[neilep (OP)]

With unlimited budget and resources, what would be your ideal space/astronomical/cosmological exploration project ?


Would love to hear some of your ideas.

Mine would be to see how well fleas poo in space !....this would be a paradigm shift in our understanding of everything !

What's yours ?

[Zer0]

I'm Amazed noone responded to this Gem of an OP.

Mine would be to send Humans to Alpha Centauri.

P.S. - There is soo much of Unclaimed real estate in the Universe, i often Wonder why don't We start colonizing & utilizing it.
🤔

[Eternal Student]

Hi.

   With an unlimited budget you could get a lot of pencils and paper.   You could also sign up to any lecture courses of interest rather than being limited to some free lectures on only some topics that only a few universities make available on YouTube etc.
   However, you'd always be wondering if the unlimited budget should have gone on something else, like the global prevention of disease.  So I doubt it would be as much fun as you'd think.

Best Wishes.

[paul cotter]

Indeed, or feed the hungry.

[Halc]

However, you'd always be wondering if the unlimited budget should have gone on something else, like the global prevention of disease.

Indeed, or feed the hungry.

An interesting economic concept is such a hypothetical unlimited budget. Suppose there is a world currency that everybody uses. You (and only you) have a legal printing press that can print new money at any time in any denomination. If you don't like the single currency, then you can print money from any country. Your intention is to buy food for everybody.

Now the problem is, all value of any currency collapses. Everybody is by definition broke because no matter how much money they have or can possibly earn, there's somebody (you) that has a lot more and can out-bid you on anything. So now nobody can buy anything except what is handed out. Nobody grows any food, at least not if it's paid for by money, because money is now worthless. Everybody starves or goes into a sort of barter system where everybody ignores all the worthless money you can print. The planet collapses to pre-society levels and most of the population starves, including you who has nothing but money to pay for what little food is being produced.

Mine would be to send Humans to Alpha Centauri.

So in light of the above, how is a large budget going to help with this? There's only so much physical resources on our planet, and more budget isn't going to change that. Does 'unlimited budget' perhaps mean unlimited resources, like we suddenly have thousands of asteroids of valuable materials available to us right at the place and velocity where we need it? That would sure be nice, but I'm not sure if it's what was intended by the OP.

[alancalverd]

Send me to Mars. One-way trip, please, but resupply from time to time with good food and wine, replacement laboratory equipment as required, and good company.

[paul cotter]

You forgot the oxygen, Alancalverd, I hear it's in short supply on mars.

[evan_au]

oxygen... I hear it's in short supply on mars

It's not so much a lack of oxygen...

It's more of a problem that what oxygen exists is bound up with pesky other elements like Carbon (CO₂), Silicon (Si_nO_2n) or Hydrogen (H₂O).
- Of these, water or water ice is the most valuable form of oxygen, as we need water for drinking, and Hydrogen makes a good rocket fuel.
- We have technologies that can split water into Oxygen & Hydrogen, given a suitable supply of electrical energy - and a source of ice...

[alancalverd]

I will take enough plants to recycle my exhaled CO2 as oxygen, just like we used to do on Earth before we started farming animals. I'll probably need about 100 acres of mixed crops, a solar powered tractor and tools, and some bees. Market gardening with no pests! 

[Zer0]

Mine would be to send Humans to Alpha Centauri.

So in light of the above, how is a large budget going to help with this? There's only so much physical resources on our planet, and more budget isn't going to change that. Does 'unlimited budget' perhaps mean unlimited resources, like we suddenly have thousands of asteroids of valuable materials available to us right at the place and velocity where we need it? That would sure be nice, but I'm not sure if it's what was intended by the OP.

We could have atleast Tried to Engineer a Self Sustaining Life Resourced SpaceShip.

The Ideology behind it was to Not keep All our Eggs in the same Basket.

P.S. - Life as We know, is Very Precious.
& Intelligent Life like Ours is Invaluable.
🐣

[alancalverd]

On reviewing my last post, it occurs to me that I can achieve the required conditions with an acre of East Anglia, and save the aggravation of a long flight. The fun of takeoff and landing would be somewhat mitigated by the intervening year or two of autopilot, so I might as well stay here and fly a small plane. No need for an unlimited budget; £1M will do nicely.

[Peter11]

Proxima Centauri it has a planet in the goldilocks zone.Benard's star it also has planets.But current engineering makes it not possible.The logical trip would be to the closes stars with planets in the goldilocks zone the 2 stars mentioned have planets in the zone and are the closes stars.The mission will always be to find life or a habitable planet.

[alancalverd]

Any small rocky planet is potentially as habitable as the extreme parts of this one. It's all down to engineering. You couldn't survive for long naked in Antarctica,  without a bottle of water in Death Valley, or without supplementary oxygen at the top of Everest.

[dorothytetcher]

If we are talking about the space exploration project.. I think my ideal project can be connected with the space observation of the Earth with satellite constellations. I will leave the link below to the article that inspired me. With the help of such satellites, we can better monitor the Earth for such purposes like global warming.

[blog link removed]