[krisvek]

i'm all for corporate space endeavors....i love nasa, dont get me wrong, but yeah, beauracracy sucks, and it's killing it

you need breathing room to do stuff like space travel...innovation needs room to thrive....new ideas are dangerous, but neccesary

the wright brothers werent government endorsed; i think corporate competition, for better or worse, is the way of the future....governments are close to being corporations anyhow

and so far as the "dangers" of the upcoming launch...they NEED to do this launch;  sure, if there are probs to prevent it, then they need to not go ahead with it...but you know what?  they know that, and they wouldnt do it....hell, the astronauts arent idiots, theyre all ****in PHds and ****, theyre gonna keep up with the wellbeing of the program and the mission
not to mention....when this whole space idea started, they used TEST PILOTS;  these are guys who hopped into PROTOTYPES of a rocket strapped to a chair and said "yeehaw mutha fecker!!!"
astronauts are feckin HEROES....theyre some of the bravest (and luckiest) people on earth, but they cant be scaredy little cowards....space is dangerous, and it always will be....if the average joe knew all the details of exactly how dangerous it all was, they'd vomit, faint, and then crap themselves....yet astronauts are aware of it, and they CHOOSE to do it anyways

in every shuttle that crashes, each person in it decided that it was a risk they were willing to take;  they ARE NOT victims....like i said, they are heroes, and they want to do this **** no matter what cost

(i met an astronaut recently on a visit to cape canaveral...it was awesome...i shook his hand and had a photo taken with him, asked him alotta questions....i was giddy, lol...i touched a man who has been in friggin SPACE!!!)

[EtherShock]

What bothers me about corporations is, are they doing this to benefit humankind, or their pockets? What bothers me about the government is, are they doing this to benefit humankind or some secret agenda? They both must be watched carefully.

Space will always be dangerous. In the future, it will just be a question of how dangerous, as we become more familiar with traveling in space, it will become safer. It'll probably be more dangerous than flying, but treated in a similar manner. I don't believe astronauts are necessarily heroes just because they go up into space, but they certainly are very brave. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little. Who didn't? I still want to go up there someday.

[krisvek]

ahh, krisvek, meet the censors....wondered how much language was filtered

in the end, it's all about greed, or some nicer sounding equivalent...corporations are just more up front about it

what is the purpose of expanding out to the stars?  why do we want to colonize?  why do we want to prosper?  because, dammit, we think we have the right....we WANT to, and that is enough
we do have other options...i mean, we COULD be training the dolphins, chimps, or elephants to evolve and prosper like us, or something, but why add more competition?  we're out to save our own necks....self-preservation is, one way or another, a form of greed...every living moment of each of us is at the price of the life, comfort, etc. of countless others;  i'm not about to give up my place in the universe though

[Kosh]

I guess space exploration is like early naval exploration (before Columbus) for the europeans. The sea always has been, and always will be dangerous, but modern ship designs are far safer than those early caravels (or whatever they were called).


But where the comparison breaks down (here and in a few other places), is that those early naval expiditions were much less resource and monetarily taxing (I think, I could be mistaken) than space exploration is. This is why I believe the earth must sooner or later unite to become (for the most part at least) a single planetary nation. This way a lot more resources can be pooled into space exploration than is possible under the current, divided, earth.

[krisvek]

i like the corporation idea more still...because the timetable for united-earth-nation is tooooo far off
but, ideally, i agree

[Andreas]

Originally posted by EtherShock
What bothers me about corporations is, are they doing this to benefit humankind, or their pockets? What bothers me about the government is, are they doing this to benefit humankind or some secret agenda?

Corporations want money, plain and simple. Whetever it is a bunch of low-paid Chinese working in some textile factory, or a bunch of miners in Mars, it's the same thing.
 
Governments are more interested in military and political appliances that space can offer. The scientists working for these entities are most likely the ones who want to do it to benefit mankind.

[Bobboau]

orbital elivator.

[krisvek]

lol...bob, what's the latest youve heard about orbital elevators?

i've heard the concept and all...and maybe it would work...but....from the ground into space?  that'd be quite a task...and an easy target...and...it's just....so far-fetched sounding...

not that i'm too closed-minded for it...id' support it, if they really thought it would work...but i dont think most would (obviously, or else we'd be building one)

[Bobboau]

it'd work, it'd just cost about atrillion dolars to build one, but after that, building other ones the cost would go down exponentaly, and we'd be able to get realy big hunks of matter into orbit easily and cheaply.

[krisvek]

trillion dollars?  hmmm....it'd have to be a united effort between countries/corporations

would be awesome though...but does that trillion spent save money?  how much have all the shuttle launches cost?
essentially free travel to space would be cool....i'd send my santa clause letters up there

[EtherShock]

It sounds like a project of magnitude like the alien launchpad from Contact.

[krisvek]

that's awesome, because i'd thought the exact same thing....good, good movie...tho i wish the aliens had been more exciting....the trip was cool though

[Unknown Target]

I think an orbital elivator is simply the dumbest idea I've ever heard. Can you imagine having a giant pole sticking up into space? I can see it now: terrorist attack collaspses elevator, obliterating a four hundred + miles of terrain. Or "errant aircraft crashes into space elevator"

It's a nice concept, if we didn't have to live on the planet along with it.

[krisvek]

well, if the line was severed near the surface of earth, then the thing might just float off into space...(i dont know how that would work, lol)

dont know about 400+miles...but if it was loading a fuel tank up there, then yeah...it'd be bad for that thing to fall to earth from 6 miles up...not sure if it would actually ignite though....it's not liek they use diesel

[Mongoose]

Plus, would you want to live next to the thing and have to look at it every day?

[Bobboau]

itwould have to be based on the equator and would likely be mounted in the ocean.

it would use carbon nonotubes for the tether, this has the dencity of news paper, it would fliter to the ground in a worst case senario.

it would not be that easy of a target if it was built right, a large array of smaller tethers (think square mile), all connected to a sub station every few miles. each car would grab hold of sevral strans at the same time (more than four) so that if one failed there would be others to fall back on (and arrainged so that there would be no way a single object moveing through the array could leave a car with fewer than three strands, each strand individualy would be strong enough to safely hold a single small load car and it's maximum capacity load)

the strands themselves can be conductave (superconductive if I recall corectly) so you could power the cars through the strands.

[EtherShock]

An orbital elevator is as probable as digging your way to China. Where's it going to go to, the moon, the international space station?  It's just ludicrous. Spacecraft would be much more versatile.

[Bobboau]

an orbital elevator is how you build big inter planetary space craft, it would allow industrialiseation of space. it would become ecconomical to, for example, mine asteroids.

[FireCrack]

And it probably wouldnt gost trillions of dollars, billions is more likely once we find a way to make nanotubes well.

[Bobboau]

we can make kilometer long sheets of the stuff now, there still needs to be a bit of work done, we need a more pure composit (they aren't quite strong enough just yet). I'm figureing in development of the materials into the cost. and remember it's going to be a bunch of *44 thousand mile* long strings of a rather expensive material.

at the very least hundreds of billions.