Perserverance safely lands on Mars!

@sonhouse said
@wildgrass
Each landing gets closer to the question of whether there is life on other planets in our own solar system with Mars high on the list, along with some of the outer moons like Europa.

That is exciting in its own right.

In all seriousness, I am very excited about this. I just always thought when I was a kid that I would be living in space right now in one of those spinning artificial gravity space ships from science fiction books with trees and parks and stuff. Realizing that won't ever be reality is depressing.

Also I'm a bit dismayed to find out there's a big backlash to this project from a finances point of view. Lots of people are legitimately angry that we've spent lots of money to build a robot and send it to mars but we can't house the homeless. I think it's a dangerous logical fallacy that there's some zero sum game of money pot and we can't innovate unless everyone on the planet is housed and fed and happy. We can do both right? This seems to be an issue of improperly messaging the role of scientific discovery as "progressive".

@wildgrass
But the bottom line is in spite of the money spent on space programs, the average health of the human race is a LOT stronger than any other time in human history.
It is science that gave us that.

@sonhouse said
@wildgrass
But the bottom line is in spite of the money spent on space programs, the average health of the human race is a LOT stronger than any other time in human history.
It is science that gave us that.

Yeah but still. Where's my moon colony?

@wildgrass
Or flying cars or a bunch of other stuff predicted 50 years ago.
Apollo was a publicity stunt as it turns out. As soon as Nixon realized we beat the Soviets, he killed it. If there had been political will we could have had a real colony on the moon decades ago.
I worked Apollo, back in the day. Did you know the plans for the Saturn V were shoved in a dumpster so now we had to totally reinvent the heavy lifter SLS NASA is building now, start over from scratch.
Of course 50 years of technological advances have made the SLS more efficient and more thrust and such so the whole art of rockets has advanced a lot in the last 50 years.

For instance, one electric propulsion system is the VASIMIR, when fully developed may get humans to Mars in a month, 6 times faster than our rockets of today because it does a small acceleration for a long time, so 1/20th of a G 24/7 gets you there in a month. A lot of work is to be done to get that.

@sonhouse said
@wildgrass
Or flying cars or a bunch of other stuff predicted 50 years ago.
Apollo was a publicity stunt as it turns out. As soon as Nixon realized we beat the Soviets, he killed it. If there had been political will we could have had a real colony on the moon decades ago.
I worked Apollo, back in the day. Did you know the plans for the Saturn V were shoved in a dumpster ...[text shortened]... long time, so 1/20th of a G 24/7 gets you there in a month. A lot of work is to be done to get that.

Flying cars exist though.

Given all the ultrawealth spread out in the world, a moon colony would be a gold mine from a tourism perspective. Charge $50 million for the ride up there.

@wildgrass
Yeah, EVERYONE could visit the moon then🙂

@sonhouse said
@wildgrass
Yeah, EVERYONE could visit the moon then🙂

As a society we need to start doing big things again, other than building obsolete jets.

@wildgrass
Well, it is the advance of science and technology that makes those jets obsolete.

@sonhouse said
@wildgrass
Well, it is the advance of science and technology that makes those jets obsolete.

Jet engines were around 80 years ago. What about new discoveries, new advances, new land? Manifest destiny. Let's inspire a new generation of scientists to make fundamental discoveries, not incremental improvements.

@wildgrass
Well it seems we have made a lot of fundamental discoveries, like the relation between space, time, mass and velocity.

Obviously there are more fundamentals to be discovered but you can't just decide as a scientist to say, well today I am going to make a fundamental discovery.

It is a world wide team effort to come up with such.

Like Newton and Leibnitz coming up with calculus, a fundamental math development that engendered almost everything we see today.

We have to build on previous discoveries to climb the next peak and maybe see the whole horizon of science.

So IMHO science is built on bit by bit discovery and work and my guess is any fundamentals will be discovered also bit by bit closing in on whatever it is.

Like the rockets first invented by Goddard and now we contemplate sending humans to Mars.
Like this:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/faster-than-light-travel-warp-bubble

Trying to build a real warp drive, you would have to admit THAT is fundamental🙂

Of course chances are what, a million to one of ever happening especially in century 21 but maybe century THIRTY ONE?