Jump to content

Nathair

Members
  • Posts

    387
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Nathair

  1. Thus spake the KSP Wiki: In Kerbal Space Program a biome is a geographic area on the surface of a celestial body typically corresponding with types of geology like mountains or craters. This is in contrast to the real meaning of the term in which biomes are biotic communities in contiguous areas with similar climatic conditions and organism populations. So, life? Not so much.
  2. Assuming that you mean "temporary" rather than temporal, your contention is now that it is not a colony until all the people there were born there and will all die there? What conceivable difference does that make? People were objecting to kindergartens and schools and all the "civilian permanent community" requirements of a colony but not you, you're just worried that the people who die there weren't born there... or something? I would put to you that having a full time community of multiple families with all the surrounding infrastructure of hospitals, cemeteries, kindergartens and schools, bars, local radio stations etc. is pretty clearly also town rather than merely a "research base". If it is only mandatory cradle to grave habitation that suddenly raises your objection then... why? What magic line-in-the-sand does that suddenly cross? And why should we worry about that at this stage? What difference does it make if people live there for five years or twenty years or fifty years as long as they do not live there for eighty years? [snip] Let us all recognize that Villa Las Estrellas is intended in part as a colony. It was founded to help support Chile's (under Pinochet) claims to Antarctican territory. They don't regard these communities as "temporary" in any way. Likewise Esperanza and Argentina's claims. These places are towns. You have full time families, a scout troop, a cemetery, a church, a bar, a bank, a local radio station, a kindergarten, a public school you're a town [snip]. That doesn't mean you can't also be doing perfectly valid research but let us agree to call a spade a damn shovel, OK?
  3. Argentina (and Wikipedia, for that matter) consider Esperanza a permanent community. Not to put too fine a point on it but the official motto of Esperanza is "Permanence, an act of sacrifice ". Villa Las Estrellas [snip] has a hospital, a kindergarten, a primary school and a cemetery. That seems to pretty much cover the range, no? Families live there year round. In what possible way is that temporary? So... what? If a building uses local material it becomes a colony? Is that your new definition/objection? This is, again, an absolutely arbitrary line you're drawing. Just look up the wiki page on Villa Las Estrellas in which they note that "Villa Las Estrellas is a Chilean town and research station". The Either/Or distinction seems to be entirely in your mind. In actuality the two are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, are simply a natural progression. Finite, perhaps but "limited" has a connotation of scarcity which simply does not apply here. We have more than enough resources for these programs.
  4. That'd be NACA you're talking about. In 1958 a specific decision was made to separate the military and civilian aspects of advanced research. NACA was dissolved and NASA (civilian) and DARPA (military) were created.
  5. No it doesn't. NASA is intentionally and specifically a non-military organization officially in contrast with DARPA which was created for military purposes.
  6. Check out Villa Las Estrellas and Esperanza Base. So... a research base won't build any buildings? Again, let me point at McMurdo in Antarctica, they've built more than a few new installations. You've drawn an arbitrary line. The onus is upon you to explain how and why a base suddenly flips from Great! to Horrible! when... something. Too many buildings are built? They become too independent in resources? Too many people die there? Too many people are born there? What exactly and why? Instead? Who said anything about instead?
  7. I'm not sure what that sentence means. You mean that things don't always work out the way we intend? Space exploration and research has always shown an excellent ROI, why would that suddenly change on Mars? Actually, the word "Space" isn't really necessary up there, is it?
  8. Ahh, so you're just poking a bit of fun at Squad's (mis)use of the word "Biome". Fair enough.
  9. Why not? You'll not that I actually said "somewhat self-sustaining." ISRU is a significant goal for any Mars base and it will be increasingly significant the further out these bases go. At what point does that work in establishing a degree of resource independence flip from being an excellent way to reduce hauling consumables around to A Bad Thing(tm)? So if they built a day care facility at A-S and researchers families went to live their, suddenly A-S would be a failure? When does that kick in? McMurdo boasts a full time population of about 1000 people, is it a failure as a research station? There are schools and gyms and bars and about a dozen children have been born in Antarctica now, does that ruin all their work somehow? Have we colonized Antarctica? Where exactly is the line in the sand here which separates "legitimate research" from "waste of money"? How is Mars different?
  10. He meant that NASA is not, in fact, a military organisation. Neither is the ESA, CSA, etc. NASA is an independent branch of the Federal Government, the ESA is an intergovernmental body, the CSA is under the purview of the Innovation, Science and Technological Development Ministry, etc.
  11. This is merely a matter of semantics and nomenclature. If we send a crew to Mars with the intention that what they build will become a permanent habitation, is it "a colony"? Does our intention for the future magically transmute the base from a "valid" research and exploration base into throwing money away? More semantic nonsense, really. Establishing a permanent base is a process, probably a very long process in the case of Mars. This isn't Civ-BE, colonizing another planet won't be a matter of dropping a complete city down onto the surface. Colonization, in this case, will amount to establishing a base, building up the survival infrastructure to the point that it can become a permanent base, expanding the base to the point that it becomes somewhat self-sustaining and capable of supporting more than a minimal research and construction crew and then, if all goes well, beginning to shift the focus towards "colonists". This magical either/or distinction of "Colony bad" and "Exploration base good" seems almost entirely arbitrary to me. At what point does "Yay! We're learning how..." switch over to "Stop it! That's bad learning!" ? Put another way, if they build a day care facility at Amundsen-Scott would it just ruin everything? Would it become "a colony"? Hey! Google's campus has full time day care, does that mean that Google is a colony?
  12. Those two sentences don't actually go together. Moho wasn't built from the core of Kerbol, all the planets were formed from the remnants of earlier generations of stars. It was in those earlier stars that the heavier elements found in the planets were synthesized, not in Kerbol. The easiest place to get metals (off Kerbin) is (like here in the Solar system) from asteroids.
  13. Neither of those is necessarily true (nor necessarily bad.) Just because you say so? You think, for some undisclosed reason, that cancer research would instantly run out of money because there was a Mars program? You think CERN would be nailing plywood over the windows just because there was also a Mars program running? Why? It's not like there's a specific stack of dollars in the world with the word "Science" stamped on them. It's certainly not like a few billion dollars spent on a Mars program would even put a dent in the global GDP. It's not like running Apollo slammed the doors on the vault and other science ground to a halt; in the same year that we first landed on the moon we also implanted the first artificial heart, determined the structure of insulin, introduced string theory and invented the laser printer. This is just an unsupported appeal to scary consequences. Um, zoology is not the study of zoos. If that is true then let's do both. We certainly have the capacity. (Although I hasten to point out that northern Africa, being part of Terra, is already about as terraformed as it's ever going to get. Greening the Sahara, on the other hand is possible but presents significant uncertainty about consequences. Look at what happened to Lake Hamun... ) Let's not be jumping right to building a nursing home. It's not like a permanent Mars base would be shipping geriatric astronauts and pregnant women in the first crew transfer. "We don't know" is an invitation to "Let's find out!" not an excuse for "Let's not try!"
  14. I dunno about the first object, but it was the first spacecraft.
  15. No, I did not say that. I did not say anything like that. I have repeatedly said that we should do this because the benefits from this type of research endeavour have always enormously outweighed the initial investment. I'll repeat it one more time: spending time and money in this arena is an investment that has always, always generated excellent returns both in direct financial terms, in scientific and engineering advancements and in all the quality of life trickle down effects that entails. What is more, public engagement and involvement with a pro-science agenda is something desperately needed in this "post truth" age of "alternate facts" and general woo. The fact that none of that motivates you does not mean "there aren't any motivations." And what exactly is wrong with that? You admit that we'll be learning but now you're worried that we'll be learning the wrong things? What exactly is wrong with learning how to keep people alive in hostile and alien environments? Saying it yet again - every time we try to do these things we come across myriad unexpected benefits from baby formula to smartphone cameras to IR thermometers to the radial tires on your car. This kind of exploration is simply worth doing. I see. So if we do exactly the same things but rotate crews every three years that would somehow provide new and different "tangible benefits"? How does that work? How exactly does rotating the crews rather than having permanent habitation change anything at all about the work done or the results or benefits? Your objection to colonization seems to be absolutely arbitrary and nothing more than a semantic quibble over nomenclature.
  16. You must have missed the part where I said "All in all, I think it would be an excellent choice, although not one likely to be made in today's political climate." Of course the decision to do this is largely a political one. Of course the arguments, especially in this political climate, will be expressed in terms of economics. All of that has very little to do with the issue of whether or not we should do this. You must have missed the part where I said "Science spending, especially the exploration of space, has always been a good investment both directly economically and through new technologies and quality of life. There's no reason to expect that to suddenly change." I think we should each be willing to invest a few dollars more into an endeavour that has always given us excellent ROI. So much for not making it personal, eh? That is an absolutely false dichotomy, an artificial and disingenuous distinction. What would happen if we just stopped using the word "Colonize" and started, instead, talking about establishing a "Permanent research and exploration outpost" on Mars? Would you suddenly be on-board with that effort? Colonizing Mars will be a triumph of science and the new pinnacle of human exploration. As such spending has always done, it will inform every aspect of our science from agriculture and biology right through to zoology with the concomitant impact to everything we do in our lives. Your opposition to it is absolutely identical to the opposition we have heard all along from the opposition to moon landing efforts to the opposition to the continuation of Apollo beyond 11 and, indeed, right up to the anti-science efforts coming out of the current occupant of the White House today. I am sure that the first person to propose the change from hunter-gatherer to agricultural living heard fundamentally the same arguments.
  17. I would suggest beginning with cuts to military spending (what you call "defense") . One percent of that money would fund the colonization of Mars quite nicely. If we were in a real rush we could also look at the US spending the kind of money on space that they did in, say, 1965. That would handle things nicely for a full steam ahead approach. One could argue that this rock keeps the tigers away too, doesn't make it so. Science spending, especially the exploration of space, has always been a good investment both directly economically and through new technologies and quality of life. There's no reason to expect that to suddenly change. I think the contrast to spending the same dollars on, say, providing full military gear to small town police departments or a few billion spent in making sure that people don't smoke pot is pretty obvious.
×
×
  • Create New...