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[RedKing]

Nuclear bomb, WW2 stuff

-snip-

  Even if they had gotten it first I doubt very much a bigger, more expensive bomb would have been enough to save the nazis.

It would've been much worse. Nazi's launch the Bomb, Nuke London. Allied forces react with WMD's of their own. Namely, Anthrax, poison gas and other bio chemical weaponry. Germans, or what's little is left, also react with remaining nuclear warheads, and bio chemical weaponry. Significant parts of Europe would be unlivable to this day.

By mid-1944, the Germans were having problems finding enough fuel to make their tanks go, much less enough resources to support a full-on atomic weapons programme. Of course, we had no way to know that in 1941 when Manhattan started.

And besides, we didn't need exotic WMD's to retaliate. We virtually wiped Dresden from the map in a single day with conventional bombers. US/UK killed half a million Germans in strategic bombing, and another half million Japanese (not counting Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

[MonkeyHead]

Spoiler: Relevant comic is relevant... (click to show/hide)

[Loud Whispers]

By mid-1944, the Germans were having problems finding enough fuel to make their tanks go, much less enough resources to support a full-on atomic weapons programme. Of course, we had no way to know that in 1941 when Manhattan started.

They didn't have the resources to support an atomic weapons program because their attempts were sabotaged by Norwegian and British operators. Chances are, America still would have won the atomic race in any case. But there would have been competition, and perhaps the fat man would have had his sights on Germany instead.

[Solifuge]

See, this is what I'm talking about. You all are falling for the same fucking trap that is going to ruin one of the best things we have ever done. The second you militarize space, our age of international scientific cooperation in that field is done. It will return to the age-old question of "how can we most efficiently kill our enemies today"? No more humanistic research for the good of our future, unless it happens to coincide with military goals.

And it is our future. It is too valuable to hand over to the domain of killing each other.

Militarizing space might boost funding and research, but the result would be a bad idea, even from a utilitarian perspective. Sabotage and orbital military actions would cause us to lose very expensive and fairly delicate parts of our orbital infrastructure, such as satellites and research stations, drastically increasing the cost to operate and maintain them. Additionally, damaged equipment would fragment and contribute to the high-velocity shrapnel storm that spins around our planet, which would make putting anything in orbit even riskier and less practical. Even impossible, after a certain point.

Basically, the militarization of space would quickly make space impractical, and even inaccessible to us.

Curiosity's mission is completely on hold until Congress gets its shit together.

God damnit, I am so sick of this country. With our access to natural resources, technological infrastructure, and information, there is so much potential... so so much potential. Why the hell does all it keep getting squandered so?

[Aklyon]

Why the hell does all it keep getting squandered so?

Because politics wastes everything. Even space apparently.

[misko27]

Curiosity's mission is completely on hold until Congress gets its shit together.

God damnit, I am so sick of this country. With our access to natural resources, technological infrastructure, and information, there is so much potential... so so much potential. Why the hell does all it keep getting squandered so?

Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment, there is a very large, very influential, (and, in my view, shortsighted) group of people already opposed to spending money shooting expensive equipment into space because the expensive equipment would be more useful, and get a bigger personal bang for the tax-buck, down here.

And now we're all on another watchlist.

I think anyone who's been on these forums for more than a few days is on so many, one more won't make much difference.

LOL. Like you need to actually do anything to be on the NSA espionage list.

Again, Devil's Advocate: To be fair, saying they watch people on a forum where people often discuss how to brutally torture small humanoids, with a full organic system to personalize the injuries, from a position of near omnipotence with a almost limitless bag of methods, often with respect to some needlessly violent semi-rigorous pseudo "Science", putting the humanoids through any level of repressive managing methods to force them to build complicated and often violently inspired "mega-projects", and making a point to declare every humanoid or non-humanoid's life forfeit as soon as it steps on the screen in some violent idea of "Losing", a euphemism for every humanoid under their control dying due to some unknown or underestimated factor, often including violent slaughter, or burning alive in magma, "is Fun", would not register on most people's radar as unwarranted.

[lue]

Congress!
"Because fuck you too, that's why"

Congress!
"We hope you die in a pit!"

Congress!
"Don't you want to see what happens to NASA's stuff now? Where's your sense of Curiosity?"

[Baffler]

I didn't say we didn't deserve it

[Solifuge]

Curiosity's mission is completely on hold until Congress gets its shit together.

God damnit, I am so sick of this country. With our access to natural resources, technological infrastructure, and information, there is so much potential... so so much potential. Why the hell does all it keep getting squandered so?

Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment, there is a very large, very influential, (and, in my view, shortsighted) group of people already opposed to spending money shooting expensive equipment into space because the expensive equipment would be more useful, and get a bigger personal bang for the tax-buck, down here.

For the sake of debate, shortsighted would be the word for it. There are phenomena in that happen elsewhere in the universe which we can't observe here on Earth due to the conditions it experiences... physical forces, forms of energy, and other resources we may never know about unless we get out there and explore. And there is a wealth of raw materials that are incredibly rare on Earth (such as platinum), but which we could have in abundance with a decent near-Earth asteroid mining infrastructure. No doubt people felt similarly about the monarchy funding expensive trans-ocean voyages... that is, until the wealth of new foods, materials, medicines, drugs, and luxury items started pouring in, opening up a wealth of new industries and conveniences back at home.

It's little different with space exploration and research. We wouldn't have GPS Systems, Cell Phones, or Satellite Cable/Internet Connections if NASA hadn't developed the technologies they did to supplement their research. And that's not to mention materials like the memory foam used in high-end beds, the superalloys used everywhere in modern industrial environments, and the memory metals which keep modern powerplant turbines and helicopter rotors from deforming due to stress. Hell, NASA even improved modern baby formula via their research into human food crops that could be grown in space. And they did all that on a very meager slice of the Federal Budget.

When you think about all the things they've offered humanity, and then look at what the government shells out to weapons manufacturers and military-industrial contractors... groups who I struggle to come up with serious examples of things they've offered humanity, other than new and exciting ways to kill people; innovations such as fancier missiles, guns, and remote-control planes (now featuring missiles and/or guns). And yet they are paid more than 75 NASAs worth of tax money yearly. Then, when you consider how lately, almost 50% of NASA's budget has been coopted by the military to put their Satellites into orbit? Or how, as the Federal Deficit grows, and budget concerns rise, NASA's budget shrinks, while they tack on a few hundred billion more to the military budget every year? It's hard to believe.

Funny how you could cut one year of US Military Spending in half, and it would would completely cover the cost of all the materials and electricity NASA has used, the payroll of every researcher, engineer, technician, and even janitor in their employ, and the total cost of every mission and experiment NASA has undertaken. And not just for the year, but since their foundation in 1958, over half a century ago. And that's with only half the yearly Military budget.

Imagine what we might have accomplished, and what sort of world we might be living in right now, if their budgets had traded places?

Citations:
Beep
Boop

[Flying Dice]

The core problem is that peaceful science for the sake of science and/or technological advancement is in a sense is at odds with the core purpose of the state system, which is in turn the foundation of nearly every aspect of modern political thought. Yes, scientific progress via military R&D funding is less than ideal, but it's a more realistic goal than replacing the paradigms derived from the Westphalian model of the state and the policies which in turn derive from that. We joke about it, but there is at best a tangental relation between peaceful science and the goals of the state, and that's by the standards of the less power-focused mindset.

Scientific research is at best a long-term investment in future outcomes (which politicians--and more importantly, their constituents--may not even live to benefit from), and at worst a time-sink that produces nothing but a certainty that there is nothing worthwhile down that road of development. Unless you can justify that investment of resources by framing it as being relevant to security (or, occasionally, national pride), there are very few people who will willingly support it, and a scant few of those are individuals with the power to do so on any meaningful level. We can have our ideals all we like, but we also have to consider things from a realistic perspective and figure out how to manipulate the system into the best outcome we can hope for. Either we get underfunded civilian R&D, or we get very well funded military R&D that'll have civilian applications a few years/decades after the first useful results. Unless you want to hope for the phantasmal benevolent free-market billionaires to solve the problem like they have with social inequality. It isn't pleasant, but political realities rarely are.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That argument might have some merit if not for the fact that it is demonstrably untrue in regards to space. I don't think we really need to have the "what did space travel ever do for us" discussion on this forum yet again.

[Eric Blank]

[snip]

This was a very inappropriate thing for me to say. I'm sorry to anyone that had to read all that ranting. I'm just mad that they took away our robots.

[kaian-a-coel]

I'm just mad that they took away our robots.

You're not the only one *pat on the back*

[Eagleon]

So NASA wants ideas for instruments to put on a new rover to send to Mars. If they don't have ideas for this themselves, to me that means it's time to send the start of a colony instead.

What we lack for that is certainty about one element - the landing. There was a tremendous amount of engineering that went into it for Curiosity. It was a triumph that what we did worked, but we were also very lucky. If NASA wants to land a colony on Mars, at some point that needs to get a little bit less spooky for the public.

Instead of a rover, we should be sending an airport.

Now, I don't have the mass requirements, or power requirements, or any of that for what I'm suggesting. But it's a little less hairy than it sounds when you consider that it doesn't need to be tarmac and air traffic control towers. No, the big thing we lack that the space shuttle had each time it landed was a functioning weather and positioning system.
For that, consider the humble RFID. What I propose is a two part system.

One, the sensors. These could be anything we'd like (barometric, temperature, humidity, whatever), and there would have to be a lot of them. They'd be compact, durable, and reprogrammable to repurpose them for other things, but we'll get to that. They would be powered entirely by radio flux, possibly with a secondary radioisotope-powered transmitter in orbit, and we'd achieve that by having very long, very thin antennas attached to each.

These would unfurl as draglines - the sensor modules would be shaped like spools, grooved aerodynamically to spin as they entered the Martian atmosphere, throwing the wound antenna outwards forcefully as they descend - as they slow, the antennas would naturally start to pull more and more, putting a large amount of its momentum into rotation. There would have to be no other method slowing them, so yes, the sensor would impact with a certain amount of force.

If we made them rugged enough (with well-engineered sensors), that could actually help them find purchase in the soil once they hit. Some of them would probably fail, but we're trying to prevent the same thing from happening for colonists. It's an unknown to me, but since there's no complicated robotics, I'm reasonably certain we could work something out.

So now we have a loose network of transmitters scattered across the surface of Mars. If you made the mission large enough (which, lacking the need for crazy heat shields and sky crane maneuvers and chutes etc etc etc, you might be able to make this system quite thorough), you would now have the beginnings of a communications and locations system. They could act as primitive relays to allow future martians an emergency comms system that would "never" fail. Because Mars has no magnetosphere, they could act as doppler weather stations for a suitably equipped orbiter (and this is also why I think that a RFID-type setup could transmit powerfully enough to work, correct me if I'm wrong) If you'd like, they could be repurposed as a great big radio telescope, which could provide for another source of data for solar activity, or just for Science. I'm sure people could think of other uses for a bunch of antennas attached to computers. It'll probably end up being Martian WIFI, which is probably a sanity saver for colonists.

This is why having them be reprogrammable would be a good thing. Raspberry Pi anyone?
So two - the orbiter.

Distributing this system properly would benefit from some better planning than just letting them all go at once. I would suggest a single sensor be sent down to gather weather data in the local area, and then an additional one should be dropped each time mission parameters are reached where they could be reasonably sure that the sensor would not veer off-course. If there was significant drift from wind activity during the descent, this process could be sped up, and if we notice them drifting together in certain spaces, that would be an indication of a more established wind pattern.

As the sensors are released, the orbiter would naturally tend to drift out further - we could do three things at this point.

One, allow it to leave orbit to go off to another mission. Two, slow it at a higher orbit using the propulsion system we used to get there, or just keep it at the orbit we first had by correcting as they're unleashed. Three, time things correctly to put it into orbit around Phobos, or even at the L1 to form the start of a future tether mission (the orbitter would have to have a substantial antenna too, after all) All three have advantages, which could be better studied and determined by NASA rather than someone with no degree and no fat government salary (haha. Ha. I'm effectively 'furloughed' too :/) motivating them to do the legwork on what each would require.

What do you guys think? I just think that we can do better than another rover. Particularly now that we've found water, and philanthropists seem to be interested in dipping their toes into exploration on their own, it seems like a waste to send a nearly identical mission just because we don't feel like spending money to develop other ideas.

[miauw62]

*Ahem*

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