is sending gear/people into space bad for the planet ?

[brantuk]

7 minutes ago, cuivenion said:

Well that just depressed the hell out of me. Doomed either way.?

Sorry matey - my meds have just kicked in - the missus says I'm all doom 'n' gloom when I take my pills. That's quiet apart from my normal jovially cycnical self lol. Look on the bright side - it's all over within 90yrs for most of us - so it's all of no consequence anyway lol.

[xtreemchaos]

wow got some well different views, all very interesting.

I resided myself years ago that indeed in the long run we are doomed, and I think maybe " tongue in cheek" we have past the point of no return already, with no birth control across the planet to reduce the pop , the earth is overrun with humans and theres nowhere left for other life, its going to be easter island world wide, I think the only chance we have is to get off planet and go mess up some other worlds .. charl..

Ps once we leave this planet and solarsystem and look back towards Earth we will see a big sign post saying " KEEP OUT you may be eaten or worse past this point"

[Macavity]

In some sense it must be possible to work out the amount/type of
fuel used by all spacecraft since some "t-zero". I see someone has
worked out that a "Saturn V" generated sufficient power to light up
New York for 75 minutes. Of course New York was never powered
by Kerosene / LOX! But this might give some sort of perspective.

In fact one could convert this to UNITS of "transatlantic flights"...
"how-to-work commutes" etc. etc. MY gut instinct suggests that
the space program has probably damaged the earth less(?) than
some of these mundane (and popularly accepted!) "pollutions".

To the mix one could add a few tens of kg. of Plutonium which
fortunately were not deposited on earth but will be on Saturn!

Aside: I had previously held significant confidence "science" was
able to calculate "most things". To a great extent scientists were
as unbiased as they could possibly be. Peer review & consensus
would root out "discrepancies"! I not sure I believe this now...  

P.S. On the other hand, I happily believe in Higgs Bosons etc. 

[Dave In Vermont]

17 hours ago, xtreemchaos said:

 .. charl..

Ps once we leave this planet and solarsystem and look back towards Earth we will see a big sign post saying " KEEP OUT you may be eaten or worse past this point"

Nothing has led me to conclude that such a 'sign' (or something serving this function) does not, in fact, already exist! If it doesn't...well...it really should.

Argue?

Dave

[xtreemchaos]

thanks Dave, I totally agree, I think the S@N will proberly do a show about it one day .. charl. 

[Macavity]

N.B. If a piece of Space Junk lands in your garden 
you might be a LITTLE wary re. the contents?!? 
e.g. things like Hydrazine: Poison, Carcinogenic etc.

The thread prompted me to look up a LOT of stuff!
(Saturn V) "F1" Engines... Types of Rocket Fuel...
How they MANAGED to make such things work! 

Interesting NASA are trying to "reverse engineer"
some of this technology! Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos
recovering "Apollo fallout" from Deep Oceans? 

Etc., etc., etc. (I leave you to explore!) 

[geordie85]

Unfortunately because of our own mentality to this thing called "money", that has absolutely no value apart from the value we give it, we are bound and gagged and will never truly advance as a civilisation simply because of the greed of the few.

I've never understood why we can't do everything we do without the use of money. Without money the resources are still there, our ability is still there and we'd be alot more open to other forms of fuel instead of relying on conventional, expensive fossil fuels.

Our planet is a living organism and, like ourselves, can heal itself. Unless of course we go beyond the point of repair.

[Erla]

1 hour ago, geordie85 said:

Unfortunately because of our own mentality to this thing called "money", that has absolutely no value apart from the value we give it, we are bound and gagged and will never truly advance as a civilisation simply because of the greed of the few.

I've never understood why we can't do everything we do without the use of money. Without money the resources are still there, our ability is still there and we'd be alot more open to other forms of fuel instead of relying on conventional, expensive fossil fuels.

Our planet is a living organism and, like ourselves, can heal itself. Unless of course we go beyond the point of repair.

Communists tried to live without money.. Lots of issues lol 

Money in itself is not "evil". It really makes obtaining resources much easier. Allows us to trade. 

And greed is something that I think is inbuilt genetically. Animals are greedy too. Dogs do not like sharing their food, no mater how much they might have. And the biggest stick is always the best. Doesn't matter that it doesn't fit through the gates. 

Sometimes I think we are not much smarter than dogs. 

[xtreemchaos]

1 hour ago, geordie85 said:

will never truly advance as a civilisation simply because of the greed of the few.

the only problem is getting the greedy few to lissen to common folk, thay are deaf to our voice, peacefull protest can win small battles but the bigger stuff like saving the planet if it affects there income thay pretend to hear but it gos straight over there head, thay should lissen because history tell us it dosnt end well for super rich not hearing the poor and by poor I mean if you have less than a million. charl.

[geordie85]

1 hour ago, Erla said:

Communists tried to live without money.. Lots of issues lol

Sometimes I think we are not much smarter than dogs. 

That's only because the mentality is wrong. Unfortunately it's something that will never change. 

All we can do is smile and carry on.

[xtreemchaos]

17 hours ago, Erla said:

Communists

carnt talk about politics, but if the man at the top had the same as the man at the bottom it would work, its because the man at the top lives like the king of the world with his cronys, and everybody else lives on turnips and hardship, it has to be = across the board for it to work.  charl.

[xtreemchaos]

getting back to the space post, I think  the next step we need to do is get a base on the moon, its been too long since we have been there, my idea would be to have a halfway space station then move onto the moon in steps, its in my mind the next bridge to getting off the planet, loads of problems forseen but I think we could do it, it only takes the will and cash to do it.  charl.

[Erla]

50 minutes ago, xtreemchaos said:

carnt talk about politics, but if the man at the top had the same as the man at the bottom it would work, its because the man at the top lives like the king of the world with his cronys, and everybody else lives on turnips and hardship, it has to be = across the board for it to work.  charl.

That's the thing - power corrupts. I kind of hope that one day all humanity will become one nation. We could achieve so much more united. 

I like the moon base idea. Much less gravity to overcome and that could result in new, more capable designs. We already have experience building modular stations in space, so why not something similar on the moon? 

 

[xtreemchaos]

Thanks Eria, yer I see bases very much like the great A C Clark , and less gravity would solve a lot of problems and take a lot of space related work off planet, we could build bigger, better space craft getting most of what we need from the moon. I totally agree. id love to see something there before I kick the tripod "bucket". charl.

[brantuk]

2 hours ago, Erla said:

That's the thing - power corrupts. I kind of hope that one day all humanity will become one nation. We could achieve so much more united.

I don't hope we have one nation - if I landed on the moon I'd want it all for myself and just my friends and family (and I don't mean facebook friends). Oh and a few families to provide staff for Moondonalds, and a film company for the latest blurays, and a beach - it's gotta have a beach for swimming and jet skiing, and a good free doctors surgery and pharmacy, and an astronomy club of course. Better let FLO have a shop there as well I cos I'll need some free gear........ oh and gravity boots.

(And everyone else can have their own planet cos there's plenty to go round lol)

[xtreemchaos]

great plan Brantuk, id add it to the F1 tour aswell. but think about the size of mirrors we could make, thay would be the size of the biggist radio telescopes here on earth but optical, not sure how thay would perform with the glare on the moon,. charl.

[Erla]

Brantuk, I'm beginning to suspect you are little prince's evil brother   admit it - it was you who downed de sent egziperi for making your weakling sibling famous.

 You are evil genius, I'll give you that. A gram of moon rock goes for 50k USD, so.. 

laughs aside- surely there's a way to make a profit of moon missions? One kilo of moon dust costs the same as launch to low orbit. So if left Neil (or Brentuk) there and put a bag of local moon rock in his seat... It does make financial sense.

[MarsG76]

I think that while there is a "dollar" value placed on something like space exploration there will not be much progress in space exploration in our life times. 

I'm afraid that were just going to be doing the same thing over and over again, launch/build new telescopes every few decades, differences in each will be seeing in different wavelengths and using later sensors.

But as far as even sending a human to mars.. I'm not holding my breath... "too expensive", no sense of adventure and no "cold war threatening bases on mars/moon" for the super powers nations of greed to do anything but talk about "future" missions.