Should we suspend manned spaceflight?

[refaller]

A friend of mine was President of West Virginia's Forestry Association. He had a shirt that said "Earth First" on the front (which is an aggressive environmental group that put spikes in trees). On the back was a desolate earth with a man standing over it with a chainsaw and pick and it read "We'll mine and forest the rest of the planets later." Kinda funny, except other planets don't have trees.

ref

 

[Aldaris]

I can't imagine space travel without the masculine facial hair of Commander William Riker.

 

[mechtech2]

Our involvement in space sure let Ronald Reagan fool the Russians with 'Star Wars' threats.
But we would have had more of a return if we were to go into the oceans and obtain information, technology, and minerals. Deep water environments are much harsher than space, though.

 

[Schmoe]

Did he really fool them, or is does this thing work? We'll never know unless you got super-deluxe top secrete clearence. But then again if you did, you'd have to kill us all later. I view space travel is nice, but you got to get all your other problems solved first here on terra firma.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Yeah, that's a good idea, when we finish screwing up this planet, let's start on others, by immediately dumping waste there.

There is a rather large fusion reaction not to far away available for that purpose.
Quote:
you got to get all your other problems solved first here on terra firma.

Not gonna' happen.

 

[Al]

Not anymore. The cost needed to be 1000% sure that no life is lost is now more than we can afford.

We don't really need to go up and fix anything..

Hubble breaks? Launch a new one (or 2 or 3). Or hire the Chinese to fix it.

Space Station breaks? Good riddance. Throwing good money after bad. The fact that our government thinks its a good thing to keep putting men in space says it all.

Just because it was a good idea in the past doesn't mean its a good idea now (American's in space)

 

[NJC]

Originally Posted By: MarkC
Yeah, that's a good idea, when we finish screwing up this planet, let's start on others, by immediately dumping waste there.

Reminds me of Bill Peet's The Wump World

 

[Gary Allan]

The spin off technology from the space race gave a great rate of return, I think. That was a grand time.

As others have said, I don't think we can fix our problems here first. If space exploration was developed ..with some intense focus of intellectual and technological resources ..then it may offer something "more" to reduce our terrestrial anxieties.

Robots are cheaper ..but it kinda takes the fun out of it. So far, they haven't really done much in terms of providing anything beyond information from my view. Way too much time between evolutions due to cost. There should be remote robotic miners/smelters and whatever else needed for "something" to be done besides rolling around taking soil samples and images by this time. We're running out of time before the efforts furthering this needed advancement become more than we can sustain. I compare it to the creation of the atomic bomb. If it had been started any later, there would not have been the resources to build it (or so it has been said).

..because if planet Earth is the end of the line without external resources or some magic crack in the energy nut ...it's a sure road to nowhere.

 

[kargo27]

As far as waste goes, too bad we can't stick it into the receiving end of where the continental plates merge. Then it would be inducted below the overlying plate.

The only problem would be nuclear and toxic waste if it made it's way into a volcano and was spurted out back onto the biosphere. Since I'm not a geologist, I don't know the time frame of when the underlying plate melts, turns to magma and makes it's way to the surface. Does anyone know? Maybe the spent nuclear waste would be harmless by then?

 

[MarkC]

You mean it wold be subducted. The margins you refer to are subduction zones.
Subduction is somewhat slow... a longer time than you'd imagine ...maybe 0.9 cm/year.

 

[oilyriser]

There's one off the coast of California...

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan

Robots are cheaper ..but it kinda takes the fun out of it. So far, they haven't really done much in terms of providing anything beyond information from my view. Way too much time between evolutions due to cost.

In my view the most useful things that are in space are communications satellites Most privately funded. No human lives risked. One fails? put another up there.

I would argue these things are 100 times more useful and putting people up in s 30 year old shuttle that NASA can't even figure out how to insulate the fuel tanks.

Innovation: NASA = The Government FailBoat.

 

[andyd]

Another vote here for more oceanic and deep sea research

 

[Gary Allan]

I would normally agree ..but since I feel that all you will find is either more resources to do more damage ...AND you can't live there ..AND that we're probably destroying that natural environment as much as we are everything else we're touching ...I'd rather develop "somewhere else" for resources and whatever.

Like I said, if this is the end of the road ...we need to cull the herd a good bit before you can expect a "future".

It may buy some time ..but if you overcome certain roadblocks ..

 

[MarkC]

Originally Posted By: oilyriser
There's one off the coast of California...


Actually, the Cascadia Subduction Zone runs from Vancouver Island to the San Franciso Bay area. The Juan de Fuca and the Farallon plates are being subducted beneath the North American Plate.
Possibly counterintuitively, there is actually little seismic activity beneath this zone compared to other subduction zones.
This is probably because the plates are "locked".
The Juan de Fuca plate moves inland about 4mm/year, over a period of many, many years, this results in a lot of stored energy if the plates are locked, and when they unlock, there will be a massive earthquake of magnitude 8.5 or better.