Topic: Nasa stopping space flights for 5 years?

[ThePerm]

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r259/theultimateperm/venusconquer.jpg

see diagram

[UltimatePartyBear]

Even if you do all that (and you're seriously overestimating the explosive force of nuclear weapons), Venus is not inside our solar system's habitable zone.  It's simply too close to the sun to ever be cool enough for life as we know it.  Its extraordinarily long days don't help much, either.

[NWR_insanolord]

Venus is way more trouble than it's worth for colonization, especially given how much available space on the moon, Mars, and the various Jovian moons. Forget colonizing Venus, I want an underwater colony on Europa. Plus we need to colonize the moon so we can find the TMA, we're way behind schedule on that.

[animecyberrat]

Since when have we ever backed down from a challenge? I agree with The Perm, forget Mars let's do Venus first.

[NWR_insanolord]

How about we do it on the moon and Mars first to get the hang of things so we're not trying the hardest test in the solar system as our first colony? My Europan underwater colony would be damn hard too, but at least we can practice that in our own oceans first.

[ThePerm]

i dont see why we don't do it all at the same time and see which one gets done faster, i dont think venus is outside the habitable zone, I believe a few hundred years ago it was recorded as a blue planet, it might have even been inhabited, possibly venus had a civilization that screwed up like we are doing. Any evidence of life would be destroyed by crazy winds, radiation exposure, burning surface.

re-reading up on venus, though i came to some problems though with my plan. Miainly there is a lack of hydrogen. Which poses a problem to terraformers. ITs possible to ship hydrogen, but not feasible. I suppose the fission reaction from a nuclear blast would create hydrogen, but i couldn't tell you if it would be enough. Theres hydrogen in sulfuric acid, but again apparently the sulfuric clouds while coverin the surface are still a small part of the atmosphere

[NWR_insanolord]

This isn't a video game here, we can't just keep trying until it works, a lot of people's lives and billions of dollars are at stake, this is something we want to be careful and play it safe with.

[animecyberrat]

So why haven't we colonized the Moon yet? I would have thought that would have been doable by now.

[Caliban]

There's no petroleum on the Moon, that's why.

[NWR_insanolord]

It's probably doable, but that doesn't mean the money's there for it. Didn't Bush say we were going to put a base on the moon a couple years ago as a campaign promise or something?

[animecyberrat]

I thought he said we would start sending people back to the moon by 2020 or something like that. I don't buy that there is no money, I think it is just there is no return makes more sense. A colony on the moon would not be self sustained so it would drain our resources. But I thought they were going to build a base or something there to launch our future trips to Mars from or something like that.

[NWR_insanolord]

Launching to Mars or other places in the Solar System would make sense to be done on the moon, you'd save a ton of fuel doing it that way. One of the points of doing a colony on the moon is to see how self-sustainable we could make it, because going any farther out we would need it to be extremely self-sustainable because it takes a long time to get something from Earth to Mars.

[ThePerm]

apparently the composition of moon rock is such that all that need be done is melt any rock and at least something 20% h2o can be withdrawn. The moon is probably more habitable then mars at least initially. One of the biggest problems with launching objects into space is the amount of energy required to break earths gravity is massive. Breaking the moons gravity is not so bad. If the moon is as resource filled as recent experiements have shown then it would be a place to go before going anywhere else.

I think that for building on the moon, minimum resources could be used if the moon had tunnels dug into it and then on the ends of either side of the tunnels then structure would be put over that. Inside a type of bio habitat could be built with excesss space dedicated to plantlife so that oxygen can be collected and used for further mining.

one of the things that bothers me about trips to other planets is that the government intends to bring them back, most of the people who settled America never intended to go back to their home land. It might be better to send them there and expect them to stay there and slowly build so that others could come. If they would want to come back then they would have to slowly acquire the resources from that planet  in order to do so.

as dangerous as it sounds. Imagine if the government gave a waver to death row inmates to wave their death if they agreed to be sent to another planet. If we currently don't value their life, than why shouldn't we send them over there to help build. To some extant it sounds bad, but to another it would be an opportunity of a lifetime. It worked for Australia and the state of Georgia. Its also hypocritical that we worry about the deaths of astronauts and not the deaths of soldiers fighting in wars.

[NWR_insanolord]

as dangerous as it sounds. Imagine if the government gave a waver to death row inmates to wave their death if they agreed to be sent to another planet. If we currently don't value their life, than why shouldn't we send them over there to help build.

Isn't that basically the backstory of the Terrans in Starcraft?

[GoldenPhoenix]

Is Perm a scientist? I never realized we had scientists on the board!

[ThePerm]

no,but i took biology, chemistry and earth science. I'm an studio art major, but Iv taken a lot of interdisciplinary classes.
Everything i know i learned in class, pbs, the discovery channel and its sister stations, and the internet.


and lol insanolord, i wasn't thinking about the starcraft back-story at all, but that must have been some hidden neuron connection in the back of my mind

[Shecky]

Is Perm a scientist? I never realized we had scientists on the board!

No, but there are a few.

[Shecky]

How about we actually finish the ocean ON OUR PLANET first before doinking around in space to look at all the pretty stars.

Hell, we haven't even finished exploring all the LAND...

I support either one of those and NASA Helps with both.

Earth Observation
Weather Satellites

Also the second Jason is up which measures the ocean.

I just believe that the technology that comes from the space program benefits all areas of explorations.  NASA has even supported various studies of the ocean.

I Applaud your attempts at saving this train wreck.

[ThePerm]

what he means by 'we haven't done all our land", he means the ocean is so vast and deep, yet unexplored. Humans have only covered something  like 13% of the land area, we've barely put anything underwater.

[UncleBob]

Its also hypocritical that we worry about the deaths of astronauts and not the deaths of soldiers fighting in wars.

Not to de-rail this thread, but you're a damn fool if you think we don't worry about the deaths of soldiers fighting in wars.  It happens, yes, but I can assure you, we worry about every single one.

[ThePerm]

i dont mean you, I mean as a whole. Some people don't care and that throws off the whole average. For every 20 people that care theres that doesn't. Those are the douche bags. I'm trying to say that if were so morally bankrupt as to send people that we actually do care about off to die, then its not a leap to send people that we despise off to die on some Martian expedition.

[RABicle]

This would cause the planet to iniially be very hot, but cool down expoentially. The planet would then have a cooler climate. Specific bacteria could be released in certain order in order to create controlled climate change and also to convert certain harmful compounds int more organic friendly compounds through fermentation

You're suggesting something with a timescale of millions and millions of years here.

i dont see why we don't do it all at the same time and see which one gets done faster, i dont think venus is outside the habitable zone, I believe a few hundred years ago it was recorded as a blue planet, it might have even been inhabited, possibly venus had a civilization that screwed up like we are doing. Any evidence of life would be destroyed by crazy winds, radiation exposure, burning surface.

There is something crazy about this post and it has nothing to do with the wind.

So why haven't we colonized the Moon yet? I would have thought that would have been doable by now.

Why would we colonise the fucking moon? IT'S A LUMP OF ROCK IN A COLD BARREN SPACE. It has no atmosphere, no resources it would be completely unsustainable. We haven't colonized the moon for similar reason to why we haven't colonised Antartica or Midway Island.

The only possible reason we might have to colonise the moon is to launch future space missions from it, since it would take substantially less energy to raise large spacecraft off the Moon's weaker gravity. But for this to even be viable we'd have to be sourcing 95% of the materials, constructing and commissioning  the ships in space. That'd require a massive workforce who'd all need to eat, breathe, and live on the moon, a colony. Which is not a viable option for the lack of an atmosphere or food.

[ThePerm]

a massive force of robots

robot ants!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony

[NWR_insanolord]

This would cause the planet to iniially be very hot, but cool down expoentially. The planet would then have a cooler climate. Specific bacteria could be released in certain order in order to create controlled climate change and also to convert certain harmful compounds int more organic friendly compounds through fermentation

You're suggesting something with a timescale of millions and millions of years here.

i dont see why we don't do it all at the same time and see which one gets done faster, i dont think venus is outside the habitable zone, I believe a few hundred years ago it was recorded as a blue planet, it might have even been inhabited, possibly venus had a civilization that screwed up like we are doing. Any evidence of life would be destroyed by crazy winds, radiation exposure, burning surface.

There is something crazy about this post and it has nothing to do with the wind.

So why haven't we colonized the Moon yet? I would have thought that would have been doable by now.

Why would we colonise the fucking moon? IT'S A LUMP OF ROCK IN A COLD BARREN SPACE. It has no atmosphere, no resources it would be completely unsustainable. We haven't colonized the moon for similar reason to why we haven't colonised Antartica or Midway Island.

The only possible reason we might have to colonise the moon is to launch future space missions from it, since it would take substantially less energy to raise large spacecraft off the Moon's weaker gravity. But for this to even be viable we'd have to be sourcing 95% of the materials, constructing and commissioning  the ships in space. That'd require a massive workforce who'd all need to eat, breathe, and live on the moon, a colony. Which is not a viable option for the lack of an atmosphere or food.

Yeah, the moon has no resources, unless you count a rather large chunk of ice (the equivalent of a lake 6 miles by 6 miles by 60 feet) and large deposits of titanium. Food is easy, hydroponic farms. In addition to being a great place to launch ships from because of the low gravity and no atmospheric pressure, not to mention the water that can be used as fuel, it would be great for astronomy because there's no atmosphere to lessen the effectiveness of telescopes. It wouldn't be totally self sustaining, but it would be close enough for it to be viable.

[Bill Aurion]

I have no idea if this was mentioned or not, but there was a really good program on the Discovery Channel on Sunday about NASA's plans and ideas for colonizing the moon (starting with a satellite probe that will launch later this year in order to scan the best locations for a potential base) and what they plan to do about water, food, etc...It all sounded fairly practical, so moon colonization isn't entirely out of mankind's reach...