2 thumbs up for mankind

Many things have trickled down from the space faring business into practical use.
Thats what I hear from guys like Neil deGrasse Tyson.
What those things are, I'd go with Neps internet, and of course GPS and mapping. But what knowledge comes from beyond the moon who knows. Be the first to spit the furthest. Russians beat America to space, so America beat Russia to the moon but China's got way more stuff on the moon so whos the current space race with, China. Will there be a collab with China like there is currently a collab with Russia and USA.
 
Dauntless said:
With the gravity on Mars being something like 37% of Earth and all the books that were older than I was as a kid that I read on Mars being softer packed than Earth, (I'd have to DIG UP information to see if they've changed their minds on that) a meteor hit would put such dust in the air for perhaps a decade. Probably similar to what the nuke would cause.

We should power manned space flight with the same unlimited free lithium batteries we plan on for unlimited free electric transportation on Earth. The same boondoggle that powers this board can power conquering the universe.
Click to expand...
I don't think they'll dig the hole in 10 yrs with bots and the nuke would leave it toxic for longer

Nuclear Fusion - that's that answer - run it on lithium that way, lots of heavy water in space and you get to reuse the 18650s
Oh, nope, that's 40 yrs away still (always)
 
markz said:
Many things have trickled down from the space faring business into practical use.
Click to expand...

That's true, and probably why it's OK to keep pissing away so much $ on space flight. Who knows, we might just get lucky and make the "Big" discovery needed for true interplanetary space flight. Guaranteed that fossil fuel won't cut it.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
🧗‍♂️🌌
 
Here's an interesting little datum for y'all.

Over the last 20 years or so, the median cost of launching a kilogram of mass to low earth orbit has dropped from very approximately $20k to very approximately $10k. Per kilogram.

Another: In the same period, the global GDP per capita has increased to about $11k. Per human being, per year.

Getting to Mars within a human time frame takes over twice as much delta V as getting to low earth orbit. That doesn't make it twice as hard, or half as efficient. It's a lot harder and less efficient than that. Basically, to get to Mars from orbit, you have to start with all the same resources that you would have used to get the same payload to orbit from the ground. At $10k per kg of everything, that gets really expensive really quickly. And that assumes you won't be trying to come back.

It costs as much to put a kilogram of anything into low orbit as the average human produces in a year. We can't afford, apparently, the cost of putting the brakes on runaway climate disaster on our home planet. Yet some people think we can afford to colonize Mars. I think they haven't done the math.
 
There's dozens of technologies and tweaks we could employ to dramatically lower our carbon emissions at a net negative cost. It's not an economics problem, it's a human behavior, priorities, and choice problem.

There's tons of very low hanging fruits to pick for lowering our CO2 and other pollutant outputs per human. The really disappointing thing is that even most environmentalists aren't talking about them, since they're more focused on getting government to tax and regulate things rather than provide solutions via engineering.

..that kind of engineering is sort of what this place is all about, eh?

But finding a "planet B" is still worthwhile. And yes it is ungodly expensive still.. but like you mentioned, prices are dropping on space propulsion, just as they will for nearly any advanced technology that sees increasing adoption rates.
 
neptronix said:
And yes it is ungodly expensive still.. but like you mentioned, prices are dropping on space propulsion, just as they will for nearly any advanced technology that sees increasing adoption rates.
Click to expand...

Tech gets cheaper (and defense industry graft can get squeezed out), but these days energy does not become cheaper over time. The tyranny of the rocket equation is fundamentally an energy and propellant mass problem, not a tech problem.
 
If you take inflation into account, the price of energy is actually decreasing. Gasoline has been 2-3 bucks a gallon for decades now. it's just that we continue to have higher expectations and want to use increasingly larger amounts of it.

Yes, we're going to need exponentially cheaper and denser fuel to get further into space. Because space is sprawled out like mad. This is the biggest and craziest engineering problem one could tackle!
 
I'd say there's as good an arguement for a bigger better space station
Escaping one gravity well just to drop into another one may not be the best plan, or at least the main one.

But a backup plan isn't bad, all eggs in one basket isn't great either
Can't escape human nature though and once the super rich think they can live on Mars...

GDP includes things like banking and the stock market and I'm not sure how selling futures helps us build rockets
 
BobBob said:
GDP includes things like banking and the stock market and I'm not sure how selling futures helps us build rockets
Click to expand...

Meaning the real productive economy has even less juice to squeeze out for resource sinks like space travel, and each kg in low orbit actually represents more than an average man-year of productivity.
 
Chalo said:
Meaning the real productive economy has even less juice to squeeze out for resource sinks like space travel, and each kg in low orbit actually represents more than an average man-year of productivity.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, but there isn't a shortage of money, just fairness of distribution and a global tragety of the commons
If we could change human nature we wouldn't need a defense budget

Rockets to mars seem a fairlly harmless folly in the short to medium term and I reckon once they've spent a few million lives' worth of effort on building a greenhouse and installed a gardener it might be, um inspirational like the pyramids or something.

Equally likely redbull racing will sponser a low gravity sports event on the newly built mountain
 
markz said:
Governments do and will lose money.
Click to expand...

They will lose YOUR money for you and demand more. If you don't have any more they'll push you out of your home so someone who DOES have it can live there and give it to them.

So all the squalling back when about the over a decade cost of going to the moon led to the analysis that the money redirected would have accomplished well under 10% of the urban renewal the critics claimed they wanted it spent on. Meanwhile it did create better jobs for those who did get to work on it, they went home and spent money, etc. Then there's the technological advancement, the kids growing up planning college because of the space race, etc.

I wonder how MUCH more positive came from the race to the moon than ever could have come from allowing the government to play politics with urban renewal.
 
There is only one reason to continue Space tecnologies,.....
..and that is to keep pace with, or better still be superior to,..the other National Powers doing the same with unpredictable intentions. Who trusts China, Russia, etc tc, to develop Space technologies for strictly peaceful or mutually beneficial purposes.
Regan had it sorted with the “Star Wars” type defence programm.....we need that more than we need to dig an impossible hole on Mars.!
 
Hillhater said:
There is only one reason to continue Space tecnologies,.......and that is to keep pace with, or better still be superior to,..the other National Powers doing the same with unpredictable intentions.
Click to expand...
The person/company who starts colonies on other planets, and/or starts mining other planets and asteroids, will win the game no matter what other countries do. Indeed, such an effort will render terrestrial countries somewhat irrelevant.
Who trusts China, Russia, etc tc, to develop Space technologies for strictly peaceful or mutually beneficial purposes.
Regan had it sorted with the “Star Wars” type defence programm.....
Click to expand...
Riight. Because all the advances in space in the past 20 years have come from the government, not private companies.
 
JackFlorey said:
The person/company who starts colonies on other planets, and/or starts mining other planets and asteroids, will win the game no matter what other countries do. Indeed, such an effort will render terrestrial countries somewhat irrelevant.
Click to expand...

Umm, no. The person/company/country that does that, goes broke first.
 
Chalo said:
JackFlorey said:
The person/company who starts colonies on other planets, and/or starts mining other planets and asteroids, will win the game no matter what other countries do.
Click to expand...
Umm, no. The person/company/country that does that, goes broke first.
Click to expand...

https://now.northropgrumman.com/can-you-really-become-a-mars-land-owner/

You mean like the way the original Roanoke colony of Sir Walter Raleigh had everyone vanish completely before the first round of supplies could arrive?

I remember this woman from the Mars One group came to my school some years back. She's there to speak as a potential astronaut. If I remembered the whole story just so, it's terribly funny. But it's been awhile. Basically though, she talks to the hall full of people about fund raising needs. Basically, her job as a potential astronaut was to go out and raise money. Any technical question you asked resulted in the answer that she didn't really work with that, she was to raise money. I was just waiting for her to pass the hat. Oh, did I mention she seemed more like a potential Playboy Playmate than a potential astronaut? That might have made her a better fund raiser.

And Mars One is still trying to be the first to dig a big hole on Mars.

http://www.mars-one.com/
 
JackFlorey said:
Hillhater said:
There is only one reason to continue Space tecnologies,.......and that is to keep pace with, or better still be superior to,..the other National Powers doing the same with unpredictable intentions.
Click to expand...
The person/company who starts colonies on other planets, and/or starts mining other planets and asteroids, will win the game no matter what other countries do. Indeed, such an effort will render terrestrial countries somewhat irrelevant.
Click to expand...
Which is why domination and control of Earths space , orbits, etc......are critical.
 
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-lunar-sampling-robot-has-landed-on-the-moon/ar-BB1bxjCa
I know they have way more landers and probes on the moon, plus they went to the dark side of the moon to collect samples and data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_on_the_Moon

How deep were those samples taken.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union collected Moon material throughout the Space Race in the 1960s and ’70s, and US scientists are still studying these samples today. The US brought back 382kg of lunar dust and rocks during this time, and the Soviet missions returned less than half a kilogram.
Click to expand...

So Mars is an attempt to distract from the other countries study of the moon.
 
Chalo said:
Umm, no. The person/company/country that does that, goes broke first.
Click to expand...
$2.5 Bn cost of sending 900Kg (2000lbs) means picking up solid bricks of gold wouldn't be worth doing

Mining is only worthwhile for resources if a colony is worthwhile as a long term plan, or for the publicity, but there are no return trips or profit for investors except here, at least for a lifetime or two.

I reckon Tesla are doing ok out of it. Lots of rich kids buying a toy spaceship car, also it is reasearch which is one way we can improve lives without just using more resources.

I see a future Tesla Mars eco bubble house, but owned by the rich and built somewhere nice
 
Chalo said:
Umm, no. The person/company/country that does that, goes broke first.
Click to expand...
I guess so! After all, both Tesla and SpaceX went broke trying to be the first company in new fields. And Qualcomm is now out of business after trying to bring digital communications to the world.
 
JackFlorey said:
Chalo said:
Umm, no. The person/company/country that does that, goes broke first.
Click to expand...
I guess so! After all, both Tesla and SpaceX went broke trying to be the first company in new fields. And Qualcomm is now out of business after trying to bring digital communications to the world.
Click to expand...

Like one of my buddies during the internet bubble used to say, "every business plan has to have a place where the money comes out".

I don't know what net revenues can be made from manned flights to space, but trying to get to Mars would erase any of those if they exist. Plutocrat tourism might break even for low orbit, and helium 3 mining might pay for moon trips, maybe? Possibly? It's way more expensive in both labor and natural resources than our minds can get around. Nothing on Mars or in the asteroid belt will pay the cost to get there and come back with the goods.

Find a source of energy that's truly unlimited and truly free, and we'll talk. Until then, it's like transporting a car factory from Miami to Seattle to get a free napkin, and then setting up the factory and building a new car and driving back in it before you can wipe your mouth with the napkin.
 
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