Space exploration

JacquelineDeane55 said:

Wow, you are young. I was born in 1987 and grew up watching Star Trek the Next Generation with Captain Picard and the Klingons. You remember Commander Riker? Maybe not, you are younger than I am after all.

The Next Generation is probably old school to people now.

Click to expand...

I remember Riker, and Piccard, but I prefer the original star trek.

What has age to do with ones views on these things? I can't see any connection, at least not one of youth being more disbelieving. I grew up watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, loved it, much less far out than Star Trek, and much more plausible. But it never persuaded me entirely. I think some of the Bermuda Triangle incidents are simply due to a radio blindspot. Another such as the USS cyclops could be due to a mutiny perhaps, when all the evidence is considered, other explanations that are not paranormal present themselves. All that jazz was doing the rounds in the cinema when I was growing up in the 1970s. Its a wonder I got through with my sanity almost intact!

its ok, it was the actual notation as an expression in maths, i was wondering about.

Humor aside. Quarantine is one thing, but we would need to be able to help any astronaut who came back with an infection. And what about on the other planet, any incipient life might be destroyed by a cold virus we might bring, or something equally minor to us.

..DOUBLE POST

JacquelineDeane55 said:

Wow, you are young. I was born in 1987 and grew up watching Star Trek the Next Generation with Captain Picard and the Klingons. You remember Commander Riker? Maybe not, you are younger than I am after all.

The Next Generation is probably old school to people now.

Click to expand...

Talking of 'old school' and Star Trek, see what you think of this: Its Leonard Nimoy reading from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles!

[MEDIA]

Radagast said:

The old-school novel and film The Andromeda Strain discuss exactly that.



An argument for staying inside the space suit.

Click to expand...

Indeed. I recall that film Andromeda Strain, and they found an old man, and a baby who had not been infected, while the rest of the town was dead. Its a satelite that falls out of orbit, they take it to someone in authority in the town, and he opens it, releases the germ.

'Ok important safety tip....'

Based on a Michael Crichton book. Good film. Actually it holds up extremely well, just a few elements of fashion and hair styles give away it was made in the 1970s. Thanks for mentioning. People born after 1985 may not have heard of these gems.

Contains Spoilers - The old man and baby were not affected by the virus, because their blood PH was outside the normal range, and the andromeda virus could only affect people with normal blood PH. However the reason the old man's blood ph was outside normal was completely different from the reason the baby's blood ph was outside normal. Nevertheless they had been exposed, and had not been through the elaborate decontamination process that the Wildfire staff had gone through. I haven't seen the film in a while, just reading about it online. Eventually one of the characters has to take a risk and forego being completed isolated from the two patients, to get into another sector of the containment facility so it doesn't blow itself up , you remember each sector automatically sealed itself off from the rest if there was an alert, and the old man asks: 'You ain't leaving us here Doc?'

But the main point of the film to me was that they thought they had a 'gold standard' in automation, but a mere piece of stray paper caused it to fail, as it meant that a teleprinter didn't ping as designed, when a new report came in. Then the scientists were late in learning of important developments. But also the problem was that as the staff member had nothing to do but wait for a ping, he became psychologically conditioned, and assumed no new reports had come in from the outside world.