Posted on 09/24/2007 10:41:14 AM PDT by Names Ash Housewares
I guess I had to be the first to mention this:
I did buy the soundtrack and DVD in spite of the problems the mini series had.
None of that is science. It’s all engineering and prospecting. Science would be right where it is without any space exploration at all.
Someone will bring up the argument that the Hubble is doing pure science, but the twin Kecks are doing a lot more at about 1/500th the price. "Pure Science" is a resource allocation problem. How much to you plunder the taxpayers for it, and how do you allocate the plundered resources to get the most result for your dollar. Sending a man to Mars is probably the most wasteful thing that NASA has ever come up with.
IF they want to colonize someplace awful they should try antartica. It has no resources but rocks and ice; however, it has air and it's tens of thousands of times cheaper to get there.
think again... there are thousands of offshoots. I am sorry but you are demonstrating a serious lack of understanding of scientific progress.
Do you know some people wanted to close the U.S. Patent office in the erlay 1900's because we hade the steam engine and everything that could be invented already was?
The benefits gained from the moon mission are well known and are not 'my assessment' or 'likely negligable'. Never substitute your opinion for knowlege. Study more.
think again... there are thousands of offshoots. I am sorry but you are demonstrating a serious lack of understanding of scientific progress.
Do you know some people wanted to close the U.S. Patent office in the early 1900's because we had the steam engine and everything that could be invented already was?
The benefits gained from the moon mission are well known and are not just 'my assessment' or 'likely negligable'.
Never substitute your opinion for knowlege. Just because you don't think something is true, does not mean it is not true. Study more.
Going to the Moon is easy--it's only a three-day trip each way between the Earth and the Moon. Going to Mars is quite something else, with a trip that will take anywhere between two and eight months each way (depending on the type of vehicle used) and living on Mars for one year or more.
I do think that we will find some sort of primitive life on Mars by 2013, thanks to the findings from the Phoenix lander next year, the Mars Science Laboratory in 2010, and the ESA ExoMars lander in 2013-2014. Once we find those lifeforms expect a major effort to go to Mars using nuclear-powered ion rockets.
Even HAARP is doing more and at the cost of a few dipoles and a couple supercomputers. I won’t quibble about the cost and the waste of money, but I do object to the ultimate pointlessness of thinking gov’t will ever develop outer space and establish civilization out there. They can’t get it done, but they sure can keep it from getting done.
How about we pay off our national debt by 2037 and just send a robot to Mars?
Except that most of the supposed "offshoots" of the manned space program are total myths.
Do you know some people wanted to close the U.S. Patent office in the erlay 1900's because we hade the steam engine and everything that could be invented already was?
And I'm not one of them. My opposition to manned space exploration (viz. unmanned) has nothing to do with opposing progress. I just don't think that it passes any remotely rational cost/benefit test.
The benefits gained from the moon mission are well known and are not 'my assessment' or 'likely negligable'.
Such as...?
What was the last NASA microgravity study that actually made it into a peer reviewed scientific journal? NASA and the ISS have had some serious problems with that in the past.
Name 50 (or 49 not counting Tang)
The city of Moresville, Utopia, Mars was founded in 2034 by the Pacific & Orbital Space Navigation company, the long-distance shipping branch of the P&O Rail Road (NYSE: PNO), owner/operators of the commercial "space elevator" railway system. An important stop on P&O's Asteroid Belt run, Moresville boasts a population of 4,400. The city was built in 2035 shortly after the the unveiling of the LG-Philips-Westinghouse Cavortron® gravity drive system.
After a reception and tour of the city, the NASA astronauts, who spent three years in hypersleep aboard the Ares XXI en route to Mars, were returned to Earth aboard P&O's gravity-drive cruiseliner SS Percival Lowell. Although surprised by the quickness of the two-week trip and the privatization of the former U.S. government space agency, they each accepted an emeritus position at its successor, North American Space & Aeronautics, Inc. (NYSE: NASA).
If it were done by private industry it would be. However 2037 is about 20 years ahead of when this government waste of an agency will get around to landing a shoddily put together spaceship designed 40 years earlier. Sort of like the spacebus NASA currently keeps sending up
Watching bugs flail around and plants grow in confused directions until they die is hardly science. Physics is science. Astronomy is science. Even chemistry is science. Biology is sort of science sometimes, but doing biology in space is pointless if we are not going out there ourselves. Science is a flimsy reason for a space program.
I’d put up pretty good odds on two subjects here:
1. that it doesn’t get done on time
2. if it gets done at all it will be over budget.
“If it were done by private industry it would be.”
No one is standing in their way.
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