Closer to Mars

[DrEvil]

^^People were saying the same thing about landing rockets, and now the Falcon 9 has become the workhorse of US spaceflight with more launches than any other current booster (88 total, 11 this year) in less time and with less money than it took to build one SLS booster (which still isn't finished and will cost over a billion dollars per launch when/if it is).

Landing and reuse has become so routine you never even hear about it anymore, and now they're on to mass producing the rockets that will go to Mars. They've blown up three prototypes so far, but they're churning out a new one every few weeks. They might not make it, but they're trying really, really hard. Now if only Musk could get the fuck off Twitter...

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Yea.

Rockets/propulsion is but one small step, and a very preliminary one at that, of a very complex project that will require many leaps in technology at each phase. And then, all those phases will need to succeed in aggregate to have any chance of success.

This is part of the reason humans have yet to return* to the Moon in well over 40 yrs.

*I shan't open the Pandora's Box of discussing officially accepted Moon landing events. We have prior threads on that one.

In ~15 or so years, my commentary here may be viewed as short-sighted and foolish if indeed humans land on Mars. Or perhaps, in 15 yrs a number of us will still be debating the probability of a Mars venture -- depressing, if so, for those still holding onto that belief.

Same can be said for other belief systems, though. Why not worship at the altar of NASA/SpaceX?

(I can think of a few reasons, but i'm an anonymous entity on the internet, a sub-par source for insight).

[DrEvil]

Musk's plans are definitely grandiose, but he's the only one seriously trying to do it, and it's been the plan all along. Everything he's done the last decade or two has been geared towards that goal, and so far he's been pretty successful.

If (big if) he gets his Starship assembly line up and running properly and starts mass producing massive rockets he's pretty much got everything he needs. Anything that can't be acquired on Mars can be sent there. As soon as they've got the supplies needed to maintain a small crew on the surface they can just keep sending more stuff and slowly expand.

I'm probably a little starry-eyed about all this, but god damn it, it's exciting!

[Harvey]

English isn't his first language but the argument is more or less sound:

"..this planet will float deserted through space" You can call it transhumanism but you can’t call it a future

The discrepancy between the time span a tech civilisation needs to ruin the planet (200 years) and the time span needed to reach an exoplanet (>1000 years incl tech preparation) tells clearly what is wrong and what should be done — saving home and staying home...

[Cordelia]

Echo in Space to all Rory wrote on this thread.
,
And a toast to The Alberts, who gave their lives to make it possible for the Nazis in NASA, Elon Musk, et al., to travel in space. (Toast too to Rory, who is very much missed on the forum.)...


Albert II (Hope this image is 'acceptable'.)

[Nordic]

Has anyone ever explored the idea that maybe it’s not a good idea for life on earth to be constantly blasting holes through the all the layers of the earth’s atmosphere with big fuel-burning rockets?

Nobody’s studied that?

No, humans think it’s ok to just TRY everything they can imagine. It’s both our brilliance and our destructive stupidity.

Apparently we already have pig/human chimeras. Wow, we can DO this, y’all!

[Cordelia]

^^^But why destroy just one planet and its atmosphere when we can destroy others?

Apparently we already have pig/human chimeras.

Tack så mycket for that reminder Nordic.


This pig embryo was injected with human cells early in its development and grew to be four weeks old.

Brought to mind (in the 'spirit' of the thread) ...


Starchild from 2001: A Space Odyssey

fwiw...

The creepy Starchild from 2001: A Space Odyssey is still floating around

While movie props often end up looking their age after 50 years (and often less), this one is just as baby-faced as it was when in 1967 when it was born at the hands of sculptor Liz Moore in MGM Studios’ 2001 art department—and still crawling all over the planet with the traveling Stanley Kubrick exhibition. I

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-creep ... ing-around

[DrEvil]

Has anyone ever explored the idea that maybe it’s not a good idea for life on earth to be constantly blasting holes through the all the layers of the earth’s atmosphere with big fuel-burning rockets?

Nobody’s studied that?

No, humans think it’s ok to just TRY everything they can imagine. It’s both our brilliance and our destructive stupidity.

Apparently we already have pig/human chimeras. Wow, we can DO this, y’all!

It's not harmless, but there isn't much research on it yet. Here's an op-ed discussing the issue:
https://spacenews.com/op-ed-time-to-cle ... pollution/

Unfortunately, the sad fact is that if we stay a single-planet species then we will go extinct. Something catastrophic is going to happen sooner or later. Having a presence in space can potentially counter at least one of those things (asteroid impact), but there's fuck-all we can do about a massive supervolcano or nuclear winter.

As the climate change protesters are fond of saying: there's no Planet B. I think there should be, and I think it's worth trying.

[Cordelia]

DrEvil » Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:24 pm


Unfortunately, the sad fact is that if we stay a single-planet species then we will go extinct.

Would that be so bad? Would anybody besides us miss us?

(Unfortunately, something catastrophic would take out more than our species.)

[DrEvil]

^^I think it would be bad. Eventually we're going no matter what, either by extinction or by evolving - naturally or technologically - into something else, and I would prefer it was the latter. That's the whole point of life: to hang on as long as possible with a cheeky grin and a raised middle finger to entropy. If trashing this tiny ball of rock is all we ever achieve I will be sorely disappointed. I want us to trash all the planets!

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Echo in Space to all Rory wrote on this thread.

Co-sign. Just re-read all 10 pages. Tip of the cap to your contributions as well, Cordelia. Of course we're all just sharing opinions and can only ruminate on this topic. None of us know what's really going on up there. None of us.

[Cordelia]

^^I think it would be bad. Eventually we're going no matter what, either by extinction or by evolving - naturally or technologically - into something else, and I would prefer it was the latter. That's the whole point of life: to hang on as long as possible with a cheeky grin and a raised middle finger to entropy. If trashing this tiny ball of rock is all we ever achieve I will be sorely disappointed. I want us to trash all the planets!

~Lack of empathy--Check

~Peak Survival Instinct--Check

~Haughty contempt for others--Check

~Off-the-chart competition levels--Check

Why aren't you a billionaire DrEvil--or are you?

[DrEvil]

^^I think it would be bad. Eventually we're going no matter what, either by extinction or by evolving - naturally or technologically - into something else, and I would prefer it was the latter. That's the whole point of life: to hang on as long as possible with a cheeky grin and a raised middle finger to entropy. If trashing this tiny ball of rock is all we ever achieve I will be sorely disappointed. I want us to trash all the planets!

~Lack of empathy--Check

I don't get it (probably my lack of empathy), but how is not wanting my species to go extinct showing a lack of empathy? Wouldn't it be the opposite? The 'trashing all the planets' bit was a joke.

~Peak Survival Instinct--Check

Yep. Dying sucks.

~Haughty contempt for others--Check

How? Because I disagree that going extinct is no big deal?

~Off-the-chart competition levels--Check

Nope, don't get this either.

Why aren't you a billionaire DrEvil--or are you?

Too lazy and zero ambition, and I hate capitalism. There shouldn't be any billionaires.

[Cordelia]

^^^I wrote a longer point-by-point answer but it got lost in a maze of my messing up the quote functions.

I didn't mean what I wrote as an attack on you and I'm sorry if it came across as such. (And you could argue that me writing that extinction might not be bad is my own haughty contempt for others),

[DrEvil]

No worries, I read it as being somewhat tongue in cheek leading up to your punchline.

I would make a terrible billionaire btw *, but if I was one I would definitely be throwing most of it at space exploration, and the leftovers I'd spend on hookers and blow undermining capitalism and promoting socialism.


* Pretty sure it's impossible to be a billionaire and still be a decent person. Even if you try to do good your footprint is so massive you inevitably end up stepping on people.