NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we are

[gturner]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Um, no. The Sahara is shrinking. Increased CO2 means that plants lose less water through transpiration, allowing them to move into areas formerly too dry for them. Global warming also increases rainfall. For example, El Nino produces floods, and la Nina produces droughts. Past temperatures are sometimes estimated by using rainfall as proxy. The planet's largest and driest desert is in Antarctica, not Africa.

 

[Yminale]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Um, no. The Sahara is shrinking.

Uhm yes. Every resource I looked up states that Sahara is expanding.

 

[B.J.]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

From Apollo 11 - 17, what was the total hours on the Moon? A day and a half, maybe?

~12.5 days total, but who's counting?

That whole romance with the idea humans need to go to space to survive... Sigh. Earth is, and will always be, the most human-friendly planet in our reach. Mars, and any other planet in our proximity, is DEAD. You have to live in airtight bunkers, go out in spacesuits. Even if our planet was hit by a catastrophe like a supervolcano, Earth would still be a friendlier environment than that. If you can build autark colonies on Mars and Venus, you can build autark colonies on a catastrophy Earth.
Then that talk about terraforming. We can't even purposely terraform our own planet.

In the near term, geologically speaking, yes, Earth is the best place for us. But in the extreme long term, the sun and Earth will eventually die. Then what? Personally, I hope the human race survives that long and has found a way to live beyond the Solar System, rather than just die with it.

 

[RAMA]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Any suggestions on how to get the human population down to 500 million? Should we use mass sterilizations or an engineered virus? What about populations that refuse to comply and somehow combat our best efforts at exterminating them with the chemical or biological methods?

And while we're at it, shouldn't we take this as an opportunity to further improve mankind's genetics by picking the survivors from the brightest and healthiest 5 percent of the current population, ones with no criminal record, no trace of resistance to authority, and no heritable genetic problems?

One of the single greatest unpopular ideas in human history is any kind reproduction law, especially limitations. Even in China, the restrictions on child bearing were finally lifted after being so unpopular.

I share in your sarcasm.

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Don't forget to remove the biggest obstacle first, those evil Jews who survived the last socialist attempt at making this a better planet through genocide.

Genocide? I'm talking about political resistance to access to birth control (ironically Catholic countries birth rates are declining).

And global climate change won't affect Sub Saharan Africa at all,

Unless these people to learn to eat sand, it will affect them. Desertification is spreading and will be made worse by global climate change. Droughts and famines will be made worse by decreases in rain fall and tropical diseases will spread north.

Birth rates have more to do with economic status. Right now, despite the ideas to the contrary, the Earth is experiencing millions of people coming out of official poverty. People in countries that reach a better state of equilibrium supporting themselves have reduced childbirth rates.

Also, population control will take care of itself. The footprint of these people on the environment and resources is what i was talking about earlier.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies

 

[RAMA]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

It is obvious if you energetically direct a depopulation program you could undo what is happening, but humans naturally are developing this way. I don't see a directed depopulation program anymore do you??

UN population figures have always been wrong. Europe and Japan are depopulating. Many countries have birth rates under the replacement rate. The largest birth rates occur in Sub-Saharan Africa which sadly will be dealt with by global climate change. We are already moving in that direction. We just need to remove the few remaining obstacles (like the Catholic Church and right wing conservative Christians).

Marginal survival is better than none.

Not if you factor in the cost. We deal with this in medicine all the time. If I increased your chance of survival by 1% but it cost you 1 million dollars would you do it.

A Singularity can also encompass human derived artificial intelligence. Obviously you haven't been paying attention.

HAL is a human derived AI. If you are talking about transcendence/uploading the human mind than no offense but you are talking fantasy that may never occur. Your argument is no better than saying we should explore space because the magic space ponies tell us to.

HAL is not human derived AI, he is completely machine, and no human brain emulation is very real and progressing all the time. I believe I recently posted some links that give a likely timeline for this, last time was in the Transcendence thread in SF forum. Far from being in the realm of fantasy, it's basically just a matter of time and mathematics at this point.

Um..cost is exactly what goes down as it become more common...more development=more access. Commercial space initiatives are already proliferating, and the first SLS will be tested soon, making interplanetary travel more common.

No the UN population figures are accurate:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

As for population rates, they will go up before they go down. See the link I posted in the last comment.

 

[Chilli]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

I learned by reading this thread that NASA is directly responsible for what budget it's assigned. Neat.

Mars is already littered with our defunct robots. The moon landing sites are littered with bags of urine, junked cars and torn up platforms ... not to mention a couple crashed probes.

For how cynical you are about humanity, you've got an absurdly anthropocentric idea of "littering". Humans have left a negligible amoung of waste on the moon, yes. To the universe, that's pretty irrelevant: a bit of inanimate matter on a huge chunk of inanimate matter, and nobody there to care about it one way or the other. To a civilization way more advanced than ours, these'd be some fascinating artefacts on an otherwise boring world. It takes a human to go "eww, astronaut poop".

Nothing less intelligent than us would know to be offended or bothered by anything humans have left on the moon, and to anything more intelligent than us, bitching about human artifacts on the moon would kinda be like finding a single feather, or speck of moss, on an otherwise lifeless rockface, and thinking the rockface forever ruined.

And this is what annoys me about people that run around bitching about how rubbish humanity is, often while wearing t-shirts reading "people=shit" and whatnot. It's not even that I disagree with the sentiment. It's that the people voicing it often seem to think they can disavow any connection to the unwashed masses of rubbish people simply by being sufficiently dickish. But in doing so, they will often end up exhibiting some of the worst human characteristics, with their dickishness often aimed at people exhibiting the best human characteristics - like the folks over at NASA in this case. If there's any single organization that's done more to expand our knowledge of the universe we live in over the last few decades than NASA, I'd really like to hear it.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Chill, Chilli! I'm O.K. ... You're O.K. ...

Your missive is rambling, I'm not sure exactly how much of what you're saying is actually directed at me "personally," or just a tirade. But be assured that I do not - I say again, NOT - wear T-shirts with slogans, logos, messages of any kind. I do not believe that "People Are Shit." I happen to love people - especially women people.

Yet, I have dissed the Head of NASA's speech and sentiments, regarding Humanity setting up shoppe throughout the Cosmos. And, apparently, you take exception to that. What can I say? I am an American. I know full-well what NASA is, what it's done and what it does. Perhaps you believe I should be grateful and supportive of the agency? Perhaps, you find some duplicity in a STAR TREK fan not supporting the notion of Humanity spread throughout the Galaxy?

Yes, there are stewards of the environment. Yes, there are individuals who don't want to contribute to Global Warming, or deforestation, or any number of things affecting the Natural World. But those noble sentiments have yet to reach full swing. There is a very long way to go. And we are very capable, and in fact, very likely, of polluting the worlds we visit. Because that, too, is part of the Human Condition. We've already started, in a way ... and all in the name of exploration. As noble and worthy as The Quest for Knowledge is, however well-intentioned, the act of pursuing it is neither passive, nor necessarily benign, for that matter.

 

[scotthm]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Um, no. The Sahara is shrinking.

Uhm yes. Every resource I looked up states that Sahara is expanding.

National Geographic

New Scientist

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[Dukhat]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

When have you last been in a Walmart store. Every store literally is a mountain of trash.

Which has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make.

Actually you supported instead of refuted the previous poster. Hence I mentioned the average size of Walmart.

I did no such thing. What one personally feels that Walmart sells has nothing to do with the point that the amount of artificial objects on extraterrestrial surfaces can be placed into one supermarket-sized building on Earth. The poster mentioned that this amount constitutes "littering" of these extraterrestrial surfaces, which is nonsense. But since then we've established that his point was nonsense to begin with, so there's really no reason to belabor this.

 

[gturner]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

The largest objects we ever landed on a body was the Apollo lunar lander. With the legs retracted the lunar lander was about 14-feet by 13.3-feet. We left six landers on the moon, which would take up about 1,117 square feet. The lunar rover was 10-feet by 6-feet, and we left three of them, bringing the total to 1,297 square feet. The two Russian rovers were about 5-feet by 7, bringing the total to 1,367 square feet. The average Walmart is 102,000 square feet, so we'd have to do 75 more Apollo programs just to fill up a Walmart. (It would take 550 Apollo landers to fill an average store). The moon's area is about 400 trillion square feet, so it would take 2 trillion landings to cover it, so to cover the moon with landers, every single person on Earth would have to fly 750 Apollo missions (since each mission takes three people).

And yet someone thinks six missions have ruined the place.

 

[Dukhat]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

The largest objects we ever landed on a body was the Apollo lunar lander.

Not quite. Several Saturn V third stages had crashed on the Moon post-mission, not to mention the Centaur upper stage from the LCROSS mission, which were significantly larger than the landers. Which was why I upped my estimate of the size of a building on Earth that would house all the artificial objects on extraterrestrial surfaces. And I'm probably being extremely generous in my size estimate as well, as you've rightly mentioned.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

For how cynical you are about humanity, you've got an absurdly anthropocentric idea of "littering". Humans have left a negligible amoung of waste on the moon, yes. To the universe, that's pretty irrelevant: a bit of inanimate matter on a huge chunk of inanimate matter, and nobody there to care about it one way or the other. To a civilization way more advanced than ours, these'd be some fascinating artefacts on an otherwise boring world. It takes a human to go "eww, astronaut poop".

It's fascinating. I used to joke about it, because I thought it was awesome, when I suddenly realised people were taking this extraterrestrial littering thing seriously.

If there's ever a settlement, human or otherwise, anywhere near a crashed rocked stage, the wreck will be a monument, you wouldn't be allowed to touch it, I'd reckon you wouldn't even be allowed to put it inside the pressurised part of your habitat or step anywhere near it. Cleaning it is what would be tantamount to littering and contamination.

Not only there is no biosphere or natural wonders there to disturb, but these objects are so rare and unique that they wouldn't disturb anything even if there was. It would be no different if ancient aliens crashed a spacecraft inside a present-day rainforest, we'd cut the trees around it to expose it, and it will be the polar opposite of waste. And if it was buried under a house in Pompeii, we'd disturb part of the ruins to open access to it precisely because it was more unique and rare.

On an semi-related note, even exaggarated end-of-the-world fictional works can show appreciation for technological junk in a middle of a rainforest.

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

Um, no. The Sahara is shrinking.

Uhm yes. Every resource I looked up states that Sahara is expanding.

National Geographic

New Scientist

---------------

Supports my opinion that there is nothing absolutely bad about climate change. It's just different than we are used to, and that will cost a bit of money in some regions, but other regions will profit from it.

 

[publiusr]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

When you burn fossil fuel, you are essentially returning bio-mass to the surface. When Earth had no icecaps, it was a bit more lush. Supercontinent are bad news--the Gobi desert is the result of the Eurasia proto-Supercontinent.

Don't dump on NASA, they only have the money to spend that congress gives them. Once we got to the Moon congress has never allocated the money to do anything else amazing. It's just not a priority with the American people. We need to figure out a reason to make it one.

I'm for cancelling F-35 and giving that money to NASA.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Re: NASA chief touts deep space exploration: We can only survive if we

I'm for cancelling F-35 and giving that money to NASA.

Revise that to give a THIRD to NASA, along with a third to public primary education, and another third to reinforce our food aid programs, and I'm with you wholeheartedly. But if neither of the other two were feasible for some reason, then heck yes - give it to NASA. Better than the waste of money the F-35 program is now, either way.