Space

A great number of things have been happenning in the past five years. Things have been going faster. We are thinking, as a society, about space a bit more. With science advocates and companies getting up and talking, it is something that I think has started permeating more and more into the new generations. As if, like Mr. Tyson said, we were trying to create the next generation of space enthusiasts to trampoline ourselves, finally, into the skies.

I say this because it's something that's happened to me. I never thought about space much before. Well maybe on the level of "woo space, aliens, spaceships, lasers, star trek/wars, woo" but mostly never as a destination. But progressively, I hear the aching that Carl Sagan speaks of. The creaking of the bones of our society as some of us want to reach further.

I'm putting this here in aspirations because I think space is something to aspire to. Us becoming a truly spacefaring civilization is something that would strike me with awe. To be able to set foot on another planet and live there, in my life time, as a colonist. A crazy dream. But damn. Seeing humanity go from single planet to solar system scale civilization.

What do you think? Do you aspire to this? Has it left you unphased? Would you like to go to space?

Space is the great unknown to us. There is so much of space that we know is out there but we are unable to see it, to touch it, to get to it. Most people I know would tell me space is not very interesting to them, and that they would much rather we spend our time and money on discovering what's left of the ocean.

But that's just it- It's just the ocean. Eventually we will of course be able to know what all is down there, because there is a limit. That's why space is so fascinating because the limit expands constantly.

I don't know if I would say we are looking more towards space as a society or not, because it still seems very shunned. Recent discoveries however are sparking the minds of the youth. We can dream.

I'm actually really happy I saw this because I was specifically looking for a space related thread. I think space, The Great Frontier, is a beautiful place. It's so vast and expansive and we can't even comprehend the basics of it more than launching shit out of a rocket into it.

I'm actually doing my degree in space studies. Specifically in Astronomy, Ontology, Philosophies, and possibly Astro-Physics. I don't know exactly which ones I'll stick with but ultimately, I want to study Black Holes and everything about them.

We're still a level 0 civilization. Thinking about space when we haven't even solved the energy problem is jumping the gun so to speak. Personally, I don't even think any human has actually gone to the moon yet. Come up with an alternative fuel, and solve the problem of breaking through the radioactive barrier surrounding Earth, then we can start talking about sending people out into deep space.

There is always a debate whenever space travel is evoked on wether it is useful to do so considering the problems that we allready have. There are many arguments back and forth, the better ones being "The more we wait the harder/easier it will be to leave. (taking into account various factors (geopolitical, ressource based, societal, scientific))", "Working towards space/earth development will help with earth/space development" and the final pairing of "Space is so big we'll never get anywhere anyways"/"If we stay only on one planet we are sitting around for : 1)an asteroid; 2)overpopulation; 3) ressource depletion to kill us.

It is true that we are a type 0 civilization, level 0 on the Kardashev scale, and that is a problem and it is true that by solving the energy problem we would solve many, many problems alongside it. And the energy solution and the liberated ressources could then be applied to space travel.But to me the benefits of trickle down science that space travel encurs is more beneficial in the long term and easier to attain than cold fusion (I jest with cold fusion of course *wink*).

I would love to have a more intricate talk about why you think we haven't gone to the moon but I'll let it drop and address the radioactive barriers problem you evoked, which is still a problem as you say but one to which we have found ways of negating, mitigating and working around, through radiation hardening of our spacecraft components and the shutting down of key ressources when passing through particularly high radiation zones of the barriers. So they are an inconvenience more than a problem.

Doing research for this post I found this article about a company that even had a plan to eliminate almost completly the inner radiation belt using magnetic tethers linked with sattelites but I digress. Quite interesting stuff.

To finish off, I would say that space has the advantage of making people dream and wonder. That is a great motivator that projects working down on earth sometimes lack. Tahnks for the contrary post, it's nice to have different view points.

Mmh. Might make a SD post on this.