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#31
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
Ian Parker wrote:
:On 11 Jan, 20:52, Fred J. McCall wrote: : : :Google is one of the more successfult companies. : : : : Note that Google is run by ONE board of directors. : :Google does indeed have one board, but :- : :1) Anyone whatever their citizenship can join the Google board. : Oh? Try and act on that and see what it gets you. : :2) ESA likewise has a single board. : But what ESA has isn't really a 'board'. : : : : : For example, it probably would have been a much better station if they : : had ****canned the original design when the price kept going up and : : the capabilities kept going down and had listened to Lowell Wood's : : ideas. : : : :I googled him and his ideas. I think you are doing a certain amount of : :special pleading here. How do you know that his ideas for (say) Mars : :would not also go up and up in price. : : : : I was referring specifically to his ideas about how to 'fix' the ISS : program back before they bent the first piece of metal. : :I can't help stating the truism that history is what has hapenned :rather tan what might have hapenned. It may well be that there is some :genius that if he/she had been listened to would have produced a far :better ISS far cheaper, but there is absolutely no proof of this. The :ISS is the result of a series of decisions. : Ian gibbers on, saying nothing. Chatterbot. : :In fact the long and short of it is that the ISS lacks a role. :Scientific experimentation is done with dedicated unmanned spacecraft. :This has been found to be far and away the cheapest solution. I have ointed out that a fragmented telescope in free space is a better bet :than one on the Moon. I fear too that if, and it is a big if a Moojn :base is established in 2020 it will be a similar white elephant. : You've pointed out all sorts of silly ****. : :Had a real genius been around when the ISS was though of he/she would, :without question, have said that the thing to do was to develop :repairable spacecraft and swarms and also concentrate on smart pebbles :and ultrastability. OK this is again what if, but these are the :technologies with a real medium term future. : And so now Ian claims that his gibbering is genius. He's obviously flirting with Guthball territory. : :History has is fact passed the ISS by. : History had, in fact, passed it by before the first piece of metal was bent, since it was descoped and made an international political project. -- "Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid." -- Heinrich Heine |
#32
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
"Ian Parker" wrote in message
... On 12 Jan, 13:01, (Rand Simberg) wrote: - Show quoted text - On Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:17:22 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away, Ian Parker made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: The scheme illustrated on my page probably is a little 'utopian', since it envisages the construction of gigantic underground domes, high enough that trees can grow in them to full height. At first, the domes would probably be a bit smaller, and housing might be dug from tunnels leading from the domes rather than in the form of buildings built inside the domes - where food is grown. Only a Von Neumann machine can achieve this. Other people continue to pooh pooh the idea. I pooh pooh all grandiose ideas NOT involving VN technology in one form or another. Yes, we know you do--you don't have to tell us. It's one of the primary things that makes you such a loon. Well aol your ideas are too. The only future for manned spaceflight that I can see is one of ever inceasing cost. Manned spaceflight is simply conspicuous consumption which call be ill affored in a recession. OK Keynes DID advocate public works, but public works with a FUTURE, like the Hoover Dam. Manned spaceflight has no future other than ever increasing levels of unproductive expenditure. That is the cold hard truth. Another cold hard truth. America is in the state it is because it has spent so much money unproductively. Not only on speceflight but on Iraq. The Iraq money could have been used to produce loads of "green" energy or in a myriad of productive ways. Asia is NOT spending on either Iraq or Afghanistan and is outproducing the US in terms of engineers. Their money by contrast is spent productively. Another cold hard truth - Hamas is going to emerge bloodied but unbowed. More extremism is going to follow. Khaled Mashaal is called Khaled (xAlid) because he will always be there. Kill him and someone else will take his place. Yet another - The US has a balance of payments deficit on high tech goods. All the evidence is that the rest of the World has not only caught up but is acually surpassing the US. Detroit is where it is not only because of the recession, but because it is producing cars no one wants to buy any more. Japan has a very real technological lead. To me the whole idea of manned spaceflight along the lines you seem to what to suggest is absolutely insane. Any reasonable analysis says it must be. People go the Moon. All their supplies have to be brought in from Earth via Ares or some other rocket. If they then go on to Mars all the material going to Mars will have to be transported up to LEO, to the Moon? at great expense. An expedition will (let us say) weigh 2,000 tons at LEO. Some 50,000 tons of expendible boosters will be needed to get it there. About 200 tons will arrive on Mars. During the trip to Mars, on Mars and back, food, oxygen and other consumables will be used up. Staying on Mars will use up yetr more consumables. The whole thing does not add up. To produce a habitat would require about a million tons of boost from the Earth's surface. Jacob Navia is right. The technology is not there. Not there for plants in a vacuum, not there for plants in a prwessurized environment. All you seem to want is money to carry out your pet schemes, which I will predict will come to nothing. - Ian Parker I think I see a grain of truth in here, but most of the preceding thread looks to me like a useless exercise at intellectualization. It goes nowhere; it fails even to carry some core point such as mine at the top of this thread that today's current exercise in "exploring" space could be replaced by a hard choice to *build settlements* in space. And that that urgently needs to be done. In simplest terms, "space flight" and "space settlement" are two related but very different things to do. "Space flight" is the brief period in which you lift off and get there; "space settlement" is the very longterm business of our human species getting off Terra into the solar system, after which it has a hope to exist and grow for millennia to come. As vs, if it doesn't, expectable astronomical violence or local religious and ideological foolishness, using technologies now available, will put an end to all this local Terran trouble. There's a really good plan for a human future in space, written in 1893 by Frederick Jackson Turner. I see no evidence in the above thread that anyone here ever read it. They should. It does need some translation to bring in present and expectable future resources Turner could not have known of, but the basic outline is there, it's well based in recent American history, and I think that with appropriate updating its usefulness *far* exceeds the vague and bluesky stuff I see around such as "man must explore...." "The Future of Human Spaceflight" is too limited in its conception. It barely manages to recognize the present. Those of us who can think about such matters, need to be working at "The Future of Human Culture in Space" and of our species. Titeotwawki -- mha [sci.space.policy 2009 Jan 12] |
#33
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
On 12 Jan, 15:38, "Martha Adams" wrote:
I think I see a grain of truth in here, but most of the preceding thread looks to me like a useless exercise at intellectualization. *It goes nowhere; it fails even to carry some core point such as mine at the top of this thread that today's current exercise in "exploring" space could be replaced by a hard choice to *build settlements* in space. *And that that urgently needs to be done. If you are going to build a settlement in space you need to make that settement self sufficient. It seems to me that not only is the technology to do this not there, but any attempt to get there is "looney". To me the only "sane" thing to do is to call it a day. It would seem too that LISA is never going to work. If a fragmented telescope is not feasible neither is LISA. I personally believe that building one on the Moon is going to prove to be even more problematic. If all the masterials have to be transported from Earth (the only "sane" solution, would it not be far better to simply have it in space anyway. I have perhaps been ratrher to scathing on America, but not wholly without justification. I think America very much represents a bureaucracy that is in a rut and does not know how to get out. Will Obama get them out? Doubt it. In simplest terms, "space flight" and "space settlement" are two related but very different things to do. *"Space flight" is the brief period in which you lift off and get there; "space settlement" is the very longterm business of our human species getting off Terra into the solar system, after which it has a hope to exist and grow for millennia to come. *As vs, if it doesn't, expectable astronomical violence or local religious and ideological foolishness, using technologies now available, will put an end to all this local Terran trouble. There's a really good plan for a human future in space, written in 1893 by Frederick Jackson Turner. *I see no evidence in the above thread that anyone here ever read it. *They should. *It does need some translation to bring in present and expectable future resources Turner could not have known of, but the basic outline is there, it's well based in recent American history, and I think that with appropriate updating its usefulness *far* exceeds the vague and bluesky stuff I see around such as "man must explore...." I think we must explore, but not at any cost. What I am particularly reacting to is the unwillingness to consider new ideas. I don't know whether classification is a factor. All I can say is that without new ideas the whole idea is doomed. If you needed Ares to reach California it would not have been settled, it is as simple as that. No one has seriously suggested crossing America with ballistic missiles. There is a different order of magnitude in cost. Classification is an issue. I don't know for example whether fragmented mirrors have ever been suggested or not. I feel they must have been. My criticism of America was made with this reasson in mind. 1) New thinking is needed, ottherwise any advance in space will become exponentially more expensive. A trip to Mars was possible after Apollo but would have had an exponential price tag. 2) If ideas are locked up under classification, and a disinformation campaign initiated whenever someone else comes up with the same idea America is doomed to futility. If there is to be human spaceflight with new thinking America will not be the country to do it. I think this is very clear. "The Future of Human Spaceflight" is too limited in its conception. *It barely manages to recognize the present. *Those of us who can think about such matters, need to be working at "The Future of Human Culture in Space" and of our species. The future of human culture is I believe in a united world. It is to do with space, yes. If we think about culture we cannot ignore other things. We cannot, for example, ignore the Middle East and the resentments that have been and are still being built up. I hope that space is explored as a united world. This may be too utopian, although if we go into space with national rivalries it will endanger rather than protect humanity. - Ian Parker |
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
On Jan 12, 6:29*am, Ian Parker wrote:
Another cold hard truth - Hamas is going to emerge bloodied but unbowed. More extremism is going to follow. Khaled Mashaal is called Khaled (xAlid) because he will always be there. Kill him and someone else will take his place. You're probably right. But that is not a necessary truth. It is possible to kill every last member of Hamas. It should have been done, though, without killing so many Gazan civilians if one does not want new terrorist groups to rise up. I can think of two ways destroying Hamas could have been achieved with less bloodshed. 1) Israel allows Egypt to open the border to Gaza to evacuate the civilians of Gaza temporarily during the offensive against Hamas; or 2) Since there is mistrust concerning whether Israel is targeting Hamas as spcifically as possible, why not have a multinational force, made up of troops from the U.S., Britain, France, and the other European countries, be what enters Gaza with the purpose of hunting down and destroying Hamas utterly (the way al-Qaeda and the Taliban are to be destroyed utterly)? Apparently, political considerations prevent these two alternatives from being taken. Given that, those who create these obstacles are in no position to criticize Israel. John Savard |
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
On 12 Jan, 22:38, Quadibloc wrote:
On Jan 12, 6:29*am, Ian Parker wrote: Another cold hard truth - Hamas is going to emerge bloodied but unbowed. More extremism is going to follow. Khaled Mashaal is called Khaled (xAlid) because he will always be there. Kill him and someone else will take his place. You're probably right. But that is not a necessary truth. It is possible to kill every last member of Hamas. It should have been done, though, without killing so many Gazan civilians if one does not want new terrorist groups to rise up. Given the fact that you are where you are, there is some truth in what you say. "Cast lead" is a logical culmination of steadt escalation on BOTH sides. I can think of two ways destroying Hamas could have been achieved with less bloodshed. 1) Israel allows Egypt to open the border to Gaza to evacuate the civilians of Gaza temporarily during the offensive against Hamas; or 2) Since there is mistrust concerning whether Israel is targeting Hamas as spcifically as possible, why not have a multinational force, made up of troops from the U.S., Britain, France, and the other European countries, be what enters Gaza with the purpose of hunting down and destroying Hamas utterly (the way al-Qaeda and the Taliban are to be destroyed utterly)? Al-Qaeda has not been destroyed utterly. It has sufferered a defeat in Iraq (where if it was not for the US military they would never havre been anyway). It is still present in the moutains of the NW frontier. The parallel is not quite true anyway. Al-Qaida sufferes from one very real deficiency. It is puritanical, it is "la la land" (la = no). It does not have an appeal to Arabs. No alcohol, no belly dancing, no fun. Hamas and Hezbullah have the appeal of liberation movements. The British had to talk to Markarios and Kenyata in the end. Why are the Palestinans expected to live differently from the people in any other country. Gaza was strangled during the "cease fire". The Israelis are STILL holding on to vast swathes of territory in the West Bank in the shape of settlements. Apparently, political considerations prevent these two alternatives from being taken. Given that, those who create these obstacles are in no position to criticize Israel. There are political consideration on both sides. If I remember correctly Ms Livni failed to become Prime Minister because the Religious Party wanted an undertaking that Jerusalem would never be a part of negotiations. I am a great believer in "first past the post" elections. The Israeli system of proportional representation gives far too much power to minority parties. Do not image that Hamas/Hezbullah are unaware of this. The "resignation" of Trippi Livni was just one stepping stone on the road to war. When I was in Damascus there was never any nonsense about the positions of buttons in lifts on Fridays. Yet this is just one of the demands that the Orthodox are making. In any case this is only one of the "hard truths". The majority of "hard truth" is about manned spaceflight. Everyone admits that the ISS is going nowhere. Anything beyond LEO is prhibitavely expensive and will remain so. Yet another hard truth. There are probably people out there with even better ideas than those I have put forward. I do not believe that one will ever get anything constructive out of this group. I think its goose is well and truly cooked. With no really good ideas on the horizon I do not believe Mr. Obama has any real option but to call a halt on the whole thing. The only justification, and it is a tenuous justification at that, for manned spaceflight is that the ISS is an important part of international relations. - Ian Parker |
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
"Quadibloc" wrote in message ... On Jan 9, 9:05 pm, "jonathan" wrote: 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. After all, in over 200 years of history, the U.S. had only *one* civil war; look how many wars they had in Europe in that time! Don't blame Americans for the fact that Communists and terrorists are uncivilized! John Savard I think the point that democracy defines being civilized is correct. Our steadily improving and stable democracy is the source of our prosperity and ability to afford such things. But the larger picture also indicates the more prosperous or 'civilized' a nation is, the lower the rate of population growth, even to the point of shrinking populations. This trend would suggest that as democracy and prosperity spread, as the world becomes more civilized, the population growth problem will take care of itself. I think it's pretty clear that if humanity gets it's house in order then colonies would become a luxury, not a necessity for survival. Another trend is with our instinctive curiosity about 'outer space'. The less we know, the more we wish to go see, and find out. So over time, as our knowledge and wisdom concerning our surrounding increase, our 'need' to explore will diminish proportionally. For instance with Mars, by the time we could put people there, the various rovers will have told us pretty much all we really wanted to know in the first place. |
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:39:29 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
Ian Parker made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: Hamas and Hezbullah have the appeal of liberation movements. Hamas is not a "liberation movement." It is a genocidal movement. Yet another hard truth. There are probably people out there with even better ideas than those I have put forward. It would be frightening to contemplate that there are people with worse ones. |
#38
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:50:50 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
Quadibloc made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: After all, in over 200 years of history, the U.S. had only *one* civil war; look how many wars they had in Europe in that time! Only if you ignore Shay's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Texas revolution... The War Between the States was our most spectacular one, but it wasn't the only one. |
#39
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
"Martha Adams" wrote in message ... "space settlement" is the very long-term business of our human species getting off Terra into the solar system, after which it has a hope to exist and grow for millennia to come. Reality says something else, population growth rates diminish quickly as a nation becomes more prosperous or stable. As democracy and freedom continues to spread, the need to colonize to perpetuate the species becomes completely unnecessary. Your opinions seem to spring from a mish-mash of sci-fi imagery, such as runaway populations and some inevitable apocalypse. As vs, if it doesn't, expectable astronomical violence This also is another nonsensical argument. For instance, which is easier or more likely to become reality? An ability to deflect or destroy incoming astronomical threats, or quickly moving SIX BILLION PEOPLE to another planet? If we move our population somewhere else ahead of time, how are we to know we didn't move ...into..the path a future collision? Defense is the only logical, practical or moral choice. Moral in the sense that colonies will always be for the select few, not the general population. Colonies can't support billions of people. They never will, not in ten lifetimes. Ten lifetimes is too far to plan for, only dream about. or local religious and ideological foolishness, using technologies now available, will put an end to all this local Terran trouble. That's the silliest thing you've said, we'd take all our troubles with us and you know it. Only unless we fix those 'troubles' first, can we hope to successfully colonize anything. Having done that colonies become an extravagance, let the big corporations pay for them. Only profit driven motives can build such things anyway. Jonathan s |
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"The Future of Human Spaceflight"
On 13 Jan, 14:04, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:39:29 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away, Ian Parker made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: Hamas and Hezbullah have the appeal of liberation movements. Hamas is not a "liberation movement." *It is a genocidal movement. this is what Israei propaganda is saying. Neither Hamas nor Hezbullah has ever proposed attacking western targets in general. Wht the great big US of A cannot keeps its paws off I will never know. Hamas agrees in principle to peace within the 1967 borders. They must clearly form a part of the peace process. They were after all DEMOCRATICALLY elected. Or, do you agree with elections only when they produce the result you want. As in Latin America ....... Yet another hard truth. There are probably people out there with even better ideas than those I have put forward. It would be frightening to contemplate that there are people with worse ones. There are. You are one of them. Listen - nobody is going to buy maned spaceflight beyond LEO at the price tag proposed. Forget it. - Ian Parker |
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