Mars

[DaGip]

f*ck MARS!!!

[JBlombier]

Yeah, well. Your post perhaps comes close to "insulting" and "not necesarry", but mostly it's just off-topics, so I guess it's just in the right place. If we really want pictures of people who we think look freaky, we're perfectly able to look them up ourselves when we're drunk, though. In fact, I'll have a beer and rethink this issue.

[RiskTycoon]

why are we going to Mars or even thinking we need to at some point when we can't/haven't even successfully flourished on our home planet.

that's what I got out of it....or feel about it I guess.

[waauw]

why are we going to Mars or even thinking we need to at some point when we can't/haven't even successfully flourished on our home planet.

that's what I got out of it....or feel about it I guess.

The british used to dump their shitheads in Australia, the russians used to dump theirs in Syberia, and yet we still have so many left. Clearly we need an entire planet to dump them on.

[2dimes]

If we are getting rid of convicts why not just launch them into deep space?

[DaGip]

why are we going to Mars or even thinking we need to at some point when we can't/haven't even successfully flourished on our home planet.

that's what I got out of it....or feel about it I guess.

Exactly, nobody really got the point. They kind of just flubbered around on it and tried to make funny.

If you are planning to go to Mars, you should first make sure you have cleaned up your own planet before offing your shite out to Kepler 438B...just saying.

If your planet still looks like this:



f*ck MARS!!!!!

[Funkyterrance]

Space travel is such a model of inefficiency and hat yeah, I agree, f*ck mars.

[macbone]

NASA's space exploration led directly to innovations in the following health and medicine technologies:

• Infrared ear thermometers
• Ventricular assist device
• Artificial Limbs (artificial muscle sensing, robotic sensors, etc.)
• Light-emitting diodes in medical therapies
• Invisible braces (protection vs. heat-seeking missiles)
• Space blanket (lightweight, reflect IR radiation, often used in first-aid kits)

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Transportation, public safety, agriculture, water purification, solar cells - investing in space exploration and research has many, many benefits to the people on terra firma, including the young fella in the first post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

Did no one see Interstellar?

China's development of their space program is right on the money. There are so many new innovations just waiting to be discovered.



Zefram Cochrane will be Chinese.

We could end world hunger within ten years if we really wanted to. The question is, why haven't we?

Save the Children is to be applauded for reminding us all of one of the most extraordinary and humiliating aspects of living in the modern world: child hunger. Drawing a parallel with the fight to abolish slavery, the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah recently asked what future generations will condemn us for. One sure candidate is the needless human carnage wrought by hunger. Some 850 million people (one in eight of the world's population) go to bed hungry every night. Many of them are children, for whom early hunger leaves a lifelong legacy of cognitive and physical impairment. The human and economic waste is horrifying.

Such hunger is not due to a shortage of food – globally there is enough to go round and if (a big if) we make the right decisions now, we can continue to feed the world despite population growth and climate change. By some estimates, stopping the waste of food after harvest due to poor storage or transport infrastructure, and then in our own kitchens, could free up half of all food grown. The number of overweight and obese people in the world, suffering their own health problems, including a sharp rise in heart disease and diabetes, is roughly equal to the number of hungry people. That highlights one of the underlying causes of hunger – extreme levels of inequality, both within and between countries.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... rld-hunger

How much does it cost to solve world hunger?

World hunger can be eradicated.

A price has been set and estimated by the United Nations to solve this crisis – $30 billion a year. It may seem like a large sum of money, but when compared to the U.S. defense budget – $737 billion in 2012 – $30 billion seems more attainable. The $30 billion expense is manageable, especially when the U.S. would be joined by other investors in global poverty, but the U.S. has the capacity to be the leader on this issue.

http://borgenproject.org/the-cost-to-end-world-hunger/

Prediction: China will take the lead here, too.

[Funkyterrance]

Those discoveries were more or less serendipitous and probably cost billions. Straight-up research is much more efficient.

[Dukasaur]

But what's the point of research if you're not going to conquer new places?

[macbone]

No, funky, those discoveries were made in order to better facilitate launching rockets and shuttles and surviving up in space. They weren't serendipitous at all. They were made with the express intention of doing space exploration more efficiently and effectively. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention.

More discoveries and innovations brought about by space exploration, from that same page:

Transportation

• Aircraft anti-icing systems
• Improved radial tires (made from a fibrous material 5x stronger than steel developed for Viking Lander parachutes on, that's right, Mars)
• Chemical detection - sensors to warn of corrosive conditions on aircraft before damage occurs

Public safety

• Video enhancing and analysis (law enforcement and military applications)
• Fire-resistant reinforcement - developed for the Apollo heat shield, now used for aircraft, high-rise buildings, and public structures, allowing more time to escape in case of a fire
• Firefighting equipment - lightweight equipment developed for the US Space program, now in wide use in the US - lightweight breathign apparatus, short-range two-way radio, mask weighing less than 3 ounces that protects from injury, fire-retardant suits

Consumer, home, and recreation

• Temper foam - memory foam - high-energy absorption, comfort - mattresses, pillows, aircraft, automobiles, motorcycles, furniture, human and animal prostheses, etc.
• Enriched baby food - lifes'DHA and life'sARA, based on microalgae, in 90% of the baby food in the US and infant forumulas all over the world
• Portable cordless vacuums - developed for extracting core samples, led to the Dustbuster vacuum
• Freeze drying - simple nutritious meals for people who are homebound

Environment and agriculture

• Water purification - developed to give astronauts lean drinking water, provides affordable, clean water in underdeveloped countries where water may be contaminated
• Pollution - Petroleum Remediation Product that can clean pollutants from water

And the list goes on. =)

Duk, obviously the end-goal here it to replicate the game Alpha Centauri. =)

[DaGip]

Don't forget TANG!

[mrswdk]

[Funkyterrance]

No, funky, those discoveries were made in order to better facilitate launching rockets and shuttles and surviving up in space. They weren't serendipitous at all. They were made with the express intention of doing space exploration more efficiently and effectively. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention.

More discoveries and innovations brought about by space exploration, from that same page:

Transportation

• Aircraft anti-icing systems
• Improved radial tires (made from a fibrous material 5x stronger than steel developed for Viking Lander parachutes on, that's right, Mars)
• Chemical detection - sensors to warn of corrosive conditions on aircraft before damage occurs

Public safety

• Video enhancing and analysis (law enforcement and military applications)
• Fire-resistant reinforcement - developed for the Apollo heat shield, now used for aircraft, high-rise buildings, and public structures, allowing more time to escape in case of a fire
• Firefighting equipment - lightweight equipment developed for the US Space program, now in wide use in the US - lightweight breathign apparatus, short-range two-way radio, mask weighing less than 3 ounces that protects from injury, fire-retardant suits

Consumer, home, and recreation

• Temper foam - memory foam - high-energy absorption, comfort - mattresses, pillows, aircraft, automobiles, motorcycles, furniture, human and animal prostheses, etc.
• Enriched baby food - lifes'DHA and life'sARA, based on microalgae, in 90% of the baby food in the US and infant forumulas all over the world
• Portable cordless vacuums - developed for extracting core samples, led to the Dustbuster vacuum
• Freeze drying - simple nutritious meals for people who are homebound

Environment and agriculture

• Water purification - developed to give astronauts lean drinking water, provides affordable, clean water in underdeveloped countries where water may be contaminated
• Pollution - Petroleum Remediation Product that can clean pollutants from water

And the list goes on. =)

Duk, obviously the end-goal here it to replicate the game Alpha Centauri. =)

Yeah but all that junk would have been developed at a later date when it was actually needed for some useful purpose and probably for a lower cost since other, more needed technologies, would have been discovered by then. It's like arguing that cavemen should have spent time developing arch supports while they were freezing to death from lack of furs on their backs. NASA is just an obsolete department, let's face it.

[AndyDufresne]

NASA is just an obsolete department, let's face it.

Of all the parts of the government that my tax money goes to, NASA is probably the one thing I am pretty okay with all the time.


--Andy

[nietzsche]

No, funky, those discoveries were made in order to better facilitate launching rockets and shuttles and surviving up in space. They weren't serendipitous at all. They were made with the express intention of doing space exploration more efficiently and effectively. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention.

More discoveries and innovations brought about by space exploration, from that same page:

Transportation

• Aircraft anti-icing systems
• Improved radial tires (made from a fibrous material 5x stronger than steel developed for Viking Lander parachutes on, that's right, Mars)
• Chemical detection - sensors to warn of corrosive conditions on aircraft before damage occurs

Public safety

• Video enhancing and analysis (law enforcement and military applications)
• Fire-resistant reinforcement - developed for the Apollo heat shield, now used for aircraft, high-rise buildings, and public structures, allowing more time to escape in case of a fire
• Firefighting equipment - lightweight equipment developed for the US Space program, now in wide use in the US - lightweight breathign apparatus, short-range two-way radio, mask weighing less than 3 ounces that protects from injury, fire-retardant suits

Consumer, home, and recreation

• Temper foam - memory foam - high-energy absorption, comfort - mattresses, pillows, aircraft, automobiles, motorcycles, furniture, human and animal prostheses, etc.
• Enriched baby food - lifes'DHA and life'sARA, based on microalgae, in 90% of the baby food in the US and infant forumulas all over the world
• Portable cordless vacuums - developed for extracting core samples, led to the Dustbuster vacuum
• Freeze drying - simple nutritious meals for people who are homebound

Environment and agriculture

• Water purification - developed to give astronauts lean drinking water, provides affordable, clean water in underdeveloped countries where water may be contaminated
• Pollution - Petroleum Remediation Product that can clean pollutants from water

And the list goes on. =)

Duk, obviously the end-goal here it to replicate the game Alpha Centauri. =)

Not a counter-argument, I'm just wondering:

Had similar discoveries/inventions been made if a similar amount of money and resources was allocated to, say, explore the sea bed? The question is, is "space" the key word here?

The mind is a marvelous thing, you put enough tension towards a goal, then shake it up a little, let it rest and see new things, and it figures out ways to achieve the goal.

[Funkyterrance]

NASA is just an obsolete department, let's face it.

Of all the parts of the government that my tax money goes to, NASA is probably the one thing I am pretty okay with all the time.


--Andy

Yeah...but why? It appeals to your dreamy outlook? I don't get it.