Re:It's logical to go to space
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 1
My first post here; forgive the rambling on.
It's more than logical, it's our destiny. It has been ever since we found out that the stars weren't fastened to the inside of a crystal sphere.
But there's a lot more involved in going to space than building a boat and stocking up on oranges to stave off scurvy among the crew. You can't just "go" to space, not yet. We're barely at the point of knowing what technology we'll have to invent to do this. Getting into space is easy. Getting into space cheaply seems to be eluding those who send things into space, and that'll have to come first. Then there are the questions of extended living in micro-gravity (O'Neill colonies will remove that problem, but how do you build an O'Neill colony?), radiation exposure, isolation, and so on. It will take years to work all this out, and I believe hundreds of years before space travel will be as both as simple and as useful as jumping on a 747. I could pay $98 000 to leave the atmosphere for all of two minutes, but that's a lot of money, and there's no there there.
The problem is, not many people are willing to invest in projects that may very well take 40 or 50 years to produce results. How long do you really think it will take us to produce functional space stations like the one seen in 2001 or (be still my heart) the Babylon Project stations? And who will pay for the 150 years of R&D (a modest guess) that will have to happen to get us to that point.
I will, for one. I'd gladly give $10/month for space research. If we assume 50% participation in a Canadian Space Exploration Fund, that's 1.8 billion dollars. Throw that exclusively into developing one facet of the necessary tech, say large scale, smoothly flowing magnetically driven ultra low maintenence motors, and we might get somewhere. Especially if the Germans focus exclusively on hydroponics, the Americans on propulsion and structures, and so on.
Space exploration should be more than federally funded, it should be publicly funded. I'm willing to invest in a future my great-great grandchildren might see, but I doubt any private corporation is. If they don't see results in five years, it's not worth their time.
andrem said, "I think our natural curiosity will lead to further space exploration and as a result of large scale projects like Apollo, the human race will benefit in general."
But not the poor, because...
"If we all spend time feeding the hungry, the human race will stagnate and never evolve."
Objectivism aside, I don't think the American public would go for spending $60/year on space exploration just yet, nor would the American government consider serious slashes to the "defense" budget (quite the opposite). Hundreds of dollars every year on alcohol and cosmetics are okay, though. Unless the race (even the poor) puts its collective heart into it, we're stuck with big dreams and a lot of knowledge regarding how rates mate and ants dig in microgravity.
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It's more than logical, it's our destiny. It has been ever since we found out that the stars weren't fastened to the inside of a crystal sphere.
But there's a lot more involved in going to space than building a boat and stocking up on oranges to stave off scurvy among the crew. You can't just "go" to space, not yet. We're barely at the point of knowing what technology we'll have to invent to do this. Getting into space is easy. Getting into space cheaply seems to be eluding those who send things into space, and that'll have to come first. Then there are the questions of extended living in micro-gravity (O'Neill colonies will remove that problem, but how do you build an O'Neill colony?), radiation exposure, isolation, and so on. It will take years to work all this out, and I believe hundreds of years before space travel will be as both as simple and as useful as jumping on a 747. I could pay $98 000 to leave the atmosphere for all of two minutes, but that's a lot of money, and there's no there there.
The problem is, not many people are willing to invest in projects that may very well take 40 or 50 years to produce results. How long do you really think it will take us to produce functional space stations like the one seen in 2001 or (be still my heart) the Babylon Project stations? And who will pay for the 150 years of R&D (a modest guess) that will have to happen to get us to that point.
I will, for one. I'd gladly give $10/month for space research. If we assume 50% participation in a Canadian Space Exploration Fund, that's 1.8 billion dollars. Throw that exclusively into developing one facet of the necessary tech, say large scale, smoothly flowing magnetically driven ultra low maintenence motors, and we might get somewhere. Especially if the Germans focus exclusively on hydroponics, the Americans on propulsion and structures, and so on.
Space exploration should be more than federally funded, it should be publicly funded. I'm willing to invest in a future my great-great grandchildren might see, but I doubt any private corporation is. If they don't see results in five years, it's not worth their time.
andrem said, "I think our natural curiosity will lead to further space exploration and as a result of large scale projects like Apollo, the human race will benefit in general."
But not the poor, because...
"If we all spend time feeding the hungry, the human race will stagnate and never evolve."
Objectivism aside, I don't think the American public would go for spending $60/year on space exploration just yet, nor would the American government consider serious slashes to the "defense" budget (quite the opposite). Hundreds of dollars every year on alcohol and cosmetics are okay, though. Unless the race (even the poor) puts its collective heart into it, we're stuck with big dreams and a lot of knowledge regarding how rates mate and ants dig in microgravity.