The Shuttle/ISS, and manned spaceflight in general

CivBase wrote:Dude... we can make Halo!

Much bigger, actually.

This thing was big enough to encircle the earth, 100 km above the equator.

Zaki90 wrote:Overpopulation is not the problem. Earth will find its balance.

Colonization is needed for resources and land. But colonization should not be achieved until after the world is united under the UN because then everyone is going to rushing to Mars trying to get whatever land there is.

Then we have a Mars wars. And until we terraform Mars enough to be able to support planting, we have a massive famine wars. And food will be hundreds of dollars on Mars due to the cost of transporting it there.

I call bullocks.
Not just because of the UN bull, but also because of the sheer difficulty in getting to Mars. That combined with automated construction SHOULD allow us to construct biodomes for farming and living space.

Rasq'uire'laskar wrote:

CivBase wrote:Dude... we can make Halo!

Much bigger, actually.

This thing was big enough to encircle the earth, 100 km above the equator.

Zaki90 wrote:Overpopulation is not the problem. Earth will find its balance.

Colonization is needed for resources and land. But colonization should not be achieved until after the world is united under the UN because then everyone is going to rushing to Mars trying to get whatever land there is.

Then we have a Mars wars. And until we terraform Mars enough to be able to support planting, we have a massive famine wars. And food will be hundreds of dollars on Mars due to the cost of transporting it there.

I call bullocks.
Not just because of the UN bull, but also because of the sheer difficulty in getting to Mars. That combined with automated construction SHOULD allow us to construct biodomes for farming and living space.

How is it hard to get to Mars?

I see the biodomes, but those would cost millions. Also, the plants need water. Frozen ice doesn't help you very long.

actually in the book One Day on Mars they used Geodesic domes that encompass an entire city. It was really effective until the giant supercarrier crashed into part of it and broke the seal.

Rasq'uire'laskar wrote:
As for overpopulation: It ain't going to happen for a while. Sure, India needs to be hit with a Co60 nuke, but most of our population problems can be cured with better farming techniques. Oil? Switch to electric and start drilling at home. Energy? Nuclear reactors.

Fission reactors won't last us long. Ignoring the HUGE initial costs of building something like 100,000 nuclear energy plants (each costing what? A billion dollars?) the world wide uranium supply would be quickly depleted. Fusion plants would last us a LOOOOOOOOOONG time, but we're not capable of that, and won't be before it's too late.

Hydroelectric and Wind energy won't ever make up for a large percentage of power. In order for solar energy to carry us, we'd need a RIDICULOUS land area to be taken up by them , which would require an enormous amount of money and a pretty huge feat of engineering. Hydrogen is great, but it's still inefficient, and we'd need something like 30 years to perfect it.

The world runs on oil and oil is running out. Sure there's a hell of a lot of oil in the ocean, but we need time to figure out how to drill it. Saudi Arabia, Alaska, and parts of Russia hold the last major supplies of oil these days, and they have reached peak discovery. Pretty soon, production levels world wide are gonna reach their peak... and it's all downhill from there.

Wars will of course be fought to secure those last major reserves, but they won't last us long.

We get EVERYTHING from oil. Gasoline, electricity, industry, plastics, cosmetics, ect.... and there's no other resource available to us in the near future that can possibly sustain the lifestyle that oil has given us in the past 100 years. We're fucked.

Sorry for the apocalyptic rant.

ReconToaster wrote:

Rasq'uire'laskar wrote:
As for overpopulation: It ain't going to happen for a while. Sure, India needs to be hit with a Co60 nuke, but most of our population problems can be cured with better farming techniques. Oil? Switch to electric and start drilling at home. Energy? Nuclear reactors.

Fission reactors won't last us long. Ignoring the HUGE initial costs of building something like 100,000 nuclear energy plants (each costing what? A billion dollars?) the world wide uranium supply would be quickly depleted. Fusion plants would last us a LOOOOOOOOOONG time, but we're not capable of that, and won't be before it's too late.

Hydroelectric and Wind energy won't ever make up for a large percentage of power. In order for solar energy to carry us, we'd need a RIDICULOUS land area to be taken up by them , which would require an enormous amount of money and a pretty huge feat of engineering. Hydrogen is great, but it's still inefficient, and we'd need something like 30 years to perfect it.

The world runs on oil and oil is running out. Sure there's a hell of a lot of oil in the ocean, but we need time to figure out how to drill it. Saudi Arabia, Alaska, and parts of Russia hold the last major supplies of oil these days, and they have reached peak discovery. Pretty soon, production levels world wide are gonna reach their peak... and it's all downhill from there.

Wars will of course be fought to secure those last major reserves, but they won't last us long.

We get EVERYTHING from oil. Gasoline, electricity, industry, plastics, cosmetics, ect.... and there's no other resource available to us in the near future that can possibly sustain the lifestyle that oil has given us in the past 100 years. We're fucked.

Sorry for the apocalyptic rant.

Lets see...


A solar field that costs three months of the Iraq Gaywar across the Nevada desert=power the continental U.S. Now, let's get talking about the Outback....

ReconToaster wrote:

Rasq'uire'laskar wrote:
As for overpopulation: It ain't going to happen for a while. Sure, India needs to be hit with a Co60 nuke, but most of our population problems can be cured with better farming techniques. Oil? Switch to electric and start drilling at home. Energy? Nuclear reactors.

Fission reactors won't last us long. Ignoring the HUGE initial costs of building something like 100,000 nuclear energy plants (each costing what? A billion dollars?) the world wide uranium supply would be quickly depleted. Fusion plants would last us a LOOOOOOOOOONG time, but we're not capable of that, and won't be before it's too late.

Hydroelectric and Wind energy won't ever make up for a large percentage of power. In order for solar energy to carry us, we'd need a RIDICULOUS land area to be taken up by them , which would require an enormous amount of money and a pretty huge feat of engineering. Hydrogen is great, but it's still inefficient, and we'd need something like 30 years to perfect it.

The world runs on oil and oil is running out. Sure there's a hell of a lot of oil in the ocean, but we need time to figure out how to drill it. Saudi Arabia, Alaska, and parts of Russia hold the last major supplies of oil these days, and they have reached peak discovery. Pretty soon, production levels world wide are gonna reach their peak... and it's all downhill from there.

Wars will of course be fought to secure those last major reserves, but they won't last us long.

We get EVERYTHING from oil. Gasoline, electricity, industry, plastics, cosmetics, ect.... and there's no other resource available to us in the near future that can possibly sustain the lifestyle that oil has given us in the past 100 years. We're fucked.

Sorry for the apocalyptic rant.

two words: sugar phosphates

You have to think about maintenance on something like that though. Who wants to go out into the middle of the Nevada desert to preform regular maintenance on hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of solar panels? Besides, how many power companies have that type of money?

Carcarius wrote:
two words: sugar phosphates

To produce sugar, you need farmland. To produce viable farm land, you need petroleum based fertilizers and you need to divert current farmland to the cause of energy production, starving billions.

I need rasq/rot to come in here and tell me how wrong I am... please.

Solar Power has come in leaps and bounds in the last several years.

Behold!



We're still screwed though; but I just think the space elevator should be built before we start bleeding billions into what is currently excavation.

There is already a new Nasa workhorse in the making, the Ares rocket will have 7 times the payload capacity in Low Earth Orbit, and 24 times the trans-lunar injection capacity then the space shuttle. That means that only 2 Ares flights can carry the entire ISS into space. In addition to this, by next spring, the NGST will be proposed, and we will soon have a telescope with 2,000 times the magnifying power as the Hubble telescope.

Zaki90 wrote:How is it hard to get to Mars?

To get humans to Mars? It would be roughly the equivalent of getting humans to Luna back in 1955. Getting a lot of people there will be quite a problem for some time.

Zaki90 wrote:I see the biodomes, but those would cost millions. Also, the plants need water. Frozen ice doesn't help you very long.

True, but you need to maintain a closed system. Human waste is recycled to feed the farms, which feed the humans, which feed the farms, while you keep adding water and nutrients to the system.

ReconToaster wrote:Fission reactors won't last us long. Ignoring the HUGE initial costs of building something like 100,000 nuclear energy plants (each costing what? A billion dollars?)

It's something that needs to be done, for the next ten or twenty years it will take us to get nuclear fusion. And we need to invest in fusion the same way we invested in World War II.

ReconToaster wrote:Hydroelectric and Wind energy won't ever make up for a large percentage of power. In order for solar energy to carry us, we'd need a RIDICULOUS land area to be taken up by them , which would require an enormous amount of money and a pretty huge feat of engineering. Hydrogen is great, but it's still inefficient, and we'd need something like 30 years to perfect it.

True. However, Picken's Plan will carry most of the US energy needs for a while. In the meantime, we need to start harvesting Methane from landfills and cattle farms, as well as building more of these.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/geoplasma-plasma-waste-to-energy-facility-florida.php
http://innovech.wordpress.com/2007/03/02/bye-bye-landfills-a-yes-from-joseph-longo/

ReconToaster wrote:The world runs on oil and oil is running out. Sure there's a hell of a lot of oil in the ocean, but we need time to figure out how to drill it. Saudi Arabia, Alaska, and parts of Russia hold the last major supplies of oil these days, and they have reached peak discovery. Pretty soon, production levels world wide are gonna reach their peak... and it's all downhill from there.

Well, we need to start recycling our petroleum products while we switch over to Natural Gas, Methane, and Electricity.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/microwave-alternative-fuel-47120305
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJYa42zYZ2I

ReconToaster wrote:Wars will of course be fought to secure those last major reserves, but they won't last us long.

And the US MUST rise as the leader in alternative energy within five years, if we are to maintain our position of superiority.

ReconToaster wrote:Sorry for the apocalyptic rant.

No problem. I said a lot worse when I was sixteen. I still think like that today. It's depressing.

I don't know. It seems like Fusion and Solar energy is really the way of the future. Hell, if/when we get fusion going, Solar will be worthless.

If we can bridge the next few decades with fission, as well as other alternative energy options already in use, we could hold out long enough to figure out how to do Nuclear Fusion... and that will likely last us for the rest of our time on Earth.

Why is it that we're not spending more resources on researching Fusion? It's a practically unlimited energy Source. I blame Three Mile Island.

I blame the Russians and their shoddy communist construction. You hear that Ruski! And fission isn't even all that bad, especially now that we can turn nuclear waste into more energy.

Isn't the Picken's thing turn garbage into hydrogen and resin? I remember reading about it in POPsci a long time ago.

Ringleader wrote:Isn't the Picken's thing turn garbage into hydrogen and resin? I remember reading about it in POPsci a long time ago.

No, he's the guy expounding wind energy and natural gas.
Joseph Longo is the guy with the machine that turns garbage into energy, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and slag.