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Orion Space Capsule

Nice thread, Stoked. I was gonna make it yesterday but I felt lazy.

I'm deeply interested in everything related to space technology as I grew up reading SFs and astronomy magazines. A few weeks ago, I've spent an entire day and night following the ESA landing a washing machine sized robotic device that was traveling on Rosetta space probe for almost 12 years, onto a comet for the first time in human history. Comets are the primary center of interest in the current era as they offer potential sources of answers to both of our scientific curiosity such as the wonder of the origin of life and some capital interests like the mining dreams on comets.

After the Stardust that collected data and material from a comet's tail and the Deep Impact that tried to capture data from the inner parts of a comet through colliding with it, the task of the Philae(the lander) was kind of raising the bar for the scientists. But despite an imperfect and very bouncy landing, they amazingly accomplished the hard task and Philae landed landed on the comet 67P which is 317 million miles away from us. It's one of the milestones no doubt in the science and space adventure of the human kind.

This one magnificent image of the 67P is from the Rosetta probe.

philae%20lander_0.jpg


As the space researches are increasing again these days, it makes my futurist soul tickled pink, I just look my way to enjoy the news and developments like these. I've also followed the Orion test flight and after I recovered myself from my wild imaginations, I immediately opened Kerbal Space Program game and tried to replicate the flight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEuOpxOrA_0

And now I just read that Japanese also launched another space probe named Hayabusa 2 on the last Wednesday, for a six-year round trip to land on an asteroid(1999 JU3), to blow a hole in it and collect samples that scientists hope will help to collect more data from the comets on the way of revealing the origins of life.

I've watched its launch as well, of course in pure awe, and found quite a lot of inspiration again for my future KSP adventures.
 
Siro said:
The government very much does care about taxpayer money. They're much more willing to award hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to their current/future employers than spend a few billion of trivialities like "science" and "understanding" that won't even get them a bigger yacht. We know what the NASA budget is, and how it's being spent. There are no secret organizations doing deep space exploration in hiding. Those are massive endeavors that require cooperation from thousands of experts across the globe.

Of course the government does have plenty of classified military space programs, like spy satellite and probably orbital missiles and such. Just not deep space exploration, as that has no immediate financial returns.

And I meant you never struck me as a conspiracy theorist. The fact you're a dumbass should go without saying!
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But what if our Mars rover, Wall-E I think his name was, was able to detect large quantities of silver, or gold, or fossil fuels while on it's first/last mission? Would that not be sufficient reason to figure out a way to get into space? Perhaps we are on two different pages when we talk about DSE though... Maybe there are massive reserves of *insert something cool here* on the moon? Would that not be sufficient reason to spend money? How about the companies that could possibly profit from that type of thing? If you just poke your head inside the rabbit hole for a second, regardless of how silly you think it might be, you may open your mind a little bit. The chances of Earth being the only celestial object with "assets" is essentially zilch, and if scientists and governments have known this, and have been working on recovery, for the last fifty years, I imagine they'd have some pretty amazing things to show for it.

And don't give me the whole "thousands of people would need to cover it up" nonsense; this isn't a 9/11 conspiracy. Space exploration, I imagine, would be one of the easier things to hide and manipulate from the public, as there is really no way to fact check. Simply mask it as "defense" and you're good to go. Of course, I imagine a good chunk of it actually IS defense, but I digress.
 
E.J. Wells said:
But what if our Mars rover, Wall-E I think his name was, was able to detect large quantities of silver, or gold, or fossil fuels while on it's first/last mission? Would that not be sufficient reason to figure out a way to get into space? Perhaps we are on two different pages when we talk about DSE though... Maybe there are massive reserves of *insert something cool here* on the moon? Would that not be sufficient reason to spend money? How about the companies that could possibly profit from that type of thing? If you just poke your head inside the rabbit hole for a second, regardless of how silly you think it might be, you may open your mind a little bit. The chances of Earth being the only celestial object with "assets" is essentially zilch, and if scientists and governments have known this, and have been working on recovery, for the last fifty years, I imagine they'd have some pretty amazing things to show for it.

And don't give me the whole "thousands of people would need to cover it up" nonsense; this isn't a 9/11 conspiracy. Space exploration, I imagine, would be one of the easier things to hide and manipulate from the public, as there is really no way to fact check. Simply mask it as "defense" and you're good to go. Of course, I imagine a good chunk of it actually IS defense, but I digress.
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There are practically infinite resources in space. Not "fossil fuel" since that obvious comes from living organisms, but metals and minerals and water. There are a number of companies studying the means of exploiting near Earth asteroids and such (but it won't start to pan out for a few more decades). We know the exact composition of the Moon and other solar system bodies. We have MASSIVE amounts of resources deep in the Earth's crust that we don't have the capability to get to, and it would be a lot easier to invest in ways to extract those than some elaborate conspiracy to exploit space resources in secret (which would literally cost tens of trillions of dollars and involve a good chunk of the world's experts).

But either way, if you think an opinion based on the evidence at hand is just me keeping my mind closed, then there is no point to this discussion. Anyone can play the game of hypotheticals, and to be frank, I stopped giving two ****s about the things people take on faith a while ago. So, you know, believe what you want.
 
Siro said:
There are practically infinite resources in space. Not "fossil fuel" since that obvious comes from living organisms, but metals and minerals and water. There are a number of companies studying the means of exploiting near Earth asteroids and such (but it won't start to pan out for a few more decades). We know the exact composition of the Moon and other solar system bodies. We have MASSIVE amounts of resources deep in the Earth's crust that we don't have the capability to get to, and it would be a lot easier to invest in ways to extract those than some elaborate conspiracy to exploit space resources in secret (which would literally cost tens of trillions of dollars and involve a good chunk of the world's experts).

But either way, if you think an opinion based on the evidence at hand is just me keeping my mind closed, then there is no point to this discussion. Anyone can play the game of hypotheticals, and to be frank, I stopped giving two ****s about the things people take on faith a while ago. So, you know, believe what you want.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa...

I wasn't calling you close minded. I can see that that's how it sounded, so I'm sorry about that -- seriously.

Everything you said above is right on, and probably true. I don't buy 99% of the conspiracies I read about, and even the ones I think may have some plausibility are still pure schlock. That doesn't mean that I flat out reject some of the ideas though.

I feel pretty stupid about writing "fossil fuel" though... My bad.
 
E.J. Wells said:
Whoa, whoa, whoa...

I wasn't calling you close minded. I can see that that's how it sounded, so I'm sorry about that -- seriously.

Everything you said above is right on, and probably true. I don't buy 99% of the conspiracies I read about, and even the ones I think may have some plausibility are still pure schlock. That doesn't mean that I flat out reject some of the ideas though.

I feel pretty stupid about writing "fossil fuel" though... My bad.
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One should reject an idea when the evidence seems to go against it. Or if not out right rejection, at least shelf it until credible evidence for it surfaces. Most of what people consider conspiracy theories are utter garbage. Also, and this will sound mean-spirited (but it has to be said), conspiracy theorists tend to be terrible people. Which makes sense when you consider that those people believe a large segment of society is conspiring to **** them over. Check out this study for example:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110504080730.htm

As you know, I do not like the idea of religion. Conspiracy theories come from the same place in human cognition that makes religion possible, but it is stripped of all the goodness that religion actually provides. It is the type of religion that has zero positive side. So I can get heated when the subject is brought up. And I apologize if I come off as patronizing.

But that doesn't mean that any idea that goes against the mainstream is a conspiracy theory. For example, I believe cold fusion has been unfairly dismissed when the evidence suggests the effect might be real. There is no conspiracy. Scientists can be as political and close-minded as anyone else. There are plenty of things that are taken as a given in the mainstream when they certainly aren't.

But I digress (after all that, lol). We better get back to the Orion subject.

I am excited for the next test as that would send the capsule around the Moon! After that, and closer to the end of the decade, we'll have a manned test. And if everything goes according to plan, humans will be back on the moon before 2025! Exciting.
 
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