if we can move....

[mrfish]

mountains of men and machinery to the normandy beachhead under fire.......

then why are we so apathetic about space?

we ought to be able to straight up conquest a place like mars....just attack it with machinery and supplies and start colonizing.

i guess it takes a war or the promise of gold to really show what we're capable of. standing on the earth today looking at the night sky ought to conjur up the same kind of will to explore that struck the euros and asians centuries back. i have a weird feeling people still see a dome when they look up.

i guess now, as then, only a small fraction really give a damn what's out there.

[Udie]

America should be ashamed of itself in this area.  This should have been our "national goal" for the past 3 decades, instead of the welfair state and race bating crap of the past 30 years.

 This planet won't last forever

[Yeager]

This planet won't last forever
====
No it wont and neither will the universe.  Fact is that somewhere down the road is the end game.  I seriously doubt humans will be there to see it since the expected life span of the cosmos is considerably greater than the expected lifespan of our sun..

Mars is a dead end and humans will not be able overcome the fact that all matter is restircted to the speed of light (which is extremely slow considering the vastness of the universe).

Take care of this planet.  It is all we will ever have.

[Ripsnort]

We need another war!  Just about all the technologies we discover are influenced in a time of warfare. Even the first analog computer was a result of military spending.

Yeager, this planet will take care of itself, just like it has for millions of years, once all humans have destroyed themselves.  Then it will be back to its normal schedule.

[Animal]

this is something that has been troubling me for some time now.
ive been very pissed at the lack of enthusiasm from the goverments and people of the world.
this IS something that should be one of the top priorities - the colonization of space.

Mars is a dead end and humans will not be able overcome the fact that all matter is restircted to the speed of light (which is extremely slow considering the vastness of the universe).

Take care of this planet. It is all we will ever have.
 

sub-light spaceships are not what will take us vast distances in the far future. mathematics will. if we ever get far out there, it will be in some way of bending space and "moving" like a threadmill.

as for mars and other planets - so what if they are hostile? nothing our minds cant deal with. terraforming and such technologies are possible in the long run. of course, not we or our grandchildren will have the fortune of living a normal life in space, that doesnt mean we should not work hard for it to be possible in the future. too bad we only care about inmediate profit and benefits. thats because we have so short life expectancies that we dont care what happens when we die. we are in a rush to do stuff fast while we live - anything after that doesnt matter. we should be working hard on space for the same reason the fathers of your contry worked hard so that you could have what you have now.

i think the international space station is a move in the right direction, but not nearly enough for what SHOULD be done. i guess in the end it will not be goverments fueled by wars that will give us the chance to colonize space. it will be giant enterprises looking for profit out there. there is some serious wealth in mining asteroids, etc. we just dont do it cause its seriously expensive, its expensive because we never put much effort in achieving it

i hope its not too late when mankind takes a look at the cosmos and decides to go there because of serious need to do so. it could be late then. we should be there now, it was possible decades ago, but the effort was stopped once we proved we could do it. pathetic.

[midnight Target]

Mars is a dead end and humans will not be able overcome the fact that all matter is restircted to the speed of light (which is extremely slow considering the vastness of the universe).

Relativity gives us the means to travel great distances in reasonable RELATIVE time. Just can't go back to what you left behind. I have also seen some studies on the possible terraforming of Mars. It would be a centuries long project, with the goal being to set up a greenhouse type atmosphere and to gradually warm the planet to the point that liquid water is possible.

[J_A_B]

The limititation of the speed of light might not be too much of a problem; travel through "hyperspace" is hypothetically possible.  

Before we can go anywhere we need to invent some kind of self-sustaining power source capable of creating and sustaining huge bursts of energy (like controllable nuclear reactions or matter-antimatter technology or something).  After that we need to figure out how to utilize hyperspace.   Space travel is quite feasable; we just lack the technology.  With current technology, even a flight to Mars would require well over a year.  A flight to the closest star system (which may or may not have inhabitable planets), at the speeds we're currently capable of, would take centuries.  

Give humanity a couple hundred more years and maybe they'll be able to do it.

J_A_B

[Curval]

Dunno guys...

Before we go spending billions on trying to colonize planets I think we should finnish exploring the one we live on!  Two thirds of our planet is covered by ocean....there is much more potential for the oceans depths to provide us with all kinds of beneficial medicines, energy products etc etc.  It would also cost alot less to live underwater than in space...

[Tac]

There's talk of being able to terraform both mars and venus.

For mars, crashing an ice comet or ice asteroid on it and planting algae on the upper atmosphere and newly formed lakes. The O2 cycle would start on its own. So they think.

Another theory (now unpopular) was to nuke (H nukes) mar's polar region to make the ice melt.

For Venus, seeing its superhot, they've also thought of smashing an ice asteroid/comet on it and then using stuff to make its atmosphere shed the heat into space.

And then there's Europa, the solar system's 2nd largest swimming pool.

[Eagler]

can u imagine the poor ping times and lag from there??

plus I heard the fishing is even worse than in some yankee states

no thanks

[CyranoAH]

Well, speaking as someone who has a professional interest (and enthusiasm) in space, and knowing many, many people and organizations in its industry, I think that the main problem with the progress of the space sector is linked to the "I want it now" or "social shortsightedness" syndrome.

When one learns about the space industry deeper than the, shocking, flabbergasting, inspiring first impression, one realizes that... well, it's kind of boring, slow, and apparently stall.

An example: The latest ENVISAT satellite, state-of-the-art earth observation satellite by ESA, took 8 years to develop.

8 loooong years.

How do you sell that?

People want "hey, let's go to mars! But man, I want to see a manned spaceship going like now!".

Then comes phases A, B, C, and D... totalling some 10 to 15 years in preparations.

People lose interest.

Now try to imagine selling the ---EXCITING--- terraforming of Mars. WOW!!

Just wait some 400 years and we may be able to have something green over there! Wow, you mean just like earth? No sir, that's 400 years more.

And I haven't mentioned money yet

Anyway, I think it's more a social problem than a technological problem. We - as the human race - don't have perseverance to embark in projects that last many times longer than our expected lifespan.

Heck, politicians won't embark in projects that are longer than 4 years!

Many scientists theorize, write papers, research on subjects that are bound to be finally proven (or not) many centuries after they are dead. THAT, gentlemen, is the spirit.

Make people realize that the greater good is something that takes quite a loooong time to accomplish... (and that doesn't only apply for space), and you'll have progress. Slow, steady progress (which doesn't impede for the geniality of a few to make giant leaps forward) that will get us where we want to go much faster.

And remember, Space Whines are best served cold (near 0 degrees Kelvin), in complete vacuum, and with a touch of microgravity.

Enjoy.

Daniel

[Hangtime]

Henh..

resources?? space is positively crawling with resources... there's an asteroid belt out there filled with every imaginable need of raw materials.

energy??  all we could ever want.. right there, beamed down free by good 'ol Sol.

technology? we got it. have had it for the last 3 decades.

national will? *bzzzzrrrt* no sale. space is 'nationialsed'.. you ain't got a 'permit' you ain't gonna boost fer orbit. our respective goverments have effectively hamstrung any privatization of space enterprise. and therein lies the rub.. we ain't goin because our goverments won't let us. period.

bastards.

[Sikboy]

Originally posted by J_A_B
The limititation of the speed of light might not be too much of a problem; travel through "hyperspace" is hypothetically possible.  

Yeah, but sometimes when you hit the button to get out of the way of ONE asteroid, you just pop out in front of ANOTHER asteriod.
-Sikboy

[mrfish]

ever been inside an aircraft carrier? steel on top of steel, inside of steel, encased in steel.....a redundant monument to the american industrial base, and we even have enough to throw a few away now and then.

and that's just us....a friend of the entirety of industrialized nations. every time we have a war we all crank out insane loads of steel and technology just to blow it up.

i don't need much of a reason - mars is just sitting there daring me. the nearest star is far away but so what - one thing at a time.

[SageFIN]

Try this conversation in sci.astro.amateur:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=8b14c7a4.0203250048.2b0166ff%40posting.google.com&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dasteroids%2Band%2Bbush%2Badministration%2Bgroup:sci.astro.amateur%26hl%3Den%26selm%3D8b14c7a4.0203250048.2b0166ff%2540posting.google.com%26rnum%3D1

An excerpt:

Karol wrote in message
<8b14c7a4.0203250048.2b0166ff@posting.google.com>...
>Hi,
>With the new administration so much focused on defense systems and not
>affraid of using nuclear devices and even weapons in space, would it
>be possible to revive an old project Clementine 2? It was cancelled by
>the Clinton Administration and was supposed to target some asteroids
>to test technology for protecting our planet. Clemetine 1 was already
>run by the Department of Defense and this one would not require an
>increase in NASA budget either...
>--
>Karol

Ummmm, try to think political.  The only reasons they care about defense are
1.) All the terrorism - Is Bin Laden gonna hijack an asteroid?  Not likely.
2.) Defense spending is the standard Conservative thing to do.  But it only
includes defense from other humans, and that won't change unless our planet
is actually hit by something that kills a significant number of people.

Face it, the human race is mostly a pack of ignorant schmucks.  They sit
there and pay 50% of their income to the federal government which dumps
billions of dollars into failing schools and lines the pockets of greedy
politicians of whichever of the 2 evil parties you subscribe to, and even
when Jupiter gets slammed by an impact which would have devastated or
destroyed our planet, many people don't even KNOW, and most that do only
have a vague idea of the implications, and generally just think "that will
never happen here."

What I don't understand is why interested people in the public don't start
organizing and funding private space missions.  Screw NASA and the govt, it
will take them 2 centuries just to explore most of our solar system.  We've
been in space for over half a century and still know almost nothing about
even our local neighbors.  Sad, sad, sad.