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Post by AudioHTIT on Jun 2, 2020 20:30:29 GMT -5
... Hi Keith, I understand and somewhat agree, but lets look at just the population management angle. How much area on the planet Earth is uninhabitable between land, sea and air? Would it not be simpler, safer, less expensive to make these areas on Earth inhabitable? Mark Yeah, that’s the world I want to live in ...
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Post by gus4emo on Jun 2, 2020 20:42:25 GMT -5
If we don't find a way to travel even a fraction of the speed of light any time soon, to travel to even the closest system, Alpha Centaury, we will have to use what we can to get around our own solar system, it might take a long time, but we will colonize it, hopefully at first leaving bad people back on earth, by that I mean filtering who is going, like when they scrutinize who is the best to make it as astronauts, just giving an example....humanity will go on as it can to spread out in space....the sun will be a red giant in roughly 4.5 billion years, swallowing the inner 3 planets, hey, that might mean the moons in the planets Jupiter and Saturn might be warm enough to live on, in addition to technology helping along......and let's not forget, we are NOT alone.....
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Post by ttocs on Jun 2, 2020 21:31:48 GMT -5
I've got space in my backyard, and it's habitable.
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klinemj
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Post by klinemj on Jun 2, 2020 22:14:29 GMT -5
Mark said “Hi Keith, I understand and somewhat agree, but lets look at just the population management angle. How much area on the planet Earth is uninhabitable between land, sea and air? Would it not be simpler, safer, less expensive to make these areas on Earth inhabitable?” Let’s go! View AttachmentI wish everyone could hear a friend of mine talk about sustainability and the bioburden life puts on a planet. She's a PhD specializing in the topic, and she's not political at all...very science-based. She's also a very wonderful person and a delight to spend time with. Mark
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Post by 405x5 on Jun 3, 2020 7:25:18 GMT -5
... Hi Keith, I understand and somewhat agree, but lets look at just the population management angle. How much area on the planet Earth is uninhabitable between land, sea and air? Would it not be simpler, safer, less expensive to make these areas on Earth inhabitable? Mark Yeah, that’s the world I want to live in ... View AttachmentGideon?
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Post by 405x5 on Jun 3, 2020 7:27:05 GMT -5
If we don't find a way to travel even a fraction of the speed of light any time soon, to travel to even the closest system, Alpha Centaury, we will have to use what we can to get around our own solar system, it might take a long time, but we will colonize it, hopefully at first leaving bad people back on earth, by that I mean filtering who is going, like when they scrutinize who is the best to make it as astronauts, just giving an example....humanity will go on as it can to spread out in space....the sun will be a red giant in roughly 4.5 billion years, swallowing the inner 3 planets, hey, that might mean the moons in the planets Jupiter and Saturn might be warm enough to live on, in addition to technology helping along......and let's not forget, we are NOT alone..... The tough part is gonna be getting John Deere up there with a backhoe
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geebo
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"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are driving taxicabs and cutting hair"
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Post by geebo on Jun 3, 2020 7:28:18 GMT -5
If we don't find a way to travel even a fraction of the speed of light any time soon, to travel to even the closest system, Alpha Centaury, we will have to use what we can to get around our own solar system, it might take a long time, but we will colonize it, hopefully at first leaving bad people back on earth, by that I mean filtering who is going, like when they scrutinize who is the best to make it as astronauts, just giving an example....humanity will go on as it can to spread out in space....the sun will be a red giant in roughly 4.5 billion years, swallowing the inner 3 planets, hey, that might mean the moons in the planets Jupiter and Saturn might be warm enough to live on, in addition to technology helping along......and let's not forget, we are NOT alone..... But we can travel at a fraction of the speed of light. About 1/27,000th the speed of light.
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Post by 405x5 on Jun 3, 2020 7:37:28 GMT -5
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Post by AudioHTIT on Jun 3, 2020 11:17:01 GMT -5
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Post by gus4emo on Jun 3, 2020 18:47:48 GMT -5
It is great that US is back to space. It never gets old for me to see a launch. As long as propulsion is based on chemical rockets, though, we (humanity, not just US) ain't going nowhere beyond our own backyard. Little by little my friend, little by little, I wish you were alive 500 years ago, and hear what you might have said....
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Post by MusicHead on Jun 3, 2020 22:56:20 GMT -5
It is great that US is back to space. It never gets old for me to see a launch. As long as propulsion is based on chemical rockets, though, we (humanity, not just US) ain't going nowhere beyond our own backyard. Little by little my friend, little by little, I wish you were alive 500 years ago, and hear what you might have said.... That's why I wrote "as long as". I have no doubt that in due time new propulsion systems will be developed.
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Post by ttocs on Jun 3, 2020 23:11:22 GMT -5
Propulsion: Photon powered sail-space-ship. Acceleration from Zero to 1,000,000 miles per hour: Eventually. Only Problem: No brakes.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jun 4, 2020 1:11:44 GMT -5
That's not quite true....
In a vacuum the very idea of brakes is a non-starter.... The way it works is that, when you want to stop, you turn around, and accelerate in the opposite direction.... So you start out real slow, accelerate for half of the trip, and decelerate for the other half.... You're sitting still at each end of the trip... and at max speed at the middle of the trip....
(Not counting complications because odds are neither your starting point or destination is actually sitting still.)
(And, yes, you'd better avoid situations where you'd really need brakes...)
In real life, of course, it gets much more complicated... For example, at 1,000,000 mpH, "empty space" isn't all that empty, so friction will get to be an issue well before that... But, for the same reason, at very high speeds, you'll find plenty of stray atoms of matter floating around in your path, which you can collect and use...
(If they're hydrogen, or something else you can use for fuel, you can burn them, or you can collect them and spray them out the back as reaction mass.)
The biggest problem we have these days is fuel... If you could burn a Saturn Five booster at full blast for just a few hours you could reach Pluto by dinner time (ignoring friction and such). The problem is that those massive rockets only hold enough fuel to burn for a few seconds. And you can't drag a few billion tons of the stuff along with you so you can keep going. (Imagine driving a race car, that's real fast, but gets a fraction of a mile per gallon of fuel, and no gas station for a billion miles.)
The whole big thing with ideas like ion drives is that they use stuff you can collect more of continuously along the way. So, for example, you collect power from sunlight, and you collect some of that space dust, then use the solar power to push the dust out the back. It may not be very powerful... but you have an unlimited supply... so you can run it for years instead of just seconds. (And, instead of looking at space dust as "junk getting in your way" it becomes "an unlimited supply of fuel you can collect and use".) Propulsion: Photon powered sail-space-ship. Acceleration from Zero to 1,000,000 miles per hour: Eventually. Only Problem: No brakes.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jun 4, 2020 1:22:50 GMT -5
I don't think that would work out in the long run... Many areas are just too hard to make inhabitable...
And you still have to feed everyone...
And you still have to get rid of the garbage... And, no matter how well it works out, it isn't a permanent solution...
(Because, unless something changes, the population will simply keep increasing until it exceeds whatever capacity you have.)
It's pretty obvious to me that the simple solution is to control our population... Figure out how many humans the Earth can comfortably and sustainably support... Then simply make a decision to maintain that number as a steady population...
We've had the technology we need to do so for decades... It's simple, effective, safe, and doesn't even cost much...
But, for a variety of reasons, we just can't seem to actually get people to DO it...
(There are a million excuses, and a million rationalizations, and even forcing them doesn't seem to work very well.) The bottom line is that the Earth is NOT going to get any bigger... so eventually it will fill up.
But it wouldn't be that hard to simply stop having so many children...
I agree entirely..... There was a time when other continents on this planet were "out of reach"...
There was a time when "everyone knew people could never fly"... And there was a time when it took six months by sea to reach New York from England... (Do you think our founding fathers considered it forseeable to have lunch in Paris and be back in New York for dinner?)
And, for that matter, people a mere hundred years ago probably never foresaw being able to actually talk to a machine... (What do you think someone from 1950 would have said about Alexa?)
Isaac Asimov "foresaw" a universe with millions of populated planets... And I can foresee that as well... (And the fact that it may not happen for a thousand years makes the picture a little fuzzier... but only a little.) However... and here's the whole point... IF WE STOP TRYING NOW THEN IT IS AN ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY THAT IT WILL *NEVER* HAPPEN. (Even that is an overstatement; in fifty years, someone will decide to do it anyway, and they won't even remember this discussion.) The bottom line is that a time when the Earth is overpopulated, and our resources are totally exhausted, is NOT at all unimaginable... Which do you think is really going to take longer to achieve: - a manned colony on Mars - world peace and a stable and controlled population on this planet - everyone on Earth agreeing that we need to control our population before we run out of living space
I'm guessing we'll see a permanent manned colony on Mars before we see the last war on Earth... And we'll see people living and growing food in manned space stations before we see the end of starvation on Earth...
And I like to hope that we'll see colonies on other planets, or in space, before we run out of space here... (I've given up on sane people deciding to voluntarily control the population...)
Or, on a wider scale, PROGRESS is inevitable and necessary, and manned space flight is just part of progress.
Hi Keith, I understand and somewhat agree, but lets look at just the population management angle. How much area on the planet Earth is uninhabitable between land, sea and air? Would it not be simpler, safer, less expensive to make these areas on Earth inhabitable? Mark
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Post by jmilton on Jun 4, 2020 7:29:19 GMT -5
Two words: hyper drive.
Or like Spaceballs...”They went Plaid!”
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Post by DavidR on Jun 4, 2020 8:21:24 GMT -5
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Post by 405x5 on Jun 4, 2020 8:33:36 GMT -5
You fellas should stop worrying about how to get there....They’re already here to take us when they are ready. Just be nice and order EXTRA TAKEOUT 🥡! Aliens will do ANYTHING for a meal 🥘 no matter what planet 🌎 they come from.
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Post by DavidR on Jun 4, 2020 10:25:08 GMT -5
You fellas should stop worrying about how to get there....They’re already here to take us when they are ready. Just be nice and order EXTRA TAKEOUT 🥡! Aliens will do ANYTHING for a meal 🥘 no matter what planet 🌎 they come from. TO SERVE MAN
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Post by jmilton on Jun 4, 2020 11:00:36 GMT -5
Two words: hyper drive.
Or like Spaceballs...”They went Plaid!”
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Post by mfeust on Jun 4, 2020 11:37:28 GMT -5
I don't think that would work out in the long run... Many areas are just too hard to make inhabitable...
And you still have to feed everyone...
And you still have to get rid of the garbage... And, no matter how well it works out, it isn't a permanent solution...
(Because, unless something changes, the population will simply keep increasing until it exceeds whatever capacity you have.)
So are you saying that solving these same problems on Mars would be easy. It's pretty obvious to me that the simple solution is to control our population... Figure out how many humans the Earth can comfortably and sustainably support... Then simply make a decision to maintain that number as a steady population... We've had the technology we need to do so for decades... It's simple, effective, safe, and doesn't even cost much...
But, for a variety of reasons, we just can't seem to actually get people to DO it...
(There are a million excuses, and a million rationalizations, and even forcing them doesn't seem to work very well.) The bottom line is that the Earth is NOT going to get any bigger... so eventually it will fill up.
But it wouldn't be that hard to simply stop having so many children...
I'm not a fan of telling people that they can't have children if they want to have children. I am more of a fan of once someone reaches say 80yo they are made into food to sustain the younger population. Hi Keith, I understand and somewhat agree, but lets look at just the population management angle. How much area on the planet Earth is uninhabitable between land, sea and air? Would it not be simpler, safer, less expensive to make these areas on Earth inhabitable? Mark
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