Would have been a joke if tech we mastered half a century ago started failing.

I don't think the Big Bounce theory says anything about the universes being the exact same. Just that a universe is born, grows, eventually collapses, and then a new one is born again.

Closest I can think of is the multi-verse theory. Like there's a universe where your life is the exact same, but instead of making this post you went to take a piss instead.

One day, for now they have this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

Explore what? There's very little in Europa's surface, whats interesting is miles below its surface, and good luck getting anything down there. And thats if the rover can sustain Jupiter's extreme radiation.

>I always thought this was a bad idea because I pictured microwaves blasting down and frying any bird that happened to fly through

It's not like that's going to stop tech development. Hell, birds can fly into plane or helicopter engines and it doesn't just kill the bird, it can easily disable the aircraft as well, and it's not like that stopped us from using them. Might sound cold, but that's how things are.

But they didnt completely rely on Russians until 2011.

The US relied on Russia since 2011 (retirement of the Space Shuttle) to 2020. Wasn't even a decade.

Blame congress, not engineering, the Space Shuttle we got is completely different from what NASA envisioned of just having a small, reusable space "taxi" to let people come and go from space stations, not the big, clunky, ultra expensive behemoth it ended up being.

It's a miracle that thing only blew up twice.

Not that I'm saying the Soyuz is unreliable if it is true it was just a micrometeorite.

NASA relies on government funding so they need to jerk politicians in whatever they ask if they want funds, and diversity is all the current rage in US politics.

So you just tell them yes to whatever they say, take the billions and run before they start asking for specifics regarding the technology that's going to be used, it's already enough that they demanded the SLS to reuse old Space Shuttle tech just to prevent their buddies from losing their jobs.

Not even that, the probes would need to leave the entire Local Group and it's gravitational pull behind for expansion to need to be taken into account.

Hey, with those ships they can go bomb each other in the middle of nowhere beyond the Moon.

Sounds like they should just start working on space battleships.

Just wait a bit longer until space piracy becomes a thing, then things will get equalized.

Wonder if that will happen to us with Andromeda.

I've always through the opposite, what if they know about us, they have us monitored, but they are simply avoiding all contact because they think we are "not ready".

Imagine if there's a super advanced civilization, or a group of civilizations that have entire databases on "developing worlds" and we are just one entry in them.

But sadly the world is rarely as interesting as we imagine.

To be fair, killing Twitter is doing humanity a big favor.

I have no idea why people so ignorant on the technologies that space travel research has brought us even come to the space subreddit. Seems like this sub has way too many people for whom science is just knowing "fun facts".

The technology that comes from space travel absolutely does help with our lives.

If it wasn't for the Apollo program computers wouldn't be nearly as advanced today, for example, and the ISS helps, not just with weather tracking, but with deforestation and crop tracking, along with the myriad of satellites we have. Other things that have come from space travel research are water filters, anti-corrosion coating, scratch resistant eye glasses, hearing-aid devices...

And since you care about the enviroment, i'll tell you that, in order to reduce the polution created by rocket launches, specially the one on natural soil around launch bases, they came up with a little something called emulsified zero-valent iron, a solution that can be injected in groundwater and eliminates a huge variety of chemicals that can be a huge risk to the enviroment. For 10 years now this thing has been used by a ton of companies from oil to chemical companies, and helps reduce their enviromental impact significantly. It's NASA's most succesful licensed product so far, too.

And if you care about money, are you really going to throw a fit over NASA's yearly budget of 25 billion, when the US military has one of 750 billion and they haven't fought any real conflicts for more than 20 years, and 80 since it fought a conflict that actually affected the US?

If the SLS can actually launch anything's possible.

It is the actual Atlantis. Both Atlantis and Discovery were sent to museums after the Shuttle program ended. They just don't have the real engines since those were taken for the SLS.

Just call it Ultra Milky Way, fuck Andromeda, Milky Way number 1 😎😎😎