NASA is building the Ares rocket system as the next generation of manned rockets. They are based on Shuttle solid rocket boosters. Ares 1 is a single SRB expanded to five segments, with an Apollo-style capsule and a cargo pod sitting on top of it. This rocket can get 25 tons into LEO, and carry 4-6 astronauts into space at a time. Total cost to orbit should be considerably less than the Space Shuttle.
The Ares V is a big mother of a rocket, about the size of a Saturn V, using two SRBs and five liquid fuel engines to haul 65 tons into lunar orbit, or 131 tons into LEO. Again, most of this is off-the-shelf hardware - the solid fuel rockets are shuttle SRBs, the liquid fuel engines are essentially upgraded J2 engines - the same ones uses on the Saturn 1B and Saturn V. The crew capsule borrows a lot of technology and concepts from Apollo.
I would just like to say that building a giant orbital nail gun sounds like about the most fun you can have spending other people’s money, and as such is a project I wholly endorse.
“Nail the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Bottom line, if we can’t organize ourselves well enough to coordinate such a multi-generational project, then we are a species that does not deserve to survive such a disaster.
Likewise, I don’t really care what happens to the universe either. If the choice came down to the end of the universe or the end of humanity (which could somehow survive the end of the universe) I’d cut old mother nature’s throat myself.
[Sam Kinison]We did it, we put a man on the moon in 1969.
Did Russia ever go to he moon?
Nooooooooooo.
It’s 20 years later, have they ever been to the moon?
Nooooooooooo.
Do you know why? Cause they are a bunch of little space pussies.
[/Sam Kinison]
What are the Russians doing for launchers these days? I’d thought the Energia family wasn’t in production anymore, and that they had some booster based on a converted ICBM, but that the Proton was still pretty much it for heavy lift.
The problem is our species doesn’t get to make the choice most of the time. It’s a few select leaders who make most of the decisions. That’s why I think we should try to preserve humanity, for the peaceful people who do think long term, and who basically just want a family, a home, some land, and to not live in fear of war or environmental disaster.
I respect Stephen Hawking, and among other things, one of the reasons he thinks we should learn to live in space is the threat of biological warfare. It’s not our species that’s going to eventually make something really nasty and wipe out half of humanity, it’s a few individual humans who are going to do it, and take away the choice to live from millions and millions of humans who would certainly have chosen otherwise.
I haven’t given up on our species yet, but I’ve given up on lots of individuals in positions to make choices for large populations of people who don’t actually get asked what they think.
There’s only so much room on earth, and there are too many people here with nowhere to go. I have this wild fantasy about there actually being somewhere for them to go someday.
Peaceful humans don’t deserve to be wiped out because of the decisions of a few idiot leaders. I don’t think our leaders are truly representative of our species. If they were, I guess we’d all be leaders, wouldn’t we?
Oh, now I’m not so sure about that, because that would probably be mass murder - given that it’s quite likely there are lots and lots of alien races out there.
Yes but most of the expertise used to go to the moon in 1969 is now lost.
Most of the talent has either retired or died so the knowledge and experience they had will have to be rebuilt before a mission to Mars can be attempted.
Don’t care. A hundred billion trillion smart aliens could be out there, but I’d push the kill button in a second if it came down to a choice between them or us. I don’t care if they’re nonviolent peace loving artistic loving cuddly intelligent bunny rabbits. They’re stlll dead.
I didn’t say you did. But the fact remains that we live in a nation where the challenge, up until now, has been to convince people that global warming is real, and caused by human activity. It’s awfully convenient for those who don’t want to attack the problem if, two minutes after we’ve finally got a critical mass of people to agree on that, the problem is declared unsolvable by a whole bunch of nitwits.
So would I. In fact, I’d like it to do so by the means of most of the actual humans surviving.
What’s this, the World’s Biggest Strawman? I guess the Twine Ball had already been done, huh?
No shit, Sherlock. That was my point from the beginning; you were the one who started talking about us terraforming it.
Now that you’ve argued both sides of this one, mind if I just step out of the way and let you argue against yourself for awhile?
At least I don’t read War and Peace into a single smiley. :rolleyes:
Track record: sometimes we are, often we’re not. And the fate of hundreds of millions of people, and the well-being of billions more, depends on getting global warming right.
“IMO”? Yep, that’s a real authoritative cite you’ve got there.
But what’s the hurry about getting to another planet? The reality is, even if we don’t do jack shit about global warming between now and then, we’ll almost surely be in at least as good a position in 2050 as we are now with respect to colonizing an Earthlike planet elsewhere in the galaxy.
The problem is, it only has that limitation in your mind. There’s no reason the analogy shouldn’t apply just as well outside the transportation sector. The only reason it doesn’t (IYHO, that is) is because you want it to be an argument for going to the stars, and against addressing global warming.
I don’t know what the Latin name is, but you’re assuming your conclusion. It’s a very effective debate tactic - in your own mind.
But that’s a pretty damned small place, AFAICT.
“Learn to live in space”?? Sure.
Only before you do that, learn to live in a self-contained environment here on Earth. IOW, do the Biosphere 2 experiment again, only make it work this time.
If you can’t make it work here on Earth, then you can’t make it work in space. A little less glamorous, I know, than spending hundreds of billions on manned space missions, but if your goal is really to plant a self-sustaining human colony somewhere else, this is the problem you should solve first in order to prove you’re serious.
I get a kick out of talk that going to the moon will inspire anyone… lesse…
We last went to the moon in 1969 using 1960’s era technology. It required 8 years of intensive work, following Kennedy’s famous 1961 pronouncement.
Do I have all that correct?
Today, we think that 21ist century technology can maybe carry us back to the moon we last visited almost 4 decades ago by about 2018, some 11 years from now. I’m not even going to look up the comparative costs. I’ll just assume there is a factor of 10 before adjustments for inflation. In fact, consider that a cite. Consider me the cite. I could put it in Wiki in a heartbeat and it would probably appear in the Times by tomorrow.
Allow me to be the first to say, “whoopty fucking doodle doo.” :rolleyes:
That sure inspires me. It inspires me to curse the gods for allowing me to live to see the United States become a nation of pansy-asses who have a greater interest in teaching creationism in school, buying Chinese made crap from Wal-Mart, and telling their neighbors they than fight ‘teh gay’ if they only pray hard enough, than they have an interest in securing a meaningful future. America is raising a generation of jellybean-shaped, slovenly, video game masters - and we don’t even have a handful of magic beans to show for it.
Go back to the moon? Sure, why the fuck not? Maybe after that we can, I dunno, ‘invent’ an American made car that somebody would actually buy. And don’t come whining to me, “but I wuv my Chrysler 300!” Achtung, baby… even if that were still an American brand name, the parts come from about 15 different countries, none of which can you actually identify on a map. No. No, Utah is not a country!
I’ll tell you what we should be doing. We should be going to Mars. For the 200th time. To bring settlers to our newly founded cities. We should plant a big ol’ Amercan flag (with 52 stars after the annexing of Mexico and Canada) at the Martian pole and announce to the world, “Attention Earthlings: Fuck global warming! We have someplace else to go. How about you?!”
You said: “Ah, yes: the ol’ ‘deny global warming is real, until you can claim it’s too late to do anything about it’ gambit.” Sounds to me like you’re accusing me of denying global warming. I said Kyoto was too little too late. Why do you take that to mean my intent is to deny global warming until it’s too late? I’m not the people I think you’re upset with.
That’s the “all our eggs in one basket” idea again. Were we to get good at living in space, we could potentially have trillions of humans.
So you agree the actions of the US alone won’t save the earth from global warming?
Go back and check yourself out in post #67. Yeah, you brought up terraforming. I only used the term because you did. Personally, I think terraforming earth is a really, really bad idea, and not practical on other planets for who knows how many centuries. I also think it’s incorrect to even say terraforming WRT earth, but I figured I’d humor you. How does one go about making earth, more like earth?
Don’t sell yourself short.
I have to ask you again, who’s we? The US? Isn’t the world sick enough of our making their decisions for them? What do you mean about getting global warming right? Seems like we have. It is happening isn’t it? Or do you mean fixing it? Well how is building a moon base going to detract significantly from fixing global warming? It’s not like scientists aren’t already working on alternative energy.
I said IMO we haven’t solved global warming. I need a cite for that? Put down the pot pipe, pops.
Well here you’re just misunderstanding me. When I, and others talk about moon bases, or Mars bases, or “living in space” most of us and not talking about colonizing earthlike planets around the galaxy. That’s Star Trek. We’re just fine right here in our own solar system. We’ve got a perfectly nice star to provide us with unlimited energy, and we’ve got plenty of resources and “land area” once we get good at turning our practically unlimited resources into land. We’re not going to “colonize” anything by 2050 more than likely, but why couldn’t we have made a great deal of progress towards building self-sustaining settlements in space? Meanwhile back here on earth we can also make progress towards lessening our impact on the climate and - bonus! - maybe what we learn about using extraterrestrial resources could benefit earth too.
No, saying “100 years ago no one flew in planes and today 1 billion people/year fly” is not the same thing as saying “let’s drop everything we’re doing and fix earth’s climate.” We can make incredible advances in some areas, but fixing the planet? I don’t think so. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume there will be advances in transportation just as there will be increasingly fast computers. That doesn’t mean we’re going to invent teleportation, time travel, and faster-than-light spaceships.
Are we going to stop the floods, the droughts, the hurricanes, the colder winters, the hotter summers? It’s not me, it’s the global warming doom-sayers who tell me these things. X number of people are going to suffer and die. Stuff your Latin name for my debate tactic. I just read the news.
I’d like to see humanity expand beyond this one planet, you want humanity to stay right here, for better or worse. I’ve got a small mind?
Ah, yes: the 'ol keep 'em busy here on earth until it’s too late gambit.
Nuts to that. A working biosphere on earth is nothing like a working biosphere in space - the only place we can ever prove we can do it.
I’m sure there’s a Latin name this, but frankly I don’t care. Proving we can live in domes on earth before we prove we can live in domes on the moon is just silly. The conditions are entirely different and a moon colony doesn’t have to be entirely self=sustaining, not for a long time.
As for spending 100’s of billions on something, hey - if it comes down to transferring budgets I can think of a couple “War On…” activities we’re currently engaged in we could easily switch to your “save the earth” program which wouldn’t have to detract from our space program. BTW, the Chinese and Russians are going. Should the US just stay right here and “fix earth?”
