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mediaphage posted:yeah i mean i think that requires a civilization to feel the need to build galaxy spanning structures, or whatever, and they may not want to. i expect there’s probably aliens out there somewhere but i don’t necessarily think there’s loads of them. As for the UAP probe, it's hard to say. Perhaps the hypothetical creators of these Slylandro probes are holding themselves in reserve because they're insanely curious and don't want to contaminate the samples - you could have a very high amount of energy to support millions and millions of beings' lifestyles while only, at most, Kardasheving up one star. Or a handful. Alternatively, the majority of the UAP-creators' society might believe all of this is a horseshit waste of money, while grudgingly permitting the continued funding of the automatic reconnaisance system... basic science, don't you know... doubt it'll find anything important but we might learn something about weird metals or whatever, and at least the pictures are pretty. It is also possible that the society of thoughtful apes on this planet happen to be first, perhaps even first in this galaxy, but that in twenty million years all sorts of other people will be hopping and popping.
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Jun 9, 2023 05:03
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Raenir Salazar posted:Like, c'mon, you're completely flattening all context of all past discussions as if they were all the same, that's not fair. The problem here is this is the thread to be discussing the economic of what a hypothetical Mars colony would look like, I think we shouldn't have to completely relitigate the basic premise everytime, but often not only is this what happens but the argument (specifically arguments that say we'll never colonize space or can't speculate with any reasonableness) very often just comes down to just, really bad arguments or no argument at all. There's two sides to this coin, it'd be nice if that was acknowledged instead of me being held to what seems like an arbitrary standard because I care and put in the effort. I had a whole response to this lined up, but you know what? This is a good point. Apologies.
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Jun 9, 2023 05:21
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Nessus posted:the society of thoughtful apes I'm registering this as my charitable and exclusive men's club's name.
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Jun 9, 2023 05:31
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What do you think about a new OP, fellow spacenoids? At this point this thread is over 5 years old now, and has kind of wandered pretty far from its original topic. Maybe it'd be nice to have a new OP and title that clarifies what we're generally about? I was thinking about something like "General Space News & Speculation".
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Jun 9, 2023 16:03
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > SPACE 202X: Exoplanets, extra-terrestrials, Elon I wouldn't mind if someone put together a nice OP, but... Have we actually agreed on what we're generally about? 
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Jun 9, 2023 16:15
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for the love of gently caress no elon tia
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Jun 9, 2023 16:17
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mediaphage posted:for the love of gently caress no elon tia It was meant to mock him  edit I guess the megaman time notation was a bit of a geeky way of signifying a joke, my bad! Rappaport fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 16:19
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Rappaport posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > SPACE 202X: Exoplanets, extra-terrestrials, Elon From my general vibe-check as a person who marinates in this thread, I think it's about space-related news and speculation. Less hard-nosed than the SAL thread which is about spaceflight, the aerospace industry, and astronomy, less speculative than the one in CSPAM which fully accepts "UFOs are aliens" and talks about psychic abilities and interdimensional travel. Here: JWST news, rover news, cosmology, relativity, exoplanets, spec biology, Fermi Paradox, SETI, space settlements, the Kardashev Scale, UAPs-as-possibly-aliens-but-skeptically etc.
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Jun 9, 2023 16:38
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I agree with that list, for sure, I just wonder if there's Dungeons and Debates dwellers who think we're too strict or too loose with alien-chat, for example. But we haven't had a fight about that in ages, so maybe not! Alien-chat as in x-files type aliens, not generic alien beings out there, chillin' out
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Jun 9, 2023 16:44
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I really really want to find aliens. I really do. If they'd put the budget that went into blowing up brown people for the past 20 years into making a space telescope even more powerful than JWST (and not letting Arecibo decay into wreckage  ) I bet we'd have directly imaged and scanned the atmosphere of a watery, rocky Earth-sized exoplanet by now. Or had put it into the crewed and robotic missions, we might have landed a probe on Europa, or have had scientists on Mars by now.EDIT: Anyway, yeah, I think we could honestly loosen up on alienchat, as it seems to have cooled a lot. I think we should keep an open mind, and feel free to discuss in the style of thinking about what the possible consequences of UAP-as-aliens would be without having to automatically profess that we know for sure that they are. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 16:57
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ashpanash posted:I had a whole response to this lined up, but you know what? This is a good point. Apologies. Thank you, I appreciate this and you and your knowledge that you bring to the table. 
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Jun 9, 2023 17:01
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Is it irrational that I really want us to find aliens, even if I know rationally that it would change nothing about my daily existence or material circumstances and probably just make me go insane with wanting to know what they’re like and see them, which we likely could never do except maybe on an timeline of hundreds of years? Like, we’d never be able to photograph the surface of a planet in another star system well enough to see whatever weird animals live there, even if we can tell from analyzing the atmosphere that they’re there respirating and digesting.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:06
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I think nothing should be off limits regarding space but being Dnd the expectation is to debate it, and can't just say aliens are real and we're all cia agents and run off.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:08
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DrSunshine posted:I really really want to find aliens. I really do. If they'd put the budget that went into blowing up brown people for the past 20 years into making a space telescope even more powerful than JWST (and not letting Arecibo decay into wreckage i think "directly imaged" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. we might be able to do some jwst atmospheric analyses of closer-to-earth-sized planets around m-class stars; g-type stars like the sun will be limited to neptune-sized planets, i think. to do meaningful direct imaging imo would require something like constructing the gravitational lens array telescope I AM GRANDO posted:Is it irrational that I really want us to find aliens, even if I know rationally that it would change nothing about my daily existence or material circumstances and probably just make me go insane with wanting to know what they’re like and see them, which we likely could never do except maybe on an timeline of hundreds of years? there's a lot of appeal to answering one of the fundamental questions of the universe. in a similar fashion, uncovering the nature of quantum gravity is unlikely to make any meaningful changes to society within our lifetimes but it would be really cool to know all the same.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:22
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DrSunshine posted:From my general vibe-check as a person who marinates in this thread, I think it's about space-related news and speculation. Less hard-nosed than the SAL thread which is about spaceflight, the aerospace industry, and astronomy, less speculative than the one in CSPAM which fully accepts "UFOs are aliens" and talks about psychic abilities and interdimensional travel. Here: JWST news, rover news, cosmology, relativity, exoplanets, spec biology, Fermi Paradox, SETI, space settlements, the Kardashev Scale, UAPs-as-possibly-aliens-but-skeptically etc. I like browsing the cspam thread but it's definitely full of people being like 'this is it finally, the big one, remember where you were when alien visitors were confirmed ' so this thread is a nice counter-point to that
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Jun 9, 2023 17:26
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I AM GRANDO posted:Is it irrational that I really want us to find aliens, even if I know rationally that it would change nothing about my daily existence or material circumstances and probably just make me go insane with wanting to know what they’re like and see them, which we likely could never do except maybe on an timeline of hundreds of years? In a land of pure hypotheticals, if we did find a set of promising atmospheres on a smattering of exoplanets, it could direct a long-term research plan for sending out probes into those systems and try and get some images back. Of course this'd be way beyond current tech, and it'd be a few generations before humanity would hear anything back, but it'd be something. Whether this is rational or not is a matter of taste, I suppose. I have a hard time imagining being someone involved in a program like that, sending out a fragile little gizmo that might or might not beam some data back centuries from launch. And of course these things would be expensive as all hell.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:34
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Rappaport posted:In a land of pure hypotheticals, if we did find a set of promising atmospheres on a smattering of exoplanets, it could direct a long-term research plan for sending out probes into those systems and try and get some images back. Of course this'd be way beyond current tech, and it'd be a few generations before humanity would hear anything back, but it'd be something. Whether this is rational or not is a matter of taste, I suppose. We’d just have to do the equivalent of that ray-cat song for radio signals and seed all cultures with the idea that it’s important to keep a radio telescope running at all times.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:37
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I feel like this thread and it's successor should be a no subject barred space thread, but approached from a casually skeptic point of view. Basically if you were to picture the SAL thread as the industry thread, CSPAM as the fringe thread, we'd sit squarely between them and leave space for questions/discussions from a more mainstream/skeptical starting point.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:42
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I wanna talk about alien news since it’s been on the news recently but I don’t wanna talk about it with people who think med beds are real.
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Jun 9, 2023 17:53
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Rappaport posted:In a land of pure hypotheticals, if we did find a set of promising atmospheres on a smattering of exoplanets, it could direct a long-term research plan for sending out probes into those systems and try and get some images back. Of course this'd be way beyond current tech, and it'd be a few generations before humanity would hear anything back, but it'd be something. Whether this is rational or not is a matter of taste, I suppose. The big problems probably revolve around communication and the many tons of plutonium you’d need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission-fragment_rocket
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Jun 9, 2023 17:56
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mediaphage posted:to do meaningful direct imaging imo would require something like constructing the gravitational lens array telescope Do it, mint the coin, build the telescope. Boris Galerkin posted:I wanna talk about alien news since it’s been on the news recently but I don’t wanna talk about it with people who think med beds are real. ???...What the gently caress is a medbed? https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-64070190 quote:I tried out a medbed on a recent gloomy weekday afternoon. After being greeted at the front desk, a doctor tested my energy levels by having me place my fingers inside a metal box.   Dameius posted:I feel like this thread and it's successor should be a no subject barred space thread, but approached from a casually skeptic point of view. Basically if you were to picture the SAL thread as the industry thread, CSPAM as the fringe thread, we'd sit squarely between them and leave space for questions/discussions from a more mainstream/skeptical starting point. OK! I think we're generally in agreement here as far as vision's concerned. I'll try to throw together a OP if that's acceptable?
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Jun 9, 2023 17:56
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It sounds like the continuum here would be the SAL thread for actual industry news and direct projections, the C-SPAM one is for riding with Paul in the outdoor pool, and this would sit in the comfortable middle of informed speculation about exoplanets and space stations. This is something I didn't expect to say but the C-SPAM thread sounds kinda fun
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Jun 9, 2023 18:13
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cat botherer posted:Fast interstellar travel (like a few percent of c) is actually possible with near-current tech, using fission-fragment propulsion. Of course that’s still several generations at minimum before hearing back, and it could only do a flyby without deceleration. Nonetheless, that still gives days of travel through the target system. I think we could figure out the travel part, I was more concerned about the probe needing to be entirely autonomous for the entire mission in the other star system. I don't think ChatGPT can manage a space mission, sadly.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:15
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Rappaport posted:I think we could figure out the travel part, I was more concerned about the probe needing to be entirely autonomous for the entire mission in the other star system. I don't think ChatGPT can manage a space mission, sadly. i figure that’s the “easiest” part. in that making something capable of really complex behaviour is probably hard but in a worst case scenario they’re likely able to build a system that can take over with a series of pre-programmed actions to still send data home. assuming it’s not all rad-cooked by then, anyway.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:20
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mediaphage posted:assuming it’s not all rad-cooked by then, anyway. Full-analog computers 
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Jun 9, 2023 18:21
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mediaphage posted:i figure that’s the “easiest” part. in that making something capable of really complex behaviour is probably hard but in a worst case scenario they’re likely able to build a system that can take over with a series of pre-programmed actions to still send data home.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:21
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Rappaport posted:I think we could figure out the travel part, I was more concerned about the probe needing to be entirely autonomous for the entire mission in the other star system. I don't think ChatGPT can manage a space mission, sadly.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:22
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Thinking about it, you could do a proof of concept for the thing - and get benefits while building the infrastructure for some kind of interstellar comm system - by sending out a couple of space telescopes to 0.1 ly out and then setting into a stable position with laser communications, or whatever you're doing to talk to the drat thing.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:25
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In my mind this conversation started with a desire to get a photograph of an alien giraffe ("wanting to know what they’re like and see them"), which seems like it'd take some in-situ planning, but I guess a more serious-minded mission would be easier.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:26
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Taking a picture of an alien giraffe a millisecond before I accidentally slam the probe into the planet at a few percentage of lightspeed causing a planetwide extinction
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Jun 9, 2023 18:31
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Guys what if aliens caused the Chicxulub extinction
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Jun 9, 2023 18:34
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Rappaport posted:I agree with that list, for sure, I just wonder if there's Dungeons and Debates dwellers who think we're too strict or too loose with alien-chat, for example. But we haven't had a fight about that in ages, so maybe not! That's because the I Want To Believe UFO types went to other threads, not because everyone left here decided they wanted to hear more UFO conspiracy theories. DrSunshine posted:I really really want to find aliens. I really do. If they'd put the budget that went into blowing up brown people for the past 20 years into making a space telescope even more powerful than JWST (and not letting Arecibo decay into wreckage Exoplanet atmosphere spectroscopy is more the realm of giant light bucket 30 meter+ telescopes (which are a bit difficult to launch into space). Give the ELT another 5+ years to be completed. Nessus posted:Thinking about it, you could do a proof of concept for the thing - and get benefits while building the infrastructure for some kind of interstellar comm system - by sending out a couple of space telescopes to 0.1 ly out and then setting into a stable position with laser communications, or whatever you're doing to talk to the drat thing. The power requirements would be rather prohibitive, I think. It would be useful to get bonus parallax from putting an upgraded Gaia around, say, Neptune, but then you have to wait 80 years for maximum parallax. Saying screw it to stable orbits and flinging it directly up (or down) and out of the solar system to get away from zodiacal light would be best, but again, power requirements. Solar panels would become useless fairly quickly.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:41
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eXXon posted:The power requirements would be rather prohibitive, I think. It would be useful to get bonus parallax from putting an upgraded Gaia around, say, Neptune, but then you have to wait 80 years for maximum parallax. Saying screw it to stable orbits and flinging it directly up (or down) and out of the solar system to get away from zodiacal light would be best, but again, power requirements. Solar panels would become useless fairly quickly.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:57
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eXXon posted:That's because the I Want To Believe UFO types went to other threads, not because everyone left here decided they wanted to hear more UFO conspiracy theories. i think its mostly because the slapfighing made this thread unbearable and thats why it died for months
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Jun 9, 2023 19:02
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DrSunshine posted:Guys what if aliens caused the Chicxulub extinction Somewhere an alien species has a single close-up photo of a very surprised looking Sauropod.
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Jun 9, 2023 19:05
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mediaphage posted:i think its mostly because the slapfighing made this thread unbearable and thats why it died for months When I was a mod I was continually impressed and surprised by how contentious this thread could get. It's always been one of my DND chill reads.
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Jun 9, 2023 19:11
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The problem was never aliens or UFOs. The problem was "ufo guys". Some far out stuff gets discussed in the thread on the regular, but if you ask someone to explain where they are at they will do so generally in good faith. The "ufo guy" as a genre of person will dance around the subject and deploy the 9 levels of revolving irony so any discussion is just an exercise in frustration. It's the exact same behaviour you get from someone that's seriously into a pseudoscience or q-anon stuff, as it's a psychological self-defence mechanism that the brain deploys to preserve a fragile ego from having to admit an error, any error. Like, I don't think I've ever seen a person into the stuff admit even the smallest mistake.
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Jun 9, 2023 19:18
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Bug Squash posted:Like, I don't think I've ever seen a person into the stuff admit even the smallest mistake.
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Jun 9, 2023 20:04
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cat botherer posted:I'm into it, and I've admitted to mistakes I made doing UFO drunk-posting last night. You can be our UFO guy. ^~^
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Jun 9, 2023 20:08
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Let’s be the Carl Sagan of threads, with General Dynamics (SAL) to the right and Terrence McKenna (CSPAM) to the left. CSPAM thread is fun a lot of the time.
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Jun 9, 2023 20:30
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