Nasa's relatively new telescope has found approximately 700 new planets of which 140 are "earth like" in a very short period of time. Now by earth like they mean about the right size, made of heavy enough materials, in the right temperate zone, so we're not necessarily talking about oceans and rivers.
Now those are some damn optimistic numbers. At that rate I put the odds of finding an inhabited, or at least habitable planet fairly high. Now, we wouldn't know it's inhabited, nor could we ever get there with current technology.
So the question becomes what use is this information? Personally I think any information is useful, at the very least it helps spur technological advancement (by creating demand for better telescopes, for example), but what does everyone else think?
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Nice but kind of useless atm, need to focus on colonizing the planetoids nearest to us. Earth-like is good, but doesn't mean **** if you can't get to it without dying.
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Yodabunny wrote:
So the question becomes what use is this information? Personally I think any information is useful, at the very least it helps spur technological advancement (by creating demand for better telescopes, for example), but what does everyone else think?
First of all, as technology continues to develop (as it will), we'll be able to not only detect exoplanets, but to take measurements of their characteristics. We can compare these characteristics to measurements taken on planets in our own solar system. We can find out what elements are in the atmosphere, approximately what the surface gravity is, etc. This is key to understanding life.
Discoveries also provide a driving force for future exploration. We've sent automated explorers to our own outer solar system based on the desire to know more. We've sent men to the moon. We're planning on sending a manned mission to Mars. Discoveries like these may help produce the drive to develop the faster-than-light technology required to travel to these places, perhaps to colonize or at least to research.
Edited, Jul 26th 2010 2:49pm by AshOnMyTomatoes
The more you know......
Alma wrote:
I lost my post
AshOnMyTomatoes wrote:
Yodabunny wrote:
So the question becomes what use is this information? Personally I think any information is useful, at the very least it helps spur technological advancement (by creating demand for better telescopes, for example), but what does everyone else think?
First of all, as technology continues to develop (as it will), we'll be able to not only detect exoplanets, but to take measurements of their characteristics. We can compare these characteristics to measurements taken on planets in our own solar system. We can find out what elements are in the atmosphere, approximately what the surface gravity is, etc. This is key to understanding life.
Discoveries also provide a driving force for future exploration. We've sent automated explorers to the our own outer solar system based on the desire to know more. We've sent men to the moon. We're planning on sending a manned mission to Mars. Discoveries like these may help produce the drive to develop the faster-than-light technology required to travel to these places, perhaps to colonize or at least to research.
True dat. Not necessarily useful in itself but a launching point for the future.
publiusvarus wrote:
we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.
AshOnMyTomatoes wrote:
Discoveries like these may help produce the drive to develop the faster-than-light technology required to travel to these places, perhaps to colonize or at least to research.
And barring that, I'm sure at some point we humans will go for generation ships to get us where we want to go.
This news has made me all geekcited.
Elinda wrote:
The more you know......
Hahaha, that was in my initial version of the OP. I took it out to lower the cornyness factor.
AshOnMyTomatoes wrote:
Discoveries like these may help produce the drive to develop the faster-than-light technology required to travel to these places, perhaps to colonize or at least to research.
For me personally, this is the most interesting result, if not the primary driving force behind such discoveries. We may never break the FTL barrier, but we most certainly won't get the funding to try unless there is a compelling destination.
Find an Amazonian jungle planet where humanoid female(like) creatures prance about in banana leaf bathing suits and it's almost a certainty that man will eventually find a way to get there.
BrownDuck wrote:
We may never break the FTL barrier, but we most certainly won't get the funding to try unless there is a compelling destination.
Make it look like we're going to get our butts kicked by the
Unless the FTL 'barrier' is unbreakable, of course.
I love that we're gaining the technological capability to make these sorts of discoveries. Science marching on and all of that. What does bother me is that we have still failed to really take that next step in terms of human exploration of space. I think the problem is that NASA thinks in terms of single missions but the needs of expanded manned exploration will require a larger and broader way of looking at space. We're stuck in a paradigm that requires that manned missions be massive and expensive one-shot things. IMO, that's completely wrong.
We ought to be building an infrastructure for operating in space. It may not be as glamorous, but it'll get us there. Not just able to do single missions, but sustained regular missions within our own solar system. We ought not to think in terms of how to get a single mission payload from a point on earth to a final destination in space, but rather how to get anything from earth to a point in near space (like a convenient space station), and then how to get from there to somewhere else, and so on. Modularization and standardization ought to be the focus right now, but we're still looking at single mission specific solutions. That makes each mission more expensive than it needs to be and makes long distance manned missions inherently less likely.
That's just my opinion of course. I just think we could be doing a lot more and we should be doing a lot more.
We ought to be building an infrastructure for operating in space. It may not be as glamorous, but it'll get us there. Not just able to do single missions, but sustained regular missions within our own solar system. We ought not to think in terms of how to get a single mission payload from a point on earth to a final destination in space, but rather how to get anything from earth to a point in near space (like a convenient space station), and then how to get from there to somewhere else, and so on. Modularization and standardization ought to be the focus right now, but we're still looking at single mission specific solutions. That makes each mission more expensive than it needs to be and makes long distance manned missions inherently less likely.
That's just my opinion of course. I just think we could be doing a lot more and we should be doing a lot more.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
I actually feel the same way. All our current missions are just opportunities to get up there and come back, with a few experiments done in that timeframe. A (semi-)permanent base on the Moon could go a long way towards long-term efforts.
publiusvarus wrote:
we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.
It's a work in progress, though. We need to know more about how the human body reacts to spacelike conditions, which is one of the goals of the ISS. In a lot of ways it's a stepping stone towards reproducing a similar facility in lunar conditions.
Majivo wrote:
It's a work in progress, though. We need to know more about how the human body reacts to spacelike conditions, which is one of the goals of the ISS. In a lot of ways it's a stepping stone towards reproducing a similar facility in lunar conditions.
In the meantime, we could be working on our roadmap though. But so far, no one's even talking about it. What I mean is this:
We split our focus for manned spaceflight into two areas:
1. Vehicles for getting payloads (including people) from the surface to the ISS (and back) in as cost effective and safe manner possible. Design this so that *everything* we move into space uses this system.
2. Vehicles for moving payloads around in space. Specifically, this should be something which can be assembled in space, is re-usable, and can hold numerous modular configurations depending on the specific mission.
Do this properly, and you gain the same capabilities we previously used the space shuttle for, but at a fraction of the total cost. The shuttle was the "one vehicle to do it all" system, while this breaks it into multiple pieces. It's trivially easy to make a vehicle capable of space travel if it never has to travel to or from the surface of a planet. The structural requirements (and therefore weight) are much lower, allowing for much more efficient travel. Properly designed, you could use such a craft for anything from retrieving or repairing satellites, to trips to and from the moon.
The "roadmap" aspect to this is that we gain the knowledge of how to assemble things in space. That's critical IMO for future missions farther out. If we can assemble small craft for near Earth travel, we can connect them together (lots of design possibilities) to make larger craft capable of interstellar travel (ie: to Mars and back). By building them in this manner we can test them out instead of the "shot" approach NASA tends to use. By designing them to be reusable from the start, we create cost savings. Modular design should be an obvious approach, but I've yet to see anyone seriously suggest it (or at least not heard about any such suggestions).
There are lots of ways to approach this, but there are steps we can take in the meantime that add significant value in the long term and would realistically cost us little in the short term. The only negative is that there's no definable end point, so it doesn't seem to fit into the NASA model for missions. It's as much about the culture of our space program as anything else.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
is gbaji condoning the government spending money on what could be seen as an unnecessary project?
Lady Bardalicious wrote:
is gbaji condoning the government spending money on what could be seen as an unnecessary project?
In the context of long term species survival nothing is more necessary than manned spaceflight. I think in much longer terms than most people is all.
King Nobby wrote:
More words please
gbaji wrote:
Lady Bardalicious wrote:
is gbaji condoning the government spending money on what could be seen as an unnecessary project?
In the context of long term species survival nothing is more necessary than manned spaceflight. I think in much longer terms than most people is all.
good to know.
gbaji wrote:
Lady Bardalicious wrote:
is gbaji condoning the government spending money on what could be seen as an unnecessary project?
In the context of long term species survival nothing is more necessary than manned spaceflight. I think in much longer terms than most people is all.
********* you're just a science geek like the rest of us. It's so long-term that we could do this at ridiculously less expense in a thousand years.
A Moonbase is a net profit enterprise. There is so much fusion fuel there it's ridiculous.
And the energy content of that fuel is pretty gross. A barrel of deuterium has the energy equivalency to ~2million barrels of oil, minus energy lost to inefficiency.
If a workable fusion reaction becomes do-able, and moon mining is cheaper than distilling seawater, it's a no-brainer move for energy providers.
It's low gravity well makes it perfect for mass drivers too. Large enough that it doesn't move much, small enough for the energy well to be shallow. So Launches become far cheaper if you build stuff on site.
And the energy content of that fuel is pretty gross. A barrel of deuterium has the energy equivalency to ~2million barrels of oil, minus energy lost to inefficiency.
If a workable fusion reaction becomes do-able, and moon mining is cheaper than distilling seawater, it's a no-brainer move for energy providers.
It's low gravity well makes it perfect for mass drivers too. Large enough that it doesn't move much, small enough for the energy well to be shallow. So Launches become far cheaper if you build stuff on site.
Just as Planned.
Gbaji wrote:
What does bother me is that we have still failed to really take that next step in terms of human exploration of space.
Yup. I really think there might be a possibility that we get humans to the moon during my lifetime. Almost sure of it....Yup
"If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders". Carlin.
gbaji wrote:
Lady Bardalicious wrote:
is gbaji condoning the government spending money on what could be seen as an unnecessary project?
Pretty sure something's going to do us in before then; whether it's being sterilised by a gamma burst, smashed by a asteroid or nuked bare, the Earth's gonna get it in the teeth eventually.
There is focus on solving issues with manned spaceflight it's just not as well known because it's still in the "not cool enough" stage.
That being said. Manned spaceflight isn't really a priority because robotic spaceflight is much, much cheaper. Water and food weigh a lot, with current recycling technologies you still need to bring a good bit with you for each person. What is a person going to do that a robot can't? Or more importantly 5 robots can't, as the cost to send 1 person is probably still less than the cost to send 5 robots. With robots you don't need radiation shielding, food, water, air, heat (ya ya, you know what I mean), A/C, entertainment, sleep.
Even if you build the infrastructure in space it will still be vastly cheaper to send a robot, it always will. Humans will of course be faster as they don't have to wait for commands, but what's the cheaper alternative, better AI and more robots or sending people?
That being said. Manned spaceflight isn't really a priority because robotic spaceflight is much, much cheaper. Water and food weigh a lot, with current recycling technologies you still need to bring a good bit with you for each person. What is a person going to do that a robot can't? Or more importantly 5 robots can't, as the cost to send 1 person is probably still less than the cost to send 5 robots. With robots you don't need radiation shielding, food, water, air, heat (ya ya, you know what I mean), A/C, entertainment, sleep.
Even if you build the infrastructure in space it will still be vastly cheaper to send a robot, it always will. Humans will of course be faster as they don't have to wait for commands, but what's the cheaper alternative, better AI and more robots or sending people?
Yeah, and when the AI robots develop their own secret base on Triton and come back in a hundred years to enslave humanity....WHAT THEN?!
publiusvarus wrote:
we all know liberals are well adjusted american citizens who only want what's best for society. While conservatives are evil money grubbing scum who only want to sh*t on the little man and rob the world of its resources.
Debalic wrote:
Yeah, and when the AI robots develop their own secret base on Triton and come back in a hundred years to enslave humanity....WHAT THEN?!
Yodabunny wrote:
What is a person going to do that a robot can't?
Make sweet, passionate Earth love to the green-skinned Venusian women we encounter.
Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
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