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[Neruz]

Four hundred years ago, the concept of Atoms was wild conjecture. Hell, one hundred and fifty years ago it was a pretty crazy idea. Or wait, less than fifty years ago the mere idea of a 'Personal Computer' being small enough and cheap enough for the average citizen to own one was considered pure insanity.

And you're trying to make accurate predictions about two hundred thousand years in the future? I'm sorry DJ, but in making predictions like that my wild conjecture is exactly as solid a basis for making predictions as your wild conjecture is. That is; it's not, at all. But it's fun to imagine. If we can't even accurately predict fifty years into our own future, we've got a literally zero chance of predicting two hundred thousand years into our own future.


Hell, two hundred thousand years from now, assuming we're still around, whatever we're doing will probably look exactly like magic to us living in the year two thousand, and it'll be even more incomprehensible.

[DJ]

And St Elijah throwing bolts of lightning was also wild conjecture, and guess how that turned out. Point is, stick to things that are true to the best of our knowledge, and stop building card houses on foundations that are pure science fiction (like dimensions beyond our 4).

[Neruz]

Like i said; it has a logical basis, it's not much, but it's something.



Besides which, if we stick to what we 'know' right now, space travel will never be economically viable, Mankind will forever be stuck on Earth, with perhaps a few space stations here and there for research and whatnot. In awhile (a long while, but not forever) we'll run ouf of resources and our civilisation will collapse. And then we'll all be dead.

The End.




Gee that was exciting.

[DJ]

Nah, given our current knowledge of how things work, exploitation of Sol will be economically viable sometimes in the future. I doubt we'll ever go beyond that, though.

[Neruz]

Without a space elevator, getting shit into orbit is never going to be cheap enough to be viable for much other than sattelights.

So yeah, we could set up some rockin solar power plants, which changes the fact that we'll run out of resources and die in a few thousand years exactly not at all.


Seriously; our knowledge of the universe, Physics etc, has changed so much in the last century alone that to suggest that it will be even remotely recognisable to one of us by the next century is laughable. Especially when you remember that technological advances are exponential, not linear.

[DJ]

Who said anything about putting things up? Presumably we'd send things from orbit to Earth.

And yeah, our knowledge will surely expand. But I can't think of many old laws of physics that were rendered outright obsolete by our modern advances. And assuming that we'll figure out how to make all those things from sci-fi books is even more laughable.

[Neruz]

Who said anything about putting things up? Presumably we'd send things from orbit to Earth.

And yeah, our knowledge will surely expand. But I can't think of many old laws of physics that were rendered outright obsolete by our modern advances. And assuming that we'll figure out how to make all those things from sci-fi books is even more laughable.

We have to put them into orbit first you silly git. Or shall we mysteriously discover technology to spontainiously create celestial bodies?

[DJ]

Well obviously you need an initial investment for sending equipment into orbit, but it pays off once you start catapulting stuff like He3 from Moon to Earth.

[Neruz]

Well obviously you need an initial investment for sending equipment into orbit, but it pays off once you start catapulting stuff like He3 from Moon to Earth.

Uuummm...

The transport containers still have to be lifted into orbit again once they've landed to drop off their payload. And we don't even know if there is enough He3 on the Moon to be worthwhile or not (probably not).



Or did we invent teleportation while i wasn't looking?





Seriously; the only reason even sattelights are feasible is because most of the time they don't actually get into real space, but, most importantly, once they're up they stay up. They're a one-off cost for a constant return.

Anything else though, if it goes up, it's gotta come down again, and then it has to go up again. And boosting shit into orbit with chemical rockets is incredibly expensive. So unless you can invent something better than chemical rockets- oh wait, that would require some scientific knowledge we don't have yet. Damn.


And that's not even getting into the question of how exactly you're mining the stuff on the moon in the first place.

--EDIT--

Oh but wait; He3 is useless in your vision, as it's for Fusion research, and we can't build Fusion reactors yet, so by your count we never will be able to.

[Bauglir]

-snip-

[DJ]

Pretty much. Also, why would you have to return containers? You can make new ones on the Moon.

[bjlong]

Let me just put it this way:

FTL travel, causality, relativity. Choose two of three.

[Heron TSG]

So, did you guys hear that Stephen Hawking is afraid of aliens? It's like he thinks that they're our mortal enemies.

[Vester]

So, did you guys hear that Stephen Hawking is afraid of aliens? It's like he thinks that they're our mortal enemies.

I still say we should blow them up.

[Heron TSG]

I never knew you were cold-hearted enough to blow up a man and his wheelchair.