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Hootowl
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 04:25 pm: | 
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NASA has explored sending aging astronauts on Mars missions. They don't have to plan for a return trip. The average 75 year old wouldn't make it, but then neither would the average 40 year old. They don't let "average" people become astronauts. |
86129squids
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 05:35 pm: |
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"He who controls the Spice controls the universe!!"
(Sorry, read a whole lotta science fiction, most of what Herbert wrote, et al. This thread reminds me of "The Worthing Saga"."
We should direct NASA towards *practical* near-earth and space exploration. We humans ain't much more than jellyfish on sticks, so let's produce machines that work as our proxies.
+1 on unmanned drones, built to collect information and persevere.
Otherwise the NASA budget must conform to economic realities here on Earth. |
Hughlysses
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 06:16 pm: |
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Excellent essay by Jerry Pournelle on what NASA should be doing (written 15 years ago but still relevant):
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/why_have_ nasa.htm
I wish they'd put Pournelle in charge of space exploration... |
Sifo
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 02, 2010 - 07:11 pm: |
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Great video Froggy! Only thing that would have made that better is if had kicked the guy back! Humorous watching it on the ice, but that was also very impressive.
One down side of a walking robot is that walking isn't as efficient as rolling. When they teach that thing to pedal a bicycle they will really be on to something!
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Froggy
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 01:19 am: |
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yea but the advantage of the walker is that it can step over rocks and craters and other obsticals like shown. Recently one of the Mars rovers service came to an end when it got stuck on top of a rock.
It would be great in situations like in Haiti, use it as a motorized stretcher to get the injured out of collapsed buildings where you don't have a flat surface to roll over.
Only down side is, they can be easily defeated by tying the legs together with some tow cable... |
Sifo
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 03, 2010 - 01:27 pm: |
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I envision it being done more like a cyclocross race. Ride the bike over the smooth stuff with a flying dismount coming up to the obstacles then a flying remount.
It's still bad when the thread the tow cable through the front spokes though. |
Aesquire
| | Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 08:53 pm: |
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I'm always annoyed at the idea "Our $$$ may be better spent here on Earth now."
That's where they all go. It's not like we stuff 15 mill in a box & shoot it at Saturn. We spend the money to pay people here, on this planet, who design, run, & build the rockets & probes. Far better investment, historically, than any other endeavor.
This sucks. NASA's been an underfunded trucking company for too long. I hope the private rocket guys are allowed to continue, it's our only hope.
Btw, Getting there may be the easiest part is, I think, exactly wrong. If you can't get there... you can't do anything else.
Earth orbit is halfway to everywhere.
Correction. Velcro predates Aerospace. Microelectronics, though...GPS, Weather, com, TV. that's all space program.
(Message edited by aesquire on February 04, 2010) |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 10:09 pm: |
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Re the moon, I agree, it is the ultimate high ground. Bad form to concede it to the Chinese, not that I have much confidence that they'll make it.
Anyone care to guess the amount of the moon mission annual budget as a percentage of total budget? Practically nada. |
Blake
| | Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 10:10 pm: |
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Maybe they can work on the space elevator instead. Kind of mind blowing. |
Aesquire
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 06:52 am: |
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Unfortunately, the threat of terrorist suicide bombers make a space elevator impossible.
Imagine a lash of fire across 1000 miles of the planet. Few cities in the way, yet, but the risk is too great for any govt. |
Blake
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 08:54 am: |
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Me no savvy. |
Hootowl
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 09:40 am: |
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Theoretically, if you blow up the base of a space elevator, it will go hurling into space. If this is not the case, it would come tumbling down all on its own. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 10:05 am: |
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Btw, Getting there may be the easiest part is, I think, exactly wrong. If you can't get there... you can't do anything else.
Earth orbit is halfway to everywhere.
If I understand your statement, earth orbit is the first big hurdle in going anywhere in space. While this is true, it's more like earth orbit is stepping out your front door.
Round trips to Mars are a huge hurdle from there, and why? Are we going to make Mars habitable? To a large extent it's the same scientists who claim that adding trace amounts of CO2 to our atmosphere will have catastrophic results are claiming that we can control terraforming an entire planet and it's atmosphere with the desired results. If life on Earth is as fragile as they claim what idiot would believe that we could ever stabilize Mars so that we could establish that same fragile life transplanted from our fragile Earth and ever expect it to survive?
Just about any other space activity can be done quite well with robotics, especially extrapolating future advancements in robotics. I'm not sure what the pressing need for this would be though. Certainly not in our current economic landscape.
Theoretically, if you blow up the base of a space elevator, it will go hurling into space. If this is not the case, it would come tumbling down all on its own.
Theoretically if you blow up anything in the space program it gets destroyed. Nothing special about the space elevator in that respect. |
Hootowl
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 10:18 am: |
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Yes, but a suicide bomber can't bring down the elevator, he/she could only detach the base from the Earth, causing it to fly out into space. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 10:25 am: |
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Yes, but a suicide bomber can't bring down the elevator, he/she could only detach the base from the Earth, causing it to fly out into space.
It would only go into a slightly higher orbit, if any at all. I would expect that any tension on the elevator at the base would be as close to zero as is possible. I would also suspect that security would be pretty tight around any such installation.
Location of a space elevator seems to be one of the biggest detractors. Would you put it in Central America? Africa? India? It needs to be right on the equator doesn't it? |
Hex
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 10:41 am: |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator |
Hootowl
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 10:52 am: |
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I believe it does need to be fairly close to where the angular velocity is greatest, so close to equator, yes.
The tension on the cable would have to be sufficient to prevent the ballast in orbit from being pulled down by the load being lifted. That could be several tons. Tie a string to a baseball and swing it around. Now cut the string. |
Hootowl
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 10:57 am: |
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It wouldn't go into a higher orbit per se, but it would go into a different orbit. Possibly one that would bring it back to Earth periodically. The orbit would not have a constant height above the Earth.
Regardless, my point was that it would not come crashing down to Earth if the bottom of it were destroyed. |
Metalrabbit
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 11:23 am: |
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If it ever does come crashing down I bet it would only fall on those counties that voted for Bush. |
Hootowl
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 11:29 am: |
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Of course it would. Falling space elevators follow the same course hurricanes in Florida do. Everyone knows that. |
Sifo
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 11:36 am: |
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That's because the falling space elevator is a plot against the poor by the evil Republicans. I heard about that on Air America! |
Mr_grumpy
| | Posted on Friday, February 05, 2010 - 12:04 pm: |
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Blake. Arthur C Clarke - The Fountains of Paradise.
The man had some brilliant ideas. |
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