[Jackalope]

from an article written in 1968

What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008?

pretty amusing read

[freeridemusik]

Originally Posted by freeridemusik

A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails.

Another vacation is a stay < on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt.

I feel cheated.

[tweakmonkey]

Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules, which can be attached speedily in the configuration that best suits the homeowner. Once the foundation is laid, attaching the modules to make up a two- or three-bedroom house is a job that doesn’t take more than a day. Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family. A typical wedding present for the 21st century newlyweds is a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.

It's like the MIR space station. Too bad it's not real.

[djsoulriot]

How depressing

[randomtask]

ha, a good read

[Torx]

we can thank war, politics, and corruption for ruining this paradise of dreams that SHOULD be happening today.

nasa budget cuts are happening every year.. getting to the point where private commercial organizations are getting closer to besting nasa at everything they do.

[MSP]

I'm with Joe Rogan, where is my fucking jet pack?!? At the very least I demand a flying car.

[Torx]

^^ hahah you finnally watched it? i presume youve watched one of his stand up videos

[namelessentity]

I don't blame politics. These things just aren't as realistic as people thought. They cut NASA's budget because they're not getting anywhere. They can barely get us back into orbit, I don't think anyone has very high hopes for settling on other planets when shuttles explode before they get into space.

Would you really be willing to go to an underwater hotel? They barely clean the sheets in hotels, imagine how shitty the maintenance would be. One day you wake up to screams and water pouring into your window, sounds like a fun trip.

[jake]

You guys don't have your jet packs yet? Must have missed the memo.

[Torx]

^^lmao

underwater hotels are being developed right now in dubai
underwater restaurants are already available.

we can also thank religion for slowing down progress of space exploration.

[Chainblade]

a lot of what is in that article is acurate. too bad we don't have flying cars (or even hands free cars), those sweet homes, and space vacations.

[JustinL]

Originally Posted by namelessentity

I don't blame politics. These things just aren't as realistic as people thought. They cut NASA's budget because they're not getting anywhere. They can barely get us back into orbit, I don't think anyone has very high hopes for settling on other planets when shuttles explode before they get into space.

Would you really be willing to go to an underwater hotel? They barely clean the sheets in hotels, imagine how shitty the maintenance would be. One day you wake up to screams and water pouring into your window, sounds like a fun trip.

I find your response far more amusing than the article. Both of the shuttle failures were BECAUSE of politics. The Challenger, which is the only shuttle to not make it into orbit and was 22 years ago, exploded because it was launched on an unusually cold day in Florida. There was political pressure to get it off the ground soon so the engineers warning about how the O-rings had contracted were overlooked and you see how it turned out. From what I understand, one engineer even took one of the O-rings, put it in a glass of ice water and it shattered. Columbia failed when a piece of foam cracked the TPS. The origonal foam insulation used freon and there was political pressure to switch to a more environmentally friendly insulation. When they switched to the new insulation, they started having problems with the chunks of foam falling off and you see what happened there as well.


As far as NASA not doing anything or going anywhere, why not go ahead and check out the current planetary missions. We have how many surveyors and rovers on mars currently? How many planetary satellites have been launched in the past few years? We've launched satellites to intercept asteroids and return to earth with fragments, there are missions to Pluto, and numerous others that I can't think of off the top of my head.


As far as underwater hotels go.....
Jules Underwater Hotel

[Wedge_]

Originally Posted by JustinL

From what I understand, one engineer even took one of the O-rings, put it in a glass of ice water and it shattered.

Wasn't that Richard Feynman? He apparently did something very similar during the investigation afterwards.

[JustinL]

I don't recall the guys name but you are probably correct.

to a non-Freon-based type of foam insulation to comply with Clinton administration Environmental Protection Agency regulations

Before the environmentally friendly new insulation was used, about 40 of the spacecraft's 26,000 ceramic tiles would sustain damage in missions. However, Katnik reported that NASA engineers found 308 "hits" to Columbia after a 1997 flight.

Shuttle Foam Loss Linked to EPA Regs

[MSP]

I had never heard any of this before, it's outrageous. As infrequent as space missions are the fact that they risked astronaut's lives for this bullshit makes my blood boil.

[mistawiskas]

All of that could have been. Budgets, both federal and private, had the bux going elsewhere. The interwebs are a tasty token bone though.