Did US Astronaut land on the moon for real?

[Nominal Animal]

Colonization of space does not mean colonization by humans alone. Humans cannot survive without a supporting biome. (Anyone who disagrees, try removing the bacteria from your bowels and surviving for more than a couple of weeks. Hasn't been done yet.)

The idea that humans could build cities in space, or any urban type habitation, is wrong: even here on Earth urban areas require massive amounts of cultivation for food production alone. Add to that, we need a stable, reliable oxygen supply as well, and a way to keep the carbon dioxide content under control.

One key aspect of human colonization of space is that it requires humans to scientifically investigate how to build and maintain biomes indefinitely.  Without that, colonization will not work.  In my opinion, that knowledge alone, especially applied to life here on Earth, even if we never get off planet, will be worth the effort and resources spent.

If we ignore colonization of space, there really is nothing to force us to really research biome interactions and maintenance and the nitty-gritty details, because thus far, nature has always corrected any mistakes humans have made.  Until one day we find out that didn't happen that one fatal time, and we find out we're headed for early extinction.

[james_s]

Oh don't get me wrong, all this research and knowledge is certainly cool and I'm sure it will find value in many areas, increasing our overall understanding of life, biology, the universe, etc. I just don't buy into the "Noah's space ark" fantasy of piling into a rocket to go colonize another planet to save the human race for all time thing. IMHO it's just not gonna happen, our primary focus should be improving life here on earth because this is where the vast majority of us and generations to come are going to spend the rest of our days no matter what happens. We have no backup planet, even if we find another inhabitable planet most of us would not be able to cross the vast distance to get there.

[Mr. Scram]

Oh don't get me wrong, all this research and knowledge is certainly cool and I'm sure it will find value in many areas, increasing our overall understanding of life, biology, the universe, etc. I just don't buy into the "Noah's space ark" fantasy of piling into a rocket to go colonize another planet to save the human race for all time thing. IMHO it's just not gonna happen, our primary focus should be improving life here on earth because this is where the vast majority of us and generations to come are going to spend the rest of our days no matter what happens. We have no backup planet, even if we find another inhabitable planet most of us would not be able to cross the vast distance to get there.

I agree that the idea of colonizing another place is unlikely and many people coming along impossible. That's not what would happen. At best we'd spread somewhere and then reproduce into a sizeable population there. Nodules of humanity separated by unimaginably vast distances of hostile emptiness. Some may never meet again. The first step would be living with some comfort and longevity in space, though. How that'd happen is still a mystery we're yet to solve, but it'd certainly improve the quality of life back on Earth too. Just like seafaring has inspired many inventions we still benefit from today, heading off into space is bound to do the same. With some luck the circular waste cycle required can be translated back to the suffering Earth.

[hamster_nz]

A new planet might have mineral wealth, but without any alien life to sequester (extra-)solar radiation in carbon rich materials there isn't really anything to continue our current energy-intensive economies with.

So if we can't live sustainable here, what will moving to another planet achieve? An extra few hundred years? It isn't a long term plan. A quick spreadsheet model of 1000 colonists having 1.5 offspring every 25 years give billions before a 1000 years.

The sad but true truth is that the best thing that could happen is a plague wiping 99%+ of people.... that would definitely make a dent in carbon emissions.

[Mr. Scram]

A new planet might have mineral wealth, but without any alien life to sequester (extra-)solar radiation in carbon rich materials there isn't really anything to continue our current energy-intensive economies with.

So if we can't live sustainable here, what will moving to another planet achieve? An extra few hundred years? It isn't a long term plan. A quick spreadsheet model of 1000 colonists having 1.5 offspring every 25 years give billions before a 1000 years.

The sad but true truth is that the best thing that could happen is a plague wiping 99%+ of people.... that would definitely make a dent in carbon emissions.

It's not about saving or moving the existing population. That seems to be a common misconception.

[hamster_nz]

A new planet might have mineral wealth, but without any alien life to sequester (extra-)solar radiation in carbon rich materials there isn't really anything to continue our current energy-intensive economies with.

So if we can't live sustainable here, what will moving to another planet achieve? An extra few hundred years? It isn't a long term plan. A quick spreadsheet model of 1000 colonists having 1.5 offspring every 25 years give billions before a 1000 years.

The sad but true truth is that the best thing that could happen is a plague wiping 99%+ of people.... that would definitely make a dent in carbon emissions.

It's not about saving or moving the existing population. That seems to be a common misconception.

How many do you think is a reasonable number to set up a colony? 10? 100? 1000?

It doesn't really make that much that a difference. If the expectation is that the population will increase. Send only 10 and get an extra century vs sending 100...

[cdev]

Its true that we need to focus mostly on our mission to Planet Earth.

We're going to be here in 100 years and whatever the situation is we'll all have to live with it. We should do our best to have all of our futures be good ones.

Hamster, you're wrong about a horrible plague being somehow good. You should consider the fact that many countries are aging because people aren't having children. Apart from the poorest and most unequal countries birth rates are falling. There are big parts of many countries that were populated in the past which are now almost totally deserted. For example, big parts of Japan are basically ghost towns. Its not because they aren't good places to live either.


Also, faster than light travel between the stars is still the stuff of science fiction. We already know that the Earth is the only planet in our own solar system that has the right conditions to support our kind of life. So that means we'd need to travel to another star. That's basically impossible in the kinds of ships we could build now, because of the time spans required, and the Newtonian rules which govern rocket-like propulsion systems, even the most advanced ones. That is, unless we suddenly developed something like the 'warp drives' in science fiction (people are working on hashing out ideas like that but even if it happens it's not about to happen overnight. Frankly, realizing FTL travel may simply not be possible.)

So then for people to go to the stars would require them setting off on one or perhaps many huge Noah's Arc like ships, knowing they and their children and probably several generations would not live to see their new home, because using current technologies it would take a very very very long time to travel to the nearest stars with any strong indication they might have planets that could sustain life like Earth. Half of that time would be accelerating and half deaccelerating. What if there was a malfunction and we couldn't slow down? We would have little opportunity to do anything but gaze at what might have been our new home, colors blue shifted and then red shifted by the effects of relativity as it flashed by.

Another risk might resolve joyfully or tragically. Suppose they did set off, and a few years later we back here on Earth discovered how to travel faster than light. They might arrive at their destination to find that others, perhaps including their great grandparents or their siblings, had beaten them to their new home, and had built a nice colony to welcome them when they arrived-many decades or more likely hundreds of years later. Or they might find their great grandparents skeletons. Supposed they had arrived, set up a colony, but then been wiped out by a terrible plague. Some tenacious alien microorganism might have found them to have been a delicious feast.

[Mr. Scram]

How many do you think is a reasonable number to set up a colony? 10? 100? 1000?

It doesn't really make that much that a difference. If the expectation is that the population will increase. Send only 10 and get an extra century vs sending 100...

The process will probably at least partially depend on technology to reduce the number required and I know better than to make predictions about technology. I'm not sure what you mean by "get an extra century".

[xrunner]

So then for people to go to the stars would require them setting off on one or perhaps many huge Noah's Arc like ships, knowing they and their children and probably several generations would not live to see their new home, because using current technologies it would take a very very very long time to travel to the nearest stars with any strong indication they might have planets that could sustain life like Earth.
...

It ain't gonna happen like that IMHO. We'll develop androids with human level A.I. and send them out to explore. They don't worry about children or generations or ... you can fill in the rest. No, we aren't going to the stars our machines are.

[apis]

So then for people to go to the stars would require them setting off on one or perhaps many huge Noah's Arc like ships, knowing they and their children and probably several generations would not live to see their new home, because using current technologies it would take a very very very long time to travel to the nearest stars with any strong indication they might have planets that could sustain life like Earth.
...

It ain't gonna happen like that IMHO. We'll develop androids with human level A.I. and send them out to explore. They don't worry about children or generations or ... you can fill in the rest. No, we aren't going to the stars our machines are.

I think so too, we are going to evolve into a machine civilisation unless we get wiped out before that happens.

_{"Blessed are the children of Karras, for they are the chosen ones. They alone will inherit the earth."}

[Nominal Animal]

I just don't buy into the "Noah's space ark" fantasy of piling into a rocket to go colonize another planet to save the human race for all time thing.

No, me neither.

What I would love to see, is research stations on Moon, Mars, and maybe on a few asteroids. Hollowing out a nickel-iron asteroid (via melting it; there's actually theories on how this could be done) and then rotating it a bit to get a semblance of gravity inside, for pockets of truly closed biome research, would be amazing. And probably not nearly as expensive as one might think.

You could safely do all sorts of potentially dangerous genetic and nanotechnology research in such places, for example.

(Terminator gene research freaks me out a bit. Not the tech that makes non-germinating seeds, the tech that makes the N'th-generation seeds non-germinating: the risk of bacteria passing the gene to a wild cousin species that then passes it as a recessive gene via pollination. Everything is fine for a few seasons, then suddenly a large fraction of all cereal crops fail to germinate. Oops.)

As Kuiper belt objects (basically dirty snowballs) contain water ice, they could potentially make for great places for Earth life habitats.  I believe that if biological human beings ever go to other stars, we'll probably do so by colonizing Oort cloud objects; similar to how Polynesia and eventually New Zealand was settled.

our primary focus should be improving life here on earth

But that's exactly why we need space research!

Like I said, right now, a vast majority of people believe humans cannot affect Earths ecosystems, because it is just too big.  That may or may not be true; thing is, if it is not true, we can easily kill ourselves off.  To find out what we really should be doing, we need to try and go into space, because to do so, we are forced to take Earth life with us to survive, and find out what we need to do to keep those miniature biosystems viable. The results are directly applicable to life here on Earth!

A key misconception many people have, is that every cent put into space research is somehow out of Earth life research.  That is absolutely false.

The amount of resources we put into research is minuscule.  We could do anything we wanted in space, if we put all the resources humans currently use for visual cosmetics (makeup and such) into space research.  Research does not make any kind of a dent in our resource use, really. (And that completely ignores any returns from such research.)

In fact, if we look at past research projects, each cent spent in space research has involved an additional large fraction of a cent being used to research biomes, life, new agricultural methods, and so on.  It is not a zero-sum game.  So, if you wanted more resources for research on improving our life here on Earth, you really should support space research as well.

[6PTsocket]

We went to the Moon.

Who’s “We,” Paleface?

If you worked on the lander, you were part of the team that got to the Moon and get to say "we". I loathe people who didn't contribute anything talking about "we", but if you were on the actual team I'd say you've earned it. This isn't exactly a sportsball fan claiming a victory he did nothing for to include himself.

I worked for Grumman. We constructed a number of modules to test specific systems. I helped wire and test them. We still used Simpson 260's and the  engineers were using slide rules. It was an amazung feat considering the technology available at the time. The assent stage was wired to the decent stage by a ton of wiring. To separate them the breakers were turned off and a guillitine driven by an explosive charge cut the wires. There was no way you could have that many connectors pull apart. In testing every connector mating and unplugging was logged in a book, lest something be left unplugged. Even though they were expensive Deutsch connectors ( like Cannon plugs) with like 64 pins,they were replaced after so many cycles. There were thousands of people and hundreds companies involved. We worked three  shifts, around rhe clock. It is insulting to have some foil hat guy claim it was faked. I think their time would be better spent looking for Elvis.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[IanMacdonald]

"The amount of resources we put into research is minuscule.  We could do anything we wanted in space, if we put all the resources humans currently use for visual cosmetics (makeup and such) into space research.  Research does not make any kind of a dent in our resource use, really. (And that completely ignores any returns from such research.)"

Exactly, and that is why we should be putting money into fusion, thorium and other new energy ideas instead of windmills. You can't go into space with a windmill, but you can with a fusion reactor. Having fusion would make a lot of space projects feasible that are currently in the pulp fiction category.

Total climate change expenditure - about $1.5 trillion a year, upwards of $350 billion being on wind turbines and the like.

Cost to complete the ITER fusion reactor - $20 billion, once. NIF, slightly less.

Arguably windmills can't solve climate change either, because after decades of development they still supply only 2% of world energy. So, the likelihood of them replacing fossil fuels on any sensible timescale is extremely remote.

Success with fusion or thorium can replace most applications of fossil fuels, and deployment might not take all that long once it's been shown that the technology works reliably and is cost effective. The switch from coal to gas didn't take that long, after all. If the alternative is better/cheaper, market forces will do the rest.

[james_s]

While I'm not advocating a catastrophic plague, I'm not the slightest bit worried about there ever being a shortage of people. It can easily be demonstrated that a small number of people and multiply into a very large number over only a handful of generations. If the population ever drops substantially it will be easy to make more people.

The areas with sparse populations exist not because there is a shortage of people, but because people tend to like to cluster in specific areas for social and economic reasons. People want to live near well paying jobs and well paying jobs tend to cluster near other well paying jobs because that's where the talent pool is. Areas like where I live around Seattle have seen the population explode, it is a nightmare even compared to 20 years ago. Traffic is unbearable, housing prices are absurd, there are just way, way, WAY too many people crowding in and it is feeling claustrophobic. The fact that there are lightly populated areas in Japan is little comfort.

[raptor1956]

"The amount of resources we put into research is minuscule.  We could do anything we wanted in space, if we put all the resources humans currently use for visual cosmetics (makeup and such) into space research.  Research does not make any kind of a dent in our resource use, really. (And that completely ignores any returns from such research.)"

Exactly, and that is why we should be putting money into fusion, thorium and other new energy ideas instead of windmills. You can't go into space with a windmill, but you can with a fusion reactor. Having fusion would make a lot of space projects feasible that are currently in the pulp fiction category.

Total climate change expenditure - about $1.5 trillion a year, upwards of $350 billion being on wind turbines and the like.

Cost to complete the ITER fusion reactor - $20 billion, once. NIF, slightly less.

Arguably windmills can't solve climate change either, because after decades of development they still supply only 2% of world energy. So, the likelihood of them replacing fossil fuels on any sensible timescale is extremely remote.

Success with fusion or thorium can replace most applications of fossil fuels, and deployment might not take all that long once it's been shown that the technology works reliably and is cost effective. The switch from coal to gas didn't take that long, after all. If the alternative is better/cheaper, market forces will do the rest.

Even if you put the total global spending on renewable energy at $1.5T, and I'd love to see where you pulled that number from, it is completely dishonest to claim all of that as "Total climate change expenditure", whatever that is.  These alternate sources are providing energy, energy we need, and to make it out as some kind of liberal vanity exercise is quite pathetic.

Almost all the energy we use came from the Sun originally.  The oil we use to power our cars, trucks and airplanes was solar energy a few hundred million years ago and it took that long for the biomass that absorbed the solar energy to be converted into crude oil, gas and coal.  The efficiency of transferring solar energy into useful energy is quite low and the dwell time of 300M years makes that process pretty terrible versus, for example, solar photovoltaic that is even in its cheapest and least efficient form, is still way more efficient than the Sun>Oil process and solar cells have the great advantage of being instantaneous -- no waiting.  There are lab grade solar cells with 46% efficiency and commercial ones are following a price/performance curve that is pretty soon going to make solar the cheapest option there is.  If a significant percentage of homes and buildings had solar panels and other structures like parking lots and some freeways had panels over them we could generate 100% of the energy we need and do so without requiring the dedication of any other land for that purpose beyond that needed for the cell and panel production.

There are only two kinds of energy that are not from the Sun: nuclear and tidal.  However, it could be argued that nuclear is a result of a stelar process and that the Sun plays a small role in tidal energy production.  In summary, the Sun is responsible for pretty much all the energy we use and the question I have is:  do we wish to continue to use that energy from an indirect method that takes hundreds of millions of years, is less efficient, and creates far more waste and pollution?


Brian

[tautech]

There are only two kinds of energy that are not from the Sun: nuclear and tidal.

Geothermal ?

[raptor1956]

There are only two kinds of energy that are not from the Sun: nuclear and tidal.

Geothermal ?

And what's the source for geothermal -- oh, that's right, its nuclear decay within the core...


Brian

[tautech]

There are only two kinds of energy that are not from the Sun: nuclear and tidal.

Geothermal ?

And what's the source for geothermal -- oh, that's right, its nuclear decay within the core...


Brian

Not here, it’s from holes drilled into the earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zealand

[cdev]

I think raptor1956's point is a really really good one. I think we'd all be hard put to find almost any source of energy that didnt originate in the sun in one way or another. What that means though? It could mean a lot of different things.

One thing we should consider, suppose big volcano(s) go boom and the atmosphere gets filled with a real lot of ash. The earth becomes a white instead of a blue ball from space for a few (thousand?) years and here on Earth most of us (except for the ones with geothermal and maybe nuclear power?)  freezing, dark and dry and dying off by the billions and what little rain falls is laced with sulfuric acid. What then for solar, wind and hydro power? And humanity. The volcanic abrupt climate shift part (involving large areas of basaltic volcanism) has actually happened several times and likely was behind at least one huge mass extinction. Maybe more. I actually live on top of one of the volcanoes that was involved in it. It still looks very volcanic in places too. ('traprock') There are tons of signs of it if you know where to look.

(Even though it happened many millions of years ago and was covered over by ice god knows how many times since then, up to a mile deep.)

*Thats a good reason to have backup plans elsewhere too*.

[CatalinaWOW]

Just pedantry, but nuclear power doesn't come from our sun, but from the dead carcasses of earlier sun's elsewhere.

[cdev]

Hmmm... looking for info on that I found this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor 

Pretty interesting!

Another interesting thing more relevant to the discussion, check out the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

concept. A well thought out proposal of how faster than light travel might be possible..

[raptor1956]

There are only two kinds of energy that are not from the Sun: nuclear and tidal.

Geothermal ?

Yep, drill a hole in the right place and you get geothermal power.  Now, where did that energy come from -- what is the source of that energy.  Well any planet that condenses from the gasses that make of the solar system will produce heat as they compress but that heat doesn't last and for a planet the size of Earth we'd have pretty much used up that heat of formation quite some time ago.  But, it turns out we have a good deal of radioactive material in our core and the decay produces the energy needed to keep the core nice and toasty.  That heat is what powers geothermal ... even in NZ.


Brian


And what's the source for geothermal -- oh, that's right, its nuclear decay within the core...


Brian

Not here, it’s from holes drilled into the earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zealand

That's right, in numerous places if you drill a hole into the Earth you can extract heat and use it to produce electrical power.  Where the hell do you think the energy that you pull from the ground comes from?  Well, here's the deal...

Like most planets the Earth formed from the dust and gas and as it compressed it heated.  That heat, if not added to, would have dissipated bu now so its a good thing we have another mechanism to keep the core nice and hot.  That mechanism is the decay of radioactive material.  So, we can thank nuclear processes for are molten core and the Earths magnetic field -- not to mention the heat you pull from the ground.


Brian

[raptor1956]

Just pedantry, but nuclear power doesn't come from our sun, but from the dead carcasses of earlier sun's elsewhere.

If you'd read what I said I never said nuclear power came from OUR SUN.  What I said is that it is a result of stellar processes.  Our Sun is unlikely to die in a way to produce the kinds of heavy elements that produce nuclear energy, but the stars that do are still stars -- just like the Sun is a star.

And, as far as renew-ability is concerned, nuclear power based on fission isn't the answer.  Fusion offers a significant possibility and with fewer negatives, but solar can be distributed and individuals can own there own power generation and not have to pay a utility company or the oil industry.  It should not be hard to understand that this fact makes solar a frightening thing to the fossil fuels and electrical power companies and is the reason those industries spend large amounts of money to astroturf and troll the subject and to grease the palms of politicians in both parties.


Brian

[hamster_nz]

Please feel free to ignore this rant

My beef with the solar being THE solution is that well under half of energy usage in a developed economies is household/personal use.

Wikipedia says that on a per capita basis the average energy usage in the USA is a little over 9kW - so on an average day (9kW * 24 hrs) = 108kWh will be used per person for all uses (electricity, transport, industry, aviation...).

Ignoring storage losses (and even the effect of latitude), if the average person wanted to use solar that must be in ballpark figures about 100m^2 per person....

100^2 * 1kW/m^2 of sunlight * 20% efficency * 6 hours of rated power per day = 120kWhw per day.

A family of four are going to need a heck of a lot of panels in a purely solar powered energy economy, with the current levels of energy usage.

It isn't a low-carbon economy that is needed, but a low energy economy, and as economic activity is closely related to energy usage that isn't politically going to fly until it is too late.

Sure, solar may be part of a solution (if one exists) but it isn't the whole solution.

BTW, Qatar citizens use 25kW per capita... Luckily it is sunny there!

[cdev]

Demographics are changing too, people are living much longer but more of that time is healthy time and machines are doing more and more work by themselves. So we won't need the younger generation to work to support the old, or the manager class, to mediate between workers and owners, because machines will be able to manage themselves.

Everybody could even have a vacation from our traditional roles due to automation! 

What are people going to do with all that time? My hope is that they will learn new stuff!