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Well, today is the 40th anniversary of the most monumental occasion in the history of life on earth: The landing of men on the moon.
What should the next generation do for an encore, since the generation following Armstrong's decided to waste their time and resources on a frivolous pursuit of socialism and hedonism?
Should the next generation of young continue to lie to themselves and continue root in the mud trying to rescue the failed socialist experiment, or should they raise their heads and aim for the stars?
I say to aim high.
Well, today is the 40th anniversary of the most monumental occasion in the history of life on earth: The landing of men on the moon.
What should the next generation do for an encore, since the generation following Armstrong's decided to waste their time and resources on a frivolous pursuit of socialism and hedonism?
Should the next generation of young continue to lie to themselves and continue root in the mud trying to rescue the failed socialist experiment, or should they raise their heads and aim for the stars?
I say to aim high.
I see. So you want to spend taxpayer money on frivolous stunts, instead of on things that are actually useful to people. Got it.
Ok so, instead of attacking you like Kandahar did, I will humor you with my opinion.
I don't think the younger generation has been frivolous, its just that there have been a wave of newer and bigger problems. However, I think ignoring the exploration of the moon and Mars is ridiculous. There should be more of that. The more research we put into this kind of thing, the closer we are to finding other planets and galaxies that can sustain life.
I see.
You can't wait the scant minutes needed for the poll options to be posted.
IMO the moon should be claimed as US territory, if the natives don't protest, and used as a military installation for national defense and subsequently developed into an civillian commercial industrial playground.
Your assumption that space isn't useful is illustrative of your ignorance, and not a reflection of reality.
Other
Nothing. Abandon space to the robots.
There is nothing that human astronauts can do on other worlds, which robots can't do more efficiently, cheaply, easily, and safely.
IMO the moon should be claimed as US territory, if the natives don't protest, and used as a military installation for national defense and subsequently developed into an civillian commercial industrial playground.
Except get themselves off of a lump of dirt
Mining asteroids and such is a pipe dream.
There is nothing that human astronauts can do on other worlds, which robots can't do more efficiently, cheaply, easily, and safely.
Space colonization will eventually become technologically feasible...several decades from now. There is no need we need to send humans to other worlds right NOW, when we have pressing concerns here at home.
We should focusing first on making it cheap to get into space. Any space related activity from benefit from such research, so it should be top priority.
Manned space activities should be phased out whenever possible using robots.
The logistics of getting people into space and keeping them functional are far too high. We managed to send robots to mars without a huge problem, and but we are decades away from being able to send people.
Finally, we should look at some commercial activity in addition to research. Observing asteroids for valuable materials and investigating microgravity manufacturing would be good first steps.
Space technology certainly has its uses, but we have to remember its not the cold war anymore. We aren't trying to one up the soviets, we are looking at practical uses. We all talk about putting a man on the moon, but satellite technology was actually the most important thing our space program ever brought.
I didn't say that space wasn't useful. But it's certainly not very useful right NOW. Your fantasies about using the moon as a military base and industrial playground are a LONG way from being a reality. Until we have workable nuclear fusion and mature nanotechnology, there is really no point sending people to the moon or any other world. It's just too expensive and impractical.
There are already treaties banning claims of ownership over territory in space, and that's the way it should stay.
Until it is possible for people to genuinely reside on some celestial body space should remain in the realm of science and belong to all mankind
Tell that to Skylab. And that was only in LEO.
Tell it to the Hubble Space Telescope, and oh, gee, that was only in LEO, too.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:Tell that to the Huygens Titan atmospheric probe and lander. Oops....noboby told the robot to turn on the super-stable oscillator, so an entire experiment dependent on that was useless.
Scarecrow Akhbar said:Yes, our pressing concerns right now are killing socialism so we will be free enough later to be able to afford to colonize the solar system. Ingsoc and it's real world equivalents aren't all that hip on freedom or even satisfying the needs they're promising to satisfy, if only they had enough POWER over you to make it happen.
Orion.
Robots should be phased out because it's cheaper and more entertaining to make people.
You mean outside of the fact that we keep making mistakes here on earth and wrecking them?
No, now we should be trying to one-up the Chinese.
Abrogate them.
If the people of the United States invests a hundred billion dollars to exploit the only deposit of water found on the moon (if we ever find one) there's no logical reason why some upstart who didn't pay the cost should have any sort of claim to it.
"Belong to all mankind".
Dog vomit socialist collectivist nonsense. The territory and resources should belong to the people paying to exploit them, for their own profit.
Why is it a pipe dream? Asteroids exist, they have valuable material we need and we have been able to reach them for decades. The only unsolved questions are how to use robot miners and how to make the whole process cost effective. There is nothing to suggest that either is impossible or even unlikely.
The energy necessary to get there, mine things, load them up, send them back will far outweigh any "benefit" of mining out there.
Not to mention the immense technological mountain of I guess building robots according to you, getting them there, and successfully being able to mine on some scale which makes it worth while.
This isn't Armageddon, we can't just land things on an asteroid and say "mine this".
There's huge problems with chaotic orbits, control of the robots I guess we're using, mining, collection, transportation, etc.
And no matter what, we sit at the bottom of a gravity well, we'll always need to overcome that. It takes a lot of energy.
Skylab and the Hubble Telescope are not on other worlds. They were/are in space, a few hundred miles above the earth's surface.
It would be several orders of magnitude cheaper to send a replacement probe than to send astronauts to Titan. With our present technological capabilities, it probably isn't even POSSIBLE to send astronauts to Titan (except on a suicide mission that may not even produce the desired results anyway). Furthermore, pointing out a design flaw in a robot does nothing to further your argument that human astronauts would be more reliable.
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