Friday, 3 May 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Many of your favorite books, movies, and TV series take place there. Meanwhile, in the here and now, America’s space program is about to make a sharp change of course. This seems a good time to talk about what James T. Kirk called “the final frontier.”
[Note: We had an earlier space thread in 2008.]
Date: February 3, 2010
Categories: Non-Muse news, The Universe
IT’S BIG.
That’s all I’m saying.
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You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
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I ought to say something, I suppose, but I want to wait until things are move definite.
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KaiYves: You could fill in some background, or talk about other aspects of space.
Why do you think that so many of our stories are set in space or on other planets? As far as I know, we’re the first culture to do anything like that. The ancient Greeks set all their heroic legends in the distant past — a “Golden Age” in which everything was bigger and brighter and more exciting than whenever the story was being told. Nowadays, many of our bards compose epics about people who haven’t been born yet, having adventures in places that haven’t been discovered. Does that seem odd to anyone?
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Not really. I think it’s human nature to wonder what’s ahead , and about things we know little of.
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Is it? I’m not sure much of anybody before the 19th century thought about the far future, and even then it was only in a few countries. This genre of mythmaking seems to me a modern, Euro-American invention.
Maybe the key is that we’ve explored the Earth pretty thoroughly and know enough history to make it hard to believe in a Golden Age. So if we want surprises, we have to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, technological change is happening fast enough to assure us that the future will be different from the past and present — something else that hasn’t been obvious for most of human history.
It may seem natural in light of what we know about the universe nowadays, but I’m not sure it’s part of human nature.
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Hmm. True.
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The Greek legends were set in the past, but some of them were also set on the shores of the Black Sea and beyond, and Atlantis was supposed to be in the Atlantic (Duh), so you did have them imagining strange and wonderful things in places that were far away and hard to get to.
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Some Norse mythology was of the future–granted, it was predicting how it’d end, but still.
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Hm… Maybe it’s because the greeks were more family-centered? Or is it because we know so much about the past- that it wasn’t all heroics and miracles? Or can’t we imagine living happily ever after without our white-shine super-duper toothpaste?
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I wonder, is anyone – now or in the past – afraid of outer space? I mean, it’s quite common for people to fear what they don’t understand, but you never hear about it in relation to space. Or maybe that’s a recent thing? Before people new what outer space was, didn’t their deities reside in it? And they feared angering those deities, right? But at the same time, people often assigned space with a wonderful, mystical importance. In the more popular religions and mythologies, good people go up to heaven, and bad people go down. Just a thought. Sorry for rambling.
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Well, I don’t think many people are afraid of outer space in general, but plenty of people are afraid of space-related things. Mostly alien invasions, but also asteroid collisions or other stuff.
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I think people imagine alien invasions and the like *because* space is so mysterious. You also have people who, when asked, say they would be afraid to travel in space, not just because they see it as dangerous, but because they see it as strange.
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Outer space just is, it’s been around for longer than we have–and nothing’s happened yet, so people don’t feel the need to be scared. (Do not bring up the extinciton of dinosaurs. It was before our time.) There are so many other things on Earth closer than that to be scared of. And there’s a very low probability of space-related collisions really happening.
Besides, space is technically a vacuum. A vacuum contains nothing. It’s hard to be scared of nothing.
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Space is not a vacuum. There happen to be planets in it. There are AREAS of space that are vacuums, but space itself is not a vacuum.
Says the nitpicky princess.
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When I think of space, I always feel so small. I mean, compared to the vast leagues of stars and planets and galaxies beyond our Earth, not to mention how big the earth is by itself…It just makes me feel so insignificant compared to what’s out there, and the bigger picture. We’re smaller than ants or grains of sand compared to it. Sometimes it really shakes me up.
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It helps me sometimes when I feel terribly stressed. You realize that all the problems you thought were the most important thing in your life don’t really matter at all.
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There have been some recent xkcds about space… Anyone else read them?
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No. I’ve only read a couple of their strips, mostly ones linked form tvtropes. Are the space strips any good?
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The “Spirit Rover” one was heartbreaking.
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It made me think of you.
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It made me cry…
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Me too, almost.
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One of the college essays I wrote was about space.
When I was little, I saw this video at the Museum of Science and Industry called “Powers of Ten.” It was mind-blowing. I really suggest people watch it if they have the chance, it really puts everything into perspective, just how small we are in such as vast place.
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Our Astronomy teacher showed us it at the beginning of the Fall term and again this week. A truly, truly great film.
You can see the 1977 original here:
http:// www. youtube. com/ watch? v=A2 cmlhfdxuY
The 1996 IMAX film Cosmic Voyage is kind of an unofficial update, showing what was learned in the intervening years.
Do de do, do de do do do, do de do…
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During science yesterday, we watched a movie in….THE GALAXY. So basically, we saw how incredibly huge it was. It made me feel like the smallest ant in the world!
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Oooh, Space Shuttle Endeavour takes off in a few hours!
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KaiYves:
You might be interested in the essay John Noble Wilford published yesterday in the New York Times:
www . nytimes . com/2010/02/09/science/space/09essay . html
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10- I read that. It’s good, and I think I agree with a lot of it. Not having a set goal can make things easier, but it also gives you less to strive for and it’s not as exciting.
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PLEASE, NASA! MAKE PLANS FOR MARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I just found out there were actually three people on the Apollo moon landing. I wonder why Michael Collins didn’t get out and walk?
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Collins didn’t land. He stayed in the Command Module orbiting the moon.
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There’s a really good song about him by Jethro Tull.
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Poor Mike. He flew all that way and had to sit up in orbit the whole time while his crewmates stomped all over the Moon in their great dirty boots.
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13- The lander could only hold two people, so somebody had to stay in the capsule orbiting the moon on every one of the Apollo missions.
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Okay, I forgot to post about the 20th anniversary of Hubble…and now I forgot what I was going to say about it.
Thoughts?
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I posted something about Hubble on the Random Thread on the actual day of the anniversary. In my mind it’s a faithful, loyal…telescope…who never ceases to orbit the Earth over and over and over again, and to continually and tirelessly takes regular pictures of the universe for us. Thank you Hubble for some of the best pictures we have of space.
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It’s taken over 10,000 of them, right?
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16- Seconded. We love you, Hubble!
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Has anyone been watching the new Discovery series Into the Universe with Stephan Hawking?
I really enjoyed it, although I think that alien life forms would be much harder to understand/imagine than some of the possibilities he discusses. Like, I would expect more of the breifly-mentioned life forms that live inside stars than the carbon-and-water based forms that were described for a bit longer. I’m not sure how I feel about silicon-based life, I haven’t read/heard much on it.
Sometimes looking into the sky is exciting, because I know we’re not alone, and sometimes it’s so sad because I know that there is a strong possibility that we will never connect to any other life. And even if we do, there’s more than a 99.999999 percent chance that I won’t be here for it.
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*cough*42nd post*cough*
You know what my substitute teacher said the other day?
“What did we get out of going to space? Nothing. Nothing but new technology. We didn’t need to land on the moon.”
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It’s also not about what we get out of going to space, but what we learn by going to space. Eventually, earth is going to run out of resources and we will need another planet. We’ll need to have space travel eventually, so why not start now?
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*applauds*
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19- Considering she defeated her own question in the course of her rant, I see why she’s a sub and not a full-time teacher…
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Meryem called her a “babysitter”.
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*reads old posts* Nyeh, I was such a derpy neophyte.
I was reading about the Constellation program NASA proposed to replace the shuttle program. It would have involved returning to the moon, and landing humans on Mars by the 2030s. The name comes from the way all space missions are connected as a bigger purpose. Unfortunately, the government canceled it. 
Also, 50th anniversary of John Glenn orbiting the Earth recently. Mercury 7 was pretty awesome.
So, does anyone know what NASA is up to now?
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We were all very derpy back then.
NASA is developing deep-space exploration vehicles to replace the shuttle, but in the meantime, they’re working with commercial spaceflight companies to provide access to the space station. One of those companies, SpaceX, is set to complete a test flight at the end of April.
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Squee! *prepares to go on another archive binge about private spaceflight companies*
Deep space … like more Voyager-type probes? (; u 
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I meant vehicles capable of taking humans beyond Low-Earth Orbit, but there will definitely be robotic missions in the future as well.
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Don’t be too hard on the Administration, Rainbow*Storm. They canceled Constellation because Congress was never, ever going to give NASA enough money to make it work. The current space program might not be very exciting, but at least it’s something the country can afford. And as the economy improves, maybe politicians will start feeling more adventurous and visionary again.
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True. I suppose the USA has bigger problems right now than space exploration.
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We’ll keep on with what we’ve got, even if it’s smaller than at some prior times, and accumulate additional awesomeness bit-by-bit, like a snowball.
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