Lunacy from Brussels

Why? Earth has inhabitable empty spaces that are far easier to conquer (and are far more comfortable) than the best planet imaginable.

Thomas

apparently people Live in New York

Darwinism.........

martin

Actually quite alot !

Now if the USA would really get stuck in, maybe a hell of a lot more could be acheived ?

Safe drinking water for all and a cure for malaria would save millions of lives every year.

No argument wrt weapons research but I reckon there's a few things at home that are more deserving than a new space race right now.

Space research should concentrate on robotic missions, not an idiotic desire to send 'men' to places that aren't any use to us.

Graham

:-P !

My point is that running way from the problem is no answer anyway, even if it was practical.

The best way to deal with culture clashes is to examine the underlying reasons and hopefully learn something constructive from that.

Graham

From that artificially limited choice - no question. B of course.

I reckon our own planet needs some tlc first though.

And the UK, France, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan.

Graham

Oil rigs, industrial plant and the like are small change compared to 'space rockets' !

They were looking for it in a practical place sunshine ! Name the same planet that can sustain life. And they could get there using simple, reliable, proven and above al cheap methods of transport.

You clealry don't understand what I'm saying,

That bit might be possible. Coming back rather less so ! So it would indeed be 'some time' alive on the surface. ;-)

Ignoring for a tensy weensy second the fact that no-one has a suitable launcher nor an interplanetery craft, and if they did exist that the energy issues weren't a problem just consider the following simple practical issues ....

How much food and water would be required to sustain life for the duration of an interplanetary trip ? I'll bet it would make such a venture prohibitive.

In order to make travelling time practical, the speed of any such craft would ensure its instant destruction if it hit only the tiniest meorite.

Of course if we had the 'shields' that would be ok ?

Graham

And that's where the smart money should really be. Sustainable systems.

Graham

Einstein invented the Atom bomb.

Perhaps the quotation marks were intended to be around "they".

If you mean that there are enough resources on Earth to send a few humans to another planet (plus possibly the DNA of a lot more humans) then that is plausible. If you mean that we can continue population growth and growth in resource consumption without regard to the carrying capacity of Earth because at some stage in the future we will send a significant fraction of the human population into space, then that is total bollocks. The resources that I would consume in my entire life on earth are small compared to the energy required to launch me plus life support equipment to another planet, and that argument doesn't change much when you apply it to a few billion people. A 'space elevator' thing might make it less resource intensive but it is dangerous set a course that will lead to a population in excess of the carrying capacity of the Earth, on the assumption that we will all be able to leave when the time comes. Dangerous as it may be, this assumption is encouraged because the alternative would call into question whether endless growth in material consumption is a good thing, and endless growth in consumption is fundamental to our economic system.

Chris

reasons

'examine

I assume that's meant as tongue in cheek ?

Wel.. FYI it's a good example of the damage that religion does. Maybe in time humankind can rise about self-invented gods and superstitous practices that can result in the persecution of certain populations ?

That would be an example of said learning.

Graham

Why do you put 'invented' in quotation marks ? The atom bomb was indeed an invention. It was *not* a discovery.

Graham

it

reasons

'examine

I'm having some difficulty relating whatever it was you said to a potato famine?

Dave

Precisely - read the posts!

The WMD OP stated that the bomb was discovered, I was merely trying to make the point that it was invented, not discovered.

Dave

And to the best of my knowledge we have never lost an interplanetary mission to a debris encounter (Deep Impact excepted). Voyager 1 and 2 have not encountered, in _decades_ of travel, any artifact big enough to destroy them. Let's count off the various long-range missions I can think of off the top of my head - Pioneer, Venera, Viking, Mariner, of course Apollo, Ranger, Surveyor, Clementine, Galileo, Cassini-Huygens, Pathfinder, ... dozens if not hundreds of spacecraft on multiyear missions, none of which were lost to or even appreciably damaged by encounters with debris.

I'll get on a craft with odds like that any time, especially when you consider that none of those craft even had a realtime maneuvering capability. A manned mission could have radar to look for objects in its path (or use ground-based or orbital radar data) and make course corrections to avoid dangerous objects.

The thing with space travel is that you know exactly what's ahead of you a long time in advance, you can plan to avoid danger zones. Things don't just appear out of nowhere over the horizon.

of an

Actually, he reminds me that by his own argument life on earth is impossible.

You talk about this like it's something that might happen in the future. It's a capability we have NOW.

Dimensions: Width: 73 meters (240 feet) across solar arrays Length: 44.5 meters (146 feet) from Destiny Lab to Zvezda; 52 meters (170 feet) with a Progress resupply vessel docked Height: 27.5 meters (90 feet)

There's no non-monetary reason why we couldn't build twenty, or a hundred such vessels and dock all the components together, though the ISS's particular configuration doesn't lend itself to the thrust required for big orbital changes.

My bet would be on a certain minimum vessel size to make an "almost-closed" system practical, and the vehicle would carry enough nutrients, supplies (whatever it is that gets lost to space) to cover the losses during the trip.

Once you're on the surface you have lots of resources there to be extracted.

hell of

concept

Splendid; how about burning a few libraries and forcing everyone into the temple for three hours a day while you're at it? I mean, they'll need some place to rest after working in the agrarian society you'd like to see.

Of course, you've completely missed one of my original points which is that right now, a single plague or other mishap could wipe out the species. Having an independent colony insulated by a few hundred million miles of space diversifies the risk enormously.

Earth's human population _is_ self-sufficient in the sense that it doesn't need to import anything from off-world for continued survival. That's all I'm asking an off-world colony to achieve.

Creative obtuseness! If a catastrophe has made Earth uninhabitable, why would the settlers want to come back to it?

You missed out the words "naked Earth-origin" between "supporting" and "life".