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Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the US Remain a Global Leader in Space (pewinternet.org)
Pew Research: Sixty years after the founding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), most Americans believe the United States should be at the forefront of global leadership in space exploration. Majorities say the International Space Station has been a good investment for the country and that, on balance, NASA is still vital to the future of U.S. space exploration even as private space companies emerge as increasingly important players. Roughly seven-in-ten Americans (72%) say it is essential for the U.S. to continue to be a world leader in space exploration, and eight-in-ten (80%) say the space station has been a good investment for the country, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted March 27-April 9, 2018. These survey results come at a time when NASA finds itself in a much different world from the one that existed when the Apollo astronauts first set foot on the moon nearly half a century ago. The Cold War space race has receded into history, but other countries (including China, Japan and India) have emerged as significant international players in space exploration. Another finding in the report: Most Americans would like NASA to focus on Earth, instead of Mars.
Moon colonization shout be the goal along with asteroid mining. That is the best way to build a sustaining space travel infrastructure. Mars can wait.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Considering 1 in 3 Households in the US rank as âoeThe Working Poorâ, Americaâ(TM)s fastest growing demographic and the fact that the majority of US Households cannot afford to send their children to a college in the US, how exactly shall the US remain relevant at all. Itâ(TM)s a well known fact on Wall Street that the days of US economic supremacy are over. Itâ(TM)s all about the cash heist now. By 2035 China and the BRICS will rule and the US will become a 3rd world shithole renowned for it Prison Society and corporate backed military authoritarianism against its population of impoverished ignorant bible banging fuckwads
72% think it is essential that the US be at the forefront of space EXPLORATION, but 18% think we should do any exploring. People as a whole are completely, utterly useless at directing policy. If you ever want to do anything important or interesting ignore what people think about it.
fixed it for you
Yeah... Lets blame Trump for the 500+ years of the destruction of Earth's environment. Should we blame him for slavery, WWI, WWII, and the diarrhea I had after eating at McDonalds too?
Theres my .02
We could do both if we weren't so all-fired eager to get involved in every brushfire war worldwide.
Why?
I get a kick out of space stuff, but what's the return on investment? Could we realize a better return per dollar by spending it on other areas?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Less than a majority (even less than a plurality) of voters support this nonsense. The problem is that the way the US electoral system is set up gives disproportionate priority to poorly-educated rural voters.
we cut all this "wasteful" government spending. Every dollar spent being wasteful if it's not spent in their district...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Trump as president is just a symptom. Removing him will do nothing about the actual problem.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Another finding in the report: Most Americans would like NASA to focus on Earth, instead of Mars.
Read TFA yourself of course, but note the following:
The questions shown about what should NASA have as its priority included:
"Monitor key parts of the earth's climate system"
"Monitor asteroids/objects that could hit Earth"
and
"Send astronauts to Mars"
Whether you believe man is changing the climate or not, it still is an obvious priority preference to monitor climate unless you are really fringe and don't think it changes at all.
Additionally, even that fringe is going to consider not getting whapped by rocks..from..spaaace.. higher priority than having someone take a joyride out to one.
--- Mercutio was right.
Why not do both? The money drain is the military, not space exploration.
When was USA ever the global leader in space?
The Russians did most everything first: first artificial satellite, first man in space, first woman in space, first in-flight rocket restart, first landing on another planet, first object in solar orbit, first animals and plants in space, first planetary flyby, first communication between crafts in space, first multi-person crewed craft, first soft landing on the moon, first in-space docking, first crew exchange in space, first sample return mission from the moon, first remote rover on another planet, first in-space observatory, first soft landing on mars, first signal from surface of Mars received on earth, first flyby of Venus, first soft landing on Venus, longest time spent in space... on and on it goes.
Also they are one of only two countries who can send people to space today, the other is China. US lost this ability.
Maybe US should work on becoming a leader, first, before trying to "remain" a leader.
The electoral system is not the problem.
Americans are well aware of how that works and they accept it.
There's no disproportionate problem of any kind.
Voters are not banned from voting and that includes voting for politicians who would change the election laws.
For "problems," with voters, look to those who don't.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Here's how it really works, though. Areas with disproportionate amounts of representation have more power and have no interest in fixing the system, because it gives them more power. Thus, the system remains the same.
Ignoring the fact that you trying so hard to troll that you felt it was important to post this drivel twice.
I'm going to go forward and say that at this point it seems space is pretty much out of hands of the U.S. tax payer. The way forward seems to be in the hands of private industry. I predict that in a few years NASA will be come what the FAA is now. Just another regulatory agency. Which I think would be a good move for NASA.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
The "system," is populated by ________. (hint: voters)
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
set up gives disproportionate priority to poorly-educated rural voters.
Yea! God forbid the federal government represent its people so that their needs aren't ignored. I mean, why should rural voters have a say at the federal level? The founders were a bunch of idiots for their time who didn't understand the rural-urban divide as a serious geo-political division of culture and government needs! Truly, b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) of the internet in $CurrentYear is smarter and can come up with a mob rule to put those rural retards in their place that would benefit the educated cities.
Shame on them for not accepting the sacred cow of coastal political elites! Shame on them for having different needs of the federal government! Shame on them for voting in their own self-interests! Shame on them for not being convinced by my super smart talking points I heard in womyn studies.
We should have a final solution to those rural retards. amirite?
Here's a thought. Maybe instead of insulting people you could try convincing them with better arguments and data. Oh, I know. It's better to be a smug elitist sitting on high not having to defend the sacred cows of your ideological thought bubble.
... you felt it was important to post this drivel twice.
So, no wiggle room here that my cursor was spinning and that I got an error saying this object no longer exists so I copied my text, opened another tab, and successfully posted there.
Regarding the more civil part of your post:
What, precisely, is the point of contention? We're essentially taking a similar position but for different reasons.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
But is factionalized and gerrymandered in a way that precludes change.
Have you heard of the idea that using gerrymandering techniques the politicians choose the voters and not the other way around?
How about equal representation under law? Why is someone in Wyoming or Rhode Island more worthy of political power than someone in Texas or California?
Also, the population disparities between states were much smaller (percentage-wise) in the 1790s than in the 2010s.
And speaking to the electoral system, why not a direct popular vote in the 1790s? It wasn't because of technology -- vote totals could still have been brought by couriers. It was to avoid penalizing states that disenfranchised their residents.
Otherwise, New Jersey, which allowed women and blacks to vote in the 1790s would have had much more voting power per resident than a Southern state that only allowed white male landowners to vote. Since any citizen over 18 can vote now, the reason for the electoral system is mostly gone.
Enlightenment will come via suffering.
And we still have natural resources.
And our colleges are great, a few years won't impact that.
We have a lot of smart people, but less are coming here than in recent decades.
I'm not knocking anyone on Earth here, just making some generalizations. My kids are in a US based International Baccalaureate program focused on French. I would like them to school in Europe (I've never been).
Anyway, we could see a party-reversal on certain issues as happened around the Civil War (tariffs as the cause I would guess, and propping up already insolvent coal/energy operations is not the best move fiscally):
https://www.livescience.com/34...
Watch the debt and the short term interest rate. A higher interest rate helps savers (retired folk who have been suffering), but it hurts those who borrow (workers). Obviously it's not that simple, but it rhymes.
Oh, the Social Security program recently had to access the trust fund (first time since 1982), but it and Medicare are on the way to insolvency:
https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
Don't get me started on bridges that need repairs... (I kid, I kid)
BlameBillCosby.com
As far as a "final solution"... #calexit2020! Let's do it! No reason why Californians should need to continue paying taxes to DC to support people who seem to hate them...
Believe it or not, you don't need an IB program to attend university in many European countries. But yeah, if they want a medical, science, engineering, etc degree, it's a lot cheaper and faster to do it in many European countries. i.e. medicine is a 6-year combined degree, not one that takes 4 years after 4 years of college and a gap year. The US system is somewhat inefficient in this respect.
Very good. I mis-interpreted your intentions. You have my apologizes.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
No, but you could figure that out if you cared to.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You don't know much about Venus do you? It's really hard to explore. Nasty envrionment.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Any thoughts?
It is very difficult to construct something that will last for more than a short time on Venus surface, because the surface temperatures can reach 500 C, and an atmospheric pressure over 90 times that at the earth's surface. Further it is heavy in corrosive substances like sulfuric acid and other nasties.
So far Venus landers have lasted for no more than about two hours, most of them for not more than one hour, and that is with extreme engineering measures and materials.
It is not impossible to explore the surface, but it is orders of magnitude harder have a lander operate there than it is on Mars.
Also, NASA would like to find life or signs of past life, and that is more likely on Mars than on Venus. Even the most extreme extrophiles we know of cannot tolerate Venus surface temperatures.
Real men wouldn't consider anything less than galactic leadership.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I didn't see anywhere where it says how many people participated in this poll. I sincerely doubt that all 300,000,000 citizens responded.
That's the problem with these 'polls': limited number of participants, how do you expect anyone to believe this truly represents the majority?
And that is a problem which you'll never solve.
The most classic example for this would probably be India. The ISRO has one of the most reliable rockets yet more than half of their people aren't living in ideal conditions.
IMO, inspiring the poor through programs like these are exactly something that society needs.
Why isn't the average Joe interested in education? We keep complaining about low education standards, but maybe because it's the people aren't inspired enough that they don't see anything worthwhile with the pursuit of knowledge.
We wouldn't even care about the state of the planet or uniting humanity if it wasn't for the space program.
Maybe we could blame him for appointing Pruitt and rolling back all the environmental regulations that we've so painfully established? Just so his buddies can make a profit while the rest of us drown in filth? How about blaming him for that?
We have more money per person than many countries that have far less poverty, even after subtracting the entire cost of the DoD. We could at least match the poverty levels of the leading developed nations (in this and most measures we aren't one of them) without touching the money spent to fight brushfires if we desired to. If we eliminated the DoD, the gulf between the haves and have nots would almost certainly expand. The DoD pays a lot of relative have nots. Relative poverty would increase, not decrease.
Eliminating poverty within your borders is a far more noble pursuit than exploring space. Let's cure problems down here first and then worry about up there.
Had we waited to do that, Columbus himself would never have sailed.
I see two major reasons why we want to colonize space privately:
1. Going beyond LEO will require assuming major personal risk. Only private advanturers can undertake that risk.
2. The "priorities" argument does not apply in the private sector, and the violent and dystopian folks who hate science have no input to the process. It will go ahead whether they want it or not.
Yeah... Lets blame Trump for the 500+ years of the destruction of Earth's environment. Should we blame him for slavery, WWI, WWII, and the diarrhea I had after eating at McDonalds too?
Sounds good to me. The guy is a scum bucket. I blame him for pretty much everything. Much the same way everyone on the Right blamed Obama. Shoe's on the other foot. Karma is a bitch.
You guys on the Right are happy to run around lecturing about how everyone should be self sufficient and accountable for themselves and their actions. Until shit happens to you. Then it's all "why is this my fault. I blame someone else; anyone but me. Oh look, there's Obama. Let's blame him."
Eliminating the EC would disenfranchise anyone who doesn't live in NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco; presidential elections would be decided by those cities and candidates would have little to no reason to even visit anywhere else. If you want to see the Second Civil War, by all means, get rid of the electoral college.
NASA's annual budget is $18 bn. So, those 72% of Americans can accomplish their goal by paying $80 each every year, voluntarily.
Of course, what many of those people are really saying is that they like US space leadership and that others should be taxed to pay for it.
Solving poverty is easy. Take all the money, divide it up equally; done.
Oh, did you want a way to solve it without anyone losing out? Then you'll need to progress science and technology pretty quickly... I wonder what kind of challenges we could set ourselves that would really stretch our ability to live well without using too much resources? Maybe even in an entirely self-contained environment? And would generate interest in STEM subjects, funnel money into genuine innovation and give us all hope for the future, even if the present is crappy?
Oh I know: space exploration!
It's taught in Canada that Canadians burned down the White House, so that's not exactly the stone you want to throw, Mr Glass House.
Of course, British troops based in the British territory that would later become Canada doing it isn't all that different... just like France, Italy, and Germany all take credit for things that happened in their territories long before they became these modern "Nation States".
Why not pay them directly instead of using the DoD as a proxy for welfare/education funding?
Are you suggesting that Donald Trump went to school in Canada? Why is this being hidden from Americans?
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's taught in Canada that Canadians burned down the White House
As a Canadian, schooled in Canada, and whose children were schooled in Canada, I can tell you that this is absolutely not true. As most of you probably already know, it was British troops who razed the original White House, and that is what we were taught. (God, where does this nonsense come from?)
yup, fix a few people now and let everyone starve later.. let's just set off the nukes now, why wait? Eliminating poverty is not within our grasp for a myriad of reasons. Some governments don't want to end poverty, some people with money need poor people to do work that they don't want to do. Poverty won't end because you throw money at it. The Human race is barrelling towards an extinction event. Maybe going to space doesn't fix that, but maybe it does, maybe only the rich can afford to go, but maybe being rich in space with limited resources is not being rich anymore. Give me a cabin in Antartica no matter how much money I have and I'm equal to anyone on the planet rich or poor. In space all that matters is surviving. I can promise you, we won't survive here. We are killing ourselves, literally killing ourselves.
once more into the breach
No. It would give them exactly one vote, same as a resident of Wyoming or Rhode Island.
NYC metro area: 16 million people. Chicago: 8 million. L.A.: 16 million. SF: 5 million. 15% of US population. Candidates would still have to campaign nationwide. They just wouldn't be able to cherrypick states which have outsize influence.
I would have no problem with that. But not happening. And fighting for it just distracts from solving the real problem. Many want you to fight for that.
My point is that military spending is not a part of the problem. If we ended all military spending, the wealthy would consume the windfall. The argument of spending on military and infrastructure versus welfare and education is just a distraction meant to keep your focus away from the real change in wealth allocation that has occurred over the last 50 years. It is not a change in the government's handling of wealth. It is a change in wealth distribution among the people. The top few percent of the country have had an unbelievable run on the backs of everyone else and they aren't going to voluntarily give up what they somehow think they have "earned".
To be really candid, I've come to believe that our real problem is that without poverty, our royalty doesn't feel so royal. Who would they be benevolent to?
Hey!! At least the Republicans have (moon) rock-solid plans for getting back to space.
Newt Gingrich promised a moonbase full of citizens by his 2nd term if elected president
and Trump is building SPACE FORCE!! Woot!!
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The man being able to get elected president despite clearly being the wrong person for the job is definitely a symptom of something, but probably not what you think it is.
Like it or not, but the 2016 election was a protest election where the electorate was simply sick and tired of the political establishment and as a result two people who normally would have been practically joke candidates (Trump and Sanders) got way further than they would have gotten in a normal election. Sanders got so close to the nomination the Democrats had to use dirty tricks to ensure he didn't get the nomination while Trump was able to get his party's nomination and went on to win the election despite how clearly the leadership of his party despised him. Hillary didn't lose because she was a completely awful candidate, she lost because she's as much of an embodiment of the political establishment as a person can be and went up for election in a year where this was practically the worst thing you could be.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
https://youtu.be/TXs2UfPv39s?t...
This week major European news (on euronews) news was successful landing of Soyuz and subsequent successful launch of Soyuz (with people on board in both cases)
Have you heard anything about in American media, the media of imbecile two-bit backwood degenerate parvenu country?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Less than a majority (even less than a plurality) of voters support this nonsense. The problem is that the way the US electoral system is set up gives disproportionate priority to poorly-educated rural voters.
No, the main problem is that a near-majority of eligible voters don't even bother to turn up to vote.
Politics is treated like a football match on the television in a bar, something that is supposed to be there in the background and occasionally watched. Something that is not actively followed, as long as you know your favourite team is doing ok or, heck, just something to watch to pass the time. Worthy of a glance to see someone score, then it's back to sipping beer.
Remain? ESA is sciencing rings around NASA in space, China and India have essentially caught up to nearly equal capability, American astronauts need to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz to get to the International Space Station and the one American company that still has some (impressive) launch capability is actually founded and led by a South African.
Methinks the US as an entity have some catching up to do when it comes to "Space Leadership". It's more of a committee of nations now.
Majority of Americans stopped reading after "essential remain world leader" and jumped up and down chanting '"Murica! 'Murica!"
You probably could have asked if it is essential to remain the world leader in obesity, people in jail or environmental pollution and people would have argued that it can't be bad to be the leader in anything - as long as you are leading.
bickerdyke
nuttin
They are not currently THE global leader. Haven't been since their retired the Shuttle instead of replacing it. Some of the robots they have been sending out have been interesting though. China, Russia and Europe are the big leaders at the moment.
Yes, the problem Hillary is still there.
Its a good start though.
In fact for many "diseases", fighting the symptoms is the only way forward,
The massive migraine that is America right now, could well do with some quick pain relief by ousting this clown.
Columbus's expedition was driven entirely by the prospect of profit. If there were profit to be made from deep space exploration, we'd already be there doing it. There is no profit to be made so private enterprise is not doing it.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
If we're discussing nasty environments, let's talk about Uranus.
Voters are not banned from voting
Isn't banning voters a common tactic used by Republicans?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What people are talking about is building a self-sustaining (as far as possible) moon base as a demonstration humans can survive long-term without deliveries from earth.
Quite so. The real challenge in doing so is finding an economic reason to build such a moon base in the first place. It won't get done without a darn good reason. Either we need to discover something really valuable that can only be exploited on the moon or there would need to be some national/global defense reason to do it. Literally every really large expenditure (talking MUCH bigger than stuff like the ISS or LHC) made for exploration is made for one of those two reasons.
My personal guess is this will take at least 100 years to accomplish.
Unless it was declared to be a massive national/global priority I think your time estimate is short by several hundred years. Such an endeavor would be massively expensive and requires large amounts of technology we are in no danger of developing in the near future. I could see it happening at some point but a real moon based like you are proposing is going to take a really long time to come to fruition if it ever does. The biggest obstacle to it is economics. There just is no obvious direct economic benefit to building such a thing.
Moon colonization shout be the goal along with asteroid mining.
Asteroid mining is a ludicrous proposition. Either it requires returning a dangerously large amount of material back to earth (dropping a large rock on Earth from space tends to make a rather large boom - de facto a WMD) or it requires processing in space for which we have not the technology, the infrastructure, nor any demand. To make asteroid mining and processing in space we would have to build a huge amount of space based infrastructure, supply chains, and economy for which there is no obvious ROI. People who suggest processing in space tend to rather glibly gloss over the details about how manufacturing supply chains actually work in the real world because they don't understand manufacturing. We take for granted a lot of things that are FAR more difficult to achieve in space. You have to replicate not just processing equipment but entire supply chains and then automate them which we cannot even do here on Earth.
Moon colonization? Fun idea but what's the motivation for doing it? What's the economic or defense reason that would justify and pay for such an enormous outlay of cash? Just because it's cool (and it is) isn't sufficient. Scientific research isn't enough either though that's closer. I'm all for colonizing the moon but I just can't see a roadmap to making doing it possible on a time scale shorter than hundreds of years. We would need a LOT of massive advances in technology to really make it practical and economic to do and even then we still would need an economic reason to be there for any length of time.
That is the best way to build a sustaining space travel infrastructure.
That's debatable and there are plenty of people more informed on the subject than either of us that have different opinions.
Most great achievements of civilization are not "profitable".
That's just not true in the long run. The biggest exploration expenditures are generally made for one of two reasons. 1) Defense of nation states and 2) Economic benefit. If something doesn't have a profit eventually then it won't be done or won't be done for long. The payoff doesn't have to be immediate but there does have to be a payoff eventually.
Accountants are notoriously myopic.
Yeah it's annoying having someone point out reality all the time. Much better to live in an echo chamber where the laws of economics are suspended for your benefit.
Trump as president is just a symptom. Removing him will do nothing about the actual problem.
Quite so but it would definitely be a good start to solving the actual problem.
Eliminating poverty within your borders is a far more noble pursuit than exploring space.
First off you cannot eliminate poverty completely. To pretend otherwise is a delusion. Second, I reject your attempt to frame the argument that somehow exploring space is a less noble endeavor. Third, exploring space has proven economic benefits that are hugely useful towards fighting poverty. Every penny we've invested in NASA has been repaid in economic benefits from technology spinoffs alone somewhere between 3X and 8X ROI even under the most conservative analysis. You want to reduce poverty? Spend MORE on a well executed space program. That will do more to reduce poverty than almost anything else you could possibly imagine.
Let's cure problems down here first and then worry about up there.
That meme is tired and false. It isn't either/or. Exploring space can do far more to solve terrestrial economic problems than keeping our feet on the ground.
One thing though: the Chinese have yet to do anything really serious in space outside of launching satellites. Note the relatively slow pace of the Shenzhou manned spaceflight program, compared to the several times a year the Russians do with flights to the ISS.
I find it interesting that the insight and wisdom of the framers were able to predict the largest geo-political divide even after almost 250 years. And here you are, wanting to walk back on the deal that the rural states accepted on admission to the union and ignore the insight and wisdom which protects the minority because you can't dictate over rural states from on high.
It is apparent that in times like these the structures we have to protect the minority vote are crucial to the republic and your mob rule are the first steps of resentment, disenfranchisement, and ultimately tyranny.
Everything in the US is a compromise. The fact that you don't want to compromise, as evident by your conflation of equal representation, is a clear indication that you do not care about the minority or representation.
Sure, go a head because the republic is dying from your ignorance and self righteousness.
No. Voter ID laws != banning voters. The only instance I can think of that matches is felons ability to vote but there are states that franchise felons after X.
However, historically the Jim Crow laws made to prevent blacks from voting were part of the democratic party.
https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com...
From a paper I co-write in 2001: "A Review of Licensing and Collaborative Development with Special Attention to Design of Self-Replicating Space Habitat Systems"
https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com...
"The continued exponential growth of technological capacity since the 1970s has removed most technical limits to group collaborations on space settlement issues. To remove social limits, groups must be explicit about the licensing terms of individual contributions and the collected work, for example putting their contributions in the public domain, or under a license like the BSD license or GPL as a conscious act. The most successful space related collaborations in the future will be ones that make these principles part of their daily operations. One result of such collaborations will be a distributed library of simulations and knowledge including specific detailed designs for self-replicating space habitat systems."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The Republic was dying since it was born -- the slavery issue was never adequately resolved. It morphed into Jim Crow, War on Drugs, mass incarceration, War on Terror. The US has never been the "land of the free".
It wasn't a rural/urban issue in the 1780s. It was a North/South issue. The Southern states wanted not to be penalized for disenfranchising their residents. And yes, walk the deal back, throw it out, burn it.
Learn some history. It's rather sad that you are as dishonest as you are ignorant.
I know the history. The fact is that the founders' motives were not so noble -- the "founders" were not a bunch of saints. Patriotism is not a religion.
To remove social limits, groups must be explicit about the licensing terms of individual contributions and the collected work, for example putting their contributions in the public domain, or under a license like the BSD license or GPL as a conscious act.
Basically you are arguing that some version of open source style licensing will get us there. I think you're going to run into the same problems as we do with open source style licenses on hardware. It works well in software because there are limited capital expenditures required to build production ready software. You're basically just asking people to donate their time and knowledge and you can get working products of high quality. But hardware is different because you have to spend hard cash to make it. Even prototypes and proof of concepts of anything non-trivial can be wildly expensive. It's not enough to design something - you have to build it and test it in the real world. Furthermore software is protected by copyright by default without even having to take any actions. This prevents free riders without extra expense. Hardware has no such protection in our legal system. You have to apply for a very expensive patent which limits how easy it is to protect inventions and keep the available. Anything useful that isn't patent protected will be patented by a more motivated party with deeper pockets effectively taking it out of the public domain for a substantial number of years.
I'm certainly all in favor of what you propose in principle but I think the economic realities of it are that it won't really get us there. I think you are thinking about it like a software guy who doesn't fully appreciate the economic realities of building physical objects under our current legal framework.
If you look at History and the various technologies that have come along, you notice that there is one kind of technology that enables most others...transportation.
Whether it's inventing a wheel, canoe, ship, automobiles, etc. enabling someone to get from A to B quickly and easily is the key to creating the huge, glorious stuff once you are there.
So too with space. Don't try to be the first to Mars. Be the first to make getting to Mars cheap, quick, and easy. Don't be the first to put up a giant space station, be the first to make putting space stations up quick and easy. Don't be the first to establish a Moon colony. Be the first to make regular or on demand supply runs to that colony.
So focus on launch capabilities and, once in space, the ability to go from A to B without years of planning and relying on being shot across space on chemical rockets.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I've got one:space based solar power.
Ok, devil's advocate here. Where is the economic benefit over terrestrial generation that would justify the immense expense of developing the technology (presuming it's possible) and deploying it to space? Terrestrial solar in principle can already cleanly provide more power than the global need multifold without even taking up arable land nor requiring any new technology to be developed. It's also not clear how you plan to transmit this energy safely to Earth... For space based energy generation to become a thing it needs to provide an economic advantage over the existing options. (and it needs to be technologically feasible)
It should come as no huge shock that China is the technology leader in this space.
??? Nobody is a leader in this space because it doesn't exist outside of a few academic research projects with no immediate chance of application. There is precisely zero power being transmitted from space based solar generation to Earth nor any reasonable prospect of it happening any time soon.
It is not dumb or nationalistic to want to control your borders.
The only countries that spend more than us on education per student are Norway, Switzerland, and Austria. We are investing in education, and we'd like to see fucking ROI.
We want coal mines to stay open because it's dumb for us to import coal from other countries.
You're right. We want Westinghouse and GE to manufacture them here, instead of in China and Japan. We exported that knowledge, and then we outsourced the R&D. Part of MAGA is bringing both of those back.
Anti-FUD is not anti-science. Yes, we have anti-vaxxers. They are a minority. Yes, we have climate change deniers, and it's a problem. They are/were a direct response to the worst-case scenario end-of-days predictions that have repeatedly failed to occur. Your scientists sacrificed their credibility in an attempt to change public policy and now they have to earn it back to be trusted again.
I agree. If we don't stop bankrupting our country on military spending we won't. That's part of MAGA too; it's time to stop paying to defend every other country on Earth.
What would you propose we do differently then?
Never said they were noble. Or saints. I said insightful and wise. Maybe you are more foolish than I thought since you seem to want to burn historical insights because the judgement of your moral relativism spares none.
I don't think they were wise, benvolent and all-knowing. They were wise and benevolent only in some respects -- in other respects, they were evil.
The answer is obvious: You provide the evidence that supports your assertion and the answer is, "Yes."
Get cracking.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The only motivation for moon colonization that I can see is the same motivation for colonizing Antarctica.
There are several potential motivations I can think of. The first and most alarming and most likely is as a military base. Kind of the ultimate high ground if you will. The second is that if we are going to mine something is space, the moon seems to be a far more practical candidate than asteroids. It's composition isn't wildly different from Earth and we already have/had technology that can reach it even with humans if necessary. I still think space mining is something of a fools errand until we get substantially more robust space travel capabilities than we have now. The third is as you mention scientific research. Obvious potential utility there. The fourth is as a sort of waystation for deep space travel. It seems like the resources exist to make rocket fuel on the moon and there is(oxygen in reasonable abundance and the gravity well is considerably shallower than the one on Earth.
Are any of these sufficient to justify a moon colony? Honestly I have no idea though I admit I'm dubious. I think the military base is by far the most likely. Mining and manufacturing requires substantial advances in technology that will take a long time to develop unless we have a crash government program. I'm sure there will be efforts at scientific research but a manned outpost seems unlikely unless it is developed for other reasons. And a deep space support station seems pointless unless part of a bigger project.
Do go kill yourself.
... Jim Crow laws made to prevent blacks from voting were part of the democratic party.
You're trolling.
The Supreme Court helped undermine the Constitutional protections of blacks with the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case, which legitimized Jim Crow laws and the Jim Crow way of life.
SCOTUS is apolitical.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Please don't vote, OK?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Not trolling. Which party were responsible for Jim Crow laws? Historically, the democrats are the party of racists.
The average Joe isn't interested in education because they've been duped into believing that you can accumulate wealth without hard work, doing something you don't like to do. They look at pro sports players, for example, and see that they are getting rich for basically playing, but they are never told how hard athletes work to be successful.
Being successful through education is hard. You have to do your homework when you'd rather be playing games. You have to forgo getting pregnant or fathering children through hook-ups so that you don't have responsibilities when you need to be working 3-5 hours a night on homework. You have to be willing to delay starting your work life for four to six to eight extra years to get that advanced degree. And more important than anything else, you have to pass by studying English Literature, or Anthropology, or Rhetoric, just because they're easy and you like them and study engineering, biology, or geology cause that's where the money is. And making money is where success lies.
Because when you have enough money to not have to worry about where you're going to live, what you're going to eat and what you're going to do if you get sick then you can care about knowledge for it's own sake as a concept.
After all, if you're successful enough you can quit that job you hate at a young age and do what you actually want to do. Sometimes you actually get lucky and fall into something you like eventually and keep working because you like what you do. But that's really the exception. Most people hate their job and only do it because they are paid. But that's the real world.
As a moral relativist your opinion of evil and benevolence is rather hallow.
But the original implication was that basing our space plans on mining will be less expensive than alternatives such as Mars colonies because of the value of the ore.
It's still far cheaper to get precious metals from Earth mines than space, and it doesn't look like that economic reality will change any time soon. Digging and sifting many tons of dirt on Earth is still much less expensive than sifting less dirt on asteroids because big machines are still far easy to build and maintain on the ground than having smaller mining machines on asteroids; plus the huuuuge expense of fuel needed to move stuff into and out of Earth's gravity well.
A permanent Mars colony would be a far more glorious "human" achievement than an asteroid mining operation. Perhaps the original poster believes that asteroid mining will gradually get more efficient if we simply get actual practice, and therefore should put our resources into space mining.
However, I suspect it will take breakthroughs in other technologies, such as AI and/or space elevators, before space mining becomes practical. It may not be worth waiting around for grand inventions such that we should perhaps focus on a Mars colony instead.
Table-ized A.I.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
As for the U.S. not creating scientists that's just not true. Our biggest problem is actually the opposite. We don't need free universities, we need fewer universities. In almost every country where university education is free there is an enormously difficult barrier to get over to get that free education. Only the hardest working, most qualified individuals are given those free positions and when it comes to post graduate work students must work extra hard because in your third or forth year going for that PhD you can still be pushed out by a better student.
Our biggest problem is there is absolutely no reasonable barrier to anyone wasting societal resources uselessly going to college. We loan vast sums of money to mediocre students who will never earn enough to pay it back. We allow people to study subjects for which society only requires minimal numbers of experts because they're easy or interesting or what ever.
Worse we push people who can make successful careers out of doing other societally useful tasks, like electrician, plumber, technician, builder into going to college when it is bad for them and bad for society.
That's a great liberal talking point that you've got there. Its a shame it has nothing to do with historical reality. Let me help you. The United States is a Federated Republic. That means that each state is sovereign. In a right thinking world not only would we not get rid of the electoral college, we would roll back the 17 Amendment too.
I would content the exact opposite. The liberal elite are actually the least educated. They have been indoctrinated in progressive ideology and mistake that for education. The rest of us have a well understood and rational based knowledge of human nature, natural law and the world as it actually exists.
There's no point in addressing batshit crazy rabid dogma.
You asserted that the Democratic party was the sole source of Jim Crow.
I cited a SCOTUS ruling that established Jim Crow as the law of the land.
You assert that the Democratic party was the sole source of Jim Crow.
You and I know the definition of insanity.
You are dismissed as trolling.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
While I appreciate the rare occurrence of people apologising, it worries me that this is the only part of your little discussion rated "interesting: 5". How is this this apology more interesting than the contemplation about the future of NASA?
Actually, in France, almost any high school graduate can go to medical school for almost free. The first two years are just tough enough that a lot of unsuitable candidates drop/flunk out.
I'm not a moral relativist. I just don't see nationalism (i.e. "my country and its laws are always right") as a good guide to morality. A paper written by a bunch of dead guys 200+ years ago has some good ideas, but isn't a religion to be followed for eternity either.
Hold the phone. The SCOTUS ruling is part of it but the laws themselves were created by lawmakers of a party. SCOTUS enabled it, lawmakers enacted it. Lawmakers of a party. The original comment was about a political party not an apolitical body. (Although, the sole dissenter in that case was a Republican and the majority opinion written by a Democrat. Oops. I guess I made it political again. Damn Democrats and their racist history. )
This is the conversation:
"isn't GOP banning voters common?"
"no. historically that was Jim Crow and democrats"
"SCOTUS is apolitical!1!1!!"
" the laws called jim crow came from lawmakers of a party"
"rabid dogma!!! insaity!!! TROLLINGING!!!!!"
Sheesh. WTF is dogmatic about stating a simple historical fact in context as to which party does something that has been historically done. Historically, the Democrats are the party of racists and have used laws to ban voters.
The US originally led the space race cause they couldn't handle the idea of the commies beating them to anything. Ever since the cold war ended, there has been zero political interest to keep going, unless it involved distributing pork to politicians favorite companies.
The only way US will ever become serious about space again, is if there's a military reason to do so, and that won't happen until and unless some new existential threat his the US.
Multiple private companies are involved in space, specifically because of the potential for profit. Private-sector space communications and sensing has already made a ton of money, generating investor interest in heading farther out.
Yeah, I was wondering that too. I'm not sure what is interesting about admitting that I was wrong and making a public statement of the such.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Guess What. Moon Rocks are Pure Poison.
But at least we might develop Combustible Lemons.
That may all be true but one aspect of the idea is that simulations will improve (as they have) and a lot of hardware can be designed and tested virtually (e.g. Besiege or Kerbal Space Program).
Kerbal Space Program is not a simulation. It is a game. Do not confuse the two. It has about as much to do with how real space travel is designed as Mario Kart does with driving your car to work. Any similarities are superficial.
My first job out of college for a number of years was doing simulations of both hardware and production systems. My company had a large department for finite element analysis, vehicle dynamics simulations, etc. We also did a lot of monte-carlo analysis and robot modeling. These were useful for optimizing designs or for doing early evaluation of design ideas. But they were only supplemental in all cases. We also had a large materials testing lab, a rapid prototyping lab, and a large department for product testing because ALL models have limits to what they can tell you. A simulation model that hasn't been validated to a real world system is nothing more than a theory. It's no different than doing physics on a blackboard while never actually doing any experiments. That's not to say simulation is useless (far from it) but do not be tempted into thinking it is something more than it actually is.
Is only simulated testing ideal? No. But it is next-to-free and so can move us forward.
"Next to free"? Not even remotely. Not even if someone donates their time. Simulations can help reduce opportunity costs in some cases but they do not eliminate the costs of actually building, prototyping, and testing for hardware. Simulation is actually quite expensive to perform because you have to be able to validate the model against a real world system. That means you have to actually build a physical object or system to check against and that is never free or even close to free.
Simulation models of any meaningful complexity are actually quite expensive to develop and deploy. For the stuff I was working on I wouldn't roll out of bed for a problem that cost less than a few million dollars because the savings wouldn't justify the cost of the analysis otherwise. It would be cheaper to just build whatever we planned to model and iterate. And at the end of the day, we still had to go and build whatever we designed and we still had to go test it in the real world. Simulation can reduce costs but when you are talking about hardware design it is NEVER free or even close to free.
Eventually, sure, we need to build and test real hardware. But that can come later after we have a lot of social momentum going from the simulations.
Building hardware is not an "eventually" thing. If you want to design hardware that you know works, you have to actually build it. There is no way around this. You can simulate all day long but simulations are models and models NEVER give you the whole picture. Models are a theory and you have to actually test the theory. Nobody sane is going to step onto a rocket that has never been tested in the real world. There is an old saying in the simulation community All models are wrong. Some models are useful.. Simulation is ALWAYS a model of reality and all simulations incorporate numerous assumptions and parameter limitations which the real world is under no obligation to respect. Your simulation is going to be wrong, the only question is by how much. The only way to know that answer is to build what you are simulating.
It requires orders of magnitude decreases in cost, but that's theoretically possible with sufficient research investment.
There are lots of things that are theoretically possible in the sense that they haven't been conclusively determined to be impossible. That is not the same thing as saying they are plausible or likely.
Rectenna arrays take up less space than solar panels.
That's only an issue if space is somehow a constraint.
The panels will be in the sunlight all the time.
Again, that's only an issue if there is a constraint in play. If a solar panel + battery system gets the job done and is cheaper then the argument is over before it begins. To be honest I have a hard time imagining any sort of space based power generation transmitted to Earth being cheaper than terrestrial generation. It also seems improbable that such vast amounts of energy could be transmitted through the atmosphere without any dangerous side effects. It's a cool idea but it has a strong whiff of science fiction about it unfortunately.
Obligatory XKCD on Kerbal Space Program: https://xkcd.com/1356/
Again, I agree with what you are saying overall -- but I feel you are missing my main point about social momentum and proof-of-concept.
There is a *huge* difference socially between having essentially nothing but an idea (what we have now, e.g. James P. Hogan's Two Faces of Tomorrow novel, Gerry O'Neill's non-fiction writings, or some paper idea studies like NASA's 1980 Advanced Automation for Space Missions http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/... ) versus having a detailed collaboratively-developed simulation model based on the best science you have which brings together thousands of knowledgeable engineers and scientists (like Linux brought together thousands of knowledgeable programmers). We're going to need a lot of design thinking for something extremely complex like self-replicating space habitat that can duplicate itself from sunlight and asteroidal/lunar/martian ore which includes all the chemical pathways and mechanical designs.
Think of it this way -- if you were a multi-billionaire, who would you give some funding to for people to go further for a space habitat (like by building prototype hardware)? Some group with a hand-wavy idea? Or some group with detailed (but maybe inaccurate for the reasons you outlined) simulation models that have been worked on for knowledgeable engineers for a decade in their spare time as a labor of love to get as close as they can without having the money for hardware tests which they know are important?
Or if you hired your own people to build space habitats, who would you be more likely to hire (at least for part of the design team)? Engineers who had no knowledge of such simulations or the core engineers who had developed such systems or used aspects of them to design and build other smaller projects?
Also, don't get too hung up on the mechanical/physical limits of current simulations. There is also a lot of design work to do related to operations research, logistics, and chemical pathways related to knowing what materials and tools you need to make other materials and tools.
Consider the issue of how to make an airlock seal. There can be a lot of work done today on logistics like all the prerequisites of how for materials to make a flexible deal for an airlock door -- even if some of the mechanical design is still questionable (like whether that specific seal actually works as well as you hoped for a specific work pod's door). NASA already has made airlocks that work OK -- so presumably there is a way to find out what materials they used and then work backwards from there -- perhaps documenting a range of possible seals and then figuring out what each needs as prerequisites (and so on, recursively).
Sure, "Space Engineers" may not be realistic -- especially as it tries to be a game and not a CAD/CAM program. But something like it could be a lot more realistic. And that is a step forward -- even if it is not the final product.
We also can look forward twenty years to what might be possible for testing any detailed designs we make by then. 3D printing is bringing down the cost of testing mechanical prototypes -- and in twenty years is likely to be even better. Also, simulations continue to get better as hardware becomes cheaper and more available. How good might general simulations be in twenty year for testing designs? For example, maybe someday we will actually be able to simulate water molecules and solutions much better than we can now and so atomic-level chemistry simulations for completely new chemical processes may be much more useful. But until then, there are handbooks for chemical engineering with many cookbook recipes if you are willing to work withing the limits of what we know well (even if space may pose extra challenges for earth-derived recipes)
Another aspect is that commercial designs (like you mention developing) tend to be optimized and push the envelope of what
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.