Harry Potter said:Get your ass to Mars
Yeah me too, like, let's launch a spacecraft and see how far it goes.FlightOfHeaven said:Jesus, when they said deep space, I thought "deep space" as in "those astronauts aren't coming back"
Snaku said:What a waste of tax payer dollars. They should be researching climate change, and improving relations with Muslim countries.
if it wasn't for space exploration we'd be even more clueless on climate change.Snaku said:What a waste of tax payer dollars. They should be researching climate change, and improving relations with Muslim countries.
You sure about that?mrklaw said:Outside of the solar system - by whatever definition you choose - there is fuck all of interest. If you can only just leave it, then the only reason to do so is to say you can. No practical benefit I can think of.
XMonkey said:
mrklaw said:1) giant fucking planets just floating about? How come we've not seen evidence of them smashing into stuff yet?
B.K. said:Considering that we've never even made it to the moon, Mars might as well be considered deep space.
How old are you? If you're in your 20s or 30s, I would say the chances are very good.MrDanger88 said:I really hope I'm still alive when they put a man on Mars. Space fascinates me to no end.
"Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive. And once you're out there in space for centuries and millennia, moving little worlds around and engineering planets, your species has been pried loose from its cradle. If they exist, many other civilizations will eventually venture far from home."mrklaw said:nah. why bother?
Outside of the solar system - by whatever definition you choose - there is fuck all of interest. If you can only just leave it, then the only reason to do so is to say you can. No practical benefit I can think of. The only reason to go any further than any of the planets is if you can get to the next system, and that isn't going to be possible without some random huge jump in technology and people willing to live their entire lives on a ship.
ThoseDeafMutes said:Well we made it through the cold war unscathed, the next and greatest challenge will be to deal with the emergence of posthuman intelligences, particularly strong artificial intelligence. This is something we're going to have to deal with in our lifetimes, although we may be quite old before it happens depending on how Moore's law holds up.
Surviving this, at least someone will have the capability to travel to distant stars with regularity. Whether that's an A.I., a human dictator or a posthuman swarm intelligence is basically up in the air, but somebody will.
Deku said:It will be closer to Star Wars or the more recent actiony Treks.
Classic Trek is too idealistic to be realistic, even if you assume we have the tech.
HK-47 said:Itll be Deep Space Nine.
And Im ok with that.
mrklaw said:1) giant fucking planets just floating about? How come we've not seen evidence of them smashing into stuff yet?
2) they'd still be so far away from the edge of the solar system that my point still stands. Probably quicker to get to proxima centauri than one of these planets.
Bending space time is as SF as creating a warp engineFenderputty said:Being able to bend space and time is possible though right? At least I thought it was. I have no idea about the "hows", but I would imagine the energies invovled in something like that is beyond comprehension.
Wormholes are 'bending space time'. Unless you found a new concept in which case, write a paper, publish it, get fame and moneyFenderputty said:Isn't a wormhole different than bending space time though?
Stephen Hawking closed itWray said:I believe Einstein left open the possibility.
What, you think Ray Kurzweil is sane? You seriously think all the crap he says? AIs within our lifetime, eternal life as machines etc... Whatever, after all everybody is free to think whatever they want.ThoseDeafMutes said:That's the most deeply insulting thing anybody has said to me in weeks.
We won't be able to observe them, unless they're near a light/heat source (a star). So we simply cannot observe them.mrklaw said:1) giant fucking planets just floating about? How come we've not seen evidence of them smashing into stuff yet?
China is going to the Moon last I heard.witness said:Alright so what other countries are stepping up to take humanity back to the moon or to mars?
What about a Mass Driver?Averon said:Aside from a lack of profitability I noted earlier, any sort of extensive human space exploration is hindered by the cost, safety, and time it takes to launch anything into LEO. Last I heard, it costs $5,000-$10,000 to launch one pound of anything into space, it can take years to scheduled a launch (not surprising with how complicated a rocket launched and how easily it can all go wrong), and safety is self explanatory. We need to fight a way into LEO without rockets, or at least not be totally dependent on them.
What, you think Ray Kurzweil is sane? You seriously think all the crap he says? AIs within our lifetime, eternal life as machines etc... Whatever, after all everybody is free to think whatever they want.[/quote[
First of all, work on your reading comprehension. You just compared me to Kurzweil, and then I said that was insulting. So why would you take that to mean I looked up to the man?
Secondly, his schedule is accelerated and he is overly optimistic, but strong A.I. in my lifetime (maybe you're 60 years old or something so you won't see it) is the opposite of crazy. Everything else falls into line once strong A.I. is in place, advanced nanotechnology, Theory of Everything, biological immortality etc.
Hard A.I. inevitably gives rise to increasingly intelligent agents, as outlined by I.J. Good:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion', and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
That is to say, once Strong A.I. exists, everything that will ever be invented will be invented in a very short timescale (depending on how long recursive self improvement takes, this could be as short as days or weeks).
X-Frame said:What about a Mass Driver?
Go hard or go home.
- Laser ablative propulsion
- Nuclear pulsed propulsion
- Nuclear verne gun
- Lofstrom Launch Loop
Because it would be like 2 gnats "smashing" into each other in the grand canyon.mrklaw said:1) giant fucking planets just floating about? How come we've not seen evidence of them smashing into stuff yet?
shuyin_ said:I'm sorry but you won't see a Strong A.I. during your lifetime. Maybe a lot later, but i just can't see it happen in the next 100 years. Unless, there's a breakthrough.
edit: i'm sorry, scratch that. We don't need a breakthrough, we need several, in different scinetific fields. For starters we don't even have a widely accepted definition for intelligence. Secondly, we don't understand how the brain works in its entirety. Nobody knows how intelligence is formed. Not knowing things like this, makes it pretty hard to copy the brain.
I want it to happen as much as you do. I just don't see it happen. Wouldn't mind if someone proves me wrong though![]()
skyfinch said:What's on Mars that is so interesting....besides women with a third breast.
So basically it will be here in 300000 * 3600 * 24 * 365 * 2.5 / 140 million seconds?Deku said:It is getting closer by 100 to 140 kilometres per second![]()