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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Challenger
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2024 01:46:13 +1000
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On 12/06/2024 6:31 pm, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 12/06/2024 06:17, Bill Sloman wrote:
>> On 12/06/2024 2:11 am, Phil Hobbs wrote:
>>> Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>>>> Rocket launches and landings are intrinsically dangerous. On this I am
>>>> inclined to agree with JL - unless and until we find something that our
>>>> robotic and AI kit cannot do we shouldn't be sending people into space.
>>>>
>>>> It was the *only* way to explore the moon back in 1969 but not any 
>>>> more...
>>>
>>> Read the book if you have the chance.
>>>
>>> Space exploration has little value outside its cultural impact.
>>
>> And this will continue to be true until we find something interesting. 
>> The nature of exploration is that we don't know what we will find 
>> until we find it.
> 
> OTOH we are much better equipped at remote sensing than they were. Our 
> robotics have now reached the point where they can do almost everything 
> that a man can do and they don't need feeding and air whilst in transit.

What they can't do is notice the unexpected.

> They also have multispectral imaging beyond what a human eye can see. 
> The vacuum of space is an incredibly hostile environment humans are far 
> too fragile to survive for long without a lot of support.

The "hostility" is perfectly credible, and well documented. It can kill 
you even faster than an arctic or antarctic winter, if something goes wrong.

> Sending humans to explore any of the interesting places in our solar 
> system is doomed to failure. 

Twaddle. It has to be done carefully, and you'd need a very good reason 
to do it at all, but an "interesting place" has to be interesting for a 
reason.

> At best it will be a "Big Brother" reality 
> TV show with real teeth. John you have been voted out of the spacecraft: 
> the airlock is over there. You are the weakest link - goodbye.

That's an idiotic proposition. If you want to make money out of 
revolting inter-person competitions, you won't want to spend a lot of 
time and money getting the contestants out to some extra-planetary 
location, which lying about where they were would be so much cheaper.

> At worst we would contaminate a pristine unique independently evolved 
> biological environment with terrestrial micro organisms that hitch a 
> ride with us. A bit like introducing rats or hedgehogs onto remote 
> islands full of creatures that are unable to deal with such threats.

It's easy enough to avoid.

>> Residents of Australian find it perfectly sensible that people kept 
>> poking around the Pacific until Cooke found Australia and mapped 
>> enough of it to suggests that it might be worth establishing a colony 
>> there.
>>
>> Most the residents of North America with European ancestry would think 
>> much the same about Columbus and his daft misconceptions about the 
>> size of the earth, if they thought about the matter at all.
> 
> There isn't anywhere remotely habitable that we can see within striking 
> distance at the moment. North pole of the moon might be OK for a small 
> lunar research base in the same way as we have in Antarctica and the far 
> side of the moon would be a nice radio quiet spot for radio telescopes 
> to use frequencies that are impossible from the Earth. That is about it.

With the advantages we can see today.There may be others we haven't 
thought about yet.

> Going to Mars with current technologies will merely result in the deaths 
> of the astronauts that we send. NASA doesn't deliberately set out to do 
> one way suicide missions (unlike some vocal proponents of manned Mars 
> exploration).

It would be likely to result in the deaths of some the astronauts sent.
It's highly unlikely to kill off the lot.

> The main purpose of the ISS was to distract redundant Russian rocket 
> scientists away from ICBM design (and I suppose it worked for a while).
> 
> Most of the "research" done on that low gravity platform wouldn't pass 
> muster at a high school science fair. It has fostered international 
> co-operation though - especially during the period where the US had to 
> rely on Russian space vehicles for transit to and from the ISS.

Perhaps. The cube-sats now being sent up seem to be a very mixed bunch, 
if I'm to believe what my acquaintances tell me, and make money in 
variety of different ways, all of which sound plausible. No people yet.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney



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