/sci/ - Science & Math

And nasa wonders why it keeps losing funding

When it comes to cost-benefit analysis, nasa has no clue what they are doing

>Space elevator
Someone makes a troll thread about that every single day

This is the only good use for nuclear weapons just fyi

Also MFW I read "waste nuclear weapons"

>>2247484

Project Orion is the most efficient application of nuclear energy to propulsion, offers lifting capacity sufficient to put an entire colony on another planet in one launch, and can achieve 10/1th the speed of light within a month of acceleration, with a trip to Alpha Centauri taking about 45 years total.

It is the only true 'starship' we currently have the capacity to build.

>>2247503
Gee, I guess I know nothing of massive government projects, or economics for that matter. No matter that I have experience in highway infrastructure financing, am familiar with the development of engineering projects, and am used to dealing with over-excited engineers trying to sell their pet projects (these people infest the administrations of my country and have managed to get an OK on a supersonic civilian plane, a cold-war-era assault tank in 1992, and other costly projects that were scrapped or ended up costing a lot). I have no ability to estimate the ROI of an engineering project, its opportunity cost, and its probable delays and additional costs. You've got me there !
Christ. If administrations were to listen to every engineer's hopeful projections about the applications of their pet project, every country in the world would probably be bankrupt by now. There are a lot of hidden costs you can't even start to imagine.
The design you're promoting should be adapted to a specific mission at first. You can't sell an all-purpose vehicle to any politician or bureaucrat, and you're not saying "yeah, it can do anything you want". First, you've got to say 1) my field of research is not worthless because blablabla (and when you're talking about space exploration, you've got a lot of convincing to do) 2) my project is necessary for such purpose, it is the most efficient way to do such and such thing that is vital for [insert interest] of the nation. And you have to back that up with actual data on costs, timeframes, and everything, not with Dyson's wet dreams.

>>2247491
What a weak cop-out.
Listen. I know you're excited about space. It's cool and everything. And nukes, well, they're absolutely horrifying, but some people find them cool as well so I'm not gonna judge. But you can't go around combining cool things and saying "yeah, man, this is the solution to all our problems". That's just wishful thinking, and it's not how things work.

The search for the Northwest Passage is one of the stupidest engineering white elephants I have ever seen, along with the Yucatán expeditions. Typical first world nerd fantasy, with the added bonus of England exclusivity because there are only two countries in the world that would have enough naval weapons to waste like this.

>>2247513
On the list of things that could have a positive impact on the lives of citizens, space habitats and space exploration rank pretty low. I'm not saying nations are unable to do several things at once. But there's some prioritizing to do. I'm not saying to cut all funding to science and NASA, far from it - life would be pretty miserable if we lived only out of the things that are absolutely necessary. Just don't lose sight of the big picture and divest funds from where they are needed just to fund vanity projects.

>>2247503
Yeah NASA projects are such a huge waste of money, damn their 19 billion budget :|

oh what's that? the american government budgets a trillion to blow up sand niggers?

Military R&D is a bigger waste of money than anything NASA will ever dream up.

>>2247506

You said nothing relevant to my post. I didn't question your qualifications. I didn't mention anything about costs. I only made a series of factual statements about the capabilities of pulsed nuclear propulsion.

>>2247527
Fuck military R&D too. I don't support that shit either and I have no idea what gave you the idea that I do.

I wouldn't say I'm bitter, though, just angry. I'm angry at all the first-world priviledge that exsudes from these projects, the lack of humility, and the obliviousness to the actual challenges faced by humanity. The spatio-technological society envisioned by the likes of Dyson, Kurzweil, or De Grey are actually projections that would in fact not apply to humanity, not even to the first world, but to an elite in this first world and I find this disgusting. They are extremely hypocritical (or criminally oblivious ?) in their grandiloquent speeches about humanity's design and so on. That's why I'm angry at megaprojects such as these. The gall of whoever said "yeah ! this would solve the energy problems of the world !" is astounding.

>>2247524

>>On the list of things that could have a positive impact on the lives of citizens, space habitats and space exploration rank pretty low.

On the contrary, the reason I support colonization of the last three frontiers within our immediate reach (undersea, the arctic and other planets) is because we're at our best while conquering new frontiers; technological and social progress accelerates, piles of new wealth accumulate, new ways of thinking and living flourish. The cultural stagnation we're experiencing at present is a consequence of our sloth, our abandonment of exploration and conquest. That's what breathes new life into civilization, and guarantees it will continue to thrive.

>>2247551
See that's exactly the same superficial technological progress I was talking about earlier. Marginal amelioration of already existing designs, and with little practical civilian purpose except maybe "oh yeah, we're gonna be able to build a 1100 m tall building !!". You're stupid if you figure that there will be a "whole new space race" : the only country with a nuclear stockpile comparable to the US is Russia, and they've got far better things to do. At best, China would laugh at you and send its rockets to the moon using conventional fuel. At worst, it would scrap the non-proliferation treaty and begin a new arms race that would seriously destabilize the region and probably spark a new imperialist contest between the US and China.
Pardon me if I don't look happy at that prospect.

>>2247558

>>2247558

Fine, sit on the sidelines and pout as the rest of us expand into new territories. :]

>>2247536
What gave me the idea is that you chose to oppose something which offers some of the following -
1) A way to reduce global nuclear weapon caches
2) Jobs
3) Huge moral boost through technological advancements/ "space race" effect that we saw when America first visited the moon.
Of course there may be other consequences to the science community through this project, none of which would be bad.

This is just a drop in the bucket in terms of money and perhaps instead of rallying over such small amounts of useful money on useful projects you should turn your hatred towards the waste of untold amounts of money on what amounts to just other ways to destroy humanity.

What really pissed me off was when you said "waste nuclear weapons", what else would you like to do with them?

Sometimes the smallest superficial advancements in the science world can amount to huge advancements down the road.

>>2247564
I shall enjoy seeing your worthless country collapse out of conservative populism and terrible leadership, and your population suffer at long last the throes of overconsumption withdrawal. Your blind faith in your ingenuity and the arrogance that comes from it will only make your fall harder, and my delight stronger.
Of course, my country will follow soon afterward, but at least I'll have had the pleasure of thinking personally about you, Wolfman, dying alone of some third-world disease during a continent-wide epidemic, diarrhea oozing through your unwashed pants. New Orleans was but a foretaste of what is to come to your entire nation : unrest, squalor, hunger and dysentery.
Enjoy global economic and technological dominance and masturbate over your silly vanity projects while you still can. When the United States becomes the laughing stock of the world, as they try in vain to reconquer its later-half-of-the-20th century glory, I'll be among the masses ululating in the streets as Washington D.C. burns.

>>2247570
I love how you fuckers get offended as soon as I change my tone and give you a taste of what your arrogance feels like to other people. And yet you still don't react to the quote that prompted my words, like it's not out of line. You hypocrites.

If I actually believed a word I said in that quote you're all getting indignant about, I probably wouldn't have stayed civil all this time. The fact that my main concern about your stupid megaprojects has been their wastefulness and their opportunity cost for the population of your country all along should have given you a clue to the actual meaning of my post.

Fuck you all. Go back to your spatial fantasies and your idolatry of the nuclear bomb, undisturbed by actual considerations on the feasability and usefulness in the grand scheme of things of your nuke space gun.

>>2247573

>>2247573

>>I shall enjoy seeing your worthless country collapse out of conservative populism and terrible leadership, and your population suffer at long last the throes of overconsumption withdrawal. Your blind faith in your ingenuity and the arrogance that comes from it will only make your fall harder, and my delight stronger.

Keep strokin' it, you're almost there!

Orion was one of three nuclear propulsion systems proposed back in the day. The other two were NERVA and PLUTO. NERVA and PLUTO engines were actually built and tested. They worked. Orion would have probably worked too.

Fifty years ago, the engineers who designed these things weren't afraid to think big. They actually solved the hard technical problems. However, things are different now. For a variety of political and economic reasons, nuclear propulsion will never get built.

OP fcking trolled me hard

>>2247576

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3374893&userid=88459

>>2247579

>>They worked.

At 60% of expected efficiency.

Where do people like the OP come from, seriously

>>2247599

>>Where do people like the OP come from, seriously

They're anti-spirals. Rather than supporting the exponential progress and expansion of human civilization they seek to constrain it.

>>2247599
I thought college was supposed to be full of butthurt clueless save-the-whales birkenstock-wearing marxists but I have never met them. Only on the internet.

ITT: everyone thinks they're smarter than NASA

Orion crew capsule != Project Orion
jesuswept.jpg

>>2247607

Really? Have you looked outside the real subjects?

>>2247617
I go to a mid-tier UC (Irvine). Nobody gives a shit about politics or society at all unless it involves tuition hikes, then they go apeshit with the sit-ins and protests.

Why do space enthusiasts always talk about colonization? Colonization shouldn't be your goal. Colonization wasn't the reason people came to the New World, for the most part. They came to find wealth. They were funded because the governments back home expected to profit.

We should be designing missions to set-up mining operations in the solar system, not colonies. Colonization will flow naturally from that, but we need to find a way to make a profit for people paying for it first.

your mind is the only limit. a fountain type space elevator can start construction immediately.

the real problem is there's nowhere to go unless we start terraforming mars or putting colonies on the moon. and there's not really much industry that would be terribly benefited by being put in space.

but it's kind of a chicken/egg dilemna, if it were possible for more people to get up someone would find some benefit most likely. but of course you don't start THE LARGEST PROJECT IN THE HISTORY OF THE SPECIES for 'most likely'.

there really is no excuse to not be well into the process of terraforming mars, though. we're still bickering over budgeting for the basic research to begin the planning, that shit's retarded. we know it's gonna take hundreds or thousands of years once started, we need to be racing through this shit.

>>2247631
because we're really a post-scarcity society already. our only problem is population growth, needing places to put people. it would certainly be nice is people could learn to stop breeding, but THAT'S not gonna happen...

>>2247631
There's also the issue of decimating indigenous populations. Exploration of the "new world" (yeah I'm aware of how eurocentric that is) was justifiably maligned for how the euros treated the natives.

What life is there on the Moon or asteroids to genocide?

What if we put muslims on the moon and/or mars?

The Americans could then liberate the moon and install democracy, Bush would declare mission accomplished from his battlecruiser in space.

>>2247664
>>2247672
problem solved!

>>2247484
>Project Orion

A good way to accelerate a large payload to a significant fraction of c, should you need to do that. I don't think we need to do that right now. It'd also be useful in-system for moving large amounts of cargo, but we really don't need to do that either, just yet.

>Space Elevator

A launch loop or a mass driver (cargo only) is more feasible. An elevator would be pretty neat, but we don't have the materials to build one, I don't think.

Some day.

>>2247655

>because we're really a post-scarcity society already
I lol'd.

>>2247731
WE ARE

i always post this and get only a response like yours.

nearly all scarcity is artificial, and nearly all value is social. of course there are genuinely scarce things, specific chemicals and the like, but overwhelmingly they are things the vast majority of people don't care about anyway.

think of something that exists and you want but can't afford. now think about WHY you can't afford it. in nearly any case, it is because of an arbitrary cost determined by a perceived social status value and economics of supply and demand where the supply is kept artificially low.

>>2247777
I want Saturn.

>>2247782
alright, it's yours. don;t know what you plan to do with it, but it is now legally yours.

see what i'm getting at by "exists"?

>>2247818
But that guy over there wants his own Saturn. And so does his wife. What now?

Space elevators are in our future

>have you played civ iv or what

Why are you arguing over Orion? It was only a hypothetical meant to get scientist started on the concepts of interstellar travel and no one wanted or expected it to be built. NASA does not plan to make this any more then they plan to make an alcubierre drive.

>>2247777

I'm going to introduce you to an interesting little chemical called dihydrogen monoxide. The scarcity of fresh water is not artificial, hence why droughts still occur. Don't go all tin-foil hat on my and say that all droughts are cased by corporations wanting to charge extra, because they're not. There's a reason why areas of the southern US often have to ration their water supply.

Also, food. We, as a species, don't produce enough food to feed everyone in the world. The US is fine for food, but that's because we import tons of it. Hell, we import so much that domestic production has to be subsidized to keep prices artificially low.

Lots of unnecessary things are also scarce, but NO ONE IS CONFUSING THEM FOR NECESSITIES.

>>2247866
>It was only a hypothetical meant to get scientist started on the concepts of interstellar travel and no one wanted or expected it to be built.

Nope.

http://www.space.com/spacelibrary/books/library_projectorion_020709.html

>>2247879

>>2247866
You may also find this interesting:

http://www.islandone.org/Propulsion/ProjectOrion.html

watch this u moro deepshit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8f9ooRmwCc

>>2247866

>>Why are you arguing over Orion? It was only a hypothetical meant to get scientist started on the concepts of interstellar travel and no one wanted or expected it to be built. NASA does not plan to make this any more then they plan to make an alcubierre drive.

Actually this is wrong, Nasa did have concrete plans to build Orion vessels. See George Dyson's TED talk.

>Jees guys, China is building quantum teleporters where did we go wrong I wish we did that
>NASA THAT GOVERNMENT FATCAT WASTING MONEY ON STUPID SPACESHIT

Can someone posting in this thread explain to me what they want nasa to research and develop?
Because space transport seems quite important for the future of the moons h3 mining

>>2247664
>What life is there on the Moon or asteroids to genocide?
>What life is there on the Moon or asteroids
>What life is there on the Moon
>life is there on the Moon
>on the Moon


none.