Space travel

Hey geeks!
Here is the thing. I am doing a paper to physics about space travel, and i want your opinions. What do you think about it? Is it good or bad? What are the most important things from your point of wiev? Who do you thing will be first on Mars, if we manage to get people there? Is space flight necessary for our survival?
Just write what do you think i should include in the work.

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Permalink Reply by matthew parsons on November 9, 2009 at 3:34pm: I think space travels is awesome we just need to work out a more productive way of getting there >_< atm we burning millions of gallons of fuel to get up there and then it takes forever to get anywhere like to get to mars would be a year(or two im not sure if that was the round trip) i think to get to mars we'd have to learn how to either harness a better fuel source or improve the use of the current one :D but space and rockets entertain me greatly; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Langer on November 10, 2009 at 7:34am: Well, if i am not terribly mistaken, one of the propellants is liquid oxygen and hydrogen, and there is plenty in the oceans :-) The limitating factor isn't the fuel, but the fuel tank. On longer distances, you need more fuel, that means bigger tank, but bigger tank means you need more power, that means even more fuel... endless circle. So the only future i can think of are alternate fuels. The ion engine is on it's way and russians plan to use it on their route to mars (NASA is developing some too, check wiki for VASIMIR and HiPEP), and i like the concept of the ship using sun wind to fly.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrew on November 9, 2009 at 4:02pm: I think space travel is awesome. it really shows what we as people can accomplish if we try. As for who will be first to mars, I would like to root for my native country (USA, USA, USA), but I just don't think our space program is going to get the funding it would need to make it there first. And is it necessary for survival? I like this question and I don't, I mean we will need it for sure if we as a species plan on living past the point where our sun burns out. But as for things like escaping global warming or other things like that I don't like the idea of using space as an 'escape'. It is a very typical mindset we as humans tend to have, use it up and through it away. (We Americans are especially guilty of this one) Rather then run away from our planet we should fix it up and restore it to its full glory.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Langer on November 10, 2009 at 7:12am: Well, if you look at picture of Bajkonur (Russian Soyuz launching site), you'll see that at least the ground facilities really don't need that much money :-D But there is serious chance for USA to be beaten. But personally I think that considering this as a space race 2 is bad idea. All the space agencies should be working together on this one, THAT would be great. The thing with the escape plan - why are images from wall-e popping in? :-D - isn't that bad, if done correctly. In my opinion, if we manage to move enough humans to moon and mars, some power stations, factories, milions of cars etc. will be moved or temporarily shut down, while all the plants will remain. Then the plants, given enough time, will decrease the % of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that will cool down the planet. Meanwhile on our would-be-colonies, people will have enough time to perfect nuclear fusion to make electricity, and emisions of CO2 will be low again, giving our nature more or less 'natural' behavior. then we can happily move whoever wants to back to Earth.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrew on November 9, 2009 at 4:09pm: As a totally separate, and yet totally not separate idea: What do you think of trying to mine water from the moon? If we were ever to colonize space around our planet we would either have to have a floating.... having trouble with the word.... biodome maybe? If we don't have a biodome we would need to be able to get resources like water to the people living in space and being able to mine the moon would be a much cheaper alternative to flying it up.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Langer on November 10, 2009 at 7:15am: I believe, that by the time we have a base on moon, the technology will be far enough to create artifical ecosystem inside the base. That includes recycling water, so there won't be that much shipments needed, plus, there is the "Space elevator" project. That might do the trick.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Michael Benson on November 10, 2009 at 3:33am: I still would prefer a stargate. I mean I get anxious on the bus, so a two year voyage would be a problem if I felt the need to go to Mars. And as far as the sun burning up, that scares the crikey whatsit out of me. I just hope I die first, and if there's something else afterwards I'm hoping I somehow have descendants and they're ambitious enough to vie for figuring out somehow to get the heck out of here, cos what's the point of an afterlife as pure energy if your home gets sucked into a black hole.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Langer on November 10, 2009 at 7:26am: Sun don't have the mass to become black hole, but the supernova will probably render all of it's planets uninhabitable anyway. Stargate, or any other wormhole or teleportation technology would be cool, but i am doung a serious work, not writing sci-fi book :-) but thanks, you reminded me of one theory. It is much more possible that the mankind will leave on big ships with either hibernation chambers(like cryogenics) or artifical ecosystems. The people will live normal lives, but they will just be on a ship instead of a planet. Therefore, they will have almost unlimited time to get anywhere they want.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Steve Hetchler on November 10, 2009 at 12:11pm: I think Jay-Low will be the first on Mars, Shes already got her junk in the Trunk; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Robert N. on November 10, 2009 at 8:26pm: Ask the people who've been there! Read what the astronauts who went to the Moon, people like Gene Cernan, Buzz Aldrin, Jim McDevitt, others who've written memoirs of their experiences in space. See what they think is the value of what they did. You'll find that many of them consider space travel to be a high goal, perhaps a noble goal. Some speak of their dismay that Americans turned their backs on space after 1972, abandoning the Apollo program, not valuing what was done, what was accomplished. So, dig up some real source material, and speak out!

Robert; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by RadioGeek on November 11, 2009 at 6:48am: We learn a lot about our past and future through space exploration. It was a mistake to abandon moon missions and exploration after the initial "space race."; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Langer on November 11, 2009 at 7:01am: Well, the result if abandoning it is ISS, where many experiments are done too, so it wasn't total waste of time :-); ▶ Reply to This