NASA Mission: YOU Decide....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'll go with long-term sustainable moon base.

Not sure how much moon base $1Billion will buy you....

It's a start.

[Dory]

NASA is so last light year.

[PsychoSerenity]

Space elevator first. If we can find out how build one, it should cut the cost of building a moon base and all other future space missions.

[Pappa]

Actually, I think they should spend the money on geostationary solar energy harvesters, beaming it to energy collectors on earth. That would be a step towards helping us wean ourselves of our oil addiction.

[Loki]

Build a useful space station, one quite unlike the useless one they have now.

One capable of running the experiment to see if spinning a large ring will simulate gravity well enough for people to live in it without their bones dissolving.

[Atheist-Lite]

A platform for shooting down the angels as they leave with the souls of the Xians? Their not getting out of here so easy!

[Rum]

I read about this idea when I was into SF big time back in my 30s. I still think it is a great idea, and it would make access out of our gravity well cheap and easy!



A space elevator for Earth would consist of a cable anchored to the Earth's surface, reaching into space. By attaching a counterweight at the end (or by further extending the cable for the same purpose), inertia ensures that the cable remains stretched taut, countering the gravitational pull on the lower sections, thus allowing the elevator to remain in geostationary orbit. Once beyond the gravitational midpoint, carriages would be accelerated further by the planet's rotation. (Diagram is not to scale.)

[FBM]

Actually, I think they should spend the money on geostationary solar energy harvesters, beaming it to energy collectors on earth. That would be a step towards helping us wean ourselves of our oil addiction.

That would clean up the air, but you'd still be bringing extra heat into the atmosphere, so wouldn't it eventually start a global warming problem of its own?

[PsychoSerenity]

(Diagram is not to scale.)

I should hope not! Otherwise the Counterweight would be like the moon, but 10 times closer to earth, and the 'Climber' is all of England.

Actually, I think they should spend the money on geostationary solar energy harvesters, beaming it to energy collectors on earth. That would be a step towards helping us wean ourselves of our oil addiction.

That would clean up the air, but you'd still be bringing extra heat into the atmosphere, so wouldn't it eventually start a global warming problem of its own?

Interesting point, I'd never really thought of that. I'm not sure how long it would take though, or if we would ever need so much energy that the heat dissipation alone would be able to put global temperatures significantly out of balance (but given exponential growth in many areas it's certainly possible). I suppose what we really need for that problem, are more and better ways of taking energy directly from excess heat in the atmosphere i.e. most (if not all?) renewable sources.

[FBM]

Well, if excess CO2 is the problem with the greenhouse effect, maybe the extra heat taken from the sun wouldn't be such a problem. Not sure. Taking energy from wind and water sources would be safest, but probably not sufficient to power everything this madhouse is convinced it can't live without. If we maximized wind and water and whatever else we've got, and quit fucking around with fossil fuels, I'm pretty sure we could keep everything in balance even with the extra heat that the solar generator Pappa envisions.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd use it for research. Wind and wave patterns off Paperer (to study the possibility of such patterns on Mars, of course). Gonna need a suitable research vessel.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

And a crew:

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

And maybe even a scientist or or two:

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[Pappa]

The solar colectors wouldn't heat up the atmosphere. They would fire s beam of light to the ground where it is then collected and converted into electricity. If I wasn't posting on my phone with my left thumb, I'd find some suitable links.

[Trolldor]

NASA is so last light year.

Exactly how far away would it have to be to qualify as "so last light year"?

[FBM]

The solar colectors wouldn't heat up the atmosphere. They would fire s beam of light to the ground where it is then collected and converted into electricity. If I wasn't posting on my phone with my left thumb, I'd find some suitable links.

If you're bringing in energy that wouldn't otherwise enter the atmosphere, you're heating it up. It might be insignificant compared to what fossil fuels are doing, but you're still adding to the total energy in the planetary environment. The form of the energy doesn't matter so much, as it's always changing form anyway. Electicity to kinetic to heat, etc. Of course, it it's converted to chemical energy, the release would be delayed by a great deal, but we're not talking about storing it, are we? We're talking about using, thus releasing, it, eh?

[PsychoSerenity]

The solar colectors wouldn't heat up the atmosphere. They would fire s beam of light to the ground where it is then collected and converted into electricity. If I wasn't posting on my phone with my left thumb, I'd find some suitable links.

If you're bringing in energy that wouldn't otherwise enter the atmosphere, you're heating it up. It might be insignificant compared to what fossil fuels are doing, but you're still adding to the total energy in the planetary environment. The form of the energy doesn't matter so much, as it's always changing form anyway. Electicity to kinetic to heat, etc. Of course, it it's converted to chemical energy, the release would be delayed by a great deal, but we're not talking about storing it, are we? We're talking about using, thus releasing, it, eh?

It would, but probably only by a completely insignificant amount. All energy that we put to use, one way or another, eventually dissipates as heat. But when you consider all the vast amounts of nuclear energy we've unlocked, and how, as far as I know, the extra dissipated heat is irrelevant on the global scale (I've certainly never heard of it as a problem before), it's not going to be a problem until our energy consumption is orders of magnitude higher than it is now. But then, that still may happen. I think I heard somewhere that the main limitation to the exponential growth in computer processing power is currently overheating. And one day we might all be giving children mini hadron colliders for Christmas, to try and get them interested in science.