I'm more pessimistic, the resources and engineering to support colonies on the moon or Mars are far off, and if the goal is to get the eggs out of one basket, putting up a colony that is completely dependent on Earth for survival doesn't accomplish that, it just makes the current basket even harder to support.
We can hardly keep the ISS going.
If we want to be able to colonize space, first we're going to need robotic technology FAR better than what we have. When we can build a robot factory that can go out and mine an asteroid for resources by itself (including stuff necessary to support life like oxygen and water and such), I think we're wasting our time trying to establish lunar or Mars colonies.
Yes we are a long ways off and I totally agree we need a lot better robotics before we can do anything. Problem is we don't have the focused research effort right now to get us anywhere close to what we need to travel anywhere other than potential lunar and martian colonies and relying on a market driven research effort hasn't gotten us any further in years. Slowly and irreversibly destroying the Earth is about the only thing I can think of that will provide that kind of focus and kick start the process to get out of the current basket. Though we're probably killing the planet a bit too fast for us to save ourselves anyways.
Can't think of why we'd need a moon colony to get further out into space. It might help if that colony's task was to mine, process, and produce natural resources for creating and/or stocking the ships to get further out though.
Maybe all it needs for the Western nations to get motivated, in spending more on space programs, is to have more competition.
Perhaps when the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program starts doing what you are suggesting, the US will perceive it as a threat, and become more involved.
I recall how Sputnik affected the West. The huge investment in trying to outdo the Russians came immediately after the news of Sputik's launch.
Last edited by flamesfever; 10-21-2010 at 02:56 PM.
We will probably have permanent human colonies on the moon within our lifetimes. Mars is ambitious - I don't think they have really worked out how to protect us from the radiation.
I don't see mankind ever colonizing places like the moon or mars, their magnetic fields are far to weak, Mars itself used to have a strong field but scientists figure it was bombarded away by huge asteroid collisions disrupting it's core convection. I highly doubt we'll ever be able to give a planet/moon a magnetic field strong enough to bounce away the solar winds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by speede5
Does it really matter though? Even if we found a planet out there like Earth, what is the point? The human race probably won't survive long enough to have the technology to travel to it, communicate with it, or even get a close look at it. Given the rate we are filling the earth with people, our consuption of natural resources, we are headed for extinction pretty quickly, in the grand scheme of things. Unless by some miracle we figure out how to warp travel in the next hundred years or so, we're going to die staring at the sky. Heck I'd be surprized if we even see the day man lands on Mars, much less a planet in another solar system. Maybe I'm just missing the point.
So were not even supposed to try? 100 years is a long time in this technological time, did people in 1910 think we would land on the moon? or go from New York to Los Angeles in 3 hours?
While it looks grim now that we'll ever figure out how to travel fast enough to reach the stars one never knows the future, and there's always the possibility that some older more advanced civilization out there figures it out for us.
The Lunar outpost will be an inhabited facility on the surface of the Moon which NASA currently proposes to construct over the five years between 2019 and 2024. The United States Congress has directed that the U.S. portion, "shall be designated the Neil A. Armstrong Lunar Outpost".[1]
On December 4, 2006, NASA announced the conclusion of its Global Exploration Strategy and Lunar Architecture Study.[2] The Lunar Architecture Study's purpose was to "define a series of lunar missions constituting NASA's Lunar campaign to fulfill the Lunar Exploration elements" of the Vision for Space Exploration.[3] What resulted was a basic plan for a lunar outpost near one of the poles of the Moon, which would permanently house astronauts in six-month shifts.
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Can't think of why we'd need a moon colony to get further out into space. It might help if that colony's task was to mine, process, and produce natural resources for creating and/or stocking the ships to get further out though.
I think a big part of it is the reduced escape velocity to use the moon a the launching pad. Transfer your raw materials there, build your rocket or ship and use the orbital momentum and lack of gravity to your advantage. There is similar theories using fast spinning asteroids as space slingshots.
Does anyone else think that man will someday achieve light speed?
Personally I believe we will, but the math doesn't exist (like when Newton invented Calculus) yet to build something that could achieve such speeds.
As well, something I am pondering (which is essentially impossible) is if we were to somehow create nuclear fusion like the sun, then build something to harness that energy. It is essentially impossible because you need 15,000,000K (plus pressure) to achieve such a feat. We haven't been able to do proper nuclear fusion yet (as our input energy always exceeds our output energy so it isn't continuous like the Sun).
Hopefully one day NASA does send a satellite to get close enough to the Sun so we can study it in greater detail. Pretty sure they'll never create a "mini-sun" though. If they ever did, we found free energy.
Does anyone else think that man will someday achieve light speed?
Personally I believe we will, but the math doesn't exist (like when Newton invented Calculus) yet to build something that could achieve such speeds.
As well, something I am pondering (which is essentially impossible) is if we were to somehow create nuclear fusion like the sun, then build something to harness that energy. It is essentially impossible because you need 15,000,000K (plus pressure) to achieve such a feat. We haven't been able to do proper nuclear fusion yet (as our input energy always exceeds our output energy so it isn't continuous like the Sun).
Hopefully one day NASA does send a satellite to get close enough to the Sun so we can study it in greater detail. Pretty sure they'll never create a "mini-sun" though. If they ever did, we found free energy.
The problem is this, great , you build your super duper light mobile 3000, and decide to take it for its maiden voyage to our nearest major galaxy Andromeda. You power it up to full speed, and you get there in what you perceive as minutes, days maybe a couple years. However, when you show up you will be millions or billions of years in the future and humans likely cease to exist, and for all you know the universe is collapsing or perhaps in the midst the big rip, and your atoms are being torn apart electron by electron.
I don't understand the exact math or physics behind how time dilation works, but it essentially renders near light or faster than light travel useless for any practical purpose. Ultimately traversing the stars will likely involve wormholes, or some type of warp drive to counteract the time dilation effect. I would say we are still likely thousands of years away.
The problem is this, great , you build your super duper light mobile 3000, and decide to take it for its maiden voyage to our nearest major galaxy Andromeda. You power it up to full speed, and you get there in what you perceive as minutes, days maybe a couple years. However, when you show up you will be millions or billions of years in the future and humans likely cease to exist, and for all you know the universe is collapsing or perhaps in the midst the big rip, and your atoms are being torn apart electron by electron.
I don't understand the exact math or physics behind how time dilation works, but it essentially renders near light or faster than light travel useless for any practical purpose. Ultimately traversing the stars will likely involve wormholes, or some type of warp drive to counteract the time dilation effect. I would say we are still likely thousands of years away.
True, we must harness the power of the black hole, haha.
The problem with wormholes or blackholes say, is where do they lead? If you were to "plant" a wormhole in the Andromeda Galaxy and then next to Earth, that still leaves us with the dilemma of getting their and "planting" a wormhole.
I still say 1000 years, hopefully they develop good cryogen technology soon too.
True, we must harness the power of the black hole, haha.
The problem with wormholes or blackholes say, is where do they lead? If you were to "plant" a wormhole in the Andromeda Galaxy and then next to Earth, that still leaves us with the dilemma of getting their and "planting" a wormhole.
I still say 1000 years, hopefully they develop good cryogen technology soon too.
Wormholes and Black Holes are pretty different concepts though. We can thank science fiction for creating confusion on the two theories. A wormhole is a theoretically a tunnel or transit system per se. Where a black hole is just an infinitely dense collection of matter. Even if you could enter a black hole, time would end before you could actually observe the interior due to time dilation. I read an article on the subject I believe Hawking wrote, that basically implied the time required to cross the event horizon would be infinite.
Your point however, about planting an exit point of a wormhole is a pretty valid argument, never thought of that.
i don't think a warp drive will take a thousand years to achieve. they're already theoretically possible, the only limiting factor was the power source required. originally it was thought that the energy from all the stars in our galaxy would be needed, then with better math it was hypothesized that the equivalent of a single star's energy would work, and now the energy requirement is down to around the size of Jupiter
given how fast our technology is advancing, with computers that will be thousands of times more powerful than what we have today coming in the next couple of decades, one would think we could figure out space travel in the next couple of centuries if it is possible
"We're looking at the universe when it was a 20th of its current age," California Institute of Technology astronomy professor Richard Ellis, who wasn't part of the research team, told the Associated Press. "In human terms, we're looking at a 4-year-old boy in the life span of an adult."
There is a lot more water on the moon than previously believed, according to an analysis of NASA data being published Friday, a finding that may bolster the case for a manned base on the lunar surface.
NASA announced its groundbreaking discovery of lunar water last November. Now, a more detailed analysis of the data—the subject of six research papers being published in the journal Science—concludes that there is a lot more water on the moon than anyone expected, about twice the concentrations seen in the Sahara Desert.
"It's really wet," said Anthony Colaprete, co-author of one of the Science papers and a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. He and his colleagues estimate that 5.6% of the total mass of the targeted lunar crater's soil consists of water ice. In other words, 2,200 pounds of moon dirt would yield a dozen gallons of water.
Finding a water source on the moon has long been a dream, because it could save on the expense of transporting it from earth. A bottle of water on the moon would run about $50,000, according to NASA, because that is what it costs, per pound, to launch anything to earth's nearest neighbor.
The U.S. likely won't be involved in manned voyages to the moon anytime soon. President Barack Obama recently canceled a NASA program to return astronauts to the lunar surface a decade from now.
But other countries are gearing up. China has pledged to land astronauts on the moon by 2025, and India has plans to do the same by 2020. Japan wants to establish an unmanned moon base in a decade, potentially setting the stage for a manned mission later.
If NASA ever gets a clear directive for interplanetary exploration, a new Hundred-Year Starship could be their version of the Mayflower. And like the first pilgrims, Martian explorers might set sail with the knowledge they would never return home.
NASA and DARPA have joined forces to build something called a Hundred-Year Starship, according to the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Simon “Pete” Worden said NASA contributed $100,000 to the project and DARPA kicked in $1 million.
“The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” Worden said, according to a Singularity University blog that covered the event. “Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired.” (Worden added that he was fired by President George W. Bush.)
Beyond that, there are no details. But the prospect of a DARPA-NASA spaceship collaboration for Star Trek-esque exploration sounds thrilling — even if by definition, a 100-year ship means leaving Earth and never coming back.
Incidentally, that’s exactly the proposal in a new paper in press in the Journal of Cosmology, a relatively new, peer-reviewed open access journal. Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies suggest sending astronauts to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers for a permanent Mars colony.
Such a mission would save money, the authors say, because the prohibitive costs (in dollars and payload) of a manned Mars mission are mostly associated with bringing the astronauts home.
Last edited by troutman; 10-26-2010 at 01:07 PM.
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