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High speed trains don't capture the human imagination in the same way as steam trains. Volvos with air bags and seatbelts don't have the same response as 50s St
by juhbiu 17y ago
High speed trains don't capture the human imagination in the same way as steam trains. Volvos with air bags and seatbelts don't have the same response as 50s Studebakers.
And tunnel boring machines aren't as picturesque as 1000s of slaves chipping away at rock with stone tools - it's called progress.
- narag 17y agoIf we want to send people far away in the long term, there are certaint problems involving people in space that are not solved sending unmanned spacecrafts. We need to actually send people. Ships with antiradiation shells, autonomous and sustainable life-support, etc.
- borism 17y agowe have people in orbit for that right now
- berntb 17y agoInside the Van Allen belts, removes most of the radiation problem (GP -- "antiradiation shells"). Also, the space station get resupply from Earth. Doesn't solve GP's "autonomous and sustainable life-support". The space station isn't a complete waste, but it just doesn't tackle those problems. (Disclaimer -- I'm very much not a rocket engineer.)
- euccastro 17y agoWe can solve those problems when they become relevant. Until we know what's out there we can't know when we'll want to send people far away. And we better use robots for solving one problem a time, at least in early experimentation. For example, make robots measure absorbed radiation, to test those antiradiation shells. Or make them build a sustainable water supply and farm in the target planet, to prove it can be done. That could be cheaper, and less risky in human lives, than trying to juggle all balls at once.
- narag 17y agoWe can solve those problems when they become relevant. That's the point. They won't become relevant until actual misions make them relevant. Until we know what's out there we can't know when we'll want to send people far away. Add to this that we won't want to send people far away because we haven't (still) the right technology and you have a nasty vicious circle. This remembers me those other news on HN: the duck tape programmer. We need a duck tape exploration program, that's it :-)
- euccastro 17y agoThat's a specious sort of relevance you're talking about. Let's call it "need" instead. There's no vicious circle. Once we find something worth sending humans to, we have a motivation to develop the required tech.