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Holering

why haven't we inhabited any other planet yet? Wtf.

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Why haven't we inhabited another planet in our solar system yet? There's lots of stuff out there that is actually smaller than the well known planets (Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, etc). Why keep repeating the same old shit over and over again every year no matter what? Oh uhhhh, faster graphics, more sounds, more resolution, more shaders, uhhhh yeah that's very different from anything else we've done since the last few decades. Is mankind just flushing themselves down the toilet or what? Why isn't SGI doing some high end research on a wireless tool for measuring molecular density and structures for crying out loud? Maybe we've gotten dumber? At least Nintendo made the Wii.

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Technological progress doesn't progress according to your growth function. Oh no, what will we do?

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Oh yeah, I love measuring molecular density. I'm gonna measure molecular density with my brand new iDense 5 the whooooole weekend. Imagine knowing how dense dirt is, or water!

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Holering said:

Why haven't we inhabited another planet in our solar system yet?

What's the rush? This one's good for another couple of decades.

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I partially "get" this rant: you wonder why there haven't been major advances in "hard" sectors like aerospace technology, aviation, rocketry, internal combustion engines, and space exploration in the last decades, or why we don't have cool stuff like jetpacks, flying cars and nuclear reactors in every home.

NEWSFLASH: the end of the Cold War and several energy crises put an end to the unprecedented advance in those "hard" fields, and now the emphasis is on "softer" technologies. "Atoms for peace" has been almost entirely written off, and stuff like jetpacks and flying cars relied on the assumption that in the future, energy would be plentiful and that personal flight would be high in demand. Guess what happened....

It's much more likely that future wars will erupt over the few remaining "hard" energy resources (oil, coal etc.) that can keep militaries going (you can't project world power with solar-powered unicycles), and that any technology will ultimately have something to do with introverted electronic surveillance and policing, than space exploration.

But yeah, we surely made a lot of "progress" on stuff like Facebook, Twitter, NSA, Big Brother etc. All "soft" technologies with immediate police applications. We certainly are living in an age of relative introversion and technological stagnation, waiting for a singularity (some major war, some major energy resource breakthrough, a dramatic advancement in weaponry, self-aware AI, a mass extinction event of some sort etc.) to really push us into the next era.

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Why haven't we inhabited any other planet yet? Because the Soviet Union collapsed.


Space conquest served two roles: a civilian alibi for developing rocket science (with the unavowed idea that it'd also help create better ICBM) and a dick-waving propaganda piece.

Now get one of the two superblocks to collapse; in this case the Soviet Union but it would have been exactly the same if it had been the USA instead. Suddenly, nobody gives a fuck about space anymore. Because space is useless in the short term, and there isn't any sort of ideological conflict that requires long-term planning.

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Why bother inhabiting another planet? Its just money and lives. Oh and time too. Lots of time to travel.

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Colonizing planets takes a shitload of money. Nobody wants to band together to spend it. Even the Cold War wasn't terribly good at encouraging that when it was easier to shoot for the 600-ship navy and ICBMs don't have to be able to carry men to Mars.

Maybe Mars Once will work out. More likely it will kill a bunch of people trying, or will just fizzle before any hardware gets built.

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OP sounds like a rant someone would have after a few hits of the bong, that makes perfect sense to anyone else who's also high.

It's true though, more people need to get interested in important stuff. Now, plebes! *cracks whip*

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Yep, political agendas get in the way. It's fucking sad. With the proper motivation, we could have easily colonized another world by now, or at least a moon. The immense distance between Earth and Mars gets in the way, too. The moon is about a quarter million miles away, but Mars not only varies wildly in its distance from Earth, but at a minimum it's about 100 million miles away. Imagine trying to make it there and back. Imagine all the ships that would have to coordinate, to bring supplies and construction materials. Man. I really hope we can accomplish SOMETHING in that direction in the next half century.

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SGI? What year is it?

We'd need to actually conduct a manned mission to another planet before we could think of colonising one. Mars is the only realistic candidate within our solar system for colonisation and even then the challenges for something as simple as a manned mission there are huge. If you imagine it's easy then you haven't understood the scale of the challenges.

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Holering said:

Why haven't we inhabited another planet in our solar system yet?


You have got to be fucking kidding me.

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fraggle said:

SGI? What year is it?


Dunno, try some cyberlinks to find out.

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I heard they are going to try to land on the sun soon, but they are waiting until nighttime.

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I thought I was on another planet once.

Turns out I had passed out with my head in the toilet.

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I could tell you reasons why..

Mercury: Too hot (200ish C), no or trace atmosphere.
Venus: Way too hot (Over 400 C), corrosive oven-like greenhouse atmosphere.
Mars: Feasible with a couple hundred years of terraforming the thinner atmosphere so there is a more breathable atmosphere. Same applies to Phobos.
Jupiter: No actual solid surface, too cold, powerful winds and crushing gravity. However, one or two of the major moons may be candidates.
Saturn: See Jupiter. However, the moon Titan might be a candidate for the future.
Uranus: See Jupiter.
Neptune: See Jupiter.
Pluto: No/trace atmosphere, extremely cold and quite dark.
Eris: See Pluto. Also has a 550+ year orbit.
Sedna: Too far out, also has about an 11,400 year orbit. (estimated 937 AU for its aphelion but about 76 AU for perihelion)


Only Mars is just outside the "Goldilocks Zone" in our Solar System and it's still possible in the future. Also like others said, political bullshit and underfunding of such projects because of other bullshit (wars, etc)

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Jetpacks probably are as dangerous as skydiving, not everyone would want to use them, so they probably won't sell easily. Still going to work flying may save you lots of time, but I suppose there needs to be a more stable personal engine for it.

Flying cars already exist in some form, presumably as helicopters, but they're just expensive. And anyway, why would I want to fly in a big metal box when I could just fly with a backpack by myself?

What about personal helicopters (fans attached to your backpack)? Probably dangerous because if they hit something, you're in big jeopardy.

Anyway, I guess that any technology that involves the risk of falling to death will have a slow adoption...

For outer space exploration and conquest there are way too many risk factors to consider, it's not even funny. Maybe it's actually feasible, but to me terraforming sounds like playing god.

Why not build bases inside Moon, rather? It's closer.

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We don't have the technology to inhabit other planets. We would have it, if we'd been working on it these past 40 years or so, but we haven't because there's been no need or interest in it. It's literally that simple.

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Helicopters aren't only expensive, but they are also difficult to learn to fly, so if you can afford one, make sure you can also afford your own personal pilot or that you can shell out the cash and time to become a pilot yourself. And not everybody can do either..

Jetpacks, apart from the short range (just under a minute for current designs and with available fuels), also require no less than a pilot already expert in helicopter or vectored thrust flight (so unless you happen to be a certified Harrier jet pilot or an astronaut, forget it).
..
Even if they somehow managed to place a miniature nuclear reactor in a reasonable backpack-sized device, you'd still need a fluid to expel...assuming that they ran on the cheapest thing available (water heated by the mini-reactor) you'd still only be able to fly for a few minutes, before the liquid ran out. Unless they managed to install some insanely powerful nuclear-powered electric compressors or ducted fans....would you really like to fly with such a thing attached to your back?

Electronics/avionics may make contolling easier to some degree, but it's still going to be a challenging affair to fly any device capable of hovering. And don't even think of putting people on devices derived from radio controlled or drone quadcopters: their safety records and all-weather flight capabilities are abysmal, tolerated only because they are not manned....

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Glaice said:

Mars: Feasible with a couple hundred years of terraforming the thinner atmosphere so there is a more breathable atmosphere. Same applies to Phobos.

You must be kidding. The gravity on Phobos is too weak.

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bytor said:

I thought I was on another planet once.

Turns out I had passed out with my head in the toilet.


You thought you were somewhere in the Outer Rim in the Star Wars universe? :p

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FWIW, a certain Finn (or all Finns) will be delighted to know that I once fantasized of a grim & frostbitten planet called Jumalauto, inhabited entirely by Angry Finns that say awesome Finnish things like Jumalauta Perkele Saatana Vittu Perse all the time. That's their only way of interacting with each other, despite Jumalauyo having a population density of just 0.01 Angry Finns/km^2.

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Glaice said:

I could tell you reasons why..

Mercury: Too hot (200ish C), no or trace atmosphere.
Venus: Way too hot (Over 400 C), corrosive oven-like greenhouse atmosphere.
Mars: Feasible with a couple hundred years of terraforming the thinner atmosphere so there is a more breathable atmosphere. Same applies to Phobos.
Jupiter: No actual solid surface, too cold, powerful winds and crushing gravity. However, one or two of the major moons may be candidates.
Saturn: See Jupiter. However, the moon Titan might be a candidate for the future.
Uranus: See Jupiter.
Neptune: See Jupiter.
Pluto: No/trace atmosphere, extremely cold and quite dark.
Eris: See Pluto. Also has a 550+ year orbit.
Sedna: Too far out, also has about an 11,400 year orbit. (estimated 937 AU for its aphelion but about 76 AU for perihelion)


Only Mars is just outside the "Goldilocks Zone" in our Solar System and it's still possible in the future. Also like others said, political bullshit and underfunding of such projects because of other bullshit (wars, etc)


If Venus could be terraformed, it'd be very interesting. From a size and gravity standpoint, it's much closer to Earth than the midget Mars. However, its atmosphere is not just hot and corrosive; it's also really thick, nearly a hundred time the mass of the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in a crushing pressure.

Mars has the opposite problem, not enough of an atmosphere, to the point that the idea of terraforming it seem dubious -- what's the point of making air breathable if it's still too rare to breathe?

I don't know why you bothered listing not-planets (Pluto and beyond). And of course, nobody would bother attempting to colonize the gas giants; however they have Earth-like satellites. Europa, for instance, is a good theoretical candidate.

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Hmm...
I also wish that Mars would be colonized. However, i think the humanity should do something with the Moon first.
So I heard about the ideas to use the moon as a giant server room with a supercomputer of some sort, as well as a part of an interplanetary version of the Internet.
http://www.noos.com.ua/ru/post/3060 (It's in russian)
Also, i heard about a Japanese company planning to make a belt around the surface of the Moon (although i have doubts, judging by the craters, i assume that the belt will be hit by meteorites and crap quite frequently)
http://www.space.com/23810-moon-luna-belt-solar-power-idea.html.

As for the Mars, i also read about the ideas of building an underground base.
http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/mars-moon-bases

Personally, i am quite amused by all of the above. Too bad politicians are too busy fighting over a load of bucks...
And that's kinda sad :/

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