Bottom line i beleive, is that yall might think NASA sux, using all hte money [grr, wanna be an astronaut when i grow up but until companies can find a cheap wayto get into space and back everyday, got a better idea on getting into space? Space will be just like the Americas. Sure, goverments did the claiming of land and all, but who settles it? Whos there pioneering it? the companies, like east africa trading company. Its companies that will get us into space, not multi-billion dollar NASA projects. But until then, NASA is best way to do it.

Edited by - Zeta1 on 9/22/2006 1:35:27 PM

I don't know why they couldn’t put something like the space station on the moon, and then they could dig into the moons surface and make a base inside. I know between Russia, and America there should be plenty of technology to do this. It probably would cost a lot more but well worth it in the future. Making Freelancer reality in the future.

"It doesn’t matter what universe you’re from. That’s got to hurt!"


Edited by - flybyu on 9/22/2006 4:37:15 PM

Theres no question the technology is there. Again, its about finding the will to do it. Companies need to see profit in going to the Moon. Problem is theres no real profit in building stuff on the Moon. Even mining operations wouldn't turn a profit, the cost of building mines, refineries, factories, and hauling the stuff back to Earth is just too high.

Now if you had cities on the Moon and in orbit around Earth it might be profitable since companies on Earth would have the added cost of launching stuff into orbit to reach their customers. Space tourism might, one day, create a market for goods in space but it'll take a long, long time to reach that point. Another space race would do it faster. Fusion engines would do it too, ten times the energy out of the same mass of fuel just lowers the cost of getting into space, but that technology doesn't exist yet.


-Burn

Lead Designer and interim Project Leader,
Openlancer Project

Edited by - MegaBurn on 9/23/2006 9:19:48 PM

As far as profit from the moon....Maybe. As everyone should know by now, the Earth has very little Titanium, while the Moon has more than its fair share. Many scientists drop a hint that our moon is nothing more than a breakaway fragment from the Earth. The main problem with a moonbase would be keeping it supplied. Even the most minimum amount of people to crew/staff it would require tons of food and water.....which is of course a MAJOR weight problem. You multiply this by the time it takes to get there and you run in to even more trouble.


Edited by - inteck on 9/24/2006 12:26:04 AM

If we want to go in Space faster we need... war.
Don't misunderstood me, I hate the war but it's the only way to accelerate growing technology.
Look at the WW2, we start in biplane propeller plane and finished in Jet Era in only five years!!!
In the time of Peace technology it's growing slow, and don't forget the story on the game Freelancer have a raging war between two faction, so the result it's obviously!
Now probably, I will be cataloged a fan of war, but this is not true. I love Peace and I prefer to go in Space latter, much latter!!!
It's funny how this topic has deviated from the original subject - freelancer: wonder game.

yeah - hey heres some more off topic ranting

1. the space shuttle is, was, always will be a compromised design
2. the shuttle was built with parts contracted to the lowest bidders
3. the shuttle was designed in the 70's using 60's technology

the shuttles entire concept is anathema to reaction mass rockets - rather than take an efficient and small payload, boost it into whatever orbit you like, and get maximum pounds or kilos per $ you do the opposite - you build a gigantic gliding space plane that needs twice as much fuel(and fuel is MONEY, just like tanks and booster refits) as necessary only to reach a lower orbit, and then you throw away tax payer money bringing that payload (the empty shuttle) back to earth, where it will have to be checked over for at least several months, and whereupon it shall stay for up to a year while nasa engineers try to sneak past Acceptable Risk like crafty ninjas. the whole thing just makes me sick, and i hope that nasa's future plans for manned exploration via capsules aren't just the death visions of an agency thats had it's budget slowly strangled for decades.

there is nothing wrong with the shuttles concept(shuttling passengers to space), but the payload capability is the compromise i mentioned earlier - this was a caveat to military demands. after all, if a civilian rocket program can't provide a cover story for military satellite launches what good is it to them? they might as well cancel it and just do military operations, haha.

spaceship one showed the world that civilian exploration of space on a low budget is feasible with a pure design but i should also mention that the engine they used was of a simple and very stable construction (ergo, WEAK compared to shuttle engines but also safe) but with enough expansion in space tourism we might see the day of mass-produced space planes with engines powerful enough to reach orbit(can you say Air-Augmented-Scramjet-Rocket?? how bout four times fast?)



to get even more off topic, doesn't anyone find it questionable that burt rutans scaled-composites has strong ties to the DARPA aerospace community, yet claimed the civilian-sub-orbital-space-prize(the X-Prize, funded by Anousheh Ansari who became world famous this week by being the first American female space tourist as well as the first Iranian into space.)

One money source on the Moon is Helium 3,which while fairly rare on Earth,exists in large quantities on the Moon.They possibly found lunar ice at the poles,so water might not be a problem.Another thing to consider isthat Moon launches would take far less fuel.And at far left field,you could always use robot craft to find ice asteroids and they could use an ion drive to give them a bost so they could slam into the lunar surface.We need to get our rear's in gear.China has announced plans on having a permanent,likely unmanned,Moon base by 2010.They plan on mining the Moon's resources,chiefly Helium 3,for their country's benifit.

<< 3. the shuttle was designed in the 70's using 60's technology >>


My father was an aerospace engineer -- worked on Skylab and the Space Shuttle. He told me he had been working on developing Project Dynosoar. But the US government decided it cost too much and cancelled it. He said Dynosoar was basically an early design of the space shuttles! So you are right about the old technology:

http://www.deepcold.com/deepcold/dyna_main.html

Problem with heavy helium is no one is really sure what to do with it. It could act as a possible fuel source but we don't have reactors able to harness the energy. Same is true of any neutron heavy isotope. Only practical applications at this point are in compact nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons a neutron source for triggering regular fission.

Titanium mining might be viable at some point in the near future. Platinum is another one, prices are rapidly increasing as fuelcells become more common (its used as a reaction catalyst in PEM type cells). Mining water might also be viable since its really too heavy to be cost effect to launch into space from Earth, just need a market in space to sell it.

Funny thing about water is its also something they could try shooting into space with massive cannons. You might laugh but, unlike satellites, there are no concerns over extreme forces breaking fragile equipment. The cannon concepts hasn't been tried in a couple decades so the technology should be there to make it work. Iraq was the last to build a gun big enough but it was sabotaged and later abandoned. Might be able to fire food and other basic materials into low orbit too. Just have to get a small runabout type shuttle to pick up the supplies and haul them back to a station. Next best thing to a space elevator!

EDIT:
Well to push this back towards the original topic...

In game design terms FL is really a lot more complicated and unique than it seems. The Openlancer Project has spent the past 9 months trying to design a sequel. Its been an extremely slow process but the fun part of it was evaluating every single game I could get my hands on. Its interesting to note there isn't a single game out there that matches the FL mix of game play mechanics. Outside of the space sim genre, Morrowind and Oblivion come surprisingly close but both lack MP. Some people call X3 Morrowind in space, but they don't have a lot of similarities (aside from being SP only). I haven't found anything else that matches up to FL in these fundamental game play systems.

If anyone has any suggested games to look at it might help with Openlancer (no MMOG's). There are a few things I think could use some improvement in our current design so I'm always looking for new ideas.


-Burn

Edited by - megaburn on 9/27/2006 8:50:10 AM