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AngelLestat, all things considered, unless we tackle fusion, solar will probably ultimately win out. It may not be with the kind of solar cells we're accustomed to though. Eventually we'll probably be doing all of this with bioengineering. Solar cells will be 'alive' and won't even need maintenance because they can heal themselves.

That depends on the glass. Still doesn't mean I think it's feasible, but I see no reason to assume that we can't produce a . Heck, if we had infinite resources, we could make the whole bloody thing out of diamond.

Have they specifically said such a road would have no grooves in it? I can't fathom anyone would have overlooked the problems with making a road surface as slick as ice. Technically there's no problem with giving the road some traction. This could easily be done with a prism-like pattern (like plastic reflectors). It doesn't matter if the light is diffracted as long as it still gets sent where it needs to. Though, that still doesn't solve the problem as to how to keep the darned thing clean. Have fun getting the dust out.

Is this a variant of "Our world is a simulation?"

http://wallacegsmith.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/will-alcubierre-be-the-real-worlds-cochrane-after-all/ The one I really want though is going to be hard to pull up. I first heard it in a youtube vid where Miguel talked about the inspiration. More or less... There's a reason things like this are done. Both now and in the past. Sadly, it's something we need MORE of in the modern age. People no longer look to the future. Speculative space art was all over the place at the time space interest was at its peak. This is probably not a coincidence. Who cares if Flash Gordon rockets and Mars hotels are unrealistic if they can get the general public excited? Sometimes you need to show people the end result of centuries of development, rather than just show how we're going to get to that point. Realistic or not, hope is a necessity.

Wow, I'm this close to adding a poll, asking what the prefix on this ship is.

USS is not what it says. And comeon, you really think NASA wouldn't consider giving it that name? The Alcubierre drive concept wouldn't even be around were it not inspired by Star Trek.

http://io9.com/heres-nasas-new-design-for-a-warp-drive-ship-1588948192?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

That's been done already, actually.

Not sure if I have personally, but it's certainly in our nature (at least until "intelligent society tells us how stupid it is). Children try to directly talk animals all the time. That may be another sign of our inherent curiosity. Either way it's interesting that our younglings have an almost natural urge to try communicating with other species. Granted, all I had to play with was ants, and mostly I just tried to blast them with magnified sunlight. If I'd had access to dolphins though? Things probably would have been pretty interesting.

It's not the anti-science that's the issue. I doubt many religious people WEREN'T interested in what NASA was doing during its golden age. Really the only places that science and religion clash are with issues of origins. Origin of the universe and the origin of humans. Not much else is an issue, and certainly not space travel. In the eyes of the devout, space is a testament to the majesty of God's brilliance. They WANT to see that. It's not religious conservatism that NASA has to defeat. It's the stupid diversions that everyday television has to offer. Yeah, thought this many times myself. There was one thread I posted a month ago or so that on any other forum would have been a flamefest within the blink of an eye. 5 pages in, nobody was ripping each others' heads off. It got locked anyway.

Isn't curiosity sort of a prerequisite for developing a civilization? Without experimentation (let's see what happens when I bonk this skull with a femur), the development of technology can't happen. Eventually they would wonder if there were other sentient life forms. Doesn't even matter if they 'want to talk to us.' Whether they're friendly, warlike, or indifferent, they'd still probably want to know if we were there at all.

It'd be cheaper in the long-run. A ship assembled in space that is never meant to be anything more than a 'ferry' between destinations. It never lands, it only deploys landers. The only things you'd ever need to send once it was complete, was resources and people. That would require far less energy than to launch an entirely new ship every time you want to do something.

Well I may not have gotten the answer to the OT, but I know the bear is white.

I think that's even more imperative now than it was in the 60's. NASA needs to adapt to modern trends to a certain degree, without betraying its core values in the process. We're living in the age of Hollywood Celebrities. That, unfortunately, seems to be America's moral compass now. In the days of the space race, politicians had that job. Politicians didn't just decide what direction the nation should go. They had the ability to shape our values. That job has now been handed over to the likes of Kim Kardashian. But at the time, all it took was for Kennedy to say, "We're going to the moon," and everyone was all for it. That kind of thing could never happen today. No matter what, we'll have a divided America on the issue, split 50/50 down the middle. But some things could help, and NASA DEFINITELY needs to find some personalities who can appeal to the People in the manner that a Celeb could. Typically the more eccentric, the better, but that doesn't mean they have to be dimwits. We've had people like Sagan and Dawkins who could generate a lot of buzz, but more recently, you have Bill Nye, and he got his start by acting like a bit of a kook. But it worked, and now he's one of the best spokespeople science has. If/when we start working towards another huge space mission comparable to Apollo, it would do NASA a lot of good to find astronauts who don't only know their stuff, but also have charisma, and know how to entertain. And if they can't find people who naturally know how to entertain, TEACH them. If we have astronauts who people actually enjoy watching and listening to, people will WANT to see THEM go to another planet, asteroid, etc.

AFAIK, America is about the ONLY place that has given cartoons the stigma of being "just for kids."

I can't even be certain what the intent is. Should "irresistible" be interpreted as something that one must automatically gravitate towards? If so, I look at it as a scenario involving magnets. The irresistible force would get pulled to the immovable object. That doesn't really define what "prevail" is though. Because prevail would seem to imply that one of the two 'parties' would be forced to act outside of its typical nature. In my scenario, neither actually loses. Nothing in the phrase, "irresistible force," implies that it cannot be made to bend to the will of something else.

Well now wouldn't that be irony. Not that we'd ever live long enough to prove it, but if it turned out that we were actually the only planet in the universe that contained life... heh. With the amount of dice rolling that has gone on with the near infinite number of stars out there, it'd be sort of ironic if it was just us. The birth of life, an unrepeatable event, gives rise to a creature which states that if something can't be repeated, then it is likely false.

Hmm... could we make an appeal to congress based on that? A new means of defense from our enemies: Get the heck out of range.

Natural selection would have probably eliminated it though. Pausing to wonder if running from a lion is actually the right decision (even if it's only for a microsecond) would not give such a human a good chance at survival.

And as this thread continues, examples of why a bunch of us said this is such a great movie. Everyone is now debating different points. The elements that are not handed to us on a silver platter and are left to conjecture, are what allows a story to continue to thrive, long after it's been absorbed.

DJEN, just because I'm having one of my brief burst of super-villainy, I need to point out that Pluto is not a planet.

Maybe you DID, and THAT'S what wiped you out...

Xeno, that was just mean. They do not screw up nucle... ....crap.

The question though is, will the private sector have any interest in exploring space just for the sake of knowledge? Or only when they think they can turn a huge profit from doing it? What I would much rather see happen is a hybrid of NASA and Corporation. Then they would have a lot more freedom to look for ways to earn money, besides what basically amounts to charity. As it stands now, I don't think NASA can do a lot of things that a business can. This is similar to what is choking the life out of the USPS right now. I've thought of a lot of cool things that NASA could do (if they were allowed to) in order to supplement their funding. And I'm sure a lot of other folks around here have as well.