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Space: The Final Frontier

This is fucking sad. But hey if they can't afford it, they can't afford it. I'm 24 and I've always thought that I would be seeing Humans on Mars before I die but now it looks like that might not happen. Still I am sure some amazing discoveries are going to take place.
 

laserbeam

Banned
Memphis Reigns said:
This is fucking sad. But hey if they can't afford it, they can't afford it. I'm 24 and I've always thought that I would be seeing Humans on Mars before I die but now it looks like that might not happen. Still I am sure some amazing discoveries are going to take place.

At the rate its going we might see the moon again before we die.
 

Walshicus

Member
Protest. Send letters or emails to your representatives. I've done so here in the UK where it's probably even more futile... but if you don't let the government know that you want this expenditure, it won't happen.
 

Blyss

Banned
Memphis Reigns said:
This is fucking sad. But hey if they can't afford it, they can't afford it. I'm 24 and I've always thought that I would be seeing Humans on Mars before I die but now it looks like that might not happen. Still I am sure some amazing discoveries are going to take place.

There will be some amazing discoveries, for sure.
 

iidesuyo

Member
Bitmap Frogs said:
Shit if they are not gonna budget manned missions at least go all in, throw into the shitbin the shuttle and all the "general science" programs that are eating 70% of their budget and just launch robotic probes non-stop.

This.

Manned missions need to be done right or they should not be done at all. So, if the money is not there, use what is available and swarm the solar system with robots!! :D
 

Shorty

Banned
Good. I love space but humanity has a shitload of stuff to fix here on earth before we should even think about spending our money on space exploration.
 

Walshicus

Member
Shorty said:
Good. I love space but humanity has a shitload of stuff to fix here on earth before we should even think about spending our money on space exploration.
Fuck that. If we took that attitude we'd never go anywhere. Space exploration and exploitation is the only answer to most of our problems here on Earth.
 
Shorty said:
Good. I love space but humanity has a shitload of stuff to fix here on earth before we should even think about spending our money on space exploration.

some would argue that it is because we have so much shit to fix here on earth that we HAVE to spend on money on space exploration now.
 

LQX

Member
laserbeam said:
The news everyone wanted to hear.

No Moon

A panel appointed by President Barack Obama reviewing NASA's current plans for human space flight will report that there is no realistic way to return to the moon by 2020 -- or even 2028.



They even go on to say landing people on Mars is not an option due to costs. Bush may have been a terrible president for the most part but at least he gave a shit about NASA.

Disgusting.
 

Shorty

Banned
Sir Fragula said:
Fuck that. If we took that attitude we'd never go anywhere. Space exploration and exploitation is the only answer to most of our problems here on Earth.
Omg I didn't know that, why didn't you tell me! Let's go to space and solve conflicts all over the world. I heard there's unlimited monies floating around so we can fix our recessionz and give big macs to the hungry!
 

Walshicus

Member
Shorty said:
Omg I didn't know that, why didn't you tell me! Let's go to space and solve conflicts all over the world. I heard there's unlimited monies floating around so we can fix our recessionz and give big macs to the hungry!
Well science is the driver of Human development. It seems the height of shortsighted stupidity to cut back on the exploration and exploitation of space just because there are issues here on Earth. What do you think the world would be like today if we had that attitude hundreds of years ago?

Zero G medicine and biotech research; power generation and efficiency; asteroidal resource exploitation; improved population management and a huge increase in the survivability of our species. These are just a smattering of reasons why spending large amounts of money on space exploration is worthwhile.
 

zoukka

Member
Sir Fragula said:
Well science is the driver of Human development. It seems the height of shortsighted stupidity to cut back on the exploration and exploitation of space just because there are issues here on Earth. What do you think the world would be like today if we had that attitude hundreds of years ago?

Zero G medicine and biotech research; power generation and efficiency; asteroidal resource exploitation; improved population management and a huge increase in the survivability of our species. These are just a smattering of reasons why spending large amounts of money on space exploration is worthwhile.

Nah I'd still give the ZILLIONS to starving people.

You'd appreciate it more if you were starving.
 

laserbeam

Banned
Manned Space flight is not stupid. Manned Space flights to test how ant colonies do in space etc on the other hand are.

We need to get back to exploration even if its only going to the moon and establishing a base and eventual colony there for now.
 
laserbeam said:
Manned Space flight is not stupid. Manned Space flights to test how ant colonies do in space etc on the other hand are.

We need to get back to exploration even if its only going to the moon and establishing a base and eventual colony there for now.


Base on the moon? colony? Unless theres oil on the moon that won't happen in a very looooooooooooooooong time.
 

Shorty

Banned
Sir Fragula said:
Well science is the driver of Human development. It seems the height of shortsighted stupidity to cut back on the exploration and exploitation of space just because there are issues here on Earth. What do you think the world would be like today if we had that attitude hundreds of years ago?

Zero G medicine and biotech research; power generation and efficiency; asteroidal resource exploitation; improved population management and a huge increase in the survivability of our species. These are just a smattering of reasons why spending large amounts of money on space exploration is worthwhile.
I'm not saying cut back on science in general. I'm all for medical research etc. but NASA funding seems useless right off now. There is no program that I'm aware of that could help humanity in any way. I don't recall the moonlanding being of any greater benefit either. It was just a huge dick waving contest between Russia and the USA with the better outcome for the US. It was just a project that boosted America's self-esteem.

Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.
 

laserbeam

Banned
Teh Hamburglar said:
Base on the moon? colony? Unless theres oil on the moon that won't happen in a very looooooooooooooooong time.

Well a Moon base was part of NASA's planning. NASA wants to take things a little safer and make sure we arent sending astronauts out to die before jumping to Mars though the current administration is basically putting a big red NO stamp on the moon and Mars.
 

Twig

Banned
Shorty said:
I'm not saying cut back on science in general. I'm all for medical research etc. but NASA funding seems useless right off now. There is no program that I'm aware of that could help humanity in any way. I don't recall the moonlanding being of any greater benefit either. It was just a huge dick waving contest between Russia and the USA with the better outcome for the US. It was just a project that boosted America's self-esteem.

Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.
If we don't start now, when the fuck do we start?

Protip: humanity's problems will never be sorted out. Shit happens and shit will always happen.

Jus' sayin'.
 

Stuggernaut

Grandma's Chippy
Shorty said:
Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.
:lol
 
Shorty said:
Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.
No one is seriously thinking of settling other planets as a solution to overpopulation. Every day on Earth, roughly 350,000 people are born and 150,000 people die. If you wanted to ease overpopulation, every day you would have to fly 200,000 people off the Earth toward another planet just to stay even.
 

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Shorty said:
Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.

Erm.. You do realize that many places on Earth are not habitable due to a large variety of reasons.
 

fallout

Member
Lost Fragment said:
Please to be recommending some good budget telescopes.
Few questions:

  1. How's your knowledge of the night sky?
  2. What's your budget, roughly?
  3. What do you hope to do with it?
  4. How much of a factor is portability?
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Shorty said:
I'm not saying cut back on science in general. I'm all for medical research etc. but NASA funding seems useless right off now. There is no program that I'm aware of that could help humanity in any way. I don't recall the moonlanding being of any greater benefit either. It was just a huge dick waving contest between Russia and the USA with the better outcome for the US. It was just a project that boosted America's self-esteem.

Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.

The rocks they brought back with them are still today producing science results.

As tools improve, there's more science being extracted out of those.

About overpopulation, jesus... you couldn't be more ignorant. Not populated land is so because either people can't live there or because we need that land to feed us (AKA crops, cattle, etc). As for increasing population density, that creates huge ecologic problems and "clean" solutions like archologies are both untested and economically unviable.
 

Lost Fragment

Obsessed with 4chan
fallout said:
Few questions:

  1. How's your knowledge of the night sky?
  2. What's your budget, roughly?
  3. What do you hope to do with it?
  4. How much of a factor is portability?

-Not very good.
-Probably $200 max right now, but I might hold off for a while so I can get something better if $200 isn't enough for anything worth it.
-Look at...planets and galaxies and shit? :p Possibly while intoxicated by smokable substances. Being able to take some pictures and stuff through it would be cool too, though I'm not really sure how this is normally accomplished.
-A pretty big one. I live in the suburbs of Louisville, so I'd probably be wanting to take it out of the city and away from all the light pollution every once in a while.
 
Shorty said:
Overpopulation is a lie. It's just that some places on earth are crowded as hell whereas the majority is still to be populated. We don't need another planet to live on for now.


Holy Cow you have no idea what you're talking about.
 

Shorty

Banned
TheOneGuy said:
Where did he say that?
What I'm saying is even if you claim that earth is overpopulated because there are places that are not habitable the first logical step would be to make those places habitable instead of terraforming Mars!
 

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Shorty said:
What I'm saying is even if you claim that earth is overpopulated because there are places that are not habitable the first logical step would be to make those places habitable instead of terraforming Mars!

Firstly, no one is suggesting terraforming Mars. Secondly, it is speculated that if we were to terraform Mars that it would provide more habitable land mass than Earth currently provides of all the unoccupied areas. Lastly there will eventually come a day when the whole of Earth is no longer habitable. I don't know if this will be due to using all of our resources, environmental causes, or because of our sun growing. Escape to mars may one day be our only viable option.

And on another point. We are EXTREMELY overpopulated. This is leading to a wide variety of health and poverty problems around the world. The solution isn't to make habitable those unoccupied areas of the world, but curb population expansion in very large and densely populated areas. China has an incentive program through tax deductions and the like to keep families small. This is starting to show an effect to some degree. The fact of the matter is, things like this can not go on forever or we're in deep shit.

1650 500 million
1750 700 million
1804 1 billion
1850 1.2 billion
1900 1.6 billion
1927 2 billion
1950 2.55 billion
1955 2.8 billion
1960 3 billion
1965 3.3 billion
1970 3.7 billion
1975 4 billion
1980 4.5 billion
1985 4.85 billion
1990 5.3 billion
1995 5.7 billion
1999 6 billion
2006 6.5 billion
2009 6.8 billion
2011 7 billion
2025 8 billion
2050 9.4 billion

World_population_curve_-_log_y_scale.png
 
So, this is how it is for me to describe life and the universe for everyone to understand, from simple right up to the stuff that will hurt your head.


So to me... I visualise the steps up in dimensions as follows:

It's all just the times table.

Dimension 1
- A single line upon a single axis (x)

Dimension 2
- Add another line upon the y axis which then joins to the point on the x axis to create a triangle - the most basic two dimensional shape... or is it?

First to second dimensional bridge
- A circle, it's a single line, however creates a two dimensional shape.

Dimension 3
- add three more straight lines on the z axis to the triangle to get a 3D triangle making the least number of lined three dimensional object... or is it?

Second to third dimensional bridge
- A sphere, it's a two dimensional object, that has traits of one dimension but extend the centre of it perfectly upon the z axis and you get a sphere, but we've still only just created this from a SINGLE one dimensional line (this is a key component).

Dimension 4 (this is where it gets complicated but keep and open mind)
- time, the light radiating away from an object of three dimensional space in all directions of time based on the speed that light travels away from that point - to a human, a single point of three dimensional mass in what seems like a SINGLE LINE of time (past, present, future) but really it is time moving away in all directions, it's hard to visualise shapes like this but let me make my next point:

Third to fourth dimensional bridge
- A sphere of time. The sphere, or circle is the answer to every step of dimensional bridge. Still we are only just using a STRAIGHT LINE of time, but it moves away from the centre three dimensional object in EVERY DIRECTION like a sphere pulls away from the centre of a 2D circle. This is how to picture time.



This then leads to a profound thinking. What causes the universe to 'rotate' and 'spin' what causes the solar system to 'spin', what causes gravity and a block hole - the answers come from this sphere.

1. Take a two dimensional object.
2. Place it in a 3 dimensional world
3. Place directional force on this object in three dimensions

1. A flat face fan (2D)
2. Held in our gravitational space / atmosphere.
3. Place a directional force on the fan in the form of a single dimension or... a straight line = WIND

What is the outcome? The fan will spin, in a CIRCLE. Where is the most energised point of the fan? The CENTRE. But all blades of the fan spin at the same speed around the centre, it doesn't slow down the further from the centre that the edge are. However when we look at the very centre point of a spiralling fan it almost looks as though it is not moving at all, but it is the centre that holds it together.


Okay... so lets takes this up a step.

1. Take a three dimensional object.
2. Place it in a 4 dimensional world
3. Place a directional force on the object in four dimensions.

1. A star / sun
2. Placed in a Galaxy
3. Place our always somehow connected one dimensional force upon this three dimensional object in essentially one dimension... a straight line over time = LIGHT

What is the outcome? The Star spins, in a circle. Where is the most energised point of the sun? The CENTRE... ONCE AGAIN!

Lets look at this from a very macro level.

1. A galaxy
2. Placed into the universe.
3. Lets hit these three dimensional objects with our fourth dimensional straight line of light / time, and look at that... we get a spiral galaxy. Where is the most energised point of the galaxy? The CENTRE... what is at the centre of a galaxy? A black hole. What causes the black hole? The massive compounding spiral of energy in the FOURTH dimension which is light pushing the fan arms of the galaxy around in a circle which creates the energy at the centre, which seemingly looks to not be moving, enough so as to cause so much energy to gather that light itself cannot escape due to such compounded pressures because of the gravity. Therefore if the gravity stops time because it is heavier than light, then any 'straight line light' passing by must be curving around it as well. Light isn't such a straight line as we think.

So what do I think? The fourth dimension is not a straight line, it's a bendable movable sphere on top of a sphere, infact the circle is the connection between every dimension because it's a perfect object, even in three dimensions there is still only a single dimensional line making it up.

So where does this take us?

What is the answer to the universe and it's size?

Essentially, whenever we look in any direction - if we could find the right co-ordinates, we should be able to see ourselves in space.

Every new level of human understanding undertook this path. First, the world was flat. Then it was a sphere. Now the universe is currently a finite sphere of 13.7 billion light years because we're living in the sphere world of three dimensions, but we know it's bound by huge distances of time, therefore, it must be a a sphere of time, and for the sphere of time to work with all that curving gravity (which is caused by the energy of life itself - light) somewhere, somehow, the light that leaves earth has been bent around a HUGE gravitational point out then and wizzed back to us.

It wont be like pacman where we move off one side of the screen and re-appear on the other, but I'm willing to bet forever that somewhere out there, looking in some direction, upon some sort of gravitational light curve, that we can see ourselves.

Apply this to all points in the universe and you get the sphere shaped universe that we see when we point hubble at the ultra deep field.

There is no way that this theory cannot be correct (maybe) - this is my visualisation of the fourth dimension - I hope it helped to make yours.

Now then... so the 5th dimension what's that all about?

Lets leave this one with just one comment (which is very Hitchhikers of me).

The 5th dimension is life.

Life records the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th dimension, keeps a record and forever will it be remembered... so if it's the construct of those initial four dimensions that makes up the memory inside the life receivers then that IS the 5th dimension. I can't work out how to get that to make sense yet though.
 

fallout

Member
Sorry it took me so long to respond to this. In addition to anything I'm saying, check your local area for astronomy clubs and star parties.

Lost Fragment said:
-Not very good.
You may want to spend some time just getting to know the constellations and using some binoculars. There are some really amazing things that you can see with binocs, if you know what to look for. If you have any questions about that, I'd be willing to answer.

-Probably $200 max right now, but I might hold off for a while so I can get something better if $200 isn't enough for anything worth it.
$200 might be a little light. You'll also have to invest in a mount and some eyepieces. I recently picked up a William Optics 70mm apochromatic refractor. Very nice scope for about $399. I've got it mounted on a camera tripod that I picked up for about $100 and I primarily use a 26mm eyepiece which was a gift from a friend and a 9mm eyepiece that I picked up for about $120.

-Look at...planets and galaxies and shit? :p Possibly while intoxicated by smokable substances.
Heh, if you don't know what to expect, you might be a little disappointed. Experiences vary quite a bit, thanks to some of the fantastic pictures we've seen in this thread. Personally, I happen to be impressed by the tiniest fuzzball, especially if I can pick out little bits of detail. I've always found those views to be more impressive than what Hubble can give me, but I don't think everyone would agree.

Being able to take some pictures and stuff through it would be cool too, though I'm not really sure how this is normally accomplished.
You can do this sort of cheaply, but to do it right, it takes quite a bit of money, unfortunately.

-A pretty big one. I live in the suburbs of Louisville, so I'd probably be wanting to take it out of the city and away from all the light pollution every once in a while.
I'd really recommend starting off with a small apochromatic refractor, then maybe moving up to a dobsonian reflector if you really want to get invested. If that makes no sense to you, here are some Wikipedia links. :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refracting_telescope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflecting_telescope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian_telescope

Just know that "apochromatic" means good and "achromatic" means bad. Also, never be fooled by magnification power. Magnification power doesn't mean anything without the resolution and the quality optics.
 

Yamauchi

Banned


M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years distant, and is over 12 billion years old. At the 1974 dedication of Arecibo Observatory, a radio message about Earth was sent in the direction of M13. The reason for the low abundance of unusual blue straggler stars in M13 remains unknown.

At the center of some globular clusters, including M13, it is believed that many stars are only 1 light year or less apart.
 

Twig

Banned
I'm not sure what you were trying to do there, but...
CorporalDork said:
First to second dimensional bridge
- A circle, it's a single line, however creates a two dimensional shape.
Doesn't this go against geometry.

Lines are straight.

A circle is made up of infinitely many points, just like a line (and also a square, etc.), but it is not a line.

Unless you're talking some crazy abstract math shit which I don't know much about at all in which case I will promptly back away from this.
 
A true circle is not made up of points.

A perfect circle is not at all like this, I suppose if you said that it's made of infinite points next to each other then maybe, but on the base level of a circle the defining factor is Pi.
 

Twig

Banned
CorporalDork said:
A true circle is not made up of points.

A perfect circle is not at all like this, I suppose if you said that it's made of infinite points next to each other then maybe, but on the base level of a circle the defining factor is Pi.
That is what I meant. Well, to be more accurate I meant but failed to say that there are infinitely many points IN a circle. Certainly there's more to a circle than points.

But either way, it's not a line. Nothing I've ever learned math-wise has been "a circle is a line," or even close. Has my education been a lie?
 

fallout

Member
TheOneGuy said:
But either way, it's not a line. Nothing I've ever learned math-wise has been "a circle is a line," or even close. Has my education been a lie?
As far as I understand it, a line is a special case of a curve and a circle is another special case of a curve.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
CorporalDork said:
There's a fatal flaw in your reasoning.

It's poetic (even if it's bad poetry), and the universe doesn't work like that (see: quantum mechanics).

Life records the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th dimension, keeps a record and forever will it be remembered... so if it's the construct of those initial four dimensions that makes up the memory inside the life receivers then that IS the 5th dimension. I can't work out how to get that to make sense yet though.
Memories exists outside of time. You can replay memories backwards and forwards, you can skip between moments in your life, recall things quickly, or slowly. Dimensions are just tools to locate an object in space and/or spacetime. "Life", as you say, has nothing to do with it.
 

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
fallout said:
As far as I understand it, a line is a special case of a curve and a circle is another special case of a curve.

By that extension I guess we could say that a line has an infinite amount of points as well. There is no difference between something that is indivisible and something that has an infinite amount of divisible parts. The only difference I could see here is that one is allowed to bend or curve and the other isn't. So by definition it isn't that a line is a line because it has no points, and a circle is a circle because it has does have points. The definition is that a curve is the same as a line, but now it's bent. It's definition is the shape it appears. Not how many times we can plot it. A circle is a line being curved back onto itself. It is a line turning into a 2-dimensional object. In fact if you were to zoom in on such a real-life line it would probably appear 3-dimensional and even warp spacetime. The dimension in this case is just a descriptor of the objects alignment relative to us.

Now somebody come bitch slap me and tell me this is all wrong. I'm hardly educated on the subject :lol
 

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
Lucky Forward said:
No one is seriously thinking of settling other planets as a solution to overpopulation. Every day on Earth, roughly 350,000 people are born and 150,000 people die. If you wanted to ease overpopulation, every day you would have to fly 200,000 people off the Earth toward another planet just to stay even.
War, disease and famine tend to keep that growth in check just fine.
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Click for 3209x3083




From http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

It’s the first full-disk image of the Earth from the GOES 14 satellite, launched in June of 2009. The image was taken on July 27, from a distance of about 36,000 km (22,000 miles). It’s a visible light image, so pretty much what you get is what you see. The resolution of the data is about 1 km (0.6 miles). Wow.

The GOES satellites (there are three others flying at the moment) track dangerous weather such as hurricanes, and can save millions of dollars and hundreds of lives. They are run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and are a great example of how space exploration and your tax dollars can be put to good use.
 

Twig

Banned
fallout said:
As far as I understand it, a line is a special case of a curve and a circle is another special case of a curve.
But aren't lines infinite? Not infinite like "an infinite number of points" but infinite as in it goes on forever in both directions.

A circle, meanwhile, has a clearly defined beginning and end (which just happens to be the same point).

I was always taught lines were straight - period. But I guess it could be a case of square-to-rectangle.

on-topic: stars, planets, etc.
 
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