If the future of humanity lies with the ability to live in space and/or on other planets, why have humans not sent a man to the moon in over 30 years?
Why have we not sent humans to Mars?
Why do we still use rocket technology from the 1930s (chemical rockets)?
Does there have to a crisis (such as peak oil or massive global warming) before we get off of our collective asses?
Realistically, what year will we see the first manned mission to Mars?
PeakOil is You
Question for futurists
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Re: Question for futurists
by JohnDenver » Tue 22 Nov 2005, 05:45:26
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jato', 'I')f the future of humanity lies with the ability to live in space and/or on other planets, why have humans not sent a man to the moon in over 30 years?
You're starting from the wrong assumption. The future of humanity (at least in the next 100 years) doesn't lie in living in space. The future of humanity lies in harvesting energy and resources from space, and channeling them to the earth. This doesn't necessarily involve a lot of people in space. For the most part, it involves tele-operated and robotic equipment. There's no real reason for a person to actually be there. They can run the equipment from earth, like pilots who fly military planes remotely, or surgeons who operate remotely.
People are a positive detriment to a space mission and should be eliminated if at all possible. The food, oxygen, temperature/pressure control and other pampering that people need just makes spacecraft heavier and more expensive than they really need to be. The important point is to get capital and machinery in space (on the moon in particular) so we can start tapping its resources.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy have we not sent humans to Mars?
Because it's too difficult, and there's no point in it, beyond glorifying the nation, or the gee whiz value of finding life there. The benefits don't justify the costs.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy do we still use rocket technology from the 1930s (chemical rockets)?
Why do we still use handgun technology from the 1800s? Because it's effective, cheap and reliable!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')oes there have to a crisis (such as peak oil or massive global warming) before we get off of our collective asses?
Probably. A lot of education needs to be done to help people see expansion into space even as a *possibility*, or a thought worth entertaining. We live in an age like pre-1492 Europe. People are so conditioned to think that "Europe" is all there is; they can't even really imagine a "New World", let alone importing goods from the "New World".
It's kind of comical really. After the 70s, the space program was just staring at it's navel. People felt like we should be doing something in space, but they weren't very sure what it was.
At some point, though, the light bulb will switch on. Space is the answer to the problem of limits on growth. We can tap its resources (most importantly energy) and gradually extend our tentacles into it. It's the logical next step.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ealistically, what year will we see the first manned mission to Mars?
2040? 2050? Mars is a red herring. The entire ball game for the next 50 years is orbit, and the moon. That's where all the action will be. When will we return to the moon? By 2018 according to NASA:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ASA yesterday released its master plan for returning humans to the moon by 2018 and eventually sending them to Mars, choosing rocketry from the space shuttle era and drawing inspiration from the Apollo program that first put humans on the lunar surface 36 years ago.
[...]
Still, the new plan is "a significant advance over Apollo," he added, describing it as "Apollo on steroids." Among other differences, the new lander is larger, can put twice as many people on the moon, leave them there potentially for months instead of days, land them anywhere on the lunar surface instead of just at the equatorial region and leave the orbiting spacecraft without a crew onboard.
NASA Unveils $104 Billion Plan To Return to the Moon by 2018
Michael Griffin, the administrator of NASA, envisions the new moon mission as taking the first steps to harvest extraterrestrial resources and energy:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')ossibly, one of the most useful (resources) we will get from the moon is liquid oxygen. It can be extracted fairly easily from the lunar soil. If shipped from the moon to other storage depots, it will have very high value because it is half of the propellant needed for any exploration or any other rocketry activity over the next few decades. It is also reasonable to think about manufacturing solar arrays on the moon and then beaming that power around the Earth/moon system so that every spacecraft we build doesn't have to carry its own power system. Another reason we should return to the moon (first), is that we are not ready to go to Mars for a variety of engineering reasons. And the use of the moon and space station provide the best avenue for solving those problems.
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That's my best effort answer to your questions. Now here's mine for you: Why are you so impatient for technological progress, when you're so infinitely patient about collapse? If space isn't happening now, you tend to jump to the conclusion that it's not going to happen. But you could make the same argument about Malthusian collapse. Sure, we've been talking about Mars for 50 years, and we're still not there, but (on the other hand) we've been talking about Malthusian collapse for almost 200 years, and we're still not there either. Of course, to that you would say: "Just be patient, it'll come." But I could say the same thing to you about space: "Just be patient, it'll come."
