29 ms·

According to your argument, technologically, we are never ready for anything, so we should do nothing. Jumping into the fire when you're half way there is a hel

by dismal2 12y ago

According to your argument, technologically, we are never ready for anything, so we should do nothing. Jumping into the fire when you're half way there is a hell of a learning experience. So you would start a space base for the same reason, the experience. Imagine what would be learned when you actually have to solve the problems that come with living in space instead of just conceptually complaining about them. I'm sure a lot of things would come up that nobody has predicted before, and we would come up with solutions, some of which might have profound technological impact further down the line.

jerf 12y ago
No, that's a strawman. I'm specifically referring to those things we often look back and marvel at: "Wow, they ran a rocket to the moon on a computer with less power than my calculator!" and that sort of thing. We flung core memory into space, a ridiculous use of precious mass. We had no ability to computer simulate anything, which includes many things in addition to the obvious aerodynamics, like materials science computations and such. The time that we're ready to start seriously moving into space isn't in the indefinite future, it's about now, which is I think why you're starting to see a real private "renaissance" in space (really the first time we should be going with people). The space technology that we actually had the base for was satellites, which you'd note we've made a great deal of use of. And, well, look at what happened... we got to the moon, and, then... uh... now what? Uh... can't actually do anything. Couldn't leave robots behind, they weren't ready. Couldn't leave people behind. Couldn't do much more than toodle around in a photo-op moon buggie and bring some rocks back. Use your brain, don't just mindlessly rah-rah space travel... we got there too soon. We weren't ready to do anything except look good. We're finally getting to the point where we can seriously plan on what things we might do, and where we really are is still building the foundation we need (cheap access to space). We tried to bull ahead without building the foundation we needed, and that had the usual result. On the topic of not mindlessly rah-rahing, let me observe that if one insists that the apex of human space travel was achieved in the 1960s, things look quite dim. Despite superficially seeming to slag on the accomplishments of the past (though if you look deeper you will observe that I've actually lined up an argument about how they are in many ways even more impressive than they seem due to being so very far ahead of their time), it's my view here that is actually the hopeful one for the future. We aren't in some sort of inevitable decay... we just got too excited and ran too far ahead, and the next 20 years ought to be great for space travel. We've finally got the resources to start making it cheap, something a corporation can do, instead of "shows up on the national budget as a top-level line item" expensive.
- dismal2 12y ago
  Current technology will always look archaic from the future, I hope in 20 years we get to say something like: I can't believe we didn't build our spacecraft out of some kind of super space crystals! I see things like the Apollo program as a massively expensive (and yes, wasteful) R&D program. Private space corps, unless they reach some kind of massive scale, will have a hard time justifying throwing enough money at something for real innovation. They will continue to focus on getting satellites up there a bit cheaper than the other guy. The reason people (geeks especially) love to rah-rah the space program is because it is a wonderful form of waste. Instead of bailing out a corrupt financial system, or spying on it's own citizens, or building some kind of doomsday weapon, we could have our Star Trek fantasy and maybe find some really cool innovations while we are at it.

by dismal2 12y ago

jerf 12y ago

No, that's a strawman. I'm specifically referring to those things we often look back and marvel at: "Wow, they ran a rocket to the moon on a computer with less power than my calculator!" and that sort of thing. We flung core memory into space, a ridiculous use of precious mass. We had no ability to computer simulate anything, which includes many things in addition to the obvious aerodynamics, like materials science computations and such. The time that we're ready to start seriously moving into space isn't in the indefinite future, it's about now, which is I think why you're starting to see a real private "renaissance" in space (really the first time we should be going with people). The space technology that we actually had the base for was satellites, which you'd note we've made a great deal of use of. And, well, look at what happened... we got to the moon, and, then... uh... now what? Uh... can't actually do anything. Couldn't leave robots behind, they weren't ready. Couldn't leave people behind. Couldn't do much more than toodle around in a photo-op moon buggie and bring some rocks back. Use your brain, don't just mindlessly rah-rah space travel... we got there too soon. We weren't ready to do anything except look good. We're finally getting to the point where we can seriously plan on what things we might do, and where we really are is still building the foundation we need (cheap access to space). We tried to bull ahead without building the foundation we needed, and that had the usual result. On the topic of not mindlessly rah-rahing, let me observe that if one insists that the apex of human space travel was achieved in the 1960s, things look quite dim. Despite superficially seeming to slag on the accomplishments of the past (though if you look deeper you will observe that I've actually lined up an argument about how they are in many ways even more impressive than they seem due to being so very far ahead of their time), it's my view here that is actually the hopeful one for the future. We aren't in some sort of inevitable decay... we just got too excited and ran too far ahead, and the next 20 years ought to be great for space travel. We've finally got the resources to start making it cheap, something a corporation can do, instead of "shows up on the national budget as a top-level line item" expensive.

dismal2 12y ago
Current technology will always look archaic from the future, I hope in 20 years we get to say something like: I can't believe we didn't build our spacecraft out of some kind of super space crystals! I see things like the Apollo program as a massively expensive (and yes, wasteful) R&D program. Private space corps, unless they reach some kind of massive scale, will have a hard time justifying throwing enough money at something for real innovation. They will continue to focus on getting satellites up there a bit cheaper than the other guy. The reason people (geeks especially) love to rah-rah the space program is because it is a wonderful form of waste. Instead of bailing out a corrupt financial system, or spying on it's own citizens, or building some kind of doomsday weapon, we could have our Star Trek fantasy and maybe find some really cool innovations while we are at it.