Could Trump be about to pull the plug on NASA's SLS Moon rocket ?

[UM-Bot]

There are rumors that the future of NASA's Space Launch System could be under threat.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/382841/could-trump-be-about-to-pull-the-plug-on-nasas-sls-moon-rocket

[Jon the frog]

Shaking NASA into something more efficient would be interesting. Cancelling SLS is not a good idea but it doesn't look like an healthy project.

[Ell]

Send people to the Moon, not soldiers to the Ukraine!

[Hyperionxvii]

NASA hasn't been able to get out of low earth orbit for more than 50 years. Just give the project to SpaceX and it will get done. 

[Portre]

Has NASA et al. come up with any good reason to send humans to the Moon, Mars, anywhere other than low earth orbit? Musk's City on Mars has not been really thought through.

[Ell]

1 hour ago, Portre said:

Has NASA et al. come up with any good reason to send humans to the Moon, Mars, anywhere other than low earth orbit? Musk's City on Mars has not been really thought through.

There is no good reason, other than proving 'can do'.

In any and all cases it is better, safer and more cheap to send robots.

Humanity does need to develop a space habitat capability - for eventual interstellar travel, some centuries hence - and for that we require relatively cheap resources from the moon and especially from asteroids. Those resources can and will also be mined by robots.

[Jon the frog]

2 minutes ago, Ell said:

There is no good reason, other than proving 'can do'.

In any and all cases it is better, safer and more cheap to send robots.

Humanity does need to develop a space habitat capability - for eventual interstellar travel, some centuries hence - and for that we require relatively cheap resources from the moon and especially from asteroids. Those resources can and will also be mined by robots.

Yep, earth is finite in resources and in time, we need to go elsewhere for life of earth to prevail. With the bunch of braindead at the helm of governments, I don't know how much time we have before a dark age without a lot of chance to gain back the technology to go to space again. 

[Hyperionxvii]

On 12/3/2024 at 2:02 PM, Ell said:

There is no good reason, other than proving 'can do'.

In any and all cases it is better, safer and more cheap to send robots.

Humanity does need to develop a space habitat capability - for eventual interstellar travel, some centuries hence - and for that we require relatively cheap resources from the moon and especially from asteroids. Those resources can and will also be mined by robots.

Like Elon said, what are we going to do, wait until the sun is about to boil the oceans off before we start planning to be a multi-planet civilization. He sure sounds like he has thought about this more than a little and he is a pretty intelligent person by anyone's standards. 

Edited Friday at 09:08 PM by Hyperionxvii

[Hyperionxvii]

On 12/3/2024 at 2:06 PM, Jon the frog said:

Yep, earth is finite in resources and in time, we need to go elsewhere for life of earth to prevail. With the bunch of braindead at the helm of governments, I don't know how much time we have before a dark age without a lot of chance to gain back the technology to go to space again. 

Or we could just go all Malthusian and start severely curtailing the population. I am sure the person put in charge of just how we do that, will have nothing but the best intentions 😱

[+joc]

1 hour ago, Hyperionxvii said:

Like Elon said, what are we going to do, wait until the sun is about to boil the oceans off before we start planning to be a multi-planet civilization. He sure sounds like he has thought about this more than a little and he is a pretty intelligent person by anyone's standards. 

We are never going to be a multi planet civilization.  Elon just wants to be Winston Rutherford III...of Sirens of Titan fame.  

Human civilization on Mars is a joke.  Unfortunately some StarTrekians think it's doable.  Realists like me just think the entire idea is absurd.

Edited Friday at 10:50 PM by joc

[Hyperionxvii]

1 hour ago, joc said:

We are never going to be a multi planet civilization.  Elon just wants to be Winston Rutherford III...of Sirens of Titan fame.  

Human civilization on Mars is a joke.  Unfortunately some StarTrekians think it's doable.  Realists like me just think the entire idea is absurd.

'We are never...'

I had a million dollars for everyone ever proven wrong who has started a sentence with that, I wouldn't even consider working another day.

I

[+joc]

3 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

'We are never...'

I had a million dollars for everyone ever proven wrong who has started a sentence with that, I wouldn't even consider working another day.

I

Well, let me help make  you a richer man.  We are NEVER going to populate another planet...we should put all our efforts into saving this one.  If we can't save this one...we are toast.

[Hyperionxvii]

2 minutes ago, joc said:

Well, let me help make  you a richer man.  We are NEVER going to populate another planet...we should put all our efforts into saving this one.  If we can't save this one...we are toast.

Humans will never fly, the automobile will never replace the horse, no one will ever have a computer in their home... can I stop now?

[+joc]

8 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

Humans will never fly, the automobile will never replace the horse, no one will ever have a computer in their home... can I stop now?

I know what you are saying...but this is a different sort of never.  Musk wants to terra-form Mars.  If you think that is any kind of possibility then maybe you suffer from the same psychosis as he does.  Wait...you are a StarTrekian Believer aren't you?  That 'splains everything...carry on...

[Hyperionxvii]

On 1/10/2025 at 7:42 PM, joc said:

I know what you are saying...but this is a different sort of never.  Musk wants to terra-form Mars.  If you think that is any kind of possibility then maybe you suffer from the same psychosis as he does.  Wait...you are a StarTrekian Believer aren't you?  That 'splains everything...carry on...

"StarTrekian Believer"

I don't know what that is. But if Musk thinks it might one day be possible, I'm likely to value his opinion over just anyone posting on the internet. I might add this as well. If we could go back in time right now, you and I, to 1850 and walk up to a crowd of people and say 'Hey, we're from the future and in 200 years from now, anyone, anywhere, any person, even the most commoner peasant on the planet, will be able to communicate, instantly, with no delay, with any other person on the planet. And not only will be they be able to talk to the other person, they will be able to see each other while they are talking and even show the other person pictures of their family and friends. Well, for starters, over half of that, all of the part after  'We're from the future' would be the absolute truth. How many of those people, let's say there were 100 people would believe this? How many of them would tell us we are insane? This was 150 years ago, and the pace of technology over that period of time has outpaced the entire history of civilization by... I don't even know what sort of number to use here. Imagine 150 years from now?

I don't know what else to say. The odds of Elon being right, eventually, are astronomically high. I don't care how 'hard' it seems right now. 

Now, if Elon tells me right now, by 2030 I'm going to have people living on Mars, I would absolutely not believe it. For good reason. First, it's 80 million miles away. 2nd, it's 80 million miles away.

So, if we want to achieve this one day, we should start with the Moon. Because while both are equally inhospitable to human life, Mars is 100s of times farther away. 

Edited 13 hours ago by Hyperionxvii

[+joc]

29 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

"StarTrekian Believer"

I don't know what that is. But if Musk thinks it might one day be possible, I'm likely to value his opinion over just anyone posting on the internet. I might add this as well. If we could go back in time right now, you and I, to 1850 and walk up to a crowd of people and say 'Hey, we're from the future and in 200 years from now, anyone, anywhere, any person, even the most commoner peasant on the planet, will be able to communicate, instantly, with no delay, with any other person on the planet. And not only will be they be able to talk to the other person, they will be able to see each other while they are talking and even show the other person pictures of their family and friends. Well, for starters, over half of that, all of the part after  'We're from the future' would be the absolute truth. How many of those people, let's say there were 100 people would believe this? How many of them would tell us we are insane? This was 150 years ago, and the pace of technology over that period of time has outpaced the entire history of civilization by... I don't even know what sort of number to use here. Imagine 150 years from now?

I don't know what else to say. The odds of Elon being right, eventually, are astronomically high. I don't care how 'hard' it seems right now. 

"StarTrekian Believer"  is kind of an inside joke for those who believe that we will some day be traveling the galaxies...

I will give you this okay...it's most likely we will put a human on Mars.  But George W.  Bush also said we were going to go to Mars.  Long before Elon ever created SpaceX.  Nonetheless...I do know this...unstoppable fortitude, intense desire and to say those magic words...We Can...that is what success is really all about.  I don't doubt that the future is unknowable and unforeseeable.  No one would have believed in 1985 that in fourty years everyone practically on the planet would have a smart phone.  So, I get your point.  But I really don't think a population is going to get behind a Mars Exploration Team the way they did the first moon landing.  And something is going to go wrong on Mars and people will die.  And that will be that.  I just see no future in it.  There isn't anything there to propel us towards it save some high idealistic thinking on part of Musk and a few others.  We don't need to go there.  What we need to do is end hunger on this planet.  Find a solution to this worlds problems.  Otherwise, even if we did inhabit Mars with colonies...they would inherit the same exact problems we face here.  Greed, Hate, Jealousy.  We have a long time to go before we are ready to even think about colonizing another body in the cosmos.  I think, without finding solutions first to problems on Earth, no amount of technology will get us to teraforming Mars.  But that's just what I think.

Edited 13 hours ago by joc

[Tatetopa]

14 minutes ago, joc said:

  What we need to do is end hunger on this planet.  Find a solution to this worlds problems.  Otherwise, even if we did inhabit Mars with colonies...they would inherit the same exact problems we face here.  Greed, Hate, Jealousy.  We have a long time to go before we are ready to even think about colonizing another body in the cosmos.  I think, without finding solutions first to problems on Earth, no amount of technology will get us to terraforming Mars.  But that's just what I think.

Kind of like the people who talk about building a new house but never clean their closet or mop the kitchen floor. 

We can get to Mars, but Mars will never be earth.  It is too small to hold an atmosphere and too far from the sun  to  capture a lot of energy.

[+joc]

31 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

Kind of like the people who talk about building a new house but never clean their closet or mop the kitchen floor. 

We can get to Mars, but Mars will never be earth.  It is too small to hold an atmosphere and too far from the sun  to  capture a lot of energy.

Oh don't worry about that...Elon has it all figured out...all we need to do is create a new sun just for Mars...we just need to heat up the upper atmosphere and wallah...transformation can happen and we can do that with nuclear weapons...or...who knows...maybe solar panels...

[Hyperionxvii]

3 hours ago, joc said:

"And something is going to go wrong on Mars and people will die.  And that will be that."

Elon has already said that. Not only will something go wrong and someone will die on Mars, it will happen way before that on our way just trying to get there. But we can't be that risk averse forever. We'd all still be  living in Europe if people wouldn't have been willing to die to sail across, endure 3 moths of what must have been beyond awful at times. Remember also, NASA blew up a  bunch of people just trying to fly around in low earth orbit on a glorified airplane. 

Elon has to make it a reality show, that's the only way people will put up with dead in space horror stories. There was a film like that, It was Russian made. I can't remember the name, but it was pretty good. People will put up with anything for entertainment sake. We aren't that far removed from the Colosseum. We are still primitive savages at heart, lol.  

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Hyperionxvii

[+joc]

40 minutes ago, Hyperionxvii said:

People will put up with anything for entertainment sake. We aren't that far removed from the Colosseum. We are still primitive savages at heart, lol. 

Which, my friend, is exactly why we will never colonize Mars.