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[Bauglir]

Well, the moon -is- a dead-end...

Hardly. With proper investment, the Moon becomes an incredibly useful launching point for further exploration, what with the reduced gravity and no air resistance. It's a dead-end now, but it can be much more.

But you have to cart all the stuff there anyways. :s

Yeah, but fuel requirements are nonlinear. It's easier to haul lots of little stuff, once you clear an initial overhead requirement, and assemble it in space than it is to build it on Earth and launch the whole thing up.

[10ebbor10]

Well, the moon -is- a dead-end...

Hardly. With proper investment, the Moon becomes an incredibly useful launching point for further exploration, what with the reduced gravity and no air resistance. It's a dead-end now, but it can be much more.

But you have to cart all the stuff there anyways. :s

We got the ISS into orbit. The Moon is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump away, as far as space goes

Yeah, I mean, it only costs at least 10 time as much fuel to get to the Moon than to get to the ISS...
Remember, the ISS is in LEO orbit, the moon is much farther away.

[sluissa]

Well, the moon -is- a dead-end...

Hardly. With proper investment, the Moon becomes an incredibly useful launching point for further exploration, what with the reduced gravity and no air resistance. It's a dead-end now, but it can be much more.

But you have to cart all the stuff there anyways. :s

Not necessarily. With few exceptions most of the raw materials exist on the moon for us to build almost anything we need to. (Petroleum based chemicals and plastics one major exception.) Small amounts of water exist there with the possibility to get even more from asteroids. Launching with magnetic catapults, living underground. Getting the initial mining and manufacturing up and running would be a significant investment, but it would probably pay off immensely in the long run... let's... just not turn them into a prison colony and force them to grow our food.

Well, the moon -is- a dead-end...

Hardly. With proper investment, the Moon becomes an incredibly useful launching point for further exploration, what with the reduced gravity and no air resistance. It's a dead-end now, but it can be much more.

But you have to cart all the stuff there anyways. :s

We got the ISS into orbit. The Moon is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump away, as far as space goes

Yeah, I mean, it only costs at least 10 time as much fuel to get to the Moon than to get to the ISS...
Remember, the ISS is in LEO orbit, the moon is much farther away.

Have a look at this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sirus]

Well, the moon -is- a dead-end...

Hardly. With proper investment, the Moon becomes an incredibly useful launching point for further exploration, what with the reduced gravity and no air resistance. It's a dead-end now, but it can be much more.

But you have to cart all the stuff there anyways. :s

We got the ISS into orbit. The Moon is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump away, as far as space goes

Yeah, I mean, it only costs at least 10 time as much fuel to get to the Moon than to get to the ISS...
Remember, the ISS is in LEO orbit, the moon is much farther away.

Do I need to quote the Guide to the Galaxy? I can, you know, I've got it sitting not three feet from my current spot.

[10ebbor10]

Payload to LEO
260,000 pounds (120,000 kg)[1]
 
Payload to
 TLI
(100,000 pounds (45,000 kg))

Those are from the Saturn V. Note: TLI is just the transfer orbit, doesn't include getting in lunar orbit, landing, taking off and going back to Earth.

So maybe not ten times, but still quite a lot more.

[Hubris Incalculable]

You mean, it effects mass?

 

I see what you did there. *applaud*

[sluissa]

Payload to LEO
260,000 pounds (120,000 kg)[1]
 
Payload to
 TLI
(100,000 pounds (45,000 kg))

Those are from the Saturn V. Note: TLI is just the transfer orbit, doesn't include getting in lunar orbit, landing, taking off and going back to Earth.

So maybe not ten times, but still quite a lot more.

You're leaving out a significant number there...

Mass   6,200,000 pounds (2,800,000 kg)

That's the total mass of the Saturn 5.

Of that mass, roughly 5,900,000 pounds is fuel and oxidizer.

The last stage is roughly 260,000 pounds, gross.

That means the first two stages can get the entire third stage of the rocket into LEO using about 5,500,000 million pounds of fuel. (Actually how Skylab was put up, a converted third stage on a leftover Saturn V.) From there, it can get to TLI using only an additional 160,000.

Moving around is space is a HELL of a lot easier than getting out of a gravity well like the earth's and ESPECIALLY a hell of a lot easier than climbing out of the muck that is our atmosphere.

Edit: Going back, I see my math is slightly off but I'm tired, it's 2:30 am and I don't think I'd do much better on a second run. It's still close, I can see that and demonstrates my point in any case.)

[MonkeyHead]

Gravitational Force is an inverse square law. People always seem to forget that.

[Sirus]

To simplify what sluissa was saying, quite a lot of the fuel is burned just getting the remainder of the fuel + payload into orbit. Once up there, things move around more easily.

Kerbal Space Program is far from the most accurate simulator out there, but it demonstrates the same point.

[10ebbor10]

To simplify what sluissa was saying, quite a lot of the fuel is burned just getting the remainder of the fuel + payload into orbit. Once up there, things move around more easily.

Kerbal Space Program is far from the most accurate simulator out there, but it demonstrates the same point.

Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation lets you calculate how much that mass is.

[Oliolli]

Would be a lot easìer íf we just learned how to break the laws of physïcs...

I'm not saying it'd be easier to learn to break the laws of physics, just that if we did, it would ease getting into space a lot.

[10ebbor10]

Would be a lot easìer íf we just learned how to break the laws of physïcs...

I'm not saying it'd be easier to learn to break the laws of physics, just that if we did, it would ease getting into space a lot.

Or you know, stop being idiots and cooperate for a moment. While a space elevator is still impossible for the moment,(Though we're getting there) there are quite a lot of other possibilities, like mass drivers, launch loops and the space tram.

These can reduce the launch costs from 2000 dollar* / kg to only a few hundred dollars, with the minimum lying around 65 dollar/kg.

* These are the stats for the Falcon Heavy, which is still in development. Cost for operational systems varies between 15.000 and 3000 dollar/kg.

[RedKing]

While a space elevator is still impossible for the moment,(Though we're getting there)

Funny you should mention that.

There's a Kickstarter to fund space elevator research. Still at the research phase, but this isn't just some crank. This guy is a former JPL/NASA researcher and his company was doing this kind of research up until 2008 when the bottom dropped out of the economy.

[10ebbor10]

While a space elevator is still impossible for the moment,(Though we're getting there)

Funny you should mention that.

There's a Kickstarter to fund space elevator research. Still at the research phase, but this isn't just some crank. This guy is a former JPL/NASA researcher and his company was doing this kind of research up until 2008 when the bottom dropped out of the economy.

Funny you should mention that, I'm the one who posted that in the kickstarter discussion...

The problem with a space elevator is that none of our materials are strong enough at the moment(Well technically the are, but a cable with a multimile diameter isn't exactly viable.) Carbon nanofibers might work, but at the moment we can't make them long enough. As soon as we got 4 mm, a carbon nanofibre alloy can be strong enough, adding another thing to the list of problems that can be solved by putting the word nano in front of it.

[alway]

The reason why there hasn't been a new vision of the future for decades is simple — there's been no rapid technological advancement for decades (the invention of the Internet and the development of new video games, smartphones, tablet PCs, TV sets and other useless gadgets doesn't count).
The rapid technological progress stopped around 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Along with the Cold War, the arms race came to an end, which was the main stimulus for the technological progress.

This is BS. For example, look at the field of AI. The field existed since the 1950's, but it was going nowhere; people effectively gave up on it for years at a time (the so-called 'AI winters'). It wasn't until the mid 90's that the current revolution in how we think about creating AI came along and turned it into the hyperproductive field it is today. The so-called "Victory of the Neats" came along, showing AI based in mathematical and statistical logic were the most viable solutions. Today, AI methods are being worked into nearly every field.

Moore's Law also continues; as does similar exponential or near exponential growth in other industries. Material science continues to advance, allowing us to create things which in the past were downright impossible. Computer technology allows for faster research, development, and design, as products, materials, and designs can be tested before they are even created. We have a much better understanding of human neurobiology, etc and so fourth.

I would also not be so quick to dismiss the growing ubiquity of technology. Pretending that the ability to communicate instantly with anyone anywhere on the planet is some trivial thing to be passed over as 'not progress' is silly, to say the least. We now have devices which give us instant access to more information than is available in the entire library of congress which we can carry with us at all times. And if that was the only function of these devices, that would be amazing! But yet, they can do even more, as they are computers too. We now have these great multitools which serve as both an augmentation to our intelligence, instant communicators, and more; and everyone has one.

Ubiquity is not something to be underestimated either. We have flying cars and jetpacks today. No one cares. They aren't ubiquitous, they aren't useful enough to us. Computers and mobile devices have done nothing short of revolutionizing society worldwide in the past 2 decades.