Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: RoadKingLarry on December 15, 2013, 01:51:00 AM
-
So, a Chinese has landed a
occupation force rover on the moon.
http://news.yahoo.com/china-39-39-jade-rabbit-39-lunar-rover-220110008.html (http://news.yahoo.com/china-39-39-jade-rabbit-39-lunar-rover-220110008.html)
He that holds the high ground...
-
Until there is manufacturing capability, energy generation, and fuel refining capability on the moon, it's low ground.
High ground is space.
-
I was complaining to my wife a few weeks ago about how this country has lost it's vision. In the 60's JFK said we'd get to the moon. We were able to fight a war and land people on the moon. 70's -80's we built and launched the space shuttle. We put a ton of space junk up there. Now, the shuttle is scrapped, to get to space we beg a rid with the Russians and now China goes to the moon. But hey, we have the greatest welfare state the potus can force on us.
-
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FLFHffsr.jpg&hash=534119ff174ed2a61d60440601762305081e76ee)
-
Good for China, I say. Regardless of their politics. At least they are willing to take risks. If we had the same political structure and fear of risk in the 1960's that we have today, we would have never made it to the moon ourselves. Especially with the archaic equipment of the time compared to what the Chinese have to work with now. We would have called it quits after Apollo 1, or certainly after Apollo 13.
Kennedy was a visionary, and more "Republican" than many Republican politicians today. I think we have the same brave, willing, and able men and women in our space program today as we did then. We just have too many "safety checks" (some good, some bad) to keep us from advancing at the rate we did then, or at the rate China is going now.
-
Good for China, I say. Regardless of their politics. At least they are willing to take risks. If we had the same political structure and fear of risk in the 1960's that we have today, we would have never made it to the moon ourselves. Especially with the archaic equipment of the time compared to what the Chinese have to work with now. We would have called it quits after Apollo 1, or certainly after Apollo 13.
Kennedy was a visionary, and more "Republican" than many Republican politicians today. I think we have the same brave, willing, and able men and women in our space program today as we did then. We just have too many "safety checks" (some good, some bad) to keep us from advancing at the rate we did then, or at the rate China is going now.
Agreed. If we are going to regulate and "nannify" ourselves off the leading edge as a nation, I would rather see someone else continue to push boundaries than watch human advancement stagnate.
-
Agreed. If we are going to regulate and "nannify" ourselves off the leading edge as a nation, I would rather see someone else continue to push boundaries than watch human advancement stagnate.
Man, I hate to agree with you, but that makes a lot of philosophical sense.
We've lost our testosterone.
Terry
-
Man, I hate to agree with you, but that makes a lot of philosophical sense.
We've lost our testosterone.
Terry
Preacherman in his blog a week or three ago, quoted a Canadian he knew who said to him "I remember when Americans weren't afraid of everything."
:'(
-
Preacherman in his blog a week or three ago, quoted a Canadian he knew who said to him "I remember when Americans weren't afraid of everything."
:'(
Oh sure, rip my heart out.
-
Blue Sun.
-
Blue Sun.
Well done.
-
Blue Sun.
Eventually, we'll need to speak in Chinese and cuss in English ;/
-
I was complaining to my wife a few weeks ago about how this country has lost it's vision. In the 60's JFK said we'd get to the moon. We were able to fight a war and land people on the moon. 70's -80's we built and launched the space shuttle. We put a ton of space junk up there. Now, the shuttle is scrapped, to get to space we beg a rid with the Russians and now China goes to the moon. But hey, we have the greatest welfare state the potus can force on us.
Two wars. LBJ's neverending War on Poverty also.
-
Minor correction:
I think we have the same brave, willing, and able men and women in our space program today as we did then. We just have too many "safety checks" (some good, some bad) to keep us from advancing at the rate we did then, or at the rate China is going now.
-
Two wars. LBJ's neverending War on Poverty also.
The amount we've flushed down the rathole of poverty programs since LBJ is very, very close to the national debt.
And NASA is run by politically correct brown nosers who are more interested in meeting their diversity hiring quotas than they are in space exploration. :mad:
-
Look, I'm not saying there isn't enough that's wrong with NASA and the space program to fill an entire encyclopedia, because there is.
However, we have a nuclear powered rover on Mars for gorram's sake, and one that was landed by a rocket propelled hovering sky-crane..
Also, America has entire companies (i.e. "more than one") that could replicate or even exceed the entirety of what China has done in space over the past decade, in just one or two years, were there sufficient reason for them to do so.
Just a little perspective for the nominal gloomy-Gus "ZOMG, the Zeitgeist has passed America!" theme of the thread.
-
Look, I'm not saying there isn't enough that's wrong with NASA and the space program to fill an entire encyclopedia, because there is.
However, we have a nuclear powered rover on Mars[\i] for gorram's sake, and one that was landed by a rocket propelled hovering sky-crane..
Also, America has entire companies (i.e. "more than one") that could replicate or even exceed the entirety of what China has done in space over the past decade, in just one or two years, were there sufficient reason for them to do so.
Just a little perspective for the nominal gloomy-Gus "ZOMG, the Zeitgeist has passed America!" theme of the thread.
The Mars rovers are remarkable achievements, as were the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, the Hubble telescope, and a host of other robotic exploration tools. For my part, I'm referring to manned space travel. Had we continued our goals after the moon landings, I have no doubt that there would be a manned colony on Mars today, and it would have been there for at least a decade already. Certainly robot explorers are more efficient and less costly, but there is something about humans in space that exalts humanity to greater things.
-
AJ's dead-on correct.
America has passed its phase of romance with space, and is intent on finding a way to actually use it to our benefit.
Right now, China's actions are similar to our expressions of bravado (as well as matching efforts of the Soviets) from the 60's to the 80's. They are in the phase of asking "can we, and if so, how do we?"
Americans are now asking "what's the point of doing it?"
Once we finally answer that question... look out. SpaceX and Bigelow are the beginning pieces of it. A few more players, the beginnings of an economy up there, anything representative of semi-permanent residence or capability to resupply or biologically reproduce... and it's a whole new game.
-
You guys are correct. I was looking at NASA through the telescope backwards. Their glory days are far behind them. It is time for private enterprise to take over.
-
The amount we've flushed down the rathole of poverty programs since LBJ is very, very close to the national debt.
And NASA is run by politically correct brown nosers who are more interested in meeting their diversity hiring quotas than they are in space exploration. :mad:
And don't forget proving global warming, or climate change, or whatever the latest for the children and don't ask question environmental scare that requires sciency looking papers.
-
The Mars rovers are remarkable achievements, as were the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, the Hubble telescope, and a host of other robotic exploration tools. For my part, I'm referring to manned space travel. Had we continued our goals after the moon landings, I have no doubt that there would be a manned colony on Mars today, and it would have been there for at least a decade already. Certainly robot explorers are more efficient and less costly, but there is something about humans in space that exalts humanity to greater things.
I am definitely disappointed with the state of American human space exploration, however all the fundamental technologies in terms of aerospace design, materials science, avionics, computer systems, communication, life support, propulsion (granted, with some big limits on nuclear, but neither the Chinese nor Russians are doing anything either) are all still marching along.
If/when the political, or even better, the economic will to put humans in space beyond LEO exists, America is still better poised than anyone else to hit the ground running.
For the most part, the Chinese program is just warmed over Soviet-era tech.
My personal gut feeling is that the real avenue to manned presence with an economic or commercial cause might be asteroid mining for rare earths. As the Third World gets "wired" (or more appropriately wireless) and industrialized demand for platinum group and rare-earth group metals is going to outstrip world production. Probably made even worse as new tech we haven't even imagined yet finds new lucrative uses for these rare metals.
Granted, finding a Platinum heavy earth-crosser with reasonable Delta-V is the tricky part, but assuming you find it, a .5km asteroid could have as much as eight times more Platinum or Platinum-group metal in it than has been mined on Earth to date. Mainly because the asteroid hasn't been subject to gravitational sifting of elements, or tectonic mixing and transport like they have on Earth.
-
Need to worry if they put a rail launcher on the moon ;)
-
Wouldn't that also be a function of which dying star farted the heaviest concentration of platinum towards a location ripe for eventual accretion into an asteroid?
IIRC, elements heavier than iron are created by stars going nova or supernova within those few seconds after they run out of hydrogen and helium to burn.
Our own sun has a ways to go before it does that, and our main concern before that happens will be getting the heck out of Dodge.
-
Wouldn't that also be a function of which dying star farted the heaviest concentration of platinum towards a location ripe for eventual accretion into an asteroid?
IIRC, elements heavier than iron are created by stars going nova or supernova within those few seconds after they run out of hydrogen and helium to burn.
Our own sun has a ways to go before it does that, and our main concern before that happens will be getting the heck out of Dodge.
Yes, everything heavier than Iron was made in a supernova. (and the iron itself killed the star, any star large enough to fuse iron reaches the limit where it would be a black hole instead) Although such elements, if the nebula that formed the Solar System did come from multiple star deaths instead of just one, I'd presume it was pretty well mixed during the accretion phase, probably by the time there was a recognizable protoplanetary disk.
Earth does have a LOT of all these "rare" elements. Some of them are in the 20th spot by % of the Earth's composition. However they're really "rare" in that they tend to not clump in veins or ore deposits that are very economical to mine, because of molten circulation during planetary formation, continental drift or whatever has distributed them very evenly, or just too deeply to access.
The Asteroids, either never having formed into a body in the first place due to tidal forces and gravitational disruptions from the other early planets and Jupiter, or been blasted apart out of the cores of colliding protoplanets or larger asteroids, the concentrations of these metals are many times higher in some asteroids, sometimes orders of magnitude higher than they're found at any accessible depth of Earth's crust. The Iridium layer from the KT impactor alone proves it, even if it hadn't already been confirmed by some of our space probe's spectroscopy.
In theory even the carbonaceous chondrites are valuable, because the carbon, hydrogen/oxygen/water bound up in them and any lighter silicates are still very inexpensive in terms of fuel and Delta-V energy or transport costs as compared to stuff that's down the gravity well on a planet. Although after a certain amount of "living off the land" to fuel, support, and supply asteroid mining for the rare metals, them being useful further than that presupposes other space settlements, bases, or infrastructure that can use it.
I'd guess that ingots of rare metals could be slung on low energy trajectories wrapped in heat shields made of foamed slag for splashdown in the ocean. At least that's how I'd look into doing it. Asteroid water or hydrogen/oxygen would only make economic sense to other microgravity locations. Even the moon probably has enough that can be mined locally that sending/setting it down is not economical.
-
TANSTAAFL!
-
TANSTAAFL!
Wye Knott ???
-
My cat doesn't walk through walls, but it does pee on the dirty laundry sometimes.
-
And don't forget proving global warming, or climate change, or whatever the latest for the children and don't ask question environmental scare that requires sciency looking papers.
I also seem to remember something about "improving relationships with the muslim parts of the world". ;/
-
I also seem to remember something about "improving relationships with the muslim parts of the world". ;/
Take off and nuke it from orbit >:D
-
Wye Knott ???
Ha! I'm currently reading that book. =)
-
Take off and nuke it from orbit >:D
That's the real beauty of a space program. When you have the high-ground, and the ability to go most places at will, it's also the ability to destroy most anything on a planet you wish by dropping a rock on it.
No pesky plutonium needed.
-
That's the real beauty of a space program. When you have the high-ground, and the ability to go most places at will, it's also the ability to destroy most anything on a planet you wish by dropping a rock on it.
No pesky plutonium needed.
I think there is an element of salting the earth.
-
I think they are trying to sell cheap Chinese junk to the aliens!
-
.