Anyone Home? - NUCLEARSPACE MESSAGE BOARD (ACTIVE)

Newbie

Status: Offline

Posts: 2

Date: Nov 14, 2006

Anyone Home?	Permalink

Well, I'm back. Are any of the old-timers from the Yahoo Orion Club or the original NS message board still around? There is a lot to discuss. With environmental leaders like James Lovelock finally recognizing the viability of nuclear power, we may finally begin to get a fair hearing for space applications. As I have said many times, the pioneers and theoreticians of spaceflight always assumed that atomic power would be adapted to space propulsion. In The Future of Rockets and Warfare, published as early as 1945, Arthur C. Clarke wrote "if atomic propelled spacecraft can be produced, vistas open before which the imagination falters." In his old age, Clarke is not an advocate of nuclear power of any kind, but it is hard to see how the grand visions of his younger career were supposed to be realized without it. In fact, anti-nuclear hysteria came to serve political objectives in later years, and many of the old visionaries were sympathetic at least in part to these objectives. They have now been replaced with a new generation of visionaries, some of whom, like Lovelock, cross the old ideological boundaries in ways that hint at a new and very productive set of alignments. __________________ jimmy reynolds

Atomic Conspiracy

Newbie

Status: Offline

Posts: 2

Date: Nov 14, 2006

	Permalink
Oh, forgot the link to James Lovelock's organization, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy. Check it out. This could be a crucial alliance in the future. __________________ jimmy reynolds

GoogleNaut

Guru

Status: Offline

Posts: 606

Date: Nov 14, 2006

The Next 1000 Years	Permalink

Well, I am usually lurking around somewhere... I for one agree that nuclear power and spaceflight go hand in hand. If we want to go anywhere outside of the inner solar system, then nuclear power is the means to get there. Period. What I see is that we are at the cusp kernel of technology--we can build things just good enough to get us out there. Once we're 'there' (in the asteroids, Mars, Moon...) then we'll learn how to do things better. Once fertile isotopes are found in asteroids, then a whole native space nuclear industry will form. Including the need for fissionables...and yes, I eventually see someone or a small group building an Orion-type pulsed nuclear spacecraft and testing the concept in deep space full up, full scale, and full power. I also hope that eventually we may even discover things which may prove to be quite 'exotic' by current physics (including microblack hole power sources--which incidently may have the capacity to 'burn' normal matter into energy (no need for any special isotopes or exotic 'unhearduvums'!) Economics is the art of distributing limited resources amongst essentially unlimited demand. So what happens if we are able to actually meet all material resource demands? What happens when high technology couples with the vast material resources of the asteroid belt and the equally vast energy resources available from sunlight and fissionables? Economics (and society) will be transformed when technology, materials supply, and energy production meet in a confluence. I don't know what will happen, but one possible outcome is a more altruistic, well educated, and ironically possibly less selfish society--by no means perfect, but perhaps just about as free as free can be... That's my vague glimpse of what we can be in 1000 years.... __________________

Philipum

Veteran Member

Status: Offline

Posts: 53

Date: Nov 21, 2006

RE: Anyone Home?	Permalink

The Gaia hypothesis is a nice utopy and certainly anyone (like James Lovelock) convincingly proclaiming it as his own ideology has good chances of being admired and loved by naives. It is true that the organisms on Earth affect the environment and are affected by the environment and form a whole which eventually strikes a good balance, but my view of life is that every single organism must struggle for its own profit. There is no reason why the Earth should behave like a super-organism "trying" to preserve favourable conditions. Though, an association of environmentalists for nuclear energy seems to be a good thing. As always, I like the way you present your visions, GoogleNaut. But supposing the break-through toward space happens: wouldn't that mean a real population expansion? An then, what about groups, nations and super-powers forming everywhere in the solar system and struggling for the best resources? What about pirates attacking cargo vessels, outcasts forming their own societies, richs exploiting slaves for mining in the vast and lawless asteroid belt? Wouldn't it resemble the colonization of America? Certainly a very exciting prospect for adventurous people looking for new horizons, but scarcely an altruistic, well-educated society? __________________

GoogleNaut

Guru

Status: Offline

Posts: 606

Date: Nov 21, 2006

Expansion on the High Frontier	Permalink

Well, I would expect that naturally humans will eventually explore almost all possible permutations of the solar system environment--so yes, I would expect to see a population expansion (perhaps not an explosion;) resource exploitation, and perhaps yes a little piracy perhaps. I would also expect to see the rise of powerful 'nations,' organizations of like minded people with common goals in mind. Maybe even a space war or two...who knows? I think that what drives human beings will ultimately be the freedom to explore--new ideas, new religeons, new technologies, new places, and perhaps completely new political systems. Ultimately it will be this drive to explore and not solely economics or the accumulation of material wealth that will push us outward. In any group there is always a subset that is not satisfied with the way things are. In the (hopefully) not terribly distant future when vastly more material and energy resources become available to individuals, and populations expand to encompass other planets or asteroids in this solar system, I would expect and anticipate that eventually a confluence of ideas from many disparate cultures will naturally lead to a sort of intellectual critical mass--call it what you will--that will spur humanity to the stars. Whether that takes the form of a free floating University of Sol, or a Ceres branch of the University of Asteropolis or whatever, there will come a time when restless people will create the way to the stars--one way or another. And humanity will then become whatever we are 'meant' to be. I think this is a worthy goal of our species, and is one that I am personally commited to. -- Edited by GoogleNaut at 21:26, 2006-11-21 __________________