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khwarezm posted:Back this up please, with anything, seriously, space travel is not something the average person really cares about and I think people in this thread tend to overestimate how much their passions are shared with others. This. I'm all for futurism and bringing sci-fi to life, but I don't lose sleep over the fact that Star Trek will never be real. Besides, VR is coming and we can all get our space opera fix that way.
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Sep 28, 2014 23:38
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khwarezm posted:Back this up please, with anything, seriously, space travel is not something the average person really cares about and I think people in this thread tend to overestimate how much their passions are shared with others. More than 200,000 people, dude. I thought it was well known that there were a bunch of really dumb people who really wanted to go to another planet for some stupid reason.
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Sep 29, 2014 04:35
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ChairMaster posted:More than 200,000 people, dude. I thought it was well known that there were a bunch of really dumb people who really wanted to go to another planet for some stupid reason. I'm sorry, I can't really take all that seriously a company that plans to have people on Mars in a scant decade, has garnered a whole 200,000$ in donations and seems cagey about what resources it can muster for a 6 billion dollar project. Also it was basically a sign up sheet on the internet for a position available to four people, not a great proof of commitment, there's a petition to deport Justin Bieber with as much interest.
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Sep 29, 2014 05:21
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You asked for confirmation that there were people willing to make the sacrifices required to be extraplanetary colonists, and you got it. There's plenty of interest. The problem has always been finding the resources to send people to another planet, not finding people willing to make the journey.
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Sep 29, 2014 05:26
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Kaal posted:You asked for confirmation that there were people willing to make the sacrifices required to be extraplanetary colonists, and you got it. There's plenty of interest. The problem has always been finding the resources to send people to another planet, not finding people willing to make the journey. I didn't though, I asked for confirmation that there were: 'More people than you would think would be willing to endure some harsh submarine like conditions, perhaps permanently, to have the chance to walk on another world', which implies a previously underestimated enthusiasm for projects like this. 200,000 people (from all over the world) who sign up to an internet application that's unlikely to happen and which carries zero obligations doesn't prove much. If those people really are put through a physical and mental wringer to test their aptitude and then packed off to Mars then it would be a different story, but alas we're still stuck here on Earth despite having the potential resources to actually do that. Also, saying 'theres plenty of interest' is a bit vague, if there really is that much interest, why aren't we there already? Why aren't we back on the moon even? Why does NASA get hit by cuts year after year and nobody really seems to care? I feel if there was more genuine interest, there would be more resources provided! khwarezm fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 06:02
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NASA is having its funding cut because the space race was all about establishing US dominance during the cold war, and the fact that space travel was the vector for that was merely accidental. There's a lot of people in the US interested in space, but nobody really cares enough about it to make an increase in funding for NASA a big campaign issue for candidates. Public interest has waned now that it's trivial to launch satellites and we know that there's zero risk of a country trying to park nukes in orbit. Everything about the space race was done with the implicit unspoken sentiment of, "now imagine if we aimed a nuke at you using this same technology."
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Sep 29, 2014 06:13
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ErIog posted:NASA is having its funding cut because the space race was all about establishing US dominance during the cold war, and the fact that space travel was the vector for that was merely accidental. There's a lot of people in the US interested in space, but nobody really cares enough about it to make an increase in funding for NASA a big campaign issue for candidates. I'm still pretty optimistic. I can affirm that, while currently doing research with NASA, they're doing amazing things with their small budget. Research and research alone doesn't cost nearly as much as building something.
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Sep 29, 2014 06:27
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Please, 17.6 BILLION USD is not small. SLS is a political boondoggle, a constituency-driven jobs rocket without a destination or payload.
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Sep 29, 2014 06:48
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Extraplanetary colonization doesn't make sense fundamentally, because the technology to implement would simultaneously obviate it. If we could live sustainably on a spacecraft for fifty thousand years, we could live sustainably on earth for the next five billion or so. Culturally, the myth of colonization is a pipe dream for the Cold War military-scientific elite to try to avoid an atomic guilt trip - at best. At worst it's a way to justify military spending on utopian grounds in the face of massive terrestrial poverty. Most of the time it's just a religion presenting a sort of paradisical afterlife for industrial civilization.
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Sep 29, 2014 15:07
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:Extraplanetary colonization doesn't make sense fundamentally, because the technology to implement would simultaneously obviate it. If we could live sustainably on a spacecraft for fifty thousand years, we could live sustainably on earth for the next five billion or so. Culturally, the myth of colonization is a pipe dream for the Cold War military-scientific elite to try to avoid an atomic guilt trip - at best. At worst it's a way to justify military spending on utopian grounds in the face of massive terrestrial poverty. Most of the time it's just a religion presenting a sort of paradisical afterlife for industrial civilization. I think you vastly underestimate peoples desire to get away from one another. I mean wouldn't socialists desire to try and build their 'utopia' on some far away asteroid away from the influence of the 'bourgeoisie' and its allies?
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Sep 29, 2014 15:17
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Lawman 0 posted:I think you vastly underestimate peoples desire to get away from one another. Yeah, but the "want to get away from you and your taxes" interest group is kind of small. For the vast majority of people the Earth is still plenty big enough to get away from seeing folks (I've been to some of the remotest parts of the US and if you want to pretend that the outside world had a nuclear holocaust you can do that just fine).
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Sep 29, 2014 15:26
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Lawman 0 posted:I mean wouldn't socialists desire to try and build their 'utopia' on some far away asteroid away from the influence of the 'bourgeoisie' and its allies? No that would be "anti-socialism".
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Sep 29, 2014 15:46
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Hodgepodge posted:I was more thinking that there's no particular reason that the rules don't change again once you hit that limit in a way which preserves causality. Einstein considered the possibility that causality might just not be a thing at a certain point and decided it was unlikely and too bizarre to assume, but as far as I know, didn't wonder if his equations might reflect assumptions that no longer apply past that speed. (He might not have because there is no particular reason to assume that, of course). Lets pretend we're building a rocket. Its engine produces some amount of thrust, and it has some amount of mass. The more thrust it produces for a given mass, the faster it goes. Alternately, the less mass it has for a given amount of thrust, the faster it goes. What would happen if you could build a rocket with 0 mass, or infinite thrust? Photons have no mass, possess energy, and they travel at 299,792,458 meters per second, aka the speed of light. They travel at this speed, regardless of if they possess more or less energy. So a massless rocket should travel at the speed of light. Nothing possesses infinite energy, but observational and experimental evidence demonstrates that as objects approach the speed of light, they require exponentially more energy to increase in speed. Formulas exist which describe these observations, and they indicate a massive object would require infinite energy to travel at the speed of light. The only way the math allows for an object to travel beyond the speed of light is if it possessed negative mass and traveled backwards through time. In this case, the object would not only travel faster than light, but would be incapable of traveling slower than light (much in the way massive objects are incapable of traveling faster than light). All attempts to find evidence of negative mass (ex: Tachyons) have failed, and the general consensus is its just a potential solution in our mathematical models and don't exist in the physical universe. At this point Sci-Fi nerds get to say "Ah ha! But what if we warped space instead of moving the object, to produce some sort of warp drive or wormhole! What about quantum teleportation!" These have a whole host of specific problems but I'm just going to jump to the FTL catch all: they would allow you to arrive at destinations before you left, which violates causality. Space and time are intrinsically linked, traveling through space is traveling through time. Traveling through space faster than light (by any means) is by definition traveling backwards through time. There is no universal frame of reference, the rate at which something moves through space and time are relative to who's observing it, but at the same time the speed of light is always constant to all observers. This makes absolutely no intuitive sense because we're all used to living in the same frame of reference.
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Sep 29, 2014 17:58
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If space and time are intrinsically linked, then how does arriving at a place before you left the other place violate causality if the only way back is doing the same thing? Wouldn't you only be able to go back and affect things by doing the same thing you did the first time and still arriving after you left?
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Sep 29, 2014 18:12
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Lets pretend we're building a rocket. Its engine produces some amount of thrust, and it has some amount of mass. The more thrust it produces for a given mass, the faster it goes. Alternately, the less mass it has for a given amount of thrust, the faster it goes. What would happen if you could build a rocket with 0 mass, or infinite thrust? This is a great post, which makes it all the more baffling that NASA has allotted any amount whatsoever to research on the subject. Granted its a pittance, but still.
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Sep 29, 2014 19:14
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Does colonizing other planets really provide any insurance against nuclear war? If there's no more single planet to gently caress up, there's also no reason not to just nuke the other group's planet. MAD doesn't work any more.
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Sep 29, 2014 19:26
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Jeffrey posted:Does colonizing other planets really provide any insurance against nuclear war? If there's no more single planet to gently caress up, there's also no reason not to just nuke the other group's planet. MAD doesn't work any more.
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Sep 29, 2014 19:36
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The future of warfare will be threatening to throw rocks at each other.
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Sep 29, 2014 19:44
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Once space travel opens up the only limited resource that might provoke wars would be habitable planets, possibly. Seems unlikely you'd asteroid bomb the only thing that's valuable.
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Sep 29, 2014 20:45
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Jeffrey posted:Does colonizing other planets really provide any insurance against nuclear war? If there's no more single planet to gently caress up, there's also no reason not to just nuke the other group's planet. MAD doesn't work any more. MAD doesn't require extinction level nuclear war, just making sure neither side can win.
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Sep 29, 2014 21:12
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ChairMaster posted:If space and time are intrinsically linked, then how does arriving at a place before you left the other place violate causality if the only way back is doing the same thing? Wouldn't you only be able to go back and affect things by doing the same thing you did the first time and still arriving after you left? You have two synchronized clocks which keep perfect time. Some one takes one of the clocks and flies off in a spaceship. As we watch them fly away from Earth, their clock will appear slower compared to ours. To the person on the spaceship, they will experience time as normal, and looking back at Earth they will see OUR clock slowing down. This isn't an optical illusion, both frames of reference are equally valid. As they move through space relative to each other they move through time relative to each other as well. The problem with FTL is it assumes everyone is operating under the same frame of reference for time. "Right this instant" on Earth is a different point in space and time than "right this instant" on the spaceship. When its 10:00 on Earth, its 9:00 on the spaceship. When its 10:00 on the spaceship, its 9:00 on Earth. Both frames of reference are equally valid, so what happens when you throw an FTL telephone into the mix? Earth calls up the spaceship and says "hey its 10:00", the spaceship replies "no its not, its 9:00", Earth hears the reply at 8:00. These specific numbers are made up, but they illustrate the point: you can receive FTL messages from the future, and can send FTL messages into the past.
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Sep 29, 2014 23:06
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Once space travel opens up the only limited resource that might provoke wars would be habitable planets, possibly. Seems unlikely you'd asteroid bomb the only thing that's valuable.
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Sep 29, 2014 23:25
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Honestly, I don't fully understand this stuff, but from reading about it it goes like this: We've actually done this experiment on Earth using planes and atomic clocks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%96Keating_experiment
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Sep 29, 2014 23:47
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Trabisnikof posted:We've actually done this experiment on Earth using planes and atomic clocks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%96Keating_experiment Yeah, relativity is heavily backed up by observation and experimentation. Communication satellites actually have to take time dilation into account in order function, otherwise everything gets out of whack surprisingly fast.
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Sep 30, 2014 00:45
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Yeah, relativity is heavily backed up by observation and experimentation. Communication satellites actually have to take time dilation into account in order function, otherwise everything gets out of whack surprisingly fast. That sounds like it's easier to correct for than two objects at relativistic velocities to each others frame of reference one.
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Sep 30, 2014 00:50
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Guavanaut posted:That's just the gravity-well based one though, right? (For satellites at a geostationary orbit) The clock correction in GPS satellites actually takes a sum of terms from both general and special relativity. The general term is the significantly larger of the two though. E: Oh I see you said geostat, yeah I'm guessing the special rel term for them is basically nil? Not sure though The Protagonist fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 00:53
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Ah yes because as humans we have only the most rational reasons for going to war. Wars are usually economic aren't they? Once you dig past the propaganda.
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Sep 30, 2014 01:12
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Guavanaut posted:The future of warfare will be threatening to throw rocks at each other. And it's not a very distant future either. 
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Sep 30, 2014 01:15
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:
Oh come on, utopian socialism was totally a thing and leftists founding communes isn't exactly a new idea. God knows where they would get the funding, though. Getting a plot on Mars or an asteroid is fairly capital intensive compared to buying some farmland.
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Sep 30, 2014 02:46
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Isn't the whole point of the Alcubierre / warp drive that the object it is propelling isn't moving faster than the speed of light and is in fact not moving at all?
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Sep 30, 2014 03:27
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The point of warp drives is so nerds can reconcile their technofetishism and fantasies that break physics as we know it.
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Sep 30, 2014 20:08
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:Extraplanetary colonization doesn't make sense fundamentally, because the technology to implement would simultaneously obviate it. If we could live sustainably on a spacecraft for fifty thousand years, we could live sustainably on earth for the next five billion or so. Culturally, the myth of colonization is a pipe dream for the Cold War military-scientific elite to try to avoid an atomic guilt trip - at best. At worst it's a way to justify military spending on utopian grounds in the face of massive terrestrial poverty. Most of the time it's just a religion presenting a sort of paradisical afterlife for industrial civilization. What I'm saying is that Char was right. What do you mean by "an atomic guilt trip"?
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Sep 30, 2014 20:52
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Spazzle posted:The point of warp drives is so nerds can reconcile their technofetishism and fantasies that break physics as we know it.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:00
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Nessus posted:What do you mean by "an atomic guilt trip"? Nuclear Boy pooped outside of his diaper and the rest of the world is shaming him for it. God I hope someone other than me remembers that cartoon.
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Sep 30, 2014 21:07
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Elites justify themselves, to themselves, with religions and mythologies. Right? I am proposing specifically that the scientific-military elite of the Cold War, I am pretty sure primarily in the West, saw space colonization as a way to escape terrestrial problems - like their day jobs building and using atomic bombs. Correct me if I'm wrong but Soviet space literature saw it as an end-state of world socialism rather than a means to bring about world peace through a great tide lifting all boats or whatever Kennedy-esque turn of phrase we might imagine otherwise. If we analogize the "religion" of space colonization to Christianity we might compare early sci fi writers with John the Baptist - Mystics doing their weird thing out on the fringe. Oppenheimer and the rocket/bomb scientists of the space race might be something of a Paul, who took the message to Rome - Washington in this case. Kennedy and Eisenhower are the secular rulers who, like Constantine, made it a state ideology. Very specifically by "atomic guilt trip" I see it as a way to justify, to themselves and their peers, the development and use against civilian populations the atomic bomb. The sacrifice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the invention of the ICBM - perhaps the most obscene invention of science - etc. The promise of space justified it all, as long as industrial civilization ate its vegetables it could enjoy a paradoxical endless bounty. E. It makes even more sense if you think about the suddenly acquired preoccupation with ensuring the survival of mankind as a species. Especially when people - in this very thread - consider the great majority of actually existing human beings themselves basically a write-off. Very visible in Asimov and others concerned with overpopulation rather than overconsumption. Just a way to justify building the Bomb, and the rockets to move it around. DOCTOR ZIMBARDO fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 21:23
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So MIT took a look at the Mars One plans and they have a few comments. It'll cost 4.5 billion to put 4 people on Mars and the first will die after roughly 68 days with the rest following shortly to either hypoxia, asphyxiation or incineration. They also note that most of the technology they plan on using are in very early stages of development and haven't actually been tested in anything resembling Mars like conditions. All in all it's a solid format for a reality TV show.
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Oct 16, 2014 02:54
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Anosmoman posted:So MIT took a look at the Mars One plans and they have a few comments. It'll cost 4.5 billion to put 4 people on Mars and the first will die after roughly 68 days with the rest following shortly to either hypoxia, asphyxiation or incineration. They also note that most of the technology they plan on using are in very early stages of development and haven't actually been tested in anything resembling Mars like conditions. All in all it's a solid format for a reality TV show. Holy crap that would be the best reality TV ever. All the hype and blather surrounding their selection and training; the epic, epic multi-channel-covered Launch. The ridiculousness of four people flying in a coffin-sized environment for eight months. The multi-channel-covered Landing. And within a handful of weeks of them getting there, dead. Cameras just showing burnt or suffocated corpses 24 hours a day until the next Mars Lander can get over to their site and turn the horror show off. More likely they'll kill one another on the way over, but that would hardly be more entertaining that watching the horrific failure on Mars itself. Better yet one of them launches with ebola...
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Oct 16, 2014 04:54
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Anosmoman posted:So MIT took a look at the Mars One plans and they have a few comments. It'll cost 4.5 billion to put 4 people on Mars and the first will die after roughly 68 days with the rest following shortly to either hypoxia, asphyxiation or incineration. They also note that most of the technology they plan on using are in very early stages of development and haven't actually been tested in anything resembling Mars like conditions. All in all it's a solid format for a reality TV show. My friend is still in the running as a candidate for this. He's a reasonably smart guy most of the time, but somehow fails to grasp the complete absurdity of Mars One. Maybe this'll get him to see it. Or maybe one day I'll be watching a live feed of his dead body on cable television.
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Oct 16, 2014 05:48
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No cool space stuff will ever happen in till some form of a space elevator is created and mastered, bottom line. Outside of anything that isn't some free energy gravity engine don't expect launching large ships from earth will ever be possible.
Tenzarin fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 17:23
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Turns out women expend a lot less energy and are therefore much cheaper to ship to space or sustain in a potential colony. Muscles burn calories and oxygen after all. In a sense sending men to a Mars colony would be affirmative action because they aren't as well suited for the task since they use up more precious resources for no clear benefit. The first human in space may have been a man but space should rightfully be the domain of women in the future and I desperately want them to make an all female astronaut corps just to see how many internet nerds and MRAs would lose their minds.
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Oct 20, 2014 10:42
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