so you think you know the meaning of the word big?!

[Baxter]

trust me, the crap they do have is actually not that advanced
its quite a way behind the public sector
at least, it is in australia

[TimeGap]

Solar sails, Ion-Drives, Virgin Galactic...

These 3 things prove one thing:

The days of governments making advancements in space travel are nearing an end, and the time for private industry to lead the way in research is fast approaching us.

Firslty, Research in solar sails, one of the few viable deep space propulsion systems, has been stopped by government researchers in the USA, I can not say anything for the rest of the world...

Ion-Drives, another deep space propulsion system that is extremely promising... Same story...

Now Virgin Galactic... Private Company venturing to space, dreams of hotels in space, trips to space... Yet, no ambition to travel deeper into space, and only doing it for financial gain...

Well, lets hope Obama sticks to his plans, I would truely love to see people on mars, or something being done with Mars in my lifetime, if not, atleast a space colony, even if it is only in orbit above earth...

As for inter stellar travel... I highly doubt that any of us will see this. We are atleast 50-100 years away from doing it. According to some articles and publications I have read, our best bet is the Ion drive, which would take the better part of 10 years to work up to a speed fast enough to allow interstellar travel, due to this, we will first need a target planet that could sustain life, which will have to be scouted using some sort of scout ship also equipped with some sort of ion drive. If a suitable planet is found another craft will have to be sent for reasearch etc. So IMO, the actual colonisation of another world, by the human race, will happen a very long time after we have all been forgotten, if ever.

But yes... All of whats out there, is pretty damn big

Oh how I which I could be born again in 500 years

[[KMA]Avenger]

so, you guys think the commercial/private sector is ahead of military/Govt tech?! where do you guys think the the commercial sector gets its contracts from?


your information is wrong....full stop.

[Juliette]

Wishful thinking. Speaking for the Dutch.. I don't see the morons who make up our government hide anything substantial from us. The day the USA stored nuclear weapons on our soil, everyone knew. Everyone knows, but no one confirms it. Hell, politicians refer to it as our 'public secret'. If they can't keep a simple thing like that covered up, like hell they can hide other things better.

They can't even keep their border management up, despite an ever increasing outcry among us to close the borders to the further influx of muslim jihadists.. bloody peasants and their counter-legal sharia courts besmirching our civilisation and justice system (to mention the least of their infringements on our society).

Maybe we have already been overtaken by them. Maybe our higher echelons of government are simply layers of an onion, ultimately leading to Allah's rotten corps of islamic horror-causing marauders. If that is the case, then yes.. maybe tech is being hidden from us. Tech that would allow such a travesty to continue.


Oh well.. I hope you're right, G. It would be a good thing. At least we, as humans, would be there.

[Legendary Apophis]

You got sharia courts in Netherlands?

Anyway, I found the picture interesting, however most planets pictured appeared to be gas planets the likes of Neptune or Saturne...as for far away galaxies, we would need damn time to reach them, and by then, things would have changed due to light speed/distance/time to attain us etc...

[Kit-Fox]

I find it hard to believe Knowledge that no other writing implement other htan the 'space pen' has been used in the history of manned space flight.

And as for Ion propulsion, that is only viable as a propulsion system inside the solar system. It would not be able to achieve the speeds required for proper interstellar travel and your forgetting that current generation Ion technology burns through its suppply awfully fast.

Solar sails are a possibility but I have serious doubts about whether or not they will ever be used in any meaningful way as they are too easy to damage and too difficult to repair in a deployed state. Theres a hell of a lot of interstellar dust out there you know and it wouldnt take much to create some serious damage on such a sail.

[[KMA]Avenger]

Wishful thinking. Speaking for the Dutch.. I don't see the morons who make up our government hide anything substantial from us. The day the USA stored nuclear weapons on our soil, everyone knew. Everyone knows, but no one confirms it. Hell, politicians refer to it as our 'public secret'. If they can't keep a simple thing like that covered up, like hell they can hide other things better.

They can't even keep their border management up, despite an ever increasing outcry among us to close the borders to the further influx of muslim jihadists.. bloody peasants and their counter-legal sharia courts besmirching our civilisation and justice system (to mention the least of their infringements on our society).

Maybe we have already been overtaken by them. Maybe our higher echelons of government are simply layers of an onion, ultimately leading to Allah's rotten corps of islamic horror-causing marauders. If that is the case, then yes.. maybe tech is being hidden from us. Tech that would allow such a travesty to continue.


Oh well.. I hope you're right, G. It would be a good thing. At least we, as humans, would be there.

Jo, when i say Govts i use the term loosely, i don't literally mean the leadership, i'm talking about the agencies such as NASA, other countries space agencies, Govt owned research/development groups and the like

i agree with KF that solar sails are not a viable option as they are to fragile.

[TimeGap]

Avenger, please read the Opinionated post of another clearly before simply forcing your opinion on them... This is afterall what we are encouraging arent we? That individuals bring their opinions to light for other people to comment on, and share their own opinions...

so, you guys think the commercial/private sector is ahead of military/Govt tech?! where do you guys think the the commercial sector gets its contracts from?


your information is wrong....full stop.

Nowhere in my post did I say the private sector is ahead.

Basically what I meant was:

The private sector are starting to invest more and More into research into these fields, where governments seem to be cutting budgets more & more into the same research, leaving but one logical assumption... That in the end, private industry/corporations will be the pioneers, and not government programs.

The agenda of these private entities will never be known, wether they are backed or bankrolled by government or not.

Even the military is proof of this... Private Military Company's anyone? Renting an entire army is possible these days... Including attack planes, choppers and the like.

Globalisation, Privatisation and the economical climate the world finds itself in, will eventually demand that the private sector invest much more than governments...

And Yet again I say, we will have to wait and see what happens, none of us can truely say that we can deliver accurate information, unless you are a government spy in the private sector who relates directly to the subject, or vice versa.

So Avenger. You my friend, could very well also be wrong.

Not that I'm saying you are

Ooooh and ty KF, I did not know that About the Ion Propulsion...

[Juliette]

You got sharia courts in Netherlands?

They're in the process of introducing them, after a study from the government showed there weren't any. Some **Filtered** muslim theologians decided that is a disgrace, and proceeded to try out such a court. The test was interrupted by one of our somewhat more public branches of political enforcement groups. The media, of course, are completely obsessed with making these people appear as right extremists.. completely ignoring the fact that a counter-legal initiative was taking place with the intention of setting up a shadow justice system, much like the UK has. Then, the muslims in the UK have caused that country to be so very rotten to the core that it's no surprise they were easy to take over. Avenger's mentions of the shadow government.. he is right. It is a bad situation. The world needs to wake up to the threat, and stop being politically correct cowards.

It took the Dutch a few murders and a few soldiers to realise the threat the muslims pose. America has lost thousands of civilians, thousands of soldiers.. and do they realise it? They seem not to have. I have good hope the Bilderberg conference of this year will address this pressing issue. Our Queen knows this danger, and she's attending.

Anyway, I found the picture interesting, however most planets pictured appeared to be gas planets the likes of Neptune or Saturne...as for far away galaxies, we would need damn time to reach them, and by then, things would have changed due to light speed/distance/time to attain us etc...

There were no extrasolar planets in that picture. Only the planets from our solar system, other stars, bigger stars, and again bigger stars.

[[KMA]Avenger]

Avenger, please read the Opinionated post of another clearly before simply forcing your opinion on them... This is afterall what we are encouraging arent we? That individuals bring their opinions to light for other people to comment on, and share their own opinions...

so, you guys think the commercial/private sector is ahead of military/Govt tech?! where do you guys think the the commercial sector gets its contracts from?


your information is wrong....full stop.

Nowhere in my post did I say the private sector is ahead.

Basically what I meant was:

The private sector are starting to invest more and More into research into these fields, where governments seem to be cutting budgets more & more into the same research, leaving but one logical assumption... That in the end, private industry/corporations will be the pioneers, and not government programs.

The agenda of these private entities will never be known, wether they are backed or bankrolled by government or not.

Even the military is proof of this... Private Military Company's anyone? Renting an entire army is possible these days... Including attack planes, choppers and the like.

Globalisation, Privatisation and the economical climate the world finds itself in, will eventually demand that the private sector invest much more than governments...

And Yet again I say, we will have to wait and see what happens, none of us can truely say that we can deliver accurate information, unless you are a government spy in the private sector who relates directly to the subject, or vice versa.

So Avenger. You my friend, could very well also be wrong.

Not that I'm saying you are

Ooooh and ty KF, I did not know that About the Ion Propulsion...

don't get me wrong, i'm well awre of what your saying and to some extent i agree, and i'm not trying to force my opinion, i'm just saying that you are largely misinformed.

the reason is, that while the private sector has in the past 20+ years caught up with Govt spending on research and development, be it the the development of micro transistors/circuit boards, the compact disc, HD or whatever, those techs are contracted to the private sector by Govt agencies, in this way they can cherry pick the tech that gets into the public domain and they can also recoup much of the expenditure.


to expand, take HD for insistence, the Govt developed the tech but was licensed out to corporations who in turn-turn their R&D departments loose who come up with their version of HD, yet another company gets the same licence but they come up with a better system of HD and call it Bluray...

see what i'm getting at?

[Legendary Apophis]

You got sharia courts in Netherlands?

They're in the process of introducing them, after a study from the government showed there weren't any. Some **Filtered** muslim theologians decided that is a disgrace, and proceeded to try out such a court. The test was interrupted by one of our somewhat more public branches of political enforcement groups. The media, of course, are completely obsessed with making these people appear as right extremists.. completely ignoring the fact that a counter-legal initiative was taking place with the intention of setting up a shadow justice system, much like the UK has. Then, the muslims in the UK have caused that country to be so very rotten to the core that it's no surprise they were easy to take over. Avenger's mentions of the shadow government.. he is right. It is a bad situation. The world needs to wake up to the threat, and stop being politically correct cowards.

It took the Dutch a few murders and a few soldiers to realise the threat the muslims pose. America has lost thousands of civilians, thousands of soldiers.. and do they realise it? They seem not to have. I have good hope the Bilderberg conference of this year will address this pressing issue. Our Queen knows this danger, and she's attending.

Anyway, I found the picture interesting, however most planets pictured appeared to be gas planets the likes of Neptune or Saturne...as for far away galaxies, we would need damn time to reach them, and by then, things would have changed due to light speed/distance/time to attain us etc...

There were no extrasolar planets in that picture. Only the planets from our solar system, other stars, bigger stars, and again bigger stars.

Idiotic medias. Well, medias tend to change opinions with time, one day they are all ultra-multicultaralism **Filtered** and later they become conservative. I really don't see what's wrong with forbidding a sharia court in Netherlands, I read about that in an article regarding 2006 CDA minister of justice from NL planned to enable sharia law if 2/3 of population agreed, and then the chief CDA answered whoever would enable it would lose their constitutional rights (which I agree completly). I just saw this article searching about sharia in NL after reading your post.
Hmmm maybe we should continue this discussing on pm/msn...after the coming match more likely.

Nevermind, I got it mistaken then about planets & solar.

[TimeGap]

Ah there we go

On those grounds I do agree with you.

Yet there are entities not under govt control that are conducting their own research But we will all just have to wait and see what happens

Oh Kit I was wondering if you could pm me a link to article or some form of thesis or something to where it explains some more about Ion Propulsion, coz after reading your post i thought about it, and remembered what I heard at a lecture in Cape Town a few years ago about Ion Propulsion, where Prof. Krugman (Cant remember exactly) esplained that Ion Propulsion would NOT be viable for use in one solar system, as the acceleration is not great enough to be usefull over shorter distances, and that it would only be truely usefull where one needs to travel vast distances, to allow the system to accelerate to a speed that that warrants the distance one wants to travel.

As I say, I cant recall the whole lecture, I was like 17 years old :/

Please send me a link or something where this is proved to be incorrect.

[[KMA]Avenger]

Ah there we go

On those grounds I do agree with you.

Yet there are entities not under govt control that are conducting their own research But we will all just have to wait and see what happens

i should make myself more understood, my apologies...i agree with the above that not all new tech comes solely from Govts or their agencies/contractors, and there are many independents who also do much R&D, be it corporations or individual small time inventors.

[Hitchkok]

We need another cold war-like conflict to jiggle the pride of some countries into developing tech.

there's an ideology sporting that notion.
its called fascism.
now, hold on. i'm not calling anyone a fascist, and i know the difference between a cold war and an actual war. i'm merely reminding everyone that the reason the cold war was kept cold, is the balance of terror exercised by both nations, which resulted in nuclear proliferation, something we're dealing with to this day.
a bit to risky, if you ask me.

[Kit-Fox]

Oh Kit I was wondering if you could pm me a link to article or some form of thesis or something to where it explains some more about Ion Propulsion, coz after reading your post i thought about it, and remembered what I heard at a lecture in Cape Town a few years ago about Ion Propulsion, where Prof. Krugman (Cant remember exactly) esplained that Ion Propulsion would NOT be viable for use in one solar system, as the acceleration is not great enough to be usefull over shorter distances, and that it would only be truely usefull where one needs to travel vast distances, to allow the system to accelerate to a speed that that warrants the distance one wants to travel.

As I say, I cant recall the whole lecture, I was like 17 years old :/

Please send me a link or something where this is proved to be incorrect.

Sorry I cant provide a link as it was something I read in a scientific journal a few years ago when it was still big news, however from what I recall the article wasnt debating the usefulness of Ion Drives based on the acceleration output but on the speed of which they burnt through their 'fuel'. The basic argument was that such drives would not be very useful for instellar distances as we wouldnt be able to refuel them inflight, making them only useful inside the solar system between two established stations as it were.

However further research has shown that to reach say Alpha Centauri (our nearest star) would still take more than a single lifetime even with an Ion Drive running at 100% efficency 100% of the journey time, which it couldnt due to the fuel issue.

Hence they are not sufficient for interstellar travel. If you google you should find lots of research on the matter, its been a while mind that i bothered to keep upto date with them (last time as '07ish) so things may have changed recently.


------------------------


For a real change of interstellar travel the first step we need to complete is a functioning space elevator, which we have the knowledge to build already. In fact we've had the knowledge to make a space elevator since about '00-'01, so pretty much 10 years. It would take a huge collective effort to make one, but once made they can provide 'free' trips into space, reducing the effort neededto lift materials out of our gravity well.

With a space elevator in place we could then begin construction of a real space station instead of the poor excuses we use today and even construct a ship in orbit that would be able to travel in space better than current space ships can thanks to not having to be built to escape an immense gravity well.