Gotta love progress in space

Originally posted by sonhouse
For instance, besides just dude's going to other planets in the solar system, which I understand you think a waste of money, don't forget about weather satellites, GPS satellites, Hubble space telescope, Herschel space telescope, the probes around Mars taking those excellent photos, the landers learning about the real story on Mars, maybe probes down the ro ...[text shortened]... the moon or Mars if I get it right. That is still a small part of the world wide space budget.

The odds of that happening while our economy is in a slump approach zero. Economies recover in years or decades. Dinosaurs lived 65 million years (is that the right number?) without getting hit by giant asteroids.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
The odds of that happening while our economy is in a slump approach zero. Economies recover in years or decades. Dinosaurs lived 65 million years (is that the right number?) without getting hit by giant asteroids.

Actually, there seems to be a regularity about the asteroid thing, about 33 million years apart and it has been 65 million years now, so we are sort of overdue for one. The dino's lived a lot longer than 65 mil, the big one came 65 million years ago but dino's were around like 200 million years ago I think, something like that anyway. There were asteroid strikes between those times also but not as disastrous as the big one back then. One of the things we are beginning to see now is these things can give you a sucker punch, some big asss rock coming in from out of nowhere and several have come in between the Earth and the Moon, which is close enough to be a bit scary. That kind can hit and no amount of gnashing of teeth or launching of nuclear bombs into it could stop it. The really big ones will give you decades of warning which means you can use several different kinds of technology to nudge the suckers out of the way so the path does not intersect Earth. Hey, call it paranoia but those guys can really ruin your afternoon!
Actually, I am deeply concerned about the entire endeavor of science at all levels, in the centuries to come. If we launch ourselves into another ice age by our own hand, you can kiss goodbye to 99 percent of what we call civilization, including space travel. If that happens, we will be lucky to make a Wright brothers style aircraft again...

Originally posted by sonhouse
Moon, hell! You could finance ten trips to Mars for that price! Aren't we pushing a tril now?

Well we know why Obama canceled the moon return, don't we:
He couldn't take the chance on the fake landings in '69 being blown open, right?
Just too embarrassing, eh.

it's the puppetmasters pulling strings.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Actually, there seems to be a regularity about the asteroid thing, about 33 million years apart and it has been 65 million years now, so we are sort of overdue for one. The dino's lived a lot longer than 65 mil, the big one came 65 million years ago but dino's were around like 200 million years ago I think, something like that anyway. There were asteroid st ...[text shortened]... ce travel. If that happens, we will be lucky to make a Wright brothers style aircraft again...

Oh calm down. We haven't stopped progressing since the Dark Ages ended.

Sure, but certainly following a cataclysm the continued progression of our species is ambiguous.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Actually, there seems to be a regularity about the asteroid thing, about 33 million years apart and it has been 65 million years now, so we are sort of overdue for one. The dino's lived a lot longer than 65 mil, the big one came 65 million years ago but dino's were around like 200 million years ago I think, something like that anyway. There were asteroid st ...[text shortened]... ce travel. If that happens, we will be lucky to make a Wright brothers style aircraft again...

how much warning did we have for the string that hit Jupiter?

i think there is some bruce willis movie where they make a last-ditch effort to avert an asteroid collision, but i don't think the shuttle launches that fast.