Tevatron is shutting down today.

[Elok]

We should totally spend a ludicrous sum of money to establish a permanent or semi-permanent base on the moon. It's our only way to spend even more money establishing a permanent or semi-permanent base on other, equally dead planets, which are a logical first step to spending still more money than that to spend decades getting men to attempt to establish permanent bases on planets we haven't seen up close but which, statistically, are also highly likely to be dead. This is a much more sound investment than certain plans of the current administration which have not yet born fruit, and clearly our only choices are those and this, so ipso ex post facto we must establish a base on the moon.

P.S. Loin, please leave C.S. Lewis out of this.

[Ben Kenobi]

Do you have any ideas for ways to use the moon base that don't involve human sacrifice?

As opposed to the Shuttle?

Life is dangerous, loin. You can die just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If people are willing to engage in such a mission, I don't see the problem.

[Ben Kenobi]

I don't particularly care about your bat**** idiotic suggestion that this is a good use of trillions of dollars. I am pointing out that you are not a credible source of information on anything scientific, and rebutting your suggestion that a partly finished associate degree from kalamazoo college in astrophysics makes you one

So you think Freeman Dyson is bat**** idiotic? Look, this concept has been around since the 60's. It requires no new technologies that we do not otherwise have. It would cost about the equivalent to what the US makes in a year to construct and launch. Even Sagan has talked about this idea.

Now, we get it that your hatred of me is personal, but let's cut to the chase. Hating an idea because I brought it up, is just dumb. Aren't you supposed to be a scientist or something?

And as for 'university of kalamazoo', I got my physics training at UBC. FFS. That's rich.

[Ben Kenobi]

We should totally spend a ludicrous sum of money to establish a permanent or semi-permanent base on the moon. It's our only way to spend even more money establishing a permanent or semi-permanent base on other, equally dead planets, which are a logical first step to spending still more money than that to spend decades getting men to attempt to establish permanent bases on planets we haven't seen up close but which, statistically, are also highly likely to be dead. This is a much more sound investment than certain plans of the current administration which have not yet born fruit, and clearly our only choices are those and this, so ipso ex post facto we must establish a base on the moon.

You live here because other idiotic people sailed halfway around the world to a continent they didn't even know existed and then spent a tremendous amount of money, upkeeping said colonies, and settling them with people, who were also dumb to walk outside their house and leave to an unknown future.

If we're going to get off this rock, it has to be done.

[loinburger]

As opposed to the Shuttle?

Life is dangerous, loin. You can die just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If people are willing to engage in such a mission, I don't see the problem.

I had no idea that you supported euthanasia

[loinburger]

If we're going to get off this rock, it has to be done.

How is sending a group of people several light years away so that they can radio back decades later and say "no habitable planets here, now excuse us while we starve to death" going to "help us get off this rock"?

More to the point, what advantage would a suicide mission have over an unmanned mission?

[Elok]

You live here because other idiotic people sailed halfway around the world to a continent they didn't even know existed and then spent a tremendous amount of money, upkeeping said colonies, and settling them with people, who were also dumb to walk outside their house and leave to an unknown future.

If we're going to get off this rock, it has to be done.

This continent was found by fortuitous accident by an explorer with bad math skills, true. However, he was attempting to reach a well-known continent to exploit existing and very profitable trade opportunities, like a number of other people of his generation. The colonies were immensely profitable (when properly run)--the silver mines at Potosi kept the Holy Roman Empire funded for what, a century? If Columbus had not been incompetent and risked death by bad calculation, the discovery of the new world would have been delayed by perhaps a century while technology made it feasible to send ships greater and greater distances, assuming no other incompetent intervened in Columbus's place.

Colonizing the moon would be a net loss of tremendous amounts of money. Colonizing any other planet in this solar system would be a net loss of tremendous amounts of money. Even if we successfully established a colony on a planet outside our system, "trade" with it would not be realistically possible under our current understanding of physics, we would mostly have the satisfaction of knowing that the human race existed somewhere else--after a few decades of waiting by the radio. Even running it as a conventional colony would not be practical due to the prohibitive expenses and time required to ship people there. We could seed the initial base, maybe send one or two more ships of supplies and people if we had the political will and cash (doubtful), and that's it. Unless we discover something totally game-changing, space travel is simply a fool's errand.

[loinburger]

So you think Freeman Dyson is bat**** idiotic?

Parroting somebody else's ideas does not provide the full support of that person's brilliance, unfortunately for you. Dyson also came up with the Dyson Sphere, which is an interesting idea, but that's all it is - if you were to say that we should build a Dyson Sphere, and that anybody who disagrees with you is devoid of all dreams or whatever other hyperbole you trot out, and that only somebody as smart as Freeman Dyson is allowed to disagree with you, then you would be acting just as stupidly as you are with this interstellar travel crap.

Brilliant people do not just come up with brilliant ideas - they also come up with random musings, interesting hypotheticals, bad ideas bred in ignorance, bad ideas bred in bias, and just plain bad ideas.

[Pax]

BK, You miss a key point. Every time you post. You miss a key point. Everyone here has told you over and over again. No base will be built unless there is some profit involved. This is what motivated earlier settlers.
There are several reasons why we would build a base on the moon.
Penal Colony
Exile Dissidents
Religious or political separatists
Resources
Research
the earth becomes unhabitable

But they all have to be economically feasible i.e. the benefit has to be greater than the cost. This has been true throughout history. The people did not leave europe to go to the new world just because. That might work in a tea party or a religious cult family but it does not work for the rest of us. Most people traveling to the new world saw some advantage to leaving there and coming here. There has to be something BK. Oh yeah, Kennedy had reason to take the U.S. into space. They were political, economic and scientific. Once we got to the moon and found that at present there is nothing that we will profit from doing on the moon, we did not come back. Once there is a benefit then we should go back.
BK, if you ever read any hard scifi, you may get a broader understanding between the connection between human emotion, scientific possibility and economic opportunity. Almost every, Good Scifi writer gives detail as to how or why we are on this planet or moon. It's never just because.

[Kitschum]

I love that picture: Money! California !

[BlackCat]

Religious separatists

Honestly, I would prefer that such was confined to earth - one thing is that they mess things up here - no reason to let them mess up the universe too.

[BlackCat]

I love that picture: Money! California !

You swedes are such suckers - all you get is a small house on the prairie

[Kitschum]

You swedes are such suckers - all you get is a small house on the prairie

Haha! I let you know I've got distant family in Oregon! I'm sure to inherit anytime now.

[BlackCat]

Forget it - your ancestors was too busy fornicating and making babies, so nothing for you.

[Kitschum]

What can I say. My ancestors were well endowed indeed