roadrunner Posted August 7, 2012 Share Posted August 7, 2012 We won't find shit. They'll find all kinds of shit and we'll never know about it. think about what the political implications are of announcing that the concept of life that we thought was so unique to us is on a different planet. I can imagine that it would take some balls. You are spitting in the face of religion. Kinda like being the doctor to break the bad news. I'd celebrate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 At this moment, there are several technologies in your house that came from trom the space program. It's about progress and advancement of our technology and industry. New stuff and inventions will bring new jobs. Hey, I thought all those technologies came from the alien spacecraft that crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico back in the late 40s. Was I misinformed? All kidding aside, I have always been a big fan of NASA and JPL so I didn't want my previous remarks to indicated otherwise. I think it's just a knee jerk reaction to being told our military spending is out of control, but I read reports NASA did this amazing thing after having 40% of their budget reduced. I think that adds to what amazing a job they did with this latest endeavor. And yeah, I really do hope this leads to some incredible discovers in the coming year that very well could have a profound effect on our world. It's one of the steps for sending manned missions and hopefully one day we'll have settlements there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Valk0010 Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 At this moment, there are several technologies in your house that came from trom the space program. It's about progress and advancement of our technology and industry. New stuff and inventions will bring new jobs. Hey, I thought all those technologies came from the alien spacecraft that crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico back in the late 40s. Was I misinformed? All kidding aside, I have always been a big fan of NASA and JPL so I didn't want my previous remarks to indicated otherwise. I think it's just a knee jerk reaction to being told our military spending is out of control, but I read reports NASA did this amazing thing after having 40% of their budget reduced. I think that adds to what amazing a job they did with this latest endeavor. And yeah, I really do hope this leads to some incredible discovers in the coming year that very well could have a profound effect on our world. It's one of the steps for sending manned missions and hopefully one day we'll have settlements there. The way things are going with climate change, I think working to towards settlements would probably be a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Even without the climate change beast breathing up our necks, one day Yellowstone will decide it has slept for long enough, or any of a number of other bad things might happen. Unless one is sufficiently cynical to say humanity as a whole doesn't deserve to survive anyway, having a backup living space is a damn good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billdekay Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Hey, if we can terraform Mars, why can't we just re-terraform Earth? Is there just too many methane producing species to compensate for? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thought2Much Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Billdekay, that's actually a good point. I can't find the quote (it might have been Carl Sagan), but someone once said that they would believe that we could terraform Mars as soon as we transformed the Sahara and the Gobi deserts into lush paradises. Even if the Yellowstone supervolcano goes kerfluey, it still wouldn't wipe out all of humanity, just a big chunk of it. There isn't any point in colonizing other planets in our solar system in order to avoid any kind of catastrophe on Earth, since Earth already has all of the resources we will ever need, while planets like Mars are seriously lacking in important resources. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Aaaah Yellowstone (or another dinokiller roid or whatever) may not completely extinguish humanity, but what will work best? 1. just let it happen and have the few survivers re-discover everything from scratch 2. set up data and knowledge caches (which actually has been done already in some corners of the world) that can be used by survivors to rebuild easier, as soon as they found the caches and learned how to access its information 3. have a safe place where humans (even if just a few) can still thrive and directly help the survivors Of course this is all kind of simplified but I trust you get the idea. Also, even Earth itself won't last forever. Of course to escape the inevitable fate of our local dirtball we'd need to first discover another habitable world somewhere else and then actually get there and establish a colony which, as I somehow suppose, will take more than 100 bucks and longer than 2 weeks... but there's always something Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thought2Much Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Aaaah Yellowstone (or another dinokiller roid or whatever) may not completely extinguish humanity, but what will work best? 1. just let it happen and have the few survivers re-discover everything from scratch 2. set up data and knowledge caches (which actually has been done already in some corners of the world) that can be used by survivors to rebuild easier, as soon as they found the caches and learned how to access its information 3. have a safe place where humans (even if just a few) can still thrive and directly help the survivors Of course this is all kind of simplified but I trust you get the idea. Also, even Earth itself won't last forever. Of course to escape the inevitable fate of our local dirtball we'd need to first discover another habitable world somewhere else and then actually get there and establish a colony which, as I somehow suppose, will take more than 100 bucks and longer than 2 weeks... but there's always something I think our technology is global enough that there won't be a need to rediscover everything from scratch. I'm not saying that it will be a picnic, either, but even a full-on Yellowstone eruption would probably leave large portions of human civilization mostly unharmed, at least directly (though there would be plenty of long-term issues to work out). Our knowledge is already so distributed that the only thing I can think of that would knock it out entirely would be a supernova explosion close enough to earth to irradiate the entire surface, rendering it sterile; since we're in a fairly sparsely populated part of the galaxy anyway, it's probably not something we need to worry about all that much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 The other thing that is not often discussed is that space destroys the human body. They have discovered that the effects of long term exposure to zero gravity cause astronauts to go blind, Atrophy of extremities, blood to pool in the chest cavity, and problems with sleep. While exercise helps with the atrophy, it doesn't with the others. The blood pooling could be fixed genetically I think. See veins travel toward the heart and they have valves. Part of this is a counteract to gravity as blood traveling up the leg would have a harder time without the veins to stop the downward fall of the blood. So perhaps we could genetically engineer humans to have veins in the arteries. This would put a block on the backward flow of the blood and keep things moving in the circulatory system. Anyway, however you look at it, for space travel we are kinda a victim of our own success. The evolution that allowed us to be successful on earth is not condusive to living in space, or the ocean for that matter. So the issues are far more then just could we go there. Yes we could. Surviving in our current genetic state would be difficult. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stryper Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Aaaah Yellowstone (or another dinokiller roid or whatever) may not completely extinguish humanity, but what will work best? 1. just let it happen and have the few survivers re-discover everything from scratch 2. set up data and knowledge caches (which actually has been done already in some corners of the world) that can be used by survivors to rebuild easier, as soon as they found the caches and learned how to access its information 3. have a safe place where humans (even if just a few) can still thrive and directly help the survivors Of course this is all kind of simplified but I trust you get the idea. Also, even Earth itself won't last forever. Of course to escape the inevitable fate of our local dirtball we'd need to first discover another habitable world somewhere else and then actually get there and establish a colony which, as I somehow suppose, will take more than 100 bucks and longer than 2 weeks... but there's always something I think our technology is global enough that there won't be a need to rediscover everything from scratch. I'm not saying that it will be a picnic, either, but even a full-on Yellowstone eruption would probably leave large portions of human civilization mostly unharmed, at least directly (though there would be plenty of long-term issues to work out). Our knowledge is already so distributed that the only thing I can think of that would knock it out entirely would be a supernova explosion close enough to earth to irradiate the entire surface, rendering it sterile; since we're in a fairly sparsely populated part of the galaxy anyway, it's probably not something we need to worry about all that much. or a gamma ray burst. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thought2Much Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 The other thing that is not often discussed is that space destroys the human body. They have discovered that the effects of long term exposure to zero gravity cause astronauts to go blind, Atrophy of extremities, blood to pool in the chest cavity, and problems with sleep. Until we are able to build very large, rotating, shielded structures, then this is correct. And the way things are going, that won't be anytime in the foreseeable future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 I'd say we are already able to do that, or at least most of that. The question is how willing we are. Not that I think that we are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ConureDelSol Posted August 8, 2012 Share Posted August 8, 2012 Guys, we need to give more money to NASA. For the record JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) is also in the works as of this year within the European Space Agency. It will be surveying the icy moons of Jupiter for the potential of the moons to sustain life. In particular, I'm excited about Europa, which scientists theorize has a vast ocean beneath its icy shell. Europa is one of my favorite moons...yes I have favorite moons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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