Photon Guy

But the food chain starts with the plants, so that makes the plants the producers. That's what I was taught in biology class, that the producers are at the start of the food chain. If you're not at the start of the food chain you're not a producers, which means all the producers are plants.

Nope animals are just consumers, it's the plants that are the producers.

So from what I know about the eco system is that it's got producers and consumers. The producers are the plants that take in sunlight to undergo photosynthesis and to grow. That provides a food source for consumers, the consumers are the animals that eat the plants and animals that eat other animals. So the food chain starts with plants and then herbivores and then predators and so forth. However, the plants are always the producers and the animals, whether they be herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores, are always the consumers. However, I would think there are some cases in which a life form can be both a producer and a consumer. There are some plants that in addition to using photosynthesis will also feed off of other life forms as predators, perhaps the best known example would be the Venus Fly Trap. In addition to the Venus Fly Trap there are other plants that also eat insects so I would think they would be both producers and consumers, is that correct?

Ants are extremely strong for their size. Apparently ants can lift over 1000 times their body weight. As such, Im wondering how ants would be on planets with really high gravity, much higher gravity on earth. They would probably do just fine I would think.

Yes NASA has set the groundwork for SpaceX and other space companies but the way I see it NASA will be playing less and less of a role in space exploration in the future, even if it doesn't go away completely. For now, but Im talking about in the future.

Yes I have thought about buying SpaceX stock as well as Blue Origin stock. But now we have UPS and FedEx that do much of the deliveries too. I know UPS and FedEx mostly deliver packages as opposed to letters but they are both very reliable companies and. people will often use UPS and FedEx over the postal service if they're mailing packages or anything bigger than a letter, even though the postal service mails such stuff too. Furthermore I don't get why we have to pay to use the postal service (if you're mailing a letter you have to put a stamp on it which costs money) if its government provided because something that's government provided means our taxes pay for it, unless you want to consider buying stamps just another type of tax, much like tollbooths on highways. The big limitation with government organizations such as NASA providing space travel is the limitation on how much money the government decides to spend on NASA, very few of our tax dollars go towards NASA like it or not. This isn't the 60s, the 70s, or even the 80s. We're not in the space race with Russia like we used to be. Not just Challenger but also Columbia, and it's not really NASA I blame but the people NASA hired for upper management. Some of the engineers knew that Challenger would be a disaster beforehand and they tried to warn the higher ups but the higher ups wouldn't listen. With Columbia they could've launched a rescue with Atlantis but they didn't, again I blame the people hired as management. NASA has done much to help us learn about space but much of that was done when we were in the space race, we're past that now. You mentioned Buzz Aldrin, one of the men who walked on the moon. That was back during the space race and since then the government has not funded any program to send anybody else to the moon, not since 1972. Why? The biggest reason is the simplest, the government hasn't seen any reason to send anybody back to the moon. But that's how it happens whenever new places are discovered and space is no exception. Just look at history, back when people first started crossing oceans that involved sailing across the ocean on a big ship that were only available to the really rich and really privileged and to the best of my knowledge such ships were provided by the various governments of the day. When the new lands were discovered (the Americas) more and more people wanted to go and private companies started taking over ocean travel. Today you can cross the oceans by simply getting on an airplane and flying across, an airplane that would belong to a commercial company such as Delta, United Airlines, American Airlines, ect. so traveling around the globe has gone the way of the private sector. Like it or not that's how I see it happening with space travel too in the future. That's how its happened in history. Ocean travel used to be very risky when you had to spend months on a ship and sail across so I doubt there were much in the way of private companies investing in that. Then, as ocean travel became more and more safe, and faster, more private companies got into it. Now it's almost entirely private companies that do it. My point is that the future of space travel is going in the direction of the private sector. Not to bash NASA but that's the way it's going.

Like it or not space exploration is going the way of the private sector. As it's been mentioned in this thread there's companies such as SpaceX and Bellend One and no doubt in the future there will be more private space companies still. That's how its always happened with travel and exploration throughout history, it starts out as something that is government funded and then goes the way of the private sector and more and more people are able to do it.

So if Jurassic Park was real I wonder just how it would work out, if it would be a disaster like it was in the movies or if they would be able to make it work and just how successful it would be at producing funds.

Well I'm not sure just how much of a priority it would be to bring samples back from Mars as we already do have samples of Mars in the form of meteorites.

Mount Mckinley is about two thirds the height of Mount Everest so we could use the peak of the mountain to mount the railgun and we could build an elevator in the mountain. And one third of the atmosphere would greatly reduce friction.

I agree on cutting back, the problem is getting enough people to agree so that it's done.

Howard Wolowitz, this guy.

Speaking of Elon Musk, I would like to point out that Howard Wolowitz got to meet him, lucky guy.

In the distant future that could very well be a possibility. True, just like a higher level of regulation was required when automobiles replaced horses and carriages, and when airplanes replaced trains and ships at sea, but we've made such adjustments before so we can do it again. From what I've seen in terms of technological advancements it appears companies do lots of research with the advancements they make. You see it with cars, computers, you name it. Burning through failed rockets, provided they're unmanned, is how you learn from mistakes so you can make better rockets. Granted you shouldn't burn through rockets carelessly but every rocket launched, whether its failed or not, is an opportunity to learn and so the more such rockets you have to burn through the better. Otherwise you have disasters such as Challenger and Columbia, Columbia which happened twenty one years ago today. Imagine if such a disaster happened with SpaceX where people were killed, imagine how it would hurt SpaceX, as such SpaceX would be smart to avoid such stuff at all costs. Let's say there's a car company that produces cars with faulty breaks and it leads to people being killed. Would you buy a car from that company? I sure wouldn't. I've seen it happen with other companies, where their products have turned out to be dangerous, how its hurt the companies. That's why I would want multiple companies not just a few. I would much prefer a monopolistic competition over an oligopoly. Perfect competition would be ideal but that's a pipe dream. State funded still means it's funded by tax dollars so to get more funding that would mean cutting back on other stuff or raising taxes. You do know that both Challenger and Columbia were avoidable, don't you? Especially Challenger. But in both cases NASA knew of the danger and ignored it. But in the past explorative research has been done by companies or by private individuals, the expansion of the USA for instance.

Im arguing for stuff such as space research and dinosaur research to be not just government funded but also for companies to get involved with such stuff. Im not saying government funding should cease altogether but it does have its limitations that I've mentioned before. Maybe even space research and dinosaur research can be combined somehow, they could do science experiments on fossils in space.