I believe the proper term is "Taikonaut".

dollhopf says: "The challenge of traveling in deep space, I guess, would best be mastered by individuals with a sort of contemplative conciousness, like monks should have, like devoted worshipers on a pilgrimage. Their ship like a monastery. Because how else can the human mind deal with the void, if not having the universe in his or her innermost self."

Interesting concept.

But it sounds good to me. Is already a copyright on it?

For the forseeable future the expansion of space will be developed by apes fighting to build the largest pile of shiny rocks (or trying to steal someone elses rocks).

Don't knock the tried and true.

For the forseeable future the expansion of space will be developed by apes fighting to build the largest pile of shiny rocks (or trying to steal someone elses rocks).

Don't knock the tried and true.

Maxwell, what drives us? Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs. Physical well being and social appreciation. People strive for this constitutional goals. Why should they reach out for the stars in their pursuit of happiness?

The insights of modern economical theory claims that war isn't economically at all. Sure, sometimes you have to fight for your freedom, which is the foundation of a successful economy. Especially when the enemy is immune against rational thinking because of religious blindness.

So I guess that more than war, it is the cultural development of every single member of a society, and that this leads a community to cultural peak performances, to high-technology, and in consequence to the stars. I already mentioned the immense financial losses due to vandalism in German cities. You probably read about the crime of Robert A. Williams in the NYT. What is their culture medium?

The father or mother of all things is evolution, cultural evolution included, this is what has brought us this far, I suppose. Fate has no point of view, it is a value-free interplay of what we humans interpret as good and evil. So, if we want societies which are able to improve propulsion systems for space travels we should strive to improve individuals in these societies from birth on.

But we do interpret the fact of a very long travel time under the premise of a relatively short lifetime. Our subjective perception of a very long time is induced by our foreseeable lifespan.

In Germany today newborn girls have a predicted average lifespan of 82 years (boys 76.6). Every second girl has a chance to become more than 100 years old. In the year 1849 the most long-living women were in Sweden and the female population there had a lifespan of 46 years. The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research found out that the average lifespan of the offspring in Germany today increases by three month each year and no end of this trend is in sight.

We already found life-forms here on earth that theoretically could live forever: Hydra polyps. If technology fails to find appropriate forms of propulsion for fast traveling beyond the Interstellar Boundary, then, which would in the end mean the same, it might tremendously increase the lifespan of the travellers?

(The best, of course, would be to travel with speed of light while living eternally

…but it sure would be a waste of Gods gift of life to sit on this rock and wait for another rock to wipe us out without even trying.
Especially if the answers to deep space travel turned out to be stupidly simple. You never know.

To put people in space, to put wars in space, and to put business in space means its highly profitable to move through space quickly.
The desire for success in business and war have gotten us this far.

If theres a better incentive to develop a faster than light drive system, I cant think of one.

If this were a few thousand years ago, and we were talking about the development of wooden dugouts in the same manner, we would hit a similar conclusion.
I mean which village elder would pay for the development of massive iron vessels driven by jet turbines and guided by computer.
Colonizing continents across the sea would seem highly impossible.

The answer to the problem is to get people thinking about space, researching space, traveling in space and eventually working and living their entire lives in space. These people are the most likely to find real solutions for long term survival and travel through space.

Space travel has to get out of the exclusive hands of government and become the publics domain.
A task made easier if private developers can capitalize on the sale of space technology, instead of just giving it away to foreign governments.

Yes, the psychological profile of those voyagers should notedly differ from that of contemporary pilots like Gargarin, Armstrong or the NASA astronaut corps.

The challenge of traveling in deep space, I guess, would best be mastered by individuals with a sort of contemplative conciousness, like monks should have, like devoted worshipers on a pilgrimage. Their ship like a monastery. Because how else can the human mind deal with the void, if not having the universe in his or her innermost self.

I guess that deep space journeys, if someone will have put it on the duty roster one morning, will be the realm of people who stand more in the Far Eastern tradition of thinking. A deep space crew would advantageously consist of Buddhanauts?

Awesome! It is not even possible to speed up to a remarkable fraction of the speed of light. On the other hand, it is already pretty expensive to travel on low speed.

"We will be "stuck" on this rock called Earth until we go extinct."

sounds reasonable

Just recently, the German secretary of commerce, Michael Glos, doomed German's LEO project, the Lunar Exploration Orbiter, and thus catapulted the country out of the race before it even started.

The necessary expenditures would have been 350 million Euros for a period of five to seven years and ostensibly fell prey to budget consolidation. But apparently it was redirected to a prestige project in the home province of the secretary, where his party is currently on hustings.

By the way, in Germans capital Berlin alone the local public transport (S-Bahn and Busses) suffers a loss of 15 million Euros each year due to vandalism? In seven years this are a 100 million Euros. Just in Berlin! Then take three other major German cities, such as Frankfurt, Bremen and Hamburg and you see the money for a complete space project scrunched and thrown away puckishly. By the same group of people which constantly demand more money from the German welfare system. I guess that many of them were among the fawning Germans, which celebrated an American presidential candidate in Berlin recently.

It is this attitude, be it presently true or not, has held the world back for decades.

I want, and it is my goal to make, humanity into a space fairing species. I don't care about prestige.

If scientific research is the fastest and easiest way to justify doing so, that's fine with me. The same cannot be said of using exploration exclusively as a tool for scientific research, with no regard to our specie's long term future off this rock.

And it depends on the political good will of all participants during the entire project. (Britain and France almost didn't hang together long enough to develop Concorde…even allowig for the fact that that was a commercial project, not basic science)

Did anything really come of Apollo-Soyuz?

And not 'all mankind' has something to offer to any given space effort.

What everyone really needs is technology to lower lainch costs and increase launch reliability to LEO. Everything will flow naturally from that.

Instead of projects necessairily requiring international support, we need to get to where NON-national entities can afford to do more in space.

Do some looking around. There are plenty of multi-national projects currently going on in the scientific community; not just in those which study outer space.

Splitting costs among many nations is fiscally intelligent. Especially when there are so many projects to work on.

Those who believe this is a waste of money, must believe man is at a point where they will be unable to learn or create anything new in the future. What a sad state to be in. Not to mention ignorant; not realizing all the things they use everyday which was developed or refined through the aerospace industry.

I say we've barely scratched the surface.

It undermines both organizations with a totally redundant layer of governance, leading to an ever increasing waste of scarce resources without anything concrete enough to speak about. Mission by mission basis cooperation is welcomed, but this vague framework appears to be a total failure in all respects.

An inevitable outcome from these "empty feel-good" PR-treaties should be an increased criticism and opposition concerning the Agencies in question.

Maybe it would be a good time for politicians on both sides of the pond to get something done and bring down this Potemkin Village, before it causes too much irreparable damage?