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

Mainly because sending humans out of low earth orbit is... unnecessary at the time being. It's way too expensive for what it brings. If we want to do scientific exploration, remote probes are much more effective than human beings. And colonies are pretty much a colossal waste of resources given the environmental crisis we have now: it would be orders of magnitude more efficient to design and build arcologies on Earth to protect the populations against climate change issues.
Right, & what's powering these arcologies? When the CO2 is over 400ppm, what is living?

Or is the population living on enormously lower standards of living? Yeah, the North is going to exterminate the South to keep its own high. Or enslave them. Or both.

Good idea, let's turn earth into a prison.:rolleyes:
If you want some space industry, it'll most be for feeding Earth industries with raw materials and the handful of products that could only be built in zero-g environments.
Yeah, let's keep the pollution & the excess CO2 in the biosphere. Let's keep despoiling the planet instead of turning it into a gigantic park.
I have never found any realistic argument explaining why we should do it, except maybe for:

1) the prestige of it;
2) protection against a colossal planet-killing catastrophe.

You won't send our overpopulation into space, it's not the 1600s anymore, and space isn't the Wild West.
We don't need to "send our overpopulation into space". The energy will raise the standards of living here, while we figure out how to take people off cheaply, & safely.

No, wait, you want earth to be a prison of pollution & extinction--including Man, I presume, because if we don't do something like it pretty soon, that's all that's left.:rolleyes: The Green zealots refuse to see it, & they've got the media & the rubes sold.:rolleyes:
 
Right, & what's powering these arcologies? When the CO2 is over 400ppm, what is living?

Or is the population living on enormously lower standards of living? Yeah, the North is going to exterminate the South to keep its own high. Or enslave them. Or both.

Good idea, let's turn earth into a prison.:rolleyes:
Welcome to nuclear power. It works, we have 80 % of our electricity out of it without lowering our standards of living, all the while polluting much less per capita than other Western countries.
Yeah, let's keep the pollution & the excess CO2 in the biosphere. Let's keep despoiling the planet instead of turning it into a gigantic park.
You don't get what an arcology is? It'd involve turning cities and habitats into spaceship equivalents, with as little input and output as possible, keeping them autonomous, pollution-neutral and self-sufficient. Just like your dream-ships, except that we build them on Earth without the absurd constraints you want to add for no reason.
We don't need to "send our overpopulation into space". The energy will raise the standards of living here, while we figure out how to take people off cheaply, & safely.

No, wait, you want earth to be a prison of pollution & extinction--including Man, I presume, because if we don't do something like it pretty soon, that's all that's left.:rolleyes: The Green zealots refuse to see it, & they've got the media & the rubes sold.:rolleyes:
Riiiiiight.
 

Ian_W

Banned
The fuck? Perfection is the bloody minimum when you send high-level specialists in missions where anything less than perfection turns these high-level specialists into expanding cloud of steam and burning debris. If you want to have 1,7 % chance of dying in an activity (2 catastrophic failures out of 135 space shuttle flights), you have to seriously justify it, because otherwise, it's absolutely unacceptable.

*checks the death rates for transit in 16th to 18th centuries colonies*

*compares to 1.7%*

Well, carry on then.
 
The fuck? Perfection is the bloody minimum when you send high-level specialists in missions where anything less than perfection turns these high-level specialists into expanding cloud of steam and burning debris. If you want to have 1,7 % chance of dying in an activity (2 catastrophic failures out of 135 space shuttle flights), you have to seriously justify it, because otherwise, it's absolutely unacceptable. A critical mission to prevent mass fatalities through other means? Yes, 1,7 % chance of total party kill is acceptable. Some really high value scientific and engineering missions? Same, we can consider it. But to do something less efficiently than the alternative and getting such a massive fatality rate for no other reason than "Colonies IIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!" is stupid, period.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-passenger-traffic-globally/

Imagine for an instant that the airline industry was as dangerous as space travel to low-orbit (which is the safest space travel because you are in easy range of emergency resupply or can evacuate any spacecraft that goes awry). Hell, I'll be generous, imagine if the airline industry was TEN TIMES more secure than space travel to low orbit. We'd get 4,588,000 dead passengers this year. Is it an acceptable outcome? No, it isn't, and when the 737 MAX had issues that catastrophically affected a couple of flights despite hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of successful flights, the plane was grounded all over the planet, because responsible people don't play with the safety of millions.

Cutting down costs like crazy and being inspired by the consumer product industry to work in the space industry, with the goal of applying it to something massively more complex than the most complex space programs ever envisioned? And wanting to apply that to millions of civilians? It's mass murder through criminal levels of disregard for human life.

Space is not the adventure shown in sci-fi. It's an environment that WILL kill you for the slightest mistake. Those who go up there tend to be selected through insane competitive exams they do after having gone through a dozen years of college education, and then go through years of additional training in order to be in the pool, let alone launched. There's a reason for it.
And this has sweet fuck all to do with building O'Neill habitats, since the people building them will be staying on the fucking ground. Except for a handful of inspectors when the goddamn things are finished.

In the meantime, I expect safer passenger delivery methods will be developed, but they are not a construction cost, any more then the construction of the fucking airport system was a part of the cost of the first DC-3. Or the first 747. Contrary to what you seem to think.
 
*checks the death rates for transit in 16th to 18th centuries colonies*

*compares to 1.7%*

Well, carry on then.
Right. You want to have people get back to 16th century death rates. I guess we have different standards nd respect for human life.
And this has sweet fuck all to do with building O'Neill habitats, since the people building them will be staying on the fucking ground. Except for a handful of inspectors when the goddamn things are finished.

In the meantime, I expect safer passenger delivery methods will be developed, but they are not a construction cost, any more then the construction of the fucking airport system was a part of the cost of the first DC-3. Or the first 747. Contrary to what you seem to think.
So, "magic happens", OK.
 
So, "magic happens", OK.
It's called "technological development".

And I notice you ignore the issue at hand, because it contradicts your preconceptions: the cost of the structure is not the cost of the spacecraft to deliver the people to the structure.

Tell me again how the O'Neill hab will cost $500 billion.
 
It's called "technological development".

And I notice you ignore the issue at hand, because it contradicts your preconceptions: the cost of the structure is not the cost of the spacecraft to deliver the people to the structure.

Tell me again how the O'Neill hab will cost $500 billion.
Look above. Not my fault if you go all space cadet and deliberately ignore complexities to have your little fantasy, and choose to ignore how inefficient it would remain compared to other options. TBH, you illustrate very well what I said in the first few pages of the thread: people who picture tech and science as magic like in movies.
 
Look above. Not my fault if you go all space cadet and deliberately ignore complexities to have your little fantasy, and choose to ignore how inefficient it would remain compared to other options. TBH, you illustrate very well what I said in the first few pages of the thread: people who picture tech and science as magic like in movies.
I'm not ignoring anything. You're combining two factors that need not be by any rational definition of the project parameters, because you can't see past your own preconceptions.

And you've managed to ignore every factor raised by me that doesn't fit your own views.

And you've ascribed to me positions I don't hold.
 
I'm not ignoring anything. You're combining two factors that need not be by any rational definition of the project parameters, because you can't see past your own preconceptions.

And you've managed to ignore every factor raised by me that doesn't fit your own views.

And you've ascribed to me positions I don't hold.
Yeah, of course. Try to look at the complexity of human-rated space equipment and we'll discuss again. You're not the first and not the last to go all about automatisation as a miracle solution. For those who think as you do, I also point at the hilarious F-35 fiasco, where LM claimed they could do everything at once and use mass production to get super low prices without going through the same development process as everyone else, and ended up with a plane that is overpriced, half a dozen years late if not more, its customers unsatisfied enough that they are starting new acquisition programs (Advanced Super Hornet and F-15X), and which is bugged as hell with hundreds of planes built that will need a crapload of expensive corrections while the oversight agencies confirm that the claimed prices are unlikely to be achieved. Buzzwords do not solve problems in real life.

Powerpoint engineering: not even once.
 
And you have no ability to separate your preconceptions from reality.
Of course, of course. Sorry to remind you and others that science and technology do not work like in series and that space engineering does not work like in Michael Bay or MCU movies either. Sorry to remind you that at equal technology, it's still a lot less efficient to build space habitats rather than arcologies. Sorry to remind you that buzzwords from powerpoint files do not work particularly well in real life. Sorry to remind you that space engineering has different requirements than consumers goods' engineering.

For all of this, I am truly and honestly sorry. But that's what happens when you have a space cadet vision of the world and thinks going to space is its own justification and are covering your ears when being pointed out that you are describing something as superficially interesting and deeply flawed as the Frisian Islands scenario.
 
Right, & what's powering these arcologies? When the CO2 is over 400ppm, what is living?
Would the idea not be that even a poisonous outside atmosphere is easier than none to work with? Ie building a closed system would be easier on earth than in space and we still haven't been very good at the tests of that so far....
 
Would the idea not be that even a poisonous outside atmosphere is easier than none to work with? Ie building a closed system would be easier on earth than in space and we still haven't been very good at the tests of that so far....
Maybe. What's feeding the people? Because their livestock can't live in the poisoned, extreme-CO2 environment, can it?

And I'm not going to defend turning the planet into a sewer, given a choice.
 
Maybe. What's feeding the people? Because their livestock can't live in the poisoned, extreme-CO2 environment, can it?
Looks like someone hasn't kept up with the actual technological developments: vertical farming is actually becoming a lot more efficient with each passing year, in good part because using LED to power plant photosynthesis produces much, much better results than just using the Sun (because we can tune the wavelengths to what the plants actually need, which isn't the Sun's spectrum). Vat-grown meat is already having results that are improving in cost-effectiveness as well. Without needing centuries, we are going pretty fast to a situation where it becomes cost-effective to stop using traditional farmlands but rather producing better crops, better vegetables, better fruits, for cheaper costs and lower pollution (less water usage and much less transportation).

Rather than having fantasies about big rockets, you should pay attention to much more revolutionary inventions, such as the blue LED. That quiet and omnipresent breakthrough a couple of decades ago is more likely to protect humankind for the next few centuries than some Powerpoint projects.

farmedhere-illumitex-basil3.jpg


FYI, this light spectrum is what plants actually crave, not sunlight.
 
Looks like someone hasn't kept up with the actual technological developments: vertical farming is actually becoming a lot more efficient with each passing year, in good part because using LED to power plant photosynthesis produces much, much better results than just using the Sun (because we can tune the wavelengths to what the plants actually need, which isn't the Sun's spectrum). Vat-grown meat is already having results that are improving in cost-effectiveness as well. Without needing centuries, we are going pretty fast to a situation where it becomes cost-effective to stop using traditional farmlands but rather producing better crops, better vegetables, better fruits, for cheaper costs and lower pollution (less water usage and much less transportation).

Rather than having fantasies about big rockets, you should pay attention to much more revolutionary inventions, such as the blue LED. That quiet and omnipresent breakthrough a couple of decades ago is more likely to protect humankind for the next few centuries than some Powerpoint projects.

farmedhere-illumitex-basil3.jpg


FYI, this light spectrum is what plants actually crave, not sunlight.
Do you see cattle?:rolleyes: Notice, I said "livestock". (Of course, you think cattle can be grown like lettuce.)

And where is the power for these coming from? The same place as all those "zero emission" electric cars, I wager. Which is why the CO2 content is 400ppm & SO2 is poisoning lakes & killing forest. Yeah, vertical farms are brilliant. (For the record, I thought they were stupid when I first heard about them more than a year ago, too. Cool idea on its face, but doesn't survive actual examination.)
 
Do you see cattle?:rolleyes: Notice, I said "livestock". (Of course, you think cattle can be grown like lettuce.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat

And where is the power for these coming from? The same place as all those "zero emission" electric cars, I wager. Which is why the CO2 content is 400ppm & SO2 is poisoning lakes & killing forest. Yeah, vertical farms are brilliant. (For the record, I thought they were stupid when I first heard about them more than a year ago, too. Cool idea on its face, but doesn't survive actual examination.)
Cattenom-1.jpg


Fun fact, we produce a shitload less CO2 per capita than the rest of the western world because 80 % of our electricity is nuclear (most of the rest comes from dams). I love travelling around the country in trains that have their power from nuke plants: ecology in action.
 
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