Space exploration

Erik Nelson

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I hope you're kidding.

Also, Antarctica is not "isolated," and people who live in the Southern Hemisphere (along with everybody who loves penguins) would object to such a plan.

Everybody loves penguins :)

Penguins live along the coasts, launch pads could be put inland away from any nesting grounds. Antarctica is as isolated as it gets on Earth, circumpolar currents keep most of its air over the continent, and most of its coastal waters near it.

Jokes about Penguins aside, the whole of humanity is acting like Batman stuck in his Batcave, trying to explore Gotham with a few small RC cars. Why not "get out and live a little" ? The "Batmobile" is called NPP.

Meanwhile, humanity can dink around for a thousand years with chemical rockets and still not equal half of 15 minutes (1 launch) with NPP.

Ironically enough, far more people will suffer from junk food, cigarettes, booze etc & not wearing seat belts. "Penny wise, pound foolish" according to the statistics. There might be ways to make it cleaner than people fear. I guess it's less unlikely penguins will evolve and orbit a million tons of payload first.
 
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Radagast

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Everybody loves penguins :)

Penguins live along the coasts, launch pads could be put inland away from any nesting grounds.

Quite fierce katabatic winds blow from the interior to the coast. And penguins nest well inland, anyway. Do you want penguins to glow in the dark?

Antarctica is as isolated as it gets on Earth, circumpolar currents keep most of its air over the continent, and most of its coastal waters near it.

Not true. Here is one of the major currents, for example:

100427101234_1_900x600.jpg


Jokes about Penguins aside, the whole of humanity is acting like Batman stuck in his Batcave, trying to explore Gotham with a few small RC cars. Why not "get out and live a little" ? The "Batmobile" is called NPP.

I wasn't joking. And you're insane. Invasion by the Fithp aside, NPP must never be used.

Footfall%281stEd%29.jpg
 
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Tom 1

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Can you tell us how they help and to what degree they help with the growing of food? I don't think we should have to just believe or not, that is to say if do help in some way?

Use of GPS guidance is a common one. I use a GPS unit for some field prep work, it makes it easier to work after dark and saves fuel by making it easier to avoid overlap in rows (e.g when using a wide heavy roller), or going over the same ground twice
 
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cloudyday2

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I think when people are starving here on earth that they should not be throwing billions of dollars into the sky. Lets fix the problems here first, then go out exploring...
Another concern is that the US culture and productivity seems to be decaying. :(
 
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cloudyday2

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To cloudyday

Well yes I agree with you that unmanned is less costly and fewer risks humanly speaking. Personally I think it should be funded by business, or sponsorship, not governments, if it can be transparently done.

But as regards extra-terestrial DNA and the likelihood of 'pan-spermia' - it would be interesting to compare DNA but it would not tell us much, because they won't find anything conclusive. Pop science says human DNA is supposedly 50% shared with a banana! Well if you take a raw sequence, disregard chromasomal location, nearby genes, methylation, and a number of other factors that contribute to what a DNA sequence actually does, you can find maybe 25% similarity I read on a Snopes thread, and similiarity can be defined in a couple of ways.

However comparisons that indicate relatedness are much more complex than simply stating we share n% with this or that.

On the other hand the Bible says in Genesis Chapter 2:7 - God made Adam from the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

I take that to mean this planet earth.

Why would life need to originate on another planet?


Why did God make man out of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7)?

If we found microbes on for example Mars or in the atmosphere of Venus, it would tell us a lot about evolution. If the DNA (or maybe it wouldn't even be DNA) was radically different then we would know that abiogenesis is common and can happen in a variety of ways. If the DNA is seems to have commonalities, then we might suspect that abiogenesis is rare and pan-spermia explains life on Earth. I believe some scientists think that comets or asteroids have amino acids?

Anyway, I think it would be interesting.
 
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Dawnhammer

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In theory, space farms could grow 24/7/365 under idealized conditions without fear of storms or pests. Wouldn't even need insecticides.

Or you could do something radical like building a greenhouse to get the same effect.

If for some reason you want to do it in the middle of hurricane country do it underground.

Expensive, but nothing compared to farms in space.

Should we use economics of scale and do some megastructures that might make sense

 
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nonaeroterraqueous

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(by the way does our moon have a name?)

It's like anthropologists asking isolated tribes what their tribes are called. They always seem to call their tribe "people." They have names for other tribes, but their own is just "people." Our moon is just "moon." We have no name for it, really.

Even food donation can cause hunger, if it is done in a way which damages local agriculture.

I would go further than that. Observations on the effects of United Nations food donations to refugees in Uganda makes me realize that people respond much like the pigeons of London. If you feed them, then they become dependent and multiply until they need to be shipped more food. It's frustrating to think of it. I'm all in favor of feeding the hungry, but there needs to be some better method that doesn't encourage an expansion of the problem.

However comparisons that indicate relatedness are much more complex than simply stating we share n% with this or that.

Thank you. God bless you. You're right, and I wish more people were aware of that.

In theory, space farms could grow 24/7/365 under idealized conditions without fear of storms or pests. Wouldn't even need insecticides.

If you can do it in space, then you can do much cheaper in an isolated bubble on Earth (see the Biodome failure, as an example). If you can't find a way to keep the pests out of a system on Earth, then you can't keep them from stowing away on your supply ships traveling between the two, anyway.

If we found microbes on for example Mars or in the atmosphere of Venus, it would tell us a lot about evolution.

We haven't found any on Mars or in the atmosphere of Venus. What does that tell you about evolution? Beware of a priori assumptions. Gather all of the evidence that you like, but base your understanding on the actual evidence, and not the assumed evidence. At the moment, I conclude that there is no life on other planets. That's the scientific conclusion at the moment.

I worry that people are so determined to find what isn't there, and so convinced that it is there, that they'll eventually find it, even if it isn't.
 
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Dawnhammer

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At the moment, I conclude that there is no life on other planets. That's the scientific conclusion at the moment.

Considering there are hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars each with order of magnitude more of orbital bodies around them......it is sheer arrogance to assume there is no other life in the universe.

Certainly this isn’t scientific conclusion, only your own.
 
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Radagast

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Considering there are hundreds of billions of galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars each with order of magnitude more of orbital bodies around them......it is sheer arrogance to assume there is no other life in the universe.

Certainly this isn’t scientific conclusion, only your own.

No, he's right: all evidence to date fits the hypothesis that only Earth has life.
 
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Erik Nelson

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Or you could do something radical like building a greenhouse to get the same effect.

If for some reason you want to do it in the middle of hurricane country do it underground.

Expensive, but nothing compared to farms in space.


Well, that is probably true, especially limiting ourselves to "conventional" chemical rockets. Greenhouses on the ground, with grow-lights, are probably less expensive than space farms.

The cost structure might change dramatically with "un-conventional" NPP technologies. Antarctica might be the most isolated, and most internationally neutral, territory for NPP "mega-lift" vehicles.

Obviously, nobody wants "Penguins to glow", especially because if penguins 100s of miles from the launch pad were "glowing", how much worse would it be for the ground personnel & crews ??? And obviously, nobody launches anything in hurricane force winds on any continent, you obviously launch around weather, whether at Cape Canaveral in Florida during hurricane season, or when katabaric winds are forecasted in Antarctica. Who can speak for all of the millions of people in the Southern Hemisphere? But there might be a way to employ NPP without putting them at risk.
 
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Dawnhammer

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No, he's right: all evidence to date fits the hypothesis that only Earth has life.

Paraphrasing Neil Degrasse Tyson

“Saying there is no other life in the universe is like filling a glass of water from the ocean and concluding there are no whales”
 
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dms1972

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No direct evidence of life on other planets has been discovered is what I understand. I don't know how scientists decide what to investigate, how that decision is reached. But i would guess its on the basis of what is known already. What then is the goal of sending probes like the voyager ones out? Whats the motivation as it were? Is it just to learn more about the solar system, are they looking for life on other planets?
 
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Tom 1

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No direct evidence of life on other planets has been discovered is what I understand. I don't know how scientists decide what to investigate, how that decision is reached. But i would guess its on the basis of what is known already. What then is the goal of sending probes like the voyager ones out? Whats the motivation as it were? Is it just to learn more about the solar system, are they looking for life on other planets?

I think there were some staged goals in mind, as in when it arrives at this point we can look for/test for this or that thing we think or know is there, and see what else comes up in the process
 
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Radagast

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Paraphrasing Neil Degrasse Tyson

“Saying there is no other life in the universe is like filling a glass of water from the ocean and concluding there are no whales”

And if you had never seen any hint of evidence for whales, that would be rational.

But the tiniest microbe on another solar planet would alter the expected number of extrasolar planets with life to a huge number.
 
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Radagast

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or when katabaric winds are forecasted in Antarctica.

You're in luck there; the katabatic winds only blow on days when the South Pole is cold. ;)

But you miss my main point; the wind patterns would carry radiation to the coast. Sea currents would then carry it to the rest of the world.

Let's leave NPP in the science-fiction literature.
 
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Dawnhammer

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And if you had never seen any hint of evidence for whales, that would be rational.

We know there is life in the universe. Fact since we are here.

Considering the incomprehensible vastness of space it is pure lunacy to think that life only exist here.

I understand it feels all cuddly to think we are that special.

It is the same false sense of arrogance that for a long time maintained that sun orbited earth and we were the divine center of the known universe.

Until we learned better. Well, some did and some didn’t.
 
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dms1972

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If I can make a general comment - a couple of unfounded assumptions seem to be creeping into the discussion. On one hand abiogenesis has been and still is highly questionable, its certainly no more than a hypothesis. All life we know of comes from pre-existing life, yes or no?

Does abiogenesis differ greatly from spontaneous generation?

[Correction]: Anaximander originally proposed the theory of spontaneous generation. Aristotle propagated it but seemed to think some animals came from their parents while others were spontaneously generated such that mice were generated spontaneously from dirty hay, crocodiles from rotting logs in a river! Dirty hay would of course would attract mice. Additionally Louis Pasteur's experiments have disproved spontaneous generation.



We seem to be talking about something very wide in scope - life, and disagreeing a bit. Already its been mentioned in terms of the tiniest microbe. If we want to discuss we need to explain what we are talking about to each other, rather than talk about life so generally.
 
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dms1972

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We know there is life in the universe. Fact since we are here.

Considering the incomprehensible vastness of space it is pure lunacy to think that life only exist here.

I understand it feels all cuddly to think we are that special.

It is the same false sense of arrogance that for a long time maintained that sun orbited earth and we were the divine center of the known universe.

Until we learned better. Well, some did and some didn’t.

ok, but what do you mean by life elsewhere in the universe?
 
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Tom 1

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Considering the incomprehensible vastness of space it is pure lunacy to think that life only exist here.

Pure lunacy seems to be overstating it a bit. Unlikely maybe. Are you basing that on anything other than how big the universe is?
Who feels all cuddly about possibly being the only conscious creatures (if we are)? I think you’re making a bit of an assumption there.
 
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