https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cJZbqGySik"]Tom Jones - Beyond Earth: America's Future in Space - YouTube I get the impression that space exploration is slowing to an eventual near halt, globally. United States AND Russia face challenges to furthering their ambitious goals. His mention of Russia's decline struck me as something that *could* correlate to the supposed reduction in life expectancy of Russian men (if what I read about that is true). Another eye-opening, informative tid-bit from this presentation is the impact of solar storms and how it can break DNA .. causing terrible degenerative disease and death. This should be a public health concern .. not in regard to space travel, but in regard to the daily life of all people. As for entitlement programs consuming more than 50% of financial resources, I don't believe it's fair to argue that the masses are handicapping NASA. I did hear mention of *billionaires* who will likely indulge certain space exploration before even government does but please, let's not pitchfork the entitlements of people to accommodate what appears to me to be a potential hint of possible competition between private and government interest. Thank You.
National Health Expenditures 2012 Prescription drugs alone = $263.3 billion Medicare = $572.5 billion Medicaid = $421.2 billion Those numbers are about HALF of Private Heath Insurance which is $917.0 billion (might as well call it a trillion) http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statist...onalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf I have to agree that the United States can do *much* better managing costs. But even to master the cost and spending on health issues there are still many, many more priorities *on the ground* that need attention before space exploration. Maybe private billionaires can give NASA the extra $5 billion they're looking for. If they're motivated to compete with Russia (and China), that is. ha.
Humans future in space does not depend on NASA.... or with solely one nation like the U.S. (or China or Russia). Why in earth should billionaires give their money to NASA instead of to commercial space transportation and exploration projects?
humanity has a future in space. but if we are not to be the bad guys when we meet anyone besides ourselves out there, and as being an easily crushed annoyance, we ARE going to have to out grow this nonsense of nationalism.
I caught some good footage of that new NASA X- Bird here in Tx.. https://scontent-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net...5_10152394041294763_6725930743864659059_n.jpg
President Obama may come out of history looking like a bloody genius on this topic. Please indulge me in this thought for just a few moments. What he did to NASA (basically breaking it up, at least as we have always known it.) may have been a brilliant move. I have to use history to explain this. Before the western hemisphere was "discovered" (we now know natives were here, Vikings had visited maybe even Egyptians) the queen of Spain funded Christopher Columbus's voyage here. Once he returned, she funded him another trip, then came the hundreds of Spanish ships that explored all the way to S. America. But things REALLY took off when businessmen and companies got involved. Black pepper, coffee, potatoes, cocoa for chocolate were all discovered because of entrepreneurs, and they knew money could be made from them. So, back to the point, the U.S. government, and others, have made space travel possible possible by spending the money for the exploration of the science of leaving the planet, but we will get to other planets when the money men get involved. If there is a profit to be made by mining nearby asteroids for minerals, perhaps this leads to bases or factories on the moon to avoid the expensive cost of escaping earth's gravity. Of course outer space work is dangerous, this very well could also lead to a rapid expansion of the robotics industry. You buy a robot one time, no major upkeep (housing,food,etc...) really required, they can work 24/7 with no rest needed, no real government regulations would be involved (safety,work conditions) making robots an even cheaper form of labor. The breakup of NASA may very well be the greatest achievement of this President. And remember, this is a man who does not seem to really like big business, and he may have just created an opportunity that will create the largest corporations our world has ever seen. Only time will tell.
NASA is just a cover project now and thats why they barely are launching anything anymore. Private black projects are controlling the real space exploring. We are up there, everyday, they arent going to admit it though but there has been whistleblowers
But submarines can go down really far and check out all the caves etc. like I'm pretty vocal on the moon landing hoax, I don't believe we made it to the moon. I have no concrete evidence, I've just never believed, mainly because it really annoyed my mother when I was a teenager because "I watched it at school and saw with my own two eyes" and I always teased her, but I've grown up not believing now. And I find it bizarre you know how we can create such technology to view other worlds and galaxies etc. and yet we can't find a missing plane or ship or something you know? It's just all fluff, that's all science is to me now days, absolute fluff. "I'll believe it when I see it" - I can't even comprehend, they let me see what they want me to see, who really knows what I'm seeing. I don't believe we have much of a future in space either tbh. We'll use all our resources up well before the space age. We won't even build a mining machine for another planet. Of course with CGI influences now days, they'll show us exactly what they want us to see and we won't know any better. We'll nod our heads in approval, or congregate on an online forum with speculations and controversy.
Hello, true. But on the other hand, ocean currents and temperature gradients, for instance, can best be observed from above. That helps understanding the underlaying mechanism and building models. I think you reference flight MH370 here. Well, I don't know what happend. Maybe there is some interest, that the remnants of the aeroplane shouldn't be found, maybe it is just complicated. I do engineering stuff. Not rocket science, most of the things I do are not plain simple, but they are well understood and people had done them before millions of times. But I'm always amazed what can go wrong. Stupid little things go wrong all the time and you spend hours and hours searching the failure. And if you know it you slap your head because the cause of the failure is so stupid and simple. I think the ocean is vast and a plane is small (it's even smaller if it hits the surface of the ocean). It's easy to convince me that you just can't find it. I once lost a knife in the woods. I know this part of the woods like the inside of my pocket. I searched for the knife, I trotted the same path, I sit under the same trees, but I never found the knife. Well, I don't think that space is a future habitat for mankind. Perhaps some people will travel to Mars or elsewhere and die there. But Mars or any other celestial body will never to a second Earth or home. Regards Gyro
I remember hearing in grade school that by the year 2000 the entire world would be growing hungry. What happened ? Technology gave us a greater yield per acre. For paper we can use hemp plants (no THC) and leave the trees alone. We now have a growing industry of 3D printers capable of making food and even building buildings. Technology can save us. We are just now developing tools that work on a molecular and sub molecular levels. What this means is we will soon be able to break refuse down to the molecular level and be able to use it as the material needed for the 3D printers. The huge landfills we have now, in 10-20 years could become mining operations just for this recycling purpose. Water is a different issue, but if the seas are going to rise, we are probably too late to prevent this, we may have to filtrate sea water to get fresh water. Or turn our waste water into clean water. For an example of this look up an article on Wichita Falls, Tx. water recycling program for more on this subject. I also remember learning that every plant and animal on our planet was in some way dependent on sunlight ? We were discussing the oceans, and the teacher explained that the microscopic sea creatures that lived in the depths of the oceans fed off of decaying plant and animal matter that fell from upper parts of the ocean. Those microscopic animals were eaten by larger creatures, etc... Robert Ballard proved this to be only partially true while searching for the wreck of the Titanic. He discovered hot ocean vents spewing toxic clouds of sulfur dioxide and multitudes of sea life such as shrimp and tube worms living in massive quantities, with no advantage from the sun. This one discovery rewrote science books and at the same time gave us a far better understanding of how many forms of life can exist on our planet as well as on others. Science is fluff ? You are correct, much of the time it is. Remember 20 years ago drinking alcohol was bad for us ? Caffeine in coffee was bad for us ? Remember the whole decaf coffee craze ? Now, science says a drink or beer, or two a day is beneficial. Coffee ? Just last week it was reported up to 3 cups a day is highly beneficial. Who knows, a report this week about whatever and how bad it is for us, next week a different report will say the very opposite from the first report. Science, as contradictory as it can seem, is now influencing so much of our technology that molecular universes are opening up for us. Using organic tissue for data storage capable of storing more information than any hard drive will ever accomplish. Or imagine feeding entire villages with food replicators (3D printers,for now). Science and technology are going to save us all. And as long as a buck can be made off of any of this, you can bet America is going to lead the way.
