NASA has broken my heart...

I've been going through the "Ask an Astrobiologist" NASA site for the last few hours I've actually posted 2 other threads about things there but I noticed a trend in NASA's thinking about humans exploring space and it seems that NASA doesn't think we will soon or infact ever leave our own solar system (humans not probes)

Link 1

recognize that we will probably never be able to visit other planetary systems, let alone establish outposts there

Link 2

On travel to other star systems, that is impossible today and is likely to remain so forever

Link 3

There is negligible chance that we would ever have physical contact

Link 4

sending humans, the most likely answer is never. I can not imagine ever having the technology and resources to send humans to any external planetary systems.

This makes me sad, I think in the back on my mind I assumed that technology would always get better to the point of us being able to do amazing things, but the idea that we are "stuck" in our own solar system and will be until our sun dies out is a horrible prospect to me, our planet will some day be gone and no-one will know we even existed there are probably planets that this has happened to already billions of years ago and now all that exists of them is now space dust...

Scientists also said heavier-than-air flight was impossible and that getting to the moon was impossible.

cheer up dude

if it helps, nasa are a bunch of liars anyways

it can only get better from here

reply to post by roughycannon


you do realise that the chains are on right?



now i know its just a song! but start looking into lyrics and everything else from now on!

aliens are in our face every day! including the bible! even nazis..look up the swatstika that symbol is worn by "ancient gods" in some cases!

why? b/c the chains are on! we are owned by another species!

reply to post by roughycannon


Dude, that's a load of crap...it all hinges on the assumption we wont ever be able to break the speed of light. But there is paramount reason to believe the speed of light can be broken. I can't really remember all the technicalities, it's been a while since I studied physics, but it has to do with the way we interpret the theory of relativity I think. Furthermore, if you believe in an alien presence you've probably already concluded their "light craft" are some sort of interdimensional craft. If we could access other dimensions, we could easily travel to other star systems. Some people theorize the craft actually have a black hole generator emitting gravity waves of a certain frequency, this creates quantized mass and enables faster than light speed travel. In reality, there are so many possibilities, so many things about physics that will give us "loop holes" around the universal speed limit without actually breaking the laws of physics. Do not fear my friend, you are completely correct, we will reach a stage where our technology will allow us to reach other star systems. NASA is just too small minded.

Dude I saw a flying saucer (metallic) fly over my house one night, it was really close I could see details of it's surfaces.

This guy from NASA, is just highly uninformed of the actual facts.

I have personally seen with my own eyeballs, the proof which makes this man's statements wrong.

No wonder we haven't gone back to the moon.
"Oh it's impossible! Even in a million years its still impossible! Oh the humanity!"
What a joker.

To be honest I'm not even sure the human race will survive long enough colonize other worlds.
I mean its either keep Nuclear weapons and destroy ourselves or destroy Nuclear Weapons and get annihalated by a renegade asteroid.

reply to post by WhizPhiz


nasa like most of the world governments are controled..bill clinton said it himself

there is a group beyond the government that controls the government!

when barrack obama was asked in an interview i think it was 60 mins about what he learned about the government since becoming president that he didnt know before or w/e he got very uncomfortable!

jfk a man who pushed man to the man was assassinated...they couldnt have him ushering in a space age for man!

we are stuck until we break our chains!

do some research!

Originally posted by WhizPhiz
reply to post by roughycannon

 

Dude,

Dude, we both replied automatically with the word dude to start our posts. Back to back even.

Coincidence?

Why is the way the OP talks making us talk that way in return?

reply to post by muzzleflash

Why is the way the OP talks making us talk that way in return?

I didn't really take note of the way the OP was talking actually. I some times start off with "Dude" when I want to sound all serious and make an epic entrance. It's like, DUDE, listen good fool!

The problem I have with UFO's is that I don't really believe in them, I'm interested in them and would love them to be real but I have never seen one and never seen any evidence that has made me go "AH HA!", I'm not calling anyone a liar but I do tend to fall more towards science than strangers comments on forums I just found it a bit disheartening to hear this from NASA themselves...

reply to post by roughycannon


It makes little difference whether UFO's actually exist or not, according to moderately new research there is anything up to 11 other dimensions we can't see. And quantized mass is still completely possible. And who knows what other possible loop holes there are to avoid the universal speed limit. We literally know maybe 1% of all there is to know about physics. If you think any different you obviously have very limited knowledge of physics. NASA just like to believe they know it all, and we wont ever find any possible way to break that limit, which IS COMPLETELY ABSURD. In my opinion NASA know damn well that we are being visited, and news like this is simply to make people react in exactly the same way you are reacting; they're trying to suck all the hope and possibilities from your head. Don't even listen to that crap, who ever said it is a total fool and I doubt the majority of NASA staff would agree with those statements.

Man is too curious and adventurous for that to "never" happen... Besides if we're going to keep our species going we'll eventually have to get off this rock, even if that means developing a working biosphere ship. I'm sure in the billions of years we have left, we'll figure something else out. We've been told many times throughout history that we couldn't do something and it's always proven wrong. I'm just surprised it's a scientist instead of a priest when it comes to space exploration. It will happen eventually, just wish I could be apart of it....

It isn't that the technology won't be there to let us do space exploration, it's that we aren't needed for it to occur. Humans are more of a hindrance to a mission than helpful. With harsh climates and environments, robots are far better suited to being sent on missions without the loss of life or limb. Not too mention our eyes are extremely limited and we can outfit cameras with different filters to capture multiple perspectives of the same scenary that humans would miss entirely.

It's disappointing, but extremely logical.

Originally posted by roughycannon

sending humans, the most likely answer is never. I can not imagine ever having the technology and resources to send humans to any external planetary systems.

This makes me sad, I think in the back on my mind I assumed that technology would always get better to the point of us being able to do amazing things

If any of us had been alive in 1900, how many of us could have imagined the advancements in technology that would happen by 2011? My guess is very few or none.

So I would also say I find it hard to imagine with our present technology, in fact it's not only hard to imagine, it's nearly impossible with current technology.

And even with the stunning rate att which technology advances, I doubt we'll be able to do it by 2111.

Star Trek fiction has the first warp drive being tested in 2073 but people who have looked at the warp drive concept have calculated that even if such a drive was possible, the energy needed to power it isn't something we are likely to have by 2073. It might take more energy than the total amount produced by the sun according to some calculations.

But after a few centuries, or a few millenia, or maybe even a few million years, it's virtually impossible for us to see that far into the future so I don't think we can say it will always be impossible. This is the same argument Michio Kaku uses when he asks what if an alien intelligence is a million years more advanced technologically than us? I'm sure they are capable of feats we can hardly imagine.

But NASA is probably right that it's highly unlikely to happen within our lifetimes, and robots are much better suited to the job of space travel than humans.

We have to get off the Earth in less than a billion years or die because the oceans will boil away, and without water, life as we know it can't exist.

But that's a really, really long time to figure something out.

Cheer up a little. I know that it is late for the conversation but I just wanted to let you know that this is one man's idea of the possibilities. I took a few minutes to look at NASA's site and I came across alot of ideas and studies on interstellar travel possibilities. These ideas are still being explored. Here is one I found.

Ideas Based On What We’d Like To Achieve

The following section has a brief description of some ideas that have been suggested over the years for interstellar travel, ideas based on the sciences that do exist today.
Worm Hole transportation
Just when you thought it was confusing enough, those physicist had to come up with wormholes. Here’s the premise behind a "wormhole." [graphic] Although Special Relativity forbids objects to move faster than light within spacetime, it is known that spacetime itself can be warped and distorted. It takes an enormous amount of matter or energy to create such distortions, but distortions are possible, theoretically. To use an analogy: even if there were a speed limit to how fast a pencil could move across a piece of paper, the motion or changes to the paper is a separate issue. In the case of the wormhole, a shortcut is made by warping space (folding the paper) to connect two points that used to be separated. These theories are too new to have either been discounted or proven viable. And, yes, wormholes do invite the old time travel paradox problems again.

www.nasa.gov...

This is why I still have faith that nasa will pull something off spectacular. I noticed that it said "ideas bases on the sciences that exist today". The ideas are there, but the technology is not. We have to be very patient when dealing with gov't agencies or entities.

Who knows, this guy that is posting this information in your article could be some kind of disinformation informant from the TPTB. I know that it is the old disinfo agent thing, but you cannot just believe this guy because he says so.

Don't be sad. They're scientists, not prophets. With the technology we have today such things are out of the question, but they can't foresee what mayor breakthroughs we will have in the future in technology and humanity.
I know I won't get to see it in this lifetime, but that's okay.

Besides I don't need Nasa, I'm aiming to become enlightened so I can be freed from this material body and the material realm so I can roam freely to whatever places imaginable.

When researching some of the black op programs we are already travelling amongst the stars with exchange programs already going on. I do agree the situation is sad with so much fundamental information just covered up.

reply to post by roughycannon


First some Humor to lighten the moment.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ad57080c18d5.jpg[/atsimg]


Now, a list of hope.

The Telephone

In 1876 with the invention of the telephone, Western Union distributed a memo decrying that the device, while intriguing, had no real applicable use in the world and would never have any real applications. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

X-Ray - Radio - Airplane

In 1899, William Thomson would denounce Marconi's miraculous technological achievement of radio by denouncing the device with, "Radio has no future." That same year both X-Rays and Airplanes would likewise be denounced as being impossible hoaxes. Today all three objects have outlived their initial detractors and have become part of everyday life.

Nuclear Power

acclaimed physicist Albert Einstein declaring that nuclear power would be impossible. He would later contribute to physics in ways that would prove himself wrong.

"Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems for
human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them."
-- Science Digest, 1948

Automobile

"The ordinary 'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for the wealthy;
and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of
course, come into as common use as the bicycle."
-- Literary Digest, 1899

Physics

"Physics, as we know it, will be over in six months." -- Max Born, 1928

X-Rays

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

Airplanes

"Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if
not utterly impossible."
-- Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902

Bombing a naval vessel

"As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it."
-- Rear Admiral Clark Woodward, 1939

Humans going to the Moon

"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
length to which vicious specialization will carry scientists. To escape
the Earth's gravitation a projectile needs a velocity of 7 miles per
second. The thermal energy at this speed is 15,180 calories [per gram].
Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible"
-- A. W. Bickerton, 1926

"I am bold enough to say that a man-made Moon voyage will never occur
regardless of all scientific advances."
-- Lee De Forest, "the father of electronics"

Computers

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
[This is actually right: computers these days usually do weigh no
more than 1.5 tons.]

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Processor Chip

"But what ... is it good for?"
-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip

These are just a few "impossibilities".. The people who say things are impossible should be thanked. Without them, people would never try to prove them wrong.

For all we know, there could be an announcement tomorrow that scientists have discovered a method to make Fusion energy possible. During the press conference, they could thank the group who helped make it possible, the people of Alpha Centauri.

Source of quotes above

To borrow a quote from a TV show -

"Because it's next. Because we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is on a timeline of explorations and this is What's next.

As Arthur C. Clarke said:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

And history has no shortage of scientists claiming things are impossible only to be proven wrong later.

Having said that, it currently appears that interstellar travel is very difficult, if not impossible. However, once in a while, a scientific "black swan" occurs which changes everything. There's no guarantee that this will happen and enable us to travel to the stars, but hey who knows. Also if I might add, the work of a professor at Cal State Fullerton named James F. Woodward might in fact turn out to be the black swan we're all hoping for that could enable rapid spacetime transport and possibly even FTL drives. I highly recommend you do a search for "the Woodward effect" and read the relevant publications/replication experiments(People have ascribed this name to it, but Woodward himself calls it the Mach effect since it has its origins in Mach's principle.) There's an ongoing discussion about this at NASA spaceflight forums under the advanced concepts sub-forum (thread title is Propellantless Field Propulsion"). Nextbigfuture also has several articles on Woodward.