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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 4 Sep 2006 11:30 pm |
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I have found another wonderful site for The Unscrambled Web. It is Pathways, a "Creation Science" site in America.
What led me to it was a Google search which threw up an article whose subject is:
"12 reasons why interstellar manned space rocket travel will never occur".
It's wonderful stuff. Roll over NASA and tell Tchaikovsky the news.
Here are the 12 reasons:
1 - Physical Deterioration - Do not underrate it
2 - Wear and Breakdown - Always to be considered
3 - Radiation Hazards - It could be dangerously present
4 - Meteoroids - Eventually they would strike
5 - Repairs Unlikely - Yet breakdowns would surely occur
6 - Motion Sickness - It would have to be contended with
7 - Air Pollution - It is inevitable
8 - Energy Sources - They are inadequate
9 - Interpersonal Conflicts - Explosions would occur
10 - Distances Too Vast - They would doom the project
11 - Radio Contact - Do not forget this factor
12 - Objectives Unlikely - Might as well forget the whole idea
And here's a link to the article:
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/02star10.htm
The arguments advanced are sensible ... well, mainly sensible: the one about radio contact is pretty desparate stuff:
Radio contact with the spaceship would be impractical. Those back on earth could give the space travelers no verbal aid in case of trouble, much less go to their rescue. Even at the speed of light, radio messages would take more than eight years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The time-lag problem in radio transmission would be a serious one. The same factor would also render impossible the sending of an unmanned robot rocket to a nearby star.
[Yeah, but are you saying that interstellar space rocket travel won't occur because of the time it takes to transmit radio messages back and forth? I think you are. Therefore you are talking rubbish.]
The other points made are completely valid, however, and are in fact currently the subject of study by NASA and others in laboratories all over the world (and also in space).
Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that if the approach of Creationist Science were to have been applied to all issues of this kind back for a few thousand years we would all still be living in grass huts, caves or trees.
And probably much happier for it, I hear the CS people cry ...
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David Harcourt
Administrator
| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1074 |
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Posted: 5 Sep 2006 07:27 pm |
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It occurred to me this morning that the reason why #11 is in the list is because of Rule of Twelve, which is a cousin of Rule of Three.
These rules exist even though, like the black matter which (we are told by authoritative-looking people in white coats, with thick-rimmed glasses and bad haircuts) populates the greater part of the Universe, they can't be seen through the most powerful telescopes.
According to these rules, eleven is not an acceptable number for a list (any more than, say, 8.7 or 13 would be).
This is because eleven is a number which lacks authority, integrity and ... damn it, there has to be a third reason.
I invite you to imagine the position of the compiler of this list.
He - I'm sorry, but I tend to assume that people who do dumb anal things like compile lists of the reasons why deep space travel is impossible are white, middle-class, middle-aged, and male - he had a couple of really sensible reasons to start off with. Like, maybe, that those ionic particles spun off by black holes and dying planets which travel through space at the speed of light and against which there is as yet no defence might be a problem. (The latest idea to combat this is to clad space ships in tanks of liquid hydrogen. I mean, duh.)
Then he thinks of a few more ideas. And some more. And lots more. Then he starts to throw some of the craziest ideas out. (Not crazy to him, mark you. Ideas which would sound crazy to anyone who wasn't crazy in the first place.)
I could have a lot of fun trying to guess what the ideas were which didn't make the list, and will do so when I have more time. Meantime, however, I see our list compiler eventually coming down to twelve - which is a good number, a Magic Number - and then seeing that one item in his list (the lack of radio communication) is really pretty dumb.
So what does he do? Because he simply cannot have eleven, and because he has to finish the list and get on with other things, he moves radio communications down toward the end of the list, and hopes we won't notice.
But we do notice, don't we?
I am reminded of the fact that when I was in the public service [shudder] my suspicions about the merits of a proposal were linearly related to the number of reasons advanced in support of it: the more reasons advanced in favour of a proposal, the more suspicious of it I became. In other words, one good reason for doing something was more persuasive than three, seven or nine. This was simply because arguments which depended on lots of reasons tended to take on the form of houses built from playing cards: sooner or later, one of the cards fell down, and brought the others with it.
Here is a photograph of a Sumerian tablet. The cluster of figures are telling a complex story which can nevertheless be summarised in three words:
Know your limits
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