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When will humans return to the moon?
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I'm ANN LANDERS!! I can SHOPLIFT!!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 21 2023, @12:34PM (12 children)
> It will take another thousand years to climb back up it to where humans again have the knowledge and technology to travel to the moon
May be challenging without good access to fossil fuels.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 23 2023, @06:30AM (10 children)
Biofuels ftw.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 23 2023, @12:34PM (9 children)
Nope. PiMuNu is right. The easy fuels and the easy metals are gone. Civilization gets knocked back that far and there won't be another industrial civilization capable of space travel until the continents turn over.
Pockets of knowledge might survive, but it takes massive amounts of easily accessible fuel and metal ores to drive an industrial revolution.
A sustainable society built on biofuels and renewables just won't have the spare capacity.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 25 2023, @06:13PM
Bullshit, humanity wasted way more material filling landfills than it would take to start a space program. Pair with proper recycling and you don't need to excavate a continent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2023, @01:40AM (7 children)
There's still wood. It's the obvious easy fuel here. As to the easy metals, humanity has spent enormous resources to dig up those metals, refine them to astounding purity, and place them throughout cities and dumps. Those metals will be easier to get at than when they were in the ground as raw ore. Aluminum is a particularly obvious example. Not only is it in a form that ancient humans never could achieve, it can be used to melt steel.
Also, solar, wind, and water will still be here. It'll be different, but it won't be that challenging.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 30 2023, @11:44PM (6 children)
EROEI is what counts for energy, and fossils fuels had an extremely high one. Even then society killed a lot of miners getting that coal out. You can't do that now.
As for metals, if the dumps are so superior why are we still mining raw ores? It's because the dumps are better for piecemeal recovery and use. You can't drive the industry needed to get to space on that sort of distributed re-use.
Getting a civilization to space requires a concentrated effort that won't be achievable again if we become a society living on recycled metals and sustainable solar energy. We will probably still launch satellites, but we won't be mining the asteroids and setting up colonies.
I bet you could find groups now that would favour taxing SpaceX into oblivion and using the money to "help the poor". They will get louder and more influential if things get tougher.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 01 2023, @02:06AM (5 children)
They're typically in populated areas. That means little space for things like tailings or leach ponds. It also means significant restrictions on pollution and noise.
SpaceX shows it doesn't require a civilization to colonize space.
Sure. Already we see people angsting over the threat to the pristine "environment" of the Moon or the danger that someone somewhere might make money in space. This is balanced by these people having zero ability to do anything in space. So anyone who manages to get up there will be playing a different ball game.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2023, @05:37AM (2 children)
I am quite assured that khallow will never make any money from space. In fact, not sure he is making much from emptying the vending machines at Jellystone. Booboo! Get the Pikinic basket!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 01 2023, @05:13PM (1 child)
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2023, @10:54AM
I find it interesting that many mock khallow, when khallow does not endeavor to be mocked! Mod points for low effort! Excellent!!!
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday December 02 2023, @01:42PM (1 child)
SpaceX is one company driven by a guy with a dream. He got the money to pursue that dream by being one of the first in an expanding new industry.
That won't happen again if we move to a steady-state sustainable civilisation. Look at what happened to Thomas Jerome Newton and D.D. Harriman for an idea at what is going to happen to any future visionaries looking to travel to space in a "sustainable" crab-bucket future.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2023, @09:42AM
So many things wrong with your post.
Really? Are you this ignorant? Let me tell you about generational wealth, colonialism, and gem mines in South Africa.
Who? And you are appealing to a science fiction past to make some point about a libertarian dystopican future? The "crab-bucket" cinches it. Yes, the crabs pull down any crab trying to elevate themselves over the other crabs, but you miss a crucial thing: Then they rip them apart and eat them. Eat the rich! And the libertarians, despite the smell and gag-reflex. Desperate futures call for desperate measures.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday December 19 2023, @08:15PM
For space travel, that's not a problem. If you've got the energy, you can synthesize them. (But splitting water is easier. Methane has pretty much won out for now, but if you have to synthesize it, the economics change.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.