[Sixstrings]

Ran across this,

There's a crazy new engine some guy cooked up. Was supposed to be "impossible." Uses microwaves and something about quantum vacuum virtual plasma.

So anyhow NASA tested the idea and it works. This kind of engine could cut a Mars trip down from 8 months to 2 weeks.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ASA Tests 'Impossible' Engine, Finds Out It's Really Fast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxRdNj0_8JU

[Withnail]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'S')ix, 3-D printing is simple, elegant, inexpensive, fast, and imaginative for one simple reason: it prints plastic, not steel. It's a design and prototyping device. It will not manufacture solid metal replacement part for space mining, propulsion, habitat/containment. That requires incredible tensile and compressive strength at extreme temperatures and pressures, plus UV resistance in deep space without protective atmosphere of earth.

[RepublicanfromEngland]

The Moon and Mars are the closest of locations, anywhere has much more challenging problems.

A trip to Jupiter is half a decade, never mind a moon in orbit.

Sure a probe could be sent there, but personnel, not for a long while.

[radon1]

Antarctics.

Much closer and far more human-friendly. Lots of fresh water. No queues to colonise it though.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'D')o you know about quantum mechanics? How things can be in different places at the same time? All zeros can be ones, and all ones zeros, all at once?

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'R')an across this,

There's a crazy new engine some guy cooked up. Was supposed to be "impossible." Uses microwaves and something about quantum vacuum virtual plasma.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('radon1', 'A')ntarctics.

Much closer and far more human-friendly. Lots of fresh water. No queues to colonise it though.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'S')ure that's a long time from now -- hundreds of millions of years -- but if we don't take first steps then it will never happen. If civilization collapses and we regress and have a dark age and lose spacefaring tech, then it may never happen.

We have to use this window of opportunity to take those first steps. It's like how Columbus sailed to the Americas with those three little ships. And then it took a good century after that for colonization to really take off. But it never would have, if he'd never sailed, if those first little colonies were never planted.

[Quinny]

Still searching for a free lunch?

[Withnail]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')
There's a lot of ways society could collapse on earth, so you need those breakaway colonies on the moon and out in the jovian system, as insurance. Humanity has to start expanding. Being stuck on earth is like a bottleneck on one continent.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '
')By "we" I guess you mean the gubmint. How much TAXES are you willing to pay for a gubmint project that may (or maybe it may not work) benefit some people hundreds of generations in the future, probably not including your own personal descendants.

TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES TAXES

[Sixstrings]

To answer your question another way, Keith..

You're basically saying why would people want to pay taxes for future generations.

Yet you and dohboi and others want a lot more money going into climate change. And I have no idea where the hell that money goes to.

We had these same kinds of arguments back int he 1960s. People wanted more money for welfare.

So whatever, okay you spend money on welfare in the 1960s and don't go to the moon and then in fifty years YOU STILL HAVE PEOPLE ON WELFARE ANYWAY and you never went to the moon, either.

Apollo program was actually a very large expenditure, about $200 billion in 2014 dollars, and we've never done another like it. Other than the world wars, the Apollo program was the most monumental thing the US government has ever done. And it was a brilliant success.

Egypt has its pyramids.

China has the great wall.

And our civilization landed on the moon. Only America could have done it. The Soviets were close, they were trying, but couldn't. And now, half a century later, it's a big deal for other nations to land their first moon probes and plan for a manned landing. We did it first, though, and we did it with slide rules and archaic computers and we had to invent all this technology from scratch, good ole rocketry and rocket plumbing and the best scientists and engineers.

For goodness sake, did you know solar polar was developed because of the space program? So many advances, like that.

If you care about climate change and the environment then you HAVE TO BE a space supporter. That's satellites to study the sun with, and to study climate on earth, and to learn from climate on other moons.

And every tech needed for space will directly help climate change mitigation. Because everything needed for space means energy efficiency, and smaller better tech.

How can some of you guys be so interested in climate science, yet you're not interested in space science?

Science is science, you don't find it fascinating? Learning new things that humanity never knew before?

Btw, in 2015 NASA's New Horizons probe will arrive at Pluto. No telescope has ever been able to see what Pluto looks like, it's so far out. It's the closest of the kuiyper belt of ice dwarfs at the outer solar system -- a massive ring of moon like worlds, a whole lot of them, and we know little about it.

Pluto is a binary system with a smaller body called Charon and actually two other little moons so there are four spinning around. Pluto and Charon are binary though, orbiting each other, neither orbiting the other.

Pluto and Charon have a strange eliptical orbit and when they get closer to the sun the ice melts and they get a weird atmosphere going on.

So anyhow this will be exciting. We're going to get great pictures of these planetoids.

Every mission NASA does, adds new information and scientific knowledge that we didn't know before. You don't think that's worth it? What, are we just supposed to be stupid apes stuck on this planet forever and never understand or take a look at what's out there in the universe?

Even the ancient greeks were fascinated by the planets and stars. Well, we have rockets and can actually go to them, but we've got people bitching they'd rather see the money spent on welfare, or more mansions in the Hamptons for useless internet entrepreneurs. How the hell does a new Facebook game advance humanity. We need some old school industry again, and that's going to be space tech, that's why I like Elon Musk so much because after Paypal he went out there and did something REAL -- space capsules and rocket engines and it's real industry and all made in the USA.

Here's an idea, spend all that money on developing a massive American space industry and require it employ Americans and then you take care of two issues at once.

We have the resources to do this, in the USA. And we should. Because China plans to. We could be sitting pretty here, #1 in energy, and then stake out some new claim and be #1 in space. Let Russia fight wars in the Ukraine for another hundred years if they want to, and let's go do something new.

We should do this, just as Spain set off for the western hemisphere and laid claim to it, and populated continents. And wound up very rich for a long time and the New World was a Spanish world. And people said Columbus was an idiot too, at the time.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Withnail', 'H')umans can't live long term on the moon. Too much radiation, gravity too low.

Babies would have to be born on the moon in your scenario. They wouldn't develop properly in low gravity.

[Withnail]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')
If children are raised in low g, or zero g, then yes they'd be weak but -- they'd also just be suited to their environment.

[RepublicanfromEngland]

No, sadly space flight is full of difficulties. A lunar outpost was possible but just too expensive.

Private space flight may never do what government initiated flight has done.

Sixstrings you are too eager to type about space flight like it is just do able with no real problem. As for the Russian Federation, well they share their comitment to the station. The Russian agency has no plans. The government just can't afford it there.

[dinopello]

Space station resupply rocket blows up a couple hours ago (with video)

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')n unmanned Antares rocket exploded six seconds after liftoff from NASA’s Wallops Island launch facility in Virginia late this evening.

The rocket, made by Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences, is a two-stage launch vehicle designed to ferry payloads to the International Space Station.

The rocket was carrying a Cygnus spacecraft packed with 5,055 pounds of supplies, science experiments, and equipment, according to Reuters. The rocket also carried a satellite owned by Planetary Resources, Inc. of Redmond, Wash.

The Orbital Sciences Corporation (ORB) stock fell after the explosion. As of 6:45 p.m. the share price fell 5.86 points (-19.30%) in after hours trading