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[Rant] Why I dislike Space Enthusiasts; Even though I arguably am one?
Topic Started: Jan 15 2012, 11:14 AM (3,282 Views)
T.Neo
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EEZs are associated with shorelines though, nobody pops up an EEZ in the middle of nowhere and says "hey everyone, this is mine".
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FallingWhale
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How will we handle the Ur-quan when they come to seal us under a shield then?

It's the exaggerated 'future' that leads the general populace to do anything involving space. NASA is dependent on that future to get any funding. It's to the point that the budget cuts hit the science half and not the astronaut half.
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T.Neo
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The astronaut bit doesn't get its budget cut because it revolves around an unecessary heavy-lift launch vehicle that exists solely because it benefits specific aerospace contractors and political districts. The reason it exists couldn't care whether it launches any astronauts or not.

Also, the important bit (Commercial Crew Development, or CCDev) got absolutely slashed through budget cuts.
Edited by T.Neo, Jan 15 2012, 06:48 PM.
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lamna
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Yes, but the definition of shoreline get's a bit stretched when we claim a huge chunk of the Atlantic because of this.
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Honestly we had a guy stand on it with a flag and everything!
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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Kamidio
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Zerraspace
Jan 15 2012, 03:29 PM
Lebanese seem to think they found America first (back when the world knew them as the Phoenicians), but since none of those early explorers led to global recognition or the foundation of a standing nation their exploits can be considered inconsequential compared to Columbus'. What is it that you hold against the man, anyway? He was certainly less a tyrant than Cortez, and if it weren't for his discovery your nation would not exist (certainly not in the form it is today). Like him or not, you owe him.


I hate Columbus with a passion. He was a self-deluded bastard who had no past.

T.Neo
Jan 15 2012, 05:22 PM
I'm sure Pyramids would be immensely costly to build even today with modern technology.

Pyramids are easy. All it is is stacking blocks. Hell, with out technology, we could just carve it out of the mountain and slap some marble slabs on it. Bam, a pyramid.

T.Neo
 
So? Progress can enable spraypainting gigantic images of unicorns onto the sides of mountains, too. If progress enabling something means it is desirable, why the focus on space colonisation, but not spraypainted mountain unicorns?

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T.Neo
 
That's a very bad justification, it's kind of like "people should do it because they should do it". People settled different environments because they migrated there over generations. Nobody picked themselves up and said "I want to move out of this temperate floodplain and live in the tundra".

Meet the Inuit. Their ancestors decided "Hey, this looks good, we'll settle down here and let all those stupid people go south."


lamna
Jan 15 2012, 06:05 PM
Antarctica is a much nicer place to live than Mars or the Moon. You can go outside and breath the air, look at the sky, smell the ocean breeze and decaying penguin droppings, listen to the crashing waves and farting elephant seals. In summer on the peninsular it can be quite pleasant.

Best description of Antarctica ever.

lamna
Jan 15 2012, 06:55 PM
Yes, but the definition of shoreline get's a bit stretched when we claim a huge chunk of the Atlantic because of this.
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Honestly we had a guy stand on it with a flag and everything!


I'm guessing it's called "That One Rock that's Covered in Bird Shit."

Edited by Kamidio, Jan 15 2012, 07:49 PM.
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Lol can I ask why you keep saying you hate Columbus? What do you mean by saying "no past?" I hope you're not talking about Western civilization. And if you're talking about an individual.. you know what I really don't now what you're saying. Do you mind explaining?
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Flisch
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T.Neo, I think you severely underestimate the length of the future.

Either that or the speed of technological advancement.

Possibly both.
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Kamidio
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Flisch, considering the universe is expanding ever outward, the future is forever.
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Scrublord
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I doubt we'll have a "Space Future" until we find hard evidence of extraterrestrial life, whether in our own solar system (Mars, Europa) or elsewhere. Why? Because once we know that there's life out there, there's going to be more of an incentive to explore other planets close up and develop cheaper, more efficient spacecraft in order to do so.
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Kamidio
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My rebuttal:

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Zoroaster
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Pyramids are easy. All it is is stacking blocks. Hell, with out technology, we could just carve it out of the mountain and slap some marble slabs on it. Bam, a pyramid.

No no no! Aliens built them! Aliens in flying saucers, in the Chariots of the Gods. Africans (Egyptians) were too stupid and retarded because they were just too ancient to think of slapping 4 triangles together on top of a square, holy crap - Pi wasn't even invented yet, let alone Hypotenusing and Pythagoras wasn't born yet.

Fakey
 
Meet the Inuit. Their ancestors decided "Hey, this looks good, we'll settle down here and let all those stupid people go south."

I think it was more a case of - "oh crumbs, I'd rather live south where the deer and the antelope play, but there's bigger badass mofos down there and they won't let us share the steppe/prairie with them, selfish bastards!"

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I'm guessing it's called "That One Rock that's Covered in Bird Shit."

No, that's Nelsons Huge Phallic Symbol in Trafalgar Square.
Edited by Zoroaster, Jan 15 2012, 11:09 PM.
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Kamidio
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Magoo, the Inuit literally just set up camp and stopped moving once they made it past Beringia. So it was more like "Fuck it! I'm too damn tired! I'm not moving from this spot and you can't stop me!"
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lamna
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People live in crap places because they had no choice. The Inuit would have loved to go further south, but those Cree bastards already had it. Same with the San and just about everyone else.

And the island is called Rockall.

I don't know why people seem obsessed with collating anything long and vaguely cylindrical with penises. I mean, I've never seen a tiny amputee admiral on the end of my penis.
Edited by lamna, Jan 16 2012, 04:16 AM.
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T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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T.Neo
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T.Neo, I think you severely underestimate the length of the future.


I think you make too strong assumptions of the future. Why is space so important? It does not have to be, even though a lot of people assume that it is.

When you try to realise how Earth is just another place in the universe, you realise how everything else in the universe is also 'just another place', and that the Earth happens to be a pretty special place...

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Either that or the speed of technological advancement.


But I've been trying to say the whole time that technological advancement doesn't magic things into happening, and it reaches limits. I'd like to say rocket engines are a good example- they're right on the edge of what is physically possible within their schemes of operation (and this is talking about rocket engines that date back to the 1970s, there are still engines flying today that had their first versions flown back in the 1950s), but they still have ways to go in terms of durability and run time between refurbishments.

Of course, this is still an example of why technological advancement doesn't magic things into happening: all the materials, engineering knowledge to really make reusable rocket engines a powerful technology is available today (and has arguably been available for a while), it's just that nobody has bothered to put it together in a learning curve to actually develop the technology to that state. The demand isn't there.

Of course another issue (again, one created by physics) is that rockets and spacecraft are big- if you hear things like "heavy lift" often enough, you'll think of 10 ton payloads to space as small (and indeed they are 'small', at the lower end of the "medium" range of space lift), but when you actually see a 10 ton payload, it's huge. And the launch vehicle to lift it is even huge-erer (again, due to physics, the rocket equation, etc).

Two guys who run a bicycle shop can build an airplane, but even a vehicle to lift a single astronaut with a spacecraft strapped to their back, would be a massive undertaking.

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I doubt we'll have a "Space Future" until we find hard evidence of extraterrestrial life, whether in our own solar system (Mars, Europa) or elsewhere. Why? Because once we know that there's life out there, there's going to be more of an incentive to explore other planets close up and develop cheaper, more efficient spacecraft in order to do so.


If there's extraterrestrial life in our own solar system, it's most probably single-celled. I can certainly imagine increased interest (especially among the scientific community), but it's easy to imagine it fading from the public imagination (things too small to see probably aren't very visuall exciting).

As for extraterrestrial life outside our solar system, it could be more exciting (much more exciting), but then it'd be far away... so far away to be practically out of reach, even if you could send probes to it for example (you wouldn't hear from them in your lifetime).

Researching interstellar travel in the hope of a way to visit new worlds is a good way to learn how to hate reality.

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I mean, I've never seen a tiny amputee admiral on the end of my penis.


Thanks a lot lamna, I don't think I'll ever recover from that image. :OO:
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lamna
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I've never understood those people who think finding aliens will change humanity forever. People will just shrug, talk about it for a few days and then forget about it.

But speaking of single stage spacecraft, Skylon looks rather promising. Of course being a British aerospace project, its budget will be slashed and nothing will ever come of it. Still, it might point others in the right direction.
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Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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