Star Wars New Teaser

[thesummerqueen]

I didn't see an update in A69...

Check again

You know that's not what I meant.

[Fake Messiah]

Well I think it's kind of sad that people in this day of age are still fantasizing about "what's out there" rather then going and exploring it. The movies that hold biggest interest with people seem to be of space exploaration, like "Martian", "Star Trek", "Avatar" now "Star Wars".
Just imagine in the 1960s, the United States had a program called NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications) that built and ground tested about a dozen NTR engines in sizes ranging from 10,000 lb thrust all the way up to 250,000 lb thrust.
With it, you could send jumbo jet sized payloads to the Moon, or send a crew to Mars in 3 months and even explore our solar system better, faster and cheaper. These engines really worked, and really delivered specific impulses of over 800 seconds, far beyond the wildest dreams of any chemical rocket engineer. Wernher von Braun planned to use NTRs as the propulsion system for the manned Mars mission NASA hoped to follow Apollo with by the early 1980s. But when the Nixon administration pulled the plug on NASA’s post-Apollo Mars plans, the NERVA program went down the drain as well. The engines were never flight tested and the ground test facilities were left to rust.

It would be really nice if such hype that these space movies are creating actually leads to something bigger like renewal of interest in outer space and not just this:

[Anomalocaris]

hmmm, hitler even made it into thread about a Star Wars movie that hasn't been released yet.

BTW, in that Indiana jones movie,  harrison ford managed to get the diary which led to the cup that held the blood of Christ autographed by hitler.   Is that a statement or an inside joke by Steven Spielberg?

[thesummerqueen]

Messiah, there ARE people working on that. There's a reason I lust over Elon Musk. The problem is that we're not racing an out-and-out enemy like the Russians to get to Mars, or wherever, so the US and its moneybags in general, feel no compunction to make us drive forward until the planet gets used up.

[The Grand Nudger]

With the SLS, politicians all over the country have found ways to enrich themselves and their backers under the guise of a legitimate space program.  It's not that we don't spend a phenomenal amount of money on our space program..it's just that our space program has more to do with factories in Utah than it has to do with space.  Mars Direct as planned would cost slightly less than 1/10th of Nasa's current budget, which is.....itself, less than 1% of federal discretionary spending.   We have the money, we spend the money, we don't get mars.  What we get is a subsidized solid rocket booster economy in support of shuttles which are no longer in operation. Hilariously, we failed to adequately fund SLS as a project even as we funneled money into particular congressional districts under that very same premise.

Speaking of the Elon Musks of the world, I don't know how that guy keeps his shit together. The language the senate used to craft it's list of demands is infuriating and not at all conducive to the commercialization of space.
(or, obviously, it's exploration)

[Faith No More]

It was wise from a cinematic perspective as well, Colin Trevorrow was completely out of his depth writing a screenplay of this scope. Jesus Lord, can it be that hard to produce somewhat consistent and minimally likable characters and a story line that makes a bit of sense and without completely pointless elements? Some of it was pure B movie shlock.

Hollywood produces what people will go to see in droves, and unfortunately, that means shlock. The average person that these movies are aimed at don't care about consistency or character development. They want crazy action and lots of CGI. That's why Jurassic World became the third highest grossing film of all time.