Manned Space Travel.....Pbbbbbttttttt!

[Quetzal]

Heck, last I knew they were saying, that as far as the first astronauts to Mars are concerned, it is a one way trip.

You are talking about Mars One (I think). That project has gotten a lot of backlash and I, personally, don't support it.

 

[Revoltingest]

.....the Atacama Large Millimeter Array is by far cheaper with a much better return for the dollar. However is that needed at this time and is it more beneficial to us to spend the money there than in other places.

Only a billion & a half dollars for a way to see things not visible using other means...yes!
It's well worth it. The broader knowledge gained is (I say) a better benefit/cost than
many other unmanned missions. Does it rank up there with Hubble? Perhaps above it.

 

[Wu Wei]

You are talking about Mars One (I think). That project has gotten a lot of backlash and I, personally, don't support it.

Could be, not sure exactly, I know I was rather shocked by some that wanted to make the trip and leave family behind (wife and young Children) just so they could go to Mars.

Don't get me wrong, I think getting humans on Mars would be pretty cool, however I am not so sure it is anything that is going to help the Human race overall, or if it will ever be cost effective to go there and live there.

 

[Quetzal]

Does it rank up there with Hubble? Perhaps above it.

Hubble is fantastic, but we could use an upgrade.

 

[Quetzal]

Could be, not sure exactly, I know I was rather shocked by some that wanted to make the trip and leave family behind (wife and young Children) just so they could go to Mars.

Mars One are the folks who wanted to send people on a way trip. Further, they wanted to fund the project by selling advertising space on live streams of the journey. In short, they wanted to turn the first trip to Mars into a reality TV show sponsored by Pepsi.

 

[Wu Wei]

Only a billion & a half dollars for a way to see things not visible using other means...yes!
It's well worth it. The broader knowledge gained is (I say) a better benefit/cost than
many other unmanned missions. Does it rank up there with Hubble? Perhaps above it.

But I am not just referring to Space research or travel. I tend to think there are better ways to spend the money at this time on various things and people right here on planet Earth. I understand that there is much knowledge to be gained in space exploration, but there is much knowledge to be gained here as well and there are a lot of ecosystems and people that could use help that that have little or nothing to do with Space.

I do believe one must be aware of ones surroundings and that includes what surrounds the earth, but I think, at this time, there are things that $1,500,000,000 can be spent on.

 

[Quetzal]

But I am not just referring to Space research or travel. I tend to think there are better ways to spend the money at this time on various things and people right here on planet Earth. I understand that there is much knowledge to be gained in space exploration, but there is much knowledge to be gained here as well and there are a lot of ecosystems and people that could use help that that have little or nothing to do with Space.

Good news is private industry has really taken the bull by the horns here. This allows us to do both, which we couldn't really do before with NASA hogging all the cool toys.

 

[Wu Wei]

Mars One are the folks who wanted to send people on a way trip. Further, they wanted to fund the project by selling advertising space on live streams of the journey. In short, they wanted to turn the first trip to Mars into a reality TV show sponsored by Pepsi.

Sadly advertising, no matter who goes to Mars, is likely to play a part.

Good news is private industry has really taken the bull by the horns here. This allows us to do both, which we couldn't really do before with NASA hogging all the cool toys.

As far as advertising goes.... I rest my case.
And now I have no doubt reality TV will likely be part of it too

 

[Quetzal]

Sadly advertising, no matter who goes to Mars, is likely to play a part.

I hope not, but it's possible.

 

[columbus]

I do believe one must be aware of ones surroundings and that includes what surrounds the earth, but I think, at this time, there are things that $1,500,000,000 can be spent on.

I am pretty sure Usonians spend that much on makeup and sports team gear every 7.5 seconds.
Tom

 

[Wu Wei]

I am pretty sure Usonians spend that much on makeup and sports team gear every 7.5 seconds.
Tom

But that is their own money that they worked for, not government spending based on Usonian tax dollars

 

[Iti oj]

Not if we can figure out cryogenics though.... journeys of 1000's of years could become viable and bring many solar systems into range, hypothetically the colonization of the entire galaxy..

Which is why I don't think we'd meet any aliens anywhere, because apparently no one else ever did this! My guess would be because they don't exist. The universe is too small to make another Earth very likely-

Multigenerational ships

 

[columbus]

Multigenerational ships

Would the passengers still be human beings at the end of a multigenerational voyage?
Tom

 

[Quetzal]

But that is their own money that they worked for, not government spending based on Usonian tax dollars

Let's talk about that. As this industry gets more and more privatized, this is going to become less and less about your tax dollars. That is one of my chief rebuttals to threads like this. The large dollar signs you are seeing are not being spent by government agencies (strictly referring to US launches for this post, fyi). It is being spent by the consumer/client of the launch agencies. Now, does the government have their hand in the cookie jar? Sure. But not nearly to the extent they did in the 60s. Further, I think it is going to be less and less as these private companies gain more traction.

 

[jeager106]

Astronomers estimate 100 billion habitable Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, 50 sextillion in the universe.
Humph. They just had to introduce sex into this discussion.

 

[jeager106]

The ONLY way we will know if intelligent life exists in this universe is it
"they" come here and say "howdy".
Maybe they could sent us a message via radio waves but that presupposes
the message would be on a frequency we can receive and in a way
we can understand it was a message.
Even if that happened and it's a huge if, the message could be thousands
of years old by the time we got it.
Would we understand it anyway?
If it were simple binary then we probably would recognize..........................
1 2 3 4 5 6 and so on but that would only mean an intelligence sent it.
Then the questions: From Where? When? What dose it mean? and so forth.

If aliens came here and dropped off a book called How to Serve Man
then promised to come right back I'd suspect it would be a cook book.
Gulp!
The best thing we could get from alien visitors is if they ate garbage
and peed gasoline.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Would the passengers still be human beings at the end of a multigenerational voyage?
Tom

Yes tricky- accommodating, feeding, entertaining- an entire little civilization for generations,- much easier to sleep through the trip

But if they were going to do it, Arthur C Clark's 'Rama' was a clever idea- rotating cylinder..

 

[Quetzal]

The ONLY way we will know if intelligent life exists in this universe is it
"they" come here and say "howdy".

I will say that the probability of what I would define as "complex life forms" is a bit lower than traditional evidence of life.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The ONLY way we will know if intelligent life exists in this universe is it
"they" come here and say "howdy".
Maybe they could sent us a message via radio waves but that presupposes
the message would be on a frequency we can receive and in a way
we can understand it was a message.
Even if that happened and it's a huge if, the message could be thousands
of years old by the time we got it.
Would we understand it anyway?
If it were simple binary then we probably would recognize..........................
1 2 3 4 5 6 and so on but that would only mean an intelligence sent it.
Then the questions: From Where? When? What dose it mean? and so forth.

If aliens came here and dropped off a book called How to Serve Man
then promised to come right back I'd suspect it would be a cook book.
Gulp!
The best thing we could get from alien visitors is if they ate garbage
and peed gasoline.

Good points, but meanwhile we have an ear on an entire galaxy, and we hear nothing but the 'great silence' . Perhaps we can take this at face value?

This is a particularly large, nice, hospitable galaxy, if we are alone here, it doesn't bode well for other galaxies.

 

[jeager106]

Good points.
On a scale of one to a couple of millions my concern about such matters is
way out there lost in the couple of millions.
I love sci-fi.
So many possibilities in the human imagination.