Monday, April 6, 2009

Steven Hawking speaks up for space exploration

Manned, that is. I'm divided on the topic- I think we need to probe the hell out of anywhere we plan to go before we go there. I read The Andromeda Strain, you know (shame what Crichton became in his later days, no?).
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5 comments:

tommy said...

I think this is related to humans in space, found it on Red Ice...

Gigantic human hand in space

The scene, which spans 150 light-years, is about 17,000 light years away, so what we see now is how it actually looked 17,000 years ago, and that light is just arriving here.

April 6, 2009 10:24 PM
Christopher Knowles said...

Yeah, I was going to post that. Awesome Sphynx you got there!!!!

April 6, 2009 10:26 PM
Michael Hunter said...

I think it is noble and bold to want to go on a manned operation. As it is said in The Living Cosmos,"We live at the edge of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way." But going up there is the utmost in dangerous. There's a plethora of issues for manned operations. So many that it is not worth mentioning here. The smaller the craft, the less drag, the easier it is to hit the needed speeds close to the speed of light. What better craft for that job than unmanned drones. On page 271 of The Living Cosmos by Chris Impey he says it this way."Here's how it might work. A cicilization like ours sends robotic probes to the nearest stars. They explore planets and search for signs of life, then mine asteroids or rocky moons for material to make replicas of themselves. The replicas fan out to a new set of stellar systems, and the process repeats." The slight irony of that description of how we should go about it is of course all of the creation stories that we hear in this realm. Was it not all a mining issue according to men like Lloyd Pye(?). Also of note is that building objects or monuments out of great stone is somewhat synonymous to mining. And early man's greatest triumphs were building and carving giant statues and monuments. I don't see why our next great little step would not be to drone space and explore it hands off. That way we're not ruffling the feathers! But boy o boy couldnt you see the movies being written. Space Junk:The Return; Terminator 80000: The Return of the Probes. Kidding......

April 6, 2009 10:52 PM
tommy said...

It's not my cat but thanks. :) Mine looks similar but it's not hairless. I'm somewhat connected to feline energies lately, observing the erratic behavior of the kat as I would anything else. I've named her "Kheti" (primarily because it sounds like "kitty").

April 6, 2009 11:52 PM
SoapFan said...

I find it extremely odd that someone as scientifically advanced as Hawking would advocate manned space exploration unless he is privy to some sort of knowledge about its feasibility that is unknown to us commoners.

As Michael Hunter notes vast distances alone would hinder human travel and the probes Michael mention are similar to those I read about while searching panspermia. The probes are called von Neumann and Bracewell probes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe#Von_Neumann_probes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

But the hypotheses behind these probes are used to disprove extraterrestrial civilizations and disprove the feasibility of manned space travel...that is as we know it now.

April 8, 2009 10:00 AM

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