So true.

And other than that... it gave us all something to look at and think "Look at what we can do". We can send a spaceship up into space and it can then come back down and land on a runway, that's just darn cool.

Yeah, it had problems, yeah it had a couple of catastrophes, yeah it never met the initial goals of cost of flights and number of flights that it was supposed to reach.

BUT.

It has given a generation of us a program of ships that looked like spaceships dammit... these looked like our science fiction fantasies, these looked like what we wanted spaceships to look like, not just a capsule on top of a rocket.

So yeah, it has been a success.

It's sad that it's quite some time before something as inspirational as that will fly into space again, it really is.

It's also sad that it's left up to private enterprise and some billionaires (SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo) to push forward in this regard, a unified, cross country effort would be do far more good for the soul of the planet at the moment I think.

If the citizens hate the law against front yard gardens (yardens?) so much they should change it. Until then, if the law is proven to define no front yardens, then that's the law.

It's all a matter of degree, isn't it liberals? You're upset about THIS when your eco-fascism is now fully one-third of fedguv's laws...LOOK at the arbitrary power you've given your masters!

All of a sudden you're FOR private property rights? Out-RAGEOUS!



Here's some of the voices of reason of your heroes:

"We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."

--Paul Elrich, Stanford University biologist and Advisor to Albert Gore

"I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism."

--Judi Barri of Earth First!

"Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere."

--Dave Foreman, Founder, Earth First!

"The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection," explained Andy Stahl, staff forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, at a 1988 law clinic for other environmentalists. "Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest," he joked, "for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it."

--Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund

"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real."

--Jonathan Shell, author of Our Fragile Earth

"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."

--Richard Benedict, an employee for the State Department working on assignment for the Conservation Foundation

"[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

--Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Professor and author Quoted by Dixey Lee Ray in Trashing the Planet (1990)


"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one."

--Lynn White, Jr. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, (Mar. 10 1967), p 1206

"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."

--David Brower, Friends of the Earth

"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."

--Keith Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept

"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. It [AIDS] has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crises."

--Earth First! newsletter

>> ^mizila:

>> ^honkeytonk73:
The ability to send a robotic spaceship to collect scientific data billions of miles from Earth is insignificant, next to the magical powers of Jesus. Water to wine... see if Nasa can do that!

What do you mean, "see if Nasa can do that!" ?? First you have to show me Jesus doing that.


The ability to detect the helio-pause is insignificant, next to the power of invisible magical sky beings....... your lack of faith is disturbing .....

>> ^honkeytonk73:

The ability to send a robotic spaceship to collect scientific data billions of miles from Earth is insignificant, next to the magical powers of Jesus. Water to wine... see if Nasa can do that!


What do you mean, "see if Nasa can do that!" ?? First you have to show me Jesus doing that.

>> ^honkeytonk73:

The ability to send a robotic spaceship to collect scientific data billions of miles from Earth is insignificant, next to the magical powers of Jesus. Water to wine... see if Nasa can do that!


Careful dude, ShinyBlurry will want to mate with you.



After a respectful engagement and devout nuptial ceremony, of course.

The ability to send a robotic spaceship to collect scientific data billions of miles from Earth is insignificant, next to the magical powers of Jesus. Water to wine... see if Nasa can do that!

@ gwiz665
Philosophical certainty is the only kind I really care about. And I still don't suppose that God "isn't in certain places" is a true statement if you can't be certain about your certainty, then you aren't certain...thats for certain...wait what? I am not a theist mind you, but I am not certain that God doesn't or can't exist.

I mean, what is the say that the reason that gravity is the way it is and particles move in waves instead of lines aren't just the rules in God's head; that this is just a reality matrix of rules that exist in a beings mind...same thing he supposes in the video. Such would also be unverifiable, but true. That is my main problem with empirical inquiring as a method for truth, it has a limited number of predicates to deal with, and some subjects it can't address.

I admit, my mindset is a minority. I care about truth with a capital T. Most are just focused on limited understandings that make medicines and build spaceships, cool stuff mind you! For me, I much rather focus on what can be called certain, and certainly not. And for the most part, I have to rule that certainty in either case is lacking. As such, I am compelled to believe neither.

We don't see exactly eye to eye on this, but I will still let you touch my man cleavage.

In a complete aside, I had a dream where all the matter, energy, and "stuff" in this universe was actually just an abstraction of some other universe...like we were just a shadow of a reality that existed elsewhere. And there were special beings that could infiltrate this universe and hide. A war broke out between those taking refuge in the "dream world", and they would dodge back and for to reality to affect the dream world in ways that were desirable. Kind of maxrixy, fun stuff!

The reason I bring it up is much like Newton and Einstein point out, we seem to be trapped in perspective. The objectivity of science is really just group subjectiveness. Our individual experience of A is similarly described. So let us all call our experience of A, A prime and just refer to it as an objective event. It works when you want to build a building, but is isn't certainly true. And that defines one of my main problems with most empirical discovery. If you don't see a problem with it, well, then I just care about a different set of truths

>> ^probie:

Sign me up for any sci-fi that doesn't include the cliched malevolent alien.


That'd be funny if you found out that the planet was really just an alien spaceship and the people they flew to it were used as food.

Your video, Rendezvous with Virgin Galactic's Spaceship 2, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital spaceplane. A space ship.

Alan Shepard, the first American in space, flew the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission, a suborbital flight, aboard the Freedom 7 capsule. A space ship.

It's a space ship.>> ^westy:

Its not a space ship.

@IAmTheBlurr

Your wish is my command.

Thanks!

In reply to this comment by vaporlock:
*quality

"God's justice" includes stoning people for a variety of offenses including a woman not being a virgin on her wedding night, and disobeying your parents; very specific rules on how to take, keep and treat slaves; supposedly wiping out nearly every creature on Earth; and condemning all of humanity for sin in the first place. No, I don't want God's justice, thank you very much.

You, like many Christians, seem to have this misguided idea that all atheists want to do is have hedonistic orgies and go on Christian killing sprees, when in fact atheists are usually the ones that understand that, in reality, we only have one short life and we must all work together as a species on this tiny, fragile, blue spaceship, whizzing alone through the cosmos with nothing else around us for light-years. It's the religious fantasy of an afterlife and the proper way to get to the proper afterlife that keeps everyone segregated into factions, with everybody at each other's throats.
>> ^shinyblurry:

They want Gods justice but not His punishment.

Luck. Lucky would be if we existed first and found Earth by blindly flying around in a spaceship. The fact that we evolved to live in the conditions in which we exist is not a matter of luck. This is a one in one chance. If conditions were different, we'd be different. Oh, and the moon came from Earth, and the amoeba came from a ever-so-slightly different amoeba many times until it was something not quite an amoeba. </preaching to the choir>
I still think Bill-O is a troll.

So the Martians learned that raping their planet would be the key to liberty, as well lubing up their...spaceships? Which apparently don't need oil, but their ground transportation does?

And we laughed at the Soviets for their propaganda.