Space exploration, should we ever colonize the moon or are we only focusing on mars?

if we can harness efficent rail gun technology then we could gather up every piece of waste on the earth and shoot it out of our galaxy. lol wasnt that an episode of futurama? either way i think it is a practical solution to the growing problem of waste in our world.

is this a joke?

the practical problem to waste on our planet is deffintley not to shoot it out into space-thats almost like saying we have no problem because we CAN shoot it out into space! God forbid our goverments find in the future that they cand do this ! Weve already made a complete hash of dumping our own crap all over this planet but heh FU$k it lets send some really nasty garbage drifting around to some other star systems just to prove how much consideration we have for future universal relations!!
We sent out a monolith with "hello" recorded in many different launguages and by mistake the first initial encounter other life forms have of our exsistence is a container full of radioactive crap with "yeah,you guessed it-us dumb humans on earth sent this" written all over it!

Make less garbage and be kinder to ourselves and our planet,before we screw up somebody elses playground!!!

Ok,ill get off my soap box now.

thats why we put a big label "Zetan Garbage"

honestly though, how bout we aim it towards a black hole? then *poof* it gets sucked into oblivion, no more garbage!

Garbage can already be efficiently and profitably incinerated in a plasma and organics can be put into bioreactors to create more useful products. Garbage can be a lucrative business if you know how to finess it(start digging up landfills!).

Nuclear power is a good way for our race to become spacefaring, however the years of stigma that have resulted from accidental meltdowns i.e. Chernobyl and three mile island and the continued scare of nuclear apocalypse has left many with the impression that fission is an evil energy source. How wrong these people are. We could already have colonized much of the solar system if fission and its benefits were better understood by the average man, unfortunatly the naysayer's have the stand right now. So realistically until we can create and energy source that satifies both sides, our space travel is going to be substantially limited.

BTW, if I had a few extra million I would be setting up multiple plasma and bioreactor sites all over the country and then the globe. Talk about a return on an investment, getting rich and helping the environment, can't get much better than that!

www.startech.net...

^promising plasma conversion technology



[edit on 18-9-2004 by Sigma]

Originally posted by Murcielago
thats just stupid, everyone knows theres 24 hours in a day, as for mars its 24 hrs 39 mins.

what? the human biorhythmic clock is 25 hours, not a normal clock. i passed kindergarden thank you very much, with flying colors.

what id like to see is an efficient conversion of matter to energy, use that for our garabage. itd be nice. toss a ton of garbage away, enuf energy to fuel the planet for a few years.

Originally posted by Amorymeltzer

a report on nuclear myths. some of the stuff is a little hyperbolized, but you get the point.
i dont necessarily mean problems like boom explode die problems. those are easy to get. small leakages that arent noticed for a little bit, that could prove catastrophic to a mission. but more simply, stuff happens. everything is perfectly safe (sector ZZ9 plural Z alpha) until it isnt. par quote]

Nuclear power is far from perfect but if you were a pioneer on your way to survey the moon would you put your trust in an untried proposition system or with nuclear power?
I would go with nuclear power at least then I know what can go wrong and I can take steps to prevent any mishaps.

I hear that americas garbage feeds half of the world so its kinda true saying that garbage provides energy.

Never mind what I wrote. I just found out it means something else.

what id like to see is an efficient conversion of matter to energy, use that for our garabage. itd be nice. toss a ton of garbage away, enuf energy to fuel the planet for a few years

problem is that your always going to have waste products no matter what we do for making energy? fission has nuclear waste, coal has smoke, and oil, and wood, is their any clean method of energy proction that is remarkably efficient at the same time? as in how will efficient is fusion theoretically meant to be? and does it also produce nuclear waste that has to be buried for future generations to get cancer off?

also, someone said that the h3 is worth 50000 per ounce or something, but how can it be worth so much if we havent worked out how to use it practically yet? just for use in tests u mean?

IM sorry but what is H3

i didnt knew to reach moon it takes ONLY 3 DAYZ

datz great but more great wud be to go there and look at EARTH dat is endowed with master brains to explore universe

Originally posted by SpaceAlienatic88
Colonizing the moon would be a great start to deep space exploration. Due to the low gravity we have an easier ability to build large space vessles that would take years to build on Earth, and we'll have a better ability to launch humans to Mars. Mineral on the moon could mabye supply stronger metals then here on earth.

This is all true. What needs to be done is corporate venture bringing money to people on Earth, and then money to people living and working on the Moon. That will kick off true exploration of space.

In the days of the Cold War Soviet commanders and their best scientists were working on a project to build military headquarters on the Moon, the Novaya Gazeta weekly reports. The paper writes that the lunar base project was developed thirty years ago and was only abolished because of its enormous cost.

The newspaper cited Aleksandr Yegorov, deputy general designer of the General Machine Building Design Bureau (the name of the bureau suggests that it deals with top secret military projects � MosNews) as saying that he personally took part in the development of the lunar base project.

Soviet scientists considered the Moon to be a very good place for a strategic headquarters as nuclear strikes on its surface would lose most of their destructive force. As the moon has no atmosphere, no shockwave could spread there and the radioactive dust would immediately fall out back on the surface without an atmosphere to carry it.

The designer also said that the USA had also developed a lunar base project and the Soviet scientists had been aware of these plans.

Yegorov said that the Soviet Union had planned to put two spaceships into orbit and assemble them into a single station that would fly to the Moon. At first the lunar settlers were to live in moving shelters and later a stationary base was to be built.

Crews of four cosmonauts were to spend up to one year on the moon. To make the base habitable it would have had been furnished with water and air purification systems and even a special space greenhouse.

The project was abolished only due to its enormous cost, Yegorov said. According to him, the Soviet project was �tens of times� more expensive than the Apollo project of the United States which cost $34 billion.

www.mosnews.com...

Thought this might be of interest.

helium-3 is a isatope that is discharged from the sun. travels through space, but is deflected by our atmosphere. some of it ends up on the moon. mining it is relativly simple sind it just seeps into the dirt. extract it, take it to earth. some obscure but miniscule amount could power a city like detroit for a year. well worth the effort.

Originally posted by sturod84
helium-3 is a isatope that is discharged from the sun. travels through space, but is deflected by our atmosphere. some of it ends up on the moon. mining it is relativly simple sind it just seeps into the dirt. extract it, take it to earth. some obscure but miniscule amount could power a city like detroit for a year. well worth the effort.

This is what I'm talking about. Big government projects to get guys to the Moon were mostly propaganda efforts. Government doesn't really care about space exploration without an incentive stronger than scientific interest. At the same time commercial development of space faces gigantic economic hurdles. US government should invest in space development so we have control of the next big industry.

Originally posted by taibunsuu

Originally posted by sturod84
helium-3 is a isatope that is discharged from the sun. travels through space, but is deflected by our atmosphere. some of it ends up on the moon. mining it is relativly simple sind it just seeps into the dirt. extract it, take it to earth. some obscure but miniscule amount could power a city like detroit for a year. well worth the effort.

This is what I'm talking about. Big government projects to get guys to the Moon were mostly propaganda efforts. Government doesn't really care about space exploration without an incentive stronger than scientific interest. At the same time commercial development of space faces gigantic economic hurdles. US government should invest in space development so we have control of the next big industry.

yes, remember that episode of simpsons where nasa sent homer into space because no1 would watch space launches? there is not doubt that public interest has to be generated into space exploration before people get interested... but how? I disdain the use of propoganda and brainwashing (e.g teachers "making" kids love space exploration). The average person does not care that setting up a mining colony would provide us wiith h3 with which we could use a "miniscule amount could power a city like detroit for a year"

But if the moon has h3. Why won't we just go there and build a city upon it. It like creating a world on top of a battery. Just plug it in and go.

Originally posted by SpaceAlienatic88
But if the moon has h3. Why won't we just go there and build a city upon it. It like creating a world on top of a battery. Just plug it in and go.

We probably would, if we had better tech then rockets.

sigh... stupid public. i wish theyd just be interesting in something interesting, like the future, as opposed to american idol or survivor 9 (dibs on survivor 17).

ps - by public, i mean entire mass of world, governments included, minus a few.
pps - by few, i mean really really few.

no one has ever really made the case for space exploration or colonization. its obviously (see example A, ATS) being discussed but nobody comes out and explains to everyone why we should be doing. and, were they to do it, everyone would simultaneousy change the channel, followed by wondering why they were on CNN in the first place.

id like to see a coalition of people (read: scientitsts, engineers, high-ranking officials, etc) meet to hash out the logistics of it, getting specific as to a plan, mission objectives and the such, but still staying relatively general so as its open to interpretation and alterations. then, they come out and have some really respected, eloquent figure just say it, straight up, to the entire world.

Yeah I agree with alot of that Amorymeltzer.

I hate it when the qeastion "WHY" is asked.

WHY go to space.
WHY spend so much money on it.
WHY not use the money on earth.

WHY dont all these people just shut the hell up.

We have to go to space, people who dont understand why need to just be quite and let it happen. and stop thinking about all the money it costs and lives lost, its not there life so they shouldn't be complainen.

The only reason we should colonize it is for economic and social and scientific factors. The moon has a large supply of Helium-3 which can be used in fusion reactors. As for social colonization due to lack of space, I dont see that happening. Scientific outposts are sure to become more popular.