jlf1961
Posts: 14840
Joined: 6/10/2008
From: Somewhere Texas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Greta75
In another words, our technology is still not good enough to explore space and the universe.
The thing is, I do not believe at all, that our planet is THE only planet in this Universe that could possibly have life. That we are so special! Another thing is, I believe that even if advance beings found us, maybe they simply observe and not want to make contact, as they weren't sure if that would result in their own lives being endangered.
Okay, a bit of a astrophysics lesson for you.
There are three civilization levels, per Nikolai Kardashev.
Level 1: called planetary civilization – can use and store energy which reaches its planet from the neighboring star, this means utilizing solar power at near 100% efficiency, the best solar cells available are barely 40%, so we aint even a level one.
Level 2: harness the energy of the entire star (the most popular hypothetic concept being the Dyson sphere—a device which would encompass the entire star and transfer its energy to the planet)
Level 3: Type III civilization can control energy on the scale of their entire host galaxy.
And since we are still dependent on chemical rockets to get off planet, we are basically little better than cave men.
As for the notion that an advanced civilization be perfectly content to observe, I must point out that human history basically explains why that is bullshit.
Advanced civilizations move in and either 1) enslave the natives or 2) Exterminate the natives. And when you figure in basic human instinct, IF we did figure out we were being watched, racial paranoia would take over and we would try to blast the shit out of the observers and steal their technology.
In other words, we would then be exterminated for THEIR own good.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Greta75
There is already more than enough funds spent on cancer research, but we all already know why. All our food is processed with chemicals in some ways that eventually pretty much in any long term consumption, make people sick. We know how to prevent cancer. Just that, quality food is not accessible or affordable to all.
While I agree on the environmental factors, I disagree on the money spent. You want to go to Easton PA and tell my nephew who has Leukemia that there should not be more money spent to find a cure for the disease that may just prevent him from seeing his 8th birthday?
Hell I will buy you the round trip ticket just so I can watch him tell you to go screw yourself, he would very much like to live a bit longer.
Why not look at the patient photos from the St. Jude Children's hospital cancer ward.
A cure for cancer was just one example, what about AIDS? How about the recent resurgence of Measles (drug resistant to boot,) or any one of the thousands of diseases that kill people, mostly children on a daily basis?
Or how about spending the money to grow enough food so no child faces starvation?
Or how about the trillions spent by all the countries on the planet on tools meant to destroy large numbers of people at one quick shot? I'm not talking nuclear, chemical or bio weapons, I am referring to the tried and true old fashioned drop from a plane bomb.
Instead of solving serious problems, lets spend over half of the world cash fund on bigger bombers to blast more people with one plane?
The simple fact is that there are over 1000 radio telescopes tasked to normal research, any signal from a race outside our solar system will be picked up by accident, and when you figure that all you would have to do is write computer software that kicks out any signal that does not fit the known natural radio sources as possibly artificial in origin, you then dont have to build special radio telescopes to look for races that we cannot talk to.
And finally, theoretically, the ONLY way we would be able to communicate in anything near real time would be at the quantum level, which is at least 60 years down the road, why build the goddamn things now?
quote:
ORIGINAL: Greta75
I think some fund allocation to exploring extra terrestrial life is very important, CONSIDERING our sun has a limited lifespan. And since it takes so slow to develop technology that is advance enough to really explore the Universe, they gotta start doing it now. As it will also take a very long time, AFTER THAT to figure out how to migrate the population to survive elsewhere in the Universe.
Yup, the sun has a limited life span, we got about 150 million years before it enters the red giant phase, which would then directly impact life on this rock.
The biggest threat to the planet today is the damage to the environment, behind that is what we can do to each other with weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, when compared to the money spent looking for ET, the search for NEO's (Near Earth Objects) those pesky asteroids that could hit the earth out of nowhere is less than 2 cents on each dollar.
Then of course there is the simple fact that nobody really has a plan to prevent the impact if we do find one, since the "use the nukes" idea is stupid as hell. Even if you hit the rock with every nuke on the planet you would not have enough force to actually change the orbit, or if it is made up of a bunch of little rocks, you take one big object, convert it to a fucking lot of little objects that when they enter the atmosphere they generate heat and given enough of them, basically cook all life on the planet out of existence.
So, while the sun might go on for another 100 million years or so, the odds are that we will blow ourselves into extinction long before it happens.
So bottom line, why spend money on projects that have no real world impact other than to find out if there is anyone out there that we cannot talk to, or spend money on solving problems that are impacting the quality of life here and now?
Now, a last point.
Current rocket technology destroys more ozone per mission than all of the CFC's used in all the spray cans ever used in any given year.
So, to even consider getting off this rock in any great number, we need a lot more spent on propulsion, EFFICIENT propulsion, not something that uses 1000 times the weight of your payload in fuel to get it into orbit.
NASA was working on such a system (until congress killed it in the late 70's early 80's) that basically took off like a jet, climbed to extremely high altitudes all the time sucking in atmospheric gases, super cooling them, and when they got cold enough they separated, then, at the high point of atmospheric flight, shut down the jet engines and burned the separated gases as rocket fuel. At that point, all the pilot would have to do is point the nose up, and transition from atmospheric flight to space.
Now, that the technology for super cooling gasses has caught up with the idea, what is NASA doing? playing with solid rocket fuel and a crew module that is basically an Apollo capsule that has been enlarged.
A few other points, McDonnell Douglas aerospace division submitted an idea in the original shuttle design competition. A bit more complicated, but, it was not dependent on a freaking huge hydrogen filled bomb strapped to the belly of the shuttle (remember the Challenger and indirectly, Columbia?) which had over a third more payload capacity and was designed to be upgraded, the engines, avionics etc was modular.
So for 30 years, the US spent trillions playing around in low earth orbit and what did we get out of it? The International Space Station.
Big deal.
First read 2001 A Space Odyssey, then watch the movie.
Arthur C. Clarke repeatedly made the point that with the exception of the space plane, every thing in that movie could have been built and in use by 1990 at the latest. Russia was already using small reactors on satellites for power, so the plasma drive for Discovery was an easy jump in technology. We had gone to the moon, so the Torus space station at L1 was well within reach with the then current designs for reusable space craft which were not even considered for the shuttle design competition.
And to be brutally honest, IF humans were not so dead set at finding new ways to blow each other to hell and gone, instead of the trillions spent in the cold war on nukes and bigger and better fighters, subs, carriers, not to mention every gun ever produced, we could have had men orbiting Jupiter by 2000.
Okay, you dont want to use a fusion reactor, let me hit you with a bombshell.
The math has been done to show exactly the balance between gravity, magnetic force, expansion and all the other factors that allow the sun to be one freaking big fusion reactor.
The neat thing is that you can increase one and decrease another and be able to maintain a fusion reaction in a controlled environment.
So, right now, unlike when fission power systems were perfected (of course that was accidental because it came out of research to build a bomb to drop on either Germany or Japan before the Germans and Japanese got one to drop on us) we are taking baby steps in the research.
The rest of this line of thought deserves an independent thread.
_____________________________
Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?
You cannot control who comes into your life, but you can control which airlock you throw them out of.
Paranoid Paramilitary Gun Loving Conspiracy Theorist AND EQUAL OPPORTUNI
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RE: Okay, stupid questions - 
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