NASA LASER PROPULSION SYSTEM COULD REVOLUTIONIZE SPACE TRAVEL

jefferz said:
I thought Light Sail had already been launched. That's the Planetary Societies one isn't it?
Click to expand...

on a cubesat - yeah...they are doing another one slightly bigger host - with a larger sail in 2016
 
Meh. Come back when you've invented Phasers and Time Travel, boys. Then I'll be impressed.
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
on a cubesat - yeah...they are doing another one slightly bigger host - with a larger sail in 2016
Click to expand...

on this note, i never understood why a flat earther has never decided to join the Planetary society and see for themselves.
 
andnowweknow said:
A.) Your implication it's that rare is false, in fact, these are so hard to detect historically that we missed the single largest extinction event induced by an object from space since the dinosaurs caught the hard goodbye until 2007, and we're still putting the pieces together on that one. Sure, that was 12k years ago, but we know that roughly 100 years ago Tunguska happened, which had it happened over moscow rather than siberia, you'd have millions dead, not just millions of trees broken like twigs.

B.) The budget is the problem. But you are correct, we will never catch everything...it would be nice to put 300 million towards it instead of throwing a paltry 30 million bucks at it to detect less than 1 percent of the estimated amount of dangerous near earth objects. Realistically, we should be investing billions yearly to deal with near earth space, not the 30 million dollars it costs to run a McDonalds for 1 year.
Click to expand...

Something of a missed opportunity then, one feels.;)
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
I hear what youre saying but still, no known human for the past 1000 has been documented being killed by direct impact or by effects of one impacting... take from that what you will

and it would take hundreds of billions to design a mesh network even remotely close monitoring near earth objects at a percentage that would make everyone sleep comfortably at night.
Click to expand...

It comes down to this...even if it were true that nobody has been killed in the last 1000 years by something from space, is that really a reason not to fully defend against what is BY FAR the greatest threat to humanity? It's a matter of perspective, but if you want to get really esoteric, there's probably a reason that "History" begins in the backyard of the greatest cosmic event this planet has scene since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

It would be very easy for our relatively fragile civilization to be completely paralyzed in the event of an object we could have (or even should have) detected and used already existing technology to nudge out of harms way.

Do you think 500 billion would be a misapplication of resources? I get it's not going to happen and that we're just going to have to go with "hope we get lucky", but I hope any rational person could see this as a well apportioned amount of money given the other shit we waste it on. It just seems odd to me that our goals of manning the solar system have come before actually protecting our civilization here.
 
andnowweknow said:
It comes down to this...even if it were true that nobody has been killed in the last 1000 years by something from space, is that really a reason not to fully defend against what is BY FAR the greatest threat to humanity? It's a matter of perspective, but if you want to get really esoteric, there's probably a reason that "History" begins in the backyard of the greatest cosmic event this planet has scene since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

It would be very easy for our relatively fragile civilization to be completely paralyzed in the event of an object we could have (or even should have) detected and used already existing technology to nudge out of harms way.

Do you think 500 billion would be a misapplication of resources? I get it's not going to happen and that we're just going to have to go with "hope we get lucky", but I hope any rational person could see this as a well apportioned amount of money given the other shit we waste it on. It just seems odd to me that our goals of manning the solar system have come before actually protecting our civilization here.
Click to expand...

Depends on the masses sharing of your views as the "greatest threat to humanity"; which i see as a hyperbole as there has been an incredible plethora of events / organisms / objects that have killed far more people in the last 1000 years.

Im not saying the possibility of cataclysmic impact shouldn't be taken seriously and perhaps a more proactive approach towards defense against (if any is even possible?) But, yeah, i think for the amount of return we would get in terms of ROI on spending hundreds of billions on a strategy / monitoring plan would be pretty hard to justify. Considering the best we could realistically could do in the next 50 - 100 of years seems almost futile.

if we are going to allocate 500 billion and requires the collaboration and cooperation of at least 20 nation states - im voting for nuclear weapon disarmament
 
Theses threads full of optimism for a future full of the promise of traveling into the deep reaches of space and living out a true scifi future.
Its all bullcrap. No ones going to fund this because everyone is too concerned over petty human things like Donald Trump and economic sanctions. We will all die and never traverse the infinite void.

ule_nihilist.gif
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
Depends on the masses sharing of your views as the "greatest threat to humanity"; which i see as a hyperbole as there has been an incredible plethora of events / organisms / objects that have killed far more people in the last 1000 years.

Im not saying the possibility of cataclysmic impact shouldn't be taken seriously and perhaps a more proactive approach towards defense against (if any is even possible?) But, yeah, i think for the amount of return we would get in terms of ROI on spending hundreds of billions on a strategy / monitoring plan would be pretty hard to justify. Considering the best we could realistically could do in the next 50 - 100 of years seems almost futile.

if we are going to allocate 500 billion and requires the collaboration and cooperation of at least 20 nation states - im voting for nuclear weapon disarmament
Click to expand...
Agree to disagree. This planet has been shaped and reshaped by cataclysmic events emanating from space...one about 12k years ago probably explains why we know next to nothing about what the other 95% of modern human history outside of recorded history is all about.

Your view that my point is hyperbole comes down to perspective. The same sort of thinking you are employing is why Fukushima happened and why Katrina was such a disaster...an obvious problem wasn't treated as such until it was too late. The one we're talking about just happens to be one we wouldn't recover from. Back to square one and there will be no giants shoulders for people like you and I to perch on.

Laser ships are awesome, space travel is necessary to ultimately avoid extinction...controlling our local environment is also necessary. Being short sighted, even on the millennial scale is irresponsible to the future generations and probable long term achievements we are capable of.
 
andnowweknow said:
Agree to disagree. This planet has been shaped and reshaped by cataclysmic events emanating from space...one about 12k years ago probably explains why we know next to nothing about what the other 95% of modern human history outside of recorded history is all about.

Your view that my point is hyperbole comes down to perspective. The same sort of thinking you are employing is why Fukushima happened and why Katrina was such a disaster...an obvious problem wasn't treated as such until it was too late. The one we're talking about just happens to be one we wouldn't recover from. Back to square one and there will be no giants shoulders for people like you and I to perch on.

Laser ships are awesome, space travel is necessary to ultimately avoid extinction...controlling our local environment is also necessary. Being short sighted, even on the millennial scale is irresponsible to the future generations and probable long term achievements we are capable of.
Click to expand...

I agree with your premise; i just see more value in allocating resources to more tangible goals - especially if we are classifying obligation to the generations 1000's of years from now.

But if someone actually came up with a semi practical methodology / plan for protecting the earth from a world ending impact - id be all for giving them a forum to gain the resources needed.

Right now i am much more concerned with the plan for the San Andreas fault line - The world kind of needs California
 
JudoThrowFiasco said:
I agree with your premise; i just see more value in allocating resources to more tangible goals - especially if we are classifying obligation to the generations 1000's of years from now.

But if someone actually came up with a semi practical methodology / plan for protecting the earth from a world ending impact - id be all for giving them a forum to gain the resources needed.

Right now i am much more concerned with the plan for the San Andreas fault line - The world kind of needs California
Click to expand...
It is crazy that we can land machinery on bollide objects in space travelling 50+k miles per hour yet the looming threat of San Andreas is still ever present and without answer decades after it was deemed a major issue for the Western united States. I've read numerous plans on incremental faultline stress relief but again no action from the powers that be. Wait and hope...just another case of matter of time.
 
andnowweknow said:
It is crazy that we can land machinery on bollide objects in space travelling 50+k miles per hour yet the looming threat of San Andreas is still ever present and without answer decades after it was deemed a major issue for the Western united States. I've read numerous plans on incremental faultline stress relief but again no action from the powers that be. Wait and hope...just another case of matter of time.
Click to expand...

I completely agree - this is something that should've been taught in every school in North America for the past 70 years with a multi million dollar prize for whoever figures out a realistic solution
 
andnowweknow said:
It is crazy that we can land machinery on bollide objects in space travelling 50+k miles per hour yet the looming threat of San Andreas is still ever present and without answer decades after it was deemed a major issue for the Western united States. I've read numerous plans on incremental faultline stress relief but again no action from the powers that be. Wait and hope...just another case of matter of time.
Click to expand...


...you have officially lost your mind
 
I would like to see NASA go after this and make it happen.
 
They should just bribe the aliens with Twinkies and fried chicken in exchange for some better advanced space travel technology.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,238,257
Messages
55,547,097
Members
174,824
Latest member
Rank Wang

Share this page

Back
Top