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you know the old Cliché..."if we spent as much on space exploration as we do on war.....".

when i see things like that it angers me no end that we would sooner start a fight with another country, and waste billions upon billions of £/$ than invest in space exploration and the development of space related technologies such as (but not limited to), more advanced propulsion systems.



anyways, end of rant and i hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

typical in democratic politics. I see it and hear it pretty much everyday.
I heard this story that was circulating, well its more of a joke, but its kinda relevant:
the U.S drained a few billion dollars on research and development of a pen that could work in space (as normal pen+ink+gravity don't mix), it could work under heavy amounts of pressure, in a deep sea environment, freezing temperatures, and extremely hot temperatures. After after a few months one was made.
The Russians used a pencil.

that's one we all know about...

what did you think of the images?

its pretty big out there aye

all i can think about is how long it would actually take to get anywhere
currently, to get to mars it would take a few months
getting out of the solar system takes a decade
try getting to the nearest star

at current rocket top speeds i agree, but i saw a program a few years ago where scientists were set-up in the mid 60's until the 70's when the project was suddenly and without reason-cancelled. they were set-up in a top secret facility and tasked with finding more efficient and faster forms of propulsion systems, 1 of the first forms of propulsion systems they came up with were nuclear. it was a simple system, a reactor powering 2 super heated plates and a powerful jet system jetting gas between the plates. the tests carried out on the engine estimated safety was tremendously improved over current rocket tech, and speed was estimated at 10X current rocket tech.
the program even showed the test-bed where the engine was mounted and fired, but no records of the test have been made public.

1 of the scientists said that this new engine was to be a direct replacement for current tech until systems like anti-grave could be perfected, he made it clear that using mercury as a core would have allowed them to perfect the tech. he kept using the word "perfect" instead of "develop" which would imply they had the capability way back then to create a working anti-grave or other kind of propulsion system...

before anyone jumps on me, i'm only repeating what i saw, nothing more

I have seem things like that many of times.

While its a fair bet that the russians pobably did use pencils on their initial space flights with people (after all they beat the US up there) there is a point to the 'space pen'

That is carbon filings, which are conductive. In a low or no gravity environment you dont want them floating around and shorting out contacts.

Hence soon after the 'space pen' was invented it was getting used on all space flights of both US & Russian origin.

bit of string never hurt anyone.

all this war, defense money also pisses me off..
I wanna see aliens in my lifetime. that is all!

Kit-Fox wrote:While its a fair bet that the russians pobably did use pencils on their initial space flights with people (after all they beat the US up there) there is a point to the 'space pen'

That is carbon filings, which are conductive. In a low or no gravity environment you dont want them floating around and shorting out contacts.

Hence soon after the 'space pen' was invented it was getting used on all space flights of both US & Russian origin.

if u break a pencil.. the **Filtered** flies around and in the end can cause too much damage.

We need another cold war-like conflict to jiggle the pride of some countries into developing tech. Think about it..The first free flight was done by the Wright brothers in 1907 and some 60 years later we're walking on the Moon. We've done nothing ever since...

Ashu wrote:We need another cold war-like conflict to jiggle the pride of some countries into developing tech. Think about it..The first free flight was done by the Wright brothers in 1907 and some 60 years later we're walking on the Moon. We've done nothing ever since...

Hey now! Don't knock the Japanese..
Just this week (or last week) a probe returned to earth that they had sent to an asteroid. It landed on that asteroid, and it's supposed to have picked up some dust/stones. But the most important part, is that it has returned. We're talking about how these Vikings, Pioneers and Deep Space explorers are soo awesome.. but none of those come back. This one went the distance of one quarter of the solar system, and actually came back.

Regardless of what it has brought back, the fact that it returned is one of the major achievements of space science of the past years.



I'll admit, it could be so much more.. but it's easy to dream up non-existent tech. Just to name something.. "inertial dampening". It's such a simple concept. But if we were able to make it, we would (for example) win every Grand Prix, just because we're no longer affected by G-forces.. we would win every Red Bull Air Challenge.. all with tech that is among the easiest to think up, but rather difficult to accomplish.

If anyone does have a functioning prototype of this tech, I have an almost-decently-functioning prototype of a rotary magnet propulsion system. If you are interested, we could pool our prototypes and get something bigger going.

i do, its right next to my room-temperature superconductor and my limitless energy supply

Baxter wrote:i do, its right next to my room-temperature superconductor and my limitless energy supply

I'll see your limitless energy supply and make it self sustaining. We could use my space elevator to get all the way out to the Dyson Sphere's inner construction scaffolding.

Ashu wrote:We need another cold war-like conflict to jiggle the pride of some countries into developing tech. Think about it..The first free flight was done by the Wright brothers in 1907 and some 60 years later we're walking on the Moon. We've done nothing ever since...

who knows what tech Govts are keeping from the public. the best guesstimates are that Govt/military/space tech is about 30 years ahead of commercial/public tech knowledge....

thats not say they have advanced propulsion or as Jo says, "inertial dampening" or even star trek type shield systems, i'm just saying, who knows what they have.