NASA Tests All-Composite Material Version of its Orion Space Module

i got first comment

lol... i think its interesting that they think that a glorified corvette will survive in space and re entry after being in a vacuum and absolute zero(close to it)
they need to build mini models of same and test them in the space staion befor they waste a couple billy screwin around with what will inevitably be a deathtrap.

Literally an aluminum can can hold enough pressure to keep a person alive in space. Its not really as bad as you make it sound, and putting a module on the iss costs more than making a capsule.

@MarcusJetson Actualy Space averages out to be about 3K which, last time I checked, is not that close.

Now how about some shielding, so the astronauts don't get fried by cosmic and solar rays. Unless of course the new life expectancy of an astronaut in the furure is the length of the trip itself.

3K isn't close to absolute zero? It's closer than most things, lol.

Wowlfie, I would argue that we cannot afford NOT to colonize space. we literaly have all our eggs in one basket right now. if anything happens to earth, Humanity is gone.

while it is expensive, further exploration and development is vital. exploration because eventualy we will find something out there, be it animal mineral or vegetable, that corporations will be willing to spend the money to get. And development so that when that time comes, we are ready to go.

the "abandon manned space exploration because its too expensive" is shortsighted at best, Nasa is a tiny tiny part of the US budget, something like 1-2% i believe. that is rediculously tiny in the big picture. for every 1$ the government spends on Nasa, it spends 98$ on social programs. how will that 1% force us into bankruptcy?

Seriously? You don't think there's enough money spent on social issues already? So where exactly are we going get the resources and realestate to sustain or house Earths people in say 75 to 100 years? Our world population currently doubles every 5 to 10 years. Don't you think we should at least try and find alternative sources of raw materials? Or maybe some other places to live?
I wonder if your attitudes, and that of our current US Admin., were a prevalent in the 1300's, would the majority of humanity be still piling up in the eastern hemisphere today.

If the government spent 98% of its budget on social programs that actually benefited its citizens, we would have colonized Mars by now. Our culture is completely backwards; there is no push for social progress, rather self interested and narrow minded views are dominant. Half of the planet lives in extreme poverty because a handful of people control the majority of the wealth. Globally, governments need to stop screwing around and actually get some work done. Imagine how productive and advanced humanity will be once everyone is given a legitimate chance for post-secondary education. There are 6 billion capable people on this planet. Think logically.

“What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

We will never colonize space? That is just an amazingly dim statement. There are 4 phases, generally, in all technologies.

1. Things and expensive and don't generally work that well.
2. Prices drop, and they work better, but it's still relegated to the wealthy.
3. Things work pretty well and prices are reasonable for the middle class.
4. Things work flawlessly, and other devices begin to depend on them as subcomponents, and the price has become trivial in most cases.

We now have starving Africans that use prepaid cell phones.

Think about the cell phone, the computer, HDTVs, etc. The only difference, with big issues like space flight, is that we accomplished it kind of early in our development, and we arent to stage 3 yet. Space X and other companies are getting us closer.

If, for example, we could construct a craft from carbon nanotubes - the craft would be far more sturdy than we need and weigh only a few hundred pounds. We could use a space elevator also, the Helium-3 on the moon is so valuable that it alone would be worth the trip - not to mention moon tourism.

I agree that we sometimes overreach and set a goal before the underlying tech is discovered to make a goal efficient, but don't forget all the developments and technologies that we developed along the way. Teflon and tang have sold more than 4.9 billion since their discovery, so in a way it pays for itself over time. We will colonize space, likely sooner than people think.

The first human genome took over a billion dollars to sequence, now a full sequence is about 10 thousand. Thats in just 15 years. Suborbital flight was 200k a pop, now it is 100k only 2 years later. I think you should step back and look at how fast and far humanity is going before you relegate us to sit on this little rock for all eternity.

http://singularityhub.com/