I know this may seem for the gaming thread, and I very rarely post on here. But... as I'm sure most will know, Surviving Mars is out and whilst I have never really been one for astrology, meteorology, cosmology... I don't know. I grew up watching and playing the usual stuff that most fans of space exploration do.
But I can't believe how way behind time I am with space exploration. I saw that Elon Must documentary recently and it is probably the most inspiring documentaries I've seen in years. Obviously, I moved onto the game, and have played most space sims (if not all), and watched most space/science films docs.
I had no real idea how much movement there was and in a strange kind of way, both together (the doc and the games), you can see how private enterprise is forming and I have kicked myself for not following the Elon Musk story sooner. Having not read this thread, he is an inspiring bloke, but him along with Richard Branson, could potentially see the first landings (of some sort) on Mars in our lifetime.
It's blue sky thinking of course, but the whole enterprise perfectly represents the capitalist model/ideology (as well as many others), but it got me thinking about the vertical take-off, landing thing (I don't know the correct term). But those two I mentioned seem to be going about it in different ways and whilst tourism and exploration is the obvious end goal, (as well as... many others), surely the future is some kind of synthesis of Elon Musk's SpaceX engine, and Richard Branson's VSS would eventually be a way of mitigating huma risk, whilst able to somehow eventually merge to the soundtrack of Interstellar.
I'm far from knowledgeable on the subject, but know enough that the joint-effort may go against that ideology and potentially harbour genuine competition. However, when you think of the two techs, the two ideologies, it is surely a perfect match is it not?
I get my science from Hollywood, and I'm one of those "if you can visualise it, you can do it" people who think with their skin. But it is all terribly exciting, and again, we get most of our taste of space via film and TV. So it is very inspiring to see someone literally just burning money away to fulfil that ambition of man.
Yet when you cross the experience of film and TV with a game like Surviving Mars, it is actually very interesting how thinking as to how capitalism and industry may in fact be the overiding formula to a future societal structure. That's all obvious to many on here I'd suspect, but I've never really thought of it in the way Surviving Mars proposes.
I imagine a lot of SM, is of course, guesswork and theoretical physics at its finest and most digestible... But at this moment in time, I think most of us if we had the cash, would like to just fuck the world off and go and explore. A-to-B, mass and propulsion.... etc... being the obvious problem of... and scientific words that I can't be arsed to google.
It's weird how the tech and subject crosses over into many other interests, but stops short of your thoughts because you'd think the media would be ALL over it. I know SpaceX has received coverage, and SpaceX do a good job on their media output (as well as having to keep a lot secret). Yet, I imagine that most of the media coverage is stateside, as well, the ESA looks years behind, but I always got the impression they were years behind, and had other agendas to follow (i.e communication and network).
The network EM is proposing with satellites was interesting, and I found it particularly interesting how they explained how the satellites could look like lights or planets in the night sky... but then fell short of saying they could look like UFO's or other phenomena.
Looked back over a few pages, but I am hoping to binge on some documentaries and read-up as I have a cough and plan to vegetate over the weekend.