Should I feel optimistic or pessimistic about Space Travel right now?

optimistic that we will go to mars
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next century.

>Should I feel optimistic or pessimistic about Space?
Optimistic about SpaceX
Pessimistic about NASA

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One in the same.

That's Buran, the Shuttleski
The Shuttles are well-cared for tourist attractions. Still useless, though.

Pessimistic

Interstellar travel isn't realistic. We will have nuked ourselves into oblivion before we can reach that level of technology.

Of course we'll reach mars, but how will that help us in any way? Space dust?

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Pessimistic. Even if spacex is serious there will be huge backlash against what they plan to do because they are walking into big money turf with decades of entrenchment.
The cancelled martian capsule and the moon tourist flyby are good examples of backing away from conflict.

chemical rockets are sufficient for inner solar system travel, including Mars, Venus, near-Earth asteroids and maybe Ceres

further than that and you need nuclear or fusion tough

Pessimistic, humanity will never visit more than 0.00000000001% of the universe because everything is going away from us constantly.

It may be stupid but honestly it made me stop being sad I wasn't born at the right time, to late for earth exploration and too early for space exploration. Now I'm just glad I'm here at a time where we have enough knowledge to make good Sci-Fi books/movies/video games and dream about what could be out there.

Interstellar travel is unrealistic but, a Mars base would make a decent staging point for missions further out into the solar system. You could take the BFR into Mars orbit and refuel it with the tankers, then head out towards the Jovian moons.

Too many wealthy people who like the planet the way it is m8.

Mostly poor people die.

This. Without unlocking the secrets of anti-gravity it is pointless to even try.

The only post in this thread that actually makes sense.

> FTL
> havent used it yet
weak bait

Why do rockets launch at a curve? Is it because it's more efficient/easy to launch with the curvature/rotation of the planet?

>Is it because it's more efficient/easy to launch with the curvature/rotation of the planet?
Yep. As some wiseguy once said: getting up there is easy, staying up there is hard. Our atmosphere isnt that large, most fuel is spend on achieving terminal velocity.

Fuck off, faggot. I can go to space if I want.

time traveling will be possible in like 1000 to 1000000 years

Because they don't actually go into space.

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to go to space you need to go mostly sideways

Pessimistic as fuck. Literally the most exciting things happening in the space is the James Webb telescope which will be launching soon, and the potential Breakthrough Starshot program which I hope actually happens. But both of these things are unmanned. We might send a man to Mars but who the fuck cares that's lame.

If a mirror is lying flat on the floor and somebody is standing on the opposite side of the mirror, at an angle from you, their reflection will reflect at that angle for you, and your reflection will reflect at whatever angle you are at for them.

The first priority is to get out of the thick atmosphere, reducing air resistance. Thus a vertical launch. However, the final orbit is horizontal. As you go up and encounter less resistance and gain speed, you start pointing horizontally: the priority gradually shifts from leaving an atmosphere to entering an orbit. Eventually, all your acceleration/velocity is horizontal.

The direction of the horizontal component is usually W to E to take advantage of the Earth's rotation. It's also why launches are best made from as close to the equator as (politically) possible, where the rotational speed is greatest. But polar orbits (or close enough for the missions) are also launched.

>James Webb telescope which will be launching soon

nah, probably add a year+, not because of Ariane - but Northrop Grumman

Optimistic.
The real dark age was post-apollo. It's like the world ended as far as spaceflight went.
But thanks to certain recent additions aerospace industry we are close to seeing that mistake undone.

Geez.. do I have spell it out?

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Space travel is such an irrelevant thing to even be discussing until we solve the energy crisis. I'm 100% serious.

It's not as if we can't do both, you know.

Lmao.

I'm imagining a fully committed space program that would actually be reaching other planets and eating up ridiculous, unanticipated amounts of earth resources. Renewable needs to be the #1 source of common energy for home and transportation, and fusion needs to power our industries and cities before we start doing it for real.

>He's not excited about TESS

It should look like this.

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And that is *exactly* why the Apollo program came to a halt. People complained resources should go to the poor.
So science pretty much ground to a halt.
Everyone has their own agenda.
And they're all the most important.
Get in the queue.

Ummm... rocket-wise, yes.
Now where's the Moon's reflection in the water?

As long as you understand we'll never ever leave our solar system

>resources should go to the poor
XD lmao upboat +1 totally what I said

nope, Mars is a meme planet, we need to concentrate on the belt and the Jupiter/Saturn Systems. Trillions will be spent on the Mars boondoggle and nothing will come from it, and then it's only a matter of time till Kessler Syndrome occurs, and we're trapped here forever

From the photographer:
>bassfaceglenn
>Thank you! Yea I was really happy with how this shot came out. Originally I was going to shoot a single 3.5 minute exposure but a few minutes prior I switched my settings to 30 second shots firing off one after another. Ended up having 7 frames worth of rocket streak data. I blended the streaks (sky and water reflection) with some targeted masks and the lighten blend mode. The stars are from the frame right before launch. The rest of the image is from the frame right at ignition when the sky was the brightest. I decided on the composite approach last minute because the moon light was creating some real gnarly banding issues in the sky when I took my test shots. When I dropped it to the shorter exposure I wasn't getting the banding problems as severely.

Pessimistic. Humans will never travel into space on a large scale. There may be very limited travel within our solar system for the purposes of resource extraction and possibly leisure for the ultra wealthy. Besides that not much.

And any space travel is essentially meaningless since we cannot travel faster than the speed of light and thus we can never reach distant galaxies or do much exploration. And by "we", I of course mean nobody here, nor myself.

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The logistics of a space colony located on Mars or even the moon would be insane. Any turmoil on Earth means there's a very real risk of resources being cut off and the colony will die. Furthermore, no government would be stupid enough to set up an actual colony off Earth anyway because a single shitskin suicide bomber/saboteur could destroy the entire thing.

I figured it out by comparing the shapes of the paths in the sky and reflection: the Moon's reflection is just off-frame, below the image.

>Asking a fapanese bannana massage parlor how you should feel.

You dug past rock bottom. Found its molten core, dug through that. Popped out the other hemisphere on a pyroclastic flow and the sheer force of your autism has managed to shove you right into the depths of a black hole in the furthest reaches of space where only God can hear you scream.

Then why havent we seen them yet?

>what are NERVAs
>what are Nuke Pulse drives
>what are laser highways
It's like people here don't even Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur.

>send scientists to Mars
>that can't even lift a solar panel onto solar tracking rack

Mars needs heavy labor.

>2018
>weight of 2.3 pounds per square foot
>averaging 40 pounds per residential class panel
>Mars has the gravity of ~0.3g
>lifting 13 pounds
Yeah, nerds might be weak, but first nerds we send there will most probably be buff nerds from the military.

Well to do that you will have to get your government to stop funding the third world. Good luck with that. At this point, private companies are the only solution.

WHAT THEE FUCK

The Buran was better than the STSs, but the USSR's economy obviously didn't do too well because of the economic reforms. It didn't help that they had Yeltsin as president for a while.

Buran was... meh. Better on the avionics and control part, worse on orbital capabilities, to be honest. The best part of the Buran program was the Energia. That titanic thing was the best rocket of it's age. And we blew it. "Пpocти нac, Юpa, мы вcё пpoeбaли".

Depends on what you're expecting.
>Mars mission actually being planned seriously
>SSTO (planned) and reusable rockets
>biggest rockets since Saturn V being constructed, even bigger planned
>multiple earth-sized exoplanets with the potential for life being found
>actual (albeit expensive) LEO/Moon tourism soon
>return to the moon being planned
>various ion drives being used
>EMdrive might be the most important thing in modern space exploration (if it works)
[spoiler]>with negative energy being proven to exist, an alcubierre drive (FTL) becomes theoretically possible in the very far future[/spoiler]
I'd say it's the best time since the 60s.

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>this is your brain on pop-sci

Energia...overrated.

All the Energia-Buran money should have been spent on a larger capsule and cargo spacecraft for the Zenit and a larger next gen space station.

Today Russia's plans are for a larger 6 person capsule for a Zenit clone rocket. They still haven't caught up to where they could have been in the late 80s due to the strategic misinvestment in Energia Buran.

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9580220
>STILL spamming buzzwords
You don't get a (You)

There is a secret space program that is currently under black budget. We've had FTL since the 1970's. youtube.com/watch?v=wXwOkzaqzog

what-if.xkcd.com/58/

What am I meant to see here

She has a really nice bum

Cryo is a feasible answer to that for one-way sublight interstellar trips though

>Cryo is a feasible answer

Name a better option then you negative nancy

>THAN
Anyways it's just another hurdle that at this point isn't achieveable
Not saying it won't I'm just saying feasible makes it sound like it's actually, uh... feasible

I'm pretty optimistic about it now thanks to SpaceX. It's hilarious looking at the launch manifest for the year and seeing how hard they are destroying the competition. How can bezos even compete?

youtube.com/watch?v=ZL4yYHdDSWs

>How can bezos even compete?
At least Bezos is not like this guy.
youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-7nNw-04Q

Flat Earth cumfurmed

Is a fusion powered rocket capable of attaining 3,000 km/s? While also being able to constantly accelerate at 9.81 m/s? My idea is to use an afterburner fusion engine using Methane as the fuel for the afterburner(for its abundance). Thoughts?

3,000 km/s for Delta-V in case anyone got confused on that

I think "then" was the correct use friendo

SpaceX cucks will never cease to make me laugh, keep it up please.

Even if SpaceX can land many of their big fucking rockets on Mars a permanent settlement is just not feasible and would be almost entirely dependent on supplies from Earth. Extreme pessimism.

>What is a technology humanity will ever make
>What is a technology humanity will ever make
>What is a technology humanity will ever make
>Isaac Arthur
>"""""futurism"""""
hopeless optimism is just as bad as pessimism retard, none of those can ever be built

That's if they can even build the damn thing. They're already talking about tests next year despite not even having the engine built yet.

mars colony by 2040

>What is a technology humanity will ever make
>'''''''''contraption''''''''
We will never build your fancy heavier than air flying machine contraption. Boats and Trains are the pinnacle of technology you absolute Johnny flim flam

Insider here,

Be optimistic about SpaceX. Really optimistic. Blue Origin too, we're moving along slowly but surely.

Be pessimistic about SLS. Be pessimistic about anything NASA. NASA is making a multi billion dollar mistake right now with the SLS and sinking more funds into the Mobile Launcher and holy fuck it's going to end badly.

Everything is pretty much riding on BFR and New Glenn, which I am 100% sure are going to succeed by 2022.

t. BE-4 enginer

Why foreign governments copy NASA with expendable rockets?

Has it been stated how SpaceX will deal with radiation for BFR during the Mars journey?

Lack of technology and resources. VTVL development takes a lot of time and very careful testing. SpaceX has been playing the long game for a while and sought not instant gratification or contracts like other foreign agencies. It's easier to "look competitive" by saying you'll have a rocket that can deliver 130 metric tons to LEO in 2 years, but in reality the costs of the fucking launch make the whole thing so pointless nobody but NASA will be able to afford to pay for transport (out of your pockets).

Not his problem, literally. Elon's main concern is making BFR and having it perform to requirements. Humans are always flaunted as the reason we make these rockets, but the seats you could sell on a BFR or NG to GEO then mars orbit would make you fucking nothing compared to the fuel costs. Money is entirely in transportation of cargo, which radiation isn't a concern for.

Wouldn't mining materials like Titanium n shiet net much more income than just blasting off to Mars?

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Forgot to mention the part about the Titanium being on the Moon... Just go to the fucking Moon is what i'm trying to say.

The ass of the rocket points towards the sun so all the engine mass and fuel tank mass is between humans and the sun. Apparently they are surrounding the crew cabin with a water tank blanket for non solar radiation. Supposedly there is also going to be a rad shelter too where they can pack them like sardines if the rads get too high.

>A jacket of H2O surrounding the living space
Sounds heavy...for me

>Be optimistic about SpaceX.
>Be pessimistic about SLS.
wew weee. Now this is some prime bait going on over here. You're not even trying to hide the fact that you're a shill aren't you? "BE-4 engineer"

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Neither, you're not leaving the planet in your lifetime. Or your kids'.

Not
An
Argument

You're some random SpaceX fanboy pretending on being an engineer so that your can spread FUD. I don't need an argument for you.

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How is highschool treating you?

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I got you in my sights terrorist traitor

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lol, is the fact that you do work for them supposed to change anything? You're still some random cuck spreading FUD. It actually just makes you an even bigger shill since you're actually on the company's payroll.