I wish they would focus more locally to generate interest in space travel. Space tourism seems like a very acheivable goal in our lifetime, and there are a number of "divots" around the earth's orbit you could park a space hotel/casino for some nice space vacay. Personally, I don't think we are going to see the next big step in space exploration until you get capitalism involved. If there is a way to make money, then there will inovation.
I've seen it in action. Very neat. Deep Space 1 (launched in the late 90s) had an ion drive called the NSTAR. The EU launched one just recently but I forget the name.
Feel like everything humanity has done so far in space technology is primitive thus far. When people can actually travel long distances in space efficiently the stuff we've done now will be like how we view the failed flight inventions in the 1600s up until the Wright brothers.
The future of space exploration will be robotics and AI. Replace of the humans and you don't have to have all the weight of life support systems and the extreme travel times required to anywhere become less of an issue. You don't have to provide robots a round trip.
The movie was Event Horizon. Sam Neill was in it. I'm a sci-fi lover but that film was bizarro even for me. If you love sci-fi, give it a try and you might like it; otherwise you'll think it's terrible and probably give up on it early.
I thought the gore was excessive and kind of soured the movie a bit for me. Still, not a bad concept for a flick. So...yeah...undecided. Spoiler I also did not like the "they went to hell bit". I thought that was cheesy and the "alternate dimension" was more in-line with the movie's feel.
Yes, but it never turns off -- the probe we just put in orbit around Vesta used ion propulsion and the thrust was as strong as the weight of a single piece of paper sitting in your hand. After the Dawn probe is finished with Vesta it will travel on to Ceres. Once you escape earth's gravity it doesn't take a lot of power to move around the solar system.
They did it already in 2010: The Year we Make Contact <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/34MXGB83heI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Its funny that 2001 and 2010 have come and gone and we are nowhere near getting people to Jupiter.
I just skimmed the thread and I saw no "that's no moon" reference anywhere. But no gnews is good gnews with Gary Gnu. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Dddm5bQeKvg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Agreed. Although I appreciate those efforts, the next big threshold that we must cross is Faster-Than-Light communication and transportation. We should be pouring our efforts into this (and extra-solar planet discovery).
I thought faster than light travel was theoretically impossible. I would settle for traveling to Pluto in less than a day (25% of light speed). With those kinds of speed, we could efficiently explore our solar system.
We can actually achieve something close to this with current technology, nuclear pulse propulsion, which is basically throwing nuclear bombs behind a space craft and let the explosions blow it away. It can possibly reach another star in 100 years. Since we are reducing the number of stockpile nuclear warheads anyway, wouldn't it be awesome if those could be used instead for such a mission?
