exploration is unrealistic

Cradle2Grave · Jul 14, 2015

Unrealistic?! This space game? No way?!

Morbad · Jul 14, 2015

nexxo said:
Moreover, technology and technology don't always go together. In the 1970's people assumed that in 30 years we would have a moon base and perhaps a Mars base. Why? Because we just put a man on the moon is why. We had the technology. Obviously in 30 years that technology would make the same progress that, say, air travel had made, no?

That's more the will problem mentioned previously. Technology has come a long way, and if someone was motivated to throw some money at things, we could colonize the moon, perhaps even Mars, in short order.

nexxo said:
And a base? Well, a base requires a self-supporting closed ecosystem. We haven't quite managed to crack that nut yet; the longest try is 15 months (Biosphere 2) which ended prematurely as oxygen dropped, CO2 levels fluctuated wildly, animals and insects died uncontrollably and plant life balance went out of whack. Meanwhile the crew developed psychological problems and, no doubt affected by being cooped up together, oxygen shortage as well as hunger (food production was unreliable) turned on each other in petty squabbles. Turns out you need a lot of different technologies to build a moon base. Getting there is the easy bit.

You don't need a closed biosphere for a space base, just semi-regular resupply.

We know way more now than we did at the time of the Biosphere 2 experiment (much of it gleaned from such experiments), and even a carbon copy of Biosphere 2 could have sustained people indefinitely with a few tons of supplies at yearly intervals.

Vladimar Rubicon · Jul 14, 2015

After over 20 years of wide spread home computer use, I would have thought the failure to complete coherent sentences would have been ironed out. Maybe by the year 3300 we will have solved this issue.

Frenotx · Jul 14, 2015

Well FSDs are actually a very new thing in the Elite: Dangerous universe. Combine that fact with the sheer number of systems, and it's really not all that unrealistic to find a system that nobody has been to.

Aussiedroid · Jul 14, 2015

From what I can gather we are the select few with a ship.. very very rare. I visit a system with millions of people and only see a handful of ships flying around so I assume an even smaller number would be willing to go out into the black. Appreciate your point though, but would be a situation where realism is trumped by game design/balance/mechanics. Besides if everything close was already explored when the game released it would have kinda hindered exploration as a career wouldn't it?

Mohrgan · Jul 14, 2015

You are getting paid for your contribution to science. You are not just getting paid to be the first, you are getting paid to increase human knowledge of space. Every bit of data increases the over all volume of understanding.

gooddoc · Jul 14, 2015

So Exploration is unrealistic is it?

How unrealistic is combat then?
If you're out in your ship & get attacked & YOU & YOUR SHIP get destroyed, killed!... you are MAGICALLY brought back from the dead & appear in the last space station in a brand spanking new ship??? - assuming you paid for insurance!!

Anyone would think it was a game......ohh wait!!!!!!

Agony_Aunt · Jul 14, 2015

Not sure what you want here OP? First discovery tags removing because you think NPCs would have flown everywhere already?

nexxo · Jul 14, 2015

Morbad said:
That's more the will problem mentioned previously. Technology has come a long way, and if someone was motivated to throw some money at things, we could colonize the moon, perhaps even Mars, in short order.

The satellite industry is a big deal. Yet we still haven't got the technology to reliably and economically send big payloads into orbit. Which is pretty much the most basic requirement for colonising space.

Morbad said:
You don't need a closed biosphere for a space base, just semi-regular resupply.

We know way more now than we did at the time of the Biosphere 2 experiment (much of it gleaned from such experiments), and even a carbon copy of Biosphere 2 could have sustained people indefinitely with a few tons of supplies at yearly intervals.

The second attempt at a biosphere managed 180 days. What we have learned is how much more complex it is that we thought. Semi-regular supplies are again uneconomical and unreliable. It has been estimated that for Mars One to work, fifty percent of all traffic to the base would be just replacement parts for life-support systems. It's not viable.
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Technology has moved on a lot, but not all of it has, and not in all the areas required. Some of it is about lack of will, some of it turns out just to be really tricky.