final shuttle launch

[TheSelfishGene]

I would look for some wesker qoute about evolution, but I'm sure someones got one qued up.

Wesker didn't know shit about evolution.

It's a sad day that the space programme has come to an end.
For all the naysayers that say there's nothing of interest in space, you have to understand that that can change in an instant. And without ever investigating, we will never know.

[Trent]

What annoys me the most is that governments, or politicians, are the ones who ultimately sit with the power to decide such things in regard to science. Which is utterly ridiculous.

In the words of Richard Feynman, who consulted NASA at one point:

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

[Darkmoon]

The same for other planets, if someone put their foot on Mars tomorrow, picked up a few rocks and came back to earth what exactly was the benefit to mankind?

Depends. Does that space rock contain a unlimited powersource of cheap, clean energy? That might be worth going to Mars to get.

Even if not, though, even if we've managed to find every element in the universe or even the slightest use to us already here on earth, there are a lot more of those resources out there than there are on earth. We're gonna need to go get them eventually, because they're finite. The sooner we're able to go get them the better it'll be for us all. Oil in paticular is something we need more of - and not for fuel. We've worked out a fair few alternatives to that already, and we're going to get better at using them.

No, we need oil for plastics. They're such an essential material in the modern world. I wouldn't like to see the stainless steel I-Phone, would you?

[TheSelfishGene]

Governments run to short term election cycles. Where things like space programs and other scientific efforts require sustained long term funding. It's generally not a problem with things like medical research, but things like space exploration people can't see the benefit (as evidenced above), and this makes it more politivally unpalatable, which is a real shame.

[Scream]

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Have to wonder if nature stays constant throughout the universe though, maybe its just evolved for our point in time/space. The rest of the universe and its hundreds of billions of galaxies may be uninhabitable to some extent..

A new study show that alpha seems to have varied a tiny bit in different directions of the universe billions of years ago, being slightly smaller in the northern hemisphere and slightly larger in the southern hemisphere. One intriguing implication is that the fine-structure constant is continuously varying in space, and seems fine-tuned for life in our neighborhood of the universe.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/01/quasars-reveal-that-laws-of-nature-change-over-time.html

[Project Omega]

Why goto the moon?

The escape velocity is much smaller than Earth's so less fuel is needed to go from the Moon to other planets. It can be used as a hub to store fuel and wait for the lunar orbit to be in the right position to use the Earth as a gravitational slingshot to further conserve fuel and reach farther places faster.

Earth is not full of infinite resources. Once resources get scarce enough, it will be cost effective to fly out to asteroids or other planets to set up mining expeditions and what not to sell back on Earth.

As humans, we have Mars. An entire planet we can terraform into a fucking Utopian paradise. The first thing we would have to do would be increase the CO2 levels and get the planet warm enough to be hospitable and melt the ice caps to get water flowing again. Set up a massive almost planet wide irrigation system set up and start growing some flowers to increase the O2 levels of the planet.

There's alot of iron on the planet (hence all the red colors; iron oxide (rust) is brownish/red) so making steel should be easy (iron + carbon). Essentially start the Industrial Revolution 2.0

[Scream]

Yes that's a good point. As the moon has no atmosphere it may make a good hub - especially so if they ever create a working space elevator for easy transportation of resources. I'd say terraforming Mars would take like 250 years from after we arrive there.. give or take.. depending on how technology advances.. I'll be like Mr. House by then I hope.

[Darkmoon]

I must admit - personally, I consider a Skyhook to be the next logical goal rather than actually heading to the Moon or Mars. If we can build a Space Elevator then the costs of going up drop, we can build and maintain vessels never intended to touch down on Earth a lot easier, and we have less need for the Moon as a staging point.

[jimmyjoejangles]

hey Trent thanks for the back up.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/

check out this link for Spinoff, its a yearly publication detailing innovations that nasa has given away to companies in the u.s. for production. the american people get a return of something like forty dollars on every dollar put into the space program.

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

check this one out too really good radio show lots of science news and alternative history and medicine.

[Mr. Spencer]

Wesker didn't know shit about evolution.

It's a sad day that the space programme has come to an end.
For all the naysayers that say there's nothing of interest in space, you have to understand that that can change in an instant. And without ever investigating, we will never know.

But we ARE investigating. We just don't need to go up there ourselves to do it.

There's alot of iron on the planet (hence all the red colors; iron oxide (rust) is brownish/red) so making steel should be easy (iron + carbon). Essentially start the Industrial Revolution 2.0

Hm, idea for a steampunk game set on Mars...

[Stu]

but how will we get the technology to travel in space while we can't even get into orbit anymore without paying the russians three hundred million a head.

Sector Seven had the right idea.

We need to catch ourselves a Megatron and reverse engineer all our technology.

[jimmyjoejangles]

Sector Seven had the right idea.

We need to catch ourselves a Megatron and reverse engineer all our technology.

http://www.enterprisemission.com/datashead.htm

check this site out Richard C Hoagland says we have been reverse engineering for years.