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#783659 - 12/07/06 07:55 AM
Re: NASA to Return to the Moon?
[Re: oilyriser]
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Shannow
Registered: 12/12/02
Posts: 12534
Loc: a prison an island
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Oz went from a free university education to a pay for service education. Admittedly, there were many "lifetime" students, who wandered from degree to degree. Easy fixed by saying "first degree is free, second, and you either pay, or get a sponsor."
saw this link this morning.
http://www.gscit.monash.edu.au/gscitweb/research_student.php#B
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#783660 - 12/07/06 08:56 AM
Re: NASA to Return to the Moon?
[Re: Shannow]
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Mystic
Registered: 03/05/03
Posts: 4114
Loc: Pueblo West, CO
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Star Trek was good science fiction but not science fact. The stars (with the special exception of the Sun, of course) are TRILLIONS of miles away. The stars closest to us (except for the Sun) are about 4 light years away. A beam of light travelling at 186262 MILES PER SECOND (about 300000 kilometers per second), every second, would take more than 4 years to reach those stars. The only fairly fast means we have of trying to communicate with anybody that might be out there is with radio astronomy.
Now, going to the stars is not impossible. If we could produce enough anti-matter (to superheat matter) we could probably reach light speeds. It would take a lot of anti-matter, far more than the entire human race has ever produced. And it would take a lot of energy. And than after figuring out how to make that much anti-matter (no small task) we would than have to figure out how to prevent a grain of dust encountered in space from destroying our spacecraft travelling at that speed.
Now, again, it is not impossible. But it is extremely impractical with our current level of technology. People are trying to figure out easier ways and their ideas sound like science fiction, not science fact. In fact, some of our most advanced mathematics imply (if the mathematics are correct) that the entire Universe is just an illusion.
There are actually 4 unmanned American spacecraft heading for the stars. It will take tens of thousands of years for the remains of those spaecraft to travel any considerable distance in interstellar space.
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#783661 - 12/07/06 02:56 PM
Re: NASA to Return to the Moon?
[Re: oilyriser]
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Al
Registered: 06/08/02
Posts: 11421
Loc: Elizabethtown, Pa
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Quote:
i would love to see our nations top exports be educated people to work all over the world.
Yea, when you think of exporting the best educated as being the best and importing least educated being the worst isn't it obvious which would be occurring? 
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#783662 - 12/07/06 06:55 PM
Re: NASA to Return to the Moon?
[Re: Gary Allan]
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Win
Registered: 02/05/03
Posts: 869
Loc: Northwest Arkansas
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Quote:
Maybe they'll find out if Alice ever made it there.
Good one.
At least when billions are thrown at space travel, we have some adventure to be excited about, a bit of new technology and knowledge for mankind, and a few artifacts. Throw billions at poverty and education, and we get slum cities not fit for mankind, and kids that can't read, write, spell, or do simple math.
_________________________
04 Jaguar Xj8
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94 Jaguar Xj12
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#783663 - 12/07/06 07:30 PM
Re: NASA to Return to the Moon?
[Re: Win]
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Mystic
Registered: 03/05/03
Posts: 4114
Loc: Pueblo West, CO
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Throwing billions of dollars at poverty and education never seems to work. I think the answer in education is charter schools. The public schools are a total disaster. Billions of dollars to try to solve poverty merely made everything worse.
Hopefully a few billion dollars put into finding alternative energy would work. If not, we are all out of luck.
I can't really see continuing to throw billions at NASA. What have we obtained from all of that money? The Russians copied the Space Shuttle and then flew theirs only one time. They realized it was a loser and they went back to expendable launch vehicles. NASA was too proud to admit that the Space Shuttle was too dangerous, too expensive, and not as good as expendable lauch vehicles. And we wound up with two entire flight crews being lost. That thing still is none too safe, even with billions spent trying to solve the safety issues. There is still a lot of stuff coming off of the external fuel tank. All it takes is one small piece hitting the tiles under the Space Shuttle. As it is they will retire the Space Shuttle in 2010 and guess what? After that they will for all practical purposes return to expendable lauch vehicles (some components may be reuseable). Could have saved lives and money if they had been willing to admit their mistakes earlier.
We need satelites of various kinds in Earth orbit. And we need some additional unmanned flights to explore the solar system. Heck, the Air Force could do that sort of stuff in California.
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#783665 - 12/07/06 08:29 PM
Re: Space travel a good bet
[Re: Win]
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Benzadmiral
Registered: 10/12/05
Posts: 1180
Loc: Louisiana
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Quote:
Quote:
Maybe they'll find out if Alice ever made it there.
Good one.
At least when billions are thrown at space travel, we have some adventure to be excited about, a bit of new technology and knowledge for mankind, and a few artifacts. Throw billions at poverty and education, and we get slum cities not fit for mankind, and kids that can't read, write, spell, or do simple math.
Absolutely. Space travel will pay off. Just not right away, and if we (Americans) as a people are too short-sighted to see that, too impatient to take the long view, we will end up on the dustbin of history. When we do get to the Moon on a regular basis, we'll be buying our air from Toyota of Luna.
What payoff could we expect now? Technology! Almost all the stuff that keeps Grandma Edna alive in the ICU is descended from stuff NASA commissioned for the astronauts. We can have manufacturing on the moon, especially anything which would involve vacuum; we wouldn't have to pay to create it, it's right outside the window! Employment -- a construction boom to start with; a high-tech and IT boom to follow.
And a planet is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to put all its eggs in. What if another dinosaur killer asteroid slams into the Earth? Our civilization winks out, and so do we. If we've got self-sufficient colonies elsewhere, we keep going. (Yeah, I know earthlike planets are a long way in our future. But if we don't take the first steps now, we'll *never* get there.)
If our ancestors had stayed safely in the trees and never risked coming down to the savannah, we wouldn't be here.
_________________________
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-- Paul W. (The Benzadmiral)
('03 Buick Park Avenue, charcoal/cream)
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#783666 - 12/07/06 08:36 PM
Re: Space travel a good bet
[Re: Benzadmiral]
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Benzadmiral
Registered: 10/12/05
Posts: 1180
Loc: Louisiana
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In addition, the reason space travel has been costing us so much is NASA's insistence on absolute safety -- triple-redundancy, never taking a chance, etc. If the Pilgrims had had that attitude, we'd never have started this nation. ("Oh, we couldn't possibly cross the *entire* Atlantic in just one ship! And the ship, well, it's got to be waterproof, and failure-proof, and . . ."
The original Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts knew there was always the chance they'd die in the space program. They went ahead anyway.
Cancel the pointless War on Drugs, stop wasting money on illegal "guest workers" and ship them back home, and you'd have the money you'd need for space exploration. By men.
_________________________
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-- Paul W. (The Benzadmiral)
('03 Buick Park Avenue, charcoal/cream)
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#783667 - 12/07/06 09:30 PM
Re: Space travel a good bet
[Re: Benzadmiral]
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Mystic
Registered: 03/05/03
Posts: 4114
Loc: Pueblo West, CO
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People talk about NASA insisting on absolute safety. They supposedly do, but in the case of the Space Shuttle after years of research and billions of dollars they still have not been able to solve the tile problem. It is not that they insist on totla security. Heck, we need near total security with the Space Shuttle-there is the crew to think about, no more will be built, and billions of dollars are at stake with every flight. The problem with NASA is not their insistence on total security. The problem with NASA is that they have lost somehow the drive to solve every problem. Can it really be that nobody can solve a tile problem? THERE HAS TO BE AN ENGINEERING SOLUTION!
Whatever happened to the can-do spirit of NASA? It used to be there. Can somebody find it? If a problem involving tiles pieces coming off cannot be solved than we might as while ground the Space Shuttle fleet right now and give up.
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#783668 - 12/07/06 09:46 PM
Re: Space travel a good bet
[Re: Mystic]
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MarkC
Registered: 07/10/03
Posts: 8044
Loc: Not Seattle, but close.
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I saw this yesterday, which is interesting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061207/ap_on_sc/mars_water
_________________________
"Pride and ego are the anesthesia of ignorance." - Ed Parker Sr.
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