Space Exploration

[kirkland]

On the useless moron scale, they're above a flat earther and below a 9/11 truther.

It's not worth arguing with any of the three, I've tried many times.

[Jellybean]

Yes, I agree, we should definitely keep going, and we will keep going, because that's what we do. But I also believe that many people do not fully understand how truly far away we are from getting to another habitable planet.

Here's a fun video by Cody's lab where he plots out the distance of the objects of our solar system on a football field. At the scale he is using, the sun is the size of a pea, and the distance between the Earth and the Moon is only a couple millimeters. A couple millimeters representing the farthest humans have ever traveled. He then drives out to where the nearest star would be on that scale and has to leave the state to get there, it's pretty astonishing how much farther away it is. Just seeing it at that scale really puts it into perspective.....

Yeah, but that doesn't matter because we're not at that point yet.
It's like explaining how far the ocean is to a primitive tribe that can't build a proper rowboat yet, when all that tribe needs to do right now is build a bridge across a river so they can go hunting and get at a lot more trees to chop up...
It's nice to know the next town over is there, but we just need to drive a couple millimeters right now. Which is what IS at a point of near-practicality, we just need to to go out and do it already, like exploring the old west; go UP young man!
Then once we've spent the next hundred or so years perfecting near-planetary travel, glomming onto the most useful nearest planets/moons, and finding some asteroids to mine the $#!+ out of, we can figure out exactly what a millimeter really means in space time-distance.
I suspect even with limited near-space capability it's going to take our species consciousness to places we can't even imagine today... not to mention the likely second great tech explosion.

[WS6]

I've seen different sides of this on several sites, threads and posts on here. Some think it's a worthy goal, others think it's a waste of money that could be better spent on more earthly projects.

How does M4C feel about the budgets for NASA as well as the goals in our space programs?

NASA budget typically runs $17-18 Billion and change.

Budget of NASA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NASA spills over to "earth programs" all the time. Worth funding, even if you give zero shits about space.

[SteyrAUG]

It's not worth arguing with any of the three, I've tried many times.

Yep, they are devoid of even the most basic logic.

Flat earthers, I honestly don't even know where to start. I honestly believed they were all just yanking chains until the internet proved there are large numbers of actual people who will literally believe anything regardless of how absurd the belief or the overwhelming, indisputable evidence that completely invalidates their beliefs. These people should probably not be allowed to be free in public unsupervised because they are literally capable of believing anything.

Moon landing deniers, god that's a tough one. I mean even middle school children now possess sufficient technology to bounce a laser off of reflectors left on the surface of the moon. If we overlook independent verification of the moon landing such as the Selene photographs and similar observations provided by other than NASA sources, the most compelling evidence for our multiple moon landings is Russia. If Russia wasn't 100% absolutely certain that we landed a manned mission on the moon they would have had Russian cosmonauts on the moon within two weeks of the of the July 1969 Apollo mission. They might not have successfully brought them back alive, but Russia definitely would have sent them. The only reason Russia didn't send a manned mission to the moon is we did it first. Ironically this is one of the few arguments moon landing deniers sometimes accept as they are generally more willing to believe Russian perspectives over that of the US.

9-11 truthers, this is actually kind of an easy one. Once you explain that their basic premise is that George Bush (43), who is generally regarded as a D student president, successfully orchestrated and executed the most elaborate conspiracy in the history of mankind where he managed to trick several radical muslims into perpetrating the worst act of modern terrorism all the while concealing both his involvement and the possible participation of the state of Israel. Additionally his plan was so complex and complete that no credible media outlet or opposing political adversary was able to successfully challenge it because Bush (43) was ultimately too powerful or his political adversaries were somehow complicit in the conspiracy. Pretty good for half a moron.

Honestly I sorta blame the internet. A tool that was supposed to make everyone potentially smarter because any information was immediately at your disposal, we have instead turned it into a sounding board where anyone can find like minded idiots who will group support any ridiculous idea that might cross your drug addled brain no matter how much evidence exists to completely debunk the idea.

I'm certain, without even looking, that there is almost certainly a Unicorn forum devoted to the literal belief in Unicorns and the documenting of suppressed evidence of the existence of Unicorns both past and present. But if you find it, please don't show it to me, I don't want to see it even though I'm certain that such a forum must likely exist.

[turnburglar]

I thought this is a good thread to throw this little nugget.

Im taking a low level Astrobiology class at ASU Space and earth sciences school.

The most intensive greenhouse gas is.......... Water vapor. By an exponential factor. We have a simulator where you can build out a planets atmosphere and adjust different factors of the inorganic carbon cycle. You can add literal shit loads of methane and carbon dioxide to an atmosphere and barely affect the surface temperature on a planet. However add some water vapor and you have an inevitable run away green house affect. Apparently the 'science' doesn't actually work out in Al Gore's favor. For a perfect example we just have to look at venus. They think Venus actually had oceans on its surface at one point, and based on its proximity to the sun, the oceans went into the atmosphere and had a runaway green house affect. It wasn't ruined by some master race of idiots burning fossil fuels like the liberals want you to think.

[kirkland]

Yep, they are devoid of even the most basic logic.

Flat earthers, I honestly don't even know where to start. I honestly believed they were all just yanking chains until the internet proved there are large numbers of actual people who will literally believe anything regardless of how absurd the belief or the overwhelming, indisputable evidence that completely invalidates their beliefs. These people should probably not be allowed to be free in public unsupervised because they are literally capable of believing anything.

Moon landing deniers, god that's a tough one. I mean even middle school children now possess sufficient technology to bounce a laser off of reflectors left on the surface of the moon. If we overlook independent verification of the moon landing such as the Selene photographs and similar observations provided by other than NASA sources, the most compelling evidence for our multiple moon landings is Russia. If Russia wasn't 100% absolutely certain that we landed a manned mission on the moon they would have had Russian cosmonauts on the moon within two weeks of the of the July 1969 Apollo mission. They might not have successfully brought them back alive, but Russia definitely would have sent them. The only reason Russia didn't send a manned mission to the moon is we did it first. Ironically this is one of the few arguments moon landing deniers sometimes accept as they are generally more willing to believe Russian perspectives over that of the US.

9-11 truthers, this is actually kind of an easy one. Once you explain that their basic premise is that George Bush (43), who is generally regarded as a D student president, successfully orchestrated and executed the most elaborate conspiracy in the history of mankind where he managed to trick several radical muslims into perpetrating the worst act of modern terrorism all the while concealing both his involvement and the possible participation of the state of Israel. Additionally his plan was so complex and complete that no credible media outlet or opposing political adversary was able to successfully challenge it because Bush (43) was ultimately too powerful or his political adversaries were somehow complicit in the conspiracy. Pretty good for half a moron.

Honestly I sorta blame the internet. A tool that was supposed to make everyone potentially smarter because any information was immediately at your disposal, we have instead turned it into a sounding board where anyone can find like minded idiots who will group support any ridiculous idea that might cross your drug addled brain no matter how much evidence exists to completely debunk the idea.

I'm certain, without even looking, that there is almost certainly a Unicorn forum devoted to the literal belief in Unicorns and the documenting of suppressed evidence of the existence of Unicorns both past and present. But if you find it, please don't show it to me, I don't want to see it even though I'm certain that such a forum must likely exist.

The arguments of moon landing deniers and 9/11 truthers are fairly easy to debunk. But flat earthers are on a whole 'nother level of "special." How do you convince someone of anything who doesn't even believe gravity exists, someone who believes the moon and stars are projected images on a glass surface in the sky, or someone who believes Antartica is an enormous ice wall that encircles the entire earth and nobody is allowed to visit there because it's all some huge conspiracy? I've gone around and around with flat earthers, arguing with them, and the thing is they always have an answer for everything, and no matter how ludicrous their answer is they always believe it with 100% conviction even in the face of irrefutable evidence.

I watched the video of the rocket launching into orbit the other day, and scrolled down into the comment section expecting to find the typical flat earth comment that goes something like "curves against the firmament and falls into the sea, another fake rocket launch" or "Why does the rocket always curve, how come it never goes straight up" I found several of those comments and even though I knew better, I couldn't resist attempting to explain to them how orbit works and why the rocket doesn't go straight up. I got answers like "The ISS can't just hang in the sky, it would fall to Earth."

Other flat earth classics are, "Water cannot stick to a spinning ball." "the surface of the earth cannot be moving 1000 miles and hour, if you jumped you wouldn't land in the same spot." "All Nasa images are CGI." "You have been lied to your whole life, we're the only ones who reject the lies and don't just blindly believe what we've been told" "don't believe what science says, believe your own eyes, and my eyes tell me the earth is flat."

I've even come up with creative ways to explain to them how they can actually see that the surface of the earth is curved just by using their own eyes, things like observing the stars and the sun, especially if you can do it from different parts of the world. Or by observing a lunar eclipse and seeing the shadow of the Earth projected onto the Moon. Hell, just the fact that only part of the earth is lit up at any one time by the sun proves that the earth is not flat, if the sun were over a flat earth, it would light up the whole thing. Or stuff like observing the horizon on the ocean or any large body of water, especially if there's ships or islands or land with buildings that are just beyond the horizon, partially obscured, and even more so if you can get a second elevated vantage point to compare the view from ground level. But you don't even really need to do all that, just the fact that there even is a horizon on the water proves the surface is curved.

Anybody can do these simple experiments and see for themselves with their own eyes that the Earth is not flat, I've done them myself, and I've explained all this to several flat earth believers. But it's still not good enough for them, they either cannot grasp this basic logic or just flat out reject it, preferring instead to keep the wool pulled over their eyes. They're the ones who say you should go out and do your own experiments with your own eyes, and when I tell them exactly how to do that, they just continue to sit behind their keyboard and say "no." They're not interested in learning anything that could disprove their beliefs, and even if you do manage to convince one that he might be wrong, there's a hundred more that will rush in parroting the same old flat earth arguments, it's just not worth it to even try with these people.

[Novak]

I find talk of space exploration to be rather ridiculous given the fact that our country is in the process of turning into Brazil. In 1960, I would've said, "the price is worth it," but now it's like asking if the late Roman Empire should've dedicated resources to transoceanic exploration.

YMMV.

[WillBrink]

It's not worth arguing with any of the three, I've tried many times.

I try to be tolerant of other people's beliefs, but that's a level of stupid I can't overlook or call it anything else.

[utahjeepr]

"But the truth is right there on the flag of the UN" - Morons.

Like the ONE F'ING THING the UN doesn't lie about is that the earth is flat. I can't even wrap my head around that level of stupid.

[TehLlama]

I find talk of space exploration to be rather ridiculous given the fact that our country is in the process of turning into Brazil. In 1960, I would've said, "the price is worth it," but now it's like asking if the late Roman Empire should've dedicated resources to transoceanic exploration.

Practically, where would we be if they had? I'd argue drastically better off, practically the only reason we as a race did halfway decent is that the Arabs captured a non-trivial amount of intellectual knowledge during the fall via Byzantium, and that this downfall was phased from Chinese dynastic cycles... it's not like hemhorraging salt and dinarii on the Colosseum or social programs had a meaningful ROI.