vger

It would be interesting to see if the reaction would have been the same if they left religion vs. science out of it. The detracts from the point of Cosmos, in my opinion, and only adds to a concern I've already had. Pure science is unbiased, and every time you start picking at scabs, you're not being unbiased. I've been seeing this kind of thing more and more recently. I fear that the goal of science is very slowly and subtley shifting towards "debunk Faith." And while research and discovery often leads to this anyway, it's not the same thing as learning for the sake of learning. While you can publish an article stating your findings about what stars are, there's a big difference between that and walking up to people to say, "You shouldn't believe in a god, and here's why." That's not being a scientist, that's being a missionary. The "war" is having a detrimental impact on attitude, and this is not a good thing.

A highly speculative future mission? Which calls for a lot of... speculation?

Besides, if China ever gets itself into hot water, they'll still have ways of compensating. The U.S. will finally have a solution to paying off its debt.

Welcome aboard the Enterprise?

If you hire in China, adding to a problem in your own country that leads to people either being on welfare or being homeless, that is NOT loyalty. The only thing these companies are loyal to is money. But you're right, that's not off to a good start. Taiwan used to be 'outsource central.' Then things changed and China proved to be a better option. If another country finds a way to even cheaper tech labor (without resulting in a riot in the process), those companies will abandon China in a heartbeat.

If we weren't, this debate would be about the Andromeda Galaxy, and not Mars.

Dude... you could spend your entire life trying to count the number of ships that have been lost at sea.

Lulz, well it WAS China who faked the fireworks at the Olympic ceremony, and had a talentless pretty girl lipsynch for a less attractive girl who had the voice of an angel. If China gets to the moon, the kind of conspiracy theorist flak they'll get will be 10x worse than what NASA got.

Didn't they do that with the Brooklyn Bridge in the cheap Ferris Bueller knock-off film? I wonder if they were subtly picking fun at that? "Hey' let's trap him up in the bridge and pummel him with missi-- oh, err... nevermind." And.... OMG, RODAN is in this?!

China always wins at manufacturing. Even if it's half as good as another nation, China still wins, somehow. Now we can take the same kind of unfair trade practices that we have in the global economy, and apply it to an interplanetary one.

Heh, I just don't trust how fragile they are though. If you want to get someone back to Kerbin in one, you've got to make it a lander. Chutes won't keep it from blowing up.

Wow, a rally cry for an anti-religious crusade. No way THIS thread will get locked, or anything.

Competition can result in a lot of amazing things, but I can't help but think that we could accomplish a lot more if we all worked together.

Still have to get around to seeing it, but I doubt there's anyway it could make me cringe as much as Armageddon.

Anyhoo, more relevant to the convo, I really wanted to see it when it first aired, but my wife took horribly sick around that time, which gave me about as much motivation as a slug stricken with mononucleosis. Hopefully they'll do a marathon at some point and I can just record the whole bloody thing.

Could be worse. It could be the Fantas-err... Discovery Channel.

Yep. There's a 2-year span between each time Earth and Mars are closest to each other. To be capable of an 'emergency' return trip, you'd need a ship capable of getting you home even when Mars and Earth are in a superior conjunction. Nobody in their right mind would ever try such a thing, because the transfer time would be ridiculous. If you have a ship that can keep you alive long enough for that, you might as well forget about even trying to establish a Mars colony since you practically already have a self-sufficient space station with a big rocket attached to it. To have a return ship that can take you at the worst possible time, you'd be increasing the weight of your payload 100 fold.

Well I only said beginning to. I didn't say it was yet. I'm just lost for what to argue at this point because you said it's OK if someone wants to go one way, but also said it shouldn't ever happen. *scratches head*

This is seriously beginning to look like a troll attack on a Yahoo comments page.

Well considering that society in Star Trek abandoned Capitalism at some point, both because of WWIII and because they just found something they liked better, I don't think anyone cared.

Copyright is supposed to expire some 70 years after the IP's creation. Unless you're Disney.

More like "press buy." All the information I had at the time said that you couldn't make custom ships ala KSP. And I'd already blown cash on a few other starter games that had proved to be a lot less than they were cracked up to be (Alpha-stage or not)

Well for the sake of your argument I hope someone steps up to the plate then. As it is now, Mars One is the ONLY option on the horizon. And one of the only reasons the voyage is even remotely feasible is because there isn't extra money being spent on an 'ejector seat.' Perhaps if they get more funding, that will be possible. Either that, or someone else needs to give us an alternative mission, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Really... must be something new, last I checked all ship designs were stock. Must look again

Now that I think of it, I don't know how astronauts would feel about this, but I think heckling bad movies would actually be a pretty darned good way to boost morale on a long space journey. It's not only good for laughs, but it also encourages interaction in a non-competitive environment.