Another new planet discovered and explored via Hubble
http://news.yahoo.com/type-alien-pla...162802250.html
This one is mostly water.
They've found 700 planets thus far - according to this article.
Yet, we are cutting back on NASA and space exploration in general. We would never dream of cutting back on money for worthless, lazy, next generation feces baby making blobs of crap but NASA is fair game.
We need to get our priorties straight in this country.
~Nemo me impune lacessit~
"worthless, lazy, next generation feces baby making blobs of crap"
+1
Gunsnet member since 2002
Salt Water Cowboy - Dolphin 38
Wow, that's amazing. If we could go the speed of light we would be there in only 40 years at which time we could not land as we are unable to survive there!
Thank you Hubble for letting us know there are places we can never go at the low low price of only about 3 billion dollars!
"blobs of crap"??.....lemme guess....pro-life?
Where could space travel take us but away from the kind omnipotent benevolence of our dear leader...No need for that now is there.
History has a severe case of stuttering complicated by chronic hiccups.
It always repeats itself and it never fails that something will go horribly wrong along the way.
Direct democracy is a gang rape. Eight men vote to rape one woman and the woman has to accept it because the majority decided that it was ok. A constitutional republic on the other hand is eight men and one woman with a full mag. Think about it for a while until it hurts your head.
We Americans are descendants of explorers. What a shame that we wasted money on space exploration when that money could have been used to feed people that don't want to feed themselves.
Of course, without space exploration, we would most likely not have the technology we have now to be able to complain about this to people we don't know, living who knows where.
Oh, and I would like to thank NASA for the last shuttle mission that went to repair and update my adopted brother. Some of the money that went into the Hubble put me, my brother and my sister though college and provided a reasonable living for my parents.
And now that we rely on the Russians to get into space, and are saving all that money, are those who refuse to feed themselves any better off?
There is life out there someplace... and sometimes I stop and wonder if it's intelligent, and if it too is thinking about what else is out there. It might not be possible to travel there right this second... but it will be IMPOSSIBLE forever if we abandon it wholesale.
The Earth is flat, we will never fly, the sound barrier will never be broken and we will never be able to harness the power of the sun. It's all been said, but it is not about being impossible, it is about us learning how to make it happen, and if there is enough reason, we will. But it feels like we are giving up in this nation, partly due to lazy, fat, soft people and partly due to our poor choice of leadership from BOTH parties.
I guess it's just sad.
"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."
-Nietzsche
"Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory."
-George S. Patton
I don't have an issue with us exploring space, I think it's a great thing.
What I have a problem with is the insane waste involved without any clear goal or plan.
We went to the moon, that was awesome. We put Hubble up there, very cool. We put a rover on Mars that exceeded all expectations, we had people living in space on the stations for extended periods, that gave us really good info.
The problem is we went back to the moon a few times and it got stale, we ran a shuttle service into low Earth orbit and back for 20+ years which no one really cared all that much about unless they exploded.
We put about 9 telescopes into space and plan to put another to replace Hubble...and after 20+ years up there Hubble is still sending us the best images.
We actually landed I think 11 times on Mars, over half of which crashed, and plan to send another...I have no idea why.
Why no Moon rover? Why no rover on Saturn's or Jupiter's moons?
Going the same place you have gone a dozen times is not exploring!
Spending billions to go to a place where we absolutely know we really cannot send people is pretty pointless. Doing it a dozen times or more and people will start to question whether the whole thing is worth it.
There are some plan facts people need to know, even if the nearest habitable planet was as close as Al*pha Cen*tau*ri, that's still 4 light years away, with our current fastest rockets it would take us nearly 60,000 years to get there.
Given that we've only had the written word for about 5,000 years and already have the power to destroy our planet it's just not likely that we would make it anytime soon.
If we aren't going to NEW places, or going faster then it gets dull and we lose momentum.
The problem is there is no plan, just a bunch of willy nilly ideas and sending crap to the same spots over and over.
It's no great shame that we don't have a rocket that can get people into space if we have no goal or no need to go anywhere.
If we decided to land people on Mars then we can build a rocket for that...although frankly I see no reason to send people to Mars.
Also NASA has to stop telling us about the useless crap it has done to "make our lives better"...the were putting out press releases on how they developed grooves in pavement to give extra traction?!!
Seriously?!? Do they expect us to buy that without NASA we would have no idea that grooves help with traction?
Was that a ten year study to figure that out? Did we come in under a billion bucks on the textured pavement equals better traction discovery?
Don't they get how badly they look like they are reaching for an excuse to exist with that crap?
You know, Kadmos, I was off the board for about 3 years. Since I've been back, 2 things have become apparent; you have been thru a divorce and you have become a bitter old man who's posts are no longer interesting to read and don't contain anything but diatribe for the most part. Must be a fun life.....
The simple answer Kamdos; Rome wasn't built in a day. Space exploration is a dangerous game, and so as a test bed we go to places that are close so we can learn how to do it with a better then 50%success rate. Mars is still an ENTIRE planet so there are plenty of places to land and explore, plenty of things we can learn.Originally Posted by Kadmos
But to just give up so we can feed the lazy? No thanks.
One of the biggest problems with our society these days it it has completely overridden natural selection by emplacing protections to be fat, weak, stupid and lazy and as a result we are being overrun with them. This is just another cost associated with this reality.. and it sucks.
"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."
-Nietzsche
"Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory."
-George S. Patton
Exactly my view on this. +1
We need to end the anti-natural selection programs and put the money into eliminating our national debt then, start investing heavily in space exploration with a focus on economic return. That's what has happened over and over in history and every time, propelled the acting nation ahead technologically and economically.
We will find a way to travel faster than light if we work diligently to do it. Who would've thought we'd have communication devices even more advanced than the Star Trek communicators only 25 years or so after that show came out?
Last edited by O.S.O.K.; 02-22-2012 at 01:51 PM.
~Nemo me impune lacessit~
Dangerous, and expensive. But ok, it's exploring and I am for that. But can we at least come up with clear goals? And can they not be stupid?
Do we need to put 100 rovers on mars to tell us we really can't survive there and it's way too expensive to mine, if there is anything to mine there anyway?
Do we need a detailed map of every nook and cranny on Mars?
Did we need to go into low earth orbit on a shuttle 135 times at a cost of 1.5 billion dollars per flight?
I'm not saying give up, I'm saying have actual goals, a long term plan, keep the cost reasonable with the goal in mind. Don't do the same exact thing 100 times and call it exploring.But to just give up so we can feed the lazy? No thanks.
But here's a thought, how about we work on alternative fuel sources, ways to turn actual desert into farmland and make it cheap enough to pay...maybe we could lower the cost of basic food so people could buy their own.
There is more than one kind of scientific exploring, we could send out the occasional craft on a clear mission to a new place and spend a lot of the money we basically wasted trying to solve some of the big problems here.
Nasa needs to quit fooling around with this stuff and do more to make muslims feel better.
I think the speed of light is a limit designed by God in His infinite wisdom... to keep self aware life forms from all over the galaxy and universe from killing each other.
Unless space can be "bent" with a wormhole, we are going nowhere.
Gentlemen may prefer Blondes, but Real Men prefer Redheads!
Do we need to fund the war on poverty for 40 years only to find we have more poverty than ever then declare we need to spend more?
What exactly do you do for a living Kadmos? Teach? College?
Didn't notice the divorce myself, but always known he was a wacky lib masquerading as someone with a half intelligent brain. Probably why I go off on him regularly. I can't stand people that pretend to be something they aren't.
Who says that? The same scientists that say we have global cooling in the 70's and watch out for the lack of food and glaciers? Or the ones claiming global warming to find the glaciers haven't melted one IOTA and may have added to the ice pack instead..... Einstein wasn't infallible, nor were his predecessors. Plenty of things in physics have been proven wrong, that's why they are called THEORIES. FACT is water boils at a certain temperature at a certain altitude. Something that can be proven over and over again. Saying the speed of light cannot be exceeded is Theory.
I agree. Electromagnetic radiation may be the fastest thing in the universe, but there is nothing I can think of that says it is set as the absolute limit. If you think of a "particle" of light falling into a black hole, I would have to think the light has to gain speed as it falls below the event horizon...as an example.
Some of the things that Kadmos has said has led me to my conclusions.
I was watching a thing on the science channel where they were talking about the possibility of man made worm holes. Right now they are saying that a artificial wormhole would be to unstable to move anything through...and even if you could move something through it...there is no telling where it would end up.
I agree, we do not know the limit, if there is one until we come close to or break the barriers that we think might exist now.
So there's a goal. If we want to go for it, that's great, we should try. But right now I don't think we are even going 1% of the speed of light, lets just be aware of that and plan accordingly.
Space goals need to be short term, medium term and loooooong term.
Short term might be a rover on those planets where it wouldn't be completely destroyed (10-30 years).
Medium term might be a man on Mars or Titan, or probes to the nearest planets outside our solar system which go 50 times faster that what we have now, or golly be rovers that actually come back and land here so we can have a parade or something for people to gawk at. (50-100 years)
Long term, getting humans to a planet outside our solar system (500+ years)
And all these goals need to be get A whatever to wherever, not get 10 there or 20 close to there.
The bulk of what we've done in the last 20-30 years is akin to packing up the whole family driving across country to Disneyland, driving real slow through the parking lot, then going home...and planning to do the same trip in 6 or 8 months.
Even if it can be exceeded...one would have wonder what type of substance could survive being broke down into tiny atoms and restructured at point B of the journey.
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