Other planets and space exploration

GreekOrthodox said:

Well B5 was written by J. Michael Straczynski who is an affirmed atheist. However, he does have a point here.

"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar, Survivors

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Self-interest is not enlightened. Enlightened as to what? What is supposedly casting the shadow that you are dissipating? This is just sophistry, trying to cast a philosophy of selfishness as if it could encompass more noble things within it.

I don't believe in this modern atheistic fiction of Selfish Genes. That Altruism is only done for your own gain, chasing a feeling or whatever. Men did things for Ideas or Honour, not just for gain or reputation. Sometimes gain comes into the equation, but this is often poison in the chalice. The Abolitionists didn't end slavery for personal gain, and the blood of Martyrs was not spilt just in a selfish hope of getting into Heaven.

You can act in an enlightened manner, only by light cast from some Ideal, but if you start out with Selfish interest as that ideal, anything and everything is Enlightened or can be.

I for one envison a time when we colonize all the planets in our solar system and beyond. It is within our grasp to colonize Mars now. I say we go for it.

Quid est Veritas? said:

As a postscript: Most of these modern space efforts, like Musk or Mars one, are mostly PR stunts or investment bubbles or flatout schemes.

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Mars one was basically a hoax with minimal funding and lots of hype.

Elon Musk is a visionary that has two companies With market value over 100 billion dollars each.

So comparing those two seems just ignorant.

Most of the people seem fixated what the space travel is now comparing what it will be hundred years from now.

Humanity made it’s first powered flight in 1903. Time when few had any idea what revolutionary moment in history it was.

1969 we landed on the moon.

63 years to go from a flight of few hundred meters on sandy beach by a ramshackle airframe with a lawnmower motor to making all the technology we needed to get a man to the moon and back alive.

It is not a question if we venture forth, solving the issues involved with research and technology.

It is simply a question of when.

As for wasting money. It is relative. Sure few hundred billions is a big sum of money but there are plenty of technologies that trickle down after they have been used in space exploration first and the economical possibilities of space industry and mining are literally endless without even considering what scientific insights we may get along the way.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have both cost well over a trillion dollars each and I would venture that you have gotten way less from them than from NASA’s efforts.

It is worth doing.

We already have an unknown planet beneath this planet God created specifically for us. While most people are eyeing to outer space, inner space, under the oceans, have been neglected. Only 0.05% of the area UNDER worlds oceans have been actually explored, though its been mapped in detail by satellites since the 1970s.
Humanity has already had all the technology to explore under the ocean, even the deepest parts of it, since at least the 1960s. Interstellar travel, in contrast, may not be technologically available for at least hundreds of years from now,even though the Hubble Space Telescope discovered Earth like planets in other star systems and even, allegedly, even heaven itself with angels.
As a bonus, even flat earthers would be willing to accept the facts and discoveries of undersea exploration vs space.

dms1972 said:

Are you saying that we should only go where we need no special suits or equipment?

Just getting to Space or Outer Space in itself doesn't seem to be the goal, just a step. The only purpose at present seems to be putting stuff up there that we can make use of down here, mainly communications satelites and such, but more recently a space station.

I don't know for sure what Mars is like, I have read it has climate extremes worse than Earth. I don't know if one could breath its atmosphere. Not sure why exactly folks want to go there, but some do.

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I can see the attraction and benefit of sending out probes into space to discover other planets (such as they did with Mars and Jupiter). We have learned so much about space in general and about other planets in our solar system.

Ultimately, space travel is a quest to answer the questions that have always remained a mystery to us. Are we alone in the universe? Do other life forms exist? Quite possibly, since within the Milky Way alone, scientists estimate there could be up to 40 billion planets within habitable zones of stars such as our sun, possibly capable of supporting life. However, the current speculation is that our nearest "Earth-like" planet could be between 4 - 12 light years away. Realistically, to get anywhere near an inhabited planet in our lifetime would require us to travel at speeds close to the speed of light which works out at about 670,616,629 mph. Could we attain such speeds and stay alive? Probably not! Even a probe being sent at there at such collosal speeds would take many many years to arrive and then you would need to add the time it takes to send back images. Therefore I think the chance of discovering other life forms within our lifetime remains highly unlikely.

dms1972 said:

How has this Space X launch brought Mars within our reach?

As regards the other planets have you ever read about the nature of these other planets, some are gas giants - such as Jupiter. Which others do you envision us colonising - Mercury and Venus are not habitable as too close to the sun, unless you enjoy temperatures in excess 400 C !! The rest I think would be too far from the sun.

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Venus is not that bad actually


Also habitable megastructures are an option.

I think Space exploration is a vanity. We will never go beyond pir solar system because Jesus will return before then.

Jonathan Walkerin said:

Elon Musk is a visionary that has two companies With market value over 100 billion dollars each.

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Tesla has never been profitable, making a loss of 860 million dollars last year. It consistently fails to reach production targets. Its demand projections are alwsys overly rosy, and the infrastructure to support its model simply doesn't exist.

Here is a thread where I talked about it before, with links:

Tesla looks to turn a profit, by asking for refunds from suppliers

Here is a more recent one discussing its shortcomings, and I attached a thesis discussing Tesla's failings as a viable business.

Tesla's stock is surging but some analysts found real problems with its earnings report

The only thing keeping Tesla afloat is continual investment, and SpaceX is even more simply based on Futurism. Only investor confidence keeps these things running, and essentially that is what constitutes a bubble. The fact that their stocks are surging; at one point having Tesla valued morr than Volkswagen, a company with a long record of reaching production targets and steady demand; clearly shows this. What keeps it alive is simply confidence in Musk and his futurist visions, nothing concrete. Even you reached for the hackneyed adjective 'visionary'.

Essentially, Musk's task is to present an image and bank on goodwill. He is a showman, akin to PT Barnum. His companies are valued based on pipedreams and romanticism, so he needs to keep himself in the media and present an image of being innovative. This is why he constantly invents new things, such as a minisub for kids stuck in a Thai cave, or then ventilators for Covid 19, etc. A car company does not suddenly have expertise to build unrelated technology like ventilators or submersibles, and this also is why he is so touchy when critisised.

Jonathan Walkerin said:

So comparing those two seems just ignorant

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So no, I don't think it ignorant to compare them. Their business models are similar, one just managed to ride the bubble and the other didn't, but neither has substance to back anything up.

Jonathan Walkerin said:

63 years to go from a flight of few hundred meters on sandy beach by a ramshackle airframe with a lawnmower motor to making all the technology we needed to get a man to the moon and back alive.

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This is a fallacy. Space flight has nothing to do with aeroplanes. It is a different set of technologies with different problems, as the one is mostly about thrust and the other lift. Space flight started at Peenemunde in WWII with the V2, not at Kitty Hawk. Basically it peaked in the early 70s and has been declining ever since, because the commercial and technical problems are legion. Comparing it to normal flight is just silly, really. Afterall, planes became profitable within a few years and extensively used, while barring the use of communivation satellites, Space flight has had very few dividends.

Quid est Veritas? said:

So no, I don't think it ignorant to compare them. Their business models are similar, one just managed to ride the bubble and the other didn't, but neither has substance to back anything up.

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Tesla has produced over million electric cars

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/10/21172895/tesla-one-million-cars-production-model-y

and they were the ones who proved electric vehicles were practical choice with today’s technology.

Now other car makers have to follow or fall.

Mars one achieved literally nothing.

So yeah comparisons are pretty poor. Even if Tesla failed today they have already achieved huge changes that will not disappear even if Tesla does.

Comparing aerial and space flight was fallacy of your own making. I merely used it to demonstrate what rapid technological progress can be made.

Amusing you think space flight peaked at 70s.....

They had a good run with intense superpower pressure on Cold War but that now it is private companies that are flying men to space.

Private companies. It is no longer an endeavor that needs resources of a nation behind it. Still expensive but doable for wealthy companies or even individuals.

And the technology is only going to get better and cheaper. It will snowball like nothing you would expect.

Peaked at 70s lol.

They will go to Mars.... In time that is... They have to give the public enough of a time span in which they can be convinced that NASA and others have solved all the problems with traveling that distance in space, and returning... safely....

When they have given the public a confidence that NASA and their partners have had enough time to invent and test the systems... Then they will go back to the studio... "in a Hollywood Basement" and make the movie... another fake reality show... where they go to Mars.

So, be patient... sit back... Give NASA all the billions of dollars... and then they will give you the new fake space mission.

dms1972 said:

With the launch of the latest SpaceX rocket, what are your thoughts about space and solar system exploration?

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I think it's great. Expensive, but the list of technological breakthroughs that arose from the effort is quite long so there's a huge societal payoff.

BTW, in the Space Trilogy Malacandra hadn't experienced a Fall either. That's why Earth was known as the Silent Planet.

And hearing someone refer to the initial launch of the Columbia as "the early days" makes me feel old - I remember the Apollo 1 disaster and to me the shuttle program seems rather late.

JacksBratt said:

They will go to Mars.... In time that is... They have to give the public enough of a time span in which they can be convinced that NASA and others have solved all the problems with traveling that distance in space, and returning... safely....

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Perhaps you might get better audience at conspiracy forums where there are other people who believe there are actually no space , or planets, or reason and everyone is lying to them because only they have seen the truth.

Or something.....

dms1972 said:

With the launch of the latest SpaceX rocket, what are your thoughts about space and solar system exploration? I think I was a lot more excited about this back in the early days - such as when the space shuttle was first launched, and now I am less so, and wonder about it all. Has God put these worlds out there for our exploration, or are we not supposed to go to them. How far does God permit us want to go in explorations? We have found a way to break or overcome earth's escape velocity - and get into space. A while ago I read Lewis's science fantasy trilogy called That Hideous Strength- the first two parts are set on Mars and Venus respectively, both of which are inhabited - Venus (Perelandra) is unfallen. I find Lewis's ideas interesting but not really sure I would agree with them all. These novel are more science-fantasy than science-fiction, they are great stories, and a bit like Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, who also envisaged life on Mars.

But I pretty much accept the modern estimate of these worlds - that they are lifeless.

Should we attempt to travel to them?

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Excellent a space thread. The SpaceX launch is a fantastic achievement and opens up the door for manned exploration of the solar system after 50 years of scelerotic visionless bureaucrats and risk averse politicians running the show. The technology is there and with Musk we have a visionary leader determined to make the push out of earth orbit.

Yes it is dangerous with radiation, gravity and toxins being major hurdles to overcome. I believe the construction of space habitats and the research necessary to make these work will also help us look after this earth as our understanding of how we can preserve and promote life grows.

There is something deeply Christian about bringing life to desolate places,adding human meaning to places without purpose or significance and filling the emptiness with love. It thrills me to think of Cathedrals on moon and Mars and the kinds of insights about God that Martians and Lunans will one day favour in the unique communities they build out there. I would love to live long enough to see the earth from Mons OIympus or tour the Marianas trench or to swim butterfly in a giant swimming pool on the moon. In one sixth gravity the experience would be akin to that of a flying fish

dms1972 said:

Lewis said that the difficulty of getting into space was a limit God had put on mankind. The vast distances themselves he likened to a post-fall cosmic quarantine zone.

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Or which he set as a challenge to a people who only now have filled the earth,and only now are ready to bring life and love and light to the desolation of space. Anyone who builds a space habitat or wrestles with the difficulties that human bodies will suffer there is trying to duplicate what God has already done. In doing so our understanding and appreciation of Him as Creatör can only be deepened

Sabertooth said:

Currently, it takes many months to get to Mars. A human body would be adversely affected if it were in zero-g for that long.

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People have survived more than a year in weightless conditions.

We can spin two or more ships linked together to simulate gravity, extensive exercise and various drugs can also help prevent bone loss,blindness etc

This is a challenge not an impossible task

Bob Crowley said:

I'm cheating, as I posted this on another subject, namely

But it's relevant to this discussion, and I can't see the point in rewriting the post.

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Probably not the place to put my weird views, but I think God intends to drive us out into space. To do that, He (quite possibly with our help through nuclear war or some other stupidity or both) would have to make this planet so inhospitable we would not want to stay here, much as many forebears of the US and Australia could no longer tolerate their original home nations for example.

I also believe we'll learn to teleport, using quantum entanglement, which scientists are already fooling around with. Supposedly impossible, but I always use liquid fuelled rockets to boost my argument, if you'll pardon the pun.

Dr. Robert Goddard was possibly the best known pioneer of liquid fuelled rockets, and he reached about 41 feet in 1926 with a top speed of 60 mph.

In one of those ironies of history, the Nazis launched the space age in 1944, just 18 years later when the first V2 liquid fuelled rocket hit London after flying 200 miles and reaching speeds of 2800 mph.

Thirteen years later the Soviets launched Sputnik (same name as my dog incidentally - apparently it means "fellow traveler" in Russian), and a mere twelve years after that the US landed men on the moon, using a liquid fuelled rocket.

43 years from 41 feet to the moon - 1926 to 1969.

I think there'll be a similar hyperbolic leap in quantum entanglement experiments, just as there has been in IT and electronics for example. It's also instantaneous.

So we may have to go into space whether we want to or not. One thing is for sure - the emphasis would be on sheer survival. Most of us probably would not be tough enough to survive.

For me, private enterprise rocketry a la Tesla or Virgin will prove to be a stop gap measure. I think entanglement will be where the action is going to be.

https://phys.org/news/2019-08-complex-quantum-teleportation.html

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Religious persecution or oppressive regimeson earth might also be a good reason to look for a new land and new hope out there. People with religious motivations are more likely to survive the challenges

Quid est Veritas? said:

That is a bit myopic. It is only 'for nothing' if you have a certain aim in mind, which fails thereby. This seems to assume some goal such as to exist itself or to propagate, as if something has no value unless it somehow survives. If I sing a song, which immediately disappeared, does this have no value? Is the purely experiential void of worth if it cannot be recorded or shared?

Personally, I see all this space stuff as a waste of scarce resources from an economic standpoint. Someone once argued that NASA was a cheap investment, costing only something like 5 billion dollars a year. Excuse me? How is that cheap, for what little practically we've gained? As a long term investment to move manufacturing to the moon say, maybe, but I can't help but feel we are throwing good money away. At the moment though, it is basically a luxury.

It reminds me of the woman pouring oil onto Jesus' feet. That money could have been used to help the poor, but as Jesus said, it was done for His sake. I doubt space exploration is done in a like-mannered mindset, and the resources used is astronomical, while we have far more pressing issues. I think it largely an aspect of Prestige, a species of the sin of Pride, that mostly drives it today. We went to the moon on the back of technology developed to kill our fellow man, in the interest of narrow rivalry, so there is little to admire here. There was no follow up, no colonisation or experiments done further, just run up a flag and saying goodbye. Basically it was a big Folly, in the sense of a fantastic but essentially useless thing. Like the Emperor Bokassa being crowned in a petty African statelet. I don't think it glorifies God, rather our vanity.

As a postscript: Most of these modern space efforts, like Musk or Mars one, are mostly PR stunts or investment bubbles or flatout schemes.

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Economically the solar system is an unlimited energy and mineral resource , a potential base for the most toxic heavy industries. It can pay for itself once a certain tipping point of key infrastructure is surpassed. The benefits of gps,satellites , non stick frying pans, global communications are all obvious benefits so far. In the future tourism, mining, energy production are all likely to produce immense wealth. If we who love freedom do not do this thing then new tyrannies with a reachto the heavens will displace us

SaintCody777 said:

We already have an unknown planet beneath this planet God created specifically for us. While most people are eyeing to outer space, inner space, under the oceans, have been neglected. Only 0.05% of the area UNDER worlds oceans have been actually explored, though its been mapped in detail by satellites since the 1970s.
Humanity has already had all the technology to explore under the ocean, even the deepest parts of it, since at least the 1960s. Interstellar travel, in contrast, may not be technologically available for at least hundreds of years from now,even though the Hubble Space Telescope discovered Earth like planets in other star systems and even, allegedly, even heaven itself with angels.
As a bonus, even flat earthers would be willing to accept the facts and discoveries of undersea exploration vs space.

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We should be doing both,in fact we need to learn how to restore oceans we have stripped of life and to come to them as farmers and setllers not just scorched earth nomads. The point about space and the oceans is that the frontier is wide open and human beings have not even begun to cultivate these gardens