• 7U5K3N@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 days ago

    Born to late to explore the world.

    Born to early to explore the cosmos.

    Born just in time to finance a pizza from Domino’s.

    Meme

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        8 days ago

        Exploring the ocean is like trying to explore the desert, in the middle of the night, and you just know it’s going to be miles and miles of empty sand and you can only see about 4 ft in front of you at any one time.

        Exploring the ocean is extremely difficult and to be honest not very rewarding 99% of the time.

    • tburkhol@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      What else is going to drive corps to build faster rockets? Without WW3, the profitable strategy is to keep building the same rockets, just cheaper & crappier.

      • JackFrostNCola@aussie.zone
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        7 days ago

        Oh no, this WW3 we are going to get tockets developed with ‘AI’ controls, which inevitably run off course due to their vibe programmed co-ordinate control and are launched by AI threat detection models after falsely detecting a credible threat by a world leader spewing nonsense on social media and accidentally nuking every major city or food bowl on the planet.

      • marcos@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Maybe because making they more capable makes them cheaper by an exponential rate?

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 days ago

      It was supposed to be renewable energy, and it almost was until the fascists slammed the brakes.

      Cheaper, more plentiful, and cleaner. Plus it doesn’t take decades to increase capacity like nuclear does, and it won’t become less safe and efficient due to climate change like nuclear is already starting to.

      • someguy3@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I hope you know there is a difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, because your comment doesn’t read like it.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          They both are “just two decades away”. One exists but takes that long to build a plant. The other is still under development and might exist by then.

          Although the race for fusion is getting more exciting every day. We may actually see it happen! And it feels like soon!

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              I always got a kick out of that graph and realistically it can apply to so many worthwhile projects we start but can’t commit to. For example: California High Speed Rail, or really any high speed rail In the US. Preventing climate change

              My eye is immediately drawn to the “fusion: never” investment and how far we are below it.

              But realistically for fusion whether that would have been true or not, we’ve made huge advancements in computation and modeling, lasers, materials, that just never could have happened on those timelines. Maybe the Tokamak would have worked but the stellarator or laser ignition never could have. While we still don’t have an answer, it might not be the tokamak

              • someguy3@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                You are applying funding for research to funding for infrastructure? You either have no clue or are discussing in bad faith. Or both.

  • Formfiller@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I never thought I’d be in the president sucked a dick and Russia has the pictures so now we’re owned by Russia timeline

  • Nangijala@feddit.dk
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    7 days ago

    I think the most sobering thought is that everything we are dealing with now will someday be reduced to a cliffnotes version that some bored teenagers are supposed to learn about in school to get a passing grade. In one ear, out the other.

    • themoken@startrek.website
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      7 days ago

      That is literally the best outcome. The worse it gets the longer the chapter on this era gets, until eventually there is no textbook at all.

  • MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Where is my flying car? I don’t want a freaking drone with a seat. I want something that defies gravity without any visible external mechanism and makes little to no noise while moving.

  • mech@feddit.org
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    8 days ago

    Space travel?
    Best I can do is a remake of the lead-up to WW2 on top of a remake of WW1.

  • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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    7 days ago

    This hit me hard ten years ago.

    I’ve always been fascinated by space, as a teenager I wanted to be an astrophysicist, in my early twenties I fully believed Thant humanity was going to explore the solar system and that it would start happening in my lifetime.

    I was studying mechanical engineering and I did everything I could to work in aerospace: picked the right specialities, I got two master of mechanical engineering specialized in aerospace manufacturing (France and Czech Republic). I worked in the manufacturing of critical parts of Arian’s rocket engine and designed new manufacturing technique for future aircraft engine parts.

    I was working towards one goal: being part of the people who will build the spacecraft that will explore the solar system, maybe even be in one.

    Then in 2015 after few years working this hit me, I realized all that was never going to happen. Instead of witnessing the exploration of the solar system I am going witness the collapse of it thermo-industrial civilization.

    We are running out of resources and energy to maintain the growth of it civilization, so we will witness a slow rise of fascism and extreme as countries start fighting for resources. My dream was to go in space in a few decades, now I realized that I’ll consider myself extremely lucky if I have enough for and water to survive in a few decades.

  • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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    8 days ago

    it was never going to be space travel, not this century

    probably not the next one either

          • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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            8 days ago

            And a century is a blip in the face of building a sustainable, long-term habitat anywhere else. So what if we have rockets, there’s nowhere to go.

            • theneverfox@pawb.social
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              7 days ago

              Well, if we crack full automation we could build superstructures. And if we can work on that kind of scale, we could even get crazy with it and do things like terra forming the moon

              • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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                7 days ago

                Even if resource inputs weren’t a problem, those are projects that one generation starts and different generation ends. “Full automation” isn’t gonna just magically speed up that process.

                • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                  7 days ago

                  Of course it does. Full automation means robots that make robots from scratch. Which means we can play entirely outside the gravity well. Which means practically infinite resources

                  Exponential growth is hard for the human mind to comprehend. After a start up process, full automation would mean infinite scaling. It would ramp up over the course of a few years, and then it would be godlike power. A billion ships full of tireless workers, why not. We’re basically only restricted by energy at that point, and the sun is right there. It’ll take time to get to the belts and gas giants, but once they’re there then they can launch an endless stream of resources across the solar system. Hell, maybe you have the robots on board to do detail work in transit.

                  Megastructures are multi-generational projects. Superstructures might not be

                • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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                  7 days ago

                  Well, one generation is starting it, now. Is that just supposed to stop for the next 75 years?

                  I dont understand why we’re even arguing about this…

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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          7 days ago

          “if you can make it to orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere”

          it’s a famous quote but i forgot who said it. it means that the most challenging part in building a rocket and flying anywhere, is building the rocket. like, once you have a functioning rocket, it doesn’t make much difference whether you use it to achieve orbit around Earth or whether you use it to fly to another planet. That’s why Earth’s orbit is actually a pretty useful target destination for testing whether the rocket works.