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Someone almost made me cry today

RiverOfIce said:
We should get rid of the military first though. NASA need to be reformed.

As for ninja, I am sorry, but water is one of the most abundant mocules in space. The kepler belt surrounding our solar system contains hundreds of thousand of times more water then the planet earth. Water is avaible everywhere in the universe, there is nebulas that contain trillions of tons of water. As for making it drank about or mining it, I really don't need to tell you how to do that, it would not be unlike how we do it on earth.
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None of what you said changes the facts. There is an unimaginably huge, mostly empty space between our solar system and the next. The Kuiper belt (or Kepler belt as you say) is right outside of our solar system. The article Roze quoted mentions someplace 12 BILLION lightyears away! A lot of good that would do. I never said there is no water in the universe except on earth. I only said there would inevitably come a time when we would reach a desert-like expanse, and slowly die of thirst. Sorry if I am ruining some people's dreams.

P.S. The closest nebula is 650 lightyears away.
 
i dont think we can get rid of the military as a whole... we do need some for the protection of the USA. Not as a police for the whole planet. maybe cut by half
 
Ninja, on a completely self contained spaceship flying through empty space, where does the water go? You drank it, breath it out, it will have to condense some where and process it back to drank able water. It is not like you can destroy the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Creating water from hydrogen and oxygen is very easy.

But once you store the water on board, you are in a bubble. The water can not go anywhere but inside the ship. The amount of water you started the project with is the same amount you will end the project with.
 
ninja_reject said:
None of what you said changes the facts. There is an unimaginably huge, mostly empty space between our solar system and the next. The Kuiper belt (or Kepler belt as you say) is right outside of our solar system. The article Roze quoted mentions someplace 12 BILLION lightyears away! A lot of good that would do. I never said there is no water in the universe except on earth. I only said there would inevitably come a time when we would reach a desert-like expanse, and slowly die of thirst. Sorry if I am ruining some people's dreams.
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Which is part of why I say that we really need replicator type technology. The things that make Star Trek trek work is basically three things - replicator technology to create anything they need, artificial gravity so the way things work on Earth is the way things work in space and FTL abilities. The first is theoretically possible, but we don't have it yet and aren't close. The second may or may not be possible and we aren't even close to developing it. The third may not be possible at all even in theory, but our knowledge of physics is far from perfect.
 
A.Nonymous said:
The second may or may not be possible and we aren't even close to developing it. The third may not be possible at all even in theory, but our knowledge of physics is far from perfect.
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Artificial gravity is created by the space station today. If you move a mass in a circle, the momentum of that movement will create a force that is artificial gravity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity

A.Nonymous said:
I think it would be completely unlike how we do things here just because we're mining in an environment that is freezing cold and has no gravity. Lots of tools that work here are not going to work. Lots of methods that work here are not going to work. Packing for Space by Mary Roach is a great book I would recommend to people. It talks about all the problems faced by astronauts that people don't even think of. In space, you don't even know that you have to pee because your bladder just floats no matter how much liquid it has in it. By the time your bladder gets full enough that it presses on the muscle that tells you you need to pee it's at the point where medical intervention may be needed.
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Sigh, you just can't win. For long term space travel you will have to create artificial gravity, so you will know when to pee. As for the rest, I don't know where to start. Mining will be easier in space, because of no gravity, not harder.

It is just not worth having this conversation.
 
RiverOfIce said:
Ninja, on a completely self contained spaceship flying through empty space, where does the water go? You drank it, breath it out, it will have to condense some where and process it back to drank able water. It is not like you can destroy the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Creating water from hydrogen and oxygen is very easy.

But once you store the water on board, you are in a bubble. The water can not go anywhere but inside the ship. The amount of water you started the project with is the same amount you will end the project with.
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I did give it some thought, and I think it would go toward reproduction, and death. The water in a fully formed human doesn't come from nowhere. The mother would have to consume the water as she forms the life within her. The same goes for animals. You would need at least some animals in this hypothetical Noah's ark. A seed takes water to form a new plant as well. Also, what do you do with the dead people and animals? They have water in them, and bodies can't just be piling up, you would have to get rid of them. On Earth, as bodies decompose, they release the water they once held into the atmosphere. You might not think it would make a difference, but generations being born and dying, the bodies presumably being pushed overboard or something, water begins to deplete. On Earth we have the water cycle, water goes into the atmosphere and comes down as precipitation. How could humans mimic that in space, with even near-future technology?

I suppose the only way I could see every drop of water remaining on the ship is if there was a dehydration room, for everything from waste to compost to bodies before anything was pushed into space. Also, the animal, plant, and human population would not be able to increase too much.
 
Water loss via bodies leaving the ship.... Is small and slow.. Which can be replaced by small amounts found as ice in space
 
Getting rid of bodies on the space ship would be the easiest part of all. You chuck them in an airlock and vent them to space.
 
9to5cynic said:
I think it's sad. We need to get space colonies up as soon as possible. To many threats to earth. (Asteroids, Nuclear war, sun going super nova (some time out)... etc. )

We need to 'abandon ship' - so to speak. ;)


But really, we need to keep the space program going.
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One problem is we are in a gravity well, but we need to get resources beyond the well, which is why a space station is needed. From there we need to harness the asteroids for basic material then build for further exploration.

I remember reading something about a space tower. Placing an asteroid in orbit and having an elevator to space. A bit far out, but maybe worth some study.

A very slow process, but affordable and the resources obtained from asteroids may even pay for it.
 
dan330 said:
send me into space for a few weeks with some playboy playmates.. I will give it a try.. anything to help out science.. :D

would that be a good expenditure of gov funds?
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B2L said:
Sure, I would allow you to use my tax dollars to do this. Just make sure everyone who paid for it gets a free video. :P ...
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By Jove, I think you got it. Porn for Science, the Last Frontier. All except "a free video", make 'em pay though the nose.

Now where is my copy of Barbarella, of course used only for research purposes.
 
2 things NASA proved. 1. The moon isn't made out of cheese. They even went back a few more times to make sure. 2. There is no gravity in space. The whole basis of nasa was to beat the Russians to the moon. There was no real planning of the creation of NASA. It was here's a lot of money and now do something. Not much has changed with NASA to this day.
 
I am sure that when over 500 years ago, people wanted to prove the earth was round, people said similar things.

Knowledge is power and today's useless knowledge will be tomorrows cure, fossil fuel, or something else useful.
 
Interestingly enough I found myself at a lecture today given by a NASA astronaut. I asked him how he would respond to someone who says that with the economy as bad as it is we can no longer afford to explore space. He replied that everyday gadgets we use like laptops and cell phone have technology in them that came from space exploration. He further explained that when you do space science, the majority of your work is done on the ground, not actually up in space. And then he said that for every dollar spent on the space program, it generates eight dollars of revenue for the economy. He didn't cite a source so I have no way of fact checking that.
 
A.Nonymous said:
Interestingly enough I found myself at a lecture today given by a NASA astronaut. I asked him how he would respond to someone who says that with the economy as bad as it is we can no longer afford to explore space. He replied that everyday gadgets we use like laptops and cell phone have technology in them that came from space exploration. He further explained that when you do space science, the majority of your work is done on the ground, not actually up in space. And then he said that for every dollar spent on the space program, it generates eight dollars of revenue for the economy. He didn't cite a source so I have no way of fact checking that.
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that is what I was talking about....

$ create more $$ for econ..

and projects help create ideas.. and new tech.. to do things better .. faster.. lighter...
 
ninja_reject said:
They have water in them, and bodies can't just be piling up, you would have to get rid of them...water begins to deplete.
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Sigh. Can I have burn them, for 100 please? But that is just me. If you cremate the bodies. You can either cause the water to boil off or convert to hydrogen and oxygen. Once it is in hydrogen and oxygen, you can easy covert it back to water. The ashes can be used as fertilizer.

Space is not empty. The chances of you coming across "a desert" in space is extremely unlikely.
 
RiverOfIce said:
Sigh. Can I have burn them, for 100 please? But that is just me. If you cremate the bodies. You can either cause the water to boil off or convert to hydrogen and oxygen. Once it is in hydrogen and oxygen, you can easy covert it back to water. The ashes can be used as fertilizer.

Space is not empty. The chances of you coming across "a desert" in space is extremely unlikely.
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Intergalactic space is largely empty.
 
Dark Jedi said:
2 things NASA proved. 1. The moon isn't made out of cheese. They even went back a few more times to make sure. 2. There is no gravity in space. The whole basis of nasa was to beat the Russians to the moon. There was no real planning of the creation of NASA. It was here's a lot of money and now do something. Not much has changed with NASA to this day.
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Gravity is curved space and it's pretty much everywhere. If there were no gravity in space then we'd be missing things like galaxies and solar systems.
 
We need NASA.

Why?

If it weren't for NASA, I wouldn't have an awesome Tempurpedic bed.

'nuff said.
 
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