Going to the moon in 2024

[davsel]

An interesting example of research being done on the ISS that couldn't be done on Earth, but could have some significant implications for people who need replacement organs:

https://www.wdrb.com/news/wdrb-video...82035e927.html

Yup, another Govt grant EXPERIMENT that, if all goes well, "may" be viable in a decade. Yes, it can be done on Earth.
This company, Techshot Inc., appears to exist to take taxpayer money: https://govtribe.com/vendors/techshot-inc-dot-1d0e2

[Justin]

Evidently you didn't watch the video. They plainly stated that the organ materials they're printing would be too fragile to generate on Earth, and the best way to do the work is in a microgravity environment.

[Justin]

Also, yes, Techshot is a company that does research science work in the aerospace sector, building systems that allow experiments to take place in space. As of right now, the only infrastructure that exists for doing such experiments are all controlled by government entities because the only organizations currently capable of doing significant work in space are all nation state-level actors, so yes, they contract with NASA.

It turns out that the US government sinks a lot of money into basic science research, and this arguably has helped to make the US the greatest nation on Earth.

[davsel]

Evidently you didn't watch the video. They plainly stated that the organ materials they're printing would be too fragile to generate on Earth, and the best way to do the work is in a microgravity environment.

Evidently I did, which is why I quoted the decade timeline.
Yes, the "material they're printing" would be too fragile. No reason they could not (and currently are) print with a material that would not collapse on Earth, or use a different method on Earth that supports the fragile structure without relying on micro-gravity.
But no, they applied and were granted a ton of cash to run their little space man experiments to help justify the ton of cash wasted on the ISS already.

[davsel]

His arguments are easily countered, also, Futurism is known as a clickbait site.



Oh, I bet that's a newsflash to all of the people who've got an interest in Mars.



Plenty of people go to all kinds of inhospitable places on Earth, from the Arctic circle to Mcmurdo. Many people will voluntarily endure living in awful places if it suits their interests, be they financial, scientific, or other.



There are no cities at the North Pole because it's just ice floating on water, which makes for a poor base to build permanent structures.
There are no cities at the South Pole because anything other than scientific research stations is banned by international treaty.



Maybe, maybe not, but the biggest impediment to going to Mars, or The Moon isn't the inhospitable environment, but the lack of infrastructure that allows any sort of visitation at all. Being able to test his thesis becomes much easier when it costs $150/kg to lob something out of Earth's gravity well instead of $10,000/kg.



Theoretically a problem that's solvable via the construction of habitats that use the most abundant materials found on Mars to construct a habitat, namely the dirt.



You don't say. Interestingly enough, there's currently an orbiting space station that has almost 20 years worth of constructing an infrastructure that mimics Earth, and in an environment more harsh than Mars or The Moon; it's called the International Space Station.



The one thing here that is actually reasonable, but only because it seems that NDT is arguing against colonizing Mars on the same level of Earth today, which is patently absurd. Even the most ardent Mars optimists don't see a Martian colony being larger than a million people within a century. I guess it's easy to be right if you bound your predictions to a ridiculous scale.



What read of history? Humans have been successfully colonizing new places since before the dawn of recorded history. This entire sentence sounds like bullshit.



All of the issues surrounding survival in other locations in the solar system are purely engineering problems, many of which have already been solved Earth side. The issue for getting offworld is going to be in properly architecting systems for existence off world and instantiating the systems and facilities that allow those designs to be rigorously tested and implemented under an acceptable risk profile.


Like I said, NDT should stick to tweeting about movies.

Your counter arguments speak for themselves.

[Justin]

Evidently I did, which is why I quoted the decade timeline.
Yes, the "material they're printing" would be too fragile. No reason they could not (and currently are) print with a material that would not collapse on Earth, or use a different method on Earth that supports the fragile structure without relying on micro-gravity.
But no, they applied and were granted a ton of cash to run their little space man experiments to help justify the ton of cash wasted on the ISS already.

Yeah, there's a long timeline between basic science research and something actually getting to market. That's life.

If your plan for printing biological material planet side is such a surefire deal, I look forward to seeing the link to your whitepaper that spells out your methodologies for doing so, as well as your experimental results.

Also your business plan for getting to market in less than ten years.

[Justin]

Your counter arguments speak for themselves.

A truly convincing and thorough rebuttal if ever I saw one.

[Irving]

Justin, is anyone realistically working on a space elevator that you know of?

[Justin]

There's some super basic research being done on space elevators, but, last time I looked, it was still mostly material studies and a couple of super small experiments.

From what I've seen there are still a number of material and architectural breakthroughs needed to make a space elevator viable, and my gut feeling is that seeing one within the next 50 years is probably overly optimistic.

I think we're going to be stuck with chemical propulsion for the foreseeable future.

[Irving]

That's pretty much what I'd read, but I don't keep up on this stuff. Thanks.