No. I keep reading all these articles about these new nuclear pellet engines that are going to cut mars travel to like 5 days, fuel is very light etc… and thought this is a better first use for this technology. I’m sure that instead we will just discard the old ones in orbit and leave them. I have a thorough understanding how all this works and how much it costs. We want to explore but safety first, maybe we should clean up. Ignoring the problem is melting the ice caps right now.

Which should be our first order of business with these new nuclear propulsion systems they want to use to explore mars. We just keep making more clutter. Eventually it will be a massive problem (like it isn’t already, it’s crazy up there)

As in there is a serious possibility that Venus or mercury could be inhabited by a hostile species? Because anything we have ever built would be vaporized long before it reached the sun

So we design a “ship” for the express purpose of pushing crap out of orbit. That’s it’s whole job. They are introducing the ideas of nuclear reactor propulsion etc to head straight to mars (yet another dumpster) when we should really clean up our backyard first. It would make things much safer.

That explanation leaves out the part that we will never fly out to collect space junk and recycle it unless we end up in some dystopian future like depicted in The Expanse.

Not wanting to contaminate a poisonous wasteland is the reason behind ideas like “scientists have lied about Venus atmosphere”. We can’t send a probe there for 60 seconds yet do not want to contaminate it.

That part’s irrelevant. Just send it all towards the sun, there is nothing of consequence between us.

We will get there soon enough. If we can smack around asteroids we can clean space trash.

I think our understanding is so limited. Maybe a few lifetimes from now we will be sending probes into them to see them better.

That would make the black hole 2 dimensional. I really doubt they are 2d

Regress to caveman ways? If the internet goes down are we burning all libraries, books and schools? If the internet went down today, we might just be in a better place than we were yesterday. Period.

Building human like machines is honestly dystopian. It would make for a creepy reality.

Since we are moving apart rather than together it will never happen…

It’s even deeper than that, it would really hurt the antidepressant market. They would rather do maintenance forever than cure a single person. Providing a cure to non deadly lifetime ailments isn’t the most profitable thing. How do you even value something like that? Whatever it is it’s going to cause backlash and they damn well know it. So the prudent course is to keep this life changing medication Federally on the same level as crack (I think the DEA has opened themselves to a lawsuit on this one as they have admitted it is medicine and non addictive yet it remains schedule 1 contrary to their own admission)

Psilocybin works wonders. It’s also schedule 1 because big pharma can’t turn a profit on something that cures serious permanent issues now can it? If they ever release a version it will be diluted and used for maintenance while you can grow it yourself for next to nothing.

Ships like the ones you are speaking of must be built in orbit, we don’t have the technology to launch them without them coming apart yet.

The only way the asteroid would offer protection from radiation is if it was hollow and made of lead, gold or water. The asteroid itself would likely be radioactive if you were mining space fuel for an interstellar journey. Hiding ships within meteors could have tactical advantages but why not just build the ship to look like a meteor?

So catch up with the asteroid then speed it up? What’s the benefit? Mining it? Now you are describing a space mining venture not a means of transportation. I thought you were trying to use the velocity of the asteroid to travel. The only way to slow down in space is reverse propulsion or impact. Speeding up is rather simple, expell propellant. Your idea is just a mining operation. (We probably already do this, I don’t trust the news anymore than old Mother Hubbard)

OP doesn’t understand the absence of resistance in space.

Avoid what? The entire universe is a result of, never mind, not here to upset anyone. It will be sucked through all the black holes and spewed out again, that’s how it works.

This thread is so very human