China Lands On Moon

cowman said:
...yet.

But I would argue that manned exploration and colonization of other worlds is our eventual path if we want to continue to advance ourselves as a species. Because of that, I believe it is the most worthwhile thing we as a people can put our time and resources into.

The moon and mars will just be practice areas and jumping off points for the real adventure ahead. Probably not in our lifetimes... but maybe our children's... maybe...
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I agree, however continuing to go to the moon is a waste of resources that can be better spent developing the technologies that will allow for colonization off planet. At this point we don't have the technology to get us to a colonizable planet nor do we even know where one is. None of this will happen until we create a gravity device capable of folding space-time. As for building "generation ships", this is stuff much more readily done in Earth orbit rather sending the materials to the moon. The ISS program is still running and it is the development and proving ground for the technologies and methods required for that approach, as useless as I see it being.
 
I remember well that many " experts" stated that we never went to the moon. (This was right after it happened. )They claimed it was all done in Hollywood. This was the flat earth types that later said things like the world trade building and the pentagon were blown up, never hit by an airplane. ......and yes, it was that darn ole " Govmint" that ran the program.
 
bnt83 said:
I wasn't even born yet, but it fascinates me to no end. I love the space coast and seeing the Saturn V there.

Great time in American history.
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It was cool, I was a kid, but I remember watching it live. However, what we have done in orbit has had much greater benefit to humanity, and what we have done on unmanned missions has revealed much more data in the way of exploration than all the manned missions to the moon combined for less money.
 
Listened to a former space pro, now a prof at Duke on t.V. Who said yes, most information had been gathered from unmanned vehicles and that the majority of "research" done on manned flights were high school level stuff.
 
Bob Noel said:
Missing? exploration.

Why bother actually visiting the Grand Canyon? you can just see pictures and videos. etc etc.
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Exploration? For who and for what? 24 men went to the Moon. Of those, only 12 actually walked around on the Moon. It's true that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong got to explore the Moon in the true sense, but the rest of humanity watched it on TV and looked at the photos. The science they did was marginal with respect to learning anything new about the Moon itself. What we mostly did learn a lot about is how to put people in space and get them back alive.

If exploring the cosmos is to be about the vast majority of us staying home and looking at photos, videos and data, then robotic exploration is far superior. Robots also return far greater science, so if the purpose of the mission is to learn more about what's really out there, again robots are the way to go. I think manned space flight is better described as space adventure rather than exploration.

I'm a big fan of Manned Space flight and for all the same reasons you are. I think though it's time we started to approach Manned Space flight for what is really is. It's adventure, entertainment, and inspiration for us all. It's not about collecting data and learning about the cosmos because there are better ways to do that.

Humans are going to other worlds, no doubt about it. That is if we don't blow our selves up, or we get hit by an asteroid or something. The only questions are, who, when, where and why? I think it is in our nation's interest to be the "who" and go on these adventures leading the way. Mars is the likely "where". A trip to Mars will take an international effort though. The costs are going to go way up. The "why" is because we should do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

If we don't take the point on this new human adventure, we will truly be a second class country and we will forever try to regain greatness.
 
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We're already second class. Nostalgia and museumification is a sign of an empire in decline. We can't go to space anymore, no one can afford the studies required to get the environmental permit.
 
Dav8or said:
I'm a big fan of Manned Space flight and for all the same reasons you are. I think though it's time we started to approach Manned Space flight for what is really is. It's adventure, entertainment, and inspiration for us all. It's not about collecting data and learning about the cosmos because there are better ways to do that.
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Side note: What normal person even used the word "cosmos" in daily speech before Carl Sagan's book? ;)

Back to the discussion: Isn't exploring robotically also just entertainment for the masses? Figuring out if there was once water on Marsis pretty damn useless information for the people on the planet who are still malnourished.

For the nourished, it's a distraction from daily living at best.
 
Why is this in Lessons Learned? Did the Chinese break an FAR?
 
denverpilot said:
Back to the discussion: Isn't exploring robotically also just entertainment for the masses? Figuring out if there was once water on Marsis pretty damn useless information for the people on the planet who are still malnourished.

For the nourished, it's a distraction from daily living at best.
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And there you have the main reason why the US space program has declined and struggles for funding. It's tough to get congress to open the purse strings. Liberals want to feed starving kids in Africa first and conservatives don't see any point in knowing what's beyond this planet and it costs too much to find out.

I wish we as country could see the real benefits of the space program. It is a fantastic PR campaign for our nation. It's great advertizement for our industries and engineering capabilities. It's a fantastic recruiting tool to get kids to be engineers, scientists, and pilots. It generates new technology that often quickly trickles down to everyday life. It's a more inclusive and durable source of national pride that doesn't involve killing somebody, or invading a country and yeah, it's a great distraction with high entertainment value for those of us that do care and have what's out there?, how did we get here?, where are we going? and are we alone? kind of questions.

Basically, our space program needs a great salesman to get going again.
 
Our space program requires a quantum leap in technology, and that will only come from projects like the LHC, not from shooting rockets with men in them. We have not stopped sending unmanned scientific probes and satellites which provide much more data at much lower cost than manned missions to send back data. So far all the data they have sent back gives us no reason to send manned missions behind them. We also spend money sending various telescopes into orbit to send back data, data that absolutely no manned mission would be able to do any better. For direct observation, having a camera that records every second, or can collect light from a defined point in space for days straight to put together a picture of the depths of the universe in spectrums the human eye cannot perceive would see no benefit from having a human with it raising the costs of the mission by orders of magnitude.

We still consider the speed of light as a limit, until we learn to use it as a door, or to fold space time, our manned exploratory missions are at a standstill. The most we can do at our current level of technology is to create stand alone space colonies, generation ships, that stand no chance of doing anything but drifting through space forever at best, unless some alien species happens upon it. At that time they will either be lunch or educated. The only real experiment we can perform with such a craft is to not induce gravity into the environment and see what the evolutionary changes of a zero gravity environment across multitudes of generations would be.
 
Dav8or said:
If you want to look at everything jaded, cynical and with suspicion, yes, it could be seen that way.

I prefer to view it as a testament to what people can achieve collectively.
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How about user fees to fund a new mission to the moon? Aviators collectively achieving awesomeness.
 
Dav8or said:
No. That would suck. Crappy idea. How about we take it out of the taxes we already pay? No need for a special user fee.
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That money is already spent. You want space we need a new revenue stream, pilots seem like the least likely and more importantly least able to complain(successfully.)
 
Dav8or said:
No. That would suck. Crappy idea. How about we take it out of the taxes we already pay? No need for a special user fee.
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Because the taxes that aviation pays wouldn't cover a trip to the moon, besides, the moon is passé. If you want to have a mission, it has to go somewhere interesting with potential. At this point the only place that holds out hope for the potential of actually sustaining life is Europa since there is enough water there to create oxygen. Still though it will require at least a few advance probes to get the environmental data needed to find and figure out how to go about harnessing whatever native energy there is to fuel the processes.
 
ClimbnSink said:
That money is already spent. You want space we need a new revenue stream, pilots seem like the least likely and more importantly least able to complain(successfully.)
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No, we need to reappropriate the money we have. I suggest take it from the military's budget. Lots of places we could cut there and the personnel, facilities and contractors could be transferred to the new project. No loss of jobs, or profits to be made. No additional taxes needed.
 
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Henning said:
Because the taxes that aviation pays wouldn't cover a trip to the moon, besides, the moon is passé. If you want to have a mission, it has to go somewhere interesting with potential. At this point the only place that holds out hope for the potential of actually sustaining life is Europa since there is enough water there to create oxygen. Still though it will require at least a few advance probes to get the environmental data needed to find and figure out how to go about harnessing whatever native energy there is to fuel the processes.
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Plenty of water on Mars too. Mars is the obvious target for the next big step.
 
Henning said:
How?
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Like you said before, the Moon has been done and a trip to Europa is a fine idea, but it is a bit beyond our capabilities at this point. Baby steps. Mars is a stretch, but doable. The knowledge gained will get us to Europa.

What would we do there?
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Simply live. The mission once on Mars would be all about survival and preparation for the return to Earth. In addition, all about sharing the experience as best possible with everyone back home. It's just about the trip there and back, just like the Moon trip.

Why would we go there?
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The same reason we went to the top of Mount Everest, to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the North Pole and the South Pole and ultimately, the Moon. Because we can.
 
Dav8or said:
Like you said before, the Moon has been done and a trip to Europa is a fine idea, but it is a bit beyond our capabilities at this point. Baby steps. Mars is a stretch, but doable. The knowledge gained will get us to Europa.



Simply live. The mission once on Mars would be all about survival and preparation for the return to Earth. In addition, all about sharing the experience as best possible with everyone back home. It's just about the trip there and back, just like the Moon trip.

The same reason we went to the top of Mount Everest, to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the North Pole and the South Pole and ultimately, the Moon. Because we can.
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Well, it would be a waste of trillions of dollars. How long should they live there? How many? What will be learned? I'd rather see the money spent on programs that may show a benefit, no rocket propelled manned program past orbit will do that any better than what can be done in orbit which will be even less useful than what can be learned with accelerators. Creating micro neutron stars, black holes, and anti matter are where the foundations of true space travel will come about. For the cost of sending a few people to mars and getting them back, we could build an extremely large nearly self sufficient orbital habitat, possibly even on a space elevator, potentially even something that can send energy back to the surface.

Right now the technology we have is only good for getting from the couch to the refrigerator so to speak, and the best we can do is grab an ice cube out of it hoping not to slip and fall to our deaths on the way there and back. In order to be useful we need to be able to get to Home Depot and bring back a load of supplies big enough to build extra rooms on the house, or to move in down the street. That will not be done with rockets or any current technology.
 
Henning said:
Well, it would be a waste of trillions of dollars. How long should they live there? How many? What will be learned? I'd rather see the money spent on programs that may show a benefit, no rocket propelled manned program past orbit will do that any better than what can be done in orbit which will be even less useful than what can be learned with accelerators. Creating micro neutron stars, black holes, and anti matter are where the foundations of true space travel will come about. For the cost of sending a few people to mars and getting them back, we could build an extremely large nearly self sufficient orbital habitat, possibly even on a space elevator, potentially even something that can send energy back to the surface.

Right now the technology we have is only good for getting from the couch to the refrigerator so to speak, and the best we can do is grab an ice cube out of it hoping not to slip and fall to our deaths on the way there and back. In order to be useful we need to be able to get to Home Depot and bring back a load of supplies big enough to build extra rooms on the house, or to move in down the street. That will not be done with rockets or any current technology.
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If you build a space habitat, may as well strap on some rockets or solar sails and send it someplace.

Interesting that you discuss things like black holes and antimatter while neglecting basic physics:
Henning said:
No, in the narrowest part of the venturi is where the air will be warmest because the pressure is highest. It's beyond there where the pressure drops and the fuel is introduced, both which drop the temperature significantly.
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with this statement, you violated conservation of energy, as the gas velocity increases in the Venturi, the static pressure actually drops.
 
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