Nasa Has Competition

[youneverknow]

The first private space flight will take place this week...really cool. Here is the article's link and a photo of the NEW ship

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aps...rivate%20Rocket

youneverknow

[ejh]

Sweet! Wonder how much a ticket costs... :-D

[kevan_j]

$102,000 according to articles on Yahoo.

[Boojum]

I can't help but greet this news with mixed emotions.

 

It does mean another potential vector of advancement in space exploration, but I'm also afraid it represents another step toward accommodating the eventual exodus of the "best and brightest" (read wealthiest) when our world ceases to be habitable.

 

And that in turn frees those in authority (at least, those who care not a farthing for their fellow citizens; and they are legion) from any concern that their own grandchildren will be among those who will have to live with the consequences of our collective ravaging of nature. It explains all too well our current head-in-the-sand policy on issues like global warming: After all, why should the affluent care if half the United States becomes a shallow sea if their own descendants need no longer be here to suffer? Consequences felt by their socioeconomic "inferiors" are no consequences to them.

 

As in the nineteenth century, so today.

[DarqFlare]

Hm...

 

I think it's cool, myself. Any way that we can pull money from rich people is fine by me.

 

Unless I'm the rich guy.

[Shannon]

I can't help but greet this news with mixed emotions.

 

It does mean another potential vector of advancement in space exploration, but I'm also afraid it represents another step toward accommodating the eventual exodus of the "best and brightest" (read wealthiest) when our world ceases to be habitable.

 

And that in turn frees those in authority (at least, those who care not a farthing for their fellow citizens; and they are legion) from any concern that their own grandchildren will be among those who will have to live with the consequences of our collective ravaging of nature. It explains all too well our current head-in-the-sand policy on issues like global warming: After all, why should the affluent care if half the United States becomes a shallow sea if their own descendants need no longer be here to suffer? Consequences felt by their socioeconomic "inferiors" are no consequences to them.

 

As in the nineteenth century, so today.

I think i would rather live in a US where half is a shallow ocean than live on a red planet with barely any water or a moon.

 

And rich people leaving like rats on a sinking boat is so far in the future we'll all be worm food before it happens.

[Boojum]

I think i would rather live in a US where half is a shallow ocean than live on a red planet with barely any water or a moon.

 

And rich people leaving like rats on a sinking boat is so far in the future we'll all be worm food before it happens.

1) Since, as Shannon observes, the colonization of other planets as a matter for the distant future, I would imagine that we will by then have found some world more hospitable than Mars. My assumption is that, barring some discovery allowing for faster-that-light travel, this colonization will be achieved by a "generation ship": a craft designed to transfer thousands of people a great distance across interstellar space over the course of many years.

 

2) This "worm food" observation sounds like an echo of President Bush's reply to a question about how history would portray our actions of today: "History. We'll all be dead then."

 

It also reminds me of another quotation, this one from one of my favorite founding fathers, Tom Paine:

 

It hath been reported of the late Mr Pelham (who tho' an able minister was not without his faults) that on his being attacked in the house of commons, on the score, that his measures were only of a temporary kind, replied, "they will last my time." Should a thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with detestation.