The Need for a Frontier...
POSTED BY: nanite1018
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 1, 2006 02:19
VIEWED: 11082
PAGE 4 of 6
Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Well we seem to have some hardcore capitalist purists around these parts, people who believe nothing is worth doing unless it makes money. While colonisation of space costs money and merely ensures the survival of the species it's just not worth doing.
In the short term there's no profit in the continued survival of our species, and in the long term the money's already been made, so who cares.
I'd remind people that before they talk about private space exploration those private companies are not interested in space exploration but exploitation. At the moment that means satellites and trips into low Earth orbit. If NASA or another space agency put colonies on the Moon, Mars or developed technologies to exploit extra terrestrial resources private companies would exploit them, perhaps even make them profitable, but they WILL not come up with them.
There's no money in exploration unless you find something, then the money is in what ever you find, not the exploration itself. Space exploration is also on the grand scheme fairly low return on your investment, far better to let someone else (like NASA) to do the actual exploring, then step in and make all the money from whatever has been found. This is how it is, has been and always will be done.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
Well there is already evidence of enormous profit to be had from asteroids. And the only easy way to mine asteroids and then use their materials in a useful way is with space stations and space manufacturing. And of course, O'Neill Colonies would be able to process enormous quantities of material in rather short order into complex finished products, saving billions if not trillions in launch costs. So there's lots of money to be had, it's just people think it is a little too risky or too complicated or whatever to try.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rabbit2:Quote:
Granted, we've tried it with Biosphere 2 and whatnot. But those weren't very large. And technology is getting far better. Plus, their approach was kind of retarded. Mini-ecosystems? Come on. Doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't you use bioengineered algae to weed out the pollutants (we've got bacteria and algae that can eat pretty much any pollutant, even toxic waste and oil!) in the water, and use algae or photosynthetic bacteria to produce oxygen and scrub CO2 from the air? We can do far better than they did. We only need a little bit of practice (probably not much at all).
Actually,Biosphere 2 was a good experiment that taught us some of the things NOT to do when setting up a life support system, it was`nt quite the failure the media tended to lable it as.
You `re right about using bioengineered algae and bacteria but you are also going to need controls on them otherwise (to use Biosphere 2 as an example) you end up with your colonists spending all their time scraping algae off the windows to allow their food plants to get enough sunlight.
Yes we need practice with this, preferably someplace where you dont get killed if something goes wrong.
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Flight Instructor: Son, know what the first rule of flying is?
Me: Don`t crash?
That is true. But of course, they used open "mini-climates" and whatnot. I'm talking about machines (if it's a small scale) that contain bacteria and algae in a contained environment that would scrub the atmosphere and process pollutants and whatnot.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rabbit2:
Yes we need practice with this, preferably someplace where you dont get killed if something goes wrong.
Like in a big glass building near Tucson AZ.
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How many Jaynes does it take to change a light bulb?
Two. One to try to put it in and another to find a bigger hammer.
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Quote:And who found that out? NASA?
Originally posted by nanite1018:
Well there is already evidence of enormous profit to be had from asteroids.
Who will create the technology to exploit it? NASA, ESA or similar organisations.
Then the corporations will step in, exploit it and moan about unfair government regulation making it harder for THEM to explore...
Corporate Capitalism won't save space exploration, it'll stagnate it.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:Quote:And who found that out? NASA?
Originally posted by nanite1018:
Well there is already evidence of enormous profit to be had from asteroids.
Who will create the technology to exploit it? NASA, ESA or similar organisations.
Then the corporations will step in, exploit it and moan about unfair government regulation making it harder for THEM to explore...
Corporate Capitalism won't save space exploration, it'll stagnate it.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
Not necessarily. Yes, NASA found it out. But if someone (anyone) with a little ambition and who also was the head of an aerospace company (dumb-ass Beoing or Lockheed-Martin) would try, they could do it. And even if not (unfortunately), what's it matter? I mean, if i had money i'd do it. All of those stupid people like Jeff Bezos, they're billionaires and yet they don't see anything in building a mining facility on an NEO or launching a private mission to Mars (which might only cost like 10 billion dollars, well within the range of many large companies today). How is it that no one who actually has any real dreams is in charge of a company? Does that seem right to you?
I mean, even if you did it and it cost 50 billion dollars like it would if NASA did it, so what? Cisco (not an aerospace company) has over 100 billion bucks sitting there doing nothing.
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Okay my last post was all freaky, sorry!
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My image in the sig messes with quote tags just put a space between them.
My point is not that Private Corporations can't do it; it's that they won't because space exploration is not a good return on investment. Exploiting what you've found is profitable, but only if you've not spent huge amounts of money on exploration.
It's nothing to do with having no one of vision at the head of corporations; it's to do with what kind of person can reach that level. People who reach that level are people who make profit; dreams don't make profit, exploiting other peoples dreams once they've shown themselves to be profitable do.
Hardcore capitalists say NASA (and others) should stand aside and let the 'Corporations do what they do best'. That would be exploiting and making what NASA is doing right now profitable, NOT expanding our influence or knowledge (at least not until space travel is easy and cheap). Right now all you can expect of private corporations is space tourism and satellites in orbit. Except of course they can already get satellites in orbit cheaply enough through NASA and ESA.
At the moment all private companies can give us are trips into orbit.
Governments explore, Companies exploit. For all the blather of the free market capitalists they need the more socialist idea of NASA to get anything out of space exploration. It's one of those ironies, both socialists and capitalists thinks their way is best and the other leads to stagnation and Oligarchy, the irony is they both do without aspects of the other to prevent it...
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Have you ever read Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter? It is a hard SF novel about a man, Reid Malenfant, who is the head of a massive corporate empire based on the environment. They outgas methane to provide energy, supplying 10% of the world's supply. They clean up rivers, lakes, and streams from pollutants. That kind of thing. Malenfant is a billionaire, who was origanally an astronaut. He washed-out (he had cancer, which at the time of the story is a manageable disease, but not when he washed out). So he founded Bootstrap, Inc.; his companies motto is: Making Money in a Closed Economy, Until Something Better Comes Along. And originally, Malenfant is all over the papers and tv pushing for space exploration and such. And then he attracts a bunch of cooks. Not good for business. So he disappeared from TV, but slowly built his buisness empire. Skip forward: The year is 2010, and Reid Malenfant is the owner of Bootstrap, Inc. Out in the desert, near Edwards Air Force Base, he has built an experimental facility that uses Shuttle technology (which has been scrapped after the discovery of a possible cluster of deformed babies caused by harmful pollutants from rockets in the Cape, which half of doctors don't even think exists.). It is meant to be a massive incinerator, capable of processing a tens of times more material per second than any other incinerator in the world, for less money than any other incinerator in the world. The idea is to clean up rivers, lakes, streams, and all sorts of toxic waste using said system. Well, so he says. As it turns out, it is in fact a cover-up for something much larger scale, a mission to mine an asteroid (or NEO). The news breaks and suddenly it's everywhere. There is all sorts of problems due to the the cover-up, and all sorts of legal issues involving the actual launch. Well, they eventually try to shut him down, and right before they can, he launches. And so off goes his probe to begin the mining project. Well, that causes more problems.
Anyway, why can't THAT ever happen? I mean, sure, people have to make profit, but why can't the people at the top want to make profit as a means to an end? And that end be a dream of theirs, the colonization of space, the ensuring of the continuation of the species.
And as to your thing about how companies WON'T go exploring. I don't think so. I mean, companies have researchers who do things like pure research, mostly because they know that that kind of thing normally ends up turning something up that is profitable, even if it wasn't meant to. and cheap launch systems and such, cheap space travel, long-term life-support, and all of that should make it relatively easy for companies to send out scouting parties and research teams. Part would be to scout for actual profit-generating things (which would be the main justification), and scientists would doubtless spend a portion of their time doing pure research, if only because it didn't cost much more for them to do so, and the company doesn't care as long as they get their primary objective done.
Of course, the first interstellar probes and the like will most likely be from NASA or some similar agency. But i think a lot of information about the planets and the Solar System and universe will come from companies doing research for practical aims, and adding for a small price some pure research on, if only to keep their scientists happy.
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My opinion is that NASA and other space agencies really need to start playing with that idea. Move the outdated and crumbling space station to a fixed position on the moon. And from there launch to Mars (so far). Or even send a probe to Mars with say some seeds, water, etc. Needed for plant life. Monitor it and see if it grows. If it takes off, then there is then a potential for the beginning of an atmosphere. It will take some time to establish and atmosphere, and I dont know what Mars atmosphere consists of now but plants need nitrogen and carbon dioxide to grow thus expelling oxygen through photosynthesis.
Also the current space ships are outdated and are falling apart. The need for a new space ship is needed. Also, there needs to be some sort of boost to the energy system to make space travel faster. It already takes a probe some years to get to its mission and having a person on board would take even longer due to the resources to sustain that person(s).
This is just what im thinking and im sure im totally wrong on some aspects.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Sirius:
My opinion is that NASA and other space agencies really need to start playing with that idea. Move the outdated and crumbling space station to a fixed position on the moon. And from there launch to Mars (so far). Or even send a probe to Mars with say some seeds, water, etc. Needed for plant life. Monitor it and see if it grows. If it takes off, then there is then a potential for the beginning of an atmosphere. It will take some time to establish and atmosphere, and I dont know what Mars atmosphere consists of now but plants need nitrogen and carbon dioxide to grow thus expelling oxygen through photosynthesis.
Also the current space ships are outdated and are falling apart. The need for a new space ship is needed. Also, there needs to be some sort of boost to the energy system to make space travel faster. It already takes a probe some years to get to its mission and having a person on board would take even longer due to the resources to sustain that person(s).
This is just what im thinking and im sure im totally wrong on some aspects.
Well kind of. Not totally wrong. Yes there definitely needs to be a new space vehicle. But moving the space station to the Moon wouldn't be wise, it'd fall apart most likely. And as to launching Mars missions, definitely. As to launching seeds and stuff, probably not. As i've pointed out, a planetary surface isn't exactly the most efficient way of living. But even beyond that, it'd take some work before Earth life could live there, at least most of it. But that wouldn't be TOO awefully difficult. I just don't see it as worth all that effort to get a planet that you could live on to support a couple billion people when you could do way more with the same amount of resources spent on mining asteroids and such. But we should definitely send manned missions to Mars and build some bases there. Maybe some small colonies too. Give people the option of going if they want, but also give them the option of going to live in a far more comfortable O'Neill Colony.
As to the "power boost" thing. Yeah, we need better propulsion systems. Ion drives are good, except they are pretty weak. An experimental system called VASIMR is meant to have the ability to be rather inefficient and high thrust or super-efficient and low-thrust, which could really improve trip times. Propulsion systems using things like Nuclear Thermal Propulsion would be beneficial to an extent. Then of course there's Orion, which is kick-ass if you want massive payloads and don't much care about fallout from nuclear detonations. Which we do. Over interplanetary space it might not be so bad. Particularly if you used fusion pellets triggered by lasers rather than atom bombs. And then there's solar sails which are nice because they don't require fuel, and would be relatively easy to make with space manufacturing (if you had a large base for the manufacturing), and magnetic sails which are easier but not as great as solar sails.
So yeah, we've got lots of stuff in the works, theories, drawings, design studies and such. And then of course you also have good 'ol antimatter-matter reactions, which would be wonderful, if you had a cheap and easy way to mass-produce antimatter (which probably wouldn't be a good idea at this time). But, yeah. We've got ideas coming out the pigu.
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