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Okay, as expected, Pluto is a very cold rock. No surprise. What the heck is NASA looking for out there, some evidence of trash left by ET, a big, black, rectan

by graycat 11y ago

Okay, as expected, Pluto is a very cold rock. No surprise. What the heck is NASA looking for out there, some evidence of trash left by ET, a big, black, rectangular parallelepiped with some strange audio and electronic signals pointing to Jupiter? Don't think they will find it. We have to expect that in the universe, both near and far, there are a lot of really cold rocks orbiting a lot of stars, "billions and billions". To get something "curious" on one of those will be really rare. Want to see what one of the really rare ones looks like? Okay, three guesses, the first two don't count. Hint: Look at where you are standing. IMHO, NASA needs to find some more important questions to ask. Mars? Okay, if there is good reason to go to Mars, then, first, do a lot in robotics: Net, send robots that can build a colony, make rocket fuel from whatever is there on Mars, fuel a rocket, sent it back to earth successfully. Iterate several times. Build a bigger and bigger colony that is more and more capable. The colony should be really good, and safe for humans -- food, water, heat, comforts, safety, etc., and a rock solid, highly reliable, very well tested way home. Then test a lot more -- much, much more testing. Then maybe send some humans.

betenoire 11y ago
gotta take pictures first, don't ya?
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
That's a 'couch explorer' way of doing it - explore as long as you sleep in your bed at the end of the adventure. There are very many people that would go without the need for a way home. And that would be a heck of a lot cheaper.
- graycat 11y ago
  To do much on Mars, just must send a lot of robots. The robots have to be relatively autonomous if only because the time for radio communications is so long. Sending a lot of suicidal people is not so good. One reason is have a lot of dead people up there could in some respects corrupt the site under study. Generally, if we are going to do much in exploration on rocks other than earth, then we need some good autonomous robots. So, we might as well get with building the robots. For sending humans to Mars, we really will be very interested in getting them back safely. One way to have confidence that we can is what I outlined: Let robots do essentially all of the needed work first so that by the time humans go they are really just guests of the robots that have long since been very successful -- lots of trips back and forth with no mistake-ys.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Again, wrong about the part about getting back safely. Its ridiculous to assume we cant go to Mars until they have an entire space industry to launch vehicles. We can go decades earlier than that, just by establishing a colony.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Let's review some history for the moment. Back in the 19th century "egghead" scientists conducted numerous lines of research into several subjects which were at the time considered to be extremely esoteric, the essence of pure, "blue sky" research. Some examples from that century would be: electromagnetism, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and gas laws. As it turned out, understanding such things lead to lots of innovations which had not been anticipated beforehand. Everything from electric motors and lightbulbs to micro-processors, cell phones, internal combustion engines, fertilizer, and AIDS drugs. Those innovations built on the back of once pure scientific research have resulted in billions of years of human lives lived that would not have been other wise, and billions of years of lives lived in improved conditions (due to more food, cleaner water, greater wealth, and so on), literally tens of trillions of dollars per year of added economic activity due to those innovations and quadrillions of dollars of added value and increased wealth to human civilization. All due to egghead scientists studying stuff just because they were curious. What will be the next set of breakthroughs? Where will it come from? How much value will they add? We don't know, that's why we continue to sustain and support our curiosity across such broad ranges of subjects. Not only might breakthroughs come from surprising directions, but I think the scientists have more than earned it. Not everything we do needs to have some tangible return-on-investment back to some concrete bottom line on Earth in the near term.
- graycat 11y ago
  Sure, but you left out some crucial parts: "Often we find that a good question is more important than a good answer" - Richard Bellman. IMHO pictures of Pluto do not answer good questions. Commonly, one of the most important steps in good research is good problem selection. IMHO, getting pictures of Pluto is not good problem selection. Mars? It's closer in. There we might get some clues to the formation of the solar system. And we have a chance of setting up a base on Mars for astronomy or whatever. Pluto? As we have long known, it's really 'out there'. Pluto? Wild guess: There is so little going on there, and it's so darned cold, that maybe we could use it as a source of a preserved record of some of the major events in the galaxy over the past 5 billion years or so Pluto has been going around out there. For this guess, maybe look at the justification NASA gave for the Pluto effort.

by graycat 11y ago

betenoire 11y ago

gotta take pictures first, don't ya?

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

That's a 'couch explorer' way of doing it - explore as long as you sleep in your bed at the end of the adventure. There are very many people that would go without the need for a way home. And that would be a heck of a lot cheaper.

graycat 11y ago
To do much on Mars, just must send a lot of robots. The robots have to be relatively autonomous if only because the time for radio communications is so long. Sending a lot of suicidal people is not so good. One reason is have a lot of dead people up there could in some respects corrupt the site under study. Generally, if we are going to do much in exploration on rocks other than earth, then we need some good autonomous robots. So, we might as well get with building the robots. For sending humans to Mars, we really will be very interested in getting them back safely. One way to have confidence that we can is what I outlined: Let robots do essentially all of the needed work first so that by the time humans go they are really just guests of the robots that have long since been very successful -- lots of trips back and forth with no mistake-ys.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Again, wrong about the part about getting back safely. Its ridiculous to assume we cant go to Mars until they have an entire space industry to launch vehicles. We can go decades earlier than that, just by establishing a colony.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Let's review some history for the moment. Back in the 19th century "egghead" scientists conducted numerous lines of research into several subjects which were at the time considered to be extremely esoteric, the essence of pure, "blue sky" research. Some examples from that century would be: electromagnetism, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and gas laws. As it turned out, understanding such things lead to lots of innovations which had not been anticipated beforehand. Everything from electric motors and lightbulbs to micro-processors, cell phones, internal combustion engines, fertilizer, and AIDS drugs. Those innovations built on the back of once pure scientific research have resulted in billions of years of human lives lived that would not have been other wise, and billions of years of lives lived in improved conditions (due to more food, cleaner water, greater wealth, and so on), literally tens of trillions of dollars per year of added economic activity due to those innovations and quadrillions of dollars of added value and increased wealth to human civilization. All due to egghead scientists studying stuff just because they were curious. What will be the next set of breakthroughs? Where will it come from? How much value will they add? We don't know, that's why we continue to sustain and support our curiosity across such broad ranges of subjects. Not only might breakthroughs come from surprising directions, but I think the scientists have more than earned it. Not everything we do needs to have some tangible return-on-investment back to some concrete bottom line on Earth in the near term.

graycat 11y ago
Sure, but you left out some crucial parts: "Often we find that a good question is more important than a good answer" - Richard Bellman. IMHO pictures of Pluto do not answer good questions. Commonly, one of the most important steps in good research is good problem selection. IMHO, getting pictures of Pluto is not good problem selection. Mars? It's closer in. There we might get some clues to the formation of the solar system. And we have a chance of setting up a base on Mars for astronomy or whatever. Pluto? As we have long known, it's really 'out there'. Pluto? Wild guess: There is so little going on there, and it's so darned cold, that maybe we could use it as a source of a preserved record of some of the major events in the galaxy over the past 5 billion years or so Pluto has been going around out there. For this guess, maybe look at the justification NASA gave for the Pluto effort.