-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
What if NASA launched a rocket as big as a Saturn V and nobody cared?
- Thread starter jmcquate
- Start date
Saturn V was much larger
Yaaaaaawn
Yaaaaaawn
Successful rocket tests don't make big news. Especially since most people wouldn't know a Van Allen Belt from a Van Halen concert. The term "beyond low Earth orbit" doesn't jive with the hipster crowd. Now if the rocket had blown up on the other hand...
I take this as a positive sign, even if the exploration plans don't pan out completely. At the very least we are attempting to maintain a vehicle for manned spaceflight- things actually look better on that front than they have in years. Even though people don't "seem" to care, I think this is ultimately good for the country.
I take this as a positive sign, even if the exploration plans don't pan out completely. At the very least we are attempting to maintain a vehicle for manned spaceflight- things actually look better on that front than they have in years. Even though people don't "seem" to care, I think this is ultimately good for the country.
Okay........it's got 40' on it.........but there was a SLASH DOWN!!!!!!! We haven't had a splash down since Apollo-Soyuz. Orange and white main chutes, giant flotation collars, naval vessels of some kind, helicopters..............the whole nine yards.
So we're almost where we were 40 years ago....
With regards to space exploration I would rather be where we were 40 years ago than where we are now. The STS was a waste of money and 40 years of engineering talent. NASA has languished in low earth orbit for too long. Now that the private sector can do that work, NASA's manned space flight should get back to what they can do best.
To what end? Spending hundreds of billions to let some guys walk around on Mars for a few months? I don't get it.
Yes, exactly that. Instead of funding useless wind and solar programs that cannot be scaled to make a dent in our energy needs or redundant social programs that do nothing to better lives but make their constituents feel good or bailing out large banks. Exploration is something Government should be doing. From Lewis and Clark to Apollo. Who knows what will be discovered in science, engineering and medicine ect………….in designing the mission and machines to get there to what we might find on the way. But we’ll never know unless we try.
You probably never will. That is the thinking that holds us back.
We should always be pushing forward; we should always feed our curiosity. Staying stagnant only puts us behind where we could be, where we should be. Why should be we send humans to Mars to "walk around for a few months"? The better question is why the hell shouldn't we? If your argument is money- well money doesn't matter. 400 years from now people won't read about how we thought about but didn't spend the money, they will only read about those who did it and made it happen.
And several million pounds...
Read the series "Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars."
Great insight into terraforming and a theoretical future of Martian Settlement.
Wife said no, so I couldn't volunteer (I'd never pass the psych eval anyway) but I'd kill to be one of the first to step foot on our future territory...
We WILL run out of room on this planet and we WILL destroy our ability to produce enough to feed our ever aging population.
Unless we enact draconian measures WRT reproduction (won't fly with Muslims, Catholics, Mormons) we will outpace our ability to live here.
Ipso Facto a need for exploration and development outside our atmosphere.
I was excited to see the revival of deep space exploration via the Orion (plus it has a great name) and hope to see, in my lifetime, humans step foot on Mars.
My prediction is 2046...
Pickle
Great insight into terraforming and a theoretical future of Martian Settlement.
Wife said no, so I couldn't volunteer (I'd never pass the psych eval anyway) but I'd kill to be one of the first to step foot on our future territory...
We WILL run out of room on this planet and we WILL destroy our ability to produce enough to feed our ever aging population.
Unless we enact draconian measures WRT reproduction (won't fly with Muslims, Catholics, Mormons) we will outpace our ability to live here.
Ipso Facto a need for exploration and development outside our atmosphere.
I was excited to see the revival of deep space exploration via the Orion (plus it has a great name) and hope to see, in my lifetime, humans step foot on Mars.
My prediction is 2046...
Pickle
Okay, I'll throw you a bone.
The common perception is that the space program has stalled since the Apollo program. What most people don't realize is how lucky we were that we made even made it to the moon; they seriously were "just winging it". The gap in engineering and technology required to go beyond putting landers and men on the moon is enormous. The technology and knowledge that has been obtained from messing around in LEO for the past 40 years was absolutely necessary before we could even begin to start planning any serious missions beyond the lunar scope. We need to fully understand the complex problems of microgravity, radiation, isolation, logistics, communication etc. of longterm spaceflight before we can seriously consider extended human exploration of the solar system. Unless we're all cool with one way suicide pioneering to Mars, we're still really, really far away from putting men on the red planet.
As expensive as the shuttle program was, we still did get hubble out of it.
As expensive as the shuttle program was, we still did get hubble out of it.
Excellent point- but there comes a time when you have to throw your nuts over your shoulder and step out the door. So we did that in the 50s and 60s (hell, we've been doing it since man first started doing such dangerous stuff as going beyond the horizon in a boat)- perhaps we weren't as ready as we could be, 3 great Americans were killed, and 3 more narrowly escaped the icy jaws of death a couple hundred thousand miles away from home. I think there are still people out there who would willingly accept the risk know that it could be a one way trip.
You indeed right about the 40 years in LEO. We now have a knowledge base about long term stays in that environment. We can always know more, but again: nuts over the shoulder and step out. We're on track to that point with Orion.