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| Lunar landing anniversary today |
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| IDEngineer:
I consider the lunar landing to be the most significant event in human history so far. It is quite literally a crime against our own species that we have not gotten any humans past low earth orbit in 50 years. I believe I read a NASA estimate that in any given year there is a 1 in 2000 chance of a rogue space object striking the earth with sufficient energy to cause global effects. We should be striving toward getting off this rock as a matter of insurance, if for none of the other excellent reasons. Governments the world over are negligent for not pursuing this as one of their highest priorities. |
| james_s:
I find it to be a pretty amazing achievement, but I also feel like we've kind of "been there, done that". The difference in effort required to get men on the moon and bring them home vs the effort to get them anywhere else more interesting is astronomical. Mars is frankly kind of boring in my opinion, it's pretty much just a bigger much further away version of the moon and we already have numerous robots exploring that. The scale of the universe means that even travelling at the speed of light it's going to take a very long time to get anywhere likely to net any sort of major discoveries and unmanned probes are a lot more practical than a manned mission. Star Trek only works because they have warp propulsion and that unfortunately is likely to remain fiction unless we discover some fundamentally new aspect about how physics works. |
| gnuarm:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on July 21, 2022, 11:23:00 pm ---I consider the lunar landing to be the most significant event in human history so far. --- End quote --- Really? More significant than the wheel? Fire? Vaccines? Antibiotics? --- Quote ---It is quite literally a crime against our own species that we have not gotten any humans past low earth orbit in 50 years. --- End quote --- ??? What do you expect from space travel other than a huge bill? --- Quote ---I believe I read a NASA estimate that in any given year there is a 1 in 2000 chance of a rogue space object striking the earth with sufficient energy to cause global effects. We should be striving toward getting off this rock as a matter of insurance, if for none of the other excellent reasons. Governments the world over are negligent for not pursuing this as one of their highest priorities. --- End quote --- "Getting off this rock" is in no way useful to the 7 billion of us who will have to remain behind. I've never understood why anyone thinks it is important to perpetuate the species by colonizing outer space. Even if that were an important goal, we are so far from being able to accomplish that, it's not even a dream at this point. Give it a few hundred more years and maybe we can take another look. For now, there's no place we've identified as being remotely practical to go. |
| gnuarm:
--- Quote from: james_s on July 22, 2022, 12:40:47 am ---Star Trek only works because they have warp propulsion and that unfortunately is likely to remain fiction unless we discover some fundamentally new aspect about how physics works. --- End quote --- Even as fiction, Star Trek is a bit ridiculous. I guess I've never paid attention to whether they've left the galaxy, still, within the galaxy, you have to exceed the speed of light by huge factors to get around. It's 52,000 light years across. I know on Star Gate, they travel between galaxies, which is truly mind boggling distances, millions of light years. How did they put it in Hitchhiker's Guide? '"Space," [the Hitchhiker's Guide] says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' Something I just learned, is that there are galaxies so close, they appear larger than the moon! https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061228.html |
| Circlotron:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on July 21, 2022, 11:23:00 pm ---We should be striving toward getting off this rock as a matter of insurance, if for none of the other excellent reasons. Governments the world over are negligent for not pursuing this as one of their highest priorities. --- End quote --- If a single dollar can save a life of someone in a third world country yet so often doesn't happen, I can't see governments putting up millions of dollars per person to move those same people to some other planet. They are not of sufficient value to them. Q.E.D. |
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