czokletmuss

I suggest you read the wiki entry, it's kind too nuanced to explain in few sentences. And I would brake forum rules by precise description of some of his ideas I'm afraid.

Oh, so I guess I'll remain totally wrong for the reasons unknown than And I don't agree - there are reasons for which we do this, after all. So it's not wrong to ask "why" - unless one don't know why. Once again I have to ask - why? I mean, is there a logical reason for it or just you feel that this is wrong? And if so, why killing animals for fun is wrong? Because you don't like it? That doesn't sound convincing, unlike what you are saying about self-defense, which is completely reasonable and I agree with it. I don't try to. I'm just curious why you have such opinion on these things. I mean, I'm sure it's based on something and I'm trying to find out on what exactly. I'm happy to hear that There are some who would disagree with you, you know - like Peter Singer who's taking animal rights to the extreme. And I mean really to the extreme. I don't want to argue, I'm just interested - so please don't take what I'm writing here as an attack. I can and that's why I completely disagree with this. Humans and animals have a lot in common but in the end they are different. Making them equal would lead to very bad things IMO. BTW it's nice to see discussion about whales evolve so much so fast

How am I wrong than? Do you have some counterarguments for my obviously wrong claims based on ancient philosophy? Of course, sponge is a whole different thing than a primate. And we can act accrodingly - because we want to. Because we are moral beings. But where is the source of the obligation to do so? Could you please be more precise why should we do this? I agree that this would be irrational. But why killing a wasp is good and killing a chicken for food is wrong? Or a deer for fun? Or a whale for whatever reason? Yes, gorillas and kittens are cute and sweet with those big eyes and everything but what is the difference in quality (philosophically speaking) between a dog and a snake or frog? More developed nervous system? What are you going to do with a disabled people with severe develpment problems then? But if this human was a small child in a persistent vegetative state with serious development deficiencies in nervous system due to some DNA problems and the gorilla was really cute, healthy and happy (and can communicate using basic sign system) whom would you choose to save?

I'm refering to classic distinction based on reason. Aristotle divided it like this (this is pre-Christian philosophy, so let the word "sould" don't fool you): Animals lack reason, that's the main issue. Of course snail is a smaller being than a whale is (in every sense of this word) - so? And yes, of course we are H. sapiens sapiens but again, animals don't have this rational part thanks to which we can create morality or thanks to which we create civilisation (and build rockets btw). Do you think animals are giving us rights? Of course they not, they can't - they are immoral like a nature is (in a philosophical sense of this word) Besides, you're saying that rights are abstract and are basically made up by us (I agree to a degree) but then you say that we must grant other animals rights or we aren't humane. Why? On what basis? What is the source of this obligation?

For me it's - among others - a failure during Morpheus test: But it's a prototype. The Proton failure in 2013 was much more spectacular: And there are of course the early days of the Space Race: http://youtu.be/zVeFkakURXM And my personal favorite, Mercury-Redstone 1:

Not in this week, sorry - I'm busy IRL currently.

I thought we were talking about blue whales? There are only couple of thousand of them left. Source: wikipedia.org

Animals have no rights because only humans can have rights. Therefore what's the problem? We kill more chickens and pigs every day globally than wales - and I mean quantity in tonnes, not in individuals. Besides, there's nothing which can be done with it - wales are going extinct soon, just like tigers.

Congratulations! And yeah, RL is much more important Take care Yogui!

NASA have lots of money. They just spend it on pointless SLS instead on missions to Europa or Titan. I mean, does anyone believe there will be a manned program like Apollo once was? Probes is all we can count on. Yup.

Exactly - they are building HLV but they don't know what to do with it. Moon fly-by? Mission to L-points? Mars? With commercial spacecraft build for LEO, Orion going to LEO doesn't make sense. So I agree with you: it should be used for other things. But there are no plans. And even worse, there is no money to build hardware for such missions. And without the hardware and real goals there is no need for HLV. So why NASA is building it in the first place? I'm afraid that this mainly about jobs and transferring money to the aerospace industry, nothing more.

Like what? There are no money and no projects, beside the Asteroid Retrieval Mission which probably won't happen at all.

Source: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2014/01/is-charlie-bold-3.html ISS and SLS are eating almost half of NASA budget. Considering that SLS have no missions scheduled or payload and that the SpaceX Dragon and other commercial spacecraft are going to make Orion presence in LEO pointless I'm afraid that money going to SLS is wasted. Wouldnt it be better to increase the funding for commercial programs? What's funny is that Roskosmos is making a lot of money thanks to this mess: Source: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/71m-russia-triples-price-fly-us-astronauts-space-station So NASA will be paying Roskosmos more or less the same amount of money ($71 million x 3 astronauts = $213 mln) which they didn't get in the budget for commercial flights (Bolden said they need $800 million, they got $696 million). Huh.

This accident sums up the differences in social attitude towards space exploration between 60' and new 10' I think...

What's wrong with Fan Works?

It was a job program and an ideal way of transfering federal money to future voters and big guys in the aerospace industry. So I say mission accomplished BTW doesn't this remind you of something?

More data and images from Yutu and Chang'e 3 here: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01141430-updates-on-change-3.html

:dun dun dun: In the meantime if you are hungry for moar stories written by me, you can read Crusader Kings II AAR "This Is Madness - Story Of The Crumbling Europe" Be warned though, it's completely different from Grand Tour and Space Race - no science-fiction! Well, apart from Aztecs conquering the Western Europe. But at least the grimdark levels are high

All spaceplanes have one big problem - you are taking wings into space. Which means that although you have rocket with, say, 100t to LEO capability you are going to use some of it for wings and all the plane stuff. Which doesn't make sense really, since you are just wasting several tonnes. Of course, the reliability and the possibility of reusing the shuttle combined with cheap maintenance and increased flight rate was supposed to overcome this. We all know how this worked out. IMHO spaceplanes are inherently a bad idea and a dead end for manned space exploration (I know there is Skylon but it's years from the first flight - and don't remember that STS also was supposed to make things easier and cheaper).

Can't wait Is this Neptune/Uranus?

I guess it is - we can see the plasma trapped in Van Allen belts here. Source: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01100912-finally-some-high-quality-change3.html By the way, it turns out it was a computer inhanced image; the real thing looks like this:

Yutu has woken up, folks! Source: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Moon_rover_lander_wake_after_lunar_night_999.html

Soyuz. Most reliable spacecraft ever built, in service since 1967. Decades of improvements, sexy look, rendez-vous with ISS in record time. Without it today we would be stuck on Earth (Shenzhou won't be built without Soyuz probably). IMHO so far we didn't have a better spacecraft (with the exception of Apollo CSM) - STS was badly designed, Buran didn't get a chance, Shenzhou is mostly a copy and it's still some time left before we see what Orion or Dragon can do.

I suggest Stellardrone's music: http://stellardrone.bandcamp.com/album/light-years

Thanks You really have been lurking for months? Define "soon" You mean like a sequel? Another sneak-peak photo: And if anyone is interested in supporting me getting Imgur premium account: Take care folks