Space stuff thread

Yes mate I did actually Google that and I shall message you as not to wreck the thread

Anak said:

A Guy said:

Humans continue the way we are, we'll need to leave the planet at some point, and will need a replacement. Better find an Earth II at some point...

A Guy

I agree, IMHO; We should of had cities on the Moon and Mars by now, damn politicians, too little, too late!

Heard this on the local news the other day....

Why do we explore? In the days of Magellan, Columbus and da Gama, undoubtedly the average person thought it was foolish to risk lives and spend large amounts of money to find out what was beyond the horizon. Those explorers didn’t find what they expected, but their explorations changed the world....

....The most often-used argument against space exploration is that we should use that money to alleviate problems here on Earth. But that argument fails to realize that NASA doesn’t just pack millions of dollar bills into a rocket and blast them into space. The money NASA uses creates jobs, providing an opportunity for some of the world’s brightest minds to use their talents to, yes, actually benefit humanity....

....NASA’s annual budget for fiscal year 2009 is $17.2 billion. The proposed budget for FY 2010 would raise it to about $18.7 billion. That sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but let’s put it in perspective. The US annual budget is almost $3 trillion and NASA’s cut of the US budget is less than 1%, which isn’t big enough to create even a single line on this pie chart....[see source for chart]

A few other things to put NASA’s budget in perspective:

Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin mentioned recently that US consumers spend more on pizza ($27 billion) than NASA’s budget. (Head nod to Ian O’Neill)

Miles O’Brien recently brought it to our attention that the amount of money Bernie Maddof scammed with his Ponzi scheme ($50 billion) is way bigger than NASA’s budget.

Americans spend a lot of money on some pretty ridiculous things. Returning to that oft-used phrase about spending the money used in space to solve the problems on Earth, consider this: *

Annually, Americans spend about $88.8 billion on tobacco products and another $97 billion on alcohol. $313 billion is spent each year in America for treatment of tobacco and alcohol related medical problems.

Likewise, people in the US spend about $64 billion on illegal drugs, and $114.2 billion for health-related care of drug use.

Americans also spend $586.5 billion a year on gambling.

It’s possible we could give up some other things to help alleviate the problems in our country without having to give up the spirit of exploration.

*the numbers used here are from various years, depending on what was readily available, but range from the years 2000 and 2008.

Source: http://8 Ridiculous Things Bigger Than NASA’s Budget | www.universetoday.com

NASA’s budget for fiscal year 2017 is $19.0 billion and the House is willing to give 19.5B with the Senate 19.3B but, there are stipulations that go along with that increase that affects NASA's original budget, and with the new administration's view on privatizing it will take a lot longer to get "where no one has gone before".

I think many people aren't captivated by space exploration or more importantly science in general. I'm certainly not one of them.
It is like the decline of the Roman empire - "Bread and Circuses". Just give me my iPhone.

I imagine you enjoy taking pictures and video with your iPhone, I do with my phone; If we had never ventured into space all of us would still be using a kodak brownie, and using landlines for communicating with family and friends.

NASA developed integrated circuits that were used in the Apollo Moon program and that lead to computer microchips, and without that there would have been a delay in creating the circuits that run our phones and the CCD [charged couple device] that takes our pictures.

Related:
Apollo 11 moon landing: top 15 NASA inventions

My reference to an iPhone was intended as a somewhat cynical comment - I don't own an iPhone. I like photography and use my Nikon DSLR.
Never mind NASA I worked for one of the most successful Labs in the world - Bell Labs (I don't think I contributed much). What did the US do - effectively close it down. Actually a Bell Labs scientist shared the Nobel prize for the invention of the CCD sensor and other Bell Lab scientists for the development of the transistor + 6 other Nobel prizes.
Good luck NASA.

PS: These are just statements of fact.

Yep well I tend to agree that science is of more benefit to us all and I was just viewing the other day smart watches that took pictures for heavens sake. I was also surprised that these devices were using CPU's that had clock speeds at around 530Mhz which just a few years ago we thought was really fast in the old computers we used to use as is memory now and storage and all in the small space of a watch!

Now I know it all sounds pretty good travelling to other places and settling down there but being a bit of a pessimistic realist I think that unless we overcome the problem of travelling at close to the speed of light it does look a rather despondent picture - given the fact that our Sun is going to decline gradually over the next few billion years and what is now the Earth is going to be swallowed up by that decline. Plus I guess all life will be long gone before that happens. But on the bright side it is going to be a long time before that takes place and perhaps there may be some bright spark who comes up with a solution.
The sad part is that I will not be around to see such changes

I've never had the pleasure to watch it on TV, but isn't that the Liberator from the Blake7 series?

The Firefox Nebula:

Source: Bad Astronomy
Picture by: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and H. Schweiker (WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Edit: Adding enhanced Firefox picture wife found on facebook courtesy: The Space Academy



A time lapse of spacex 9 launch then landing:

Source: Eight minute long exposure of the Falcon 9 CRS-9 launch & landing from Jetty Park | Reddit