You know what? I have no idea if warming is caused by humans or not. And it really doesn't matter.
If you don't know what is causing the present warming trend, how can you know whether or not it matters?
We're not going to be able to stop it.
How do you know? Didn't you profess ignorance as to the cause of the warming?
I am all in favor of less CO2 emissions and more efficiency. I just think it is a waste of time, at this point, to make that what we throw all our money at, because it isn't going to make a bit of difference in the short term.
How do you know what difference it will make without researching and understanding the mechanism that is causing the warming? How do you know how much it will cost, if it even IS a net cost?
I find your statements a bit puzzling. Have we begun to treat ignorance as a source of greater authority than knowledge? After all, the underlying reasons for CO2 driven climate change have been understood for 150 years, and actively measured for at least half that. In what bizarre world would guessing the result based on ignorance yield a better outcome than acting based on evidence and knowledge?
Except I did read the reason.com article and the abstract of the paper. The article claims that the paper criticises glaciology (a climate related science) of not sufficiently reflecting gender diversity.
This criticism is on par with other criticisms of climate science.
A country's leader only has a small influence on the course of a country.
If Assad orders planes to drop barrel bombs on Syrian cities, is he responsible for the deaths caused?
Blaming all your woes on the leadership, and then sending the country into chaos isn't always a good solution if things aren't going well.
He can always, you know, not be the leader. If he chooses to persist in pretending to lead, whilst killing folk who have the temerity to suggest that he can't be their leader unless they agree to it, the fact that he didn't choose to step down when a sane and decent person would have makes him completely responsible for the deaths he ordered.
Actually, the biggest threat to space exploration is actually the unwillingness of people to do it.
Has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason that people a generally not that interested in this vision of the future is that you have failed to convince them? That the reluctance is not their fault, but yours?
That the case for space colonisation may not be compelling enough or realistic enough for the skeptical people to want to do it?
You realize the internet that you're using to complain about government spending on started off as a government project right?
You realise the 'manned spaceflight' experiment was effectively over before any government money was spent on the internet? That should give you a hint.
At some point in the future we're going to be acquiring large quantities of resources from off-planet
[citation needed]
Really, anything that eventually helps humanity move out among the stars is far more important to us than anything we locally do on Earth.
You do realise we are already moving out amongst the stars right? when it's night, go outside and look up. See those pinpricks of light?
We might make life more comfortable for a few, but eventually something disastrous will happen to our planet (some people are even pretty sure we'll be the ones that do it) and we'll need to have a backup.
Really?
You don't think the more responsible route would be for you to tell us what these impending disasters are so that we might save the lives of the earth's 9 billion residents, rather than advocate for a plan that saves what: A dozen people? A score?
Your plan amounts to advocating genocide in order for you to pursue your political and/or religious goals. You did realise that?
Unless you've time traveled back from the year 3000, your estimates of the capabilities of robots is WAY too high.
My estimate of robot capability is based on what could be achieved if we spent a fraction of what it would cost to send a human.
Did we send a robot up to repair the Hubble space telescope?
Would we send a robot NOW, rather than a human? Probably.
In a general problem solving situation they cannot hope to match the flexibility of a person,( and remote tele-operation does not solve this). Now granted, that's using today's technology - but I would argue that developing tech. to send a human to mars will be realised MUCH sooner than tech. to develop a robot capable of matching a human/s dexterity, thinking etc.
Generally speaking, humans need to solve more problems because the systems need to sustain them tend to be far more complex than the systems need to sustain a machine. How many problems does a hammer need to solve - just the one. It doesn't ever have problems with it's life support, or running ut of food, or getting bored.
People are quite robust
Nope - people are inherently fragile - in body and mind.
Did the Europeans colonising America have "no objective value"?
The Americas were already colonised - so over all, a net zero value.
By All means, let's never actually talk about what living on Mars will actually be like so as to not spoil the fairytale of Mars as a winter wonderland where the days are spent ice-skating and cavorting on the frozen canals, snacking on delicious local delicacies.
Anybody going to Mars is not going to spend much time wandering around on the surface (owing to the radiation). It might be better therefore to simulate cowering underground in a cave hoping that the airseal doesn't blow out and kill you. Perhaps they could kill of every 3rd participant to really simulate the experience of living with the hazards of Mars.
Very interesting - thank you.
The article indicates that a shield would be used to protect the instrument from the sun, and thus allow it to reach 50 K or below. This makes sense. There are some details that don't make sense to me though:
1. The proposal to use a liquid mirror. If the instrument is cooled to 50K what is the liquid in the liquid mirror made from? It could only be something gaseous at normal temperatures, but there no metallic gases?
2. The article mentions that the azimuth on the telescope is fixed - won't that mean that the telescope would not be able to track during long exposures and thus how does it do long exposures?
The biggest advantage of the Moon is that you can fasten your telescope down and use the mass of the Moon to absorb heat and vibration.
Really? I wouldn't have thought the Moon would be any better at absorbing heat than the earth (which is generally terrible at it). Also, what would be generating the heat?
As for vibrations, what is moving that would cause the telescope to vibrate? Certainly hubble had some vibrations (caused by the doors opening and shutting) but you could get around that by re-designing the doors (or designing them out of equation).
There are also designs for small-scale processing units that will make "mooncrete" from lunar dust (and a small percentage of additives) or extract aluminium, which might be useful for the structure.
I've done some research: this is the only site I could find with an actual treatment on how aluminium extraction would work: in short, exactly as it does on earth, a process with a prohibitively high energy budget.
There are crater bottoms at the South pole of the moon which are in permanent darkness with nearby mountain peaks in permanent light (for power collection).
But again, wouldn't placing a telescope in a crater mean that a large portion of the sky is blocked by the moon?
You also have the prospect of astronauts visiting if you need repairs/upgrades your robot can;t do.
Hard to imagine a repair that a robot couldn't perform better than an astronaut - it is actually quite difficult for humans to operate on things in space, owing to the impediment of the suit.
Earth-sun L2 (where Gaia) is, is the other serious contender -- a very stable environment, but out of reach for humans and requiring a little fuel for station-keeping.
True, but then there's no reason for humans to go there (or anywhere in space other than LEO, come to think of it). An Ion engine might suffice to keep it in place for a reasonable time. Perhaps if we had a collection of craft nearby they could be refueled by a refueling drone of some sort.
It seems like the Moon's surface could be a fantastic place for an absurdly large optical telescope.
I don't see the advantage over just having the telescope in space. And there a numerous disadvantages: the moon's horizon will always obscure half of the sky, the surface will reflect light and pollute the imagery, fixing the base of the telescope means that you will only be able to focus on certain areas of the sky when the moon is in the right position etc.
and plentiful raw materials for making fused silica and aluminum surfaces.
There is a notable lack of aluminium smelters and robots to operate them - making the presence of those materials moot.
It seems to me that the best option would be put the telescope on a higher higher solar orbit than the earth. This way, you can get imagery (mostly) without light pollution and objects in the way. The main disadvantage is that should the telescope need repairing it might be a year or so before robots could be launched to repair it.
" Insisting that meat bags must, under their own strength travel around space in order for space travel to be valid is faintly embarrassing,"
That would indeed be embarrassing, however it's not remotely what I'm saying. You seem obsessed with the idea of humans doing things using their own muscles. Once again - that is irrelevant, and nothing to do with my point.
If humans aren't using their muscles, then there must be a machine doing the work. This immediately raises the question - if the machine is doing the work (propelling forward, changing direction, communicating with Earth etc etc) what exactly is the human doing? If, after years of thinking about it, we can't think of ONE thing that humans do in space that isn't easier and cheaper to do with a machine, why does the machine that goes to space and already performs all the actual functions have to cart a human about?
As you say, we haven't yet dived into the Jovian atmosphere, or landed on Titan. But that's because it's technically easier to send a specially designed robot to those places, than a person. However, given the requisite technical know how, sending a person is highly desirable.
Why would it be desirable for a human to dive into the Jovian atmosphere? If you were planning a craft that was going to Titan, what is the compelling reason to send a human plus the tons of required food/survival machines instead of just sending tons more machines? What function would the human perform on Titan that is not better served by a machine?
"Spare us your religious diatribes. You don't decide on our behalf, what constitutes our destiny."
I can only think that you have utterly misunderstood what I have been saying. You seem unaccountably angry, so tell me this. Do you think that humans becoming a multi planetary species is NOT to be desired?
I've already said:But "becoming a interplanetary species" has no objective value. You might believe it does, but the value is based on religious belief.
We should celebrate the achievement, certainly. Were I to meet one of these guys I would thank them for their service. But regretting the passing of the era of manned lunar flights is like mourning the end of the steam age. Yes - the steam age was a great advance over what came before. Yes, it is steeped (now) in romanticism. But what have now is far superior to the technology to steam technology. Let's not pretend we've regressed because nobody rides a steam engine from London to Oxford.
The same applies to manned lunar flights (and to a large extent manned spaceflights generally). 50 years ago that was cutting edge. When Apollo was devised, hardly anybody realised the future of spaceflight lay in robotics, which at the time were not very advanced. Now, of course, we have machines which are orders of magnitude more capable than astronauts of yesteryear - that era is past. We can look back fondly, but we don't need to regret that we moved on to better things.
I have no such constraint: "...and I support their ongoing use to be sure". Yes, I was thrilled by Huygens, and as for New Horizons my name is on the onboard disc.
But before you implied that robotic exploration was "not really" exploring:
OP refers to the thrill of exploration. Robot craft are interesting and useful, and I support their ongoing use to be sure - but the explorer's urge is deeply ingrained in (most of) us, at a very personal level
How does 2 or 3 people going to Mars or the Moon satisfy an urge deeply ingrained in (most of) us ? It seems for the vast, vast majority of the human race the experience is the same regardless of whether warm bodies are present.
Firstly, whether Everest is a solo achievement or a team effort, achieved using machines or just muscle power, is not relevant,
Strange. First you said that Climbing Everest was analogous to a robot carrying a meat bag to Mars - but now when we have looked a bit closer, it appears that it isn't.
The point is that the utility of sending robots to Mars, even really good ones, is limited to the scientific information they can transmit back to us.
Which is, to date, the only objective reason anybody has given as to why we (our agents) should go to Mars.
This info could be valuable, but it's value is vanishingly insignificant, compared to the value of our becoming a multi planetary species.
But "becoming a interplanetary species" has no objective value. You might believe it does, but the value is based on religious belief.
We may be fleshy meat bags, but we're the ones that do things
Crap.
Have we ever dived into the Jovian atmosphere? Got inside the orbit of Venus to grab nasty solar particles? Landed on Titan? Snapped pictures of Pluto? Left the solar system?
We've done none of those things, because in fact it makes no objective sense for us to do them when robots can do them better, and faster, and cheaper, and more reliably. Insisting that meat bags must, under their own strength travel around space in order for space travel to be valid is faintly embarrassing, like suggesting that the only "true" music is accapella, musical instruments are a tool of the devil, or that real farmers dig in the soil with their hands: plowing with steel behind a tractor is not "true" farming. It is just a doctrine with no basis in reality.
Sending a robot ahead, to prepare the ground, build some infrastructure - now that's a good idea, but it's only a precursor to people making the trip.
Spare us your religious diatribes. You don't decide on our behalf, what constitutes our destiny.
It was a relatively small meteor, but bigger asteroids repeatedly hit the Earth, and it will happen again. There is no doubt of it, the question is when.
No - the question is, if such an asteroid struck the earth, would the Earth be less habitable than Mars?
Plants do not need oxygen at all, it is even poisonous for them in a way.
Plants die in a vacuum. Humans also die in a vacuum.
In principle, they may turn a planet without oxygen into a habitable planet. But this technology does not exist yet.
Bags of meat? We no of no more remarkable organo-electro-mechanical device in the universe than homo sapiens.
On the earth perhaps. In space, they just float about helplessly. If actually exposed to the harsh realities of space or another planetary surface, they die. The most remarkable part of a human (the brain) should tell you that sending humans to space when robots are already better adapted, in every way, is ridiculous.
Neither the Mars nor the Moon are actually inhabitable.
To the extent that if an asteroid impacts the Earth, you are better off on Earth than on Mars or the moon. If a serious asteroid impact were even likely.
Have you hugged your robot lately? OP refers to the thrill of exploration.
You weren't thrilled when Huygens plunged through the clouds of Titan and landed on the surface? You weren't thrilled by the recent flyby of Pluto? What's wrong with you?
Robot craft are interesting and useful, and I support their ongoing use to be sure - but the explorer's urge is deeply ingrained in (most of) us, at a very personal level - thanks evolution! "Fun" I think, is the operative word, although many on both sides of the issue would lift their noses at the very suggestion of such an emotion - how politically incorrect (*sniff)!
You've arbitrarily constrained exploring to requiring the actual explorer to cart along a bag of meat. This constraint is bizarre- why not replace the bag of meat with a pineapple? It's not exploring unless you carry along a pineapple, with a robotic arm to hurl out the pineapple and a recording that says "THERE! Now the pineapple has set foot on this (arbitrarily defined) surface, this planet/moon is EXPLORED!"
Your constraint means the end of exploration, because exploration will be confined to the places where technology allows robots to carry us bags of meat. This means, in practical terms, we will never explore and further than perhaps Mars or Venus.
When Mt Everest was first climbed the summit could not be practically approached by any means other than by foot. These days nobody climbs Mt Everest pretending that doing so is somehow on behalf of humanity and serving to advance humanity. It's the personal challenge. Notably, they would refrain from taking a machine most of the way to the summit and then walking the last 10 metres to the top, and then pretend that they (rather than the machine) did all the work.
If the personal challenge of going to Mars inspires you, all power to you. But for this to be an Everest style challenge, you'll need to walk there. Riding there in a machine is cheating. It's the machine (and the guys who designed, tested and built it) that did all the work, so from a "summit Everest" perspective, it's those guys who get the credit and the kudos.
A better analogy would be: because exploring had always previously been done on foot, in 1492 funds that would have been put into exploring by boat were instead spent on developing means to extend the distance that could be travelled by foot, including long poles that allowed explorers to cross bodies of water by walking on the bottom. Of course, the scale of the atlantic overwhelmed this mode of travel, so exploring was confined to well known spots that were easily reachable, and had infact already been settled with and traded with by people in boats for thousands of years. Nevertheless the long pole walkists looked down and mocked those who dared suggest that boats may in fact represent a superior technology and the notion of that exploring required one to travel by foot was impractical, dangerous, faintly ridiculous, and meant that no real exploring was even happening.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what? I have no idea if warming is caused by humans or not. And it really doesn't matter.
If you don't know what is causing the present warming trend, how can you know whether or not it matters?
We're not going to be able to stop it.
How do you know? Didn't you profess ignorance as to the cause of the warming?
I am all in favor of less CO2 emissions and more efficiency. I just think it is a waste of time, at this point, to make that what we throw all our money at, because it isn't going to make a bit of difference in the short term.
How do you know what difference it will make without researching and understanding the mechanism that is causing the warming? How do you know how much it will cost, if it even IS a net cost?
I find your statements a bit puzzling. Have we begun to treat ignorance as a source of greater authority than knowledge? After all, the underlying reasons for CO2 driven climate change have been understood for 150 years, and actively measured for at least half that. In what bizarre world would guessing the result based on ignorance yield a better outcome than acting based on evidence and knowledge?
This criticism is on par with other criticisms of climate science.
More in our 11 O'Clock bulletin.
A country's leader only has a small influence on the course of a country.
If Assad orders planes to drop barrel bombs on Syrian cities, is he responsible for the deaths caused?
Blaming all your woes on the leadership, and then sending the country into chaos isn't always a good solution if things aren't going well.
He can always, you know, not be the leader. If he chooses to persist in pretending to lead, whilst killing folk who have the temerity to suggest that he can't be their leader unless they agree to it, the fact that he didn't choose to step down when a sane and decent person would have makes him completely responsible for the deaths he ordered.
"They don't like me" is not an excuse to kill people. Your people don't like you? Hmm. Jee. I dunno. Maybe you aren't a good leader then.
The Paris attacks wouldn't have happened without crypto? That's a funny way to spell "Humans."
FTFY
Speak for yourself meatbag
Actually, the biggest threat to space exploration is actually the unwillingness of people to do it.
Has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason that people a generally not that interested in this vision of the future is that you have failed to convince them? That the reluctance is not their fault, but yours?
That the case for space colonisation may not be compelling enough or realistic enough for the skeptical people to want to do it?
You realize the internet that you're using to complain about government spending on started off as a government project right?
You realise the 'manned spaceflight' experiment was effectively over before any government money was spent on the internet? That should give you a hint.
At some point in the future we're going to be acquiring large quantities of resources from off-planet
[citation needed]
Really, anything that eventually helps humanity move out among the stars is far more important to us than anything we locally do on Earth.
You do realise we are already moving out amongst the stars right? when it's night, go outside and look up. See those pinpricks of light?
We might make life more comfortable for a few, but eventually something disastrous will happen to our planet (some people are even pretty sure we'll be the ones that do it) and we'll need to have a backup.
Really?
You don't think the more responsible route would be for you to tell us what these impending disasters are so that we might save the lives of the earth's 9 billion residents, rather than advocate for a plan that saves what: A dozen people? A score?
Your plan amounts to advocating genocide in order for you to pursue your political and/or religious goals. You did realise that?
Unless you've time traveled back from the year 3000, your estimates of the capabilities of robots is WAY too high.
My estimate of robot capability is based on what could be achieved if we spent a fraction of what it would cost to send a human.
Did we send a robot up to repair the Hubble space telescope?
Would we send a robot NOW, rather than a human? Probably.
In a general problem solving situation they cannot hope to match the flexibility of a person,( and remote tele-operation does not solve this). Now granted, that's using today's technology - but I would argue that developing tech. to send a human to mars will be realised MUCH sooner than tech. to develop a robot capable of matching a human/s dexterity, thinking etc.
Generally speaking, humans need to solve more problems because the systems need to sustain them tend to be far more complex than the systems need to sustain a machine. How many problems does a hammer need to solve - just the one. It doesn't ever have problems with it's life support, or running ut of food, or getting bored.
People are quite robust
Nope - people are inherently fragile - in body and mind.
Did the Europeans colonising America have "no objective value"?
The Americas were already colonised - so over all, a net zero value.
By All means, let's never actually talk about what living on Mars will actually be like so as to not spoil the fairytale of Mars as a winter wonderland where the days are spent ice-skating and cavorting on the frozen canals, snacking on delicious local delicacies.
Anybody going to Mars is not going to spend much time wandering around on the surface (owing to the radiation). It might be better therefore to simulate cowering underground in a cave hoping that the airseal doesn't blow out and kill you. Perhaps they could kill of every 3rd participant to really simulate the experience of living with the hazards of Mars.
1. The proposal to use a liquid mirror. If the instrument is cooled to 50K what is the liquid in the liquid mirror made from? It could only be something gaseous at normal temperatures, but there no metallic gases?
2. The article mentions that the azimuth on the telescope is fixed - won't that mean that the telescope would not be able to track during long exposures and thus how does it do long exposures?
The biggest advantage of the Moon is that you can fasten your telescope down and use the mass of the Moon to absorb heat and vibration.
Really? I wouldn't have thought the Moon would be any better at absorbing heat than the earth (which is generally terrible at it). Also, what would be generating the heat?
As for vibrations, what is moving that would cause the telescope to vibrate? Certainly hubble had some vibrations (caused by the doors opening and shutting) but you could get around that by re-designing the doors (or designing them out of equation).
There are also designs for small-scale processing units that will make "mooncrete" from lunar dust (and a small percentage of additives) or extract aluminium, which might be useful for the structure.
I've done some research: this is the only site I could find with an actual treatment on how aluminium extraction would work: in short, exactly as it does on earth, a process with a prohibitively high energy budget.
There are crater bottoms at the South pole of the moon which are in permanent darkness with nearby mountain peaks in permanent light (for power collection).
But again, wouldn't placing a telescope in a crater mean that a large portion of the sky is blocked by the moon?
You also have the prospect of astronauts visiting if you need repairs/upgrades your robot can;t do.
Hard to imagine a repair that a robot couldn't perform better than an astronaut - it is actually quite difficult for humans to operate on things in space, owing to the impediment of the suit.
Earth-sun L2 (where Gaia) is, is the other serious contender -- a very stable environment, but out of reach for humans and requiring a little fuel for station-keeping.
True, but then there's no reason for humans to go there (or anywhere in space other than LEO, come to think of it). An Ion engine might suffice to keep it in place for a reasonable time. Perhaps if we had a collection of craft nearby they could be refueled by a refueling drone of some sort.
It seems like the Moon's surface could be a fantastic place for an absurdly large optical telescope.
I don't see the advantage over just having the telescope in space. And there a numerous disadvantages: the moon's horizon will always obscure half of the sky, the surface will reflect light and pollute the imagery, fixing the base of the telescope means that you will only be able to focus on certain areas of the sky when the moon is in the right position etc.
and plentiful raw materials for making fused silica and aluminum surfaces.
There is a notable lack of aluminium smelters and robots to operate them - making the presence of those materials moot.
It seems to me that the best option would be put the telescope on a higher higher solar orbit than the earth. This way, you can get imagery (mostly) without light pollution and objects in the way. The main disadvantage is that should the telescope need repairing it might be a year or so before robots could be launched to repair it.
" Insisting that meat bags must, under their own strength travel around space in order for space travel to be valid is faintly embarrassing,"
That would indeed be embarrassing, however it's not remotely what I'm saying. You seem obsessed with the idea of humans doing things using their own muscles. Once again - that is irrelevant, and nothing to do with my point.
If humans aren't using their muscles, then there must be a machine doing the work. This immediately raises the question - if the machine is doing the work (propelling forward, changing direction, communicating with Earth etc etc) what exactly is the human doing? If, after years of thinking about it, we can't think of ONE thing that humans do in space that isn't easier and cheaper to do with a machine, why does the machine that goes to space and already performs all the actual functions have to cart a human about?
As you say, we haven't yet dived into the Jovian atmosphere, or landed on Titan. But that's because it's technically easier to send a specially designed robot to those places, than a person. However, given the requisite technical know how, sending a person is highly desirable.
Why would it be desirable for a human to dive into the Jovian atmosphere? If you were planning a craft that was going to Titan, what is the compelling reason to send a human plus the tons of required food/survival machines instead of just sending tons more machines? What function would the human perform on Titan that is not better served by a machine?
"Spare us your religious diatribes. You don't decide on our behalf, what constitutes our destiny."
I can only think that you have utterly misunderstood what I have been saying. You seem unaccountably angry, so tell me this. Do you think that humans becoming a multi planetary species is NOT to be desired?
I've already said:But "becoming a interplanetary species" has no objective value. You might believe it does, but the value is based on religious belief.
We should celebrate the achievement, certainly. Were I to meet one of these guys I would thank them for their service. But regretting the passing of the era of manned lunar flights is like mourning the end of the steam age. Yes - the steam age was a great advance over what came before. Yes, it is steeped (now) in romanticism. But what have now is far superior to the technology to steam technology. Let's not pretend we've regressed because nobody rides a steam engine from London to Oxford.
The same applies to manned lunar flights (and to a large extent manned spaceflights generally). 50 years ago that was cutting edge. When Apollo was devised, hardly anybody realised the future of spaceflight lay in robotics, which at the time were not very advanced. Now, of course, we have machines which are orders of magnitude more capable than astronauts of yesteryear - that era is past. We can look back fondly, but we don't need to regret that we moved on to better things.
I have no such constraint: "...and I support their ongoing use to be sure". Yes, I was thrilled by Huygens, and as for New Horizons my name is on the onboard disc.
But before you implied that robotic exploration was "not really" exploring:
OP refers to the thrill of exploration. Robot craft are interesting and useful, and I support their ongoing use to be sure - but the explorer's urge is deeply ingrained in (most of) us, at a very personal level
How does 2 or 3 people going to Mars or the Moon satisfy an urge deeply ingrained in (most of) us ? It seems for the vast, vast majority of the human race the experience is the same regardless of whether warm bodies are present.
Firstly, whether Everest is a solo achievement or a team effort, achieved using machines or just muscle power, is not relevant,
Strange. First you said that Climbing Everest was analogous to a robot carrying a meat bag to Mars - but now when we have looked a bit closer, it appears that it isn't.
The point is that the utility of sending robots to Mars, even really good ones, is limited to the scientific information they can transmit back to us.
Which is, to date, the only objective reason anybody has given as to why we (our agents) should go to Mars.
This info could be valuable, but it's value is vanishingly insignificant, compared to the value of our becoming a multi planetary species.
But "becoming a interplanetary species" has no objective value. You might believe it does, but the value is based on religious belief.
We may be fleshy meat bags, but we're the ones that do things
Crap.
Have we ever dived into the Jovian atmosphere? Got inside the orbit of Venus to grab nasty solar particles? Landed on Titan? Snapped pictures of Pluto? Left the solar system?
We've done none of those things, because in fact it makes no objective sense for us to do them when robots can do them better, and faster, and cheaper, and more reliably. Insisting that meat bags must, under their own strength travel around space in order for space travel to be valid is faintly embarrassing, like suggesting that the only "true" music is accapella, musical instruments are a tool of the devil, or that real farmers dig in the soil with their hands: plowing with steel behind a tractor is not "true" farming. It is just a doctrine with no basis in reality.
Sending a robot ahead, to prepare the ground, build some infrastructure - now that's a good idea, but it's only a precursor to people making the trip.
Spare us your religious diatribes. You don't decide on our behalf, what constitutes our destiny.
It is absolutely possible. Any moment. Have a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It was a relatively small meteor, but bigger asteroids repeatedly hit the Earth, and it will happen again. There is no doubt of it, the question is when.
No - the question is, if such an asteroid struck the earth, would the Earth be less habitable than Mars?
Plants do not need oxygen at all, it is even poisonous for them in a way.
Plants die in a vacuum. Humans also die in a vacuum.
In principle, they may turn a planet without oxygen into a habitable planet. But this technology does not exist yet.
The maths is relatively straightforward:
Now:
Earth: Habitable
Mars: Inhabitable
[Earth gets Struck by an Asteroid]
Earth: Habitable
Mars: Inhabitable
Bags of meat? We no of no more remarkable organo-electro-mechanical device in the universe than homo sapiens.
On the earth perhaps. In space, they just float about helplessly. If actually exposed to the harsh realities of space or another planetary surface, they die. The most remarkable part of a human (the brain) should tell you that sending humans to space when robots are already better adapted, in every way, is ridiculous.
To the extent that if an asteroid impacts the Earth, you are better off on Earth than on Mars or the moon. If a serious asteroid impact were even likely.
Have you hugged your robot lately? OP refers to the thrill of exploration.
You weren't thrilled when Huygens plunged through the clouds of Titan and landed on the surface? You weren't thrilled by the recent flyby of Pluto? What's wrong with you?
Robot craft are interesting and useful, and I support their ongoing use to be sure - but the explorer's urge is deeply ingrained in (most of) us, at a very personal level - thanks evolution! "Fun" I think, is the operative word, although many on both sides of the issue would lift their noses at the very suggestion of such an emotion - how politically incorrect (*sniff)!
You've arbitrarily constrained exploring to requiring the actual explorer to cart along a bag of meat. This constraint is bizarre- why not replace the bag of meat with a pineapple? It's not exploring unless you carry along a pineapple, with a robotic arm to hurl out the pineapple and a recording that says "THERE! Now the pineapple has set foot on this (arbitrarily defined) surface, this planet/moon is EXPLORED!"
Your constraint means the end of exploration, because exploration will be confined to the places where technology allows robots to carry us bags of meat. This means, in practical terms, we will never explore and further than perhaps Mars or Venus.
If the personal challenge of going to Mars inspires you, all power to you. But for this to be an Everest style challenge, you'll need to walk there. Riding there in a machine is cheating. It's the machine (and the guys who designed, tested and built it) that did all the work, so from a "summit Everest" perspective, it's those guys who get the credit and the kudos.
A better analogy would be: because exploring had always previously been done on foot, in 1492 funds that would have been put into exploring by boat were instead spent on developing means to extend the distance that could be travelled by foot, including long poles that allowed explorers to cross bodies of water by walking on the bottom. Of course, the scale of the atlantic overwhelmed this mode of travel, so exploring was confined to well known spots that were easily reachable, and had infact already been settled with and traded with by people in boats for thousands of years. Nevertheless the long pole walkists looked down and mocked those who dared suggest that boats may in fact represent a superior technology and the notion of that exploring required one to travel by foot was impractical, dangerous, faintly ridiculous, and meant that no real exploring was even happening.