I mean, eventually, Humanity will go extinct regardless. Heat death of the universe and all.
MikeJ
4777
Asimov has you covered (now spelled correctly…)
CraigM
4779
I knew exactly what story you were linking before checking it. One of his best.
Yup.
That said, I support human spaceflight in the same way I support whoever first decided to try floating down a river on a log 10,000 years ago. Gotta start somewhere, and may as well start now.
True, but if we can get out of this yellow star and park intelligent life around a red dwarf or something, that means billions of billions more years of videogames and beer!
It’s cheaper to fix earth than to fly to another planet.
Maybe not in 500 million years, but for now it is!
CraigM
4783
Cheaper still not to break it, but we all see how that is going. Because profit uber alles.
Matt_W
4784
We’re gonna become extinct. That’s a given. Average life-span of a species is about a million years. And we’re the kind of species that destabilizes its own habitat and hastens its march toward extinction. Extinction happens to every species; we’re no exception.
Mars is really really hard. Apollo, I think, gives people a false sense of what’s possible. The longest Apollo mission was 12 days. Mars is a minimum of 3 years. Low-earth space stations are a totally different beast than a Mars mission would be. The ISS has 930 cubic meters of pressurized volume–the Apollo CM had 6. And any Mars mission is gonna lean more toward Apollo than the ISS. The ISS is only 250 miles up, and is constantly resupplied. Any Mars mission has to take everything it needs for the 120 million mile, 8-10 month outbound journey (assuming supplies are pre-staged on and orbiting Mars for the stay and return.) That’s all the water, food and air recycling supplies for all of the humans going on the trip. We’ve never done on-orbit refueling. We’ve never spun up a habitat for gravity nor tested human response to significant Coriolis forces. The MSL had a precision landing on Mars’s surface–it targeted an ellipse 11 miles x 5 miles. So any pre-staged supplies/habitats/etc would have to be gathered from an area about that size. We don’t have a plan for radiation, which is a major problem. An SPE during transit could easily wipe out the crew. Etc, etc. We’re not going to Mars.
It’s not a given that we will resign ourselves to it, though. Humans (I hope) will strive to the limits of their capabilities.
Timex
4786
That’s silly. All those things are engineering issues. They can be solved.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that “These things might happen, and then the crew would die, so we can’t do that.”
Sure, the crew might die. Lots of astronauts died over the years. Doing great stuff is not safe.
If you impose the requirement that it be safe, then sure, we’ll never do it… but that’s not a realistic requirement. There will be plenty of folks willing to risk their lives to do those things.
Nesrie
4787
I am not sure where the fate of our species will be, but i don’t think it’s going to be an issue for Democrats since the government will certainly not be the same in even a 100 years.
Anywho…
I think the Democrats should just focus on this year’s elections. We can quibble over merits of presidential candidates after that.
Those Democratic fundraising totals sure are something, huh?
They’re nowhere near enough to get a breeding population to Mars, that’s for sure.
The ads on TV are non-stop here in Missouri/Kansas these days.
My brief summary:
- Kevin Yoder seems to be attacking Davis in his ads by claiming she’s going to endanger your medicare. There’s an old couple that looks scared to death in the ad that she’s going to endanger their medicare. (Kansas race) (I should clarify: Kevin Yoder is the incumbent Republican).
- McCaskill vs Hawley race for Missouri Senator ads are back to back here all the time. Hawley is attacking her for becoming rich, and McCaskill is attacking Hawley for attacking pre-existing conditions.
They’re running for Missouri Senator. They should probably run more ads to clear that up. :D
Lots of Harley Rouda signs up in the beach front houses in Corona Del Mar yesterday. I was a bit surprised by that, I figured the rich folks would still siding with Rohrbacher.
I know they were supposed to have a debate and Rohrbacher just didn’t show up, turning it into more of a town hall for Rouda. lol
Looks like the last poll has this one as a toss up:
I’m in Mimi Walters district and it also seems like a tight race:
I have a bad feeling about this one though, just a gut feeling from the ads and comments I see on line.
Timex
4793
I would LOVE to see Russian agent Roherbacher lose.
Heh. Brain fart.
But yeah, I really like the latest round of McCaskill ads, where they play a clip of him from his ad saying he won’t go after pre-existing conditions, and then showing that he filed a lawsuit where he is going after pre-existing conditions. And then asking what he’s going to lie about next.
MO-Sen is going to be a squeaker. Right now Harry Enten has it as baaaaarely McCaskill.
