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Gwar! wrote:Why does it have a vagina!!!!

Why did you think it was so excited to jump onto people's faces?

OK this thread has seriously taken a turn too the wierd.

GG

Orkeosaurus wrote:I dunno, but it happens a lot in the deep ocean.


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Look at this crazy mother fether!

Crab People Crab People
Walk like Crabs
Talk like People.

Orkeosaurus wrote:We have water on Earth. We can build rockets and bombs here.

There's no reason to be on the moon, it's a giant rock. Tourism for the stupidly rich is the only thing I can think of.

As I said in a recent thread, why aren't we devoting more resources to things like asteroid defense and not searches for water on a rock we're not going to permanently inhabit anyway? NASA can't formulate an intelligent long-term plan to save their lives.

Gwar! wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:This is a cool discovery, but the idea of a moon base is pretty well defeated by the notion of a space station (actual zergo g, constant power supply, easier to reach, easier to return from), meaning that the only real purpose of this would be to ease the creation of a research station of some kind. You can launch space ships from the moon, but first you have to get them there. You're not going to be building them there after all, you don't have any of the resources and none of the manpower. But then, if you're launching a space ship at the moon just to launch it from there, why not just launch it from the earth?

I can answer that one.

Launching stuff from Earth is hard. Really hard. It has to be a very specific shape (because of the damn air) and size (Because of the damn Gravity) and it's just a pain in the arse.
What you do is send up rockets with the Materials needed (Iron Bars, Aluminium, Electronics etc etc etc) and assemble them on the moon into whatever shape you want (aka Big mofo Spess Sheeps) which then require little fuel to take off and do not have to worry about atmosphere.


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Wrexasaur wrote:

generalgrog wrote:Ahh he looks so cute lying there with his paws all innocent and all. The antennas too.

GG

Awww... OMFGWTFBBQ!!1!

Why does it have a vagina!!!!

Gwar: thats one way, but still its better if you do the Asteroid belt high orbit factory for materials.
simply put, send a rocket to a ice asteriod, use the ice to refuel the rocket, then have the rocket attatch to an iron asteroid and propell it back into high orbit. use the asteroid for materials.
Send more rockets out to collect more asteroids (ice and such). wazammm!!! near limitless resourses mostly protected in high orbit by the shear bulk of the asteroids. when done attatch rocket and propell waste into the sun.
I belive an american company was planning just this type of thing in the 90's but i never heard more than a squeek.

Orkasaurus: why would we want to go anywhere else in the solor system? 2 reasons
1: so the human race isnt so to speek in one basket.
2: to get as far away from the US as posible

We don't need iron and nickel. We have a lot on earth. Getting them from asteroids is stupid. It's not "near limitless resources", it's getting iron and nickel at the cost of a lot of time and labor, and that's a bad tradeoff.

Agreed. if it accessed a really cheap power source or a filter for Pollutionaway it might be worth it. Otherwise its just a scientist welfare bill.

Keep in mind that most of these prosesses can and will be aoutomated, and that the cost in lifting a rocket full of nickle and iron to build something huge in high orbit would be larger than sicking an astaroid from one of the belts.
The benifits from space to space manufacturing are enormous, and none of the processes would polute the earth as they do now, think of gigantic solor colectors that will never touch the planet or come from the planet that give off tremendous light to the solor cells on the ground, cheep eco friendly power, no more nuclear plants needed. as just 1 of a 1000 examples.
Sorry Orceosaurus, your not really giving an informed arguement, your just giving the Mr garison line. 'Its bad ummkay'
Explain to me why not raping the earth is a bad thing, or expanding tech out side of the lower orbit of our planet is dumb. you say time and labor intensive, slow, but the alternatives are to stay on earth and allow us to just keep on, keeping on. thats not an option i care to think about.
In short the benifits outway the short view.

Dude iron ore is 101 cents per ton as at October 2009.

Cents PER TON.

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=iron-ore

Frazzled: Yup.
Now let me explain high and low earth orbit to you.
low earth orbit most things burn up before hitting something (satalites and such)
high earth orbit: tiny dust speck traveling at .4 of C = BOOOOM!!!!
your gonna need alot of cussion,
One trip with rocket or how many trips / loads of iron ore from the planet. Your choice.

Edit: Oh ya, and your still raping the planet and poluting it with the processing.

Hawkins wrote:Frazzled: Yup.
Now let me explain high and low earth orbit to you.
low earth orbit most things burn up before hitting something (satalites and such)
high earth orbit: tiny dust speck traveling at .4 of C = BOOOOM!!!!
your gonna need alot of cussion,
One trip with rocket or how many trips / loads of iron ore from the planet. Your choice.

Lets be clear before I go off on a tangent (again). What are you specifically arguing for?

Hawkins wrote:Keep in mind that most of these prosesses can and will be aoutomated, and that the cost in lifting a rocket full of nickle and iron to build something huge in high orbit would be larger than sicking an astaroid from one of the belts.

What do we need to build in orbit that's so huge it requires an automated process of asteroid retrieval to contruct? (The answer is nothing.)

The benifits from space to space manufacturing are enormous, and none of the processes would polute the earth as they do now, think of gigantic solor colectors that will never touch the planet or come from the planet that give off tremendous light to the solor cells on the ground, cheep eco friendly power, no more nuclear plants needed. as just 1 of a 1000 examples.

Christ. Nuclear power is far superior to solar, even with nothing but fission to go off of. Since I'm pretty sure your asteroid removal process requires fusion to be cost effective, energy production is a non-issue (otherwise how do plan on electrolyzing asteroid ice into hydrogen?).

Your power source isn't cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination. Nuclear fission is cheap. Nuclear fission is "eco-friendly". Nuclear fusion is godly, if feasible, and if it's not your asteroid retrieval plan just lost one of its best fuels. Waiting 300 years for solar panels in the sky makes no sense. Putting them on the ground would get you further, as we have more than enough spare surface area here.

Even if you did make a network of satellites for solar power (which makes no sense), you would still get further launching them into orbit from here. Solar panels aren't made out of iron, they're mostly silicon

If you have another 999 examples, I'd use them.

Sorry Orceosaurus, your not really giving an informed arguement, your just giving the Mr garison line. 'Its bad ummkay'

Actually, as you can see, I'm far more informed about this than you are. I've gone over this before.

Explain to me why not raping the earth is a bad thing,

Oh, lol.

or expanding tech out side of the lower orbit of our planet is dumb.

It's dumb if we don't have a good reason to do so. We don't. And increasing the amount of iron ore we have isn't a technological advancement.

you say time and labor intensive, slow, but the alternatives are to stay on earth and allow us to just keep on, keeping on. thats not an option i care to think about.

What does that even mean?

In short the benifits outway the short view.

Nope. There might be benefits in the very distant future, but that's beyond the capabilities of our speculation. Society is not require the amount of energy that stupid sci-fi writers imagine it will. The developed world will advance far quicker in electronics, medicine, communications, and other service industries than it will in ENERGY AND METAL. It's the information age.

Gwar! wrote:
Launching stuff from Earth is hard. Really hard. It has to be a very specific shape (because of the damn air) and size (Because of the damn Gravity) and it's just a pain in the arse.
What you do is send up rockets with the Materials needed (Iron Bars, Aluminium, Electronics etc etc etc) and assemble them on the moon into whatever shape you want (aka Big mofo Spess Sheeps) which then require little fuel to take off and do not have to worry about atmosphere.

You just launched all the mass of the space ship from Earth, plus all the mass of the assembly facilities that would be required. And then launched the mass of the ship, again, from the moon.

dogma wrote:

Gwar! wrote:
Launching stuff from Earth is hard. Really hard. It has to be a very specific shape (because of the damn air) and size (Because of the damn Gravity) and it's just a pain in the arse.
What you do is send up rockets with the Materials needed (Iron Bars, Aluminium, Electronics etc etc etc) and assemble them on the moon into whatever shape you want (aka Big mofo Spess Sheeps) which then require little fuel to take off and do not have to worry about atmosphere.

You just launched all the mass of the space ship from Earth, plus all the mass of the assembly facilities that would be required. And then launched the mass of the ship, again, from the moon.

Yes, but you can launch things shaped like space ships from the moon much easier because there is no air and less gravity.

I'm still trying to understand what the point is?

Minerals other than some sort of absurdpowerinapowder just doesn't cut it. Frankly thats so not our problem its not funny. We need Power. We need the Cure for cancer. We need choclate that is nonfattening and adds years to your life. Absent something StarTrekkish, none of these are mined from asteroid 356479.

You can also launch them from the Earth-Moon L1 without having to deal with the nonsense of putting them on the interplanetary transit network (as they'd already be there).

Frazzled wrote:I'm still trying to understand what the point is?

Gaining the ability to launch giant rocks at the Earth.

You could play the largest back 9 ever conceived!

dogma wrote:You can also launch them from the Earth-Moon L1 without having to deal with the nonsense of putting it on the interplanetary transit network.

Yeah, the L1 point is nice, but the moon is a lot easier to build a base on, plus you can use the rock as natural shielding against radiations and heat.

dogma wrote:You can also launch them from the Earth-Moon L1 without having to deal with the nonsense of putting them on the interplanetary transit network (as they'd already be there).

Frazzled wrote:I'm still trying to understand what the point is?

Gaining the ability to launch giant rocks at the Earth.

You could play the largest back 9 ever conceived!

I thought mass drivers were illegal? Even the Centauri don't mess with them. oh wait.

I just LOVE the fact fact America bombed the moon.

Brilliant!

I suppose the point of all this is as a dry run for if we ever have to evacuate the planet - that is literally the only good reason I can see for building a base on the moon. Unless it's full of Uranium or Oil or BBQ sauce.

There is a fusion reactor in existence but it's too small for sustainable fusion,so they are building a larger one in USA.

Frazzled wrote:

Hawkins wrote:Frazzled: Yup.
Now let me explain high and low earth orbit to you.
low earth orbit most things burn up before hitting something (satalites and such)
high earth orbit: tiny dust speck traveling at .4 of C = BOOOOM!!!!
your gonna need alot of cussion,
One trip with rocket or how many trips / loads of iron ore from the planet. Your choice.

Lets be clear before I go off on a tangent (again). What are you specifically arguing for?

Frazzled:
I guess you could say, agreeing with Gwar, and his statements, adding a bit of my own, and Defending those positions against Orceosaurus. who has an opposite opinion.....


Orc: less see.

o: What do we need to build in orbit that's so huge it requires an automated process of asteroid retrieval to contruct? (The answer is nothing.)

your right at the momment nothing. i would hope though that in the very near future that a prosess like the one mentioned could be started for very large ships, colony construction and so forth so that we have the option to get off earth. the first step to that IS using and harnessing resourses off earth.

o: Christ. Nuclear power is far superior to solar, even with nothing but fission to go off of. Since I'm pretty sure your asteroid removal process requires fusion to be cost effective, energy production is a non-issue (otherwise how do plan on electrolyzing asteroid ice into hydrogen?).

First part: agreed, but it is more dangerous, but a focused solor reflector/funnel and cells are viable and will produce mass ammounts of safer energy. maybe not as much but its a hell of alot cleaner and safer.
second part: Hu? why go fusion when again the sun will fix the problem? you dont need the energy fusion will give, you simply need energy. the sun gives it. here refresher course: http://witcombe.sbc.edu/water/chemistryelectrolysis.html

o: Your power source isn't cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination. Nuclear fission is cheap. Nuclear fission is "eco-friendly". Nuclear fusion is godly, if feasible, and if it's not your asteroid retrieval plan just lost one of its best fuels. Waiting 300 years for solar panels in the sky makes no sense. Putting them on the ground would get you further, as we have more than enough spare surface area here.

Never said the process was cheep. in fact in the beginning it will be stupidly expensive. however in the long term it will pay off more than a poluted planet. and i should clarify that the pannels would be on the ground its the reflective funnels that would be in orbit. And lets get this over with now. My opinion is that neuclear fission is NOT eco friendly, the potential for disaster and missuse is a very real posibility considering some of the countries and powers that have it. There have been accidents in the past, and neuclear waste isnt just something you sweep under the rug. As for Fusion, yes it is godly but only if we can get it to work constantly, right now thats not an option, and the cost alone just for the creation of such a plant would be higher than the plan of sending retrival rockets for resourses to asteroids. (or near enough to make no matter.)

o: Solar panels aren't made out of iron, they're mostly silicon


thats right, i belive Regolith could be used. actually its beter suited. and again the panels would be on earth. unless you want to get into the whole sky needle thing...


o: If you have another 999 examples, I'd use them.

given time, sure,
alot of things are beter manufactured in zero gravity, medicines as well or so Nasa thinks. i could list em, but the one that has me all hot and bothered is the 4 mile TV screen.

o: Actually, as you can see, I'm far more informed about this than you are. I've gone over this before.

I'll agree you can provoke a thoughful discussion.



o: It's dumb if we don't have a good reason to do so. We don't. And increasing the amount of iron ore we have isn't a technological advancement.

I'll list some reasons, weather they are important is totlay up to you:
iron isnt the only thing , all materials non organic can be had with this.
With this process we wouldnt be dependant on earth for resorses.
we would be able in time to colonize other planets or moons in the solor system
travel and science would benifit
lessinging of industrial polution on earth
the human race would be able to branch out, and not be so suseptable to a global disaster that could kill off the life of the planet.
branching the science and industry could create orbital farms for food and even fuel.

o: Nope. There might be benefits in the very distant future, but that's beyond the capabilities of our speculation. Society is not require the amount of energy that stupid sci-fi writers imagine it will. The developed world will advance far quicker in electronics, medicine, communications, and other service industries than it will in ENERGY AND METAL. It's the information age.

I think the benifits would begine the moment we started doing it.
actually all the tech has been proposed in the 90's from america to do just what ive wrote. the science and technology are here now to do such a thing.
The benifits go way beyound metals and energy. food, medicine, science, you name it

Hawkins wrote:your right at the momment nothing. i would hope though that in the very near future that a prosess like the one mentioned could be started for very large ships, colony construction and so forth so that we have the option to get off earth. the first step to that IS using and harnessing resourses off earth.

Having options is fine, but that doesn't mean taking advantage of an option is always cost-effective.

First part: agreed, but it is more dangerous, but a focused solor reflector/funnel and cells are viable and will produce mass ammounts of safer energy. maybe not as much but its a hell of alot cleaner and safer.

Actually, it's not, because nuclear fission is already extremely clean and safe. Safer and better for the environment than hydroelectric is. Probably better for the environment per megawatt than solar and wind fields are.

second part: Hu? why go fusion when again the sun will fix the problem? you dont need the energy fusion will give, you simply need energy. the sun gives it. here refresher course: http://witcombe.sbc.edu/water/chemistryelectrolysis.html

You're hoping to get enough sunlight in the Asteroid Belt to melt large amounts of ice down and separate it into hydrogen and oxygen for spaceship fuel? How long is this going to take?

Never said the process was cheep. in fact in the beginning it will be stupidly expensive. however in the long term it will pay off more than a poluted planet. and i should clarify that the pannels would be on the ground its the reflective funnels that would be in orbit. And lets get this over with now. My opinion is that neuclear fission is NOT eco friendly, the potential for disaster and missuse is a very real posibility considering some of the countries and powers that have it.

Well then that explains your misperception.

There's a possibility for misuse? How about the ability to hurl asteroids into the planet? Or destroy large amounts of our current satellite network?

There have been accidents in the past,

Name one, that occurred in a modern nuclear reactor, and not Chernobyl's RBMK reactor.

and neuclear waste isnt just something you sweep under the rug.

Actually, it's hardly a problem at all. Breeder reactors and reprocessing can make it pretty much a non-issue.

That's in addition to tidal power, geothermal power, hydroelectric, conventional solar, and wind.

As for Fusion, yes it is godly but only if we can get it to work constantly, right now thats not an option, and the cost alone just for the creation of such a plant would be higher than the plan of sending retrival rockets for resourses to asteroids. (or near enough to make no matter.)

I have no idea where you're pulling this from, as we have no way of creating a sustainable fusion reactor at the moment.

thats right, i belive Regolith could be used. actually its beter suited. and again the panels would be on earth. unless you want to get into the whole sky needle thing...

Right, because we're making funnels out of steel to funnel more sunlight onto giant panels. I really don't the see the point, between all of the other sources of energy we have in addition to solar. And we have a lot of sunlight coming to earth without this project, simply having solar panels on every rooftop would make a huge difference.

given time, sure,
alot of things are beter manufactured in zero gravity, medicines as well or so Nasa thinks. i could list em, but the one that has me all hot and bothered is the 4 mile TV screen.

I'm not very inclined to trust NASA with the possibilities of commercial manufacturing in space. For one thing, they have very little experience with commercial manufacturing in any case, and for another it's clearly in the interest of the organization to make orbital manufacturing sound economical.

I'll agree you can provoke a thoughful discussion.

Well, thank you.

I'll list some reasons, weather they are important is totlay up to you:
iron isnt the only thing , all materials non organic can be had with this.

A bunch of other metals. Nothing that would be valuable on earth can be brought from an asteroid, any use it would have would be to orbital manufacturing. But I don't tink there's that much we need to be manufacturing in orbit.

With this process we wouldnt be dependant on earth for resorses.

In case is suddenly disappears?

we would be able in time to colonize other planets or moons in the solor system

That would be a good reason to start putting infrastructure in place, I'll admit, but I can't think of a god reason to try and colonize other planets or moons.

travel and science would benifit

There's always an opportunity cost.

lessinging of industrial polution on earth

I don't think that will make a significant difference. We've already made huge strides in this area in the first world. Power generation doesn't require massive orbital infrastructure in place.

the human race would be able to branch out, and not be so suseptable to a global disaster that could kill off the life of the planet.

I suppose that would tie into the first point, although that's assuming an asteroid doesn't slip and destroy the planet itself.

branching the science and industry could create orbital farms for food and even fuel.

That's not going to make any sense to be doing until we've consumed a hell of a lot of the resources currently on the planet. And there's no real reason to think that will ever occur, birth rates decrease as wealth decreases, recycling capabilities are getting better every day, we're gaining the ability to synthetically manufacture tons of things that were once rare.

If it does occur someday, it won't be until so much time has passed any predictions about where civilization is going will have been outdated. For all we know, in 500 years people will barely even care about physical manufacturing and electrical generation.

I think the benifits would begine the moment we started doing it.
actually all the tech has been proposed in the 90's from america to do just what ive wrote. the science and technology are here now to do such a thing.
The benifits go way beyound metals and energy. food, medicine, science, you name it.

Energy is not an issue that can be solved in a cost-effective manner using asteroids, and I don't see any other use to having massive amounts of steel in orbit.

Much like a moonbase, this is the kind of idea that gets thrown around a lot, because people think space = technology = the future. But there's really no reason to think this must be true, anymore. Space is just another asset, it has no inherent connection to advancement.

Orc: Well we can go back and forth for a week on this. quite frankly i dont have the time. You see it as useless i see it as useful. as we cant find some common ground on some of the points best to move on.
i call it a stalemate.

Alright, I'll accept.

I do think we both made some good arguments.

Orkeosaurus wrote:I dunno, but it happens a lot in the deep ocean.


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Look at this crazy mother fether!

Pff...Deep-sea gigantism...
The G-Virus does stuff like this all the time.

Also:
Craaaaaab people:

Frazzled wrote:I'm still trying to understand what the point is?

Minerals other than some sort of absurdpowerinapowder just doesn't cut it. Frankly thats so not our problem its not funny. We need Power. We need the Cure for cancer. We need choclate that is nonfattening and adds years to your life. Absent something StarTrekkish, none of these are mined from asteroid 356479.

Albatross wrote:I just LOVE the fact fact America bombed the moon.

Brilliant!

I suppose the point of all this is as a dry run for if we ever have to evacuate the planet - that is literally the only good reason I can see for building a base on the moon. Unless it's full of Uranium or Oil or BBQ sauce.

What if it's full of tea, crumpets, or an inordinate and unfounded sense of superiority?

In other news, what about the wide-ranging advances in technology that space exploration stimulates? And how about the interest in sciences that it stimulates? Missions like this are not completely useless. But there were certainly cantankerous nay-sayers when Kennedy told us we were going to the moon. The cranks, like the poor, will always be with us.

Manchu wrote:

Albatross wrote:I just LOVE the fact fact America bombed the moon.

Brilliant!

I suppose the point of all this is as a dry run for if we ever have to evacuate the planet - that is literally the only good reason I can see for building a base on the moon. Unless it's full of Uranium or Oil or BBQ sauce.

What if it's full of tea, crumpets, or an inordinate and unfounded sense of superiority?

Zing.

Post deleted by the Modquisition for flaming for no reason.

Even better, any asteroid based mining necessarily involves shooting big, dense rocks at the Earth.

In the far, far future, I am sure our intergalactic armada (, yeah... yeah right) will need to stock up on iron from asteroids or something.