Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by Velorum
Bremont, bring it on baby
Just in case those interested in space matters missed this:
https://www.universetoday.com/132330...nauts-in-2018/
A good space watch sponsorship opportunity perhaps?
Bremont, bring it on baby
i find elon musk a very, very interesting character.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
A very cool individual indeed.
I find Elon very interesting indeed. What I like about him is that he is very pragmatic and he just goes for his dreams and goals.
I have heard however that he pushes and presses his people around so that he can achieve his dreams and plenty of his employees are unhappy. Kind of like Steve Jobs.
In my opinion his Tesla side of the business isn't going as great as it could have. He really rushed that one. SpaceX and the electric battery segment are running a lot better.
I don't think his primary concern with tesla is the business side of the business, if that makes any sense.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Well if you wanna look at it that way I think in many ways he's not interested in money but rather just "changing the world" so to speak. Being or trying to be the first at certain things, I'm assuming.
Oh dear, what happens if they find out the original moon landing really was a hoax?
Original moon landing wasn't a hoax. They just didn't tell you what was going on there.
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Is the chap already selling tickets for the trip?
Fas est ab hoste doceri
The 2018 trip will be around the moon for two pre-paid investors. If you want to read an excellent biography of Elon Musk I can recommend THIS book.
Omega will refund everyone who has bought a moon watch since 1969
This is fantastic - Elon Musk and a few others are the true visionaries for the early 21st Century, and I'm just glad they are doing something with their wealth to advance humanity.
Musk, Bezos, Allen, Branson are in stark contrast to the totally self-serving money hoarders like Philip Green and Mike Ashley, and frankly, many if not most of the oil rich saudi's and their ilk.
So clever my foot fell off.
Not quite sure how Branson gets on the list, whilst the likes of Gates or Buffet don't!
As for Musk, it's good to see him pushing things along in regards to advancements, but i do think that there's a lot he could do here on Earth that would benefit us a lot more. Can't remember who said it, but he does also remind me of a Bond villain as well, maybe this Moon thing is the first step to project moonraker!
Well Branson is investing in space access technology and personally driving a project to develop it, like Bezos and Musk. whereas I don't think Gates or Buffet are, but correct me if I am wrong.
So clever my foot fell off.
I guess the likes of Gates and Buffet putting tens of billions into eradicating polio, malaria, etc is not on the same level as Branson and his vanity project that's shown no signs of any real progress.
I'm really unsure why you are having a pop on this. I know full well what the Gates Foundation does and has as its aims, and I know that Buffet is actually quite a decent chap and makes huge donations to various charitable causes.
But this thread was about space technology, so surely it is obvious why I named who I did, and not your boys. Note that I didn't criticise them, because I know what they do.
Strange that you decided to have a go at me over nothing.
So clever my foot fell off.
There is a growing consensus that the long term survival of our species depends upon significant numbers of the human race getting off this planet and spreading as far as possible. According to Hawking this needs to happen within hundreds of years as opposed to the far off future.
Anyone advancing this agenda will ultimately be helping this goal. Sure, all the money spend on space could instead be spent on making conditions marginally better for a percentage of people here and there (that's the money that actually makes a difference as opposed to ending up in a corrupt officials or governments back pocket) but that's really of limited benefit if humanity is wiped out by all our eggs being in one basket.
I am of the view that more money should be spent of space. Governments and key individuals should be pumping resources into this and firing up peoples imagination and enthusiasm with immediate ambitious goals.
Not everyone is going to be on the same page - perhaps the deluded, violent and primitive need to be left to play with their mud pies in the mire of tribalism, self interest and denial.
Last edited by Velorum; 22nd July 2017 at 09:12.
The whole nature of nature is that we, as a species, will eventually die out. There are no other habitable planets in our solar system and we're never going to get to another solar system so we should accept that we need to preserve the planet on which we live.
Maybe one day there will be colonies on the moon, possibly even Mars but those planets will never be as suitable for us as the earth is.
In summary we need to take care of what we've got rather than spend money trying to recreate it elsewhere.
Having said all that, I think what Elon Musk is doing both on and off the planet is very exciting.
Last edited by Dave+63; 22nd July 2017 at 10:00.
Thanks for posting this. I hope it happens.
Whenever I see a project from this chap, it reminds me of the Hyperloop which seems to have some fundamental problems but fingers crossed.
Getting up there is one thing, getting off safely at this end after the trip is the problem IMHO.
F.T.F.A.
Agreed with all this. Space is where the future is, and the sooner it happens the better.
Human nature means that this won't happen. We must always have boundaries to push. Space (and to a lesser psychological extent the oceans) is where it's at.
Like it or not, our future is out there. We must make the best of it. I think we can and will succeed; I'm not a defeatist.
Humanity is being wiped out due to decisions being made now which could be better supported with advancements here. To throw a load of money at colonising Mars is just a pipe dream at present, as our technology is not advanced enough to land a manned flight to Mars, let alone sending up the required infrastructure to start any type of colony.
We should be focusing on harnessing nature to reduce carbon issues, turning African and other areas land into a more arable land so they can farm and sustain the rise in population, we should focus on eradicating simple diseases that are a nightmare for third world countries and so on.
You do this type of thing and you will make space exploration easier in a few hundred years, whilst at the same time helping the next generations have a better life.
There are more humans than ever before. We're not even remotely close to being wiped out. Despite famines, etc., the human population continues to increase.
If no one starts then it will never be possible. We have to start somewhere.
Isn't all this happening too?
Why wait.
Real progress has always appeared unreasonable to reasonable people. We make progress through apparent irrationality and unreasonableness.
Resources are running out, which in turn will affect the populations, disease will also start to take a toll in the next century, as for starting, we already have, but what we're talking about here is way beyond our ability in terms of colonising, if it's just space tourism then that's fine, we're at that level, but anything more and we're just wasting a lot of effort when it could be more viable to mature it on Earth based projects.
I don't agree that resources are running out in general and medical and technological advances seem to consistently cope with disease. There are fears over antibiotic-resistant bacteria but I expect these will be overcome in time. If not then we'll die. So be it.
Saying that effort is wasted if it directed elsewhere is a common complaint in all sorts of areas but the fact is that the people with the resources are the ones who decide where to make the effort, and they are the ones who make advances.
In short, I don't see things in as negative or defeatist a light as you. I say: Press on.
Unless there is some hitherto unknown piece of physics the universe has not seen fit to reveal to us yet, there is not a chance that we are leaving this planet. We could not get off our own cosmic back door step before we all died and crumbled to dust. It's just too far. To illustrate; the nearest star to us is Alpha Proxima which is 4.24 light years away. The fastest object ever made by man is NASA's Juno probe which travels at around 25 miles per second. At those speeds it would take 32 thousand years to get there. We are absolutely not going anywhere. No way, no how.
Don't you just love unquestioning defeatism.
All that can be learned has been learned, eh? ;-)
Ye cannae change the laws of physics.
In the western world maybe, as for resources, that's the next big battle across the globe over the next century.
As for pressing on, that's what i've been saying, but in the 'real' world, i.e. advancements that go hand in hand with leaps in technology, instead of talking about flying cars or minority report style driving, we need to sort out the use of fossil fuels, then sort out the infrastructure and advance automated services to sustain any leaps.
Talk of colonising Mars and so on is just not for our lifetime, we can progress science, but at present we can't even colonise areas of this planet!
Indeed. But it does not follow that new discoveries and progress will not be made and are not being made. There is nothing fundamental about physics to hold the human species back. Progress is difficult but that's why we need unreasonable people trying to do it.
They might all fail. But let's find out, eh.
Your arguments seem ostensibly reasonable but such arguments result only in stagnation. It is unreasonableness that creates progress.
As I said in the message above, the attempted progress of unreasonable people might end in failure, but let's find out. Finding out is still better than the stagnation that you (unintentionally and with the best of intentions) are advocating.
I think I'm with Mark on this one.
Our planet can sustain double the current population, provided we learn how to manage our resources and environment in a far more responsbile way, therefore it may actually be easier to assert "we are full" than to struggle with the change necessary to increase our earthly capacity.
Without people like Musk, Tesla, Einstein etc we would be just be inert navel gazers. its the visionaries who don't take no for an answer that are the ones that drive our species forward. There will always those that strive to preserve the stus quo, or would rather tread the safer, risk-free, path. These arent the people that define our future.
As for landing on the moon, I'm with Dave. We did, but havent been told the real reasons why we were there. Far from it.
And Im always careful of placing the likes of Branson, Bezos etc on a pedestal. At least until they pay their taxes, like the rest of us. There really is no excuse when you enjoy that level of wealth :)
How long is a piece of string (theory)?
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
No, there is everything about fundamental physics that is holding the human species back. Gravity, distance, time, the cosmic speed limit, they are all against this one. If you want to get people out of our solar system, one thing is for sure: You are not going to do it by sitting on a tin can full of hydrazine with the laws of physics as we currently think them to be. Just not possible.
In order to do it we're not talking about simple progress here, we're talking about finding some piece of physics that has shown us absolutely no indication that it even exists. This isn't like discovering penicilin or inventing the wheel, discovering quantum physics or general relativity, it's more like finding that Hogwarts is a real place full of real wizards who can do real magic. It would be a discovery that would make every other discovery look like you just found gum on your shoe. I cannot describe how much of a long shot that is. It is the longest of all long shots in the entire history of long shots.
Last edited by Groundrush; 22nd July 2017 at 16:53.
And there is the crux. With our current technology and current understanding of physics, we just couldnt get far enough, quick enough, with enough to make the exploration or terra forming of planets really feasible. Until someone shares (or maybe they have?) warp-drive like technology we can amuse ourselves with the like of string theory, trans-dimensional field theory etc
I do like the fact that Musk views his wealth/power not only as a vehicle for an easy life and a swollen ego, but also as a method of changing society for the better. Tesla, for instance, is as much (if not more) about changing the nature of cars than it is about profit - if you believe him. Same with SpaceX... however people in this thread have made good points re: better looking after what we have, and trying to walk before we can run.
Also can't be denied that Q a few view Tesla/SpaceX/Hyperloop ventures as a pretty handy way for Mr Musk to extract government money in the form of loans/contracts/subsidies.
Does seem to be the case that "it takes all sorts" - I suspect we need both visionaries + cynics.
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is what we need...
I've had jobs like that.
Er... back on topic, here's another top notch explanation from Kurzgesagt.
If you want advancements in science then nothing beats a world war, we pretty advanced more in 6 years than in any other period in history.
I'd suggest reading the Tom Bower bio of the bearded one as he's as much of a low life as Green etc. He's continually promising to get people into space too but failing all the way. Musk will do it though.
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Tag Heuer already had a Spacex tie-in watch - flew one on an early Dragon.
https://www.calibre11.com/tag-heuer-...a-spacex-1887/
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