Comments on: Exoplanets

By: Todd

Todd — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 19:17:34 +0000

Picture phones didn’t exist before Skype because you had to have the exact same model on both ends to make a call. And instead of a video, they were a series of still images, if you were lucky. And the image was horrible.

But you’re right about the flying cars.

Where’s my oven that can turn a frozen pizza the size of a CD into a giant cooked pizza.

By: Morris Keesan

Morris Keesan — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:10:08 +0000

fett101 (#2), I have no idea what you think “alliterative” means. I don’t see any alliteration in your comment.

(Catching up on comics, and CIDU, after having been on vacation for two weeks.)

By: David A. Rooney

David A. Rooney — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:16:03 +0000

Dave in Boston - “depends almost entirely on how the’yre treated by the powers back on Earth”. Which virually garauntees a revolution, given how good our polititians are at sacrificing long-term goals for short-term objectives.

By: Dave in Boston

Dave in Boston — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:27:40 +0000

Space missions are exciting things that capture the imagination. They also have a pattern of goals and requirements that allows developing useful stuff that isn’t commercially viable until later on, without (mostly) getting stuck in boondoggles and pet projects. Space projects are not unique in this regard; military R&D sometimes has similar properties. It has to do with having a clear goal (this prevents distractions) that’s sufficiently cool and interesting that smart people want to work on it, and also sufficiently broad that it sweeps up a wide range of useful topics and ideas. For example, you mentioned renewable energy resources; any long-term space mission cares a great deal abouot efficient and lightweight solar panels.

As far as habitability, it all depends on your assumptions about available technology. Right now we aren’t good enough at closed ecosystems to make anything self-sufficient, but there’s absolutely no reason that can’t improve as long as people continue to try.

As for whether a colony would be likely to eventually take up arms, that depends almost entirely on how they’re treated by the powers back on Earth.

By: Kilby

Kilby — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:00:13 +0000

Continued space exploration could provide additional spinoffs, but there is no reason why space has to be the anchor for future engineering subsidies. There are plenty of other projects on this planet that need work (such as renewable energy resources).
As for guaranteeing human survival: there is not a single ball of rock in this solar system capable of supporting a self-sufficient colony. If we can’t solve our environmental, economic, and social problems down here, then nobody up there is going to survive for very long, either.
Even if I’m wrong, I would be more worried that as soon as an independent Moon colony gets sufficiently large, some idiot who has read Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” will try to play Napoleon by dropping rocks on our heads.

By: Dave in Boston

Dave in Boston — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:22:55 +0000

Kilby: thing is, “fostering engineering development” isn’t something you finish. There are plenty of things that could appear as spinoff tech from a big space program. It’s sort of by definition hard to predict what, but I’ll venture one guess: cars that e.g. tell you to go replace some specific hose or gasket now in order to avoid being left on the side of the road by a coolant leak next month. This is something that is possible in principle now but has a number of technical problems that need to be sorted out to make it practical in deployment.

However, that’s moot. The real reason for a serious space program is that it’s essential as a matter of long-term survival not to remain limited to a single planet.

By: Mark in Boston

Mark in Boston — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:14:58 +0000

If you have an iPhone 4, you have a picture phone. Four years from now, every cell phone will be a picture phone.

By: CIDU Bill

CIDU Bill — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:00:26 +0000

Ian, we do have picture phones now: they go by names such as Skype.

But it remains true that not many people want therm.

By: Ian Osmond

Ian Osmond — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:53:44 +0000

Mark in Boston: Picture Phones are one of the three “We’ll Have Them In THE FUTURE” inventions that don’t exist primarily because nobody wants them.

The other two are food in pill form, and flying cars. Remember: if you get a flying car, so does that idiot who totally blew through that stop sign in front of you.

By: Chakolate

Chakolate — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:59:46 +0000

I loved this comic. I wish we all got so excited about something like this - it’s so unbelievably fabulous, yet hardly anybody knows about it.