Space : Earth And Beyond
 

Okay I know this is going to sink to the bottom of the forum, but thought I would try anyway.

Anyone found space fascinating? I know it is incredibly childish and unrealistic to dream about space and the possibilities of intergalactic travel, however I can't shake this curiosity from my mind for the past 15 years of my life. And that is one primary reason I irk my classmates during science lessons because my teachers couldn't answer my questions. :heh:

Well, thought we could discuss something like this here, since I am starting to get a little bored of discussing idiot human and geopolitical issues at the News Stories thread, and I wanted a science discussion to keep myself mentally alive - shouldn't have studied something stupid like Management to ensure societal survivability when my real interest is in the bigger sciences like aerospace and physics (but then again, there isn't any opportunities for me to study that here so.....yeah, I am going to suck at life).

Why space of all the things? It is my personal belief that the view beyond the far horizon is a powerful motivator that reality has no hold in - possibilities are endless. Besides, it incorporates basically most sciences and thins the lines between Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc.

I shall start the ball rolling. As of just now I have been thinking about this : has the elliptical orbit of Pluto got something to do with the gravitational field theory? Like how the relative field strengths there are in electromagnetic fields that form a certain pattern, does the strength at each point influence its orbit above and below that of Neptune in its 140-something years of orbit around the Sun?

It have something to do with the gravitational resonance with Neptune, for every three revolutions of Neptune, Pluto makes two. So, even tho their orbits brings them damn close, a few times over centuries, they will never collide.

There was a topic on Sakura-con.

Why Space is Boring and Why Only Nerds Will Go There. (I wonder what the reasons are though).

Space is badass. I was reading a book from a 80's awhile ago and it had a shitton of conceptual paintings for Mars landers, Moon bases, and space cities, which the USSR had planned for 2030 or so. Now people don't even have the balls to go to the Moon anymore, much less build cities there. (I'll make a side complaint and rant about how nobody makes paintings of the concept designs anymore, just some lame CG models)

I think that honestly though, we should forget about the stupid rocketry thing and redirect our efforts to what's REALLY needed: A space elevator. Once we build one of those things it'll be way easier to throw stuff at the stars, and it'll probably look awesome too.

.....Hawking recently issued a prophecy that should human made interstellar travel possible, any alien lifeform encountered will be most likely hostile.

Another reason why humanity will be inevitably doomed or at best degenerated into 40k-like state in the far future.

Every so often, I hear that this scientist or that scientist claims we have the technology to make quite significant improvements in our methods of space travel, if only our governments were willing to devote enough of their budget to it, and it makes me sad because it seems likely to me that this is true, though I'd think we should sort out some of the mess on Earth before we start putting too much effort towards that.

All that being said, space is very intriguing to me, but outside of my writing, I tend to like thinking about what could happen on that front in my lifetime, rather than what could happen X centuries down the road. The sad thing for me is that the immediate reality of space is going to likely be something people ignore or want nothing to do with. The people who first start venturing up into the heavens as lifers are probably going to be largely unsung even as they lay the foundations of their kind's future, because they will be laborers. Space Hard Hat Workers. It will only be after most of the heavy lifting is done and travel between Earth and Luna or Earth and Mars becomes safe enough to be mundane that people will get excited about space and start talking about it as the "promised frontier."

Here's another food-for-thought.

If there are truly intelligient lifeform out there and assuming they are unhostile, will humanity embrace them as distant brothers or will we be as how we are today, exploitive politically motivated xenophobic selves throughout our known history ?

a line from Futurama regarding meeting between Zoidberg and president Trumana
So probably something like above.

Also for this topic this image is a must.

Space development will make amazing and lightning-fast advances, but only when people figure out how to make a profit in space. As long as space development is government-driven, it will go precisely nowhere.

"We love movies about space, but are continually bored by actual space travel.
When's the last time you rushed to the TV to watch a space shuttle take off?

No, we all seem to be waiting for the future of space travel to get here, a future of
huge, comfortable starships hauling us to other planets where adventure awaits.
Hopefully ships with lasers, that can destroy other ships.

Unfortunately, it appears that even for your grandchildren, space travel will really,
really suck. Mainly because..."

See:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18547...ways-suck.html

Ahem... well, holy shit. I know the universe is that big but it's been awhile since I thought about the sheer magnitude of it all. It's all the more awesome, and it all the more indicates that there's other intelligence out there.

Well I find it fascinating there nothing like going out side in a clear moonless night to see all the star that are out. Then there are metorshowers lighting up the night sky it some thing to see

In less technical speech... the sheer size of those things can only be described as ridiculous.. I mean there is a point where you go uhm, thats a big star, then hm thats an even bigger star... then u reach a huge star then a humongous one, a colosal one....and eventually you run out of adjectives so the only word that can describe the size of these things from there on is "ridiculous" or even perhaps "OMG-WTF size" :D

Not to be insensitive to the topic at hand, since like the rest of you here I'm a space nut, however when I first saw the topic title this immediately came to mind:

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/a...ace20above.jpg

:heh::heh::heh:

And the vastness of the universe is one of it's many appeals as Terrestial Dream's image shows. :love:

Space is the future, if humans don't go to space, there is no hope in survival at all. If we don't go to space, our existence might as well be useless.

space is big, there has to be other life forms...from the grand big, we take over worlds ones, to the we just want to study what we encounter ones.

but like Terrestrial Dream posted:
Truman: If you're here to make peace, surrender or be destroyed. If you're here to make war, we surrender.

of course if they are here to make peace, i think we as humans, depending on where they land, we will try to learn from each other, and not tell them to surrender or be destroyed. Because if they created speed of light transportation, no matter what they will have the technology to wipe us out in a matter of months.

Same here! :D

Space in itself is so and so, but I find space travel very interesting. I've got a bunch of movies and documentaries on my shelf; The Right Stuff, From the Earth to the Moon, In the Shadow of the Moon, When We Left Earth...

But what if Homo sapiens finds Extraterrestrial first ? The sapiens-Na'vi relations didn't exactly turn out for the best on a huge scale. Xenophobia and Exploitation still prevails over cultural exchange.

Well, one can take a look in past history and see what happened when one civilization met another one.

I do have low faith in what would happen if we ever meet aliens. Depending on the aliens' tech level, we either go fully Hernan Cortez dickheads on them or they gives us a taste of our own medicine.

Space travel in terms of not just some selected ppl going to the moon, we won't see that in our lifetime. We should just stick with movies and Hubble images.