places out there.

Re:What is that hard?

[DerekLyons]

Good grief, why is that even a hard question? The answer is because it's not well explored, we as a civilization have always explored, and in the end have always ended up benefitting by doing so.

We as a civilization have only explored when there was economic (material), political, or military advantages to be had. Period. Continuing to go to the Moon provided none of these things. Neither does going to Mars.

Re:What is that hard?

[MoaDweeb]

If it is a dark tunnel > You were eaten by a Grue.

Re: What is that hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

You fuck off. People aren't saying it's not important to explore. They're saying it's not useful to send humans when probes are clearly easier cheaper faster better etc at this point in the game.

Re:What is that hard?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yes but then how are we going to get one world government under neoliberals? Open borders and welcoming the Third World into our nice countries. The wars are necessary to bring the recalcitrant nations to heel. They're also highly profitable. So you can see they'll never stop.

Re:What is that hard?

[Jason Levine]

Right now, yes, but how long until we develop the technology to mine asteroids? One bonus: You wouldn't need to worry about environmental regulations. If you dump a bunch of asteroid mining byproducts into space, nobody will really care the same way they care when you dump Earth-mining byproducts into someone's drinking water.

Dood! Get a life already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Downer door!

Of course it isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

It's filled with ether, which scientists named after the LAN technology invented by Bob Metcalfe.

What a stupid article

[Baron_Yam]

We all have opinions on space exploration, we hardly need an article that's nothing but opinions.

Re:What a stupid article

[Arzaboa]

Hah. And for that, who needs books or writing for that matter.

Re:What a stupid article

[Baron_Yam]

The point being that on this site, it'd be nice if the discussion-inspiring article had something new in it.

Re:What a stupid article

[Arzaboa]

I hear ya.

Not news

[TheDarkMaster]

Governments always prefer to spend more money blowing up other governments or paying interest to "investors" (the famous 1%) than to spend on researching ways to colonize other planets. After all, how will you force others to use your currency as the world's financial ballast (and thus export your inflation for others to deal with) if you spend on space capsules instead of stealth bombers?

Re:Not news

[Baron_Yam]

>After all, how will you force others to use your currency as the world's financial ballast (and thus export your inflation for others to deal with) if you spend on space capsules instead of stealth bombers?

Space tech is really good for targeted terrestrial energy delivery. Put a man on the Moon, you can drop a nuke anywhere on the Earth.

The problem is our space tech is already good enough for that. We need to convince our leaders they should be developing the ability to divert asteroids for first strikes that appear to be acts of God and come with completely plausible deniability. And simultaneously develop asteroid deflection capability in the event our enemies are thinking the same thing.

Re:Not news

[GuB-42]

The 1% love space. Elon Musk is the most famous example now.

Also, controlling space is a good thing if your goal is to blow up other governments. The closest thing we have to space weapon right now are ICBMs, these are so effective that the only way to defend against them is to strike first. Space exploration benefits a lot from the "blow up other governments" budget.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, after all . . . .

Here's an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's set up a research station on the far side of the Moon. Test the impact of low gravity on humans for long periods of time. Put a radio telescope there, because it's a great place for one. That might move us closer to creating a colony on Mars or elsewhere, with a relatively low risk.

Re:Here's an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need people there? I've been the VLA and unlike in Contact, it was completely deserted.

Why discount robots?

[grasshoppa]

The argument worked, perhaps all too well. As soon as we landed on the moon, humanity's expansion into the cosmos slowed and then stopped (not counting robots)

Why do our achievements with sending robots not count? We're still producing remarkable feats of science and engineering, aren't we? What's so important with sending flesh and blood?

Yes, other-world colonization is a very real goal, but it's not the only one. Scientific exploration is more efficient ( ie: get more done for less ) when you don't have to worry about maintaining a fragile human being as well.

Re:Why discount robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly a valid question. To play devil's advocate, for the price of sending a few humans to tell us about one single journey, we could likely send a fleet of craft to every single planet and several other interesting locations and have them beam back 4K UHD VR for everyone to enjoy. We would easily have 10, 100 or 1000x the science per $$ spent with robots.

Re:Why discount robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't give a shit how many robot probes we send to Mars because we are too cowardly and greedy as a species to travel ourselves.

If we never intend to leave Earth, what the hell is the point of robotically exploring space? NASA have been wasting their budget on timid, unambitious projects for decades.

Re:Why discount robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell is the point of robotically exploring space?

• to find whatever we find?,
• to figure out where we should go?
• to figure out what problems we will have to solve when we get there?,
• to preemptively solve some of those problems?,
• to find valuable minerals to mine?,
• to update text books for school kids?,
• to spend grant money?,
• to employ robot makers?,
• because we can?,
• to start terra forming processes?,
• to test new propulsion systems?,
• to test new AI systems?,
• to eventually carry our uploaded consciousnesses where the hostilities of space will never allow our bodies to go?,
• because NASA scientists think robots are a better idea, and that trumps ideas from ACs?,
• to obtain sweet new pics to use as backgrounds on our computer desktops?,
• to make headline news?,
• because life support technology is not yet as advanced as you think it is?,
• because radiation, low-gravity, poop disposal, and the weight associated with water supplies are bigger problems than you realize?,
• because some of us believe AI will eventually be smarter than us anyway?,
• just to piss you off?,

I don't know. Pick a reason. There are plenty.

Re:Why discount robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do our achievements with sending robots not count?

Because to paraphrase JFK, it's about doing things the hard way.

We need astronauts looking through space telescopes to take pictures on film and develop images in space and bring back the pretty pictures when they return. None of this internet connected CCD robotic Hubble crap.

Re:Why discount robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't we do both. The idea that it has to be one or the other is wrong. If we don't develop both capabilities we will be playing a major catch-up game when we find something worth sending humans to.

Re: Why discount robots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, send robots with frozen embryos

Pointer to void

[Anonymous Coward]

Similarly, a pointer to void is not a void. It's just a bit of storage allocated to hold a hardware memory address that is empty.

It's not surprising that software-only dilletantes are frightened by pointers. They completely lack an understanding of hardware.

Re:Pointer to void

[fisted]

to hold a hardware memory address that is empty.

The only thing void about a void * is its type information. Addresses cannot be empty. You might be thinking of NULL, but even that isn't an empty address.

Nice try though, thanks for playing.

We need to prepare now

[coldandcalculating]

I agree with the sentiment that we can't talk seriously about colonizing other worlds until we learn how to sustainably inhabit our own, but we need to develop the technology to move humans en masse alongside the capability to not ruin whatever place we land on. Not ruining planets is something we should be practicing on earth immediately, but as TFA points out, many people fail to recognize the economic benefits. Some day this world will be come uninhabitable (asteroid? zombies?) and it would be nice for the sake of our species to be able to move at least some of us to a new place and stay alive there. Why not work on this technology and prepare now? I think our descendants would thank us if they didn't have to attempt the long term survival of the human race in a hastily improvised tin can.

One of my favorite stories is Aesop's tale of the boar and the fox:

One day as he moved through the forest the fox came upon his friend the wild boar who was engaged vigorously sharpening his tusks against a large stone.

"My friend," started the fox, "Why do you exert yourself so, seeing there is no hunter about and no other danger from which to defend yourself on this day in the forest?"

To which the boar frankly replied, "The day will come when I have need of sharp tusks. I shall have no time to sharpen them then."

Re:We need to prepare now

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

Couldn't even get this to work on Earth.In a temperate climate. Perfect that first before trying on the moon or Mars.

Re:We need to prepare now

[painandgreed]

Some day this world will be come uninhabitable (asteroid? zombies?) and it would be nice for the sake of our species to be able to move at least some of us to a new place and stay alive there. Why not work on this technology and prepare now?

Because quite honestly, the task of moving at least some people to Mars to stay alive there is a such a huge task that a little extra hurry now really won't make a difference. It would take 30 years and the largest engineering project done by mankind to get people there to plant a flag and get them back. The effort to establish any sort of sustainable colony there will be orders of magnitude higher. Never mind daydreams like terraforming Mars. Last time I ran the numbers, just getting Mars an atmosphere with pressure a person could exist in, with most favorable estimates of materials already on Mars, by either getting resources from nearby comets or even from the moons of Jupiter, in a century, requires energy best listing in units of daily total output of the sun. It will take a century or two to build the infrastructure to do that, and probably a century or two before that just to get the tech to attempt it. I'm all for more space exploration, but don't kid yourself that you'd see any sort of habitation in space in your lifetime even if there was the money and political will.

Re:We need to prepare now

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure that you're wrong, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine what we will be capable of 30 years in the future. 30 years ago, the internet was tied to computers and copper lines, and limited to 56.6 kbps, and now it's all-pervasive, gigabit speed, and enables "miracles" like real-time video conferencing from a phone, or real-time translation of street-signs using a phone camera. Certainly some people could predict this - Moore's Law comes to mind - but it was still a little hard to imagine. Equivalent advances in materials science or genetically engineered molecule factories could possibly transform manufacturing in a similar way. Provided we don't have a war or a major pandemic, there is a reasonable chance that in 30 years' time things will be much much easier to produce.

Besides, in 20 years we'll have working fusion power.

Re:We need to prepare now

[prisoner-of-enigma]

we can't talk seriously about colonizing other worlds until we learn how to sustainably inhabit our own

Lucky for you the tech required to sustain humans in space and on otherwise-uninhabitable worlds would work just fine here on Earth to help us develop better recycling techniques, more power-efficient devices, and in general do more while using less.

Just like the computer you're using now benefited from the Apollo-era push for smaller, faster, efficient, more reliable computers, the spin-off benefits from space exploration are beyond counting. The idea that we should focus on Earth first and exploration second is absurd when you consider the latter naturally benefits the former.

uhhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Space is REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG... and we can only go so fast.

That is what is really happening here... if this were a trip to the corner supermarket, we would do it daily.

Why does this article exist... is a much better question than anything posed in it.

It is lack of money

[cnaumann]

We cannot justify the return on the investment for sending people to Mars and returning them safely. How is that not a lack of money?

Re:It is lack of money

[Anonymous Coward]

"We cannot justify the return on the investment for sending people to Mars and returning them safely. How is that not a lack of money?"

Says he, as he types out his post and sends it around the planet using tech and knowledge largely spun-off from the space program.

Oh the irony! It burns!...it burns!...

It's a lack of leadership

[cmaurand]

Not imagination. The moon program brought us solid state, microprocessors and miniaturization the went orders of magnitude better than anything previously produced, velcro, microwave ovens, fuel cells, ground reading radar, methods of inter-body navigation, Tang, Space docking procedures, standardized hatches on spacecraft, better alloys for building air and space craft, Meals Ready to Eat, air scrubbers, and more than anything else, confirmation of the math and physics involved. The space program generated all sorts of industries. In n1961, the technology for putting a person on the moon and returning them safely to the earth didn't exist. by 1969 it did. That took leadership. I haven't seen that kind of leadership since Kennedy. Lots of private contractors got very wealthy off the space program. However, NASA doesn't have the kind of lobbying money available to it that Goldman-Sachs has. What NASA does isn't sexy.

Re:It's a lack of leadership

[angel'o'sphere]

Most of the things you mention existed 100 years before the space age.
The amount of 'new things' the space race created is greatly exaggerated.

Just think about a WWI submarine ...

Re:It's a lack of leadership

[religionofpeas]

The moon program brought us solid state, microprocessors and miniaturization the went orders of magnitude better than anything previously produced,

Those things would have been made without the moon program too. And if we'd do it for a second time, the benefits would be less, because we already have most of the tech we need.

Re:It's a lack of leadership

[techno-vampire]

Just think about a WWI submarine ...

Submarines, then and now, are designed to keep pressure out; spacecraft are designed to keep it in. Completely different design problems requiring different classes of solutions.

Re:It's a lack of leadership

[Anonymous Coward]

"The moon program brought us solid state"

Excuse me? The transistor was invented 20 years before by a telecommunications company. The first guidance computers were made for ICBMs, not for NASA. Strike one.

" microprocessors"

????What? There wasn't a single microprocessor anywhere in Apollo. In any case, arguably the first chipset that was a microprocessor was the CADC for the F-14. Not NASA. Strike two.

"miniaturization "

Yeah, those processes were invented by Fairchild, Noyce, etc. Not NASA. The logic that lead to "molecular electronics" was obvious, space not required, no NASA. Strike three.

"velcro"

You have access to Wikipedia for fuck's sake. Strike four.

"microwave ovens"

Invented by the Navy in WWII. Strike ... oh never mind, you're an ignorant, ill-informed Space Nutter.

STOP PEDDLING YOUR REVISIONIST BULLSHIT HORSESHIT YOU LYING SPACE NUTTER

Re:It's a lack of leadership

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Those things would have been made without the moon program too.

And you know this for a fact, right? And your inerrant prognostication also tells you these same advances would've been made in roughly the same time frame, right? And the iterative, compounded benefits we've enjoyed -- especially in the tech industry -- over the last 40 years would be as good or even better than what we have now without Apollo and its attendant technological breakthroughs?

Oh, wait, of course you don't know any of that. Because you can't. The rise of tech has benefited humanity across the spectrum, from commerce to dissemination of information to better medicines to providing voices and freedom in areas politically insulated from it and much more. If Apollo pushed us forward even a decade faster than we'd have gone without it, it's benefited BILLIONS of lives in the process.

Re:It's a lack of leadership

[angel'o'sphere]

The design problem is exactly the same.
And the preassure differences are 10 or up to 30 times stronger in a submarine than in a space craft. (100 - 300m diving depth in a submarine versus 1 atmosphere pressure in a space craft - they actually run them on less than an atmosphere)

Bad in physics?

United States

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't even send humans into space anymore. Only the Russians and Chinese can.

Not a void?

[Gravis Zero]

It’s a canvas for human imagination.

So... it's a void*? ;)

Re:Not a void?

[michael_wojcik]

Dude. Everyone knows space is real, and big. Ergo it's a double.

Lets Compare

[Anonymous Coward]

How long did it take from the first Viking explorers in the New World to the modern, industrialized US? Quite some time, and quite a few failed colonies and settlements between. And this was supposed to be easy, with intelligent alien lifeforms already thriving there.

Cold war's over

[bspus]

What got us there was the cold war. Both from a symbolic perspective (can't let the commies beat us) and an actual fear perhaps.
Like whoever conquers space first has an advantage and can build orbital weapons and blast us to hell kind of thing. However silly it may sound today.

We are long past those notions. Presidents can no longer justify the significant costs when other more mundane matters are pressing and can win them votes.

Maybe this will change again in the future, with China, or maybe the private sector will have a real incentive big enough to drive investment towards that area.

Early ships on the water?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like the earliest vessels to float on the water ever ventured across the ocean or even out of sight of land. Little rafts that maybe crossed a river or floated out into the ocean a bit, but it took advances in ship building to get a large amount of people crossing the oceans.

Just like it's going to take a lot of advances to get people into space. It's not imagination at all that we lack. We do not yet possess the technical know how to get people out into that void and back quickly. With our tech right now, going to Mars would be like walking from the most westerly point in Europe to the most easterly point in Asia. It's doable, but you're going to age considerably. It's not like taking a flight, where you can cross the US and back in less than 24 hours.

We need better craft and propulsion technology as well as figuring out how to offset the limitations of the human body being in space before we start exploring space in any sort of serious capacity, right now we are only playing with the idea of exploration and no real serious work has started. No human will leave the solar system until we can get to Mars (or further) and back again in less than a day or two. When that day happens, humanities' expansion into the cosmos and exploration will start taking off. Unfortunately that day will not come in our lifetime or even that of our great grand children.

While we have firms working on craft and propulsion, who is working on artificial gravity? If we are not making headway into that realm, space exploration is a dead end.

Re:Early ships on the water?

[Anonymous Coward]

who is working on artificial gravity?

You mean who's working on bending spacetime?

More complex than that

[AlanObject]

The only reason that the U.S.A. went to the moon is because the reactionary/conservative votes in Congress and their constituency tolerated it. The reason: they were afraid that the USSR would get there first and establish military dominance from space.

Even so, if JFK had not been assassinated I have read that many historians agree that most of the NASA programs and particularly Apollo would have been de-funded. It was only through sentimental appeal to preserving the JFK legacy that they managed to preserve the 1-2% of the federal budget used for that purpose.

Today, the political dynamic is far different. As long as the right-wing has control of government it will never fund NASA space exploration again. The most you can get is big sub-contracts for private enterprise like SpaceX. But you will have to notice that Elon Musk is no longer hanging out with Trump. What do you think that is?

To the GOP, government scientists are the enemy, as are scientists employed by anyone that they do not have direct control over.

The issue is not motivation or imagination. It is the very peculiar politics of the U.S for the past several decades.

Re:More complex than that

[Khashishi]

Perhaps the issue is lack of competition. Would US have ever gone to the moon if there were no USSR?

Re:More complex than that

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not, but Germany would have. Without a USSR, there either wouldn't have been a WWII or there wouldn't have been an eastern front in the way that there was. Either way, Von Braun would not have had to have come to the US and would have continued his rockets in Germany.

Re:More complex than that

[Anonymous Coward]

What's interesting about that is I find it's usually right-wingers who want space exploration.

Re:More complex than that

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason: they were afraid that the USSR would get there first and establish military dominance from space.

Serious people never thought that, even if it was an easy headline.

In Cold War technology, space = rockets, and rockets = ICBMs. The country that had better space program had better (more accurate, more powerful, ...) rockets to launch nuclear weapons. Space programs were a way of advertising that fact. In addition to economical and political differences, the Cold War was in part trying to win over the other countries of the world, and the better the space program, the more successful you were.

Re:More complex than that

[AlanObject]

The reason: they were afraid that the USSR would get there first and establish military dominance from space.

Serious people never thought that, even if it was an easy headline.

Which is why of course the Outer Space Treaty exists. Because nobody serious thought anyone would try to put weapons in orbit.

In Cold War technology, space = rockets, and rockets = ICBMs...

You are on firmer ground there, but I would disagree that the Apollo mission was no more than an international PR stunt.

First fix the problems on Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

We have enough problems down here on Earth. Anyone who thinks that flying to the stars before solving our problems down here is a fool.

Re:First fix the problems on Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Basic research pays off in unforeseen ways, and the solutions to complex challenges can find uses in other realms. Not to mention the benefit of not putting all in one's eggs in one basket.

What what?

[guruevi]

It doesn't build industries, establish settlements and scientific research stations, or scale up solutions from expensive one-offs to mass production.
NASA paid back at least 5:1 every investment ever made in it. Sure not so much today, but we wouldn't have the computer era without the space race, or memory foam mattresses or velcro or insulin pumps or LCD displays or photovoltaic cells.

Even if going to space is completely pointless (Beyond the information we get from doing basic research) it has encouraged the building of many industries. And even if it was just the information we gathered, it has helped endless amount of lives go from superstition based beliefs to actual scientific inquiry.

Re:What what?

[JoeDuncan]

^THIS EXACTLY

Wish I had mod pts for this...

What kind of idiot is totally ignorant of the ginormous boost to tech that resulted from the space race???

Going to space does VERY MUCH "build industries" - hell it even *creates* whole new ones!!!

Re:What what?

[religionofpeas]

What kind of idiot is totally ignorant of the ginormous boost to tech that resulted from the space race???

To be fair, you'd have to compare it with the things you could do by allocating the same budget on something else. We could fund quantum computers, fusion reactors, batteries, solar panels, or a bunch of other things.

Re:What what?

[hey!]

Actually, weather satellites alone probably pay for the entire space program many times over. They are probably the single best investment we've ever made in anything, on a dollars returned (or at least saved) per dollar invested basis, to say nothing of lives.

When the hurricane of 38 made landfall at Long Island New York at 2PM, people were out and about their business because they didn't know it was coming. In contrast people knew Hurricane Sandy was coming some five days in advance. Imagine what it woudl have been like if nobody had known it was coming.

I suspect it's likely that GPS, if you could actually quantify all the public benefits, might also end up being valuable enough to justify the entire space program. People just don't think of it as a space-based service; they think of it as a magic box.

Re:What what?

[bluefoxlucid]

This argument always bothered me. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, which is latin and thus means I am very smart and you should listen to me; also that a thing happened after another thing, therefor the first thing caused the second.

Fasteners evolved before space. The zipper was invented in 1901. Buttons are vastly-different from snaps. Velcro is similar to the hooks on various types of plants which attach to animal fur to carry seeds far away, but somehow is an invention only possible by NASA.

Foam rubber existed in 1929; we have similar latex beds today; but foam polyurethane somehow is an invention only conceivable because of NASA.

Plasma TVs gave us flat screens, and LCDs are based on the 1888 work of Friedreich Reinitzer and the 1927 work of Vsevolod Frederik's light valve; yet LCDs apparently were inconceivable without NASA.

The first photoelectric cell was built in 1888, but nobody would conceive of building terrestrial PVs to combat the climate change fears which began emerging in the 1970s and the long-standing concerns of air pollution if it weren't for putting the damned things in space.

Is this really the kind of argument we should use to justify NASA? That things are just impossible unless the Government space and war machines get out and push? Is that what you want to commit to as the entire reason NASA should exist? Because if so, somebody is going to reason that it shouldn't exist based on your argument being ridiculous.

We have research facilities in zero gravity which provide invaluable scientific data (okay, it's valued at billions or trillions of dollars) unobtainable via any other modern method.

Re:What what?

[HeckRuler]

That's a good argument for the believers. I like it. But it's not going to sway non-believers because it's taking too many liberties with history.

They're going to scoff at "NASA paid back at least 5:1 every investment ever made in it." and ask how that could possibly be true given NASA's ~$580 billion since it's inception. When you try and give NASA credit for:

computer era: They'll say that it would have happened with or without NASA, and I have to agree.

memory foam mattresses and velcro: Ok, but those are pretty minor things, and haven't paid out $2.5 Trillion.

insulin pumps: That's a more legit example.

LCD displays: I'd put that more at the feet of RCA. Just because the space shuttle had LCD displays doesn't mean they were exclusively developed for NASA.

photovoltaic cells: They'll point out that solar cells certainly existed prior to NASA. Of course NASA developed them further and has a practical application. The argument is that without that basic research to make them more viable, solar cells would not have been anywhere near commercially viable and private industry wouldn't have wanted to sink in the money to get it there.

NASA has a list of spinoff technologies. A lot of these aren't all that well known, but they're more concrete examples.

Re:What what?

[jbmartin6]

we wouldn't have the computer era without the space race, or memory foam mattresses or velcro or insulin pumps or LCD displays or photovoltaic cells.

This is a fallacy, you are assuming these things would not have been invented otherwise. A dubious conclusion, the work done leading up to these was already done without the space race.

Re:What what?

[guruevi]

It's not impossible, but some things (like radial tires) are things nobody ever thinks of doing until they get the "silly government request" and then find out that it's a pretty good idea.

Some things, obviously existed but space travel brought them back in the front and allowed them to be commercialized. There are plenty of good ideas in labs, but until someone invests a TON of money into developing it out, it won't ever get to us. The government has unlimited money to spend on such things which business ventures often don't want to risk.

It's all about the risk and the return on investment in the end. If you're going to develop millions of dollars worth of kit, you don't want to do it as a business if you're probably never going to get a return.

Would we have gotten there eventually? Sure, but the space age brought us these developments at break-neck speeds, accelerating funding for risky things.

Re:What what?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) The computer era began in WW2, out of the need to have faster logistics and targeting computations. The first modern transistor was built in 1947. It's often joked that the modern smart phone has more computing power than the Apollo space missions, because most of the calculations for the space missions were done by hand.

2) Memory foam was developed from a NASA-funded contract in the 1970s, as a way to protect astronauts during take-off

3) Velcro was a Swiss invention from the 1940s, but was popularized by NASA when they used it to fasten equipment..

4) The Insulin Pump was invented in 1963 as a wearable backpack. The technology was miniaturized by NASA as a way to monitor the sugar levels of astronauts, resulting in the modern implant insulin pump.

5) Even though liquid crystal technology was discovered in 1888, it took until 1962 to commercialize it. The modern LCD was invented by RCA, not under a NASA contract. NASA has done quite a number of experiments with liquid crystals however.

6) The first PV cells were invented in 1876, but weren't successfully commercialized until Bell Labs put it on silicon in 1953. It took until 1958 until the Air Force was convinced to use them in its first satellites, which then purchased them in bulk from Bell. The modern ground-based PV panel was actually invented in the 1970s under a contract by Exxon as a way to provide power to off-shore drilling rigs, by using lower grades of silicon to make it cost-competitive compared to battery installations.

Re:What what?

[bluefoxlucid]

Sure, that's the main point: people say we'd have never gotten these things, but the truth is maybe we got them sooner. The other side of that is maybe we overpaid for the luxury.

Timing is important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about how hard, dangerous, expensive was going to the moon using 60s tech!
Also think about how much easier, safer, cheaper doing the same would be today!

We must realize the existing space tech is far from what is really needed for staying long term on the moon or sending people to Mars (and staying there long term).

Why? Because extremely important tech needed is still missing:
A true O2 generator (a device that pulls in used air and converts CO2 to O2 using only electricity and does it fast and efficiently!
An effective electromagnetic shield against space radiation!
Most importantly, a powerful and dependable (nuclear) energy source! (Using feeble sunlight will not be always enough!)

Re:Timing is important!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most importantly, a powerful and dependable (nuclear) energy source! (Using feeble sunlight will not be always enough!)"

For the love of Baby Jesus! NO NUKES!!! There are other sources of power out there. Think wind and geothermal!!!

Re:Timing is important!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am talking about energy source for space (where you get lots of radiation anyway), not for life on Earth!

Re:Timing is important!

[Anonymous Coward]

RADIATION!!! Did you say "RADIATION"? Radiation is dangerous and causes cancer. Look at what happened in Japan!!! You must be crazy.

Re:Timing is important!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is a huge push from public (at least an unknown percent of it) to go to Mars or create permanent base on the moon, in recent years.

Considering current space tech is far from what is needed (at least in my view), I think attempting to go to Mars with people today, would quite possibly end in disaster!
And if that happens, any country would ever want to try again, even if tech is much better someday?

Re:Timing is important!

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like some people have no reading comprehension.
Just read a single word and based on that write an opinion!

Saw the word "Nuke" -> Nukes are bad! bla bla bla!
Saw the word "Radiation" > Radiation is bad! bla bla bla!
Saw the word "Squirrel" -> Squirrels are ... bla bla bla! :-)

It's all about competition

[Parker Lewis]

The reason why USA planned a moon travel was not because "it's hard", it was because Russia sent a man to the space first. After the competition is over, all stopped. Maybe China sending man to the space/moon/Mars will make USA react again. Need or competition is the fuel for mankind.

Re:It's all about competition

[bluefoxlucid]

We sent a moon mission because it was expensive and our economy was stronger than the USSR's economy. They called our bluff while holding a pair of jacks--which can't quite beat a pair of aces.

Let's stop pretending we went to the moon

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

It's too bad nobody actually went.

Re:Let's stop pretending we went to the moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you want to believe something doesn't make it true.

The conservative reactionaries can't seem to grok this either...

What vested interest did the Soviet Union have for confirming the veracity of the moon missions? Why go more than once? How do you explain the artifacts left behind? Were they planted by robots using technology that didn't exist at the time?

Do you also think the earth is flat and 6000 years old, that denying children knowledge of how sexual reproduction works in favor of faith-based abstinence will somehow prevent unwanted babies, and that evolution is a lie?

Hopefully the next time you get cut by your own ignorance the infecting bacteria aren't resistant to common antibiotics!

Why are we there?

[R3d M3rcury]

Getting to space isn't the hard part -- the hard part is figuring out why we're there.

To hit golf balls.

Forget space...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a "Get In Loser This Planet Blows" shirt instead.

Its about the money

[vux984]

. Not know-how, or even money, but a certain lack of imagination.

Getting to space isn't the hard part -- the hard part is figuring out why we're there. [...] It doesn't build industries, establish settlements and scientific research stations, or scale up solutions from expensive one-offs to mass production...[...]

You answered your own question. Despite your declaration to the contrary it is about the money. Nobody has figured out how to make money at being there. Industries go where the money is. Mass production happens when it is profitable.

Re:Its about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody has figured out how to make money at being there."
That's a lack of imagination.

Re:Its about the money

[50000BTU_barbecue]

...and you have a lack of facts.

Re:Its about the money

[micahraleigh]

That's a contrived way of putting it.

Landing on the Moon Did NOT Kill the Space Program

[mschwanke97402]

Johnson simultaneously going all-in to Vietnam and creating the Great Society welfare and Medicare programs didn't leave much money for the Space Program. When we went to the moon NASA got as much as 5% of the national budget. That could not be sustained.

Here's an old fashioned idea

[boudie2]

Maybe we should be spending our money on cleaning up the mess we made on this planet before we start planning on ruining others.

Notice the weak, winter Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a few careful observations, you can begin to understand that the
heliocentric model is a lie, and you live on a flat plane.

Science says the tilt of the Earth gives less sunlight to the North this time of year. But have you noticed that the sun also appears weaker, and yellower? The tilt only moves it towards the south, and gives it a shorter, lower track through the sky. But the amount of atmosphere traversed is the same for any light coming up from the horizon -- East or South. So what makes the light itself appear weaker in Winter? There should be the same amount of atmosphere to cross whether the Sun rises due East in the summer, or South-East in the winter.

So why is the winter Sun weak and yellower than the summer sun at the same altitude in the sky?

Space is fake. The Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.

Solar Eclipse: https://vimeo.com/230976895
Light of the chromosphere can be observed on the back of the moon. Allais Effect
Lunar Eclipse: https://vimeo.com/92378881
Shadow is black, then changes color to reddish.
Next lunar eclipse: January 30/31, 2018 North America

How to make it pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Columbus was a bad mathematician and got funding to try a new trade route. (Money for Spain)
He got lucky and ran into the Americas.
The explorers came to America and found riches. and paid back investors.
The rest came because of the riches.

There is not much of value on the Moon. We have to get fusion reactors working, then maybe the Tritium on the Moon's surface would be worth going for.
Venus is big, but will melt anything that lands there.
Mars is far off, cold, dry and not brimming with riches.
The first few thousand people need to view it as a one way trip to Mars.
The first few hundred need to view it as a likely death sentence. (ask the Virginia Colony)
If there is a major war on Earth, Mars may be alone for a long time (see Vikings in Greenland)
But you get to name the streets etc.

Boring article that lacks substance

[tomkost]

The article merely repeats what is known for a very long time now and offers no ideas on how to change it. IMHO, there is likely much less benefit of sending a manned mission to Mars for instance compared to what we achieved sending a man to the moon. Keep in mind that the Apollo missions developed rocket technology which was then used for both peaceful and military purposes here on earth (along with much other technology also used here on earth). But it's not obvious to me what new technologies would be developed on a series of manned Mars missions that would be very useful here on earth. We likely wouldn't know exactly until we do actually do it. But I think any technologies developed would not be very useful until such time as the earth is overpopulated or resources are nearing exhaustion and I doubt either will happen anytime soon. Reports of rare earth mineral depletion notwithstanding.

Lousy headline

[king neckbeard]

TFS says nothing about space not being a void, just that we avoid space.

Interestingly ...

[fahrbot-bot]

When President Kennedy announced the Apollo Program, he famously argued that we should go to the moon because it is hard.

This is very close to the pick-up line JFK used on Marilyn Monroe.

Re:Interestingly ...

[phantomfive]

So is eating a pinecone

Re:Interestingly ...

[king neckbeard]

I think the exact words were "...not because you are easy, but because I am hard."

TFS: Solved all of the fundamental challenges

[Knuckles]

We didn't, and this is one important reason for why it stalled

Moon Base

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a moon base, please.

Space Has Been Quietly Developing

[DanielRavenNest]

In 1972, there were less than 200 active satellites in space ( https://media.tumblr.com/tumbl... ). Today that number is about 1500, and those satellites are larger and more capable. But communications, weather, navigation, and definitely military satellites don't make headlines. Missions with people, and "firsts", like flying past Pluto, do. That gives the public a skewed idea about space. All the people getting satellite TV and radio, GPS, and weather reports are benefiting from space, even if they don't realize it.

Even human missions don't make the news once they are routine. Three astronauts just came back from the Space Station. Did that make the news? Probably not.

Re:Space Has Been Quietly Developing

[Anonymous Coward]

Three astronauts just came back from the Space Station. Did that make the news? Probably not.

so you found out how? mind-reading? were you one of the astronauts?

perhaps you saw it on the news?

Re:Space Has Been Quietly Developing

[DanielRavenNest]

I read it at https://www.space.com/39096-in... . But that's because space systems engineering is my profession, and I keep up with such things. When I said "making the news", I mean the news sources the average public sees.

If space were a void ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... then a pointer to it would be a void pointer.

Re:If space were a void ...

[bugs2squash]

That's what the stars are. void *

Outdated metric

[HeckRuler]

humanity's expansion into the cosmos slowed and then stopped (not counting robots)

Why wouldn't we count robots?

Hey, it's a great photo op to get a human on a different rock and plant a flag. There's potential political points being gained there. But there is no space-race. If we go up there and do it, there's no one to rub their face in it. Maaaaybe we show up Elon Musk? Is that even a fair fight? The US government, NASA, and all the taxpayers vs one rich boi? No, even if we get long-term "we were first" bragging rights when it comes to putting people far away from Earth, it doesn't help us today. Because there is no space race. Because there are no other competitors. Maybe if someone else gets footprints on the moon then there will be a race to Mars.

The political, PR, advertising aspect aside, putting people into space has next to zero scientific advantages (that they couldn't get on the ISS). Engineering and logistic-wise, it adds a TON of cost and it doesn't gain us much of anything. While I would love to get off this rock, I don't think we should send people until they can step into a functional habitat that could support them. The first martian colonists will be robots digging holes and planting seeds.

FTL

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't travel at a decent velocity, space is pretty much a waste of time. If a way to travel FTL was found, sign me up. Otherwise, why?

So..

[lq_x_pl]

Can we just not post articles from Slate on Slashdot from here on out?

Ya, it was for man kind my ass

[kfh227]

The moon landing was all done for the defense department. We resolved a lot of technological hurdles that can be used in ICBMs, high altitude spy planes, etc.

Well, there's no money in it, is there?

[rsilvergun]

nothing of utility is being produced. Yeah, a lot of tech got made, but it just as easily could have gotten made without spending billions launching stuff into space. You're confusing the goal (launch stuff) with the result (the stuff we invented to launch stuff). But when you think about it, it's kind of silly. Instead of spending billions on sending a probe how about some money spent on developing a safe and effective form of Male Birth control? How about money spent solving the rapidly approaching water shortage problems.

And yes, this is a zero sum game. It's remarkably hard to pry money out of the hands of the wealthy for these sort of things and the working class just doesn't have that much for you to pry. Now, during the cold war we could pry a ton of money out of the rich to fight the Ruskies, but that's over. It's not going to happen again. The rich figured out the Russians weren't a threat to them (maybe to you and me, but not them). The ultra wealthy are globalists now anyway. So we're not gonna get another bonanza like that. What little we get to devote the the general betterment of mankind needs to be spent carefully.

Here's an idea

[rsilvergun]

how about we pay people to invent those things without also paying them to shoot missiles into space to watch stars. You know that's an option, right? The two aren't mutually exclusive. The big reason we did NASA was it was the only way to get funding for that stuff. The cold war drove the space race and let us tax people (especially the rich) enough to pay for those advancements. Cold Wars over, and it's not starting up again. So if we want money to make the world a better place we're gonna have to find another way.

There is only so much we can do

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, but you can't fight reality, and the fact is that human beings can't survive indefinitely in space, regardless of how far we can go or how long it takes to get there. Until that obstacle is overcome (which may be impossible), the rest is moot.

The money you can't make on it

[whitroth]

Come on - the whole right doesn't believe in basic research, because you can't make ROI on it in the next quarter or two.

That, and even though Ike created NASA, the Rethuglicans have always viewed manned spaceflight as a Democratic thing, and so they're agin' it.

And the fact that none of them has *any* imagination, nor hopes and dreams other than "get rich(er) quick", and nothing else matters.

The peak is now (too)

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were to draw a graph charting the farthest distance a human being has ever been from the surface of Earth, the peak was in 1970 with Apollo 13.

Actually the peak goes from 1970 to 2017. The graph never goes down.
That function (peak distance a human has ever been) is monotonic so never decreases.

It has stayed constant since 1960, and will increase at some point in the future if a human travels fartherbtham the moon.

Re:The peak is now (too)

[Anonymous Coward]

Corrections: obviously I meant “1970” and “farther than”.

Re:Landing on the Moon Did NOT Kill the Space Prog

[bluefoxlucid]

I can free up a lot of that money. My Universal Dividend is an enormous tax cut, stimulus, and aid package all in one. It's fundamentally new economic policy, and causes a reduction in welfare costs by making the poor less-poor. It grows with GDP-per-capita, so it lifts the bottom out of poverty more over time, thus reducing the need for welfare and the associated percentage of our GDP spent toward that. It even takes some of Social Security's burden, guaranteeing solvency and slowly cutting back the payroll tax without reducing the total benefits in retirement or raising the retirement age.

Welcome to a world of new solutions.

Progress is wasteful and must be held back...

[ShamblerBishop]

...until we find out how some greedy fucker can capitalize on it, and shape it to their own ends, to create a new way of gaining relative power over others in society and the world. That's the system we've built. That's the system we live in. That's the system which will dictate the course of political, social, economic and scientific progress - for the rest of our lives - and the lives of all those who come after us. We choose the system we live in. We don't get to choose how we view the system we live in. We are all pressured into viewing it in very particular and limited ways, to lend it enough credibility for survival. And so we choose to stay in it, and are trained to discredit all alternatives as not credible. We (and our children, and grandchildren) won't escape from it anytime soon. We will go through decades/centuries/millenia of amazing scientific/technological progress despite it - yet collectively, we might never fully 'grok' how short of our potential we're falling, due to the political/economic system we inhabit - and may never even begin to grok the alternatives. So yes, when you look in disappointment at how short of our potential we're falling, in pretty much any area, remember that the root of it is this.

And this is not an advertisement

[jbmartin6]

For a compendium of the thoughts of writers of fiction.

If vacuum is a problem

[someone1234]

It wouldn't be too hard to make pressurized rooms in Moon's lava tunnels.

Re:If vacuum is a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the person who isn't going to be doing it.

The reason is simple

[slashdotiscorrupt]

We must go into space to test our ideals at the extremes of reality.
By investigating the truth of reality, we can solve our all of problems.

Whos is this "we"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask 99.999999% of the US population about what they did to get us on the moon, and they'll draw a blank. Manned space exploration is fun to watch and all, but unmanned missions are one hell of a lot more cost effective in terms of the knowledge that government and the private sector gets from it. Is it getting cheaper? Not all that much. Scribblers who put out pages and pages of drivel like the stuff above never run out of things to say even though they don't have any more space expertise than the posers who post here. Space is not a void? Quite right, it's more like a box with infinite dimensions. Or an ocean with few shores. Or a bird on a wire....

We only explored because there was a reasonable

[rsilvergun]

chance of profit. So far there isn't one for space. Stuff like space needs to be paid for by our civilization's wealthiest. It's simply too expensive otherwise. You can't get that kind of money from the working class. They don't have it. You'd have to take their food from them, and they'll revolt. Now, we got away with that during the cold war because the aristocracy in America was afraid of the Russians coming and taking their stuff. Most of the good from the 50s through the 90s came from that. That threat is gone. The aristocracy has stepped out onto the global stage. They've made deals with their fellows in other parts of the world. They're no longer tethered to a country like you and me. They don't _care_. If you want them to give up the goods you're gonna have to put money on the table. And right now that's not happening.

It wasn't about competition

[rsilvergun]

it was about fear. Sure, competition got the working class fired up, but you needed to get the aristocracy to buy into spending that much of their money (keeping in mind that they think of every dollar as 'theirs'). The threat of space based weaponry did that. Even the pyramids had a purpose. They were built to show other nations that Egypt was not to be trifled with.

Anyway, that threat is gone, and with it any interest by the aristocracy to pay for space exploration. Unless you can put some money on the table for them it's not going anywhere.

Cold war competition was a compelling reason

[Anonymous Coward]

The cold war drove much of the early space race. Money flowed freely from government because space research directly benefited nuke delivery research. If you can land a man on the moon, you can land a nuke anywhere on earth.

The public's interest was also partially stimulated by a sense of competition with Russia. A virtual penis measuring contest of sorts that everyone could get behind because is was peaceful on the surface (with the inherent threat that increased technical capability meant should the cold war turn hot).

Why the robot hate?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems a very reasonable idea to send robots into in inhospitable environment, especially if the trip is going to involve long tedious months of travel. Humans are pretty fragile.

EM-Drive [Re: A lack of imagination?]

[Tablizer]

The EM drive is going much the same route as Cold Fusion, which is no surprise to anyone except the cranks.

If several groups test it and find detectable thrust, it's worth investigating further. It's a long-shot, yes, but also potentially revolutionary.

      research_priority = probability_of_success x potential_benefits

Being a long-shot is thus not by itself a reason to ignore it.

Re: EM-Drive [Re: A lack of imagination?]

[c6gunner]

Several groups finding barely measurable "results" which are statistically significant but not actually significant puts it squarely in the category of "there's almost certainly no effect, we're just not sure what we screwed up yet".

It's "a long shot" in the same sense that unicorn farts are a long shot at replacing gasoline for internal combustion engines. I don't encourage anyone to go on unicorn hunts.

Solved!: Spinnit and Stuffit

[Tablizer]

longer space sojourns on the MIR and ISS have proven that they are indeed major problems

Most of the problems were due to lack of gravity. A spinning ship can solve that.

Radiation problems can be solved by surrounding the ship with fuel, food, water, supplies, electronics, and perhaps human waste. It needs an outer wall of about 5 to 10 feet thick of stuff, depending on density.

Magnetic or electrical charge "broadcasters" outside the ship can further reduce radiation hazards.

Re:Solved!: Spinnit and Stuffit

[r1348]

There are many solutions proposed to address these issues, which indirectly proves that they are indeed problems. I never said insurmountable problems, but the claim that the Apollo missions showed us that we can just ignore the effects of zero-G plus radiation for space travel is simply false.

On DOGS (Design Of Great Settlements) vs CATS

[Paul Fernhout]

Yes, we really need to think a lot more about how to design space habitats and try out a variety of ideas in simulation and reality. Below is an excerpt from something I posted in 2003 to an Slashdot article on "Jeff Bezos' Shot At Space":
https://science.slashdot.org/c...

While it is excellent to see multiple billionaires pursuing cheap access to space (CATS), this seems like a problem that will be much easier to solve as new materials and processes come along (diamondoid jet nozzles, fusion, etc.) in the near future. Several of these entrepreneurs are of course already using newer materials and processes (composites, active dynamics, small ground crews augmented by fancy computers and software) relative to what NASA is stuck with in maintaining an aging Shuttle.

While I would never say such innovative effort is wasted, it would seem that launch technologies, while sexy, might really deserve somewhat lower priorities than the issue of what to do when we are in space. The fact is, we can launch people now, and relatively off-the-shelf technology (e.g. Ariane or Saturn V equivalent rockets) if manufactured in large quantities are probably Cheap-enough Access To Space for the next ten to twenty years (until nano-tech makes far better launch systems possible) especially if we are willing to accept 5% human casualties for launch (which is probably a far lower casualty rate than most human settlement travel activities historically).

There is also an issue of focus -- people focus on reusable vehicles, but the reality is that it is so costly to get things into space that there is not much point in returning either people or equipment after they have been launched. At best, Apollo era reentry capsules for people who want to come back to earth are good enough. For example, the space shuttle costs so much to launch relative to its production cost it should really be left in orbit as usable equipment (since anything in orbit is worth its weight in gold), and people returned in a small capsule if at all. Even if launch costs are greatly reduced, I think that a general outward trend of humanity will still reflect some of this economics (short of a space elevator). For example, in the USA, most people who went "West" during the 1800s probably never came back East.

So where is a key area of research that should be a priority among NASA and Billionaires, but is not heavily pursued? The issue is what to do in space once you have gotten there. Because if there is a reason to be in space, then people and collectives will work to get there. And the reality is, that right now, if we could get there, there is nothing to do there short of look around and come back. And if that were the case, Space would not deserve much more investment than say tourism to Mt. Everest. The reality is that we don't know how to support human life in space -- in large part because we have only spent a pittance on thinking about that issue systematically compared to the issues of CATS and Planetary Exploration. Frankly, while we support human life on earth, we have very little meta-knowledge formally about how to do even that. And, most of figuring out how to support human life in space at a nuts and bolts level requires non-sexy activities like sitting around and staring out the window, talking, sending emails, building databases, building software tools, building some small physical protypes on tabletops and outdoors, and just plain thinking (the hard stuff). This is all the preparation needed for the spiritual voyage into the (physical) heavens. Biosphere II was an excellent start in some ways, although the science mission was a bit dodgy at first and it seems Columbia (the recipient) seems about to abandon that effort for cost reasons --- and in any case, Biosphere II focuses on the wrong question -- we know biospheres can work and replicate (although scale is an issue) -- what we don't know is how to replicate the mechanical infrastructure (e.g. glas

Re:Landing on the Moon Did NOT Kill the Space Prog

[mschwanke97402]

Kindly take your political spam elsewhere.

Survival...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not enough for humanity to do shit about anything. We need "more" than hedging our bets or doing something new. Maybe this is the great filter civilizations face, or perhaps it's why if any extraterrestrial civilization would ignore us.

Space maturity

[Anonymous Coward]

The "space race" was essentially just a US/USSR government willy-waving competition designed to show off ICBM technologies in a way that enthused the public during the Cold War. The governments didn't actually want anything from space at the time.

There was an interim period where interest in space was essentially academic - NASA's deep space programme etc. - but since the late 1990s commercial space has taken off. (Pun intended.) First with an interest in LEO, especially comms satellites, and more recently in supporting government research project (SpaceX flights to the ISS etc.) But as commercial payload steps up with Falcon Heavy, New Armstrong and BFR, there's a lot more commercial companies can do in space, and further away.

Initially I'd expect to see continued support to government missions, but as the cost to orbit (and cost to other celestial bodies) falls from "superpower government only" to "quite affordable for a Fortune 500" I'd expect to see a much wider range of missions. Essentially, over the next 5 years we should be in a position where the technological capability to do interesting things in space is available and affordable. Once that happens I think we'll see an increasing range of entrepreneurs doing unexpected things in space, and eventually some of the things they do will result in a pull-through of commercial spacemen to do things the machines can't, to maintain the machines etc.

I doubt I'll see a well-established commercial colonisation of space in my lifetime, but I think I'll see the beginnings of it.

Space is a Net Energy Loser with Current Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

The escape velocity of Earth is about 11.186 km/s or 25,020 mph. At current technology levels this requires a chemical rocket burning tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel depending upon the mass of the rocket and payload and the specific impulse of the engines among other variables. The earth has a limited amount of available hydrocarbon fuels and potential hydrocarbon fuels. These resources are valuable and we cannot afford to waste them regularly on space flights that produce no payoff in net energy gained. Economically, that just doesn't make sense on any large scale. So yes, a company like SpaceX might win some number of commercial launch contracts for satellites, government paid resupply flights to the ISS at taxpayer expense and perhaps the occasional NASA probe mission, but that does not a destiny in space for mankind make. We pump oil out of the ground and burn it because we can get more energy out of that activity than we put into producing the oil. In that sense, the activity is sustainable until we pump out and burn some fraction of the oil to produce meaningful work. Paying the price of the delta-v budget to escape gravity wells, like our planet Earth for example, doesn't net us any energy. It costs us energy. That's why there isn't yet a massive space economy. It just doesn't make sense economically for us to do it.

Lack of imagination describes Slate accurately

[Anonymous Coward]

Along with all the misinformation in their article. False premises lead only to untrustworthy conclusions. Waste of bandwidth.

Maybe we never went?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it odd how we were able to successfully land men on the moon in 1969, but we haven't done it since? Yet the computing technology to do so is now thousands of times cheaper, so what's stopping us? Does anybody seriously believe that if men were to go back to the moon today, and live stream 4K footage, that tens of millions of people wouldn't watch it?

So how is space not a void?

[johannesg]

You put it in the title but there is no explanation. Just another stupid attention grabbing headline, then...

Useless expense / time / energy.

[chapstercni]

Let the private companies explore space. Expending energy, time, money, etc from public resources is an incredible misuse of taxpayers dollars.

the real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

You and Elon can go live on Mars I'll stay here where it is nice and comfortable.

Re:Landing on the Moon Did NOT Kill the Space Prog

[bluefoxlucid]

You wanted to talk about medicare and welfare. I gave you a solution.

Delusions R Us

[Anonymous Coward]

Geezus, people.

We went to the moon because we were in a military race with the USSR. We had to beat them to prove we were stronger. It was the Cold War, which could easily become a hot war. We did not go to the moon because it was hard, no matter what JFK said -- he just wanted the local yokel to get on board, figuratively that is.

The Apollo program was HUGELY expensive. Congress went along because they understood it was essentially a military program, not just catnip for sci-fi nerds.

When the military reason ended, so did the reason for spending huge amounts of money on human space exploration. Going to other planets is vastly vastly more expensive than going to the moon. Until there is either a business or military reason, it won't happen. Well, not really, because if enough people are deluded we will spend our entire wealth on golden calves.

the argument from paranoia

[epine]

No sentient planet prioritizes space exploration over sufficient AGI and rad-hard bio-foliage.

A mere fifty-year delay for an order of magnitude in risk reduction. No brainer.

The only possible counterargument is the one from paranoia: that the little word "mere" above is woefully misplaced, because we might already be living in astro-adolescent end times.

As if space would even begin to solve this problem lacking sufficient AGI.

If unbridled future AGI is going to exterminate humanity, it will exterminate us here by commission, or there by omission.

No win.

"Doesn't build industries"?

[martinfb]

"Doesn't build industries"?

SpaceX???
Boeing and Lockheed expansions...?

What are you talking about?!

Because we're defeatists

[ET3D]

The problem is that our social narrative turned from 'man can achieve anything' to 'man can destroy anything'. People who don't believe in themselves can't achieve anything. They sink back into a comfortable, risk averse existence. I think it's perfectly okay to acknowledge mistakes and try to learn from them, but taking them as the soul of our existence is crippling.