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Space: The Final Frontier

O

Orayn

Member
Probably been posted a million times, but this is how I feel like responding to GAFers who say that everything having to do with space is pointless.

w5vz4.jpg
 
H

Hootie

Member
Orayn said:
Probably been posted a million times, but this is how I feel like responding to GAFers who say that everything having to do with space is pointless.

w5vz4.jpg
Click to expand...

Yeah, I love this quote. It would do a lot of good if would could drag our politicians out there and show them how insignificant their bickering and bullshit really is.

Once upon a time in a better place...
 
W

WeAreStarStuff

Member
Hootie said:
Yeah, I love this quote. It would do a lot of good if would could drag our politicians out there and show them how insignificant their bickering and bullshit really is.

Once upon a time in a better place...
Click to expand...

I love this quote as well, but would do it one step further and say instead of politicians if only we could just drag up everyone to such a view. I am as against fervent nationalism as I am against fervent religion; the thinking is too narrow. People used to think in terms of tribes, and then towns, cities, countries, nations, and all the while they are reflecting on the contrasting characteristics of the 'others', never stopping to see the larger, more grand picture of the symmetry of all things. Our viewpoint has been myopic throughout our history. I envision a world where the only flag the truly matters is that of Earth, and we think in terms as a species; a global consciousness as you will. There must be some point in the future when we will mature enough to recognize our place in this vast cosmos. On the flip, side I can see that there will always be room to become more consciously aware. Perhaps in century we will think in global terms, in a millennium in galactic terms, and maybe if we do not extinguish ourselves we will arrive at a universal consciousness, and even then I would imagine that to not be the end. It has always been my intuitive feeling that our universe is just one drop in a thunderstorm of universes out there; I was a strange child.
 
N

noah111

Still Alive
WeAreStarStuff said:
Yeah, whenever you see a picture of the sun taken from space it is always a blinding white:
http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_free_images/0124-0610-2618-0055_setting_sun_and_earths_horizon_from_space_m.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]
There's a difference between illumination and color, albeit you can get pretty technical if you wanted to.
Click to expand...
 
H

Hootie

Member
WeAreStarStuff said:
I love this quote as well, but would do it one step further and say instead of politicians if only we could just drag up everyone to such a view. I am as against fervent nationalism as I am against fervent religion; the thinking is too narrow. People used to think in terms of tribes, and then towns, cities, countries, nations, and all the while they are reflecting on the contrasting characteristics of the 'others', never stopping to see the larger, more grand picture of the symmetry of all things. Our viewpoint has been myopic throughout our history. I envision a world where the only flag the truly matters is that of Earth, and we think in terms as a species; a global consciousness as you will. There must be some point in the future when we will mature enough to recognize our place in this vast cosmos. On the flip, side I can see that there will always be room to become more consciously aware. Perhaps in century we will think in global terms, in a millennium in galactic terms, and maybe if we do not extinguish ourselves we will arrive at a universal consciousness, and even then I would imagine that to not be the end. It has always been my intuitive feeling that our universe is just one drop in a thunderstorm of universes out there; I was a strange child.
Click to expand...

I share you're viewpoint, most definitely. I hate seeing and hearing the incessant "my country vs. your country" crap all the time. None of it matters. I consider myself a citizen of earth way before considering myself a citizen of a particular country or state.

I've recently become more of an optimist. I think we'll eventually get over our closed-mindedness (provided we don't wipe ourselves out first, or get wiped out by a chance event), but it will take awhile. I just wonder what if it will be a gradual thing, or if there will be some external crisis thing that brings everybody together.
 
I

ianp622

Member
PantherLotus said:
That's pretty close. If we can reach just HALF the speed of light, we can get there in 58 years. Three-quarters and we're there in 29.
Click to expand...

Not quite. Remember, if we want to actually land there, we have to have sufficient time to slow down. It increases the length of the trip significantly. I don't know the exact numbers, but it would probably be another 50 years on top of your estimates.
 
W

WeAreStarStuff

Member
Hootie said:
I share you're viewpoint, most definitely. I hate seeing and hearing the incessant "my country vs. your country" crap all the time. None of it matters. I consider myself a citizen of earth way before considering myself a citizen of a particular country or state.

I've recently become more of an optimist. I think we'll eventually get over our closed-mindedness (provided we don't wipe ourselves out first, or get wiped out by a chance event), but it will take awhile. I just wonder what if it will be a gradual thing, or if there will be some external crisis thing that brings everybody together.
Click to expand...

I want to be your friend.

Gorgon said:
This is a pile of shit.
Click to expand...

It's really hard to take seriously. I love how they show the colors of the moon, as if such a thing could be covered up. Uh, I look at the moon all the time with my telescope; it really isn't green or pink; I swear. And it is very true by the moon being so bright that it can be hard to take a photo of; indeed without putting a moon filter on my telescope just looking at a full moon for a few seconds will make my eyes water profusely.
 
D

Dr Zhivago

Member
WeAreStarStuff said:
It's really hard to take seriously. I love how they show the colors of the moon, as if such a thing could be covered up. Uh, I look at the moon all the time with my telescope; it really isn't green or pink; I swear. And it is very true by the moon being so bright that it can be hard to take a photo of; indeed without putting a moon filter on my telescope just looking at a full moon for a few seconds will make my eyes water profusely.
Click to expand...

You've just fallen under the control of the Moon Matrix

David Icke said:
His most staggering revelation is that the Earth and the collective human mind is manipulated from the Moon, which, he says, is not a ‘heavenly body’, but an artificial construct – a gigantic ‘spacecraft’ (probably a hollowed-out 'planetoid') – which is home to the extraterrestrial group that has been manipulating humanity for aeons.

He describes what he calls the ‘Moon Matrix’, a fake reality broadcast from the Moon which is decoded by the human body/mind in much the same way as portrayed in the Matrix movie trilogy. The Moon Matrix has ‘hacked’ into the human ‘body-computer’ system, he says, and it is feeding us a manipulated sense of self and the world 24/7.
Click to expand...
 
Mengy

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
gtmax said:
I remember this thread from years ago. Nice to see it alive still.

Here's the moon in living color:

http://youtu.be/ilOsZyjRvDs

Right. I don't know how to embed an youtube vid.
Click to expand...

LOL! I watched some of this but just couldn't finish it. Is it supposed to be funny or is it a serious video? Some of the moon photo evidence is intriguing, but then it makes the claim that the moon is in reality full of colors and that NASA is keeping that from us? REALLY? It's a conspiracy? We haven't publically gone back to the moon because NASA is hiding evidence of aliens bases there from us, but our government has been sending secret space launches to the moon for years? How would you hide something like that from the public? There aren't enough tin foil hats in the world for that video...

The reality is really very simple. We don't go to the moon because it's expensive and we don't really have any good (cost effective) reasons to go. And anyone can look at the moon through binoculars and telescopes and with their own freaking eyes and see what colors the moon is. And it's not green, and blue, and pink...
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
ianp622 said:
Not quite. Remember, if we want to actually land there, we have to have sufficient time to slow down. It increases the length of the trip significantly. I don't know the exact numbers, but it would probably be another 50 years on top of your estimates.
Click to expand...

My responses, in order:

1. Who said anything about stopping?!

2. I think this is a suspension of disbelief thing. If you believe that some moment in the future we'll be able to travel those speeds, you're also supposed to believe we can freaking stop.
 
E

endre

Member
I don't think this has been posted, but there is a pretty good FAQ about the relativistic rocket at the following site:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html

Also, there are other very interesting stuff there. For example:
What would a relativistic interstellar traveller see?


So in theory you can travel across the galaxy in just 12 years of your own time. If you want to arrive at your destination and stop then you will have to turn your rocket around half way and decelerate at 1g. In that case it will take nearly twice as long in terms of proper time T for the longer journeys; the Earth time t will be only a little longer, since in both cases the rocket is spending most of its time at a speed near that of light.
Click to expand...

Here are some of the times you will age when journeying to a few well known space marks, arriving at low speed:

4.3 ly nearest star 3.6 years
27 ly Vega 6.6 years
30,000 ly Center of our galaxy 20 years
2,000,000 ly Andromeda galaxy 28 years
n ly anywhere, but see next paragraph 1.94 arccosh (n/1.94 + 1) years
Click to expand...

The thing is that one could get very close to the speed of light in a matter of a year accelerating at 1g.

The depressing part is how much fuel would one need for such an accomplishment (other then the time difference between the traveler and Earth).

Let's take the case of Laurel and Hardy, two astronauts travelling to Vega. Laurel speeds past without stopping, and so only needs 57 kg of fuel for every 1 kg of payload. Hardy wishes to stop at Vega, and so needs 886 kg of fuel for every 1 kg of payload. Laurel takes almost 28 Earth years for the trip, while Hardy takes 29 Earth years. (They both take roughly the same amount of Earth time because they are both travelling close to speed c for most of the journey.) They travel neck-and-neck until they've both gone half way to Vega, at which point Hardy begins to decelerate.
Click to expand...

EDIT: Conclusion: The time to reach this new planet should be around 11-12 years (of his own time) for the traveler on board the RT. And probably somewhat more then the double of that for people remaining on Earth.

Disclaimer: I did not calculate the time to travel 22 ly's, I am guessing based on the Vega calculations.

EDIT2: 6.22 years without decelerating, according to the above formula. So I'd say 13 years if one plan's to stop there.
 
I

ianp622

Member
PantherLotus said:
My responses, in order:
2. I think this is a suspension of disbelief thing. If you believe that some moment in the future we'll be able to travel those speeds, you're also supposed to believe we can freaking stop.
Click to expand...
I don't doubt we could stop, but our rate of deceleration is limited by our bodies.

endre said:
I don't think this has been posted, but there is a pretty good FAQ about the relativistic rocket at the following site:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/rocket.html

Also, there are other very interesting stuff there. For example:
What would a relativistic interstellar traveller see?






The thing is that one could get very close to the speed of light in a matter of a year accelerating at 1g.

The depressing part is how much fuel would one need for such an accomplishment (other then the time difference between the traveler and Earth).



EDIT: Conclusion: The time to reach this new planet should be around 11-12 years (of his own time) for the traveler on board the RT. And probably somewhat more then the double of that for people remaining on Earth.

Disclaimer: I did not calculate the time to travel 22 ly's, I am guessing based on the Vega calculations.

EDIT2: 6.22 years without decelerating, according to the above formula. So I'd say 13 years if one planes to stop there.
Click to expand...

The fuel problem might be surmountable if we can harvest the hydrogen as we travel.
 
E

endre

Member
I am tempted to call it mediocre. Perhaps it needs more character development and interactions. But the tech part is good. Also the translation wasn't good enough. I am somewhat surprised nobody made a movie about it. Possibly because of it's hard SF nature. Such movies don't attract investors.

About the ending (heavy spoiler):
It might be my lack of knowledge, but the part where the crew survives a big bang somewhat ruins it's hard sf nature for me. But since they were traveling so fast so long that they reached the big crunch (Big Bounce is probably the more accurate word) it was needed for the crew to survive and the book to have a happy ending

I'd like to get my hands on the Mars trilogy.

On the other side it's a small book so give it a chance.
 
D

Dazzla

Member
endre said:
I am tempted to call it mediocre. Perhaps it needs more character development and interactions. But the tech part is good. Also the translation wasn't good enough. I am somewhat surprised nobody made a movie about it. Possibly because of it's hard SF nature. Such movies don't attract investors.

About the ending (heavy spoiler):
It might be my lack of knowledge, but the part where the crew survives a big bang somewhat ruins it's hard sf nature for me. But since they were traveling so fast so long that they reached the big crunch (Big Bounce is probably the more accurate word) it was needed for the crew to survive and the book to have a happy ending

I'd like to get my hands on the Mars trilogy.

On the other side it's a small book so give it a chance.
Click to expand...

I have the Mars trilogy, didn't really get into it at the time. I need to go back to it.
 
F

fallout

Member
The Mars Trilogy is excellent in that it makes for very good hard sci-fi and presents some really interesting thoughts on how we might someday colonize Mars and the challenges which will be faced. However, it can read like a soap opera at times.
 
S

Spl1nter

Member
fallout said:
The Mars Trilogy is excellent in that it makes for very good hard sci-fi and presents some really interesting thoughts on how we might someday colonize Mars and the challenges which will be faced. However, it can read like a soap opera at times.
Click to expand...

The first book is great, the 2nd is good, and the 3rd didnt capture me enough to finish it.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Spl1nter said:
The first book is great, the 2nd is good, and the 3rd didnt capture me enough to finish it.
Click to expand...

I managed to finish book 3 though it took a couple of years and re-read of books 1 and 2.
Book 3 still has interesting stuff but it lacks plot and substance.

The trilogy is definetly worth a read if you're interested in hard sci-fi, Mars, terraforming, space colonization and such.

Speaking of this trilogy, i feel like i should re-read it... and play some Alpha Centauri.
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
ianp622 said:
I don't doubt we could stop, but our rate of deceleration is limited by our bodies.



The fuel problem might be surmountable if we can harvest the hydrogen as we travel.
Click to expand...

Both fair points.

I haven't clicked the links posted above, but I'm picturing a rocket with a gravity well in front of it, with the rocket riding (surfing) the event horizon as the well bends space-time to help the rocket reach the other side faster.

Of course, I'm hoping we discover something special about the higgs boson that allows us to punch holes in space time, fold it over, and travel 20-50 light years instantly. Like a stargate or something.
 
G

Gregorn

Member
The White House is proposing a $1.2 billion budget for the US space agency, down from $1.5 billion this year
Click to expand...

That's a $300,000,000 (300 million) cut, right? Surely they could find that money from somewhere else, Pirate of the Caribbean 3 cost more than that. If humanity was asked "what would you prefer, going to Mars or Pirates of the Caribbean 3?" I'm pretty sure 100% of the population would answer with the first option.
 
C

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Spiffy_1st said:
That's a $300,000,000 (300 million) cut, right? Surely they could find that money from somewhere else, Pirate of the Caribbean 3 cost more than that. If humanity was asked "what would you prefer, going to Mars or Pirates of the Caribbean 3?" I'm pretty sure 100% of the population would answer with the first option.
Click to expand...

You have too high hopes of humanity.
 
A

astroturfing

Member
goddamnit, as a non-american i LOVE Nasa. probably my favorite thing about America. don't slash their budget - give them trillions, please!

but seriously, who can i blame for this? crooks at Wall Street? i wanna blame someone.

and what about the James Webb Telescope..?
 
A

astroturfing

Member
Darklord said:
I feel like the only way we'll ever get to Mars is if people like Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerburg and other people with crazy amounts of money, billions, get together and do it somehow.
Click to expand...

wouldn't private space exploration basically require short term profits? maybe going to Mars can't be done while making profit, maybe it can only be done by taking huge losses. who will do it then?

the reason why Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is starting space tourism this year, is to start making a profit relatively soon (as in not 50 years from now). the same maybe can't be done with Mars.. it might require governmental, non-profit motivated effort.

i kinda don't know what the hell i'm talking about though, i might be completely wrong and i hope i am. i'd love to see the billionaires of the world to voluntarily take us into the next great age of exploration. i have my doubts though, that they'd still do it if it means bad business.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
The Pillars of Creation uncreated.

http://gizmodo.com/5884206/the-pillars-of-creation-were-actually-destroyed-before-we-discovered-them
The Mind-Boggling Story of the Galactic Wonder That Didn’t Exist When We Saw It

In 1995, the world was astonished by the image of a group of 4-light-year-tall columns located in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years from here. So unimaginable it was that someone called them the Pillars of Creation.

The only problem is that the pillars didn't really exist. Something had destroyed them more than a thousand years ago.

It's a natural thought. Limited by our understanding of time, we look at objects in space as if they were mountains or the ocean. We genuinely perceive these stellar landscapes as something that is up there fixed, secure, rooted in our reality, the solid foundation of our existence. Some people see the work of gods in all this seemingly immutable show, hence the fantastic name they got. Others just see a cosmic movie set for our humanity's drama.

But our diminutive perception of time, the same that makes us think we are the center of everything, is just an illusion. At the cosmic scale, just like in our individual lives, things move constantly. The architecture of the cosmos is ever changing and scientists know—since 2007, only a few years after they were observed—that these gargantuan structures don't exist anymore.

They were destroyed, blasted by a supernova that happened 6,000 years ago. With our telescopes, we can see the supernova advancing, unstoppable, destroying everything it touches. From that same vantage point, the shockwave has not reached the Pillars of Creation yet. For our senses, they are still there.

In one thousand years, there will be a hell of a show. The shockwave will arrive to the Pillars of Creation and, just like they were created, they will be destroyed once again, obliterated by the force of a dead star. Except that the show really happened a very long time ago.

...
Click to expand...
Continued in the link.

d1sow.jpg


iEA9a.jpg

Above, top, a close-up of the Pillars of Creation as captured by Hubble in 1995. Over these lines, the Pillars of Creation within the Eagle Nebula, captured by the Spitzer telescope in 2007. On the left of that image you can see the supernova that destroyed them, surrounded by a red glow.
Click to expand...
 
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