NASA Announces 1,284 New Exoplanets

[The Romulan Republic]

The only way to space is a better civilization that can focus on long-term planning. This is also why I support the Asians. They seem to have a very long planning span in comparison to Western nations. Their companies live longer, their states plan for longer. It is pointless to hope for the market to provide us with space colonies as there is no immediate or even mid-term gain.

You are making an extremely broad generalization about people's attitudes and abilities on the basis of race. I'd go so far as to call it racist stereotyping.

Hurhur, quick, accuse of racism to strenghten your point... which was what exactly, do remind? That I've made a common-sense observation?

I accused you of racism because I felt that your argument was racist. Not because I was trying to strengthen a point (I don't believe I've actually made any other point in this thread- certainly I was engaged in no prior debate with you). Your claim that, essentially, I lied to bolster an argument I wasn't making is transparently false.

You made what I felt was an overly-broad generalization about how people think and behave based on race, and used it as a reason for why one racial group was more worthy of "support". To me (and to most people, I suspect), that is racist, weather you intended it as such or not. I've certainly seen people accused of racism for more innocuous things. That is the sole reason for what I posted.

In other words, I meant exactly what I said.

If you disagree, then you disagree. But do not simply assume that I am being dishonest, or accuse me of dishonesty without evidence.

I'm not disputing weather or not it is true on average, and in any case, arguing that point would be rather off-topic here. I have no objection so long as you are clear that you are describing averages, not absolutes, and you acknowledge that their could be reasons for this disparity other than race (culture, circumstance, etc.).

Edit: Fixed quotes.

[Broomstick]

Well, sure - and on Mars there is an actual atmosphere even if it's very thin and you could theoretically have a machine that concentrates it to a desirable pressure and changes the gas mixture to something humans can breathe comfortably whereas in a space habitat you have to import all gases instead of simply gathering them from the local environment.

Oxygen and nitrogen are found commonly on asteroids and comets, which can be "gathered from the local environment" too.

Items notably lacking at LaGrange points, so you'd have to either move said comets and asteroids to there, or mine them and then transport the materials to your space habitats. Is that better or worse than mining/gathering on Mars? I don't know - has anyone really done the calculations? We've done mining on a planet before, and while Mars involves some issues with pressurizing spaces for humans involved in the process mining on a planet is a mature and well understood technology. No one has actually mined an asteroid, so there may be problems we haven't foreseen with that.

Space habitats do not lack gravity. They have centrifugal gravity, which they generate by spinning. You can find more information on this if you scroll up and look at posts to which you previously replied. Space habitats have more gravity than Mars, which only has 0.38g. This has already been explained to you.

And as I already explained to you I'd have a lot more confidence in that solution if we had actual experience in building rotating habitats in space. By all means, I'd love to see that technology mature, too.

Uh-huh.... all of which will need maintenance and tending. Some someone is going to be doing the scutwork regardless of whether they're in space or on Mars.

As previously mentioned, and replied to by you, the difference is that a space habitat can have plentiful solar electricity to power machinery to help or do the work for the humans, while on Mars solar power is an order of magnitude less efficient, meaning fewer machines to assist.

As I said - someone is going to be doing scutwork regardless of where you farm. The fact you have more machinery means a higher percentage of the scut involves machinery, that's all. Whether you're talking a habitat in space or on Mars if you're going to have actual, long-term (hopefully) self-sufficient habitats there will have to be dedicated personnel doing what is essentially ditching digging in space.

If you have a personal bias for space habitats that's totally OK, but the obstacles to making them long-term self-sufficient human habitations are daunting, just like setting up a Mars colony is daunting.

At no point have I claimed that there are not daunting obstacles. My claim all along has been that for a smaller or similar amount of infrastructure and work setting them up, space habitats offer a better quality of life, are more efficient at housing humans (which stands to reason, since that's what they're designed to do and Mars is not), and are more expandable.

More expandable? On Mars you have an entire planet to expand across.

As for quality of life - that's debatable. I expect some people would prefer one over the other. Define "house efficiently". Denser living quarters are not inherently better, as one example.

Actually, Mir had a hull puncture and depressurization and while it was certainly serious and classified as an emergency no one was injured by it, either. And the guys up there had to deal with it rather than rely on help from the ground.

Well, by "deal with it", they meant "seal off that area and never use it again". Spektr had its emergency bulkhead closed and it was never repressurized before Mir was deorbited. I don't really count that as fixing the problem.

Sure it does - they stopped the leak and no one died.

Granted that's not an ideal solution, but if there had been a will to do so the damage module could have been removed and another replace it. No one wanted to spend the money and effort to do so. It's certainly a demonstration that a leak isn't instantly fatal.

[Zeropoint]

I do NOT understand why ANYONE thinks that space colonization has anything whatsoever to do with relieving population pressures on Earth. In my opinion, it would actually rank (for the explicitly limited goal of reducing overpopulation with no regard to any other concern, such as ethics) BELOW things like "deliberately releasing a world-wide plague" or "starting a program of killing people by lottery", in the sense that you COULD actually reduce the population that way, but right now we simply don't have the capacity to ship people off-world faster than they're being born. I mean, even if all you wanted to do with them was ship them to Mars to die somewhere else, we still couldn't do it fast enough to reverse population growth.

[Knife]

Oh goodie, instead of a positive, you're more a negative. I don't think first pass space travel is a cure for overpopulation either, but fuck dude... death lottery?

[Knife]

For the record, I'm not against a Lagrange point station. I really think we should be putting that infrastructure up, I just think we should be putting Luna and Mars bases up as well. We need to learn the in's and out's of each. It is obviously not going to be the same mission and budget, but yeah. Do both. In my opinion, fuck the next super sub or super carrier or even Gen 6 fighter plane, lets do some catch up in space.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'd like to see us focus more on four main areas, personally (beyond what we're already doing):

1. Manned Mars exploration with an eye towards eventual colonization. This would establish a human foothold on another world.
2. Missions to Near Earth Asteroids. Their are two main reasons for this- test runs in case we ever need to destroy/divert one that's going to hit Earth, and the potential for mining them.
3. Unmanned exploration of the Moons of Jupiter and Saturn, as part of the larger search for extraterrestrial life.
4. Long-term, probes to other Solar Systems. Short term, continue the search for extra-solar planets via telescope.

[Zixinus]

Oh goodie, instead of a positive, you're more a negative. I don't think first pass space travel is a cure for overpopulation either, but fuck dude... death lottery?

I don't think he's supportive of the idea, merely comparing the viability of the idea to them.

[K. A. Pital]

I have no objection so long as you are clear that you are describing averages, not absolutes, and you acknowledge that their could be reasons for this disparity other than race (culture, circumstance, etc.).

There are reasons and I think they are almost 100% explained by culture and history. You certainly don't need to accuse me of racism when I didn't imply that the differences were due to "race". They are not, and "Asian" is not a race anyway, more like a mix of nationalities that happen to comprise the current nations of East Asia / South East Asia. I support the Asian nations because I think they have been, historically, less exposed to and less damaged by such factors as short-term profit-oriented thinking and deep social atomization, they have retained a greater degree of collectivism in comparison with the Western nations, and seem to have on a large scale retained the valuable concept of very long term planning in both corporate management and politics. All of the above has nothing to do with race and much more with history and culture.

However, this is irrelevant to the core of your point, which is that Japanese companies are at present, on average, more stable than American companies. And possibly more so than European or British companies, I'm not sure from the evidence I've seen you post.

They are, I think, more stable even than the British companies as of late. The delisting rate in Japan is constant and even declining, as the study has shown, and it is quite low in comparison to both US and Europe. In Britain, the delisting rate is high - although the average company age (for the companies that survived the churn between the 80s and now) is around 100 years. That's memory quoting, so you're free to check on that.

[Zeropoint]

I didn't say that I like the idea of a death lottery. I don't like the idea at all and hope nothing like that ever happens. I only brought it up to point out that as terrible an idea as a death lottery is for dealing with overpopulation, space colonization is WORSE, in that it wouldn't even achieve that goal.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, it also wouldn't kill innocent people (barring the occasional accident).

But yes, overpopulation is one of the worst arguments for the space program. The only dumber one I can think of off the top of my head is the "We need to leave Earth so we survive when the Sun dies" argument (yeah, I've actually seen people use that as an argument for the space program, apparently oblivious to the fact that it won't be remotely relevant for billions of years).

[Simon_Jester]

"When the Sun dies" is a less dumb argument than "overpopulation."

Space travel will NEVER solve the "overpopulation" problem, period.

Space travel is, by contrast, literally the ONLY thing that could ever solve the "Sun dies" problem.

Sure, it's a very very long term problem and there is no pressing need to solve it right now, or for that matter during this geologic epoch. But at least it is a serious attempt to present a problem for which space travel is the correct answer. As opposed to a problem space travel cannot conceivably solve.

[The Romulan Republic]

The worst thing about it from the point of view of a space exploration advocate is that it actively harms your case. First because it sounds ridiculous, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, because its basically saying "This isn't something we need to invest in for far longer than humanity has existed."

If you're actually lobbying for more money spent on space now, its a horrible argument that actively undermines your position.

[Zixinus]

On the interest on spurring on the topic, what present or near-future problem of humanity would space exploration solve? Not just putting more stuff into orbit but creating an infrastructure to expand all over the solar system?

[Iroscato]

IIRC, we actually have 'only' a few hundred million years rather than several billion before life on earth becomes impossible.

[Broomstick]

On the interest on spurring on the topic, what present or near-future problem of humanity would space exploration solve? Not just putting more stuff into orbit but creating an infrastructure to expand all over the solar system?

One of the interesting things about the space program is that I don't recall back in the 60's and early 70's anyone in the general public anticipating how much it was going to change weather prediction, TV and navigation for the general public. We were expecting to fly PanAm to vacations on the moon, but instead we got better weather, satellite TV, routine live reporting from anywhere in the world, GPS, and Google Maps.

So... whatever that something might be it may not be obvious at this point in time, but make total sense in retrospect.

[K. A. Pital]

On the interest on spurring on the topic, what present or near-future problem of humanity would space exploration solve? Not just putting more stuff into orbit but creating an infrastructure to expand all over the solar system?

Restoring the ruined natural habitats? Learning to solve complex ecosystem balance issues? It is hard to create a self-sufficient biosphere and the better we get at this, the more chances we have to repair the still-accumulating long term damage to our own planet.

[Purple]

IIRC, we actually have 'only' a few hundred million years rather than several billion before life on earth becomes impossible.

How is that any different? Both are numbers far longer than the human race, let alone any civilization we have has existed. It's like arguing that something is more or less expensive whilst both prices are measured in tons of pure gold.

[Ralin]

How is that any different? Both are numbers far longer than the human race, let alone any civilization we have has existed. It's like arguing that something is more or less expensive whilst both prices are measured in tons of pure gold.

The difference is that one of those numbers is bigger than the other.

[Iroscato]

IIRC, we actually have 'only' a few hundred million years rather than several billion before life on earth becomes impossible.

How is that any different? Both are numbers far longer than the human race, let alone any civilization we have has existed. It's like arguing that something is more or less expensive whilst both prices are measured in tons of pure gold.

I was being pedantic

[Guardsman Bass]

On the interest on spurring on the topic, what present or near-future problem of humanity would space exploration solve? Not just putting more stuff into orbit but creating an infrastructure to expand all over the solar system?

There's space solar power, which is wildly unfeasible and impractical if sourced from Earth but possibly useful if you can make the solar arrays entirely out of off-world resources. There's also fuel production, which could increase the longevity of satellites in orbit (and any spacecraft returning to Earth, since you could actually slow them down for a much gentler re-entry into the atmosphere). They'd both be very useful even if not vital necessities.

Also, it would be a good idea to work on getting the capability to find and deflect all asteroids above ~40 meters in diameter. It's probably not a near-term problem, but you need to keep an eye on them just in case. If you see a 200 meter asteroid with a 25% chance of hitting the Earth in 2150, it might be a good idea to send a robotic spacecraft out there to study it and do the "gravity tractor" thing to deflect it off course.

[Knife]

We simply have no idea what advances, specifically, we would have with further space exploration. We can reasonably assume advances in propulsion and computers but have no idea what kind specifically. What type of power source or engine would be best for whatever we decide to do? Who knows? I would assume some material science advancement but again, in what direction? Who knows.

[Zeropoint]

On the interest on spurring on the topic, what present or near-future problem of humanity would space exploration solve? Not just putting more stuff into orbit but creating an infrastructure to expand all over the solar system?

We don't know yet. They might not even be big problems. Ever had a bag of chips? What were they packed in--some sort of aluminized plastic film? Guess where that came from. Now, you might think that "a better potato chip bag" is a pretty small thing, and hardly a justification for spending millions on space travel . . . but think about how BIG the food packaging industry is. How much money is spent, and how much is saved, in a year because of this tech?

And that's just ONE small space spinoff.

[Broomstick]

It turned out the most profitable result of the 1960's space program was satellites - weather satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites. Aside from the profitability uses, like satellite TV and phone services, LOTS of lives have been saved by better weather forecasting/monitoring, and use of GPS to locate lost/stranded/etc. people.

A lot of things weren't invented by the space program, but improved or popularized by it: smaller, more efficient computers; velcro; appliances like microwave ovens; the store I work at sells razors/trimmers incorporating a small vacuum to suck up stubble which was developed for the space program...

So, some really big items, and lots and lots of little small ones that add up.