-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Remembering Space Shuttle Challenger
- Thread starter Quetzal
- Start date
Awful, awful, awful....oh, the tremendous difficulty of reusable space vehicles.
Well, the X-37B and Aurora have started us on the road to space again.
Fingers crossed.
No! No! No!
Ordinary vehicles don't generate 37,000,000 horsepower!
I know it's easy to make fun of what happened, but with every mishap our space legacy died a little bit. That is a sad thing since it was part of the Cold War and as such played a huge role in defining us as a nation.
We are on the upswing again, but it has been and is a long, hard road.
We are on the upswing again, but it has been and is a long, hard road.
Last edited:
Yes, the space program is a big thing here.
But I think the shift from manned exploits to remote sensing & unmanned craft is a real improvement.
Some love the exciting drama of sending people into space, but I care more about the information &
understanding gleaned. People are fragile. Our new approach, "faster better cheaper", is best.
Humans are more efficient. Once we are confident and develop more efficient rocket technology, we will start taking a peek for ourselves.
Nah....humans require all that life support stuff, & a higher safety factor for missions.
And they always want a return trip. (Robotic probes are OK with 1 way missions.)
I admit they've had a great role....moon exploration, Hubble telescope repair.
But they become less useful as the distances increase.....Mars is much more difficult than the Moon.
Think of what we get from unmanned missions.....
- Flying probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto, & beyond....places we cannot send humans.
- Chandra X-ray observatory
- Kepler, Pioneer, Voyager, etc, etc.
And remote sensing....detecting gravity waves looms as the next big 'telescope' method of exploring the universe.
These unmanned efforts have yielded far more.
Now when they get warp drive & shields, we'll talk about sending people farther out there.
Sure, I will give you that. We have quite a ways to go before you and I can book a seat to Mars. It will just take some time. Meanwhile, we can send probes and rovers to our hearts content, for less!
Woo hoo....detente!
With that in mind, keep an eye on SpaceX and Blue Origin. Two companies who are putting together some pretty cool stuff!
I watch....& am happy to let others do the actual traveling.
Seems to me we achieved this milestone a couple of weeks ago. I know I read about it somewhere.
I'll try to find the article.
I also heard about that.
Gravity waves may have been detected -
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ravitational-waves-have-finally-been-detected
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ravitational-waves-have-finally-been-detected
The real value will be in boosting sensitivity by at least a factor of 10.
Perhaps then we can look at black hole antics more easily.