Space Exploration

[Velo Vol]

I think the space exploration that is made public is very minuscule, compared to the Black Unacknowledged space projects that are top secret and need To know only.

There is so much that the public is not privy to when it comes to the space program and even some Presidents are not even read in on such top secret information..... think about that for a moment, if you will

Link?

 

[Grand Vol]

I get the lure of having humans in space. For pure deflection missions, though, it seems that the need for humans to be out there is growing less and less each year with technology.

Humans are needy ($$$). For research purposes, a lot of stuff can be accomplished on the ISS.

I think of it in a different manner. Probes and robotics can only go so far in "thinking" through a problem in a deflection strategy. With a manned mission, you have a crew that can think on their feet rather than what is programmed into them.

 

[Grand Vol]

I get the lure of having humans in space. For pure deflection missions, though, it seems that the need for humans to be out there is growing less and less each year with technology.

Humans are needy ($$$). For research purposes, a lot of stuff can be accomplished on the ISS.

Also, this isn't the only reason for manned exploration. Again, a society stagnates when they stop innovating and exploring. I think the innovations that come from the space program (both manned and unmanned) are a significant bonus to society as a whole. Think of the engineering and scientific breakthroughs that would come from not only modern lunar exploration, but lunar colonization. Think about the giant leaps needed to explore and colonize Mars. that would benefit the entire population rather than just the experiments we are conducting in low earth orbit.

Every time humans set their sights on a larger, almost unachievable target, we tend to surprise ourselves with our own creativity.

 

[Fun coupon VOL]

I love the thought of finding a planet and wiping out the dominant species on said planet to steal their natural resources and or to drop our garbage there.

You wanna talk about an F U to Hollywood.

 

[LouderVol]

I love the thought of finding a planet and wiping out the dominant species on said planet to steal their natural resources and or to drop our garbage there.

You wanna talk about an F U to Hollywood.

Until its us

 

[Fun coupon VOL]

Until its us

Would of happened already.

 

[Hunerwadel]

Also, this isn't the only reason for manned exploration. Again, a society stagnates when they stop innovating and exploring. I think the innovations that come from the space program (both manned and unmanned) are a significant bonus to society as a whole. Think of the engineering and scientific breakthroughs that would come from not only modern lunar exploration, but lunar colonization. Think about the giant leaps needed to explore and colonize Mars. that would benefit the entire population rather than just the experiments we are conducting in low earth orbit.

Every time humans set their sights on a larger, almost unachievable target, we tend to surprise ourselves with our own creativity.

I'm all in for keeping the wheels turning. We have to maximize what we can gain from the smaller challenges while still taking on the larger ones. I want humans on Mars someday but we need to wait until we are ready and have taken all the smaller steps that will get us there safely and on cost. I just think making an announcement that we're going to Mars and setting an arbitrary date is going to lead to huge wastes. The things we don't know we don't know are going to lead to big overruns and delays.

Example: It appears the entire surface of Mars is contaminated with perchlorates of a type that have very negative effects on human health. Right now we don't even know how to keep Martian dust, which is full of the stuff out of a habitat. It's simple to set up and maintain a clean room on Earth. On Mars due to limited space and weight it's probably not so easy. Anyone going outside will have to have their suits, gear and selves throughly decontaminated in some kind of separate room or airlock before reentering. Again easy on Earth. But designing, transporting, maintaining an extra compartment plus repair parts isn't going to be cheap or easy. Then what if dust does get inside. it will have to be thoroughly removed. That's designing, transporting and maintaining another system plus parts. Also if we're going to grow stuff in martian soil (which it appears we can do using fertilizer and depending on what the soil is like where we land) the perchlorates will have to be removed first.

I'm not saying it can't be done but I believe for the foreseeable future costs are going to be prohibitive if undertaken by the government. I hope private industry jumps in with both feet though.

 

[LouderVol]

I would think any major step towards Mars would require a major human space station presence. Closer in, easier to support. Start getting us used to dealing with "space" problems. I would also think we need to start building in space. The mining and refining goes on on planet, but assembly in space. Easier to take up a lot of small trips, than one big one. And again it forces us to address certain space issues.

 

[hog88]

I would think any major step towards Mars would require a major human space station presence. Closer in, easier to support. Start getting us used to dealing with "space" problems. I would also think we need to start building in space. The mining and refining goes on on planet, but assembly in space. Easier to take up a lot of small trips, than one big one. And again it forces us to address certain space issues.

Space elevator, defeats the gravity well.

 

[Grand Vol]

I'm all in for keeping the wheels turning. We have to maximize what we can gain from the smaller challenges while still taking on the larger ones. I want humans on Mars someday but we need to wait until we are ready and have taken all the smaller steps that will get us there safely and on cost. I just think making an announcement that we're going to Mars and setting an arbitrary date is going to lead to huge wastes. The things we don't know we don't know are going to lead to big overruns and delays.

Example: It appears the entire surface of Mars is contaminated with perchlorates of a type that have very negative effects on human health. Right now we don't even know how to keep Martian dust, which is full of the stuff out of a habitat. It's simple to set up and maintain a clean room on Earth. On Mars due to limited space and weight it's probably not so easy. Anyone going outside will have to have their suits, gear and selves throughly decontaminated in some kind of separate room or airlock before reentering. Again easy on Earth. But designing, transporting, maintaining an extra compartment plus repair parts isn't going to be cheap or easy. Then what if dust does get inside. it will have to be thoroughly removed. That's designing, transporting and maintaining another system plus parts. Also if we're going to grow stuff in martian soil (which it appears we can do using fertilizer and depending on what the soil is like where we land) the perchlorates will have to be removed first.

I'm not saying it can't be done but I believe for the foreseeable future costs are going to be prohibitive if undertaken by the government. I hope private industry jumps in with both feet though.

Which is why the Moon makes sense from a standpoint of "how do we do this in reduced gravity?" standpoint. Lunar dust is really fine and sticks to everything. If we were to test technologies for your problems at a Lunar outpost first before a Mars mission, we learn significantly more than just trying to figure everything out along the way. As Bridenstine stated, the Moon is our proving ground. The technologies developed to get us there (the Moon) to stay will be necessary for any Mars mission since Mars will be, at minimum, a two year mission due to launch windows.

Anyway, if we "wait" for the baby steps to occur, chances are we'll never get there. How often has the Mars mission dates been pushed back? If I recall, we were talking the 2020s some years ago. Now it's at least the 2030s and late 2030s. I've even seen some projections saying the 2040s. I mean, 20 more years to develop the technology to go to Mars when we landed on the Moon 50 years ago? Yes, I realize the Moon is fairly simple and only a three day trip, but if we could go there, land and return with 1960s technology, we have no reason why we can't go to Mars, land and safely return astronauts/cosmonauts with 2019 technology.

 

[Hunerwadel]

Which is why the Moon makes sense from a standpoint of "how do we do this in reduced gravity?" standpoint. Lunar dust is really fine and sticks to everything. If we were to test technologies for your problems at a Lunar outpost first before a Mars mission, we learn significantly more than just trying to figure everything out along the way. As Bridenstine stated, the Moon is our proving ground. The technologies developed to get us there (the Moon) to stay will be necessary for any Mars mission since Mars will be, at minimum, a two year mission due to launch windows.

Anyway, if we "wait" for the baby steps to occur, chances are we'll never get there. How often has the Mars mission dates been pushed back? If I recall, we were talking the 2020s some years ago. Now it's at least the 2030s and late 2030s. I've even seen some projections saying the 2040s. I mean, 20 more years to develop the technology to go to Mars when we landed on the Moon 50 years ago? Yes, I realize the Moon is fairly simple and only a three day trip, but if we could go there, land and return with 1960s technology, we have no reason why we can't go to Mars, land and safely return astronauts/cosmonauts with 2019 technology.

I've been a space enthusiast since the nation was in awe, fear and confusion over Sputnik. I'll never forget the beep...beep...beep they would broadcast over the radios and tvs and announce "ladies and gentlemen that sound you hear is from outer space". Of course it was barely above the atmosphere.

The Moon does make sense for the reasons you stated and I am for that. It's just that Mars is several magnitudes harder, longer and more expensive. Since the Apollo missions I've seen project after project balloon in costs and face delay after delay and cancellation. With no authority but just as a layman observer I believe that with even with strong national support and a generous Congress we will not successfully launch people to Mars before 2040.

Lets pump up the budget and continue the planning, engineering and testing that it will take to get us there though. I just don't consider it a national priority right now. I'm actually more of a planet hunter and seeker of life. (I know there could be life on Mars but I'm not as interested in the kind you might step on and never notice)

 

[marcusluvsvols]

Would of happened already.

Nobody knows we are here yet...unless by blind chance. The very first transmission we sent out in space? It has only travelled 200 light years. Thats not even a grain of sand, on the surface of a planet, that is our tiny little galaxy, in a nearly infinite universe. Fermi paradox.

 

[Hunerwadel]

Nobody knows we are here yet...unless by blind chance. The very first transmission we sent out in space? It has only travelled 200 light years. Thats not even a grain of sand, on the surface of a planet, that is our tiny little galaxy, in a nearly infinite universe. Fermi paradox.

Pardon me, but I don't quite get what you're saying. I understand how far (or not so far) our signals have traveled. But what does it have to do with the Fermi Paradox?

 

[marcusluvsvols]

The fermi paradox basically applies that as the sheer size of the universe with likely trillions and trillions of stars, billions of earth like planets the proper distance from their star to have conditions for life as we know it all but guarantees that there is life, perhaps intelligent life, elsewhere....at the same time, that incomprehensible size also nearly guarantees that we are likely so far away from any other intelligent life that the odds of us encountering them are incredibly remote. The 200 light years our attempt at communicating with others has traveled hasnt even made it anywhere yet, on a galactic scale, much less a universal scale.

Light moves so fast it is almost impossible to really visualize it or wrap our heads around. As far as we know, nothing moves faster. Not only can we not travel that fast, in my opinion, we dont even have a decent concept yet of how to possibly ever travel that fast...and yet the nearest earth like planet around a similar star to ours is like a couple thousand light years away? The distances between stars, not galaxies, just stars, are so incredibly immense...the thought of an intelligent species setting out on a journey to another star is almost laughable.

It is hard for me to square this fact in my own mind with things i have read and seen over the years that seemed to be solid evidence for alien craft visiting here...like the navy pilots recent accounts for example. I am not sure what to think. One thing i am certain of...if aliens come to Earth, their technology is so incredibly far past ours, to be able to travel at or faster than light at a minimum...that they can do whatever they want with us, and there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them. None of that hollywood bullcrap, if they can get here...we are likely an ant colony to them, coming here is like a trip to the zoo for them.

 

[TheDeeble]

It's something some might not think about. Just how great a distance between our solar system, not the galaxies, just the solar system and anything else. Article is from 2017 but that tiny tiny blue dot hasn't gotten any bigger in a year and a half....

Galactic Map of Every Human Radio Broadcast - How Far Have Our Signals Traveled Into Space?

If there is intelligent life that is capable of traveling between the stars and they already know about earth, I'd doubt it's because one of our radio signals introduced us to them. And if there was intelligent life that lived inside that 200 light year diameter, then I'd bet the Milky Way would be abundant with life like the galaxy in Star Wars.

 

[marcusluvsvols]

That picture sums up perfectly what 200 light years is on a galactic scale. It is nothing. Nothing at all...yet, if we had the power somehow to travel the speed of light, which is incredibly fast, it would take 200 years, almost as long as the US has been a country, just to travel that blue dot distance.

Nevermind the fact that it would take a very long time to accelerate up to the speed of light, since the human body cant handle much acceleration and survive. Another aspect of star travel i have pondered...force=massxacceleration...so if we could ever achieve that speed, just a very small particle, a marble of space debris, when colliding with a craft moving that fast would have the force of say a nuclear explosion. How would we, or anyone else, get around that? Thats why i say that we dont even have workable concepts of how to travel the galaxy. We havent even conceived anything yet that could possibly get us anywhere. Splitting the atom was a huge leap forward for humanity. We will likely need several more discoveries like that which are total paradigm shifts before we can begin thinking about star travel. It is more likely IMO that we destroy this planet or kill eachother before we ever have the tech to travel more than a planet or 2 away.

 

[hog88]

Question for you rocket scientists.

Space is a vacuum so that means there is no air of any kind, right? So how do rockets, thrusters, ext work in a vacuum? If there is nothing to push against how does that work?

 

[LouderVol]

Question for you rocket scientists.

Space is a vacuum so that means there is no air of any kind, right? So how do rockets, thrusters, ext work in a vacuum? If there is nothing to push against how does that work?

It's my understanding that just the act of exhausting is enough to push us around. We "push" the exhaust away and that in turn pushes us forward.

It's not much but we dont need to get up to great speeds fast in space.

At least that is how I have had ion engines explained which I know they have used on some of the newer space craft.

 

[Hunerwadel]

That picture sums up perfectly what 200 light years is on a galactic scale. It is nothing. Nothing at all...yet, if we had the power somehow to travel the speed of light, which is incredibly fast, it would take 200 years, almost as long as the US has been a country, just to travel that blue dot distance.

Nevermind the fact that it would take a very long time to accelerate up to the speed of light, since the human body cant handle much acceleration and survive. Another aspect of star travel i have pondered...force=massxacceleration...so if we could ever achieve that speed, just a very small particle, a marble of space debris, when colliding with a craft moving that fast would have the force of say a nuclear explosion. How would we, or anyone else, get around that? Thats why i say that we dont even have workable concepts of how to travel the galaxy. We havent even conceived anything yet that could possibly get us anywhere. Splitting the atom was a huge leap forward for humanity. We will likely need several more discoveries like that which are total paradigm shifts before we can begin thinking about star travel. It is more likely IMO that we destroy this planet or kill eachother before we ever have the tech to travel more than a planet or 2 away.

It would take about 350 days (I forget the exact number) to reach light speed at 1G acceleration. However you would never attain light speed. As the speed of any object increases so does its mass. If a single proton somehow managed to reach light speed it would become more massive than the entire universe. Therefore as you approach the speed of light more and more energy is necessary to propel the now enormous and growing mass. If you converted the entire mass of the universe (or several universes) into energy it still wouldn't be enough to accelerate a single proton to the speed of light.

 

[Hunerwadel]

Question for you rocket scientists.

Space is a vacuum so that means there is no air of any kind, right? So how do rockets, thrusters, ext work in a vacuum? If there is nothing to push against how does that work?

If you have a stationary pressurized chamber in a vacuum and punched a hole in it the entire chamber would move in the direction opposite of where the hole is. You would have more pressure pushing against the opposite wall than you would pushing against where the hole is (zero). (Direction of movement would also depend on the center of mass of the chamber and whether or not gravity is involved)

 

[rjd970]

If light speed or faster than light speed is ever achieved it won’t be by acceleration, it will be by “cheating”. We would have to find a way to fold spacetime on itself, or warp space time around the spacecraft. Not only is this theoretically possible, but it could provide a way to avoid the effects of accelerating to light speed and any resulting time dialation.

 

[Hunerwadel]

If light speed or faster than light speed is ever achieved it won’t be by acceleration, it will be by “cheating”. We would have to find a way to fold spacetime on itself, or warp space time around the spacecraft. Not only is this theoretically possible, but it could provide a way to avoid the effects of accelerating to light speed and any resulting time dialation.

I'm no physicist but have taken some physics in college. From what I understand about folding space (warping) is that it would take the same amount of energy to fold space to the extent that two objects become closer to each other as would be required to accelerate an object to light speed (basically infinite energy). In other words there is not enough energy available in the universe to do it. As we understand physics at this time it can't be done.

Massive objects such as black holes or galaxies can curve space but not warp it as occurs in SF.

 

[LouderVol]

It would take about 350 days (I forget the exact number) to reach light speed at 1G acceleration. However you would never attain light speed. As the speed of any object increases so does its mass. If a single proton somehow managed to reach light speed it would become more massive than the entire universe. Therefore as you approach the speed of light more and more energy is necessary to propel the now enormous and growing mass. If you converted the entire mass of the universe (or several universes) into energy it still wouldn't be enough to accelerate a single proton to the speed of light.

This never made sense to me. I guess it's the duality of light. Because a photon of light has mass, and it travels at light speed.

 

[hog88]

It would take about 350 days (I forget the exact number) to reach light speed at 1G acceleration. However you would never attain light speed. As the speed of any object increases so does its mass. If a single proton somehow managed to reach light speed it would become more massive than the entire universe. Therefore as you approach the speed of light more and more energy is necessary to propel the now enormous and growing mass. If you converted the entire mass of the universe (or several universes) into energy it still wouldn't be enough to accelerate a single proton to the speed of light.

This is why physics hurts my brain.

 

[VolStrom]

This is why physics hurts my brain.

Just watch Star Trek, they just move a slider and go to warp factor 8.