"The Future of Human Spaceflight"

I was just looking at "The Future of Human Spaceflight" by David Mindell
et al at MIT, and I think it illustrates a fundamental error in how
people are thinking about space. What is space for? We can skip right
over a lot of abstract stuff by using an analogy out of Europe in the
early 1500's, "What is America for?" Our history answers that one
easily: it's for people. Likewise, space is for people, and Frederick
Jackson Turner's paper (thanks, Robert Zubrin) outlines how people and
cultures will develop there.

But when I look at what's being said on this space topic, it's all
*Terra centered.* Space is seen as a place where you send out machines
to study hostile environments (why?), which people visit very briefly
and hustle "back home," a method for diverting some of a small
government cash stream won from the military industrial to possibly
innovative purposes. (If people had some idea what that 'innovative'
is.) I think that's where today's discussion has basically turned a
wrong corner and busily gets us nowhere. Besides provoking an amazing
amount of verbal rubbish. The root problem seems to me, to be, get
unhooked from that Terra center to things, and realize space is an
awfully big place and let's get our point of view unhooked from Terra
and focussed out there where it needs to be.

So it seems to me, apart from the trolls here who are best managed by
placing them on twit/no-read lists, much of the remaining material here
is just noise which could be focussed and turned to good effect simply
by recognizing the immense potential of space *for people*.

Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2009 Jan 09]

Martha Adams wrote:

So it seems to me, apart from the trolls here who are best managed by
placing them on twit/no-read lists, much of the remaining material here
is just noise which could be focussed and turned to good effect simply
by recognizing the immense potential of space *for people*.

You are an incompetent mammalian primate.

When you grow up, maybe.

"Martha Adams" wrote in message
...
I was just looking at "The Future of Human Spaceflight" by David Mindell et al
at MIT, and I think it illustrates a fundamental error in how people are
thinking about space. What is space for? We can skip right over a lot of
abstract stuff by using an analogy out of Europe in the early 1500's, "What is
America for?" Our history answers that one easily: it's for people. Likewise,
space is for people, and Frederick Jackson Turner's paper (thanks, Robert
Zubrin) outlines how people and cultures will develop there.


There's a huge logical flaw with the assumption humanity is destined to
colinize space. If humanity were truly civilized and intelligent, we'd
understand nature enough to be able to find a sustainable equilibruim
with our environment. So, if we were 'civilized' we wouldn't ...need...
to colonize.

If we need to colonize, then we're not civilized enough to...successfully...
colonize space. Any colony would be a weak microcosm of what
we already have on earth. So what's the point then?

When we finally have the knowledge and wisdom to colonize
space, we won't need to anymore...catch-22.

I'm sure many people will want to live elsewhere, but as far as
needing to on a large scale? I don't see any reason we
would need to depend on colonies for survival.

The only reason it's assumed humanity must expand into the
solar system is the fact we still live in a scientific Dark Age.
And an age where humanity is not yet civilized and is still
closer to animals than not.

Oh, did you read the paper today btw? The US Navy has
decided to lead a task force to shut down the Somali
.....pirates.

Hmm...pirates running rampant on the open seas.

And you're talking about humanity colonizing the solar system
as if we're almost ready to do it or something.

What were you thinking~


Btw

Martha Adams wrote:
I was just looking at "The Future of Human Spaceflight" by David Mindell
et al at MIT, and I think it illustrates a fundamental error in how
people are thinking about space. What is space for? We can skip right
over a lot of abstract stuff by using an analogy out of Europe in the
early 1500's, "What is America for?" Our history answers that one
easily: it's for people. Likewise, space is for people, and Frederick
Jackson Turner's paper (thanks, Robert Zubrin) outlines how people and
cultures will develop there.


The technology for living in space is not here yet. We need

o To be able to resist to mutations and DNA damage much better than
now. Space is full of radiation that is lethal to our bodies as
they are now.

This can be solved by mdifying and enhancing our genetic repair
mechanism to be more efficient. As a byproduct of this research
we would have a cure for cancer, since many cancers are just
genetic repair mechanism problems.

o To develop a closed ecological system that can sustain itself
with solar energy in space. We need to develop photosynthesis
in vacuum, i.e. plants that can resist and thrive in vacuum.

This needs (again) some genetical know how. We need a skin that
is able to resist vacuum AND be transparent for our plants.

o We need machines able to repair themselves automatically and
able to work in space unattended for long periods of time. This
needs progress in robotics and automatic manufacturing. As a
byproduct of this research we would obtain machines that could
replace all our factories with automatic manufacturing. Humans
could be able to reach this by 2070 more or less, in any case
within this century.

But when I look at what's being said on this space topic, it's all
*Terra centered.* Space is seen as a place where you send out machines
to study hostile environments (why?), which people visit very briefly
and hustle "back home," a method for diverting some of a small
government cash stream won from the military industrial to possibly
innovative purposes. (If people had some idea what that 'innovative'
is.)

The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

The only way to explore now is with automatic machines since they do
not need ANY of the points above to be able to travel in space. The
Mars rovers are exploring Mars now, and this since 5 years! They do
not need fuel/life-support/radiation shielding/ they do not need
ANYTHING, just the solar power they receive each day.

I think that's where today's discussion has basically turned a
wrong corner and busily gets us nowhere. Besides provoking an amazing
amount of verbal rubbish. The root problem seems to me, to be, get
unhooked from that Terra center to things, and realize space is an
awfully big place and let's get our point of view unhooked from Terra
and focussed out there where it needs to be.


It is not enough to "realize " this. We have to develop the
technologies described above, and that is a very HARD problem.



--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

On 10 Jan, 10:00, jacob navia wrote:
Martha Adams wrote:
I was just looking at "The Future of Human Spaceflight" by David Mindell
et al at MIT, and I think it illustrates a fundamental error in how
people are thinking about space. *What is space for? *We can skip right
over a lot of abstract stuff by using an analogy out of Europe in the
early 1500's, "What is America for?" *Our history answers that one
easily: it's for people. *Likewise, space is for people, and Frederick
Jackson Turner's paper (thanks, Robert Zubrin) outlines how people and
cultures will develop there.

The technology for living in space is not here yet. We need

o To be able to resist to mutations and DNA damage much better than
* *now. Space is full of radiation that is lethal to our bodies as
* *they are now.

* *This can be solved by mdifying and enhancing our genetic repair
* *mechanism to be more efficient. As a byproduct of this research
* *we would have a cure for cancer, since many cancers are just
* *genetic repair mechanism problems.

A baby has just been born which lacks a gene known to cause breast
cancer. This birth has been highly controversial. As the future
progesses we will indeed get more control over our DNA. Not just for
space but for disease prevention. Could there be genes that could
tackle obesity and burn up berliners? More later.

Of course an alternative strategy is simply to protect us. if we are
under 10m of rock/ice we will have very similar radiation to here on
Erth. Creating this environment is very much a focus of robotics.

o To develop a closed ecological system that can sustain itself
* *with solar energy in space. We need to develop photosynthesis
* *in vacuum, i.e. plants that can resist and thrive in vacuum.

What's wrong with a pressurized system? Something that can survive in
a vacuum may be an interesting piece of chemistry, but it is not a
plant. If we are to go along the lines of genetic modification I would
suggest that the first priority is to produce hygrogen from water. We
are not in fact that far off.

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/hand...pdf?sequence=1
Masters thesis - survey.

http://www.tesionline.com/intl/thesis.jsp?idt=18984 Here is a later
one. It is in Italian. Still there is Google Translate.

http://www.scientificblogging.com/fi...da_may_36_2009
Here is a forthcoming conference. I await the proceedings with bated
breath.

* *This needs (again) some genetical know how. We need a skin that
* *is able to resist vacuum AND be transparent for our plants.

I think what you are really after is siome form of nanotechnology not
plants as we understand them. More later.

o We need machines able to repair themselves automatically and
* *able to work in space unattended for long periods of time. This
* *needs progress in robotics and automatic manufacturing. As a
* *byproduct of this research we would obtain machines that could
* *replace all our factories with automatic manufacturing. Humans
* *could be able to reach this by 2070 more or less, in any case
* *within this century.

There are two routes to what could be termed a Von Neumann machine.
One is the classical robotic route, along which considerable progress
has been made. The other is the nano route. The nano route is far more
advanced technologically. What we need to do in the near future is to
send a swarm into space. This swarm will have spare parts. A breakdown
of any component anywhere will be repairable.

The Koreans have a definition of "intelligent" which involves the
ability to sense surroundings and carry out manual operations on
higglety pigglety parts. They are working on this NOW. It is not some
pie in a future sky.

But when I look at what's being said on this space topic, it's all
*Terra centered.* *Space is seen as a place where you send out machines
to study hostile environments (why?), which people visit very briefly
and hustle "back home," a method for diverting some of a small
government cash stream won from the military industrial to possibly
innovative purposes. *(If people had some idea what that 'innovative'
is.) *

The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

Absolutely. What you need is a home on Mars, Ceres or wherever which
is self sustaining. Robots would initially have to build it. The ISS
is doing very little scientific work. The astronauts spend a lot of
time housekeepind and there is absolutely nothing self sustaining
about it.

The only way to explore now is with automatic machines since they do
not need ANY of the points above to be able to travel in space. The
Mars rovers are exploring Mars now, and this since 5 years! They do
not need fuel/life-support/radiation shielding/ they do not need
ANYTHING, just the solar power they receive each day.

Absolutely, but we also need to make swarms a part of unmanned
exploration. A swarm is a necessary precursor to large scale space
construction. We will have a machine which is self repairing. We can
then start to think about making a macine from the resources of space.
If we fail to do this we will be doomed to explore space with things
not much better than the ISS.

I think that's where today's discussion has basically turned a
wrong corner and busily gets us nowhere. *Besides provoking an amazing
amount of verbal rubbish. *The root problem seems to me, to be, get
unhooked from that Terra center to things, and realize space is an
awfully big place and let's get our point of view unhooked from Terra
and focussed out there where it needs to be.

It is not enough to "realize " this. We have to develop the
technologies described above, and that is a very HARD problem.

It is indeed a very HARD problem. I have tried to give some indication
of how we might proceed. As I have said previously we are hampered
considerably by a core of military men who are determened to push
though a high cost, high dependency on Earth agenda. VN mahcines are
as they describe lunacy, but I think what you say would indicate that
unless you move some way in that direction all you will ever be able
to do is move the ISS to the Moon/Mars at horrendous cost.

You are, or people have suggested putting you, on their kill file
along with myself. I think there is a vested interest in not facing
the truth. I don't know whether classification issues are a factor.
What I have said about "OnA ErAqy" is absolutely the point. I think I
am safe in saying it is not a sausage!The techniques of disinformation
used at Falluja are exactly the same as those used against VN
machines.

If we ignore the fil(le)s des chiens ( the Iraqis use the term beni al
kalb) and confront the basic questions progress might be made. I have
no doubt that there will be progress made. Whether tthis progress will
be made by the US is another matter. History from The Peloplenesian
war to the present is full of civilizations which could have found
solutions to their problems but chose not to be "loony".

- Ian Parker


"Us Spartans, our birthrate has plummeted, we have just lost half our
citizens in this battle. They were all will ing to die but were
irreplaceable. The lunatic trhing to do is to allow your men from
their teenage years free access tro women, even helots. The sensible
thing to do is to go on as we have been, go into a state of terminal
decline. It is "sensible" too not to admit this even to orselves".

On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:00:42 +0100, in a place far, far away, jacob
navia made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:


The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

It's quite stupid to infer that the ISS is the best humans can manage
now.

On Jan 9, 5:42*pm, kT wrote:
Martha Adams wrote:
So it seems to me, apart from the trolls here who are best managed by
placing them on twit/no-read lists, much of the remaining material here
is just noise which could be focussed and turned to good effect simply
by recognizing the immense potential of space *for people*.

You are an incompetent mammalian primate.

When you grow up, maybe.

Rothschild Zionist/Nazis never "grow up". It's why we're in the mess
we're in, and in spite of BHO, it's only going to get worse because it
has gotten past the point of no return.

~ BG

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:00:42 +0100, in a place far, far away, jacob
navia made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:


The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

It's quite stupid to infer that the ISS is the best humans can manage
now.

I think the above thread illustrates my comments well enough. All that
stuff, no direction. "HARD," Navia says. *Of course* it's hard, if you
don't have a direction, if you don't know where you're going. Look at
the development of the nuclear bomb, for example (not my favorite kind
of thing but it's a good illustration). At the time the work was
undertaken to develop the thing, what resources existed to do it? Whole
new technologies had to be worked out, tested, used or discarded. But
they had an objective and they got there.

Look again at the Apollo program. It was directed to a specific
objective. The technologies to do it did not exist, only small
indications that they might be developed if someone set out to do it.
We all know, they did it. (Decades ago. Then something went terribly
wrong).

Now look at space. It's not a science-fiction kind of thing that you
cannot do space small. Space is different from he to live anywhere
in space requires an industrial triad of of a lifespace, an industrial
base to build and maintain it, and an ongoing commercial/business base
to give it reason to exist and to support it. Which means, settlement
in space must be an ongoing effort of sending out one and then another
and then another settlement, one after another, until the commercial
ecologies and networks to exist there are built there. I can't see
anything novel at all in this thinking. It's just a repeat, different
in detail and environment from what we've seen here on Terra.

As for "HARD" and all that, of course it's hard. Our remote ancestors,
finding out by trial and error and thru evolution how to live on dry
land, will tell you what's HARD. Uncounted millions of them must have
died, over hundreds of centuries. But natural selection is the slow and
difficult way to accomplish something. Today, we have the industrial
capacity, enough of the knowhow, and the resources to do it. The HARD
problem seems to be to win enough money away from wars and political
corruption and economic inefficiencies to do it.

Which requires to begin with, an *objective*. Which objective in turn,
begins with some people getting away from a Terra-centered outlook, to a
space-centered outlook. What is space *for*? ?? I'm surprised how
many people just don't figure it out.

Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2009 Jan 10]

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:00:42 +0100, in a place far, far away, jacob
navia made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:


The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

It's quite stupid to infer that the ISS is the best humans can manage
now.

It is the best humans can do now because it exists. Other things can
be maybe better but they have a big problem... they do not exist.

Speculating what humans could do is a useful activity, but it is just
speculation.



--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32

On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:46:16 +0100, in a place far, far away, jacob
navia made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:00:42 +0100, in a place far, far away, jacob
navia made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:


The technology for human space travel is just not there. Look at the
best humans can manage now: The ISS. It is a few hundred Km away, and
it is still plagued by a lot of problems, it has no closed system
it needs supplies from earth. etc.

It's quite stupid to infer that the ISS is the best humans can manage
now.

It is the best humans can do now because it exists.

No, it's the best NASA *has* done now, given all its institutional
constraints. It tells us nothing about the best that humans in
general *can* do now.

Other things can
be maybe better but they have a big problem... they do not exist.

That doesn't mean that they cannot.