You have just bought 6 seats on the BFR luna flyby

[NSEP]

10 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

And, besides, taking a bunch of beautiful people up there to Instagram the whole trip is just going to make everyone else miserable anyway. If you really want to inspire people figure out how to get them to get off their couches, put their screens down, and start living their lives.

That is why they plan on sending actual artists like visual artist, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, et cetera on the trip.

A documentary, movie, or painting really makes me want to get up and do something awesome.

[Bill Phil]

3 hours ago, James Kerman said:

I didn't know they were still performing.

 

I guess that works in more than one context...

[tater]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Interesting points here.

I personally find it a totally different thing doing something in front of a pc without any actual real world consequences or doing a real life excursion. Actually flying a plane is different from playing a simulation and actually being in a situation where decisions must be felled is not for everybody, i can tell you. The feeling of accomplishment, of success when doing something like flying, sailing, diving can't be matched by being flown around. But who am i, some people are happy with being passengers.

And that's what these guys are, imo, maybe even guinea pigs for future trips. It is black outside, every so and so comes a blue blob, a bright yellow one and a pale white one. It is microgravity with all its consequences to every day life.

Does anyone remember the first cruise ship passenger ?

Never mind my insolence :-)

 

I'm not talking about the feeling of success, or even the fidelity, I was thinking more in terms of some understanding in areas you cannot possibly do short of simulation (unless you luck into the right point in history).

In the case of the nonintuitive nature of orbital mechanics, if you have actually done problems on the subject (as I did in physics), then it makes sense. I landed on the Mun the first time I played KSP halfway through my second Guinness that night largely because I already had a feel for what I needed to do, it wasn't alien to me. Orbital rendezvous, OTOH, took me considerably longer. I knew what I wanted to do intellectually, but it was more complex.

In flight sims (I took a few flying lessons years ago, and used to sit in the right seat for a friend of mine doing IFR training (his airline pilot dad paid for all the flying he wanted to do). None the less, air combat is something very few alive have experienced, particularly gun dogfights. Knowing what it is like to fly is not at all the same for having a sense about air combat. Yeah, the available games are not high fidelity, but playing for even a little while gives you insights that people who have no simulated it at all won't have a gut feel for.

On the art front, imagine a filmmaker able to film a scifi movie in orbit...

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

That is why they plan on sending actual artists like visual artist, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, et cetera on the trip.

A documentary, movie, or painting really makes me want to get up and do something awesome.

 

[LordFerret]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

My first thought was "Who's expendable ?"

This immediately brought to mind a tale told in The Hitchhikers Guide. Ring a bell???

 

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

... it's my memory, not anyone else's.

There's a lot to be said in that.

 

Why 'artists'? This whole venture stinks of marketing. Do we really need more?

[Green Baron]

Yeah, but sims are not the same as doing, you can switch off any time and sit on a safe chair all the time ;-)

Irl, you must actually end the flight and land somewhere. Usually not were the wind is on the nose. Same with sailing on the ocean. You must actually do something, change sail area, do navigation, change trimming, cook, clean, repair, watch traffic, or you risk damage or worse. And wind and wave is rarely as predicted, at least not for trips that take several days and go over open waters.

------------

Livestreamed ?

That does it. I am out :-)

 

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

This immediately brought to mind a tale told in The Hitchhikers Guide. Ring a bell???

Not immediately ... must i search :-) ?

Edit: Marvin ?

Edited September 18, 2018 by Green Baron

[LordFerret]

18 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Not immediately ... must i search :-) ?

http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrincham

 

I think in this case, the artists would all be loaded onto Ship B.

Edited September 18, 2018 by LordFerret

[Green Baron]

Delicious !

[tater]

To be clear, doing is far better than a sim, but a sim is better than no experience at all.

My point is that if my understanding of X is profoundly better after playing with simulations than before playing with sims, then it must be some multiple of that understanding to actually do the thing.

Hence writing or films about space by people who have done some sims would be better (in the narrow area of what is simulated) than those done by clueless people (think orbital mechanics in all SF shows/movies). The “feel” aspects seem like the could be at least that much better by people with experience.

Edited September 18, 2018 by tater

[Adstri]

To be honest I'd probably just go alone.

Maybe bring a few friends.

That would probably be my only chance to go to space, let alone lunar flyby.

Edited September 18, 2018 by Adstriduum

[ChrisSpace]

12 hours ago, James Kerman said:

So which artists would you take to inspire humanity?

I don't know which categories they'd go into, but my top choices would be:

1. Myself (because reasons)

2. Isaac Arthur

3. Scott Manley

4. Andy Weir

5. Elon Musk's backup clone

6. A real journalist (Luke Rudowski?)

7. Bill Wurtz

8. Michael Stevens

9. [DATA EXPUNGED]

10. Randall Munroe

11. Tim Urban

Edited September 19, 2018 by ChrisSpace

[Gargamel]

No No, I like the Bansky choice.   Except we gotta land him on the moon with a bull dozer and a million gallons of paint. 

[DunnoAnyThing]

Actually, I don't think anyone related to the Space-industry will be chosen.
(not an opinion backed by reasoning, but it's just my feeling..)

[Superfluous J]

9 hours ago, Green Baron said:

My first thought was "Who's expendable ?" and artists were not among the top ten ...

So you're saying we should send telephone sanitizers and PR reps on the first commercial moon flyby.

4 hours ago, LordFerret said:

This immediately brought to mind a tale told in The Hitchhikers Guide. Ring a bell???

Haha I totally did not read this before posting.

[tater]

Art in this sense could be tricky. I’d likely tend towards more representational art, and people who have great technical skills. At LACMA this summer, you could often tell from across a room, and down a hall what you wanted to see. You see a face, and feel compelled to walk over and look... and it’s a Rembrandt. 

Later, we went to the building next door, and there was an exhibit of 83 Hockney paintings (82 portraits, and a still life). I walked through that in far less time than I spent looking at a couple the better paintings in the previous building alone.

I’m open to abstract art, but I doubt I’d see any that would stop me cold.

[James Kerman]

I chose Banksy because I thought it would be cool to see great street art, popping up around major cities, depicting scenes from the flight in an format accessible for all.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, tater said:

On the art front, imagine a filmmaker able to film a scifi movie in orbit...

The movie would be named "The creeping bright dots".

It would be depicting creeping bright dots on the black background. They are spaceships of other characters. They are far, so far away.
Soundtrack would consist of the fans howling and from time to time clicks.

[KSK]

21 hours ago, LordFerret said:

Why 'artists'? This whole venture stinks of marketing. Do we really need more?

In reverse order.

Yes. If you want human spaceflight to ever be something more than a costly government boondoggle in the eyes of the public, then yes you do need marketing. 

Because artists are not scientists, engineers or pilots. They can bring a new perspective to the entire venture, something other than checklists and numbers, something that a different set of people can relate to and be inspired by. Case in point - Chris Hadfield. I'm willing to bet that a lot of folks who watched his 'Space Oddity' video didn't know about, or really relate to (see  @tater's comments) his accomplishments as a pilot and astronaut - but they could relate to his guitar playing.

Also - sad to say - knowing about the arts, the classics and the humanities is still the mark of an educated person to the wider public. On the other hand, 'I don't do maths' is still seen as perfectly normal and socially acceptable. Scientists? They're either meddling with god's work (whichever deity you happen to believe in),  are in the pocket of their corporate overlords, are utterly useless because they can't give us a straight answer to anything, or wasting money doing weird stuff that has no relevance to the real world.

There's also the question of why go to space anyway? My answer to that right now is 'because we can'. Again, I agree with @tater here. Tourism is the current killer app for human spaceflight. It's something new to experience, something to remember, something to tell your kids and grandkids about. Maybe one day it'll be utterly routine. Maybe Bezo's and Musk's vision of millions of people living and working in space will come to pass. And if that happens - well we get right back to where we are now. We work to earn a living - but the arts are what makes living worthwhile. Think of the kind of things you do when you're not working. It doesn't take too long before the arts - in one form or another - find their way in there.

Edit:  Heck - look at pretty much any KSP update from Squad over the last few months. Lots of noise and disputation about the graphical overhaul. You know - the side of KSP that's done by artists.

TL:DR - if you want to take humanity into space, you damn well better bring the artists along because otherwise nobody but the nerds will care. And, as we've seen, that just aint enough.

 

Edited September 19, 2018 by KSK

[Green Baron]

Good points, almost convincing, buuuut i don't think artists will change the public perception. Maybe for a week or two if all goes well, a month or two if bad things happen.

The masses can't even afford a business class flight, space flight will always (i say) be out of their world if they must pay for it themselves. A clothing billionaire isn't always at hand when you need one to buy you a ticket ;-)

For those who want to go to other planets space needs not more artists but exploration and research. We want to be sure that things work in a certain way, with technology, plans a, b and c. Not with pictures, rhymes, music, lyric or so, that comes automatically then. Bringing them first to praise the feeling is the wrong way round.

There are more than enough artist's impressions imo, no need to add more. Musk is formidable in catching attention for some time, but lately has made grave mistakes that destroy his credibility. This actually does not serve his cause in the medium run if there is no workable technological way to make people live in space.

Or has he no other use for the bfr ? That could be it ...

Just my opinion ...

Edited September 19, 2018 by Green Baron

[tater]

20 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Good points, almost convincing, buuuut i don't think artists will change the public perception. Maybe for a week or two if all goes well, a month or two if bad things happen.

The masses can't even afford a business class flight, space flight will always (i say) be out of their world if they must pay for it themselves. A clothing billionaire isn't always at hand when you need one to buy you a ticket ;-)

For those who want to go to other planets space needs not more artists but exploration and research. We want to be sure that things work in a certain way, with technology, plans a, b and c. Not with pictures, rhymes, music, lyric or so, that comes automatically then. Bringing them first to praise the feeling is the wrong way round.

There are more than enough artist's impressions imo, no need to add more. Musk is formidable in catching attention for some time, but lately has made grave mistakes that destroy his credibility. This actually does not serve his cause in the medium run if there is no workable technological way to make people live in space.

Or has he no other use for the bfr ? That could be it ...

Just my opinion ...

BFR is meant to replace F9/FH. If it costs 100s of millions to fly it each time, then it's a great LV for the sort of payloads that SLS might loft, but fails utterly at replacing the F9 vehicles. To replace them, it needs to have a lower cost per flight for the same payloads. If it can do that, it has all the uses of every other LV on earth. If it can do that AND loft 100 tons (and a huge volume) to LEO, then it is bar far the best LV on the planet---unless NG is cheaper for the types of payloads people want to send.

Musk ad Bezos are both all about people in space, large numbers of them.

Musk honestly has the only rationale for people living in space that makes any sense to me, and it's not the existential risk line he also takes, it's just the exciting future aspect.

I don't disagree regarding why people would live in space, I can't find a reason for it, past "cool!" Bezos actually wins the argument there--he want heavy industry moved off planet, with Earth as a sort of park where people live and enjoy the Earth without energy intensive, polluting industry spoiling it. Neither vision happens without cheap spaceflight.

Regarding what people at large think, I'm unsure. People apparently love to watch people with more than they do flaunt their stuff given the amount people seem to care about "celebrities" who literally do nothing useful.

[KSK]

Sure - we’re not getting there at all (let alone at a price point where a friendly billionaire is no longer required) without science and engineering and maths and the people that do those. But we won’t develop that capability (because nobody will be able to afford it) without giving people a reason to go there and a reason to care about going there. That’s where the artists come in.

You say that that we’ve got enough artist’s impressions and don’t need any more. One  could equally well apply that reasoning to other space endeavours. We’ve seen 12 people walk on the Moon - we don’t need any more. Mars rovers - we’ve got plenty of those, why do we need any more? Exoplanets - why are we cataloguing any more of those - it’s not like we can go there anyway. 

Disclaimer - my background is in science. The nearest I’ve come to making art is painting Citadel miniatures and writing KSP fiction.  

[tater]

As a reality check, the global entertainment market is something approaching 2 Trillion $ a year.

"Serious art" is certainly a microscopic % of that, but there is none the less "art" in TV and film, and that's where I see a possible economic driver.

Look, I'm not saying this will have any meaningful effect on pushing human spaceflight past the simple fact that if done, it will be an exchange of a lot of private money, for a private trip. That alone is something.

Edited September 19, 2018 by tater

[LordFerret]

17 hours ago, tater said:

At LACMA this summer, you could often tell from across a room, and down a hall what you wanted to see. You see a face, and feel compelled to walk over and look... and it’s a Rembrandt.

I'm compelled to throw this in here real quick; Years ago I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC with a friend... the one with the spiral walkway - or maybe that's the Guggenheim? Anyway... We walked through the entire facility, it took all day. There wasn't one single piece of art I saw that I would consider 'art', save one; A painting (huge wall mural) entitled "Peekaboo"... if I recall correctly. It was up on the top floor (would have saved me a lot of walking had it been on the first), and I first saw it from down the end of a long hallway. It was a tree, at first; But as you walked up to it, you began to see faces, and faces within faces. Every last little bit of the tree, bark, leaves, twigs, etc, were all images of tiny curled up fetuses.

 

1 hour ago, KSK said:

@tater

Also - sad to say - knowing about the arts, the classics and the humanities is still the mark of an educated person to the wider public. On the other hand, 'I don't do maths' is still seen as perfectly normal and socially acceptable. Scientists? They're either meddling with god's work (whichever deity you happen to believe in),  are in the pocket of their corporate overlords, are utterly useless because they can't give us a straight answer to anything, or wasting money doing weird stuff that has no relevance to the real world.

There's also the question of why go to space anyway? My answer to that right now is 'because we can'. Again, I agree with @tater here. Tourism is the current killer app for human spaceflight. It's something new to experience, something to remember, something to tell your kids and grandkids about. Maybe one day it'll be utterly routine. Maybe Bezo's and Musk's vision of millions of people living and working in space will come to pass. And if that happens - well we get right back to where we are now. We work to earn a living - but the arts are what makes living worthwhile. Think of the kind of things you do when you're not working. It doesn't take too long before the arts - in one form or another - find their way in there.

Art, period, is subjective to the viewer, and likewise creator ... although the creator will likely argue it objective.

There would be no art without math and science.

The idea of mankind living and working out in space is nothing new. Neither Bezos or Musk are great visionaries in that respect; If anything, they're the children, or grandchildren of those visionaries.

[KSK]

17 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

I'm compelled to throw this in here real quick; Years ago I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC with a friend... the one with the spiral walkway - or maybe that's the Guggenheim? Anyway... We walked through the entire facility, it took all day. There wasn't one single piece of art I saw that I would consider 'art', save one; A painting (huge wall mural) entitled "Peekaboo"... if I recall correctly. It was up on the top floor (would have saved me a lot of walking had it been on the first), and I first saw it from down the end of a long hallway. It was a tree, at first; But as you walked up to it, you began to see faces, and faces within faces. Every last little bit of the tree, bark, leaves, twigs, etc, were all images of tiny curled up fetuses.

There would be no art without math and science.

Yeah, that sounds much like me with art. A lot of it will largely pass me by but every so often I'll see something that just grabs me. One particular (and bizarre) example, was an installation consisting of a stepladder in which each step had been replaced by a double strand of wire. Wedged into two of the double strands were a pair of yellow wellies, positioned to look as though an invisible person (one presumes a very cold invisible person wearing nothing but a pair of wellies) was climbing the ladder.

Written out like that it sounds pretty nonsensical and to this day I have no idea why I found it so pleasing - but I did.

Other times, I can rationalise my liking for a piece a bit better. I can appreciate the craftsmanship that's gone into it, or the artist captures the light in a scene just perfectly so that you really feel the heat radiating from that Mediterranean landscape. Or whatever.

So yes - I would agree that art is subjective. That Peekaboo piece that you regarded as art - I'm not so sure I would. But that's okay - I think part of the point of an art work is that it affects different people in different ways.

Genuinely curious about the 'no art without math and science though'. How does that work?

Edit: I should also add that my definition of art is pretty broad. For example I would regard speculative fiction as being just as much of an art as literary fiction.

Edited September 19, 2018 by KSK

[tater]

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

I'm compelled to throw this in here real quick; Years ago I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC with a friend... the one with the spiral walkway - or maybe that's the Guggenheim? Anyway... We walked through the entire facility, it took all day. There wasn't one single piece of art I saw that I would consider 'art', save one; A painting (huge wall mural) entitled "Peekaboo"... if I recall correctly. It was up on the top floor (would have saved me a lot of walking had it been on the first), and I first saw it from down the end of a long hallway. It was a tree, at first; But as you walked up to it, you began to see faces, and faces within faces. Every last little bit of the tree, bark, leaves, twigs, etc, were all images of tiny curled up fetuses.

LOL.

I think we're entirely on the same page here. I tend to think that much of modern art is merely an exercise in signalling. If you're "in the click" you claim to understand and appreciate it.

That said, some is still intriguing to me. We own a few abstract pieces, though I tend to prefer the more representational art we have, even if it is not "realistic," it's at least evocative.

 

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Art, period, is subjective to the viewer, and likewise creator ... although the creator will likely argue it objective.

Certainly. As I said above, I doubt I'd see anything inspired by such a trip that would stop me cold in a museum (as many much older paintings have done to me).

My own bias here on paintings, I'm certainly a sucker for a "character" that makes me want to look at them if a portrait, but I much prefer really old landscape paintings, but not pastoral scenes, towns and cities. It's the closest we will ever get to  "a day in the life" of a regular person in 16-whatever, and I find that interesting as someone who reads rather a lot of history.

I think the most motivational stuff from such a trip might be from a filmmaker, or a novelist, frankly (the latter because it might eventually become a film/show, and reach a wider audience than books).

A great writer of literature who is NOT a "science fiction" writer might find themselves one after such a trip. Ditto filmmakers.

As an aside, it's interesting how many STEM people can do fully professional level art (visual, or musical in my set of friends), and how few artists can (or do) professional level STEM work.

 

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

There would be no art without math and science.

Cave paintings predate both, and tribal cultures all the way up to the point that they collided with Europeans had art (though obviously we see what that got them ).

Math and science certainly give us more leisure time to indulge in art, though.

 

3 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

The idea of mankind living and working out in space is nothing new. Neither Bezos or Musk are great visionaries in that respect; If anything, they're the children, or grandchildren of those visionaries.

I agree, but they are actually simply doing it, instead of writing about it.

[razark]

Why not send artists?

It's not like there's going to be any science or engineering happening on that flight anyway.