The advantage of a sunshield is that it is adjustable, you could adjust the satellite to let more or less sunshine through. Other geo-engineering projects don't have this advantage, like pumping SO2 in the atmosphere to cool, or bringing dust in the atmosphere/space.
But the better options are probably carbon sequestering techniques.

To launch this sunshield one would need something like the nuclear pulse powered Orion space ship. One of the best options for space travel.

Aging death was created through natural selection amongst the original immortal organisms, IMO.

Before aging, evolution took too long. Once a species started having death through aging, the ancestors would cease to consume resources, allowing its slightly more evolved young to have more. In a short period of time, species with short lifetimes would evolve much more quickly, and gain tremendous advantage over species with long lifetimes.

That's why the dominant life form on earth is bacteria and viruses, to this day.

Humans might be able to come up with a way to make our evolution self-directed, and possible within individual living organisms (ourselves), which would make death unnecessary from an evolutionary standpoint.

Depending on how we deal with the carrying capacity of the Earth when people are immortal will be key in how we settle the question of what we do with immortality.

Maybe the key is for us all to get very, very small. That or lots of space travel. Or Dyson Spheres. I think based on our society right now, we're more likely to digitize and shrink down, since it's cheaper, and we're all about cost effectiveness.

Eventually we'll do the Dyson Sphere, but probably not until we've hit some unimaginably high population, like 100 trillion people maybe.

I have the solution but it involves killing everyone and then leaving the internet perpetually running so that future space travelers can get a good laugh. actually i guess thats the whole plan.

I've read so many great books that it's really hard for me to whittle it down to five that I think are the best, so I'm going to go with the first five that come into my head. I'm guessing that the first five must have made the greatest impression on me, so it's a reasonable place to start a favorites list.

1. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut is probably the single most influential author to me. His protagonists and story lines always clicked with me. It was like he was writing them just for me.

2. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. Everyone's heard of this one, and it's considered by many to be one of the best novels of the 20th century. If you haven't read it yet, put it next on your to-read list. Notice my first two novels are both set in World War II. I don't know if that means anything or not.

3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon. Considered by many to be Chabon's greatest work. I noticed you read one of his book's, dag. I think you owe it to yourself to read this one. I plan on reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union soon, because I've heard good things about it too.

4. The Trial - Franz Kafka. A dark novel, to say the least. To me it's about the absurdity of life and accepting fate. I don't believe in fate, but I sometimes wonder about the futility of existence. Can't help it.

5. The Foundation series - Isaac Asimov. Read the series when I was a teenager. The idea of being able to use science to not only predict but also control future events fascinated me, and that it was set in the future, complete with space travel, made it even more interesting. I liked how Asimov later was able to merge the Foundation series with the Robot series.

Other novels worthy of mention:

- Tropic Of Cancer - Henry Miller - Almost made the Top 5
- Life of Pi - Yann Martel
- Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
- Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Breakfast Of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
- 1984 - George Orwell
- Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
- God Knows - Joseph Heller
- Something Happened - Joseph Heller
- Ringworld - Larry Niven
- The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

[Edit] I just watched it again, and I will understand (as I noted when I left the movie theater after seeing it for the first time) that a lot of people won't get the appropriate message from it. They'll see the "over-the-top" music, and clips of nuclear exposions, and just turn up their nose and say "That's those atheists, just as arrogant as the people they preach about, that's not my God and that's not my religion he's talking about."

Well, you know what? It is what he's talking about. And I'm wholly glad that we have people like Bill Maher who can stand up there and say it, and glad that we have people down here who will help share what he's saying to other people. Because let's face it, a lot of atheists/rationalists/humanists are timid in the face of religion and the overly religious. This message is one of the most important, if not the most important, motivator for ending the backwards, superstitious, ancient, controlling, debilitating and retarded (non-colloquial definition) thing we just sit back and call "Good 'ol Religion".

More often than not I'm quite the cynic when it comes to the survival of our race (one of the reasons discussed in the video above, another would be from reading YouTube comments...). But there is that part of me that really, badly, wants to see us progress into the future, into space-travel, and onto wonderous scientific discoveries. And so long as Religion persists, it will damage that future and hold us back from it.

well, spacy is kinda wide, so I thought it'd be nice to keep flying in the atmosphere separate from space travel/exploration/astronomy - that is what * spacy should be for

Ahh, this is brilliant, and what I've been saying for some time. We NEED to get as many houses as possible solared right up.

Batteries have indeed been the issue up until now, along with efficiency and cost of the solar panels, but we NEED to do this.

I saw a news clip about a woman who was part of the EV-1 electric car trials in California, except that she has normal cars (I think she has two) converted to be electric. As such, she was allowed to keep hers after the trial (as she could still get spare parts and maintain them). She has solar panels on the roof of her house, she charges her car (or two if I'm right) each night, and runs the whole house off the solar... and her energy bill each month is, like, a couple of dollars.

So, using tech from a number of years ago she can almost entirely run her house AND charge electric cars from solar.

Just imagine if we were all doing that! Almost no power plants required, all cars could be electric, the power industry as we know it can largely go away, instead replaced with an industry creating, distributing, installing and maintaining solar systems.

We could start it NOW.

But we don't because big business is far too afraid of change and their current money streams.

I wish a Richard Branson or similarly cashed up person would sink some money into this for the betterment of society.

I appreciate him doing so into space travel, but would love to see it being done for energy creation.

Don't get me wrong, space travel to mars isn't my highest priority. In a perfect world we wouldn’t be spending so much money on defense and wars. Our country has some serious issues in front of us that are going to require major funding. With more and more employers dropping insurance coverage, I would rather us spend the money on something more practical like a universal health care system, and not just one that covers those who can't afford it. However, Space travel has always been something to me that inspires the imagination, and I would hate to see our country lose that, and merely "pay the bills" year after year. Heck, I would settle for another trip to the moon.

Great Sift!
If this makes you wonder what first contact might be like then check out the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. Like most good sci-fi it contains a ton of interesting ideas regarding propulsion, space travel, intelligence and humanity. It is available free at http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

Tags for this video have been changed from 'documentary, history, civil rights, parody' to 'documentary, history, civil rights, parody, nasa, space travel' - edited by calvados

i don't understand why various nations aren't more excited about their space programs. i assume because it's not blatantly obvious how it affects Terran life. Japan's KAGUYA didn't receive much in the way of publicity either, even though it's really something that hasn't been done before... I can't wait for the results to arrive.

i suppose it's the child in me that's still absolutely obsessed with rockets and space travel... i dunno.

Doc_M here is my take on the death of the conquistador. (spoilers head).

The beauty of this movie is that it allows for multiple interpretations of the entire time line and not just the ending.

One interpretation is that the movie is told using non-linear story telling. The non-linear interpretation leads to the following time line:
The protagonist loves his wife (in the year 2000). She dies while writing a book about Spain set in the 1500s. The protagonist's medical research leads to life extension technology. He prolongs his life for 500 years until the technology to travel through space becomes available. In a romantic gesture he casts his wife's remains (the tree) and himself into the nebula.

The second interpretation of the movie, which I feel more comfortable with, is that the scenes in the movie occur on a linear time line set in the year 2000 (i.e., There is no space travel). The scenes in the bubble are a visualization of the protagonist's inner space. We see this inner space every time the protagonist withdraws into himself. The scenes involving Spain are a visualization of the chapters in the book. They are shown every time someone writes into the book. In beginning the wife is doing the writing, and towards the end the protagonist is writing the final chapter as per his dead wife's wishes. The final scene shows the protagonist coming to terms his wife's death; the blooming tree is a visual depiction of his mind having an epiphany and the conquistador's death shows how the protagonist ended the book (accepting death as the spring of new life). Finally, once he has made peace with his wife's death he is able to fulfill her last wish - planting a tree over her grave.

Obviously Aronofsky wanted to make the movie consistent with the first interpretation. That is why the movie has the whole subplot involving the life-extending medical research. It is also the time line suggested by the movie's trailer. But I also think he consciously wanted the movie to be consistent with the second interpretation and this is not just me reading way too much into the story. The metaphor of 'mind as deep-space' is common in many mystic philosophies. You might have heard the term 'psychonaut' to describe people who engage in deep meditation or those who consume hallucinogens. Also, some of the scenes in the bubble show transitions of the protagonist withdrawing into his mind: example, consider the scene where he lies down with his wife on the hospital bed; the very next scene begins in the bubble and you can see the ghost image of the hospital bed and his wife slowly fading away as he is drawn into his mind.

For this and many others reason I love the Fountain.

In reply to this comment by Doc_M:
I think I've got this film figured out, but I still don't understand the death of the conquistador. If you get it, help me out here.

Doc_M here is my take on the death of the conquistador. (spoilers head).

The beauty of this movie is that it allows for multiple interpretations of the entire time line and not just the ending.

One interpretation is that the movie is told using non-linear story telling. The non-linear interpretation leads to the following time line:
The protagonist loves his wife (in the year 2000). She dies while writing a book about Spain set in the 1500s. The protagonist's medical research leads to life extension technology. He prolongs his life for 500 years until the technology to travel through space becomes available. In a romantic gesture he casts his wife's remains (the tree) and himself into the nebula.

The second interpretation of the movie, which I feel more comfortable with, is that the scenes in the movie occur on a linear time line set in the year 2000 (i.e., There is no space travel). The scenes in the bubble are a visualization of the protagonist's inner space. We see this inner space every time the protagonist withdraws into himself. The scenes involving Spain are a visualization of the chapters in the book. They are shown every time someone writes into the book. In beginning the wife is doing the writing, and towards the end the protagonist is writing the final chapter as per his dead wife's wishes. The final scene shows the protagonist coming to terms his wife's death; the blooming tree is a visual depiction of his mind having an epiphany and the conquistador's death shows how the protagonist ended the book (accepting death as the spring of new life). Finally, once he has made peace with his wife's death he is able to fulfill her last wish - planting a tree over her grave.

Obviously Aronofsky wanted to make the movie consistent with the first interpretation. That is why the movie has the whole subplot involving the life-extending medical research. It is also the time line suggested by the movie's trailer. But I also think he consciously wanted the movie to be consistent with the second interpretation and this is not just me reading way too much into the story. The metaphor of 'mind as deep-space' is common in many mystic philosophies. You might have heard the term 'psychonauts' to describe people who engage in deep meditation or those who consume hallucinogens. Also, some of the scenes in the bubble show transitions of the protagonist withdrawing into his mind: example, consider the scene where he lies down with his wife on the hospital bed; the very next scene begins in the bubble and you can see the ghost image of the hospital bed and his wife slowly fading away as he is drawn into his mind.

For this and many others reason I love The Fountain.

Seriously, with all the CGI I see from NASA (such as the Mars lander) all they need is to add a couple first person views, interactions and they've got a whole new virtual based tourist industry.

I agree though, our focus needs to be on making space travel cheaper, safer and available to the masses.

not so, Deano! ArmadilloAerospace.com (Carmacks company) is going for the vertical takeoff and landing model as well. It's quite practical and not just for space travel. Imagine the technology so available you could drop oxygen bottles to within 1 foot of a coordinate on top of Mt. Everest, etc. Carmack is going for affordable rocket modules, with up to 64 on an orbital craft. Cheap, redundant, precise.