prophet_01

Since the kerbal system is way smaller than ours and planets are a lot closer, I wonder how much influence the other planets gravity would have on such a station. Resonance effects would likely be a lot stronger. Btw, do we know for a fact that eve has a magnetosphere?

That's bad news and strange. I would have expected the US goverment to be interested in getting independent from russia with the current diplomatic situation in mind. This will increase the competition among the comercial launch providers... I'm wondering if this will negatively affect the number of supported contestants or if the budget per contractor will be cut drastically. Not sure if I like a shift to Orion and SLS. Comercial Spaceflight seems to create more inovations and new technologies relative to the invested money.

Oh look at that^^ I looked it up and it rly matches with hectre. Eitherway it's also a unit that is usually used in the same system as 'Morgen', 'Tagewerk' (0,333 hectre) and 'Joch' (varies a lot, but roughly 0,5 hectre). It's rly messi tbh and those all vary a lot in different regions... Of course you don't use it for gasoline or anything else than cooking. That's the point I was trying to make. You don't need to adapt an entire systen to the needs of cooking. You don't even need numbers for that.

Well, I was rly surpried to see NASA's parachute test on the first page of a regular news paper today. But LHC wasn't covered at all during the las vouple of days or weeks. Considering I'm talking about a german news paper this is rly strange

Who says that the metric system has to replace anything? In germany we still use equivalent measurements to a cup and so on. Most don't have any idea how much this might be in ml or g and nobody cares, it's just easyer to bake a cake like that. I've also seen that units like 'morgen' or 'hektar' are still used when it comes to agriculture and the metric system has been used here for a rly long time. If a unit rly works better for certain things it will be used no matter what the goverment says. But for international trade 2 systems of measurement are a problem. The imperial system is too late to the party to become the reference at this point. I doubt that the US will keep it forever. It's just a matter of time till the majority will see the disadvantages that 2 seperate systems have in a global world. Free trade agreements are likely to speed things up as anyone involved will go metric sooner or later anyway. It's not even that the imperial units are that bad, it's that there is a benefit in using a single system.

Well, the space cabbi is a good thing imo. It ensures frequent launches and creates motivation to reduce launch costs which pushes innovations. SpaceX's intentions and long term goals may be questionable and too ambitious at times, but they certainly create lots of competition and reduce costs. So what's not to like about the space cabbi?

Depends on the origins of that hypothetical society. Are we talking about a single organisation/govermant or a tight cooperation of many nations and organisations? In that case it's pretty likely that they will jave a single goverment. If it's founded by many competetive participants the situation would be drasticslly different. Although it's still questinable if any tenzions back home would have a significant impact over such distances. The outposts on mars would dimply need to help eachother in order to survive anyway. It would also depend on how regular space flight is at that point, if there are more colonies and how hard it would be for nations on earth to have any impact on them. If just getting there to teact on a declaration of independence would be close to commiting financial suicide, goverments are not going to be able to threaten or control them much. Earth's influence would mostly depend on the question if a colony can survive on their on production and how independent they might be. It's not likely that a colony would become autonomous within decades and it's not hard to believe that some outposts in the most hostile enviroment are controled by the organisations that gurantees their regular supply. In a very, very, very distant and highly fictional future when mars could be a mostly independent economy, it still depends if a cooperation with earth is of any use. It's rly far away and regular/comercial interplanetary trade, especislly surface to surface sounds even more sci-fi to me than coloniaation and asteroid mining.

Outsourcing is reasonable up to a certain point and at some point I even expect SpaceX to do that, but they have to become more international before that is an option. There is more than language. However, you do NOT outsource everything. Development can't be outsourced and although countries like india have a growing number of personal capable of working in the space industry, they are still behind in terms of know-how and experience. You also need lots and lots of companies for high quality material, equipment and infrastructure. India isn't there yet. They will be in maybe 10-20 years, but until then I doubt we will see an indian competitor. Even then they would still have to catch up in the recovery area, which requires even more development. The bariers to enter the market are stupidly and it's a real miracle that SpaceX got this far this quickly. Eitherway I'm not rly sure that SpaceX will do space stations and infrastriucture anytime soon, even if somebody can make a profit out of it. They are rly focused on launchers and the transport business. That is their big strength as it makes them very specialised, helps with scale effects and lowers the costs. Ultimately the falcon has a very good chance of being launched a lot and therefor to actually break even. They may be even able to make a real profit on a less subsidized market at some point. THAT is the game changer.

Tanks and exosuits? Can you explain to me how you think you can get that kind of equipment to the moon and operate it there? It's one thing to get a military unit some very distant place, but operating it is something else entirely. You need supplies, fuel, ammunition, medics and of course more transport vehicles to move your more specialised units once you are there. Needless to say that military equipment is neither build to be operated in space (fuel, heat???) or lightweight by any means. It's already a huge acomplishment to get an object to the moon's surface that has been build to get there...

Isn't it way easier for them to launch a couple of nukes and detonate them high up in earth's atmosphere? As far as I know the emp should be enough to make us not launch anything to orbit and beyond for decades. Why would you need force fields?

Well the most interesting part to me seems that NASA wants them (acording to the webside even contrscted them) to develop technologies for doing stuff with asteroids. Aside from that, I don't see much to be excited about. At this point they are a sub-contractor. But they don't seem to have the know-how on how to design and execute deep space missions...

Hm, interesting. I actually wanna buy this less now than I did before watching this. Definitely had an impression on me...

No idea how you do that pitch up trick. If I try it, I either stall or mess up the distance to the run way. So yeah... gliding is not for everyone I go easy mode with lots of airbreaks and more lift than it needs.

Current theories speculate that life might have appeared first near vulcanic regions at the bottom of the sea (on earth). Considering the pressure and density of the water at that depth it should be more than enough to block any radiation. Although it's not clear how deep those oceans on laythe are and if they are frozen at a certain depth it seems like a good place to look for life. My guess is (with the current theories about europa in mind), that the tidal forces should be enough to create vulcanism and heat down there. I won't bet on the atmosphere to block all the radiation (it's thinner than kerbin's) and wether or not laythe has a magnetic field isn't clear. So the presence of more complex life above sea level seems rather doubtfull to me. I do think that the conditions for life on laythe would be more similar to europa than earth, cause it's rly close to jool and should get significant amounts of radiation on the surface. The oceans look way more hospitable. And in contrast to europa there should still be some light down there to support algeas. Btw, that oxygen=live point of view seems rather convincing to me afterall.

Does wind velocity matter as much if the atmosphere's density is this low? Also, this kind of infrastructure would be needed to build a real colony that has a chance of bcoming self sustaining at some point. Most other proposals like 3d printing everything or the idea to use a couple of dragon capsules for long term habitation seems way too optimistic. For a real infrastructure on mars or moon we are talking about thousands of tons of payload. Even if you use materials on site to construct basic habitats and radiation shielding, it's still not realistic to think that high tech equipment or vehicles will be printed and constructed by using 3d printing and some lightweight hand tools. Especially return crafts (to keep an bare minimum level of safety) or the tons of food and water you need to ship to a colony would make an orbital infrastructure usefull if not required. Even if a sufficient food production is possible, it's unlikely to work from day one or even a year after the first landing. Although it might have some advantages, I doubt that a moon colony is required to expand to mars. I'm quite confident when it comes to orbital refueling and using water from asteroids for multiple applications. However, the ore mining, refinement and construction in space seems way too ambitious. We are going to rely on launched equipment for a long time. The construction of the ISS was already a huge task that took decades and a huge part of the funding of the bigest space agencies, and it's still not finished. And even this project was mostly done with modules and equipment that were especially designed and constructed for that task. It's not easy to build equipment like that on earth and it gets even more expensive and complex to do that in space. Your proposal seems to leave out the costs and the fact the nuclear propulsion is very unlikely to happen due to political restrictions. If the question at hand would be "how to build up a large scale colony as quickly and reliably as possible at any costs?", I think this is a good strategy. But it's seriously ambitious at best, even if you sould have the support of the most capable nations worldwide. A number of the concepts would likely need a decade or more to develop and test. At the end of the day it also comes down to the launch costs. And as long as they don't drop by at least one order of magnitude a self sustaining colony seems out of the question. A usefull longterm colony would need a 'basic' industry (hard to call something basic that is able to maintain, refuel and at some point build a spacecraft). It would need to at least maintain and repair the delivered infrastructure and create a minimum growth with a reliable way to exchange wares. I don't even know how much mass is required once we have all the necessary technologies. A colony is not nearly the same as a (large scale) outpost, especially in an enviroment that requires high tech equipment to even keep you alive and for every basic activity. Anyone else lacks optimism at this point? So no, I doubt that SpaceX will be able to construct a colony. Offering the service to deliver equipment to mars or setting up a small outpost that is highly dependent on regular resuply flights might be doable. But that won't be realised by tourists' money. A true colony that is able to build up an industry is out of theire reach within the next couple of decades. Colonial expansion on earth is not the same as building habitats this far away.

Interesting. Looks like a major discovery that could be used for a number of medical aplications. I wondee if this could be used to produce relatively low cost materials that produce electricity by using piezoelectric effects. Those might be interesting for clothing and some industrial applications.

Hard to tell. Atm it might go either way. From my point of view, NASA is tied so close to politics that it comes down to coming elections. They definetly are able to do it with some more time, development and the needed funding and political will. SpaceX does need more than 'only' the capability to do it Ithink. I think it depends if theire efforts on reducing launch costs turn out to be succesful. Afterall they are a company and there needs to be some at least partly profitable buisiness behind it. Highly exclusive tourism might work for earth orbit, but mars? I doubt it. If they rly want get someone to mars, I would expect them to act as the provider of such a service. They might offer goverments the opportunity to be the first to set food on mars. If they are able to sell that idea and convince one nation they might easily find more customers that want to compete. Maybe a business could develop out of this. I wouldn't count on it, but it seems more reasonable than the idea of elon musc as the altruistic savior of human space flight. Maybe NASA contracts SpaceX at some point to help them with even more tasks. The problem here is that the SLS is also an economic projekt and they might not be allowed to use a cheaper launcher by comercial provider. But they somehow managed to get comercial ISS flights running. So it might not be impossible

Hard to believe that they will ever cut a military program in favour of a scientiffic one. Not that it's an unreasonable thing to do in some cases. I have to agree with the general opinion on the private vs public sector discussion. Would be intresting to see what NASA could come up with if they safe about half the money they spend on launchers by hiring private companies. I actually think that this could happen at some point. Not soon probably, cause SLS does have the sunk costs argument on it's side whiche always seem to decide discussions, but it definetly is worth a closs look.

Immortality is very likely to cause severe problems to a society. Even the more optimistic variants hold many problems. How many people will be allowed to be immortal? I don't think that I could accept someone that lives forever, if I don't get that opportunity. The smart way seems to be to only allow a very limited number of people to live longer, but not forever. The conflicts within a society that contains a group of immortal elites would be huge and problematic at best. Another way to go about this is to offer everyone immortality. As mentioned, what about getting childreen? A law against it is pretty hard to keep up. What do you want to do with people that break the law? Prisons aren't much more than a tradeoff for someone that doesn't have to care about a few wasted years. I personally can't think of a proper solution. Afterall this would be the foundation of a society that I'd have to live in. I don't believe that the scientiffic progress would stop at all, but we would be srsly limited by the lack of resources. I don't think that we would be able to control the population effectively. Within a few cebturies we are likely spending a lot of ressources on an evergrowing population. I don't see us realising big projects like space exploration in a world that struggles to feed it's inhabitants and runs out of energy and space. This thread is about how immortality would change me personally, but I do believe that the enviroment we would live in affects our personality. As I see it, I would be pretty depressed in a world that gets crowded and runs out of ressources. Immortality might not be a gift to humanity as it exists now. We only have the rssources of a single world at hands and the limits aren't reached yet, but they are definetly there. I don't expect this to change anytime soon.

Some efforts on reusable infrastructure would be great, although I guess we still lack a cheap launcher to do that with reasonable results. Visiting them all and do more than a flyby doesn't seem to be an option with that in mind More extended missions to jupiter's moons would be awesome. An europa, callisto or ganymede lander would be great, maybe an io orbiting probe. Think about those pictures Mars' moons would also be an interesting destination. A sample return might be quite promising. More asteroid missions would be great aswell. I would stiil vote for an ARM different from the currently planned approach. A mostly unmanned missions with the redirection of an entire asteroid seems more interesting to me, the manned examination can take place just aswell in LEO. I would like to see this, mostly not for scientiffic reasons, but as a technology demonstrator. Don't want to drift off topic so don't get too heated up on those last thoughts

Wouldn't a mostly o2 composed atmosphere be a significant fire hazard? I'm not the best when it comes to chemistry, but this should be quite dangerous if we are talking about colonisation efforts on a bigger scale. (Edit: just read the whole threat, sry for repeating) Also is it possible trap atmosphere inside a crater if you build walls on top of the natural crater walls? The low gravity should allow quite high walls. Of course you would have to constantly produce more atmosphere in order to replace the losses, but if we use a gas with rather high density I think it might be worth a look at. I wonder how tall a barrier would need to be in order to trap any reasonable levels of atmosphere. Sadly I don't have any idea where to start with a calculation

*raises a glass and fires up a rocket with a small green model straped to it* Cheers and congrats. It's been a long and ambitious way

Well, it might be handy for very specialised planes with ram jets. The SR-71 used compressors on the ground in order to get it's engines running, but if I remember corectly they didn't took those motors up in the air, but left them behind instead. Can somebody confirm this? I don't trust wikipedia with those details.

Let's see if this works. If it's actually working thid is a true game changer. Just a quick look at the potential !manned! missions in that articlr showed the possibilties. Reaching Saturn in about a year, holy cow! Also, valid data seems to be available pretty soon compared to most other interesting projects. If I understand it right, speculations should finally be over by the end of the year. A proof of concept for a reactionless drive would be the mother of all christmas gifts But it's nice to get clearance eitherway

Well... the rusdian goverment anounced quite a few strategic projects that are very ambitious at best. They also want to build a new super heavy military aircraft carrier. They don't even have the facilities that would be necessary to produce it and struggeling to finish theire current projects, because the EU refuses to deliver the needed components. They also have other huge strategic projects going that seem rather doubtful. Anyway I don't want to drift into politics here, it's just that they announced a number of rather unrealistic projects, while theire economic situation remains difficult. This seems to be another one... although more launches and especially more manned missions aren't a bad thing