Movies and plausibility...

@Setanta,

Quote:

Oh no, you're the one with the limited imagination here. The human race developed metallurgy more than five thousand years ago. We've reached the point at which interstellar space faring might be possible only now. Perhaps, though, you think of the human race as a collective slow child playing.

I see no reason why the Roman/Greek culture would not have gone on to a very advance technology two thousands years ago if things had broken only slightly differently.

That is one reason on the time travel thread I would had love to had gone back and wiped out the start of the Christian cult and introduce a simple printing press.

We might had star travel now if only………………

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

If we really wanted to make a serious effort just to explore this star system we live in, the moon is the obvious base from which to do it.

There are resources we can gather from the moon, but as a base of operations it sucks ass. It's at the bottom of another gravity well. Once you have the capability to get to the moon, you get get to practically anywhere else in the system, and we can leapfrog the moon and go straight for the asteroids.

Setanta wrote:

We have no plans to go back there, and i don't think you can expect the Russians, or the other Europeans, or the Japanese or the Chinese to be heading there any time soon. (Mind you, the Chinese could surprise us. I'd put my money on them coming up with the next "real" space program. I rather think our plans for Mars are just pipe dreams.)

Define "real" space program. The Mars rovers are "real". You still seem to be stuck on this idea that any "real" program has to be manned. I like the idea of manned missions, but it's far cheaper to do the exploring remotely.

Setanta wrote:

The saga sources are rather confused about geography, so it's not certain, but Ari Marsson probably landed on Greenland (by shipwreck, not by intent) in about 985, although i think it might have been earlier. Erik Raudi was related to him by marriage, and undoubtedly had the story from his in-laws. Ari Marsson's story is one of the inferential sources for Irish colonists on Greenland. Erik himself would not have gone there if he hadn't been outlawed for manslaughter (a euphemism the Norse used for outright bloody murder, allowing them to avoid awkward things like law enforcement). He literally had to run for his life from Iceland, which is how he ended up in Greenland in 981. The fact that he did not go to the part of Greenland (the east coast) which Icelanders normally visited to hunt sea mammals, and that he headed directly for the west coast is part of the inferential evidence that he had Ari Marsson's story from the in-laws.

So, if the Irish did colonize Greenland, and in the late 8th century as suggested by the inferential evidence (such as a 9th century petition to the Pope to provide priests for "Cronusland," the name the Greeks gave to Greenland more than 2000 years ago), that means it was two centuries before the Norse showed up to colonize, and that was only because Erik Thorvaldsson had to get out of Dodge after murdering some folks in Iceland.

WTF does this have to do with a discussion of space exploration? You feeling OK, there, Set?

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@DrewDad,

Yeah, i'm feeling fine, clown.

The moon is a perfect base, because you need a place to marshal your resources, and the gravity well of the moon is negligible. Try setting up an advanced logistics base on an asteroid, and then tell me it's convenient to either the earth, the other planets or the rest of the asteroids. (insert rolly-eyed emoticon here)

The Mars rovers cannot make any decisions on their own on a higher order than one would expect from a not particularly bright insect. What is the point of the Mars rovers if not to explore the planet for reasons of pure research? If you really wanted to do pure research on Mars, a manned base would make more sense, especially with the resources to service or to manufacture rovers.

Now, personally, i would consider it idiotic to set up a "manned" base on Mars. No shielding against cosmic radiation, so you'd have to go underground. Given that the gravity well of Mars is about 38% of our mother well's gravity, it makes more sense to tunnel under the surface of the moon. I'm not "hung up" on a manned space program, but every scenario i've ever heard that were plausible for exploring and exploiting the solar system is going to require manned stations throughout the system. I don't particularly care if one starts on the moon or not, but my point is that we are not doing anything. At all. Period.

The remarks about Greenland and the approaches to colonizing North America are to point up what i was talking about when i pointed out that it's been nearly 40 years since we went to the moon. Just because we made allegedly amazing progress in the last 50 years is not evidence that we will make any progress in the next 50 years. I could have chosen another example, but i'd already been using that one. In fact, we made amazing progress in the first ten years of the last fifty years, and since then, Hubble is about the only noteworthy thing we've done in space. Possibly one could argue that the space station is a great step forward, but it's looking a lot like an unfinished inner city housing project in a degrading orbit about 250 miles up.

The types of experiments which are being conducted on the ISS might be useful for making safe manned missions to Mars and the outer planets a reality. However, look at the pace at which this is moving. It's not as though they're on the pace that was maintained for Mercury/Gemini/Apollo. So the references to the Greenland story become very much to the point. Two hundred years from the Irish to the Norse presence in Greenland. Nearly two hundred years from the time the corpse of the last Greenlander was found to the establishment of a viable colony on Newfoundland. Six hundred years and more between the failed Norse attempt to settle Newfoundland the eventual successful English and French efforts.

I don't see any evidence that human efforts in space are moving at a blistering pace, nor that they are moving any faster than Europeans did between 985 and 1610 in the "new world." Once again, it's not a question of technology, it's a question of public interest and will.

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@DrewDad,

Quote:

Define "real" space program. The Mars rovers are "real". You still seem to be stuck on this idea that any "real" program has to be manned. I like the idea of manned missions, but it's far cheaper to do the exploring remotely.

Short story I think by Arthur C Clark dealing with everyone on the moon base stopping work to wait and listen for some event to occur and then it came across the loud speakers a noise far more awesome then the largest rocket lifting off from earth the birth cry of the first baby born off earth.

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Hate to say it.........

Despite major kinds of ideological misgivings, I've pretty much gotta see Avatar, the Hollyweirdos have really outdone themselves on this one.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Just because we made allegedly amazing progress in the last 50 years is not evidence that we will make any progress in the next 50 years.

It doesn't guarantee progress in the next 50 years, but IMO the smart money is on some pretty amazing things happening.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Setanta wrote:
Just because we made allegedly amazing progress in the last 50 years is not evidence that we will make any progress in the next 50 years.

It doesn't guarantee progress in the next 50 years, but IMO the smart money is on some pretty amazing things happening.

The smart money, huh? If the smart money had made the same prediction 35 years ago, they'd still be waiting for the pay-off.

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@Setanta,

You don't find the Hubble telescope, cell phones, the Internet, Mars rovers, the Human Genome Project, GPS navigation, digital photography, etc. to be amazing?

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@DrewDad,

Cells phones use existing technology with no relevance to interstellar space faring. The internet employed existing technology with no relevance to interstellar space faring. Mars rovers employ no technology relevant to interstellar space faring. I'd already mentioned the Hubble, which employs no technology relevant to interstellar space faring. The human genome project ? ! ? ! ? What the hell do you allege that has to do with interstellar flight? GPS navigation uses existing technology, with no relevance to interstellar space faring. Digital photography has about as much to do with interstellar flight as the genome project does.

Once again, in the last 50 years, it was only the first ten years of that period in which this nation poured it on, and made incredible advances, which might have been parlayed into the means to explore the solar system, and since the last Apollo missions, the space program has simply re-used existing technology. The space shuttle was based on early 1960s designs which were modified and refined--the aeronautical engineers who did the sub-space X1 through X15 aircraft were anxious to stay in the game. What they came up with was eventually modified to produce the space shuttle, and the prototype Enterprise was being built while the last moon mission was on its way home. Enterprise flew for the first time more than 30 years ago. The space station gets its passengers from the shuttle, which has become a glorified taxi where you don't have to tip the driver, and it's big payloads come up on Russian booster rockers which were designed more than 40 years ago, and are now built as a part of a vast pork barrel project to keep the Russian space program on life support.

Nothing new in almost 40 years, and nothing which has practical application for interstellar flight, and definitely nothing new in the kitchen.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Cells phones use existing technology with no relevance to interstellar space faring. The internet employed existing technology with no relevance to interstellar space faring. Mars rovers employ no technology relevant to interstellar space faring. I'd already mentioned the Hubble, which employs no technology relevant to interstellar space faring. The human genome project ? ! ? ! ? What the hell do you allege that has to do with interstellar flight? GPS navigation uses existing technology, with no relevance to interstellar space faring. Digital photography has about as much to do with interstellar flight as the genome project does.

You seem to perseverate on one issue rather than actually reading what I posted.

I didn't say interstellar flight in 50 years; I said amazing things in 50 years, and gave examples of amazing things that have happened in the last 30 years or so.

I think interstellar flight is at least 100 years, more likely 200 years away.

Your post is tantamount to asking in 1910 what steam locomotives, or radio, or transistors, or smelting titanium have to do with rocket ships, which is just silly.

I suppose you're going to ask what space tourism, and the privatization of space flight, has to do with interstellar flight, next.

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@DrewDad,

Next you're going to rant about how they didn't have transistors in 1910....

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I'm not ranting about anything--seems to me that you're projecting your attitude on me. You're the one who has been ranting about amazing advancements which just aren't in the pipe line. The point is that space programs are largely in stasis right now, so i don't consider your claim that we will be space faring in interstellar space in 200 years to be a very likely scenario. Too bad, so sad.

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@Setanta,

Correction: manned programs are in stasis. Unmanned programs are proceeding quite nicely.

Of course, you completely ignore the private enterprises seeking to explore space for profit.

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I'm not ignoring them, i'm just pointing out that there's nothing on the horizon right now in the way of "amazing advancements" for interstellar space faring. You claimed we would likely see that in 200 years, and i'm expressing my skepticism, based on the lack of any significant development in that direction in anyone's space programs (including private ventures), and based on the human race's historical record on exploiting new information and superior technology.

I mentioned the Norse for a specific reason. Their ships were technologically superior to anything anyone else was using at the time, and would remain so for centuries. Their knowledge of the geography of the western reaches of the North Atlantic was superior to anyone else's, and that was true for centuries to come. But it didn't mean squat when it came to Europeans actually exploiting either technology or information. The ships Columbus sailed on were inferior to the Norse knorrir, and his knowledge of the western Atlantic was inferior to that possessed by the Norse. (In fact, he visited Iceland fifteen years before he finally sailed west, and apparently dismissed what he learned as irrelevant to his perfervid belief that the far east was just over the western horizon. He went to his grave believing that he had reached the East Indies, which is why he called the inhabitants Indians.)

If history can be used for a guide, and it usually can, there is no reason to expect to see interstellar space faring unless and until someone sees a profit in it. Ferdinand and Isabella didn't stick their necks out, they didn't spend a dime. They seized the ships they gave Columbus from private owners who was basically screwed, sorry 'bout your luck. They were not willing to actually fork over any cash of their own until he came back with a little bit of gold, and it started to look like a good investment. That story about that blond bimbo Isabella pawning her jewels is bullshit. She was pretty tight with a dollar, and had been for the many years she spent driving the Moors and the Jews out of Spain. Voyages of exploration weren't high on her agenda, and if they couldn't pay for themselves, they didn't get done.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

the Norse

The problem with your example is that technology allows us a lot more leeway (if I may use a sailing term) in how we spend our time and capital than folks have had, well, ever.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Setanta wrote:
the Norse

The problem with your example is that technology allows us a lot more leeway (if I may use a sailing term) in how we spend our time and capital than folks have had, well, ever.

The problem with your understanding of the examples i have used is that none of that matters unless the powers that be decide to exploit those advantages, and the historical record, including the last 40 years, suggests that it will be unlikely unless and until someone sees a profit in it.

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@Setanta,

And you're ignoring the work of the people who do see a profit in it. Most of whom are folks that got extremely wealthy due to the Internet, and are leveraging that wealth to make privatized space flight a reality.

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You want to address everything but the subject at hand. The topic is movies and plausibility. I remarked that movie scenarios that involve thousands of people crossing interstellar space to attack someone else are implausible. First Tsar, and then you jumped on that. You offered a Mars mission as an example, which would not involve either thousands of people or interstellar flight; and you offered Voyager as an example, which is not a manned mission. Then you came up with your claim that we'd be doing interstellar flight in probably 200 years. I expressed my skepticism, and in the course of arguing that, you made a sneer about my not understanding the extent and the age of the cosmos (an allegation having no basis, and for which you offered no evidence). In fact, the vast distances involved in interstellar space, and the necessarily long time to cross them, in human terms, even at significant fractions of light speed, simply argue in favor of the proposition that dealing with microgravity and cosmic radiation means enormous expenditures, probably prohibitive expenditures, of energy and resources.

Since then, you've done everything you could to distract the discussion from the topic of the plausibility of movies, and especially my objection to the scenario of thousands of people crossing interstellar space. Your current example does not at all address the issue of interstellar space faring, nor the gargantuan expenditures which would be imposed on such an effort by the necessity of dealing with microgravity and cosmic radiation for long periods of time--the latter condition being imposed by the vary expanse of the cosmos to which you referred.

If you want to attempt to make this a discussion of your happy horseshit, pie in the sky hopes for space faring in the foreseeable future, help yourself. I won't be joining you though for three reasons--one, it's not germane to the thread topic; two, it's not germane to the objection of implausibility which i raised against the proposition of thousands of people crossing interstellar space to attack someone; and three, you haven't advanced a single, solid piece of evidence to the effect that anyone is working to achieve interstellar flight with a reasonable prospect of success within 200 years. Talking about the possibility of amazing advances in the near future doesn't constitute evidence of anything other than your prejudice in favor of an unsubstantiated proposition.

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@DrewDad,

Quote:

And you're ignoring the work of the people who do see a profit in it. Most of whom are folks that got extremely wealthy due to the Internet, and are leveraging that wealth to make privatized space flight a reality.

Hope you're right about that. The government hasn't done much better with space than it does with other things.

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Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee . . .

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Movies and plausibility...

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