last week's night launch

Esav Benyamin

Esav Benyamin

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Apr 6, 2000
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endeavorlaunch_brown.jpg


Rockets bound for space are now launched
from somewhere on Earth about once a week.​

Every so often, even I am amazed by how routine this has become. For all the spectacular photographs, and the exceptional nature of the shuttle program among all the unmanned launches, space programs have become an integral part of our technology, necessary to the maintenance of communications, scientific research, and military and security forces.​

What comes next? The promise of unlimited power sources and materials is nowhere in sight. Has space become so routine we are failing to see its full potential?​
 
"CITIZENS ARREST! CITIZENS ARREST!"

Somebody better be showing me some receipts for Carbon Credits!!! Just LOOK at all that pollution!!!:rolleyes::D

I agree... it's not like unlimited POWER to fuel this entire earth is completely out of reach...

I guess gasoline is still "too cheap". Let's raise the price.

Duh... how stupid can we be? There IS an answer... We KNOW what that answer is... and the answer IS out there (space). Let's go get it... NOW!:mad:
 
Great pic! What's sort of amazing to me about the "power" thing is that we are just now getting around to thinking seriously about things that were proposed 20-30 years ago.

I was around waiting in gas lines with my Detroit-Iron police car in 1976. Seemed to me it should have been a bit of a wake-up call....

At least 20 years ago, when I was subscribing to OMNI magazine, (great rag, BTW, science and science fiction. Cutting edge stuff. I miss it still.) they were proposing orbiting solar collectors and low-pressure microwave beaming down to mega-scale reception arrays in desert areas.
Now this is being floated as a viable idea...

Over in Dubai (where money flows like water), they are going to install a truly mega-scale solar array in the desert, sufficiently large to be able to export power to surrounding countries.
We're still planning new coal-burning power plants, and not the much-hyped "clean" ones, either.
 
The space shuttle is an amazing machine, developed 40 years ago and is still a workhorse hauling the goods. Most technology lasts maybe 20 years at best before becoming obsolete, but here we are today and despite it's complexity and shortcomings the shuttle is still an important part of the space program.

Perhaps part of the reason has been a lack of focus on the space program, because it is hard to go to space. It is much easier to build new coal plants on the planet and funnel the waste into the environment than it is to build something difficult like a solar generating plant in the unknowns of the environment of space.

But as options run out, and it becomes increasingly difficult to co-exist with the environment without destroying it to serve our needs, we will find it increasingly easier to do work and promote industry in space and on the moon.

But inorder to work in space we need to find an easier better form of transport to get us there. The space shuttle as amazing as it is, has served us well and now there needs to be new inovation. The private sector more than likely will develop more efficient means of getting into space. Virgin Galactic with Branson's visions is one step away from developing manned space transport and there are others in the race too.

Once they figure out a way to get to space then the space industry will bloom, and a whole new frontier will await us. Heck the good old days of the wild west may return in a new way, at least for a little while until the first govenment agencies sprout up on the moon and Mars.
 
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