Starship Asterisk*

orin stepanek wrote:I don't have quick time and I don't really want to download it.

StACase wrote:This is fun

r75173 wrote:I do have QuickTime, but the NASA videos show only an initial few frames and then stall as I can see the download gauge continue to move rightward until the entire video is downloaded. Even after the download completes, however, I never see anything more than those initial few frames.

• --------------------------------------------------
  40 years after Apollo 11: What's our next step?
  By Traci Watson, USA TODAY
  
  <<Even some strong supporters of space exploration say the best place to send America's astronauts would be nowhere at all.
  
  Opponents of human spaceflight say robots can do the job just as well as astronauts, pose no safety worries and work cheaply. Sending humans into space isn't worth it, they say.
  
  "The cost and risks are just too high," says physicist Robert Park of the University of Maryland, who wants NASA's manned program to be phased out.
  
  Human space exploration also has run into trouble in Congress. In its spending bill for 2008, lawmakers ordered NASA not to spend any money to study sending humans to Mars.
  
  "Manned space travel adds far more cost than is justified in terms of scientific return," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. Frank says he doesn't want to end the astronaut program but doesn't want to send humans to Mars or the moon. He'd restrict astronauts to tasks robots can't handle, such as the recent upgrade of the Hubble Space Telescope by a seven-astronaut team.
  
  Opposition to NASA's astronaut program stretches across the political spectrum. Republican Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, wrote in Aviation Week & Space Technology last year that NASA should get out of the business of sending humans to space to make way for private space entrepreneurs.
  
  For NASA, the most opposition may be from the people who pay the bills: the public.
  In a 2005 USA TODAY poll, 58% opposed spending money on a human mission to Mars.
  
  Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says.>>
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neufer wrote:Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says.>>

orin stepanek wrote:

neufer wrote:Americans may support human spaceflight, but they don't make it a high priority, says historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Nor do political leaders, he says. "That leaves us in low-Earth orbit for the foreseeable future," Launius says.>>

I'm in favor of space exploration because I believe the future survival of man will be determined by his ability to find and colonize habitable planets. But I also believe it to be a long process and technology will have to advance beyond our imagination; So 40 years will seem as nothing; for this will probably take a few years. Hope man learns to get along with his neighbors in the meantime.

neufer wrote:Let developing countries like India & China (who apparently can't afford to give much of their population decent food & shelter much less to cut back on pollution & greenhouse gases) send men back to the moon.

orin stepanek wrote:

neufer wrote:Let developing countries like India & China (who apparently can't afford to give much of their population decent food & shelter much less to cut back on pollution & greenhouse gases) send men back to the moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... population
Hi Art! You made me curious; I never realized The USA was the third largest populace until I looked it up. China and India does indeed have a population problem. I don't think global population is an easy problem to solve; neither is pollution.

neufer wrote: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=39408

orin stepanek wrote:Photographic proof; and yet there are those that believe that it was all faked! Well the equipment is still up there on the moon. Some day this place may become an historic site for visitors!

bystander wrote:Yeah, and I guess next you'll be saying we really have rovers on Mars, or satellites in orbit about Saturn.

orin stepanek wrote:

bystander wrote:Yeah, and I guess next you'll be saying we really have rovers on Mars, or satellites in orbit about Saturn.

Ya! And don't forget the probe en route to Pluto!

Orin

orin stepanek wrote:...
I'm in favor of space exploration because I believe the future survival of man will be determined by his ability to find and colonize habitable planets.
...
Orin

grump wrote: I don't think finding (or making) habitable planets (space habitats) would do us much good - the population of Earth will expand faster that it's ability to export colonists. However, I am an optimist and think that no matter how old Earth gets stuffed up, mankind will adapt to living here. There might not be as many of us, and we might not live as we do now, but live here we will, and quite happily. The transition phase between now and then might not be comfortable though.

orin stepanek wrote:

grump wrote: I don't think finding (or making) habitable planets (space habitats) would do us much good - the population of Earth will expand faster that it's ability to export colonists. However, I am an optimist and think that no matter how old Earth gets stuffed up, mankind will adapt to living here. There might not be as many of us, and we might not live as we do now, but live here we will, and quite happily. The transition phase between now and then might not be comfortable though.

I don't believe there will be a mass exodus; but some planted here and some there. We will still have to deal with overpopulation as it happens! The adventurous blood in me tells me that someday man will populate the stars. I don't think it will happen in our lifetime but I think it will happen. The dream is there!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E wrote:
<<Throughout the 21st century, Earth was governed by the Buy n Large megacorporation (BnL), causing mass consumerism and covering the planet in trash by 2105. In an attempt to resolve the situation, Earth's population was evacuated on fully automated luxury BnL starliners to spend five years on a cruise in space while an army of trash compactor robots named WALL-E were left behind to clean the planet. This plan failed, however, when in 2110 the planet was deemed too toxic to ever support life again, forcing humanity to remain in space indefinitely. Seven hundred years later after living in microgravity, consuming liquid food and relying on the machinery around them, humans have suffered severe bone loss, and have become extremely obese and unable to walk, reclining on hover chairs and communicating only through video messaging.>>

communicating only through video messaging

Let developing countries like India & China (who apparently can't afford to give much of their population decent food & shelter much less to cut back on pollution & greenhouse gases) send men back to the moon.

Storm_norm wrote:

communicating only through video messaging

I think we can assume that if we are obese and have severe bone loss that video messaging would not be the mainstream medium through communicating. unless you like looking at obese and boneless creatures.