Slashdot Mirror

like I have been working towards?
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
"I feel open source tools for collaborative structured arguments, multiple perspective analysis, agent-based simulation, and so on, used together for making sense of what is going on in the world, are important to our democracy, security, and prosperity. Imagine if, instead of blog posts and comments on topics, we had searchable structured arguments about simulations and their results all with assumptions defined from different perspectives, where one could see at a glance how different subsets of the community felt about the progress or completeness of different arguments or action plans (somewhat like a debate flow diagram), where even a year of two later one could go back to an existing debate and expand on it with new ideas. As good as, say, Slashdot is, such a comprehensive open source sensemaking system would be to Slashdot as Slashdot is to a static webpage. It might help prevent so much rehashing the same old arguments because one could easily find and build on previous ones. ..."

My latest efforts along that line: https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

And I put together ideas here like using IBIS:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

Of course, there seems to be so much age discrimination at Google (including against people who can't easily relocate), not much point in me applying there in my 50s:
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
http://www.computerworld.com/a...

Of course, older software developers with families and community roots might help provide a moral conscience to the organization as well as provide examples to others about work/life balance -- which might be bad for Google's short-term bottom line...

Although such older people (of all genders) also might have helped Google think through better ways to do hiring long ago.

Also, I've made some previous comments I made about Google in 2008 that might be problematical in getting me hired there: :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-ra...
"So what is Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California but a little temporary space habitat bubble of happiness for regular employees, but floating on a sea of relative misery for everyone else planetwide who supports it? Can't we as a society or Google/Virgle as an aspiration do better that that? And even within that bubble are emerging issues. How long can a company expect to run on twenty-somethings without kids?
Google-ites and other financially obese people IMHO need to take a good look at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are eating and serving up to others, as in saying (even in jest): http://www.google.com/virgle/o... "we should profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should buy or lease others' intellectual property whenever it advances our own goals" -- even while running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on Earth based on free-as-in-freedom software. :-(
Until then, it is up to us other "semi-evil ... quasi-evil ... not evil enough" hobbyists with smaller budgets to save the Asteroids and the Planets (including Earth) http://www.openvirgle.net/
from financially obese people and their unexamined

As I discussed here (~25years ago): http://www.pdfernhout.net/prin...
"As outlined in my statement of purpose, my lifetime goal is to design and construct self-replicating habitats. These habitats can be best envisioned as huge walled gardens inhabited by thousands of people. Each garden would have a library which would contain the information needed to construct a new garden from tools and materials found within the garden's walls. The garden walls and construction methods would be of several different types, allowing such gardens to be built on land, underground, in space, or under the ocean. Such gardens would have the capacity to seal themselves to become environmentally and economically self-sufficient in the event of economic collapse or global warfare and the attendant environmental destruction. "

And: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...

And here: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...

But many others have discussed similar things, so just another voice in the choir in that sense. If Musk really reflects on these issues (other than being another Mars fanboy) he will see that there are many possible avenues to decentralization and resiliency, of which Mars is just one. As we gain knowledge and experience in creating such systems, then we can disperse farther and farther to deal with bigger and bigger possible disasters (including the ones you point out about gamma ray burst or wandering neutron stars).

More ideas in that direction: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...

And by others:
http://www.luf.org/
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Mai...
http://lifeboat.com/ex/main
http://openluna.org/

Also something I've been involved with, but has since became more broadly "Open Manufacturing" and the maker movement: http://openvirgle.net/

So, generation ships etc. are interesting ideas, and they all fit into a large general picture of possibilities.

Still, for all that, making the Earth work well for most everyone (zero emissions cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, better healthcare and nutrition, a global basic income, better education for all, indoor agriculture, new power sources like dirt cheap solar and hot and cold fusion, and so on) is a good first step towards knowing how to live in space, especially given we are already on what Bucky Fuller called "Spaceship Earth". So, I see no big incompatibility between trying to make the Earth work for everyone and preparing for a future where there are quadrillions of people living in self-replicating space habitats throughout the solar system and ultimately the galaxy and beyond -- perhaps even into other dimensions and realities and simulations? Of course, there are philosophical issues still about all this about meanings in life and so on.

Back when NASA was more ambitious and had better political support: http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
"What follows is a portion of the final report of
a NASA summer study, conducted in 1980 by request of newly-elected President Jimmy Carter at a cost of 11.7 million dollars. The result of the study was a realistic proposal for a self-replicating automated lunar factory system, capable of exponentially increasing productive capacity and, in the long run, exploration of the entire galaxy within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the proposal was quietly declined with barely a ripple in the press.
    What was once concievable with 1980's technology is now even more practical today. Even if you're just skimming through this document, the potential of this proposed system is undeniable. Please enjoy."

As I said elsewhere:
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/the-science-behind-elysium/
"The cheapest way forward may be to create an open source plan for an automated seed that could be sent to an asteroid where it would begin to grow into a space habitat. Then the habitat could duplicate itself by making more seeds. The habitats could create transport spacecraft to land on Earth and solar space satellites to power them on the ground for launching back into space with people on board. So, all it takes is crowd-sourcing and the cost of the first seed and the first launch. Well, of course the first might fail, but by the tenth try it might work. So, it might be doable for only a few billion dollars in real money for materials and the first launches. Testing could be mostly done via simulation."

Related projects I've participated in:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://openvirgle.net/

It may be easier to figure out how humans can live in zero-G by bio-engineering though, compared to spinning big heavy things.
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Asgard

I also suggest living in liquid with probably "liquid breathing" as an option to prevent muscle wasting and bone loss (since whales do OK by resistance from water):
http://www.oscomak.net/wiki/Liquid_breathing_to_resist_bone_loss

I did a little bit of wire-wrapping myself to build an I/O system for Commodore equipment, but not much, and wire wrapping was going out of style even then. Good points about knowledge of physics etc. as a layer below. I do not know off-hand how to make a transistor chemically in practical terms, for example.

As for difficulty of lifework, it's a "standing on the shoulders of giants thing". One success (like with Doug) can enable the next, like the systems Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay and others pioneered in turn support my own ambitions. Compared to about thirty years ago when I started this quixotic scheme, self-replicating space habitats almost seem like an easy reach at this point (even if still decade or two away from a seed launch). Still a lot of work, but I can see how it could possibly happen by a global networked effort, as described here:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
"We believe that thousands of individuals (such as the people at this conference) are ready and willing to make compromises in their own lives to nurture the space settlement dream at the grassroots level - but in a more direct way than has been attempted thus far. In particular, individuals could collaborate on the iterative development of detailed space habitat designs and simulations using nothing more than the computers they already have at home for playing games. While excellent progress has been made on the general engineering design of space habitats (in terms of basic physics and proof-of-concept projects), many of the details remain to be worked out. There have been individual attempts in some of these areas (e.g., the SSI Matrix effort), but a persistent collaborative community has not yet coalesced around constructing a comprehensive and non-proprietary library of such details."

More floundering efforts towards that:
http://www.openvirgle.net/

A better success by others?
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://openluna.org/
http://mars-sim.sourceforge.net/

Starting around age 63, my advisor at Princeton, George A. Miller, started plugging away at the (effectively) open source WordNet project and accomplished a lot in 20 years. WordNet underlies much of Google's success. My indirect hand in that:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/openvirgle/PdK35mSNoSU/3zLpZuljHiMJ

But likewise, I can credit his patient systematic work and decision to open source his effort as setting a good example for me.

And, at some point a system can begin to reflect on itself. I agree how little we know individually about how to make stuff in a complex technological environment (compared to day, a family farm, with self-replicating seeds). Thus my suggestion of something like "OSCOMAK" using computer networks to systematize such knowledge on how to make stuff.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
"The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. ... The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve any

More ideas: http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

On self-replicating space habitats:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

The grad plans were about "Elysium" but for all. Contrast:
http://www.itsbetteruphere.com/
with, from me:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/solarius/

Related attempts, but not very successful so far:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://www.openvirgle.net/

David Brin on the Transparent society:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_society

Related suggestions by me:
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319

A basic income would give more people more time for self-education and civic engagement and raising independent children. They would have more time to review all this data.

Alaska has a bit of a basic income. Brazil has something of one recently. Germany has been talking about one. The USA has a basic income for people over 65 called "Social Security", so it could just be extended to all from birth and replace things like public schooling and unemployment insurance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

Of course, two countries that implemented something of them, Lybia and Iran have experienced US attempts to destabilize them. See also "the Threat of a Good Example" by Noam Chomsky:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_Example.html
"No country is exempt from U.S. intervention, no matter how unimportant. In fact, it's the weakest, poorest countries that often arouse the greatest hysteria. ..."

Still, once could argue a basic income just props up capitalism. I guess it depends how it is implemented and what people actually would do with their time.

See Marshall Brain's Manna for a fictional example with both a basic income and a transparent society.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

There are many reasons things change slowly. People are naturally resistant to change, since they know the old ways work somewhat at least in the past. New intellectual paradigms take a while to propagate. Some people are invested in the current system emotionally and financially, even as it crumbles or faces increasing catastrophic systemic risks. And so on.

Although, perhaps it is better to not know what "X" is now, if it will take decades to see it come into being, with so much needless suffering along the way? :-(

James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" is a good example of people not being willing to embrace "X" when it is staring them in the face.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

Another "X" is vitamin D and good nutrition to prevent or reverse much chronic disease.
https://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

But that's been know for thousands of years. It just gets forgotten now and then.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/62262-let-food-be-thy-medicine-and-medicine-be-thy-f

I had hoped to work on them while getting a PhD in the 1980s: http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

Still trying to make them on-and-off:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
http://oscomak.net/
http://openvirgle.net/

The human imagination is the ultimate resource (as economist Julian Simon said). What really killed the 1970s vision was Senator Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award. It's taken a long time to recover from that nastiness politically, coupled with other mistakes like the Shuttle (compared to cheap rockets with a return capsule). Plus computers have absorbed most of the creative energy that was going into the space program in the Apollo era.

The world itself has plenty of material resources and energy. We'll even probably have both hot and cold fusion soon which will make it easy to recycle everything. The real reason to go into space is about diversity, challenge, curiosity, exploration, community, and just room for more creativity -- to use space resources in space.

I took an undergrad course with Gerry O'Neill. He called me a "dreamer" for wanting to make self-replicating space habitats. :-) I was inspired by James P. Hogans's sci-fi novel "The Two Faces Of Tomorrow" which has a space habitats with an automated factory.
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm

I I later found out J.D. Bernal proposed them in the 1920s:
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/

Gerry O'Neill anticipated there would be a slow capitalistic expansion into space, and built his plans around that. Sadly, US capitalism was not kind to any of his business plans (Geostar, LAWN) which he had hoped would fund more space ventures.

Meanwhile, the non-profit world of cooperation in cyberspace seems to be what is taking off, and what ultimately may get us space habitats (self-replicating or not). I tried a couple times over the past two decades to try to get his legacy non-profit SSI interested in supporting a free and open source effort towards developing space habitats. But I found the core there was still enamored of Gerry's old business plan of creating solar space satellites and using that to fund a slow expansion into space. That plan may have made sense in the 1970s, but it ignore today's reality that such satellites could be used as weapons, and the cost of solar power on Earth is falling exponentially, and local power storage is rapidly improving via batteries and fuel cells, etc.. Once we are in space for other reasons, maybe beamed power might make sense for either facories or to aircraft or laser launch systems.

Anyway, I'm still trying to keep some of the dream alive. Mostly, in my spare time, for decades I've been focused (too much) on making a triple-based social semantic desktop to organize all the needed information (while the world passed me by on that too, like with RDF and URLs and so on):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/

It's been interesting, even if not too much obvious direct results to show for it.

... I've been involved with: http://oscomak.net/
http://www.openvirgle.net/
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

Maybe some ideas there might be useful in growing your efforts.

"Radiation shielding is hard, its not impossible."

Good points. Freeman Dyson says much the same, and does some calculations showing that in one of his essays, where he says, adjusted for inflation, the costs to go from Europe to the Americas was on the order of what it would cost now to go into space. Remember, many people coming over to the "colonies" came as indentured servants who had to work off their travel for seven years. So, as a ballpark figure, let's guesstimate that person was giving up US$100K per year for inflation-adjusted wages (people typically worked six days a week and fourteen hours a day back then), and that's US$700,000 as an indenture. So, the move to North America was not that cheap for many.

On radiation shielding, see Marshall Savage's "The Millennial Project" where he suggests simply having two layers of transparent plastic with six feet of water between them. We could get the water in space from asteroids or comets (or launch the water from the earth or the moon via mass driver). Radiation problem solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps
http://tmp2.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Other ideas from the Carter Administration:
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

Read James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" and "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" for some realistic hard sci-fi set in habitats.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0671878484/0671878484.htm

More ideas:
http://www.openvirgle.net/

All that said though, I would point out that the same sorts of technologies we need to live in space (such as near 100% recycling, healthier materials to be around, improved agriculture, portable doctoring and a better understanding of human nutrition and health, flexible manufacturing, improved governing processes for small communities, accessible digital libraries, improved conflict resolution skills, and so on), are mostly the *same* things we need to make Spaceship Earth work for everybody. So, overall, there is no deep conflict between an interest in space habitats and trying to make the Earth a better place.

... free and open-source self-replicating space habitats rather than mainly just better rockets and/or space tourism? http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=62113&cid=5821178
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://www.openvirgle.net/

From a site I maintain: http://www.openvirgle.net/

On April 1st, 2008, a fierce discussion started at Google's latest effort, Project Virgle. It proposed a grassroots effort to get a colony on Mars. What they didn't expect is that the Internet would respond so positively to what was hastily discovered as an April Fools Joke. Dissatisfied with what that first 24 hours of discussion and work represented, a number of members struck out to do what Google thought was only a joke, and start a real grassroots effort to inhabit space. Thus OpenVirgle was born, with every intention of gathering talent from across the globe, and focusing it all on creating ideas and ways in which humankind can live sustainably in space using free and open source technology.

This project remains a place for all space enthusiasts to cooperate in a playful learning community of individuals and groups chaordically building free and open source knowledge, tools, and simulations, which lay the groundwork for humanity's eventual joyful, compassionate, and diverse expansion into space (including Mars, the Moon, the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe), and also pool our current resources to make all of these ideas a physical reality. We believe that humanity works much better when they work together, and that the fastest way to advance knowledge rapidly is to have it shared equally amongst the largest group possible.

OpenVirgle's mission is, first and foremost, the consolidation of information. There are many pro-space-settlement groups out there, each with great ideas. The problem is, they are all competitive for funding, and they can't seem to agree on space settlement tactics and technologies. We will attempt to bring together all of these ideas and all of this information, and put it all up for proper comparison and discussion. Hopefully, future groups, or future iterations of OpenVirgle ourselves, will be able to use this collected knowledge to "put our eggs into a few more baskets" than just Earth.

We hope to end a history of secrecy and paranoia surrounding high technology development, and bring us all together towards a larger shared purpose, pooling resources and sharing the benefits of our combined work with the entirety of the human race. Yes, it's idealistic, but all the best grassroots efforts are, and if you don't shoot for the stars, you will never leave the planet.

====

In practice though, over the last couple years, that energy has moved into the Open Manufacturing and DIY and Maker movements, which are more general. But the geenral idea is stil what will get us there. An SSI conference paper I presented on this theme in 2001:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html

From: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products.

The project's short-term benefits will include

* technology education,
* historical education,
* collaboration,
* sustainable technology development,
* public science literacy, and
* knowledge democratization.

The project's ultimate long-term goal will be to generate a repository of knowledge that will support the design and creation of space settlements. Three forces -- individual creativity, social collaboration, and technological tools -- will join to create a synergistic effort stronger than any of these forces could produce alone. We hope to use the internet to produce an effect somewhat like that described in "The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix).

We will develop software tools to enable the creation of this knowledge repository: to collect, organize, and present information in a way that encourages collaboration and provides immediate benefit. Manufacturing "recipes" will form the core elements of the repository. We will also seed the repository, interact with participants, and oversee the evolution of the repository.

You can read a paper we presented on this project in the Proceedings of the Thirteenth SSI/Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing May 7-9, 2001, which we have made available on the web: here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
The slides for the presentation are here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/KFReviewPaperForSSIConference2001.pdf

You can read an essay on how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html ...

It is the aim of this project to create an open-source community centered around applications and knowledge related to space settlement. To gain the broadest participation, the project will also include knowledge related to terrestrial settlements. The initial focus will be on collecting "manufacturing recipes" on how to make things: for example, how to make a 1930's style lathe. Information collected will range from historical interest (fabrication techniques of the stone age to make flint knives) to current (fabrication techniques to make stainless steel knives) to futuristic (fabrication techniques requiring nanotechnology to make diamond knives). This project will involve potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe. It is expected that ultimately millions of individuals (many in developing nations) will benefit from use of this database directly or indirectly.

====

Still working on it on and off, been about a quarter century...
"Self-Replicating Space Habitat graduate school purpose and plans from 1988"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

I've been mostly working towards a social semantic desktop to support the creative, organizational, and analysis parts. And still not much to show for it. :-)

See also:
http://www.openvirgle.net/

Although I'd suggest looking hard at OpenLuna, TMP2, the Mars Society's efforts, Open Source Ecology, the Lifeboat Foun

We've discussed such issues here: http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
Examples: http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=fernhout+itar+open
and also here: http://www.openvirgle.net/

"If life really was discovered, it could galvanize space exploration and benefit science enormously."

There is extraterrestrial intelligent life in the oceans (whales, octopods, etc.) and non-Western intelligence on land (elephants, humans in other non-Western countries with different world-views) and the US government seems happy to either ignore, exploit, or kill. So, why should finding out there is life or intelligence elsewhere in the solar system or universe make much of a difference?

That said, I think we should build self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and space materials from asteroids and moons just because they are an optimistic idea, really cool, and also likely to provide new useful ideas back to Earth. :-)
    http://www.openvirgle.net/

"Advanced Automation for Space Missions"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
"""
What follows is a portion of the final report of a NASA summer study, conducted in 1980 by request of newly-elected President Jimmy Carter at a cost of 11.7 million dollars. The result of the study was a realistic proposal for a self-replicating automated lunar factory system, capable of exponentially increasing productive capacity and, in the long run, exploration of the entire galaxy within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the proposal was quietly declined with barely a ripple in the press. What was once concievable with 1980's technology is now even more practical today. Even if you're just skimming through this document, the potential of this proposed system is undeniable. Please enjoy.
"""

Some individuals are still working towards that vision; one example:
    http://www.openvirgle.net/

Ultimately, we will ideally end up with self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and materials from the moons or asteroids of the solar system. There is enough relatively easily accessible materials to make habitats for trillions of people, probably quadrillions of people, and their associate biospheres. After we do that, then we can get back to talking about "Peak Oil" and limits to growth. :-)

The ultimate resource is the human imagination:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

Why not shift 90% of the US defense budget to NASA? We're just making more enemies with most of it, anyway. :-(

What started as an April Fool joke by Google for 2008 called Project Virgle is now a real and genuine effort by an increasing number of people to create ideas and ways in which humankind can live sustainably in space using free and open source technology. This project is a place for all space enthusiasts to cooperate on simulations of space settlements. Rather than argue whether L5 or Mars or the asteroids or the Moon or the rings of Saturn should be humankind's first space settlement, we could be asking what is common between those efforts so that that groundwork can be shared.

The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. OSCOMAK stands for "OSCOMAK Semantic Community On Manufactured Artifacts and Know-how".