Btw, I agree with Slim Jim in that # posts is a totally irrelevant standard of measure.

Word count seems a much more logical method.

_________________
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Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
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Quote:

"Why should humanity put valuable resources into exploring space?" Thats gotta be a trick question right? Granted there might be a few (maybe even more than a few) areas where mankind should concentrate it's efforts rather than in space exploration but honestly Slim (you should have at least an idea) on a scale of 1-10 how much resources are wasted in space exploration (not counting efforts made in purely commercial endeavors such as satelite technology) compared to any other totally useless ettempts at self annihialation such as warring amongst ourselves. If the exploitation of space wasn't more than just a hobby for a few then Slim Jim would be probably have a significantly larger pay check than what he has today (thats without knowing in least what he makes )

You don't need to convince me that space exploration is
important you know...

I like the idea of a bigger paycheck though. Just wait and
see, in 10-15 years, there will be a "space boom" just like
the "IT boom" of the nineties. Then I'll be in high demand, by
god!
.
SlimJim

Anyone else have any opinions to offer?
.
SlimJim

Quote:

SlimJim wrote: I like the idea of a bigger paycheck though. Just wait and see, in 10-15 years, there will be a "space boom" just like the "IT boom" of the nineties. Then I'll be in high demand, by god! . SlimJim

I sure hope the marke doesn't crash and burn during the space boom like it did in the IT boom .

Seriously though, one can draw on a range of arguments to advocate space exploration (both from a scientific and commercial perspective). However, the question is who will provide the capital and resources, especially for manned space exploration? Governments? Well considering how the US has hacked and slashed NASA's budget over successive years I ain't holding my breath. Humanity seems to be stuck in low Earth orbit and we don't appear to be going anywhere fast. Having said that, the emergence of Europe, Japan, China and eventually India as space powers, alongside the US and Russia, should foster greater exploration, albeit in the context of great power competition

Perhaps we will see some developments from the private sector. But considering the inherent riskiness and cost involved in space exploration it may be long time before we begin seeing a substantial amount of activity from that quarter.

Oh yeah, why should we explore space? Because it is cool .

@Slimjim:

- because it's fascinating
- because eventually we will run out of resources
- because eventually we will be with too much people
- because it may learn us something about how life began on earth, which is a fascinating question
- because there is bound to be life out there. And i'm not only talking about micro organisms. But i'm not talking about life as we have "learned" in movies, books, games and all either
- because we can learn from it
- because we are only a very very tiny place in this huge universe

Actually Slimjim, do you believe that there is life out there?

_________________
A.miga D.emoscene A.rchive

On the global warming thing...

1. Ice cap melting is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Many times more flooding would be caused by thermal expansion of the upper levels of the ocean.

2. Some people think that increased cloud cover due to increased surface evaporation would filter off sunlight (ozone stylee) and buffer temperature changes, stopping global warming getting worse.

3. They're talking crap because water is a greenhouse gas.

NEWS FLASH:
Did you know that amiga is working with microsoft?

Quote:

McEwen (Amiga) : We found that Microsoft is great to work with. It was very easy for us to explain what we wanted to do and quickly get their support. The products themselves are excellent devices. There's a lot of power to them; you don't have to wait for things to happen. The color is amazing.

link to the full page:

Here

Quote:

Did you know that amiga is working with microsoft?

I take it that you didn't know?

I think it was discussed to death a while ago - it seems that all m$ are doing is helping market AA.

_________________

microsoft is gonna try to kill it

@Bodie
Quote:

I sure hope the marke doesn't crash and burn during the space boom like it did in the IT boom .

A space market "crashing and burning" sounds
rather painful ... If it had to come to that I prefer it to
all just calmly die out ...

But - once the space era begins in earnest, there
will be no holding back. Once there is enough
incentive to start spacial mining operations, there
will be a space-race like no tomorrow. And once
there's big money involved, technology
advancement will pick up too. Once there's money
in space, I think things will move a lot faster than we
can ever imagine. We only need that first step.
Orbital hotels are an excellent start - moving space
travel into the hands of private entrepeneurs rather
than monolith governement agencies (which are,
however, still very much nessecary for humanity's
race into space to go on).

Quote:

Seriously though, one can draw on a range of arguments to advocate space exploration (both from a scientific and commercial perspective). However, the question is who will provide the capital and resources, especially for manned space exploration? Governments? Well considering how the US has hacked and slashed NASA's budget over successive years I ain't holding my breath. Humanity seems to be stuck in low Earth orbit and we don't appear to be going anywhere fast. Having said that, the emergence of Europe, Japan, China and eventually India as space powers, alongside the US and Russia, should foster greater exploration, albeit in the context of great power competition.

I think particularily Asia will soon start to present a
real threat to USA:s space superiority. Especially
China, even though it might take them a decade or
two to catch up. My hopes are currently with the
japanese, but their economy have to pick
up first.

That said, Europe holds a lot of expertice these
days. And even though the monolithic Soviet
programs are a thing of the past, Russia represents
world leading expertice in keeping humans in space.
It's seldom mentioned that even though USA won
the race to the moon, USSR was completely
superior when it came to space stations. Luckily
everyone tries to cooperate these days. Hopefully
only good things will emerge from the International
Space Station project.

Quote:

Perhaps we will see some developments from the private sector. But considering the inherent riskiness and cost involved in space exploration it may be long time before we begin seeing a substantial amount of activity from that quarter.

I doubt it will be that long. Ventures like the X-prize
(a prize to the first private venture to build a
reusable spacecraft capable of reaching orbit) will
assure a steady flow of people working on the
problem. All that is needed is one technological
breakthrough, one cheap solution, and it's no
stopping the space-race.

Quote:

Oh yeah, why should we explore space? Because it is cool .

Yeah, that too.
.
SlimJim

z5 wrote:
Quote:

(several points, all of which are very good reasons to explore space. I agree.)

Quote:

Actually Slimjim, do you believe that there is life out there?

I do believe that there is life out there, simply
by virtue of the sheer size of possibilities availaible
for such life to sprout. The fact that up to half of all
suitable stars might have planetary systems is also
a boost of the probabilities, even if only a tiny
fraction of those planetary bodies even remotely
resembled Earth.

Unfortunately, the chance that we humans will ever
find life outside our solar system is another matter
entirely. The fact is, we have no slightest idea how
probable it is for life to sprout. Maybe the chance is
so slim that on average it only happens once per
galaxy or even less?. In that case, we will always be
alone. But as far as we know, it could also be that
life sprouts practically everywhere. In that case,
we only have to look about a little to find other life
forms. Whether those life forms have anything we
would call intelligence, is another matter though ...

The amount of intelligent life in our galaxy, N,
is determined by the Drake Equation

N = R* x fs x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

where
R is the rate of star formation,
fs is fraction of stars capable of having
planets,
fp is fraction of those stars actually having
planets,
ne is fraction of those stars having Earth-like
planets with liquid water,
fl is fraction of those planets where life
sprouts,
fi is fraction of planets where intelligent
life develops,
fc is the fraction of those intelligent lifeforms
interested in communicating with others (being in
the so called window of outward interest)
and
L is the lifetime of such an communicative
civilisation, in centuries.

The first three variables, astronomers can make
rather educated guesses about today. The fourth
variable we might know better in the next ten-fifteen
years. But the last variables are all vastly guesswork.

It is interesting however, that when putting very
pessimistic values in, you can end up at having
between 1.5 and 7.5 intelligent, communicative
civilisations in our galaxy, one of them being us.
Being optimistic, you get 100 000 of them. Of
course, just tweaking one parameter within error
margins you can easily bring it down to one (i.e.
only us). But still it's an interesting thing to play
around with.
.
SlimJim

Quote:

MasterOfReality wrote: On the global warming thing... 1. Ice cap melting is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Many times more flooding would be caused by thermal expansion of the upper levels of the ocean.

This was interesting. Care to elaborate?
Wouldn't a bigger temperature change than melting
of icecaps be needed in order to induce a thermal
expansion of that magnitude? (Haven't time to look
up the thermal expansion coefficient of water right
now though, so I don't know).
.
SlimJim

hey,
y'know the 0S4 screenshots?

well, here's what I do with them sometimes on my windoze computer:
1 right click to set one as wallpaper
2 check to see if auto arrange is on right click desktop and goto arrange icons and turn aoto arrange off
3 move icons into correct positions (such as my computer on top of hard drive)
4 right click the desktop-click on properties-click on desktop tab-and click on customize desktop-click on web tab-and click on new-type in the web page for the amiga screen shot-and close all programs
5 right click the taskbar and make sure it's not locked
6 right click on the taskbar again and click on properties-click on the check box for auto hide taskbar
7 now your running 0S4 on your peecee! (kind of)

"1. Ice cap melting is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Many times more flooding would be caused by thermal expansion of the upper levels of the ocean."

I would have to agree with Slim here.

Daily temperature differences in the oceans surface waters do not exceed 0.3 degrees celcius. In the North Sea at a depth of 50 meters you would only get a temp diff. at the surface of 0.24 degrees/day whereas the archipelago of Åland with a depth of 6 meters the surface water reached a daily variation of 1,9 degrees.

Polar and equatorial regions have even less changes in temp.

On a yearly basis the polar and equatorial regions vary less than 2 degrees at the surface and the 30-40 latitude areas reach a max of 7 degrees. The North Atlantic and Nothern Pacific regions (due to specific conditions) can have yearly temp. diff of up to 18 degrees.

On the whole the oceans have a mean temp. of 3.8 degrees. With a volume of about 1,350,000,000 cubic kilometers and an average depth of 3729 meters you are going to need one hell of a blast of energy to heat it a few degrees.

A few thoughts more on the subject.

Water is at its greatest density at 4 degrees celcius.

Even at the equator the mean temp of a pillar of water is 4.9 degrees.

The only important source of heating of the oceans is by radiation from the atmosphere and the sun and this amounts to 295 calories/cm2/day.

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Quote:

SlimJim wrote: And even though the monolithic Soviet programs are a thing of the past, Russia represents world leading expertice in keeping humans in space. It's seldom mentioned that even though USA won the race to the moon, USSR was completely superior when it came to space stations.

How true! Here in Australia (and probably the rest of the Western world) the Mir was often the target of media ridicule, which really did overshadow Russia's significant achievements. Including for example, the first probe to land on the surface of the Moon, landing two probes in the extreme enivronment of Venus etc etc.

Off-topic here: For the conspiracy guys out there who support the idea of the moon landing hoax there is proof that we really did go there. On their last robotic mission to the Moon, the Soviets did film the landing site of the last of the Apollo mission.


Back on topic: Oh I forgot about the X-Prize. How high do they have to go to win? 60kms? BTW, what do you think are the cutting edge propellant technologies which show promise? (It's good to have an astronomer here to ask all these questions .)

PS: SlimJim, have you had a chance to get a look at Mars yet with your own telescope? Been to cold here in Melbourne, but if the sky is clear on Friday night I'll probably take a look .

"Why should humanity put
valuable resources into exploring space?"

Some reasons:
- Major meteors or comets will hit the Earth every some millions year almost making it extinct. What a pity if it would happen now, when we're just at the first step of being able to travel in space. So we have to be able to track those rocks flying around and put them out, if they're on our route.
- The Sun will expand and burn the Earth in some billions year. If we want to be able to survive that, we have to learn how to travel long distances in space.
- When every place on Earth has been explored, and every ocean has been explored all to the bottom, and most places are too crowded, a psychological effect will take place. We just NEED to see something new. We just NEED to be able to escape to some other quiet place. Else we may end up killing each other more, than we already do.

Sidenote to SlimJim:
I'm a system developer and is very interested in space exploration. If I want to make software for you astronomers and related, where should I look or start?

On global warming:

If the ice on land (South Pole, Greenland and glaciers other places) melts, those land masses will rise a little bit. The Earth gravitational balance will then make all other land masses go down a tiny bit. The extra water in the oceans will put an extra pressure on the bottom of the oceans, making them go down a tiny bit. That will make all land masses above water level go up a tiny bit. And in the end we have some extra water in the oceans.

As I see it, there are very good odds, that low land masses like Holland, most islands in Polynesia and even some parts of Denmark (where I live) will be under water.

But as has been noted, a small temperature increase could make the Gulf stream stop, leading to a new ice age.

We just have to put some money in terraforming also, so we can control these things.

SlimJim wrote:
"It's true however that the north pole
melting won't affect the water level, since these
ice-bergs are already displacing water as per the
Archimedes principle (actually I wonder if that's
actually strictly true, since ice has a lower density
than water. Hmm...)."

If all the ice on the North Pole floats, (and we have those subs going under), 9/10 of the ice is below water level, 1/10 above (because of the lower density). When that ice melts, it will become precisely that much water, that the ice take up room under water level now, that is 9/10 of the iceberg. So the water level will be exactly the same.

Quote:

Off-topic here: For the conspiracy guys out there who support the idea of the moon landing hoax there is proof that we really did go there. On their last robotic mission to the Moon, the Soviets did film the landing site of the last of the Apollo mission.

Is this a fact? I would be interested in a reference, since
I've never heard this mentioned in the debate.

Quote:

Back on topic: Oh I forgot about the X-Prize. How high do they have to go to win? 60kms? BTW, what do you think are the cutting edge propellant technologies which show promise? (It's good to have an astronomer here to ask all these questions .)

Well, I'm not a space engineer, so I don't keep up with all
the latest stuff going on in this field. But there are a few
ideas that I feel will be fundamental in bringing humanity
into the space age. I don't have any really updated info on
how far we are technologically on these things though.

The Scramjet would probably be one of the most
fundamental inventions for easy space-access. We all now
the jet engine- this engine requires the intake of air through
a fan-like system in order to combust fuel and create
propellation. Once the vehicle has reached a high enough
speed (don't ask me for numbers), one can switch
over to a Ramjet engine. These exist (as prototypes I
think), already today. A ramjet has a much more effective
way of creatingpropellation, but the speed must be high
enough for the air to flow into the engine by itself at a high
enough pace. The ramjet works between above a certain
level of altitude, since the air mustn't be too dense (if I
recall correctly). But it also have an upper limit. The
velocity created by a ramjet is not big enough to reach
orbit, since it cannot operate when air grows too thin.
This is where the scramjet kicks in. The scramjet takes
care of the final leg of the trip by accellerating the craft into
orbit. It can only start at such a high speed that even
though the air is thin, it flows past quickly enough to run
the engine. But the advanced behaviour of such a
fast-moving air-stream has not yet been understood and
tamed (I'm sure there are several other technical
challenges as well). However, if a scramjet could be made
to work, "spaceplanes" would be able to take off from an
airfield and reach Earth's orbit. Crossing the atlantic would
take - what- 30 minutes or so.

As for deep space exploration, different kinds of nuclear
rockets are probably the easiest way to go. Given enough
funding, A nuclear-driven ion-jet starship capable of reaching Mars could probably be
built already today (if the radiation issue could be resolved
properly). There is however a natural scepticism
against launching a nuclear reactor these days (even
though it has certainly been done in the past).

As for fuel, it all comes down to how fast you want to go.
Most effective is launching a low mass at a very high
velocity, such as is the idea of various electrical discharge
engines (some also nuclear driven). These are very
fuel-conservative and effective, but the acceleration is on
the other hand very slow. The other end of the spectrum is
hydrogen-fuelled rockets. These are very powerful and can
create a tremendeous accelleration. But they are usually
not very effective and you will have to carry huge amounts
of fuel.

There are also a range of more exotic ideas, such as sailing
on the solar wind. This is not a bad idea, actually, but I
wonder if we will ever go that route and build a sail large
enough to ride the energetic particle stream from our parent
star.

Concerning the X-prize: here are the rules in case anyone is
willing to try:

If you ...

* Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able
to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)
* Returns safely to Earth
* Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks

... and are first doing this, you win $10 000 000. Easy
money, huh?

Quote:

PS: SlimJim, have you had a chance to get a look at Mars yet with your own telescope? Been to cold here in Melbourne, but if the sky is clear on Friday night I'll probably take a look .

My private telescope is in shambles
I'm hoping to get to use one of the telescopes here on the
institution. We'll see, since I don't have much time these
days.
.
SlimJim

@Geomol
Quote:

Sidenote to SlimJim: I'm a system developer and is very interested in space exploration. If I want to make software for you astronomers and related, where should I look or start?

What kind of programs are you wanting to write?
'Hobby astronomer' stuff (such as programs to run small
telescopes or display the sky properly) or more in the line
of astronomy analysis packages for professional
astronomers? Or are you talking
about software for real-world spacecraft?

Do you want to try to make a living out of it or are
you just looking for a hobby project?

Before I give any suggestions, I have to know what you
had in mind you know. It's a world of difference.
.
SlimJim

Yes, of course.

As I program for living, I would like to make some money from it.
I was thinking about analysis packages for professional astronomers. Programas to handle all the data you get. Maybe visualizing software. Maybe you have some ideas of programs, you would really like to have? What do prof. astronomers need these days? Maybe I could start with some simple programs that fills a hole!?