The United States keeps investing heavily into NASA as a way to deal with environmental issues?

The United States keeps giving NASA large amount of money and support in hopes they come up with a cheap and effective way to send garbage and waste to the moon. I know there are treaties about dumping things in space or on other planets but I think that goes out the window once humans are able to actually do it at a cheap cost and effectively. Also that treaty law is stupid in regard to lifeless planets. A lifeless rock is the perfect place to send our garbage and waste instead of having it on earth. It also be interesting and possibly helpful to observe what happens to it there. What impacts would this have if NASA is able to figure something out? Is it possible even if given more funding and support? Thoughts?
 
There's certainly environmental justifications for funding spaceflight, and IMO actually getting into space for real probably will be because of this (global warming mitigation and green energy). However, garbage disposal is a pretty poor reason and one which wouldn't fly with taxpayers and politicians. If you have a few billion on funding for this problem, you could instead fund a lot of other recycling and waste disposal technology. For instance, you could get more landfill gas usage earlier. Landfills make a lot of methane, this can be captured to mitigte the emissions and then processed for cleaner natural gas sources. This creates more jobs and benefits the local economy more. The costs to send garbage into space at any reasonable price are utterly massive. You'd need to set up a full on orbital ring, which at an optimistic estimate, would cost hundreds of billions for the ring alone and would need to be set up using technology which while possible by the late 90s, is completely theoretical. And you'd still need to move the trash to the orbital ring's elevator. The whole program would take decades to complete.

Incidentally since garbage is organic or otherwise will not be sterilised like what we actually send into space, it could easily contaminate other objects, although the moon is probably dead.
 
There's certainly environmental justifications for funding spaceflight, and IMO actually getting into space for real probably will be because of this (global warming mitigation and green energy). However, garbage disposal is a pretty poor reason and one which wouldn't fly with taxpayers and politicians. If you have a few billion on funding for this problem, you could instead fund a lot of other recycling and waste disposal technology. For instance, you could get more landfill gas usage earlier. Landfills make a lot of methane, this can be captured to mitigte the emissions and then processed for cleaner natural gas sources. This creates more jobs and benefits the local economy more. The costs to send garbage into space at any reasonable price are utterly massive. You'd need to set up a full on orbital ring, which at an optimistic estimate, would cost hundreds of billions for the ring alone and would need to be set up using technology which while possible by the late 90s, is completely theoretical. And you'd still need to move the trash to the orbital ring's elevator. The whole program would take decades to complete.

Incidentally since garbage is organic or otherwise will not be sterilised like what we actually send into space, it could easily contaminate other objects, although the moon is probably dead.
We can still fund that too. The point is trying to find a cheap way to send garbage or waste there through research before actually doing it. We still use landfills and need places to put hazardous waste. It also gives us a good reason to colonize the moon. Imagine this, let's say technology makes a break through in space travel. We can now more easily go to the moon. Given the close location and lifeless of it we can use it as a place to test, run, and put stuff that could cause environmental issues or dangers on earth. This includes nuclear plants, factories without worrying about pollution, waste management, nuclear testing, mining(moon has minerals), and resource management. You now have a self sufficient and productive colony on the moon.
 
We can still fund that too. The point is trying to find a cheap way to send garbage or waste there through research before actually doing it. We still use landfills and need places to put hazardous waste. It also gives us a good reason to colonize the moon. Imagine this, let's say technology makes a break through in space travel. We can now more easily go to the moon. Given the close location and lifeless of it we can use it as a place to test, run, and put stuff that could cause environmental issues or dangers on earth. This includes nuclear plants, factories without worrying about pollution, waste management, nuclear testing, mining(moon has minerals), and resource management. You now have a self sufficient and productive colony on the moon.
Do you have any idea of the mass of waste produced yearly by our species? No, I didn't think so.
 
Considering the energy physically required to move a kg from Earth to the Moon, it's kinda retarded and inherently wasteful.
The point of this is to figure out a scientific way that this would not be wasteful and the kg could be easily met. I look at space travel similar to exploration. It use to require a large about of time and resources to travel from the Americas to Europe. Now it requires a lot less of both. This pod depends on the gains scientific advancement can make in the field of space travel.
 
The point of this is to figure out a scientific way that this would not be wasteful and the kg could be easily met. I look at space travel similar to exploration. It use to require a large about of time and resources to travel from the Americas to Europe. Now it requires a lot less of both. This pod depends on the gains scientific advancement can make in the field of space travel.
There are hard limits that no amound of science can change, such as a little something called the DeltaV. You can't tape "space" to all issues, particularly social ones, and claim that fixes them. Learn a bit about astronomy and rocket science, then come back.
 
We can still fund that too. The point is trying to find a cheap way to send garbage or waste there through research before actually doing it. We still use landfills and need places to put hazardous waste. It also gives us a good reason to colonize the moon. Imagine this, let's say technology makes a break through in space travel. We can now more easily go to the moon. Given the close location and lifeless of it we can use it as a place to test, run, and put stuff that could cause environmental issues or dangers on earth. This includes nuclear plants, factories without worrying about pollution, waste management, nuclear testing, mining(moon has minerals), and resource management. You now have a self sufficient and productive colony on the moon.

It really doesn't. I gave you the orbital ring proposal, but even that won't ever make the cost of trash low enough to be shipped into space, except for maybe certain types of waste, like how we currently send our e-waste to parts of Africa. And maybe radiological waste, since the low costs plus space mining would likely make transmuting it uneconomical.

The only solution would be to ban the vast majority of humans from Earth, restore the place to a global park, and then all of our trash would already be in space. A large orbital ring (trillions of dollars) could do that, but that's expensive too especially once you build the 5-10K O'Neill cylinders (300-500 billion each) needed to house all of humanity.
 
There are hard limits that no amound of science can change, such as a little something called the DeltaV. You can't tape "space" to all issues, particularly social ones, and claim that fixes them. Learn a bit about astronomy and rocket science, then come back.
I understand science I just think there are technologies and knowledge we have not found or understand fully yet that can make this a lot easier. Imagine what our technology now would look like to some people in the past. We went from just learning to fly at the beginning of the 1900s to landing on the moon in the same century.
 
I understand science I just think there are technologies and knowledge we have not found or understand fully yet that can make this a lot easier. Imagine what our technology now would look like to some people in the past. We went from just learning to fly at the beginning of the 1900s to landing on the moon in the same century.
No, you don't understand science. You are picturing science as shown in TV series and movies, AKA narrative magic to justify whatever the writers want to happen on-screen.
 
I understand science I just think there are technologies and knowledge we have not found or understand fully yet that can make this a lot easier. Imagine what our technology now would look like to some people in the past. We went from just learning to fly at the beginning of the 1900s to landing on the moon in the same century.

Name it. If it's even remotely possible than someone has come up with a design. They even have for freaking FTL travel which probably isn't possible. There is a hard limit on reducing costs to orbit.
 
Name it. If it's even remotely possible than someone has come up with a design. They even have for freaking FTL travel which probably isn't possible. There is a hard limit on reducing costs to orbit.
Fun thing people forget when talking about planes and stuff? Freight transport is still massively done through ships rather than planes for a very good reason: it’s a lot cheaper.
 
Given time and resources I would say few things are impossible.

Now I would suggest to come up with realistic method or some. Thing grounded in at least realistic science and push forward.

400 years ago much of what we have today is magic.

In another 400 years you could get the same
 
Given time and resources I would say few things are impossible.

Now I would suggest to come up with realistic method or some. Thing grounded in at least realistic science and push forward.

400 years ago much of what we have today is magic.

In another 400 years you could get the same
And by then, using that logic, recycling technologies might very well be on the level of molecular deconstructor and nano-foundries, making space disposal a criminal waste of resources.
 
And by then, using that logic, recycling technologies might very well be on the level of molecular deconstructor and nano-foundries, making space disposal a criminal waste of resources.
Not saying I disagree . Just given time we will more than over come things that for now seem insermountable to doing things.

I don't claim to have the answer though :)
 
Not saying I disagree . Just given time we will more than over come things that for now seem insermountable to doing things.

I don't claim to have the answer though :)
Scientific progress tends to improve on engineering paradigms, but not fundamentally break well-known elements of physics, and astronomy is among the most studied fields of science of human History. The DeltaV isn't going away easily.
 
I get that . Humans don't change easily, I also don't think we are finished with progress, and I also don't think we know everything there is about the universe.

Whether that can be harnessed I have no idea . Haven't got there yet.

Just saying that in reality as a species we are only a few bad days from our stone age / bronze age lives

So I don't think anyone in here can say space flight can not be cheaper in the future or that we don't come up with ways to do things.

But I fully agree this isn't science fiction but reality, and as such constraints are in the laws of physics, and the ability to generate energy to do things.

Just saying is all, not like anyone is going to the stars in the next 100 years.. And honestly if ever . But I don't see it anytime soon in human history , and honestly would be surprised if we get a man on Mars in that time, let alone starting a colony, simply due to the expense and resources required.

Humans are a long way from harnessing real energies in meaningful ways, we can't even get the private space race going.

Humans can't figure out how to get along on this rock, let alone work together to tackle challenges in engineering Physics, quantum theory, or other fields to move to the next level and age
 
I get that . Humans don't change easily, I also don't think we are finished with progress, and I also don't think we know everything there is about the universe.

Whether that can be harnessed I have no idea . Haven't got there yet.
Irrelevant. I am not talking about things we do not know but about things we do know. That's an annoying issue with the people who, like apparently the OP, have only a pop-culture vision of Science, that would make the impossible possible. What it does is to explore what is, and astronautics is pretty well-known: to go from Earth to the Moon, you need some specific amount of DeltaV. You can reduce its cost, but in the end, you're more likely to reduce the cost of other things at the same time and make that "solution" an inefficient one.
 
factories without worrying about pollution, waste management, nuclear testing, mining(moon has minerals), and resource management. You now have a self sufficient and productive colony on the moon.
All that is true without dumping garbage there. Not to mention you risk poisoning the water.

Not to mention it's actually cheaper to mine asteroids.

Not to mention it makes more sense to send garbage into the sun, if you're going to waste billions putting it into space to begin with.:rolleyes:
O'Neill cylinders (300-500 billion each)
Why do you think they'd cost so much? Construction in L4/L5, using captured NEAs, shouldn't remotely cost so much.
 
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