Nathair
-
Posts
387 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Developer Articles
KSP2 Release Notes
Bug Reports
Posts posted by Nathair
-
-
2 hours ago, kunok said:
Both are bases because the respective governments wants to have rights in the territories. Still both are temporary outposts for the inhabitants, they allow them to be with their families with is nice, but is not a permanent living place, so they are not colonies.
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?
2 hours ago, kunok said:How many of that buildings are done from local materials? They are made from supplies from outside, all looks like prebuilt modules, all needed in that station come from outside.
So... what? If a building uses local material it becomes a colony? Is that your new definition/objection?
2 hours ago, kunok said:A research station has nothing to do with a colony, it doesn't have any line. a research station won't have capability of manufacturing new modules.
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.
2 hours ago, kunok said:In real world we have limited resources. Are we speculating in a unlimited resources for space related programs?
Finite, perhaps but "limited" has a connotation of scarcity which simply does not apply here. We have more than enough resources for these programs.
-
1 minute ago, razark said:
Personally, I've never really looked at the history of NACA. Did von Braun actually work for that group?
-
4 minutes ago, razark said:
Many of the scientists that began work on many of the major rocket systems of the late 1940s and 1950s were brought over by Operation Paperclip, but not all. Nor were they founders of NASA. That would be the U.S. government. The Germans were working for the Army, but were later brought over to NASA.
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.
-
2 hours ago, ADreamerwithinADream said:
it shows very clearly that it is a military organisation.
No it doesn't. NASA is intentionally and specifically a non-military organization officially in contrast with DARPA which was created for military purposes.
-
11 minutes ago, kunok said:
McMurdo is another different thing that the A-S station, but is still only a station, and it only have 250 people in winter. They are heavily dependent of supplies. And you are the only reference I can search that station had kids and schools.
Check out Villa Las Estrellas and Esperanza Base.
11 minutes ago, kunok said:That isru is for consumables, is simple and overall makes the required total mass from earth smaller. A colony will need to be able to make new installations. The building and manufacturing installations for that will be bigger, more expensive and the results worse than just sending another research station
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?
17 minutes ago, kunok said:Why we should invest in a Mars colony instead of everything else?
Instead? Who said anything about instead?
-
41 minutes ago, VincentS said:
Prospective often fails, but let's try anyway.
I'm not sure what that sentence means. You mean that things don't always work out the way we intend?
42 minutes ago, VincentS said:I think that Mars colonization will occur only once there is some hope for any kind of ROI.
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?
-
33 minutes ago, ExtremeSquared said:
All biomes contain biological life by definition.
Ahh, so you're just poking a bit of fun at Squad's (mis)use of the word "Biome". Fair enough.
-
2 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:
Every single body in the Kerbal system contains already contains biological life according to the game.
Eh? I must have missed that.
-
1 minute ago, kunok said:
This part won't be done in a research station, a research station won't look to be self sustainable.
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)?
5 minutes ago, kunok said:Antartica base is an outpost in a barren land, and yes if they grow to be selfsustainable it would be a village, but they are not even close to that, you are the one oversimplifying.
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?
-
2 hours ago, ADreamerwithinADream said:
Maybe, maybe not. Please explain.
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.
-
3 minutes ago, kunok said:
The "lets find out" phase goes before the colonization phase, and will start with mice reproduction experiments, not with humans.
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?
6 minutes ago, kunok said:But then is not a colony. A permanent Mars base without kids and without old people is just a research base or even if its ever done a mining outpost. Like here the Antarctica research station or an oil rig, they are not villages.
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?
-
4 minutes ago, Xeldrak said:
Why does this thread have 9 pages?!
Why did it have 1?
-
2 hours ago, MalevolentNinja said:
No FAR, yes to DRE.
Is there a valid 1.2.x DRE?
-
3 hours ago, cratercracker said:
The only place where metals form is supernovas and star cores. So Moho is filled with metals.
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.
-
11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:
Researchers don't self-replicate in situ. Colonists do.
Neither of those is necessarily true (nor necessarily bad.)
11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:It would be the last triumph of science. As all scientific funds would be depleted for several centuries more.
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.
11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:Looks like the only difference between a Earth zoo, a Moon zoo and a Mars zoo is different gravity.
Um, zoology is not the study of zoos.
11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:Spending money in Sahara terraforming would return even more
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... )
3 hours ago, kunok said:A colony needs for example (in order per age) neonatals units, pediatrics, kindergarden, schools, institutes, and nursing homes. Nothing of that is need in a permanent habited research station.
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.
3 hours ago, kunok said:And don't forget that we don't know if mars gravity is good enough to keep healthy a human in the long term, and we even know less if a human can be born and raised in that gravity
"We don't know" is an invitation to "Let's find out!" not an excuse for "Let's not try!"
-
12 hours ago, Frybert said:
First human produced spacecraft maybe.
No, I don't think that needs a qualifier.
-
45 minutes ago, magnemoe said:
One soviet moon probe ended up as first object in solar orbit as they missed moon
I dunno about the first object, but it was the first spacecraft.
-
3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:
You claimed that we should colonize Mars "for fun".
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.
3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:Given the cost, the judgement call of "whether or not we should" colonize Mars has to be motivated. You haven't provided any motivations, because there aren't any.
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."
3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:The only purpose of sending humans to Mars is to learn how to keep humans alive on Mars.
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.
3 hours ago, Nibb31 said:Again, science and exploration provide tangible benefits, and we should pursue those goals. Colonization provides zero benefits.
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.
-
8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:
It all comes down to economics and politics, whether you like it or not.
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.
8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:But again, why ? Why would the US government spend money on colonization of Mars instead of any other policies that would produce immediate benefits to the American people. And why would any government ?
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.
8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:There is no political, social, or economical rationale for pushing the agenda of colonization of Mars, other than your own personal entertainment.
So much for not making it personal, eh?
8 hours ago, Nibb31 said:Did I say anywhere that I was against science and exploration? I'm believe that colonization is pointless, not exploration.
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.
-
4 hours ago, Allocthonous said:
If you have advanced tweakables enabled (and maybe if you don't, I haven't checked) there should be an option when you right click on the part in the VAB to disable the shroud.
"Solved" it for me.
-
Did it look like this?
-
16 hours ago, Nibb31 said:
So what programs and policies do you strip to fund your personal pipe dream? Politics is about decisions. Deciding is renouncing. So what do give up? Education? Roads? Clean air? Jobs? Research? Energy? Defense? Healthcare?
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.
16 hours ago, Nibb31 said:one could argue that most of the G20 countries you mention actually don't spend enough money to protect themselves from threats.
One could argue that this rock keeps the tigers away too, doesn't make it so.
16 hours ago, Nibb31 said:But of course, some expenditures are more beneficial to the population than others.
You think, but you still haven't given a single rational reason why.
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.
-
19 hours ago, Nibb31 said:
I disagree. I think throwing money and resources at a pointless project is a waste.
In fact, the "mind-boggling" expense isn't actually all that mind-boggling. When the GDP of the g20 is seventy five trillion dollars a few billion dollars towards Mars isn't "mind-boggling" huge it's "found under the couch cushions" trivial. What is actually mind boggling is spending six hundred billion dollars a year on the military of one nation while simultaneously denouncing spending a fraction of that amount on interplanetary colonization as stupidly throwing "mind-boggling" amounts of money away. What is also important is that the money "thrown away" on colonization isn't "thrown away" at all. I don't just mean that in the sense that we have always, always received excellent returns on our investments in space. (Which is quite true.) I mean that the money spent on colonizing Mars would be spent not somehow destroyed. We aren't talking about taking the money to Mars and burying it in the red sand, forever lost to the world economy, we're talking about paying engineers and manufacturers and researchers etc. All in all, I think it would be an excellent choice, although not one likely to be made in today's political climate.
-
On 2017-02-09 at 1:39 PM, Damien_The_Unbeliever said:
a lot of people seem to believe that adding options/checkboxes to software is "free" when in fact it's the opposite - it either adds to the testing costs or it produces more unique combinations that aren't tested.
I don't think it's free, I think it's worth it. Big difference.
Moral & Technological Problems with Mars Colonization
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
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?