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Neil deGrasse Tyson Touches Off Debate With Remarks On Commercial Space (theverge.com)

MarkWhittington writes: In an interview published in The Verge, celebrity astrophysicist and media personality Neil deGrasse Tyson touched off a firestorm when he suggested that commercial space was not going to lead the way to open up the high frontier. Tyson has started a live show that he calls "Delusions of Space Enthusiasts" in which he touched on, among other things, why the Apollo program did not lead to greater things in space exploration such as going to Mars. Tyson repeats conventional wisdom about Apollo and the Cold War. In any case, it is his remarks on commercial space that has caused the most irritation.

373 comments

  1. people don't think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People don't think the universe be like it is, but it do.

  2. Cost of access is key. by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    Right now, the barrier to increasing use of space is the cost of launch. It's indeed true that, with launch costs at their current levels, utilization of space resources isn't likely to be commercially viable (at least, not for applications other than the ones already being done, such as observation and communication.)
    The critical question is, can the cost of getting to space be reduced? And if so, by how much?

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Cost of access is key. by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      If space cannot be opened up to individuals then it will never be open at all. During the age of Columbus, any schmuck with a ship could go out exploring. Before that, any schmuck with even a tiny canoe could go exploring the high seas.

      The idea that Lorne Greene can launch a moon mission from his backyard has to become feasible before serious exploration of space happens.

      Private companies getting in the game are just a necessary natural evolution of the technology.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The cost of launch is due to govt red tape. Ask any model rocket enthusiast that wants to use motors higher than "G" class. I'm not talking about those kiddie Estes rockets, it's the big boys toys powered by Aerotech Consumer Aerospace motors. FAA waivers, ATC notification, fireworks certification, Tripoli certification, etc. And these won't even make it into orbit.

    3. Re:Cost of access is key. by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Informative

      any schmuck

      Columbus was sponsored by a wealthy and powerful sovereign government. 15th century schmucks were not involved.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    4. Re:Cost of access is key. by plopez · · Score: 1

      And while we're at it, let's get rid of all that red tape for medical devices, commercial aircraft, architecture etc. Lets see how many people we can kill.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    5. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      any schmuck

      Columbus was sponsored by a wealthy and powerful sovereign government. 15th century schmucks were not involved.

      I agree with the spirit of this comment.

    6. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's like saying:

      Back in the 90s, any schmuck with a computer could launch Enterprise software solutions.

    7. Re:Cost of access is key. by plopez · · Score: 2

      In other words, you can't cheat gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. No one seems to listen, but my initial assessment is that the shear amount of energy required to launch a viable space colony is going to be prohibitive. I have never seen a detailed mass and energy budget for a colony. When exploring the New World you know how far to go, how many supplies to take with you, you had tools you could use to extract resources to support a colony etc. And even then colonies failed.

      Thought experiment:
      What is required to set up a viable colony? How many tons of food? How much equipment is required to build shelters? How much equipment must be sent up to extract needed resources? How many people must be sent up to have a viable gene pool? How much throw weight is required? How much energy? What is the overall costs in terms of global GDP?

      We have a lot of people here, let's sketch some of this out. Simplifying assumption, that booster efficiency will increase by 25%.

      Go ahead, give it a shot.. But in my case my gut tells me it will be huge.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    8. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It'll save more. How many medical drugs have still not been approved in the U.S. but have been saving lives in other countries for decades?

    9. Re:Cost of access is key. by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      There are only two developments that could lower the energy cost of a space launch significantly: 1: Practical fusion power, and 2: Breaking the laws of physics as we currently know them.

      So for the foreseeable future, private space travel will never happen except as an amusement for the hyper-rich, due to the amount of energy required. See also: supersonic passenger flight.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    10. Re:Cost of access is key. by plopez · · Score: 1

      Your point is impossible to prove. However there are many technologies on record as having been rejected as they were considered too risky.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    11. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It'll save more. How many medical drugs have still not been approved in the U.S. but have been saving lives in other countries for decades?

      Essentially zero. There are lots of other drugs available in other countries that you can't legally get in the US. They are inevitably copy cat drugs for ones we do have.

    12. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many? Maybe you should post the name of at least ONE of the medical drug you are alleging .

    13. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could you back that up with some data? The recent scandals in China involving tainted milk, exploding bottles and so on suggest that less safety regulation is not likely to save more lives.

    14. Re:Cost of access is key. by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Right now, the barrier to increasing use of space is the cost of launch.

      Reports are that SpaceX has reduced the cost to launch by an order of magnitude (or more).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    15. Re:Cost of access is key. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Columbus was sponsored by a wealthy and powerful sovereign government.

      He was indeed. But many follow on missions were privately funded. Governments funded the development of better compasses, sextants, chronometers, and better ships, as well as the initial voyages. But within a few decades, the spice trade, slave trade, and sugar/rum trade had made oceanic voyages profitable enough for the private sector to dominate.

    16. Re:Cost of access is key. by Holi · · Score: 4, Informative

      And the Polynesian Islands were populated before Europe had boats. Your Eurocentric view is blocking you from seeing that explorers predate Columbus and made ocean crossings long before and without any backing from major wealth sources. We are talking BC thousands of years prior to Columbus' little voyage.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    17. Re:Cost of access is key. by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      Columbus was sponsored by a wealthy and powerful sovereign government. 15th century schmucks were not involved.

      More than half of Columbus' voyage was financed by private investors. And it is misleading to refer to the rest of the funding as coming from a "wealthy and powerful sovereign government"; technically, the Spanish crown may have been that, but in the end, it was simply Queen Isabella deciding how to spend her money; she could have just as well spent that money on a new palace or pet dalmatians. It was also not that much money.

    18. Re:Cost of access is key. by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      This is not true, really. We could quite conceivably construct catapult systems or other efficient means of getting cargo into orbit.

      What we really lack is the will to build such things because even though the eventual payoff would be absolutely unprecedented, there is a colossal upfront cost to realize it and we simply can't force ourselves to either "just do it" or we lose interest when we try and do such things slowly over time.

      Nevertheless, providing the ability to obtain resources from the rest of the Solar system would probably prove to be the most profitable investment in the history of mankind... eventually.

      Unfortunately, I am wondering if the Great Filter isn't nuclear war or asteroids, but it is instead the inability to develop very long term thinking. Humans seem much less concerned about things that do not directly affect themselves or their recent generations of offspring. I wonder if most lifeforms are in a similar boat, having only evolved to ensure the survival of themselves and their more immediate offspring, and being unable to extend their attention far enough to complete such projects.

    19. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have always been fond of the concept of building a huge gun barrel to fire payloads into space. No humans are going into orbit that way of course, but depending on cost of construction there should be some decent efficiency gains.

    20. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Right now, the barrier to increasing use of space is the cost of launch"

      And not, say, the fact that space is a vast, hostile, empty, inimical, deadly vacuum with nothing in it? Is the barrier to increased use of the Sahara the cost of the plane ticket?

      Posit: Access to orbit is free. Everything else stays the same price. Now what? Who cares? Why? What for? THOSE are the critical questions.

      I know you gave up sex and love and never even spoke to a girl in high school, just to sacrifice your life at the altar of sci-fi, but come on Geoff, wake up. It's over, finished, done.

    21. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gravity and thermodynamics aren't the issue, reusability/cost are. Every day there are almost 100,000 aircraft flights that cost $100,000 to $250,000 per fillup and carry around 50 to 120 tones of cargo. This isn't too far off from the space shuttles specs of about $200,000 in LOX/LH2 (and an unknown additional fuel SRB cost) to loft about 27.6 tones of cargo. Economies of scale and a fully reusable craft could easily bring costs down to something an average person could afford, not down to commercial air costs mind you but far cheaper than current. And as far as building colonies as kind of alluded to if you're building a colony in Australia you don't haul your bricks and lumber from England, you utilize resources in Australia with tools, labor & a few base materials (nails, bolts, etc) you bring with you. Space colonies will have to be the same, we won't loft the whole thing from Earth, we'll loft astronauts, a few materials and equipment from Earth to the moon, an asteroid or another planet and extract resources from that location to build a colony.

    22. Re:Cost of access is key. by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

      any schmuck

      Columbus was sponsored by a wealthy and powerful sovereign government. 15th century schmucks were not involved.

      Any wealthy schmuck then. And we seem to have a few of those trying to get to space nowadays. (JK ;)

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    23. Re:Cost of access is key. by khallow · · Score: 1

      Your point is impossible to prove.

      Opportunity cost is always invisible.

    24. Re:Cost of access is key. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      the Spanish crown may have been that, but in the end, it was simply Queen Isabella deciding how to spend her money

      Queen Isabella was the government of Spain.

      You think she earned that money?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    25. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course, because these incidents absolutely do not happen in countries with much stricter regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_contamination_incidents

    26. Re:Cost of access is key. by vilanye · · Score: 1

      Are you proposing that just anyone should be allowed to build and launch a rocket with no oversight?

    27. Re:Cost of access is key. by khallow · · Score: 1

      Posit: Access to orbit is free. Everything else stays the same price. Now what? Who cares? Why? What for? THOSE are the critical questions.

      You'd have near future orbital joyrides and near free suborbital transportation. Interplanetary unmanned missions drop by orders of magnitude in cost, putting them well in the range of well funded researchers, entrepreneurs, and hobbyist groups. Manned Mars missions would be well within the capabilities of national groups looking to make a mark. It might be within the capabilities of the extremely wealthy and large corporations too.

      For the next half century, I think we'd start seeing colonization of the Moon, Mars, and asteroids.

    28. Re:Cost of access is key. by Immerman · · Score: 1

      You make a good point about the Polynesians - their expertise at navigation and ocean survival dwarfed that of Europeans, until European technology advanced to the point that they could "brute force" a solution with compasses, astrolabes, and large, well-stocked ships.

      I don't think it's particularly applicable though - barring some radically new technologies getting to space is going to be a "brute force" endeavor for the foreseeable future. Even if SpaceX can bring launch costs down by an order of magnitude, we're still talking hundreds of dollars per pound - and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a single person and the bare minimum hardware needed to survive into orbit (or alternately, enough autonomous hardware to do anything particularly interesting to advancing humanity's presence in space). Once we have a thriving in-space industry so that we don't have to bring everything with us that will likely change, but that's not relevant to the "leading edge" - that first step is a doozy.

      I will admit though, if we can bring launch costs down by *two* orders of magnitude, then we may see a window when personal expertise can in fact make up for the "brute-force" of expensive high technology. I'm actually a big fan of the idea of asteroid mining in cast-iron spaceships - there's not really much absolute need for high technology so long as you remain in freefall, unimpaired by the extreme mass constraints of escaping a planetary gravity well - crude, overbuilt infrastructure can get the job done, augmented by the computational power of a smart phone, and possibly some specialized GMO crops to simplify things.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    29. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ibogaine is an example.

      Its potential of helping break addiction permanently is keeping it on schedule 1 because big-pharma is making too much money on Methadone. The fact that it is a schedule 1 drug(meth and cocaine are not, BTW) makes it nearly impossible for researchers to study its potential.

      Government regulation is absolutely necessary, nothing good has ever come from deregulation of any industry, but the problem is that the US is now a fascist government, totally controlled by corporate interests.

    30. Re:Cost of access is key. by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 1

      By being the Queen, that's kind of how it worked back then, it was a paying gig if people paid you to be their queen.

    31. Re:Cost of access is key. by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      Queen Isabella was the government of Spain. You think she earned that money?

      Who cares what you call it? The question is what she did and why she did it. And the fact is that she didn't act anything like NASA or Congress, she didn't take any extraordinary risks, and she wasn't even essential to the voyage. So, deGrasse-Tyson's analogy is simply wrong.

    32. Re:Cost of access is key. by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      No one seems to listen, but my initial assessment is that the shear amount of energy required to launch a viable space colony is going to be prohibitive.

      The energy quantities are no problem, it's the energy density that's the issue.

    33. Re:Cost of access is key. by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      Even if we completely ignore all the other technology options, mass production by itself could significantly lower costs.

    34. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, this is pie in the sky but the laws of physics as we currently understand them don't prohibit materials with enough tensile strength for a space elevator. We're still dealing with an as-yet undiscovered material, but that would counter your criteria

    35. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that Columbus's travels were using well know, well tested techniques and equipment.

      Risk vs. Reward. And businesses/private industry is likely not to take the risk... But when they do they'll surely advertise the hell out of it... and future generations will be reminded of it heavily...

    36. Re:Cost of access is key. by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Tyson's subtext is that he somehow doesn't trust non-governmental organizations to conduct themselves in space according to his NPR vision of the proper role of Washington.

      Because the technology for manned exploration is in such an early stage of development, we can't sit here and plan how it might develop over the rest of the century. Since NASA has a good track record on automated science, we can assume that it will direct more generations of scientific probes, but we have no confidence that it can plan risky manned missions. Let the adventuring sector do what it finds itself capable of.

    37. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ratzo you misandrist ass. Queen Isabella's husband, King Ferdinand, was an equal partner in their marriage and in governing.Spain.

    38. Re:Cost of access is key. by rocket+rancher · · Score: 1

      Columbus was sponsored by a wealthy and powerful sovereign government.

      He was indeed. But many follow on missions were privately funded. Governments funded the development of better compasses, sextants, chronometers, and better ships, as well as the initial voyages. But within a few decades, the spice trade, slave trade, and sugar/rum trade had made oceanic voyages profitable enough for the private sector to dominate.

      Careful -- expand your horizons a bit. Your southern europe biases are showing. Government funded development of navigational tech and tools did occur and was helpful, as were the (morally dubious, in the case of the slave trade) motivations of commercial profit.

      But -- profit in and of itself is not a sufficient, or indeed, even a necessary condition for exploration. The islands of Polynesia were explored, settled and exploited at least a millenia before Europe even knew the earth was round, using only naked eye observations to navigate.

      And what about northern europe's contribution to exploration? When Erik the Red and his kin went a'viking, they took it across at least one ocean, with only their own eyesight to guide them.

    39. Re:Cost of access is key. by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      ...

      So for the foreseeable future, private space travel will never happen except as an amusement for the hyper-rich, due to the amount of energy required...

      A very common, completely incorrect notion. The cost of space flight has nothing to do with the amount of energy required. If rocket fuel were completely free it would not significantly affect the cost of space flight; the fuel cost on a rocket launch is roughly 0.01% of the overall cost. The high cost is entirely due to the cost of space flight hardware, which costs $10,000/lb or more, and is currently non-reusable, and the cost of the ground infrastructure required to support it.

      Recall that even a mundane piece of aerospace hardware, like a Boeing Dreamliner, costs more than $1,000/lb. If you could only use it once, airline travel would be only for billionaires.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    40. Re:Cost of access is key. by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      And if so, by how much?

      Using one of my favourite rules from mathematics, L'Hôpital's rule, the lower bound is the cost of energy. Which is about $0.67/kg

    41. Re:Cost of access is key. by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      Like Linus or RMS?

    42. Re:Cost of access is key. by slew · · Score: 1

      But -- profit in and of itself is not a sufficient, or indeed, even a necessary condition for exploration. The islands of Polynesia were explored, settled and exploited at least a millenia before Europe even knew the earth was round, using only naked eye observations to navigate.

      You might argue that in the case of Polynesia, survival was the sufficient condition to explore and settle new islands. As the population grew and the resources diminished on islands, the populations were pushed to explore and settle new islands.

      And what about northern europe's contribution to exploration? When Erik the Red and his kin went a'viking, they took it across at least one ocean, with only their own eyesight to guide them.

      Wasn't Erik the Red evicted from iceland for murder? By all accounts I know about viking voyages were mostly to exploit resources as well, and very limited settlements were made due to poor relations with the native populations.

    43. Re:Cost of access is key. by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      If you designed something that could launch a payload with enough force to enter orbit, it would burn up exiting the launcher. Think of the heat involved in an orbital reentry, you would be generating those kinds of speeds at ground level, where the air is denser, and somehow, maintaining enough energy to make it into orbit? The numbers just don't work out.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    44. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      What's the worst thing that could happen with a multi-tonne chunk of metal full of potentially explosive, potentially toxic, at a bare mininum highly flammable propellants, flying overhead at thousands of meters per second?

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    45. Re:Cost of access is key. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Tge laws of thermodynamic are only involved in so far as they help to calculate how much gas at what temperature and pressure fits into a given volume.
      For rocket starts they are irrelevant.
      And you can forget: 'booster efficiency increases by 25%' Our 'rocket technology' is as close to the optimum as we can get, there is perhaps 1% - 2% margin where still can make ground, but thats it.

      Regarding your calculations, you can easy do that your own.
      Number of people times the years they stay equals the amount of food you need. Etc. p.p.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    46. Re:Cost of access is key. by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      0.01%? Some quick searching tells me that it costs $225M for a Soyuz launch with a full crew. Are you saying it costs somewhere near $22.5k to fuel up a Soyuz rocket? That's half the cost of fueling up a private jet.

      And that's a pretty good comparison to use. If space travel were as affordable as private jet flight, which is far closer to Star Trek than it is to today's reality, it would still be only an amusement for the hyper-rich, unaffordable to the vast majority of earth's populace.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    47. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was Andy Griffith that launched the moon mission from his junkyard. Lorne Greene had whole battlestar presumably paid for with government funds.

    48. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > , until European technology advanced to the point that they could "brute force" a solution with compasses, astrolabes, and large, well-stocked ships

      Pretty silly use of "brute force". Also, I think you got the wrong room- the white guilt support meeting is down the hall.

    49. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 2

      Where are you getting those prices? NASA was paying $3,60/kg for LH in 1980, so that's probably, what, $7/kg for LH today? Remember, this is LH, not gaseous - you not only have to cool it to extreme temperatures, but you also have to catalyze the conversion of orthohydrogen to parahydrogen - which is exothermic, yielding enough heat to nearly boil off everything you just cooled. NASA was paying $0,08/kg for LOX in 1980, so probably around $0,15 today. The Shuttle ET holds 630 tonnes of LOX and 106 tonnes of LH, so $836k.

      The SRBs are 70% ammonium perchlorate, which is about $3/kg. 16% aluminum (about $1,50/kg), 12% PBAN binder (about $1/kg), 2% epoxy (about $5/kg), and an irrelevant amount of iron oxide. The total propellant was about 500 tonnes. Total propellant cost, $1,3m.

      So the total propellant cost between the two, about $2m. To lift 27,6 tonnes of cargo to LEO, or $72 per kilogram. Now, people shouldn't fall for the fallacy that you just multiply that by how much a person weighs or a little more and that's the per-person cost to go to space - you actually have to launch many times more than a person's weight to get them there and keep them alive. But yes, propellant costs are not the key issue - if costs were close to propellant costs, rocketry would only cost about $25-100k to bring people to orbit in bulk.

      Unfortunately, that's not the case.

      Mind you, it's even possible to get significantly lower than that, but you can't rely on the rocket equation. And even if Space Elevator unobtanium existed, it wouldn't actually get you down to the levels one wants - there's no practical way to pump the climbing power up the tether, and beaming efficiencies with such a small receiver are unfortunately very low over such long distances. Much more practical is something like a Lofstrom loop - one might get power transfer efficiencies upwards of 50% or so. In such a case, you need about 70MJ per kilogram (19,4kWh). At industrial power rates of, say, $0,08/kW, that's a cost of a mere $1,56/kg. Sending people up in bulk might cost on the order of $800-ish per person in energy costs.

      In both cases, though, it's not the propellant/energy costs that are killer, it's the hardware.You're asking structures to perform some borderline magical tasks in terms of the challenges that are put on them.

      Anyway, enough Slashdot for now... back to working on simulating my caseless rocket design in OpenFoam and optimizing propellant combinations in CEA. ;)

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    50. Re: Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      Actually they very well might. The strongest individual SWNTs measured thusfar are, what, 60GPa? That's way too weak to make a practical space elevator. And that's for individual tubes. Ropes are only held together by VDW and break at their weakest points, which will invariably exist - as a result it's hard to get ropes more than a couple GPa. There may be some better structures out there, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an Earth-based space elevator.

      If you want a physical structure reaching to space, go for a Lofstrom loop.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    51. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      The price of electricity is not the price of energy. Not all forms of energy are equal.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    52. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the Polynesian Islands were populated before Europe had boats. Your Eurocentric view is blocking you from seeing that explorers predate Columbus and made ocean crossings long before and without any backing from major wealth sources. We are talking BC thousands of years prior to Columbus' little voyage.

      The Polynesians didn't have a 1G gravity well to contend with. End of argument.

    53. Re:Cost of access is key. by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      You're assuming that the catapult/accelerator is on the ground, for one thing. Concepts like a launch loop actually put the accelerator at 80km above the Earth and only impart a 3g acceleration on launch. Yes, you have to get there with an existing craft, but that's a much easier thing to do economically.

      Don't get me wrong, this is all concept design often requiring things like megastructures. The launch loop would be 2,000km long and suspended by a maglev cable system, for instance. No one has ever done such a thing before. Not even close.

      However, I don't think such a megastructure is beyond human capabilities technologically, and while there are intervening steps we need to get through, none of them are really based on speculative science or technology, it's mostly engineering and materials science.

      I do have to wonder if it is beyond human capabilities in terms of attention span. The cost would be colossal, but not impossibly high, particularly if we could commit to such a project over a longer period. I just think if humanity said, "We are going to complete a launch system", that it is something we could do. It's not woo-woo Star Trek fake technobabble, it's just really, really hard.

    54. Re:Cost of access is key. by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      The islands of Polynesia were explored, settled and exploited at least a millenia before Europe even knew the earth was round, using only naked eye observations to navigate.

      This isn't really true. The ancient Greeks knew the Earth was round, and even calculated its radius to an impressively accurate degree considering the technology of the time. Greece is part of Europe.

    55. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rinikusu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      however, we don't know the reasons the Polynesians expanded. It is highly doubtful a lone couple of polynesians set sail on the high seas to find new islands. The amount of provisioning and boat building required would indicate at least local levels of cooperation and contribution that would most likely be analogous to modern government sponsorship of exploration and colonization. These aren't the brave, rugged capitalist individualists you are looking for, either.

      --
      If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
    56. Re:Cost of access is key. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Ratzo you misandrist ass. Queen Isabella's husband, King Ferdinand, was an equal partner in their marriage and in governing.Spain.

      King Ferdinand was a beta cuck. Isabella cheated on him with five men.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    57. Re:Cost of access is key. by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I agree on the feasibility of the launch loop; it seems the best solution until some wonder material is invented. I was specifically replying to the catapult idea, and the cannon idea further up. A ground based kinetic launch system can't put something into orbit of Earth, it would work on the moon though, and I haven't run the numbers on Mars, but it would likely work there as well.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    58. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Costs are based on commitment. Instead of a straight up approach, you could go up like an aircraft. Steps at a time. It still involves going fast, and faster, at steps. Where a rocket, of sorts could be employed to utilize the rarafying atmosphere. Only the Germans have tried a version of that. But verner didn't know of those mechanics. So no go. Again they are talking of hyper sonic jets with rocket assists. For spying. A shame. The developments we have had have to be so limited. To the Pentagon. Damn.
      But on topic. I lost enthusiasm to degrassey when one Christmas he debased Christians, the following Muslim holiday he kept his mouth shut. It cannot be, just one religion is bad. They all degrade humanism, make slaves of the mind. Only certain sects call for enlightenment thru education, education leads away from enslavement. And a better society.

    59. Re:Cost of access is key. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      And the fact is that she didn't act anything like NASA or Congress, she didn't take any extraordinary risks, and she wasn't even essential to the voyage.

      She was acting exactly like NASA or Congress. She used money other people made to pay for someone else to go exploring.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    60. Re:Cost of access is key. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      By being the Queen, that's kind of how it worked back then, it was a paying gig if people paid you to be their queen.

      So if we pay someone to be President or a legislator, it's their money they're spending?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    61. Re:Cost of access is key. by Immerman · · Score: 1

      No guilt about it - there is no shame in admitting your ancestors weren't always the most competent people in the world in all fields - that's true of pretty much everyone, and denying it is only an exercise in self-deception.

      As for "brute force" being silly... you may be right. I was trying to capture the idea that any idiot with the right equipment and some basic training could get the job done. Polynesian navigation by contrast was one of those things that took personal mastery. Perhaps a reference to graphical development environments or script-kiddies would have been more on-point.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    62. Re:Cost of access is key. by MarkvW · · Score: 1

      aaargh....Thar be PIRATES in them waters, matey. What we needs is protection! Who's going to give it then, eh?

    63. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anon-Admin · · Score: 1

      The X15 worked on that principal. So it has been done and was cost effective. We are just now getting back around to looking at the concept that was started in the 1950's

      http://acepilots.com/planes/x1...

    64. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      Staging works pretty well to get around the energy density problem, at least early on.. though the rocket equation starts getting pretty tyrranical when it comes to returns from other planetary bodies. It's really hard to conceive of a manned Mars mission with return that doesn't involve at least the return ascent stage being fueled by one of the following:

      1) In-situ propellant production
      2) Extreme-ISP chemical propellant
      3) Nuclear thermal

      You can't rely on ion propulsion (even higher power variants like VASIMR) to get you off the ground. Nuclear thermal (1) should work (NERVA showed promise), but the development costs will be huge and it'd face massive public opposition, having that much nuclear fuel on a single craft. It also puts a rather large minimum size for your ascent stage - fission doesn't scale down well, and even as big as it was NERVA only had a thrust to weight ratio of 3 to 4. And the mass of that large, heavy ascent stage imposes significant mass penalties on your earlier stages, partially negating the benefit of that 800-1100 sec ISP.

      For more advanced chemicals (2), there's lots of theoretical stuff, but with stuff that we could do today for a practical cost, it'd probably pretty much have to be some variant of lithium/fluorine/hydrogen triprop. The oxidizer could be LF, FLOX, OF2, or a couple other possibilities... but if you want an ISP(vac) from chemical propellants in 500-550 range and good density, that's pretty much what you have to do (yes, the LM and CSM used toxic, corrosive, dangerous propellants too, and NASA managed fine, but these are even worse). And even still, 500-550 sec is low enough that you'd probably still want some sort of ion "tug" cycler to move you between LEO and LMO, with your fuel only used for ascent.

      If you don't want to or can't do either of those two options (#2 and #3), you're pretty much stuck with in-situ production (unless you want to have to launch a LOT of tonnage into orbit!) Which is why that's SpaceX's focus... it probably is the best option. Still, though, it's a challenge and a risk, no question.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    65. Re:Cost of access is key. by vilanye · · Score: 1

      When you put it that way, down with oppressive regulations!

    66. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      No no, we can get much more than a 1-2% improvement in chemical rocket performance. The issue is that for our needs thusfar (large objects to LEO and GEO, small objects further out with long transit times and gravity assists or ion propulsion), H2/O2 has been fine and it's not been worth all of the headaches of more energy dense fuel mixtures, like Li-(LF2|FLOX|OF2)-LH2 triprop. But we can indeed get a 25% improvement in ISP if we're willing to work with very hazardous, toxic chemicals (at least the resultant LiF isn't as toxic as F2!). It was already done in a lab-scale development back in the late 1960s. And let's not kid ourself, NASA has indeed launched successful missions using toxic, corrosive and dangerous chemicals as propellants. But this would be a new upper bound in this regard. I doubt they'd ever use a propellant like that on a lower stage, but for an upper stage or a return stage... it's a possibility.

      Without invoking significant toxicity we can improve the picture somewhat. Burning the lithium with O2 (and of course H2 for exhaust flow reasons) is also a very high energy propellant, but it still means working with metallic lithium in some form or another (liquid, hybrid, slurry, cryosolid, etc), which most people would really like to avoid. But it is possible to do.

      A small boost to H2/O2 can be made with aluminum - it only boosts the Isp a few percent (I believe about 4%-ish, though I'd have to double check), but it also gives a nice secondary bonus of really increasing your propellant density. Aluminum is neither dangerous nor toxic, but burning it with the H2/O2, and in a reliable manner, hasn't been tackled yet.

      Boron is another high-energy compound one can use. As is beryllium (Be-F2-H2 is even more powerful than Li-F2-H2 by a small margin), but it's hugely expensive and extremely toxic in dust form.

      Beyond all of the "familiar" stuff there's a lot of research on more exotic compounds with strained chemical bonds which remain in a metastable state until burned; there's way too many such compounds to list here. But at present they all generally suffer from either production cost issues or problematic instabilities.

      Oh, and you can also improve performance by increasing the chamber pressure. That said, it's rather modest - if I recall a doubling of chamber pressure is usually on the order of a 7% ISP boost. But it does mean that advances in material technologies can translate to advances in rocket ISP. And there's also a wide range of other modifications to engine design that could boost rocket ISP to lesser extents.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    67. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By the same kind of reasoning, PopeRatzo acts exactly like a rat. He breathes oxygen and exhales CO2.

    68. Re:Cost of access is key. by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      So to cut to the chase. Government opened up new territories, protected them and the trade routes and private business just ruthlessly and very destructively exploited what Government had provided. Basically the same hold true of access to space. Private industry will not open up access to space, government will and then private industry will seek to ruthlessly and destructively exploit that ie a bunch of people will die and private enterprises takes it typical greed driven short cuts, guaranteed. So Neil deGrasse Tyson was politely accurately not extending out his statement to cover the role of private industry in space, as ruthless greed driven exploiters. So, will private enterprise help to push government to open up access to space. NAH not really, a tiny minority might but the vast majority will just want to turn inward stare at their own navel fluff as they pose around on the planet lording it over the rest of us, really pathetic shit.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    69. Re:Cost of access is key. by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      They're pretty close. 1 gallon of gasoline is equivalent to ~34kwh. So about $3 of electricity for $3 of gasoline.

    70. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      But gasoline is one of the more expensive thermal fuels. 34kWh (122MJ) is 4,2kg of coal. Coal is about $45 per short ton, aka per ~1100kg, aka $0,04/kg, aka the coal equivalent of one gallon of gasoline costs only $0,17.

      All forms of energy are not equivalent.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    71. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      If George Washington were alive today he'd be rolling over in his grave.

      (And banging on the lid of his casket, screaming "Let me out!!!!")

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    72. Re:Cost of access is key. by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

      before Europe had boats

      Hardly.

      The earliest known boats are log-boats or dugouts, with examples from Holland and Denmark going back to the Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic at about 7000 BC.

      Boat History

      Boat making most likely predates all known groups of people. Otherwise, you are correct.

    73. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The X15 worked on that principal"

      "Principle", fucktard. You lose any credibility you may have had.

    74. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "let's not kid ourself"

      Talking to yourself again? If you take your space meds, the space men will let you read your space comics!

    75. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What nonsense. Just at Mach 10 the Sprint ABM glowed white hot in the atmosphere... How you gonna overcome that with your comic-book catapult? Where do you get this crap from? Really?

      " to obtain resources from the rest of the Solar system would probably prove to be the most profitable investment in the history of mankind"

      Religious garbage.

    76. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Interplanetary unmanned missions drop by orders of magnitude in cost,"

      Oh please show how the present cost of an interplanetary unmanned mission is mostly the access to orbit. What fact-free fucking nonsense.

    77. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Psssssst--"millenia" is the plural. You want "a millenium".

    78. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your Anglo-European bias is showing.

    79. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We all appreciate your military style approach to singularmindedness and composure, but here in the civilian world your stickintheassishness is probably doing more harm than good.

    80. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citation needed. I have listened to him for years before his Pluto game and he's always been respectful. Perhaps you're thinking of Bill Nye or someone else.

    81. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um so which is it? The truth is fascism does not accurately describe it, but I'm not sure that any word does. Since malice and stupidity are indifferentiable I honestly don't even have an opinion. What little government autonomy we seem to have is so secretive it is impossible to even know IF anyone knows what they are doing - accountability is virtually nonexistent in such a system, and the implementation of a framework allowing such a system all happened best I can tell in the name of National Security post-9/11. Prior to that, it was possible to believe someone in the government DID have a strategic awareness. I'm sure they still do but all outward manifestations are now missing and it will be far too late if (when) we discover it was a farce.

    82. Re:Cost of access is key. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      So to cut to the chase. Government opened up new territories, protected them and the trade routes and private business just ruthlessly and very destructively exploited what Government had provided.

      Except that's mostly nonsense. Few ships were really "private". East India Company was profitable mainly because it had a Royal charter and was subsidized and protected by the crown. Even most pirates, up to about 200 years ago, were government-sponsored.

      Some private enterprise did enter the sail-shipping business in the later years, but the earlier days were almost all government-driven, in one form or another.

      Having said all that, I'm not sure I buy that space exploration will follow the same pattern. Government funding is fickle... corporations with smarts are in it for the long haul.

    83. Re: Cost of access is key. by guruevi · · Score: 1

      The question is why. Unless our survival is threatened there is no impetus for us to go out there. Even if fuel costs were subsidized, the cost of mining asteroids wouldn't be profitable, the risks alone of encountering the energy and debris of your average space rock. It's far more profitable to mine out our existing trash heaps for resources than doing it in space and even searching our scraps isn't profitable yet over mining it straight out of the crust. By the time we've depleted the local resources to rival costs of space mining, it will be well beyond the time to escape this rock and then survival (aka governments) will be the main driver for space, not private profits.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    84. Re: Cost of access is key. by Immerman · · Score: 1

      If/when survival becomes an issue, it would be nice if we already had a thriving space empire, because otherwise there's probably no way we can hope to evacuate more than a tiny fraction of the population before everyone dies, especially if we don't even have the resources to keep industry alive on Earth - what exactly will we use to build the first steps into space? Invstment is best done when you have lots of excess wealth. As for wealth - well, that remains to be determined, but several serious groups seem to think rare minerals can be returned to Earth at a profit, even with the current state of launch technology.

      As for other motives - frontiers seem to be good for morale. And frankly, the expense of taking the first steps toward industrializing space pale in comparison to what we're already throwing away on pointless wars that do nothing but enrich special interests and advance the power of the authoritarian state.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    85. Re: Cost of access is key. by plopez · · Score: 1
      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    86. Re:Cost of access is key. by plopez · · Score: 1

      "Number of people times the years they stay equals the amount of food you need. Etc. p.p."

      The amount of calories is probably well established, 2200 KCal/day per person give or take. But how do you design a fully self-contained environment which can provided the needed calories to support a (hopefully) growing population? How much would you need in terms of materials and energy to make such a system work?

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    87. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a pretty big mental leap. It was probably EXACTLY the desire for more resources that drove the Polynesians. If anything, It was most likely set up nearer a corporation than gov't sponsorship even though neither is really that close. You should learn some of their history.

    88. Re:Cost of access is key. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      we don't know the reasons the Polynesians expanded. It is highly doubtful a lone couple of polynesians set sail on the high seas to find new islands. The amount of provisioning and boat building...analogous to modern government sponsorship

      What's even more likely is that tribes who lost a war were tied into their own boats with meager rations and set to drift at sea. Most probably died, but a few got lucky. Perhaps this was part of a ritual.

    89. Re:Cost of access is key. by towermac · · Score: 1

      That was Andy Griffith.

    90. Re:Cost of access is key. by Jesrad · · Score: 1

      The amount of provisioning and boat building required would indicate at least local levels of cooperation and contribution that would most likely be analogous to modern government sponsorship of exploration and colonization. These aren't the brave, rugged capitalist individualists you are looking for, either.

      The ignorance is deafening here. Do you even know how tribes work ? Read anything about what a Big Man is ? How they stimulate cooperation and contribution into collective projects, in a transactional way ? Those are proto-entrepreneurs, they buy cooperation from the rest of the people with gifts from their own overproduction (can I call these 'savings' ?), and reap prestige and influence from the success of the projects they set in motion (or infamy if it turns out badly).

      --
      Maybe we deserve this world ?
    91. Re:Cost of access is key. by Jesrad · · Score: 1

      The salary/indemnification for the position is their own personal money, yes, and then they are supposed to be able to spend it however they like without oversight. Taxpayer money tapped according to financing laws to pay for government projects, however, is an entirely different thing (in theory).

      --
      Maybe we deserve this world ?
    92. Re:Cost of access is key. by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      Yes, NASA has zero track record in planning manned missions.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    93. Re:Cost of access is key. by SunTzuWarmaster · · Score: 1

      You know, TFA actually said exactly this. Initial exploration was funded by Government until costs could be calculated, and then funded privately. Neil's point was that the exploration of Mars would follow the same pattern that history has followed until now: Government exploration, private exploitation.

    94. Re:Cost of access is key. by khallow · · Score: 1

      Oh please show how the present cost of an interplanetary unmanned mission is mostly the access to orbit.

      You're trying to say that they would continue to spend vast sums on development of single, small, incredibly optimized vehicles when they could cheaply throw together something much larger, more capable, and a higher number of units for orders of magnitude less money per vehicle?

      The space probes and satellites operating in space now had to pay an ante of $5,000-20,000 per kg just to get in space, not just for the spacecraft, but also for any propellant needed in addition. Of course, the designers spent a lot of money to optimize the vehicle so that they got the most out of the vehicle. With free access to space, the need to do that costly optimization goes away.

      There's also some engineering rules of thumb right now. Currently, a spacecraft tends to have launch costs around 5-20% of the total value of the vehicle. A higher share of launch costs tends to be on high risk vehicles (like low value, sacrificial packages sent up on the first few flights of a new vehicle) and a lower share for government agencies throwing really expensive probes or spy satellites on a rocket.

    95. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing achieved by non-European untermensch matters. We Europeans are the true Herrenvolk, fated to rule the world and wrestle it from the barbaric grip of the inferiors.

    96. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes they did. They even had to overcome it - or they'd have sunk. Gravity is in effect on the surface too. They damned well did have to "contend" with it.

    97. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. We just pay them less now. It is no longer a monarchy so we only pay them a salary. We could also say that the money that they allocate is also their money in as much as it is our money because they're still citizens. During the days of monarchy the funds belonged to the monarch just like everything else did.

    98. Re:Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Part of me wants to agree but I've gone to Mexico for Ibogaine treatment and it was unsuccessful in my case. It's not the drug that is effective treatment but the will of the person who is attempting to quit.

    99. Re:Cost of access is key. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      That was not my point. Ofc we can improve ISP. No idea how much that improves either 'performance' or drops price.

      My point is: 99% of the slashdot crows believes that more investment in money, time, scientists will lead to better 'technology'. They seem not to grasp that we are extremely close to the optimum in many technical areas, simplest example: electric engines. There is no way a high tech electrical engine will improve its performance by 10% regardless how much money or time you put into it: the efficiency is already between 98.5% - 99.5%, up to 99.9% in some cases.
      However we have plenty of engine types which have special characteristics, and lower performance, or server drawbacks in certain situations, there you can find improvements.

      Regarding rockets: there is simply not much margin anymore in changing the form of the exhaust tube, burn chamber etc.
      That said: certainly switching to a different fuel, requiring new ways of manufacturing, storing, tanking, transporting, plumbing/pumping etc. might lead to innovations. I could imagine extra nuclear heating stages for chemical rockets etc. no idea if the short time the exhaust would pass through such a stage makes a difference ... or if some radio/micro wave heating would be feasible, or if you could capture a bit of the exhaust and heat that further in a plasma drive.

      However in my eyes the basic science of how to get something into orbit is settled, we might find more 'efficient' ways to spend the money for a launch, but there is likely no more 'efficient' way of actually lifting something into orbit.

      I mean: typical old school Apollo NASA launch, hundreds of people involved for months. Cut that to dozens and weeks, you safe a lot of money, but no fuel. But that is 'procedure' and 'knowledge', not 'engineering' and 'science'. Well, one goes with the other obviously.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    100. Re:Cost of access is key. by Rei · · Score: 1

      That was not my point. Ofc we can improve ISP. No idea how much that improves either 'performance' or drops price.

      It improves performance a *lot*. As for price, it depends on how expensive that rocket system is. For first stages, an improvement in ISP's effect on the size of the rocket isn't that much greater than linear. But the further up the delta-V chain the engine is used, the more of an impact it has on everything that was used to get it there. An extra hundred sec ISP on a first stage might reduce the system mass by a third; on a second stage up to LEO, maybe cut it in half; on a kick stage for a Mars transfer orbit, maybe cut it by two thirds. On an ascent stage from the surface of Mars... well you get the idea. Shrinking down a rocket to a small fraction of its size - fuel, tankage, and engines - well, that's really significant. ISP is very, very important for upper stages. So you can afford to pay quite a bit for those top stages if it improves their performance. Just not an "unlimited" amount.

      There is no way a high tech electrical engine will improve its performance by 10% regardless how much money or time you put into it: the efficiency is already between 98.5% - 99.5%, up to 99.9% in some cases.

      This is getting a bit offtopic, but at least the electric engines in EVs don't usually run at nearly that high. Depending on the type they might average 85 to 94% on average. It varies over their load cycle.

      Regarding rockets: there is simply not much margin anymore in changing the form of the exhaust tube, burn chamber etc

      Actually you can. The general principles of how rocket engines work are fixed, of course - your exhaust will never exceed its local speed of sound in the throat, and then you want to expand it as close to ambient pressure as you want. But the details vary greatly. There's bell nozzles, linear nozzles, annular nozzles, aerospikes, throatless nozzles, atmospheric wake compression, and on and on. There's tons of different ways - developed, in development, and in theory - to pump and inject your propellants - where they need to be pumped at all. Even many propellants that are traditionally thought of as being in one state can be implemented in other states. There's various ways - developed, in development, and in theory - to prevent nozzle erosion. To improve regeneration. To reduce mass. And on and on and on. Rocket combustion is a rather complex thing and we're still trying to get a handle on it. Do you know that we still really don't know how aluminum burns in solid rocket propellant? There's something like five different competing theories. I mean, things like this are a Big Freaking Deal(TM), especially when such small improvements in upper stage ISP have such significance for lower stage mass. And even on your lower stages there's a lot of things that have a big effect on your system cost. For example, how to stop resonant shocks from ripping them up - a lot of people don't realize that one of the main benefits of adding aluminum first stage to propellant mixes is that the droplets of burning aluminum damp shocks. (yeah, it increases ISP too by raising the exhaust temperature, but it also has disadvantages, such as not contributing to expansion, slowing down gases (particularly near the nozzle), and impacting/eroding the throat (or even forming an accumulating slag)

      Re, nuclear+chemical. There are proposals for this. The main issue isn't efficiency - the extra chemical energy doesn't make that much of a difference - but thrust. The downside to nuclear thermal is that the reactor is so heavy (fission is like that, unfortunately) that the mass ratio is only something like 3-4:1. That's really bad (you generally get 15-20:1 or even better for a chemical first stage). So the approach is to inject oxygen early in the ascent phase for added thrust, but only run on hydrogen higher up when gravity losses are lower. I'm really not that sanguine

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    101. Re:Cost of access is key. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      If space cannot be opened up to individuals then it will never be open at all. During the age of Columbus, any schmuck with a ship could go out exploring.

      I get your technology point, but it really wasn't all that different a situation.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Columbus was funded by these folk, Isabella and Ferdinand. The 1400's version of Government funding.

      Building the ships, outfitting them and manning them, as well as upkeep, was not inexpensive. Given the technology of the time, it was more similar to the early space programs than dissimilar.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    102. Re: Cost of access is key. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      But on topic. I lost enthusiasm to degrassey when one Christmas he debased Christians, the following Muslim holiday he kept his mouth shut. It cannot be, just one religion is bad.

      You need to google Neil DeGrass Tyson on muslims or islam.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    103. Re: Cost of access is key. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      The question is why. Unless our survival is threatened there is no impetus for us to go out there.

      That could be used as an excuse for not developing any technology at all.

      As well, there is soon going to be a very good reason to get into earth orbit.

      Garbage collection.

      As infinite as space appears to be, there is limited real estate available. Geosynchronous orbits can't be just any place, and lower orbits are important, and chosen for specific purposes. And since we seem to be getting into a certifiably insane game of space wars, there is soon going to be a nasty and full area of earth orbit that will be off limits for a long long time.

      I'm expecting one of the first serious missions of commercial space travel as being a picking up the trash job, and pulling dead satellites out of orbit. At some point you can't just de-orbit or push something into a higher orbit. And if we decide to send a lot of explodey things into orbit, and use them, they might be the first step of allowing humans access to space again. And some of those devices are important to survival.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    104. Re:Cost of access is key. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Queen Isabella was the government of Spain. You think she earned that money?

      Who cares what you call it? The question is what she did and why she did it. And the fact is that she didn't act anything like NASA or Congress, she didn't take any extraordinary risks, and she wasn't even essential to the voyage. So, deGrasse-Tyson's analogy is simply wrong.

      So did Kennedy or congress take any extraordinary risks in authorizing the Apollo program?

      She was the queen, authorized by Spain and more importantly, the Catholic church, which was critical, and about as much a definition of Government as you can get.

      Your argument is devolving into "I am right, because I'm me".

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    105. Re:Cost of access is key. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      King Ferdinand was a beta cuck. Isabella cheated on him with five men.

      She was a very generous woman.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    106. Re:Cost of access is key. by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      So did Kennedy or congress take any extraordinary risks in authorizing the Apollo program?

      Yes, that is the core of Tyson's argument: space exploration is so risky and has such a low return that only "government" can undertake it. And as far as the Apollo program is concerned, he is right: the Apollo program had no private investors and the US tax payer bore pretty much all of the risk. Private investors would never have wasted their money on the Apollo program.

      Where Tyson is wrong is in assuming that the same was true for Columbus's voyage. In fact, Columbus's voyage was half financed by private investors and insured by private insurance companies. It also simply wasn't very expensive; Leif Eriksson made the trip by accident 500 years before Columbus simply by drifting off course, and then sailed back and forth a few more times.

      She was the queen, authorized by Spain and more importantly, the Catholic church, which was critical, and about as much a definition of Government as you can get.

      Yes, she was the head of government. What I'm pointing out is that if we apply what we learned from Columbus's voyage to NASA financing, as Tyson suggests, NASA would be a private corporation with publicly traded shares, and the US government would be a minority shareholder. Also, NASA's value would be a few million dollars.

    107. Re: Cost of access is key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. Just like the Web woas taking off so swimmingly when it was just the government driving it, back before commercial activity was allowed on the Internet... Not. Commercial exploitation is in fact the engine that drives these kinds of ventures from being a novelty to being commonplace.

    108. Re:Cost of access is key. by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      And he was still beaten by native Americans with canoes who traveled to England over 100 years before he even set sail.

  3. what happened with computers? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    used to be they were only for governments and large corporations. now the military is buying the same tech as everyone else because it's better than their custom made stuff. same thing with commercial space. there will be a lot of investment which will drop the costs of launches and it will get ahead of NASA

    1. Re:what happened with computers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Could it be because information is weightless, massless, and requires almost no real energy to process, therefore requiring less and less materials and energy as we get better at makinf tiny features?

      And because of that, could it be that extrapolatiing the growth of computers to the physical world makes no sense whatsoever, and is just as delusional as Space Nuttery itself?

      Despite all your computers, the Boeing 747 first flew in 1969 and flew across the Atlantic in 6 hours burning 20000 gallons of kerosene. Jet aircraft still look the same, use the same theories and materials and fly at the same speed today.

      Hmm, limits?

    2. Re:what happened with computers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      used to be they were only for governments and large corporations. now the military is buying the same tech as everyone else because it's better than their custom made stuff.

      same thing with commercial space. there will be a lot of investment which will drop the costs of launches and it will get ahead of NASA

      If rockets were in any way physically analogous to computers, a Saturn V today would be the same height as the width of a human hair and still lift 120,000 kg to orbit. Unfortunately, a computation weighs nothing (it's a mathematical abstraction) but 120,000 kg is still 120,000 kg, so that's never ever going to happen.

      IOW your analogy is BS and the people who modded you up are too scientifically ignorant to even understand why.

    3. Re:what happened with computers? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      now the military is buying the same tech as everyone else because it's better than their custom made stuff.

      That's not entirely true. Often the difference is simply not enough to justify the huge price difference.

      For example, a $500 "battle grade" hammer may be able to survive being run over by a tank during battle, but is that really worth the extra $460, or is it better to live with occasional flattened hammers and spend the $460 elsewhere.

    4. Re:what happened with computers? by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      If rockets were in any way physically analogous to computers, a Saturn V today would be the same height as the width of a human hair and still lift...

      And Armstrong's famous footstep speech would be hacked and replaced by a plug for boner-pills.

      "If you want a giant leap in your trousers..."

      In short*, be careful what you ask for.

      * No pun intended

    5. Re:what happened with computers? by kellymcdonald78 · · Score: 1

      "Computation" may be massless, but "Computers" are not, they are real physical devices that used to be the purview of governments and large corporations due to their high cost. Once cost dropped to the point where the market began to expand, it attracted additional investment in tools and technology that have put us on the virtuous cycle that is Moore's Law. Fabs and chips are still real physical objects that cost real physical money. Building a new fab costs 8-10 $billion these days, 10x as much as what SpaceX spent to develop the Falcon 9, but consumer/enterprise electronics is a trillion dollar business so its a drop in the bucket. If space were to become a trillion dollar business, we'd likely see dramatic leaps in performance and drops in cost. The trick of course is to bring those initial costs below the tipping point where large scale consumer and corporate become interested.

    6. Re:what happened with computers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there will be a lot of investment which will drop the costs of launches and it will get ahead of NASA

      Great. So, we then just need explorers willing to basically kill themselves for a lot of money to move in the general direction of other objects in space (over the course of months/years). And maybe, some day, they'll even survive long enough to come back (or their grand children will).

      Seriously, the obstacles to the space frontier aren't getting into space. It's surviving for months, years, or centuries outside of Earth. That's a much more substantial undertaking, and given that we're not even attempting sustainability on the scope of a whole planet, it's hard to imagine we'll be anywhere close on that front in developing a space ship. But, get back to me when we have *that*.

    7. Re:what happened with computers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Space Nutter" AC Retard doesn't like space. Don't talk about space, it makes him angry. Satellites make him angry. Also rockets. I think he's OK with planes. Are you OK with planes, Space Nutter Retard?

  4. Musk's the New West India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    From TFA: (...) Only after that, only after Christopher Columbus comes back and says, ‘Here are the people that I found, here are the foods, and here are the trade winds,’ only then does the Dutch East India Trading Company come in and make a buck off of it.

    Maybe Elon Musk's company IS the new East India Co.

    1. Re:Musk's the New West India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe Elon Musk's company IS the new East India Co.

      Or maybe he's the guy who builds the ships.

    2. Re:Musk's the New West India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everyone knows monopolization of the spice trade is necessary both for being the next Dutch East India Company, and for deep space travel.

    3. Re:Musk's the New West India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Elon Musk has a monopoly on the Musk trade. That manly scent that gives you a boner, even though you're totally not gay? That's Elon Musk. I mean, sure, you'd like to pull off his pants, suck his cock and slide your finger up his ass. Hell, you'd bend him over and lick the toilet paper off his asshole, but that's just his musky scent, you're not gay. Totally not gay.

    4. Re:Musk's the New West India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you have some issues you should work on.

  5. His basic thesis is probably correct by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've listened to NdGT talk about this topic a fair bit and I agree with his basic thesis that private companies will not lead the way to Mars or even the Moon. You simply cannot make a credible business case for a private company to do it. I'm an engineer but I'm also a certified accountant. I've pitched investors on projects and the problem is largely an economic one. Paraphrasing his arguments the risks are large and substantially unquantifiable, the ROI is unknown and will take many years if not decades and the amount of money required for large exploration projects is huge. The only institution which is in a position to spend large amounts of money on something with big risks, huge costs and completely uncertain payoffs are governments. Once some of the risks have been quantified and enough information becomes available to make a reasonable guess at an ROI and time frame for the investment, THEN private enterprise can jump in.

    We largely admire companies like SpaceX but SpaceX isn't doing anything wildly outside what NASA has already done. They're not sending probes to Mars, they are just improving the economics and a bit of the technology for chemical rockets - a technology we've had for 60+ years. People talk about mining asteroids but no private body is funding the exploration to go find them much less developing the technology to actually do something economically useful. The cost is too big, the returns too uncertain and the risks are still largely unknown. It's why we still need NASA out there on the frontier. Leave the launches to SpaceX and others and get NASA out into the solar system doing the cutting edge research and exploration we so desperately need. We don't need NASA building rockets, we need them figuring out how to get us permanently more than 200 miles from the surface of the Earth.

    1. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by bigpat · · Score: 1

      Yes, but if it isn't eventually economical for private investors then it isn't sustainable for government funded adventurism either. Government needs to have a return on investment more than turning over more rocks on barren worlds. At some point economics really is a reflection of resource utilization and availability and not just some abstract concept where the Federal Reserve can just add a few zeros on the computer for some spreading around money.

    2. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People talk about mining asteroids but no private body is funding the exploration to go find them much less developing the technology to actually do something economically useful.

      So Planetary Resources DIDN'T launch a satellite this summer to look for Asteroids?

      http://www.planetaryresources.com/arkyd/#arkyd-posts

    3. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You simply cannot make a credible business case for a private company to do it.

      It really depends how much cheaper it can get. I don't claim to know the answer to that. At some point, tourism becomes a reasonable business plan.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by orlanz · · Score: 1

      Well said. People just don't understand this concept that corporations, even those global conglomerates like Siemens, Tata, Hilti, etc which are bigger than many governments do not embark on these expensive, high risk endeavors. Even simple Earth stuff like figher jets, and battle ships have massive amounts of government backing for the proof of concept designs. Exploring space is going beyond the moon and that is far more complicated than what we do on Earth.

      Big companies in general are risk averse; decisions are made irrelevant of the rewards. Only small/mid companies really take risks. The former wont do it for the risk, and the latter don't have the funds. Up to LEO, sure eventually commercial will take over, the foundations are mostly known. But beyond the moon, commercial is still waiting for the Nina to be built by the queens monies, let alone chart the way and return to tell what it found.

    5. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 0

      You simply cannot make a credible business case for a private company to do it.

      Correct. And you also can't make a credible business or scientific case for government to finance manned space travel to the Moon or Mars at this point. And that is why government shouldn't waste any money on it either.

      get NASA out into the solar system doing the cutting edge research and exploration we so desperately need

      We do need research and exploration, but that can be done most efficiently using robot probes. NASA is good at that. When NASA wants to send people to Mars, however, they are just wasting money and engaging in crony capitalism.

    6. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by Outtascope · · Score: 1

      Valid points, but I think the distinction is that if the general public wants a business to take on debt to perform some function for the public, well that ain't going to happen unless the shareholders want it. Shareholders are shareholders because they want to turn a profit, preferably quickly; they tend to have a dim opinion of things with an unknown return potential at some vaguely distant time in the future with a quantifiably negative impact on dividends in the near term. That's the trade-off of public investment.

      However, if the public wants such a program to happen (and I'm making no statement about whether that's the case or not here), then it is usually something that a government is logistically more able (though not necessarily more capable) to do. That said, you are correct in that there needs to be some weenie, some potential payoff for the investment in one form or another, regardless of whether it is a public or private (or hybrid) program. The differentiator is that the confidence threshold for payoff for a government is generally much lower than that for a publicly traded business (particularly when the investment is huge).

    7. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by bigpat · · Score: 1

      I think bottom line is that it is too expensive and therefore not sustainable to settle or explore space much further either funded through taxation, private fundraising or speculative investment. If launch costs come down and other technology makes it easier then either public or private efforts can do it. In terms of speculative investment... I agree there is no prospect for financial returns on any reasonable time frame so things like asteroid mining are not going to attract large investment until the math checks. And there is no business case to be made for investors to fund the settling the moon or mars or anywhere else. But neither is there a real case to be made to the public. Space exploration was the first thing to get axed in the 1970s when the US couldn't afford it. And the likelihood is that there will be additional times where funding for space exploration from the government coffers just won't be viable. Space exploration as a point of national pride only works for missions that can begin and end in a decade or so.

    8. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could, if you could find an asteroid that has some sort of Unobtanium on it, and are reasonably able to ensure it's the only asteroid with it (or work to keep people from trying to find or get to others with it). that would probably end up setting up some sort of DeBeers business - the company mines and stockpiles all the unobtanium it can, while carefully controlling how much gets into the market. It may try to even be vertically integrated (as in, be the only/primary company that makes end products using it, as in Zales jewelry stores were), but this would only really work well if this company structure remained privately held. Said margins on controlling the end-to-end and manipulating things would thus pay for the expensive, never gonna be profitable parts of the chain, while making the insiders more money than God, BillG & Carlos Slim could ever hope to get in 100 lifetimes. Since it'd be "outer space", it would be hard for any country really to declare the enterprise to be an illegal monopoly, etc.

      But then, who's going to help enforce that company's property rights in space? You know, "possession is 9/10ths the law...".

      I can see the company also somehow making parts of the business "space based", and thus outside ANY taxing authorities reaches, too. Or, we would get to laugh as the Cayman Islands claims to also be a "space power", to extend their corporation shell game to outer space.

      And, what about the theoretical liability of extracting enough mass from an asteroid that 1000 or 1M years from now perturbs orbits for what's left, or another asteroid, to eventually make it's way to Earth's surface? that'd make for a possibly interesting Dr. Who episode, maybe...

      But, let's not forget, the Brooklyn Bridge was funded by a private corporation, in a proto-Kickstarter type setup...

    9. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by Outtascope · · Score: 1

      All true. I hope, however, that there is still some room to engage in science for the sake of science and the unknown potential benefits it may bring. But you are right, I just don't see a mechanism by which it becomes feasible, financially or otherwise, without some technological breakthrough of the sort that hasn't even been conceptualized yet.

    10. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      completely uncertain payoffs

      At what time do you pull out until payoffs are more certain? Or do you throw money at it forever because of some quasi religious belief? Maybe we should e investing a few billions $/year on time travel, I'm sure that would have a much larger payoff than space mining.

    11. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We already know they're there. They aren't exploring, and there's not an inkling of a shred of an even a concept of how to do anything useful.

      Please note, all they're getting, at best, is information. That massless, low-energy thing... Just a bunch of photons carrying some digital data.

      So tell me, how are Solaren's 2016 plans for a space-based solar power station going?

      Please tell me that.

    12. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by cowdung · · Score: 1

      His assumption that SpaceX is motivated by profit may be off. SpaceX as it currently stands is motivated by the possibility of colonizing Mars. That's its mission and that is why it remains a private company.

    13. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by LudwigVMises · · Score: 0

      As long as you don't count this privately funded asteroid mining company... http://www.planetaryresources....

    14. Re:His basic thesis is probably correct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.planetaryresources.com/

      So you see, private sector is already keenly looking at asteroids and mining them

  6. The guy aint no Sagan... by jedidiah · · Score: 0

    All you have to do is tell someone that there's money to be made in space. If there's a giant diamond asteroid or one made of gold, people will make it happen. It might not happen today or even in anti-Sagan's lifetime but the dreams of avarice will be fulfilled.

    Plus there's the whole "living in glory until the end of time" thing to consider.

    I'm sure every Robber Baron would love a holiday dedicated to their name.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    1. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by CaptainLard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bringing a giant asteroid made of gold to earth would make gold worthless. Basically the same reason DeBeers locks up half of all diamonds ever mined.

    2. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by NicBenjamin · · Score: 1

      Here's the problem:
      NASA's budget is $15-20 Billion.

      The richest person in the world can only match that for five years without getting some revenue from the project. Which means the first multi-bnillionaire who actually tries to pay for a probe all the way to Mars is gonna get a bunch of really promising projects started, and then canned when he runs out of cash. Is the second billionaire gonna take an ex-billionaire's research and use it? Why would he share the glory? If he doesn't mind sharing, how does he access it?

      Patents? How much would you insist on for that patent portfolio?

      So for this to work, particularly for guys like Musk who barely hit the two-figures billion$, the private market has to be orders of magnitude more efficient then NASA, which does not seem terribly likely because the private market has had years to get beyond the ISS and still has not done so.

    3. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm sure every Robber Baron would love a holiday dedicated to their name.

      Plutocrat-Wins-Darwin-Award-In-Space-Day? I'll dig it.

      Deserves two days if it's Trump. Three if his hair jams the airlock.

    4. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To bring an asteroid to Earth would require a wealth comprised of all Earth's diamonds [including the ones DeBeers hid], and it wouldn't be enough for barely starting the whole enterprise.

    5. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. Just to add some reference figures:

      NASA's budget is $15-20 Billion.

      ~10% of that is what the Koch Bros.&co. intend to spend rigging the 2016 election.
      ~100% of that is what the Pentagon "lost" (unaccountable money) last decade.
      ~10000% of that was the cost of the Iraq war.

    6. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by werepants · · Score: 1

      You don't understand just how overwhelmingly expensive it is to get to space. Suppose the Moon was made of diamonds. Just big piles of diamonds, easy to pick up and bring back home.

      Large, pure, high quality diamonds are worth about $65,000/gram. Someone did the math on the total cost to get us all the moon rocks we have... the cost in today's dollars to return those rocks works out to $281,000/gram.

      Your business case doesn't even come close to breaking even. You lose over $200k for every gram fictional lunar diamond you bring home. That isn't to say that there will never be a business case to be made, but if things were as easy as you claim them to be, people would have been doing this long ago.

      So, if people want to ever make money in space, it needs to become cheap. The right combo to get us there might be SpaceX working to make it inexpensive, combined with NASA providing the megabucks. Governments on their own haven't made any real progress on lowering the expense of access despite multiple serious attempts.

    7. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      Not true, asteroids could be brought near earth by incredibly cheap process that merely would be time consuming. A little nudge in the right place at the right time

    8. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by slashdice · · Score: 1

      Diamonds are a bad example because they are common and worthless. If you think they have value, it's due to marketing and artificial supply constraints. You might as well mine asteroids for water based on a $10 bottle of Fiji at the airport.

      --
      Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
    9. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      So for this to work, particularly for guys like Musk who barely hit the two-figures billion$, the private market has to be orders of magnitude more efficient then NASA, which does not seem terribly likely because the private market has had years to get beyond the ISS and still has not done so.

      We are still relatively early in the Space Age, particularly in comparison with human history. I don't think it is right to say that just because we haven't done it in 50 years that commercial players will never do it. We're still doing things like figuring out reusable launch systems, but we are making progress on those fronts.

      Admittedly, there will have to be a point where the businesses do have to make some money, and satellite launches and space tourism are unlikely to advance the profit as much as you'd want. My best bet for such a profitable enterprise would probably be space based solar power. While such a project has significant hurdles that have yet to be overcome, energy production is something we need to have increasing amounts of, and it is incredibly important to make that a renewable, "green" source as our energy requirements grow.

    10. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by crunchygranola · · Score: 2

      Not true, asteroids could be brought near earth by incredibly cheap process that merely would be time consuming. A little nudge in the right place at the right time

      Bringing asteroids "near" Earth (that is in an Earth crossing orbit, nearly intersecting the Earth) can be accomplished with a little nudge for some small set of asteroids - but this will NOT bring the asteroid "to Earth" (as the OP said) unless you are planning on causing a cosmic bombardment that will vaporize the asteroid in a spectacular explosion (good luck getting the people of Earth to buy into that plan).

      Asteroid mining requires bringing the asteroid into an Earth orbit, which involved a very large change in velocity, not a "little nudge" and won't be cheap no matter how it is arranged.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    11. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by cfalcon · · Score: 2

      He gave an example of a type of diamond that is really rare. I concur that diamonds shouldn't be used as an example of inherent value, though.

      Platinum and gold are around 30 dollars a gram.
      Rhodium peaked at around 28,000 dollars a gram.

      His example was exceptional because it used something that would trivially devalue if it came to Earth in large quantities as well. His point is that there's no known substance that could possibly justify 281,000 dollars per gram of transportation costs- the few you could point to or hypothesize are only so valuable because they are rare, such as unique quality gems, extremely short lived radioactive materials, etc. It's too expensive period- at the moment.

    12. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Which is silly, because the Apollo mission was primarily oriented around the physics of getting a bunch of large mammals into space, keeping them alive on the way to the moon, landing them on the moon, keeping them alive down there while they explore, and then doing all of that in reverse. If they hadn't brought a single rock back the total change to the mission cost would have been almost unnoticeable.

      Furthermore, who's focused on mining the moon? Most mining proposals focus on mining NEOs. It's way easier to get material from a NEO to Earth aerocapture. You could do it with a coilgun with no expenditure of consumables, again and again for years on end. They're also far more rich in interesting materials - much better than the best mines on Earth, and with no overburden.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    13. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      How many Robber Barons can you name? Who was the first Europen to set foot on north america?

    14. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      If they hadn't brought a single rock back

      Bringing a rock back was not the goal of Apollo. In fact, there were many at NASA who opposed doing so because it added risk to the mission. The first astronauts were prohibited from talking to any of the scientists because it might give them ideas. The core of Apollo was focused on Kennedy's challenge and little else.

    15. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by jonwil · · Score: 1

      Maybe the way to get someone to fund a manned mission to Mars is to announce that an unmanned mission has found oil on Mars. Hey, it worked for Iraq... :)

    16. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

      Paraphrasing the movie _Interstellar_:

      TARS: I deleted the automatic airlock subroutine.
      Brandt: What? Mr. Trump, do NOT open the airlock!
      Cooper: Did you say "Trump"?
      Brandt: Right.
      Cooper: Mr. Trump, it's the big red handle on the right hand side. Pull it really fast!

    17. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by werepants · · Score: 1

      Furthermore, who's focused on mining the moon?

      The point of the example wasn't to say that Apollo was focused on profit, or that the Moon is a good business proposition - it's to point out the fact that there are very few substances that are valuable enough, per gram, to make retrieval from space financially viable. It's not that a business case has been there all this time and everybody is too dumb to see it - it's that the business case hasn't been there because launch costs are too damn high.

    18. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Except that your cost examples are based around the price of rocks brought back as a "oh and we're going to do this too" mission add-on. It would be like as if I flew to America to visit my grandmother for Christmas via purchasing a $700 plane ticket and while I was there I bought a $15 sweater and brought it back, and you said, "See, she paid $715 to go to America and buy a sweater - American sweaters are unjustifiably expensive!" You simply cannot take the cost of the Apollo mission, divide by the mass of rocks returned, and pretend that that's anything even remotely close to the cost of retrieval per gram.

      What's the actual cost of space mining? It's too early to say. But the mining of NEOs could be as little as *zero* dollars per gram (excluding capital costs and maintenance), insomuch as it would be possible to fire sintered minerals (using solar power) via a coilgun onto an aerocapture trajectory. You don't actually have to have a rocket to bring them back. What would the capital costs be like? That we don't know - again, it's too early to say. But it's normal for large mines on Earth to cost billions of dollars, and what one can do with a large mine on Earth one could do with a vastly smaller mine on a NEO due to the superb mineral concentrations on some of them. There are a number of peer-reviewed papers putting forth that it could work out to be economical (I was reading one from the USGS just the other day) as a result of this.

      But time will tell. It's going to take a lot more basic research and engineering before we can get a good sense of just what it would cost to get what sort of throughput of what sort of minerals.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    19. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by werepants · · Score: 1

      But the mining of NEOs could be as little as *zero* dollars per gram (excluding capital costs and maintenance), insomuch as it would be possible to fire sintered minerals (using solar power) via a coilgun onto an aerocapture trajectory.

      You forgot to exclude operational expenses. And also didn't mention that you can't just lob chunks of metal straight to Earth's surface, and refined minerals in LEO aren't useful to anybody right now or for the foreseeable future. If they are going to re-enter you need at least some sort of return vehicle to control reentry, if they aren't then you need on-orbit factories for those to do any good. By your same logic, the mining of minerals on Earth would be zero dollars per gram if the equipment was solar powered and automated - that isn't the case, because fuel and drivers are a tiny fraction of the total cost of a mine.

      There's no question that it will be economical to mine asteroids at some point, but the primary driver of this is launch costs. Planetary Resources exists because they believe the business case will close, and they are giving it a good shot, but given that we have only one small startup pursuing things right now, I suspect that it's still not obvious that the numbers will work out. Part of that is because there is so much uncertainty about the makeup of asteroids, how challenging the material will be to retrieve and what the real mineral densities are. But I guarantee you, if the cost of space access came down by an order of magnitude, as SpaceX is targeting, a lot of marginal business prospects become viable. That said, Planetary Resources might already be banking on that cost reduction, it's hard to say.

      It does nobody any good to pretend that the lack of a space economy is because investors are cowards and morons that are just too narrow-minded to see the possibilities of space resources. The real problem is that boondoggles like SLS and the Shuttle before it cost the better part of a billion dollars for each and every launch, and that's been the primary model for space access historically. If people appreciate just how expensive this is, they'll stop advocating what amounts to a private jet to retrieve a $15 sweater, and instead start focusing on finding better transport. Things won't change until access gets cheap.

    20. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by Rei · · Score: 1

      You forgot to exclude operational expenses.

      Yes, people to run robots and comm time on the DSN. We're not talking about massive expenses here. The real expenses are the capital costs.

      And also didn't mention that you can't just lob chunks of metal straight to Earth's surface,

      Actually, you really just can. Even random rocks from space - not shaped for optimal entry shape, not cemented together by anything yet what nature chose to gie them - do this all the time. They have to be between a certain size range (too little and the whole thing ablates; too large and it explodes, either in the atmosphere or on impact), but the random creations of nature do it; delberately shaped and sintered projectiles should have no trouble with it, with (proportional to their mass) relatively little burnoff.

      You would, of course, need a rather large area designated as the impact area; even with very precise aiming, by the time they get to Earth and undergo reentry the random variables will spread them out over a sizeable chunk of land. A large salar might be ideal, since they get resurfaced periodically so the impacts wouldn't be damaging the landscape.

      By your same logic, the mining of minerals on Earth would be zero dollars per gram if the equipment was solar powered and automated

      It's almost as if I didn't discuss capital and ongoing costs in my above post.

      Launch costs really are key to the rate of development at the very least, in that they limit the rate in which funding can be raised for the necessary exploratory and test craft to be launched. Even if the economics for operating a mine on a NEO works out really well at present launch costs, you have to prove that you can do it before you can raise the billions to build it. And to prove that you can do it you have to launch a number of missions while you're still relatively poorly funded. They face the same problem that Bigelow has faced - a probably reasonable business plan but the early phases hinging around factors that they don't control.

      It does nobody any good to pretend that the lack of a space economy is because investors are cowards and morons

      I think you need to go back and read my last post again, particularly all of the "it's too early to say"/""we don't know"/"but time will tell"/etc lines. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that there very well could be a compelling case for asteroid mining even without any radical changes in space technologies. But there's a great deal of work to prove that before we can get to that point.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    21. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by NicBenjamin · · Score: 1

      Have you ever tried to get $2 Billion in financing for private industry?

      I haven't, but my stepmom ran debt programs for Goodyear for 5 years or so. Retooling a factory is frequently in the $2 Billion range. Goodyear had proven revenue figures because the factories were already breaking even, and could prove that they had excellent business reasons to believe the retooling would strengthen the business to the point they could pay back the loans. And she still spent much of her time jetting over the globe negotiating the fine points of the mortgages because nobody would lend Goodyear money without really good collateral. These days her job no longer exists, because they're investment rated, and can issue bonds.

      So to get two months worth of NASA's funding Musk's SpaceX is gonna need to either convince the finance weenies to give him an AAA rating, or he'll need to mortgage his other assets (like the Gigafactory).

      Otherwise he'll have to be an order of magnitude more efficient then NASA.

    22. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      there are tricks with lagrangian points for changing orbits in the inner solar system with very little energy cost...but the downside is the long time

    23. Re:The guy aint no Sagan... by werepants · · Score: 1

      The real expenses are the capital costs.

      Which you were choosing to exclude in your analysis - I just don't see the value in saying "the costs approach zero if you neglect the most expensive part of the equation." What does that add to the discussion?

      Actually, you really just can. Even random rocks from space - not shaped for optimal entry shape, not cemented together by anything yet what nature chose to gie them - do this all the time.

      Let's suppose some sort of railgun or other 'material return apparatus' that's worked into some sort of asteroid mining operation. Assume the payload is a solid slug of platinum, or otherwise highly refined and resilient metal. If you fire that straight at the Earth on a re-entry trajectory, sure, you could have it target some benign place in an ocean, or a desert. Regardless, though, this thing will end up having an enormous amount of kinetic energy... just something in LEO will be running greater than 17,000 MPH - these rocks aren't just going to be plopping into the ocean, you're talking about releasing the equivalent energy of a decent sized bomb with each one. There's plenty of space in the Pacific to do such a thing, but then you've got a massive metal slug on the bottom of the ocean floor - a difficult engineering problem itself. A land target seems even more problematic - it doesn't seem likely that something coming in with that sort of speed would hold together well, and even if it did, it would penetrate into the earth a fair way - so you would need a secondary mining operation if that was the case. So sure, you CAN return rocks straight to the Earth's surface, and have them survive (for varying values of 'survive') but the engineering challenges are still of the same order of complexity as on-orbit resource use or a controlled re-entry. I don't think that changes the calculus much.

      Launch costs really are key to the rate of development at the very least, in that they limit the rate in which funding can be raised for the necessary exploratory and test craft to be launched. Even if the economics for operating a mine on a NEO works out really well at present launch costs, you have to prove that you can do it before you can raise the billions to build it. And to prove that you can do it you have to launch a number of missions while you're still relatively poorly funded. They face the same problem that Bigelow has faced - a probably reasonable business plan but the early phases hinging around factors that they don't control.

      I agree with you there. Besides the direct impact on profitability of an established space business, there's a huge barrier to entry... it makes it hard for any new business model to get even the opportunity to prove itself.

      I'm saying that there very well could be a compelling case for asteroid mining even without any radical changes in space technologies.

      There certainly could be. Planetary Resources thinks so, and they have some serious expertise on their roster. I don't think we'll see a real "Space Age", though, until launch costs are addressed. I'm hopeful that reuse will be a substantial step in that direction, but honestly even then the complexity, inefficiency, and inherent danger of chemical rockets might never do the job. I for one would love to see a lot more research into alternatives (the Launch Loop is a personal favorite) but the investment problems there are magnified even compared to standard space access.

  7. Im surprised this even got posted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Given that it's critical of Musk, and highlights how he makes his money off government subsidies.

    1. Re:Im surprised this even got posted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most great fortunes in America can be traced back to some kind of tax subsidy or government contract. Walmart? The government subsidizes their labor costs with welfare and foodstamps. Microsoft? Government contracts out the ass. IBM? Same. Amazon? No subsidies, but by not paying sales tax it was essentially subsidized. Maybe Apple didn't have government subsidies? But I'm sure any devout Apple hater could find some. Oracle? Too easy. Google? That ones tricky, but I'm sure someone can find the hidden subsidy. Anyways, why single out Musk? Every major success in America had the help of a big injection of tax payer funded steroids at one point or another.

    2. Re:Im surprised this even got posted by Immerman · · Score: 1

      > Google?
      Hmm, direct and indirect government funding basically got the internet off the ground, but without any scalable organizational system. Perhaps there are some hidden subsidies as well, I don't really know the details of Google's early days, but I think Google might actually be that rarest of breeds, an actual self-made success story. Of course it benefited from the fact that it solved an (economically) easy problem. It doesn't cost much to get a "dot com" style business started, and there was a massive demand for a decent search engine. Google stepped in with a search algorithm that blew everything else out of the water (some government funding there maybe? Scholarships? Probably not enough to be worth mentioning compared to their revenue stream.) Once they had that, harnessing an advertising revenue stream was easy - lots of companies had paved the way beforehand.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  8. Smart guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Some people think "the market" is the solution to all problems. What they miss is that often the market's "solution" to a problem is that it isn't financially worth solving, and there's no concept of public interest involved in that decision making. You don't need to look as far afield as space exploration, just look at pharmaceutical companies and the drugs they choose to invest in; we're almost out of effective antiobiotics right now, and yet the big pharmaceutical companies invest little or nothing in new antibiotics, because they can make much more money from things like antidepressants and treatments for chronic diseases like diabetes that people just have to keep taking. So yeah, if you expect private companies to lead the way into space, show me the money.

    1. Re:Smart guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Show me the money"

      How about that $5.4 Trillion dollar asteroid that flew by Earth back in July. Space is rife with resources that are rare or are difficult to extract here on Earth. No doubt there will be many difficulties coming up with cost effective methods of extracting and exporting these resources to Earth but the rewards will be immense for anyone who can figure them out.

      http://www.space.com/30074-trillion-dollar-asteroid-2011-uw158-earth-flyby.html

  9. State the obvious, get flamed anyway... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If anything, it seems like deGrasse came closer to giving team Space!!! what they wanted to hear than I would have expected, in that he left open the implication that nation states might develop serious interest in colonizing nearby rocks and would then very likely find themselves in need of contractors for various purposes; and enable some more fully private side activities.

    The ROI of getting things into earth orbit is well established; and it has a correspondingly robust market, with more outfits clamoring to enter it. Satellites are all sorts of useful and need more or less continual replacement, repair, and so on. Nobody doubts that.

    The technical feasibility of snagging asteroids and chopping them up is still in the more speculative stages; but that also has an obvious possible ROI if the technical challenges can be overcome.

    The case for the moon or mars, though, isn't just a matter of corporate shortsightedness, it's a matter of "Please, tell me about the ROI, within, say, the next 250 years...". Planetary colonization would undoubtedly be cool; and might be something that a nation state would get interested in as part of a prestige contest(like, say, the last time we were at all serious about the moon); but nobody ever seems to have any plans, aside from vague references to Helium 3, for what would make lunar or martian living more cost effective than some sort of aggressive colonization of underutilized desert regions or something similarly unsexy. The bounteous iron mines of mars? The endless plains of razor-sharp, static-clinging, vitrified silicates of the moon?

    1. Re:State the obvious, get flamed anyway... by bigpat · · Score: 1

      The one case of government funded exploration of the moon wasn't even sustained for ten years. I think what we can say now is that with currently available or even planned technology that space colonization just isn't going to happen regardless of the funding mechanism.

    2. Re:State the obvious, get flamed anyway... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Moon and Mars are cool from point of tourism, which will require hotels, restaurants, entertainment etc. I am sure people are going to invent a whole lot of things to amuse themselves in lower gravity with.

      However the main benefits for reaching into space will be from space stations. In fact I think in distant future most people will live on space stations and come to planes only for vacations.

      Couple of benefits of space stations over convenient planeside settlement:
      1. You can easily park station where you want, therefore get more or less sunlight and get same temperatures year round (how often do you swearer about bad weather? Too cold? Too hot? Stupid rain? etc.)
      2. You can have different artificial gravity levels based on centrifugal forces (allows for different medical benefits as well for weird and "impossible" architecture).
      3. You can grow any foods or plants 24/365.
      4. You can get way different manufacture processes and way bigger factories that improve economies of scale, not to mentioning that energy is way easier to get from solar panels if you get closer to sun, or you can even use suns energy directly to melt yours metals for example.

      Obviously in short term we cannot build anything on the scale to take advantages of any of the above, but give us 20-50 years, couple of iterations of reusable rockets and it will start becoming new normal IMHO.

  10. Re:Neil deGrasse Tyson is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'm a taurus actually. Astrological cow, you could say.

  11. Space-based Economy by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

    In the very long run, probably. But I think there's probably a route to increasing space exploration and utilization by explicitly avoiding the cost of Earth-to-orbit transport costs. The plan I've seen that has some promise goes as follows:

    1. Find some metal-rich and volatiles-rich asteroids and comets (not exactly rare in the Asteroid Belt). Tow these asteroids into a near-Earth orbit and begin extraction and smelting.
    2. Set up manufacturing facilities in Earth orbit to build spacecraft and satellites.
    2a. We could even "grow" plastics with bacteria or genetically-engineered plants.
    3 ....
    4. Profit!

    In all seriousness, if you created a parallel space-based economy whose sole purpose is to make transporting anything but humans into space, then the whole question of how to make Earth-to-orbit transport cheaper ceases to be an issue. Obviously the startup costs and R&D for such a project are monumental, but in the long run, the rewards would be huge. The whole point of commercial spaceflight is to find a way to make it economically feasible, and this is about actually creating a space-based economy.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:Space-based Economy by plopez · · Score: 1

      see my comment http://science.slashdot.org/co...

      how much is all of this going to cost?

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    2. Re:Space-based Economy by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      A whole helluva lot of money. But if gravity is your enemy, why fight it?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Space-based Economy by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      The problem I see with your plan here is that Earth is a huge, huge gravity well (well, not compared to Jupiter maybe, but compared to everything in the inner solar system it is). Keeping stuff in Earth orbit requires very high orbital speeds, or very long distances (for GEO). Wouldn't it make more sense to build your asteroid refineries and manufacturing facilities at the Lagrangian points?

      Also, I'm not an expert on mining, but if any of those processes require gravity, then the Moon would be a good place for that: it has some gravity, but it's pretty low so your landing and launch costs will be low too.

    4. Re:Space-based Economy by wanfuse123 · · Score: 1

      The problem isn't with the desire to go to mars, the problem is the lack of forethought of the steps that should be taken to get us there. 1) build catapult 2) engineer the necessities in earth orbit to land all the mining machinery on the moon (developing them first here on earth and catipulting to space) 3) land machines on moon 4) land machines to make large underground habitat on moon (mining colony) 5) land crews to operate machinery (integrating as much automation as possible) 6) mine moon to build solar energy sources or even better launch MSR reactors using earths spent nuclear fuel or lftr reactors ( launched into space in small packets of carefully engineered containers for maximum and priority one safety) 7) land materials on moon with caution. 8) setup colony underground on moon 9) build catapult 10) mine aluminum for solar reflectors and aluminum for building huge mars transport 11) mine water for rocket fuel 12) assemble and 3D print the mars ship ( is of course part of this process) 13) send large ship and crew to mars using state of art solar sail ship after sending a few return reflectors to mars orbit 14) send small lander to surface 15) continue on surface research with return ships 15) use solar mirrors to teraform mars Plenty of technological gains in the order that makes long term sense and can be done with a much larger budget, in the 30 years time frame.

    5. Re:Space-based Economy by Rei · · Score: 1

      The moon's surface is kind of boring, as far as geology goes. Aluminum oxide, titanium oxide, iron oxide, silicon dioxide... by and large it's stuff that's really common on Earth. And not much of the common stuff that's super-useful, like water. And really, it's way more of a gravity well than is ideal to have.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
    6. Re:Space-based Economy by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Last I heard, they found a lot of water at one of the poles.

      And all those other things, while not extremely rare here, are still valuable for building stuff on the Moon. Iron, aluminum, and titanium are very useful for making things. Plus there's tons of sunlight there to provide solar power, without any clouds or atmosphere in the way.

      So with all this, you should be able to build a Moon base which you can use for refining captured asteroids (which have far more valuable ores) and doing low-g manufacturing.

      As for the gravity well, it's half the gravity of Mars, and it's very close to Earth. These sound like big pluses to me. I guess if you really need extremely low gravity or zero gravity, you could just build a big space station at the L1 Lagrangian point. And again, all that material on the Moon you think is "boring" would come in handy there, because it'd be far cheaper to lift all that mass from the 1/6g Moon than from the 1g Earth.

    7. Re:Space-based Economy by Rei · · Score: 2

      As usual, "pop science" news overstated the case. We know that there's ppm quantities of water in most lunar regolith, but that's not what people usually talk about. There's also a good degree of confidence that there's a lot of *hydroxyl* group in a lot of places on the moon. But the connection between that and the group being specifically water is much weaker - and many missions sent to detect water in likely areas have failed. The best evidence for water have come from Chandrayaan and LRO, examining craters that were considered likely to find ice. They have both failed to find "slabs" of ice in the crater, but found evidence for ice grains in the regolith - about 5% according to LRO. On Earth that would be considered dry soil, but it's something at least.

      Of course, if you're constraining yourself to such craters, you're really constraining where you can go. On the general lunar surface, the sun bakes water out of the regolith.

      Iron, aluminum, and titanium are very useful for making things

      They're all tightly locked up as oxides, without the raw materials that we use to refine them on Earth being available. There are however tiny grains of raw iron in the regolith, so there is some potential to comb it out magnetically. Still, asteroids present by far better resource options in much greater concentrations.

      There really is just no reason to do your work in a gravity well as deep as the moon's, and then have to break out of it, when you can just mine NEOs. Yes, it's "half the gravity of Mars", but it's vastly more than asteroids. Rockets with a couple thousand spare m/s delta-V don't just grow on lunar trees.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
  12. deGrasse is right on this one by erp_consultant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We seem to have gotten away from this in recent years but space exploration is a perfect example of what government SHOULD be doing. These kinds of exploration programs are not economically viable for commercial enterprises. Government needs to pave the way first. This is something at JFK understood all too well.

    1. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, government did pave the way.

    2. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, JFK understood "we need to make sure that when we wave our dick, it's bigger than the Russians'." That was pretty much the extent of it.

    3. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Sperbels · · Score: 1

      And then closed the road.

    4. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Government needs to pave the way first.

      We tried that with the moon. What happened? Next to nothing for half a century. The Apollo program didn't advance space travel, it held it back, by focusing on the wrong technologies.

      These kinds of exploration programs are not economically viable for commercial enterprises.

      Manned space exploration isn't economically viable for anybody at this point. It's not a question of whether private investors have sufficient resources (they most certainly do), it's whether there is sufficient return on investment.

      The fastest way to space is not for NASA to waste money on politically favored programs, it is to let space exploration develop naturally. That means focusing on robotics, biotech, and propulsion right now; once those have advanced sufficiently, manned space travel will happen by itself.

    5. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by erp_consultant · · Score: 1

      "We tried that with the moon. What happened? Next to nothing for half a century. The Apollo program didn't advance space travel, it held it back, by focusing on the wrong technologies." - That is an interesting take on it. My point was that without the Apollo program we never would have gotten to the moon in the first place. Which wrong technologies are you referring to?

      "Manned space exploration isn't economically viable for anybody at this point." - And that is precisely why government needs to take the lead on it. Otherwise it won't get done. Will they piss away a bunch of money in the process? Certainly. Your point about politically favored programs is well taken.

    6. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Immerman · · Score: 1

      They did, into orbit. And then private enterprise figured out how to commercialize orbital assets to great effect, and now even the launch capacity is being taken over by private industries. But the next step, developing space-based resources, is likely another doozy. So we may again need governments doing at least the proof-of-concept work there. Once it's shown to be possible to harvest asteroids, and the necessary technology developed to the early stages, then private industry will have a much better starting point to doing so in a cost-effective manner.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    7. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      My point was that without the Apollo program we never would have gotten to the moon in the first place. Which wrong technologies are you referring to?

      All the boring nitty-gritty engineering that was necessary to make it happen. The Apollo space program sucked up the engineering resources of nearly half a million engineers, scientists, and technicians for a decade. Think of all the useful stuff those people could have done, instead of working out how to build life support systems and flight control systems out of clunky 1960's technologies.

      And that is precisely why government needs to take the lead on it. Otherwise it won't get done.

      Like any large, long term project, a manned mission to Mars would need to be planned largely using today's technology. What that means is that probably 1-2 million scientists, engineers, and technicians would be spending the next 10-20 years on tinkering with 2015-level technology in order to launch something in the 2030's. Furthermore, the companies involved are robbed of any incentive to innovate: they originally specify the project using 2015-level technology, and they make the most profit and face the least risk by sticking with it to the bitter end.

      I think it would be a much better if those 1-2 million scientists, engineers, and technicians can spend their time and effort on developing new technologies. I suspect that in another decade, what would be a trillion dollar project now can be done for a few billion dollars with 2025 technology.

    8. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      I think it would be a much better if those 1-2 million scientists, engineers, and technicians can spend their time and effort on developing new technologies.
      When was the last time man kind developed a 'new technology'?
      There is nothing new to be expected in a field where you only need an air tight tin can, a few rockets to launch and land, and enough fuel and storage for that to make it happen.
      The only technology improvements we had the last 50 years are all related to microelectronics, LCD to OLED, microprocessors to SoCs, various forms of memory down to NAND and new magnetic 'RAMs'.

      Believing there is a marvelous technology we just have not discovered yet, which makes space flight cheaper or easier is just nonsense.

      Even the new EM-drives won't change launching in any way. Plasma drives only make the trip faster, still launching is the main problem.

      Same for fusion drives, except that you perhaps can use them to launch from earth, what I doubt.

      And bottom line: all relevant problems for a base on Mars are solved. There is no special technology needed.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    9. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only technology improvements we had the last 50 years are all related to microelectronics, LCD to OLED, microprocessors to SoCs, various forms of memory down to NAND and new magnetic 'RAMs'.

      Wow, your ignorance is just stunning.

    10. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then please compare 1900 to 1950, and 1950 to 2000.

      Why do you lack the insight to see the differences?

      http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...

      Do you also lack the maturity to question your beliefs?

    11. Re:deGrasse is right on this one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Re: "The Apollo program didn't advance space travel, it held it back, by focusing on the wrong technologies."

      Completely wrong. 100% wrong. None more wrong!

      Apollo got to the moon and that was the goal; weren't you paying attention? Did you not listen to JFK's speech?

      That was the first visit. Carp all you want about "the wrong technologies" but I doubt you know that, either now or then. The first visit is all about moving the needle from 'this is impossible' to 'this is possible'. Simply making it happen and not killing the crew is a minor miracle.

      I suspect you are frustrated about the post-Apollo space record. That was not the fault of the Apollo program; I'll not cover the issues involved. There has been plenty of that elsewhere.

  13. Private companies don't do exploration of frontier by sjbe · · Score: 1, Informative

    During the age of Columbus, any schmuck with a ship could go out exploring.

    Not the big voyages. Those required the resources and backing of governments. A large sailing vessel in those days was equivalent to a SpaceX rocket rocket today. Hugely expensive and state of the art technology. Columbus could only do his voyage because he was backed by the crown. It wasn't until centuries later that "any schmuck with a ship" could set sail for wherever. People didn't sail across the Atlantic until a government backed expedition (Columbus) proved that there was something out there worth going to see.

    Private companies getting in the game are just a necessary natural evolution of the technology.

    Private companies are NOT the ones doing the exploration. They are building the equipment used by those doing the exploration. SpaceX is building rockets not much different from those used 40 years ago. They aren't building a moon base or any of the equipment needed to go to Mars. They are building what amounts to the Model T of chemical rockets to get the cost down. NASA is the one sending probes to Pluto. NASA is the one doing experiments on the space station. Private companies only get involved when there is something they can see a way to profit from. It's a good thing but pure exploration of the frontier is simply something they cannot do because the risk/reward ratio is off the charts bad.

  14. Let gamblers gamble by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    The practical current function of commercial space co's should be to provide routine transfer of staff and supplies to and from a station or base. That makes perfectly good sense. When something becomes a semi-commodity, private enterprise, with competition*, is usually more efficient.

    If and when space does become profitable, such as asteroid mining, such commercial co's will already have some of the infrastructure and knowledge to pursue that market.

    As far as pie-in-sky commercial endeavors like a one-way Mars mission, let investors waste money if they want. Who knows, maybe they'll stumble on an unforeseen way to make a profit. Surprises happen. If somebody discovers how to tame anti-gravity particles to get cheap launches, for example, existing space companies will have a big leg up. It's not irrational to devote some of one's investment portfolio on high-risk/high-reward stocks.

    And even if they fail, humanity as a whole will be smarter for it, learning from their mistakes. Failure is experience.

    * NASA does use lots of private contractors for current missions. But, they are mostly custom one-off products.

  15. More than just money by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    During the age of Columbus, any schmuck with a ship could go out exploring.

    No they could not unless they had the backing of someone wealthy to pay for the ships, equipment and salaries needed. However they were willing to pay for it because while it was expensive and dangerous they were motivated by a variety of things: hope of treasure to plunder, land to lay claim to and knowledge of distant peoples and creature to learn about.

    It's a bit sad that someone who calls themselves a scientist thinks that the only reason anyone will ever do anything is purely for money. The ability to make money will certainly be what causes space exploration to take off in a big way but, as with any frontier be it in knowledge or on the map, the first explorers are often motivated by things other than how much money they will make...that tends to follow later.

    1. Re:More than just money by Sperbels · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No they could not unless they had the backing of someone wealthy to pay for the ships

      Yes they could. People cross the ocean in small boats all of the time. And just look at the Pacific? All of those islands were colonized by people with Stone Age level tech. It's not a great analogy to space, but surely you don't need a billion dollar rocket to get into orbit. Surely it can be made more affordable, and that's what they're trying to do.

    2. Re:More than just money by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      Those small boats do not make a global commerce systems, they're not relevant to discussion. Vikings in north america were more like our moon landings than a space colony that mines and manufacturers.

    3. Re:More than just money by vilanye · · Score: 1

      He was commenting on the commercialization of space travel.

      By definition, that is a profit-seeking proposition and there is no profit to be had now and probably 100 years from now.

      That is why NASA is doing the exploring in the past and now.

    4. Re:More than just money by Sperbels · · Score: 1

      Of course they're relevant. You're looking at exploiting a vast new territory. You have to have pioneers to go out there and figure out where the pitfalls and useful stuff are. They're not going to go out on tankers, cargoships, and passenger liners. They'll take small "boats".

    5. Re:More than just money by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Vikings in north america were more like our moon landings than a space colony that mines and manufacturers.

      Not really, because whatever they did in North America was a small backwater part of what they were doing on islands all across the north Atlantic, and which added up to a really large amount of trade. They were supplying lamp oil and walrus ivory even to the Mediterranean. The places those ships were sailing out from was seeing them come back loaded with trade, and those ports were made wealthy from it. So North American exploration by the Vikings or culturally related groups is better understood as the insignificant far reaches of a successful trade route, rather than something like the moon shot that didn't directly relate to commerce.

      Moon landing is more like ships that sailed out over the horizon, had no idea where they went, landed on some uninhabited island, and then managed to sail back, starving but alive, and with no trade items. I mean, there were serious practical reasons for the moon landings, but they were related to military technology and politics, not commerce. From a commerce perspective, a moon landing is way way smaller than a viking trade route.

      One problem with space mining being profitable, there isn't anything on Earth that is plentiful enough that we have industry that relies on it, yet scarce enough that it would be easier to move it all the way from outside our orbit down to a soft landing, plus the insurance overhead. We've yet to actually use up any of the main industrial resources. For every raw material we use, we're only using the high grade sources. And when those run out, the lower grade Earthly sources will still require less energy to extract than would be needed for space mining.

      If you go out and mine a bunch of gold or diamonds or something from the asteroid belt, all you'd do is crash the market on Earth for that item. You would not be able to begin accessing a giant new source of the resource without dropping the price and blowing market predictability to hell. You could flood the Earth with diamonds and improve the average quality of drill bits, but you might only lose money doing it. They won't still have notable cash value. It is the very nature of scarce items and why they are expensive. An unlimited supply might not have as much value as a limited supply would.

    6. Re:More than just money by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      There is nowhere to go except for the 3-hour tour category. ;) So he's totally right. Train travel didn't become commercially interesting because somebody had a loop track and could charge tickets to go in a circle. I mean, I know that one pizza place sells a lot of $5 tickets for their outdoor kiddie train ride, which just goes in a circle. But it is not the main commercial use for train travel. In general, commercial travel requires potential passengers with a latent demand to arrive at a destination. The only travel destination in space is the ISS, and it doesn't have the capacity for enough visitors to support an industry.

      It isn't enough to build a moon base, you'd need a reason for travel to the moon. If there was a moon base with some sort of high paying jobs, that would create latent travel demand; mostly round-trip tickets to Earth, I assume. And if you had enough workers on that base to support a shopping market, then you might be able to entice a few Power Shoppers to come up from Earth. Then you'd at least be able to support a Bed & Breakfast. Eventually if you had enough jobs on the moon, you'd have a whole city, and would make sense for it to end up as a tourism powerhouse. But that still isn't an industry.

      Joyrides at the edge of space seems to be the industry that is developing that is closest to "space travel." And I would assume that its size will be such that Space tours are to space flight as air tours are to air flight. Which is to say, it exists, and people get paid well to do it. But it isn't big business.

    7. Re:More than just money by vilanye · · Score: 1

      Put an amusement park on the moon, and don't forget the hookers and blackjack.

    8. Re:More than just money by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Gilligan's Palace. Maybe on the roof you can put a human cannon, and for an extra six digits it can launch you all the way around the planet and into a big net. Then you roll off the net right into a pool shaped like a giant teacup. And there will be a bunch of sexy green aliens serving poolside drinks.

    9. Re:More than just money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      surely you don't need a billion dollar rocket to get into orbit

      And you don't need a car with airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones, and emissions controls to physically drive down the highway. Who is going to be liable for the remote, but real, chance of a catastrophic failure of a commercial launch vehicle that destroys property or lives? Insurance? Who's going to make sure they have enough insurance to pay for the worst case scenario? The government is effectively self-insured, but unless a commercial outfit has billions of dollars in reserves, they cannot say the same.

  16. It requires energy, not money. by dak664 · · Score: 1

    While some may dream of using Earth's energy resources to acquire extraterrestrial mineral resources, it won't happen until the spacers become self-sufficient in energy, and maybe even export a little back to the home world.

    1. Re:It requires energy, not money. by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      I think energy is the first thing we will be able to get from space, not materials. Space based solar is a project that will provide energy, but without the major concerns of mining and transporting actual matter to Earth. And as you pointed out, once there is sufficient space based power, the mining can become profitable both in space, and in providing materials for Earth.

      The sun itself is probably the best energy source we have at this time and it will scale up very well over time. If we can figure out the big hurdles of building the infrastructure and transmission, there could be significant profit to be made in space well before we start mining it. Indeed, the mining might be started by the energy company itself to reduce costs of building more infrastructure by not having to launch them from Earth.

  17. Re:One thing for certain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Half a dozen billion.

  18. "Delusions of Space Enthusiasts" by butchersong · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I've tried but I cannot respect this guy. Seems that everything he does drips of condescension.

    1. Re:"Delusions of Space Enthusiasts" by rubycodez · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Because he chooses legitimate targets worthy of contempt, such as string theorists. Don't shoot the messenger, don't let the truth butthurt you

    2. Re:"Delusions of Space Enthusiasts" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and has nothing to do with the fact that you're a racist.

    3. Re:"Delusions of Space Enthusiasts" by TheSync · · Score: 1

      The touch screen discussion was bogus - it was invented by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK in 1965.

    4. Re:"Delusions of Space Enthusiasts" by Rei · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Did you see his interview with Colbert about Pluto? He talks about everyone who disagrees with him about the IAU decision (a group that includes most of the New Horizons scientific team) as though they's ignorant little children who just don't "understand" like he does.

      --
      I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
  19. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Holi · · Score: 1

    That's not quite accurate. I mean the bit about Columbus is, but remember Columbus was not the first person to cross the Atlantic. Eric Thorvaldsson (Eric the Red) reached Newfoundland without the backing of the crown and did it long before Columbus was conceived.

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  20. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by Outtascope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sensitive much? There was nothing anti-business about what NDT said. He stated simply as fact, the exact same rational that pundits on the right-hand side of spectrum have used repeatedly when explaining why business-oriented individuals are better candidates to run the government: businesses are results oriented, and generally risk averse. If they are publicly traded and their principal business is not risk, then they are required to be by law.

    Tyson wasn't making a qualitative statement about business competence or capability, he was talking about the fact that there is not even the teeniest tiniest business case that can be made for building a human spaceflight program to Mars. None. No CxO could present such a proposition to their board without running the very real risk of receiving a vote of no-confidence. This is fact, not the bias of a left-wing statist (though ad hominem is clearly the appropriate mechanism through which to debate your point and win people to your position).

    Now, could a counter argument be made to NDT's point that perhaps a single, very rich, individual might be able to accomplish such a feat without having to worry about the ROI implications, perhaps even more nimbly and efficiently than governmental bureaucracy would allow? Sure, and I believe that Elon Musk is exactly that type of individual. Though I suspect that even he doesn't have the resources to pull it off alone, and will need outside investment. Which brings us back to challenges faced by business that Tyson identified.

    Argue your position. Stop with the my team/your team red vs. blue bullshit and engage in an honest debate. If we don't find a way to do this as a society, to step away from demagoguery and ideological obstinence in order to find consensus, or at least rational, well-reasoned disagreement, then we have much, much bigger existential problems to address than the challenges presented by a manned mission to Mars.

  21. Awwww shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's done it now! All the Space Nutters will flail their skinny pale arms and bobble their over-sized, jug-eared pasty heads on their bearded pencil necks in anger!!!!

    But but but the Species! Exploration! Glory!!! SPIN OFFS!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Uh huh, sure, whatever Space Nutter. No one rational believes what you do.

    1. Re:Awwww shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, it's Space Nutter AC retard! Did you look up and get mad about the sky recently? I say, that's just not Krikkit! You know that capitalizing Space Nutters the way you do suggests strongly that you're really fucking stupid? It's not a Proper Noun. It's just you, talking shit on the Internet. ExoMars is landing in 2019 - does that make you angry?

  22. He's partially correct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Government can do amazing things when they need something, and damn the cost. But commercial interests can sometimes hinder advances in technology.

    As an example, I forward you the case of the Uranium Fuel Cycle vs. Thorium Fuel Cycle.

    After the Manhattan project, which was as we all know, a massive government/military project to prove out the concept of building an atomic bomb using fission (and eventually fusion) it was realized that we could use fission to produce energy. With that in mind, the various branches of the US Military now wanted 4 things

    1) Bombs, lots of bombs. This required the production of large quantities of fissile material, namely plutonium.
    2) A small reactor capable of powering a nuclear submarine
    3) A small reactor capable of powering a large surface vessel (aircraft carriers)
    4) A small reactor capable of powering a large bomber (yes, I'm NOT kidding, the military wanted nuclear powered bombers).

    The scientists went to work, and provided 1, 2, and 3. At the same time, the PWR reactors that became the solution to providing 1-3 were not a good fit for 4, and the scientists proposed that instead they use LFTR reactors using the Thorium fuel cycle. Unfortunately for the LFTR reactor, the nuclear bomber program was soon scrapped (it was generally considered a crazy idea).

    LFTR reactors didn't get the uplift costs paid for, and only a few research reactors were built and then mothballed. Meanwhile, PWR reactors became the thing to build for nuclear power, and the companies building them were the same companies that got the contracts for the replacement fuel rods (something that isn't needed with LFTR reactors).

    Commercial interests promoted PWR over LFTR, expecially since companies like GE will not invest time into LFTR because it would eliminate a very lucrative fuel business.

    Anyways, its never simple when profit becomes your only motive. Governments can have motives other than profit, but commercial companies answer to their share holders, who want ever increasing profits. To make space worth doing, you must have a business model that eventually provides profit. And that business model won't always require deep space exploration. Blue Origin for instance will not be going to the Moon or even Mars anytime soon. Their business model is simply to provide 4 minutes of zero G above 100 km. Musk's Orion project has bigger goals, with possible Moon and Mars missions, but he won't be doing asteroid mining. And the list goes on.

    Commercial companies are only going to do what they believe will be profitable. You would never have a private company do the Manhattan project, period, and sometimes those projects are the only way forward.

  23. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by tnk1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the 15th Century every early exploration of any note was government sponsored to some degree.

    Although, it is important to note that at that time, there was a fuzzier line between the "government" and the people who had capital to send voyages. Queen Isabella provided money of her own for the voyage, as opposed to money raised directly in a tax and budgeted for the exploration.

    However, as Queen, her jewels and her personal wealth were effectively derived from her position as a ruler.

    Prince Henry the Navigator was in a similar position. He was rich, but mostly rich because he was a royal who had estates and money derived from his position related to the government.

    There was no commercial interest, or any individual ship which was involved in the exploration of the Americas at that time.

    You would likely have been better off discussing the Viking voyages, which is more of a scenario where voyages of relatively small ships fitted out for trade and raiding eventually got to North America.

  24. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Holi · · Score: 2

    Quick fix. Sorry it was Leif Erikson, his son that made it to Canada.

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  25. Who will pay for the exploration? by sjbe · · Score: 1

    All you have to do is tell someone that there's money to be made in space.

    That's great but until you do some exploring there isn't a single company in the world that is going to go there to find out. First you have to explore to get enough information to find out IF there is money to be made in space and if so, where it can be made. Private companies aren't going to do that bit on the frontier. They cannot except on comparatively small scales. Governments pretty much have to be the ones to do the initial exploration so the risks and rewards can be determined.

  26. Shameless Self Promoter by frovingslosh · · Score: 0

    tyson is just a shameless self promoter who likes to say outrageous things just to get attention. Look at his destruction of the planet Pluto. He isn't even an astronomer (he's claims to be an astro-physicist, which should have nothing to do with discovering or undiscovering planets), yet he took it on himself to destroy our ninth planet, and managed to convince some other scientists to go along with him.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:Shameless Self Promoter by DarenN · · Score: 1

      I would be significantly more impressed (and scared) if he had actually destroyed the planet(oid) Pluto.

      --
      Rational thought is the only true freedom
  27. Let's face it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Big government = Big Space. Obama's commercial space has been an exercise in cronyism. 8 years and still no manned flights. I thought jokers like SpaceX were supposed to be fast. NASA has already flown the Orion spacecraft.

    1. Re:Let's face it by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      Why are manned flights part of your criteria for space progress in the near future? Smarter to probe for now rather than waste money prematurely, while we can develop useful tech for moving and sustaining humans in space: e.g. bioengineering, efficient solar panels, ion engines and other thrusting systems, nanotech, etc.

  28. secret trick to get stuff to space by cellocgw · · Score: 2, Informative

    As others have pointed out, the gravity well makes launch costs prohibitive. It also makes getting that load of ore from a captured meteor back down without another dinosaur extinction difficult.

    Even with a few dozen engineering hurdles completely unsolved, a tethered station on a space elevator is really the only way to lift mass (you know, people and equipment) with any kind of reasonable energy-to-mass ratio.

    --
    https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    1. Re:secret trick to get stuff to space by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      And as soon as we can make single-walled carbon nanotubes in sufficient length to make a weave that can reach to GEO, then the price of getting to space becomes cheap.

      The "only way" is currently not viable as the record SWCNT is.... huh. About 1/2 a meter in 2013... Wow, the last I looked they were struggling for centimetres. That's really encouraging.

      So... It's coming. But in the meantime, it's rockets all the way up.

    2. Re:secret trick to get stuff to space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And as soon as we can make single-walled carbon nanotubes in sufficient length to make a weave that can reach to GEO, then the price of getting to space becomes cheap.

      And this dream is reassuring to you, because then you don't actually have to build this miracle material. Or you could live in the real world, realize that the construction costs have to be paid for somehow, and...

    3. Re:secret trick to get stuff to space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Getting closer all the time: Smallest Possible Diamonds Form Ultra-thin Nanothreads

      Then there's the powering the climber problem that has yet to be solved. If this research was receiving similar funding to current chemical rocket research, we might be a lot closer.

    4. Re:secret trick to get stuff to space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every single thread about asteroid mining have wast majority of people dismissing asteroid mining because when you bring resources back to Earth it cannot complete with mining we currently have down there.

      Maybe this time you guys will finally get it: asteroid mined materials are TO BE USED IN SPACE!!!

      We are not going to bring them back to Earth, we will bring them to orbit and use it there instead of launching from this gravity well.

      Simple stuff like water and fuel currently cost about $20,000 per kilogram to get to space, and even with current satellites we require over hundred tons of that stuff per year, which makes it $2,000,000,000 market.

  29. Economic incentives and existential threats by sjbe · · Score: 1

    And you also can't make a credible business or scientific case for government to finance manned space travel to the Moon or Mars at this point.

    Sure I can. It's actually pretty easy to make that argument. But it probably won't happen until one of two things occurs - either there has to be an economic incentive or an existential threat. That's part of what NdGT talks about. We went to the moon to beat the Russians during the Cold War - an existential threat. Once that threat was confirmed to not be an issue anymore we stopped going to the Moon and haven't been back since. We hadn't figured out a way to profit from going there yet and so the government funding went elsewhere. If it looks like China is going to the Moon I guarantee you that the US will find the money to do it too - just in case...

    We do need research and exploration, but that can be done most efficiently using robot probes.

    Some exploration can be done efficiently with probes. Some cannot be done at all with probes. There are a wide variety of topics for which exploratory probes are quite useless, not the least of which is studying human physiology and life support away from Earth. There is plenty of benefit in probes but the notion that nothing will be gained by sending people is absurd and short sighted. That's like thinking that we can explore the ocean using nothing but satellites and ROVs. They're useful tools but they aren't a replacement for going yourself.

    1. Re:Economic incentives and existential threats by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      Sure I can. It's actually pretty easy to make that argument.

      You're welcome to try.

      We went to the moon to beat the Russians during the Cold War - an existential threat

      Really? How did putting people on the Moon help us defend against the USSR?

      Some exploration can be done efficiently with probes. Some cannot be done at all with probes. [...] They're useful tools but they aren't a replacement for going yourself.

      Nowhere did I argue that manned exploration should never happen. But given the technology we currently have, robot probes are arguably the best bang for the buck. In fact, focusing development on robot probes and autonomous systems is probably the fastest way of getting a manned space program up and running. The problem with government financing of manned space programs is that it misallocates resources, ultimately hurting what it is trying to achieve.

    2. Re:Economic incentives and existential threats by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      We went to the moon to beat the Russians during the Cold War - an existential threat

      Really? How did putting people on the Moon help us defend against the USSR?

      The theories included, roughly:
      -- the USA clearly can build way awesome rockets that can deliver H-bombs to targets in the USSR with centimeter precision
      -- the USA's rocketry, ballistics, computers, and manufacturing capabilities so outclass the USSR that they don't dare mess with us.

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    3. Re:Economic incentives and existential threats by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      Those are not consequences of us putting a man on the moon; they are consequences of the US investing in rockets. We didn't need to put a man on the moon in order to do that.

      Furthermore, those insane technologies nearly caused global nuclear war; that kind of madness is only the result of government action. If anything, it's another argument why government should not be allowed to engage in this kind of spending.

    4. Re:Economic incentives and existential threats by crunchygranola · · Score: 1

      We went to the moon to beat the Russians during the Cold War - an existential threat

      Really? How did putting people on the Moon help us defend against the USSR?

      The Cold War was not primarily a military conflict, but a socio/economic/political one. In 1965 about half of the world's population lived under Communist governments, and much of the rest of the world (by population) were either allies or friendly with one or more of the Communist powers (example: India). It was quite explicitly a confrontation between sociopolitical systems - the motivation behind the whole space race on both sides was to show which system was superior.

      The moon race was an explicit calculation by the U.S. to show the superiority of U.S. society and the U.S. system. There were no bones made about this, it was part of the declared purpose.

      And it succeeded in exactly the way envisioned. Not just succeeded as in "we got to the Moon", but showing that the Soviets could not compete. The Soviets actually tried to mount a rival Moon mission (two different programs in fact - a manned orbit of the Moon and a landing) but they fell far behind Apollo, and were abandoned in the early 1970s when the U.S. had already secured all the laurels for being first.

      --
      Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
    5. Re:Economic incentives and existential threats by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

      The Cold War was not primarily a military conflict, but a socio/economic/political one.

      As I was saying: you also can't make a credible business or scientific case. You are making a socio/economic/political case. Yes, my qualifier was there for a reason.

      However, when it comes to the socio/economic/political argument, I think you are on thin ice, because creating gigantic federal programs to demonstrate the superiority of free markets and free societies over communism is idiotic. What the Apollo program really demonstrated was that the rest of our economy was so strong and resilient that it could tolerate such utterly useless programs as the Apollo program. Building a bunch of gigantic pyramids would have accomplished the same purpose.

    6. Re:Economic incentives and existential threats by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      they aren't a replacement for going yourself.

      Sure they are. Why send 3 people down in a submarine looking out a tiny window when for the same cost you send 5 rovs, each with a dozen ultra high definition cameras fed to 600 oceanographers over satellite links simultaneously all over the world working 24 hours a day? And have them spend months at a time at 4,000m. All deployed by a nuclear powered drone boat that comes to port every 5 years for maintenance and fueling.

      If a cramped experience is required, then build mockup of submersible and have people sit in it while looking at porthole monitors.

  30. Neill should rewatch his Startalk interview with M by jvrichie · · Score: 1

    Tyson makes the mistake of assuming Musks goals are the same as other commercial space ventures. From the very beginning - as in PayPal - Elon's stated goals were to prove that spaceflight could be much cheaper thereby forcing NASA into using its dollars better and getting humans to be viable on Mars. Period. He has stated these goals in speeches, books, talk shows and most importantly in investors meetings. All the people financing SpaceX when its not Musk's own money - share his goal. They are not in this for profit anymore than he is (yes, profit is desirable but only as it advances the other goal). His investors are eyes wide open when it comes to profitability. Its disappointing that Tyson either doesn't understand that or dismisses it.

  31. ... but it doesn't apply to Elon Musk by bgarcia · · Score: 4, Informative

    Elon Musk's goal is to create a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In order for that to happen, he decided that he would have enough people volunteering to immigrate to Mars to make that happen if he can bring the cost of a ticket to Mars down to $500,000. And in order for that to happen, he needs to find a way to severely bring down the cost of launching rockets.

    SpaceX's goal is not the usual corporate goal of making quarterly profits for the shareholders. He is keeping SpaceX private because he knows his goals would never be reached if he were to make it a publicly-owned company.

    So while NdGT is probably correct, I think the only reason he will be correct in this case is that Elon Musk will die of old age before SpaceX gets far enough along to make a Mars colony a reality. But I'm really, really hoping that Musk can pull this off.

    --
    I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
  32. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    PUBLIC companies have a shareholder obligation to make money.

    Private companies and consortiums can do what they want. Government is not the only agent for change.

  33. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by roman_mir · · Score: 0

    My answer to this is very simple actually, if there is no business case to go to Mars I don't want any government stealing money from people to go to Mars because at that point it is all it is: theft.

    Eventually a business case for Mars may become real and then businesses will find a way to get there. Today it is likely not the case at all that there is any sort of ROI on going to Mars except for raising spirits of those, who want to see it happen.

    Well, if the people who WANT to see it happen actually PAY for it by BUYING bonds that would pay for it, then a private business can do it without government! That's because a private business can print bonds that can be sold (tentatively) to people and if enough money is raised then actually collect the money and start building.

    To do it otherwise is to steal, but that's nothing new, that's what all governments always do.

  34. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by swillden · · Score: 1

    If they are publicly traded and their principal business is not risk, then they are required to be by law.

    Cite?

    I'm fairly certain there is no such law. What publicly-traded businesses are required to do is to do what they say they'll do in their articles of incorporation and their prospectus. For most, these documents state that their focus is to generate a responsible return on investment (language varies, but that's what it boils down to). However, it is perfectly acceptable for them to include other goals, and even to prioritize those goals over making money.

    Were SpaceX to go public, they could specify that their primary goal is to get to Mars, for example, rather than to make money. That would probably lower their valuation, but there would be nothing at all illegal about it.

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  35. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    Not the big voyages. Those required the resources and backing of governments.

    Columbus' voyage was already predominantly privately financed. Furthermore, Queen Isabella contributed nothing like a modern government to the exploration effort, she merely acted as another investor with money that she pretty much had sole control over. If Queen Isabelle she hadn't paid for it, Columbus could well have found the balance of the funding from other private investors, or simply scaled back the voyage a little (after all, one or two ships might have sufficed). Furthermore, the risk of those voyages was privately insured, not born by Queen Isabelle or any government.

    In addition, Columbus worked out the business plan and the voyage independently before seeking funding, and he decided on the spending like a private business man. That is nothing like the space programs that deGrasse-Tyson favors, which involve decades-long government programs, subject to Congressional spending choices and political meddling.

    Your story is the same argument deGrasse-Tyson keeps making, and it falls apart when you look at historical facts.

    Private companies only get involved when there is something they can see a way to profit from. It's a good thing but pure exploration of the frontier is simply something they cannot do because the risk/reward ratio is off the charts bad.

    Private companies make high risk/return gambles all the time; high risk per se isn't a deterrent. The problem with manned space travel to Mars is that it is high risk/low return. That is, even in the best case scenario, if you succeed traveling to Mars, there is going to be little return from that because there is nothing on Mars that we want or need right now.

    However, government funding is low risk/high return for the companies that actually receive the funding. NASA's manned programs have been nothing but huge subsidies to US aerospace and defense contractors, plus some politically expedient handouts to politicians in important states.

  36. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

    I think the problem here is that NDT is just not keeping up to date on the 'New Space' sector. Investors are just starting to realize that space is an option. You can invest $10b now on a copper or gold mine, with an eight year payout, or you can invest $6b on an asteroid mission with a 15~20 year payout. To a big-ticket investor, these two opportunities look very similar.

    I wonder what he'll say in a few weeks (or months) after SpaceX 'sticks the landing' on their first booster recovery, which will forever change the economics of space flight.

    My guess is he just spends too much time rubbing elbows with 'establishment' types in the space business, and doesn't fully appreciate the revolution taking place below the 'mainstream' radar.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
  37. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And look at all that Leif Erikson accomplished.

    Wait, wait, it's a few houses on Labrador?

  38. Tyson disses the Libertarian religion with facts by bigsexyjoe · · Score: 1

    He didn't say anything remotely controversial or anything that isn't obvious. A for-profit corporation figuring out how to get to Mars or doing any expensive basic research? No. Of course, not. Just won't happen.

  39. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by khallow · · Score: 1

    he was talking about the fact that there is not even the teeniest tiniest business case that can be made for building a human spaceflight program to Mars

    Rich billionaire is willing to spend X to get to Mars for a tourist trip. Cost is Y where Y
    You can do the same calculation for more customers. The problem here is that Y>X. Bring the cost down and the business cases appear.

  40. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    And their colony failed. The Spanish, Portuguese, English and French colonies in the New World succeeded because the governments that ran those colonies backed them financially and militarily. At least in the case of the English, owners/shareholders of colonials often received economic monopolies, giving them substantial impetus to make colonies economically viable in fairly short order.

    And even though colonies could obviously become self-sustaining in pretty short order, they still required a significant amount of protection from the colonial power, and the colonial powers served as the route to accessing markets.

    The Vikings experiments in colonization as private endeavors were mixed successes at best, and ultimately only Iceland survived as a successful colonial enterprise by the early Modern era, with the North American and Greenland colonies failing (though the Greenland colony did manage to hang on for several centuries).

    There are probably any number of reasons; less than hospitable sites for colonization that were vulnerable to climactic changes at the top, but also the more limited means of making such colonies economically viable. At least in the North American attempts, the native peoples may have played a roll as well. The Norse simply didn't have the resources at their disposal that the Colonial Powers could bring to bear when they started seizing the New World. The Norse were hardly better equipped than the Inuit and Native Americans they encountered, whereas the Spaniards, French and English had firearms and much larger numbers.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  41. Re: Neil deGrasse Tyson is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    You can't masturbate a person. A person masturbates themselves.

  42. Re:Neil deGrasse Tyson is for cows. by Coren22 · · Score: 0

    Which is a male cow.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  43. Re:One thing for certain by Immerman · · Score: 1

    Ah, but "billions and billions" only implies a minimum of 4 billion: 2 billions and 2 billions, possibly as few as 2 depending on your pluralization rules (is 1,000,000,001 "billions" or only "billion"?), substantially less than your half-dozen billion either way. 2 billion might even be vaguely realistic, though I would be kind of surprised if that many people even knew of him to have a well-formed opinion, what with most people in the world having little if any access to modern media.

    --
    --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  44. His thesis used to be correct by bennebw · · Score: 1

    His thesis does not appear to considers current political and economic realities. The current situation is that governments (esp. the US gov) cannot spend another dime on fanciful spaceflights until everyone is fully insured, police brutality is stamped out through omnipresent surveillance of police, the terrorist state is pacified, females have equal access to STEM training and jobs, soc sec and medicare are fully funded, and any manner of other social welfare institutions are fully operational and ready for battle. Until then, a trip to Mars is only available to people or corporations or the founders of corporations who have a dream and enough money to make it happen. If asteroid mining ever yields precious metals or unlimited energy (could you steer asteroids to impact earth in a specific place and generate net energy gains??), then you'll see governments going to war over the rights to mine them. The Social Justice crowd has fully convinced me (and pretty much everyone else) that we (the US people/government) don't have a dime to spare on anything that isn't directly going to the eradication of social injustices. Maybe someone gets creative and funds an all female/minority version of NASA to go to Mars, thereby creating opportunities that alleviate a few situations and still goes to space. But I don't see that as the path of least resistance for solving those problems, with nearly all the resistance being political. None of this should surprise anyone for whom /. is a primary source of news.

  45. Re:Affirmative Action won't take us to Mars. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks for not addressing the actual subject and finding a way to look both racist and stupid in a single comment

  46. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Cows and Bulls go MOOOO.
    APK goes "whine whine whine, eat your words, whine whine whine".

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  47. I actually contacted him about this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He is been saying that exploration was always done by government money. Which is ofcourse bullshit. To call the financing of Colombus by the queen of spain "Government grant" is plain stupid because back then corporations and countries were the same thing. Rulers were the business people. Businesses know how to think further ahead then polititians in democratic governments. So Tyson's assertions that government does the riskiest things is absurd. The riskiest things governments ever did is to do war and raise taxes.

  48. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    You burned up on reentry?

    Are you going to miss me tomorrow when I am eating turkey and ignoring the computer? I know you are secretly in love with me, I'm just too nice to break your heart.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  49. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    Sorry, no, they were using old maps. And cocaine from South America has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. There was cross-Atlantic trade long before anybody wrote down the details, because those who had the details considered them to be trade secrets. It was only in the modern age when there were already large vessels in every corner of the seas (going "somewhere" but don't ask where) that so many people held the "secrets" that it became more valuable for some percentage of them to make and sell maps to capitalize.

    Notice for example that international products were already in local markets in an age where there were no world maps, or even text descriptions, that could tell you where the places actually were that the products were from. That was the case from thousands of years ago, right up to the era of Columbus. Very few explorers were trying to "discover" things in the romanticized sense that modern school history units phrase things in, but rather they were trying to develop their own private maps and routes. When somebody would sponsor an expedition, that is what they were mostly paying for; the ship logs and maps that would be created on the voyage, and that can be used to send additional ships to the same places in the future.

  50. Re:Affirmative Action won't take us to Mars. by Rei · · Score: 1

    I think his job is more "ticking large numbers of people off". For example, he was one of the leaders behind the "Pluto, Eris, Ceres, etc aren't planets" movement - he had references to Pluto being a planet removed from the Hayden Planetarium years before the IAU vote. He's not exactly popular among those who felt that hydrostatic equilibrium was the relevant constraint and that the "cleared the neighborhood" definition is fundamentally flawed.

    --
    I hate to bring up our imminent arrest during your crazy time, but we gotta move.
  51. The True Problem With Commercial Space by Baldrson · · Score: 1

    As the person credited for the first law commercializing space launch services (credited by the law's sponsor, Ron Packard during his introduction of my Congressional testimony on space commercialization) there truly _is_ a problem with privatized space and it is a capital market failure.

    This capital market failure systemically suppresses technology investment and it derives from something that should be obvious to anyone in venture finance:

    Economic activity is taxed rather than liquidation value of net assets.

    A venture financier, or angle, or anyone else who takes dollars out of a bank account and puts it into a high risk venture, is rendering their capital illiquid. If you cease taxing economic activity (income, capital gains, sales, value added, inheritance, gifts, etc.) and instead tax only the liquidation value of net assets, for all practical purposes high risk investments cease being taxed.

    This is why, the year after I testified before Congress on the initial legislative direction for companies like SpaceX, I wrote a white paper titled "A Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market Democracy" wherein I proposed a shift away from centralized government provision of technology development and, at the same time, a shift away from politically biased government delivery of social goods (ie: the welfare state), by taxing net assets at the rate of interest on the national debt and distributing tax revenues as an unconditional citizen's dividend. Later I clarified the assessment mechanism to be liquidation value as well as some of the further aspects of government to be privatized.

    Its obvious why so-called "liberals" don't want this since by-passing the welfare state without regard to any politically defined criteria other than citizenship, it would gut their political base.

    Conservatives, in particular neo-libertarians of the Austrian School, on the other hand, have much to answer for here. A net asset tax, so assessed, is a big step toward the anarchocapitalism of the American school of libertarian thought exemplified by Lysander Spooner in his definition of "legitimate government" as "a mutual insurance company". Protecting property rights is according to the American school of libertarian philosophy (as contrasted with the Austrian school), the primary role of government and it is entirely legitimate to charge for that service just as it is legitimate for a property insurance company to charge a premium that is approximately proportional to the value of the property being underwritten. Moreover, it is entirely legitimate for any company to pay dividends and a mutual company would pay dividends to its members -- members who, quite reasonably, could be called on for service in times of emergency such as war and could, therefore, quite reasonably be assigned one share and exactly one share each.

    Indeed, I view it as a moral responsibility for men like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg -- particularly as beneficiaries of network externalities aka network effects that could not exist in the absence of government protection of those monopolistic property rights -- to at the very least lend their vocal, if not material, support to such a capital reform.

    It would be smart for risk investors like Elon Musk to do so.

    1. Re:The True Problem With Commercial Space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound like a deranged homeless person, rambling to himself outside of a Safeway. I'm glad 25 years ago somebody took you seriously, because I'm quite sure you are currently ignored.

  52. Really? by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    Man who has spent his life as an academic or government functionary claims the only way something will be accomplished is...through the government.

    News at 11?

    --
    -Styopa
  53. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    You would likely have been better off discussing the Viking voyages, which is more of a scenario where voyages of relatively small ships fitted out for trade and raiding eventually got to North America.

    I don't think even that's accurate. Viking ships were indeed relatively small compared to the English or Spanish or whatever ships which came 500 years later, but at the time, the Viking longboats were the largest and most advanced ships made in Europe. Their range extended as far as North Africa, Italy, Iceland, and of course all the way to Newfoundland. These weren't boats that a couple of guys could build, they were financed and built by people who were then the wealthy leaders; it just took too much manpower to do that. Don't forget the cost of sending men and all their equipment and arms. Watch a YouTube video sometime showing how a reproduction Viking sword is made; the amount of labor involved is absolutely ridiculous, plus the raw steel at the time was extremely expensive. I just watched a video last night about a smith forging a Viking sword and it took him 3 months, and that was with the benefit of a lot of more modern equipment (like the big pneumatic hammer used to draw out the sword; back in the old days they had to hammer everything by hand).

    The European voyages that came later surely benefited from centuries of improved technology and more developed economic markets.

  54. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +1 Informative

  55. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    However, government funding is low risk/high return for the companies that actually receive the funding.

    I completely disagree. If this were true, Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop Grumman,
      etc. would be the most profitable companies around, instead of Apple. Government contracting generally means accepting a limited profit margin, dictated by the government, plus a shitload of overhead to make sure the contractor is meeting the terms of the contract and that everything is accounted for. The reason government contractors do it is because it's low risk and decent return, not high return. It's almost a sure thing basically. Once your company is big enough and established enough in the government contracting space, you just have to keep doing what you've been doing and reliably provide service and you'll get more contracts and have a continuous source of revenue, though it is subject to political dealings and changes. But if you have a multi-year contract in place, you can count on getting continuous revenue for that time, as long as you live up to the contract.

    By contrast, a company like Apple can make huge profits by selling overpriced Chinese-made stuff to gullible consumers, but only as long as their marketing convinces them it's fashionable. As soon as consumers, who are known to be fickle, decide something else is more fashionable, or Apple pisses them off somehow, the house of cards can collapse and their profitability disappear. The risk is quite a bit higher for companies which sell directly to consumers, but the potential for profitability is higher.

    there is going to be little return from that because there is nothing on Mars that we want or need right now.

    There may be mineral resources there. However it's ridiculously far away and it's unknown if it does have any significantly valuable resources. What makes a LOT more sense is near-earth asteroid mining. There's already some billionaires who've set up some venture to work on that. It's quite likely there's very highly concentrated ores in asteroids which pass relatively close to Earth, of very valuable materials like platinum. We already know how to launch probes to stuff within the orbit of the Moon or so (or really, all the way to Pluto), and with anything as close as the Moon, you can even remote-control it in almost realtime (a few seconds' delay), unlike with Mars where you need to wait 30-60 minutes to hear back from your rover.

  56. Delusions of The Public by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On this one I would agree with Tyson. But the public has to get over its love affair with the value of Media Celebrities and Personalities.

    Human being will not be traveling to Mars now or anytime in the next 200 years, possible 600 years. If they do happen to go they will be dead before liftoff.

    As for commercial space flight, it will never be safe for humans or monkeys. One more pad or liftoff explosion and Orbital/SpaceX/BlueOnion will be history. If Branson is really smart he will bail out of Virgin Galactic unlike his dead co-pilot who did not have an option, stock or otherwise.

  57. It is so disappointing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At the end of the day: Tyson is, sadly, a hack.Great Maker! Compare him to Brian Cox or Michio Kaku.

  58. It doesn't matter what NDT thinks. by thumper666 · · Score: 1

    The surest way to get large scale government investment in space exploration is to have a private company appear to be making progress on establishing off-planet colonies of people that governments cannot credibly exert ownership over.

    To that end, I laud what SpaceX is doing as it's seriously freaking out governments and government-pushers like NDT to invest more in space in order to bring star-chasers back under government bootheels.

    Governments will of course fail in this effort, but it will push us into space faster.

    1. Re:It doesn't matter what NDT thinks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you realize how utterly insane you sound or are you through the looking glass?

  59. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 that's not a very good defense against what I saw apk totalled you with.

  60. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by Outtascope · · Score: 1
    disclaimer: IANAL

    That is where I said "unless their principal business is not risk". Having said that ...

    Stone v. Ritter [Delaware 2006], while the court found on behalf of the company because the issue at hand was whether a failure to institute a particular program of internal corporate espionage to detect malfeasance or malpractice by its employees constituted liability upon its directors (the court found that in the instant case it did not), it did state that under a corporation's fiduciary duties is the duty of loyalty.

    Stone v. Ritter cites Guth V. Loft [Delware 1939] in helping characterize that the duty of loyalty

    ...demands of a corporate officer or director, peremptorily and inexorably, the most scrupulous observance of his duty, not only affirmatively to protect the interests of the corporation committed to his charge, but also to refrain from anything that would work injury to the corporation, or to deprive it of profit or advantage which his skill and ability might properly bring to it, or to enable it to make in the reasonable and lawful exercise of its powers.

    So while the courts do give wide latitude to directors to make decisions on behalf of their companies, to include significant propositions of risk, it is clear that there is some threshold at which a reasonable level of risk crosses over into territory that constitutes a violation of the Duty of Loyalty as it posses a likelihood to

    ... work injury to the corporation, or to deprive it of profit or advantage...

    Under that guidance, a corporate officer needs to be able to show that their decisions pose a reasonable likelihood of being profitable to the company (conceding that what constitutes reasonable is generally quite broad).

    So you are correct to say, in as much as I can find, that there is no such law, but there is such guiding principal which colors the law and the rulings of the courts and, more importantly to corporate directors, the disposition of shareholders. If you are tossed from your directorate position by a shareholder led initiative, or have to spend months or years fighting to defend a decision that you made because of the same, do the semantics of the process really matter? Does that not work to seriously disincentivize actions that are more likely to fail than to succeed?

    Again, you are correct that a company is more tightly bound to abide by its articles of incorporation. Somethings, however, won't fly. You could file as a non-profit (though we aren't talking about non-profits here) but generally you must turn a profit some percentage of years (3 of last 5) or demonstrate that you can turn a profit or basically, show that the business is viable in order to receive tax deductions for expenses. There is a window of opportunity where start-ups can by-pass these requirements, but eventually you will be relegated to hobby status, and my recollection is that some states will rescind your articles of incorporation if you fail to demonstrate viability for X period of time. All this ignores the fact that exactly what kind of IPO or valuation do you think a company is going to have when their 10Ks say they don't intend to make a profit? You drop that valuation too far, particularly in technology rich turf such as space exploration, and you are some other company's lunch, and if you are public there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. So this all leaves you back at the wealthy individual territory which we previously covered.

    Lastly, with respect to your example of SpaceX, the regulatory bodies (both public and private) place certain profitability and market capitalization requirements on corporations as a requirement for listing on exchanges. Even if SpaceX makes those requirements (and it looks like they may well be near that) they have to maintain them to some degree after IPO. That means hugely costly efforts that would deplete market c

  61. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Have a good Thanksgiving Alex, hopefully you can find something to be thankful for to help you end this needles crusade against the truth, and perhaps help you seek the help you so desperately need. BB on Friday o/

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  62. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    The reason government contractors do it is because it's low risk and decent return, not high return.

    The return is high relative to the return they would be getting without government funding, which is close to zero.

    By contrast, a company like Apple can make huge profits by selling overpriced Chinese-made stuff to gullible consumers

    The value of Apple's products is in what people are willing to pay for it, which apparently is a lot of money. The fact that you (or I) may think that their products are "overpriced" in some sense does not change that.

    What makes a LOT more sense is near-earth asteroid mining.

    It does. But, as you pointed out yourself, private companies are getting into the act, and teleoperated and autonomous robotic probes are the drivers there.

  63. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by vilanye · · Score: 1

    Does anyone believe that this is not APK shilling for his fucktarded self?

  64. Yeah but a small boat by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    seems a _lot_ more dangerous. Today I can cross the ocean with near 100% safety if I spend enough money. The biggest danger on a modern cruise ship is the buffet...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  65. Polynesian expansion across the Pacific by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2

    And the Polynesian Islands were populated before Europe had boats.

    No, they weren't.

    "Polynesian ancestors settled in Samoa around 800 BC, colonized the central Society Islands between AD 1025 and 1120 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaii and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 1190 and 1290."
    http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/ike/...

    Your Eurocentric view is blocking you from seeing that explorers predate Columbus and made ocean crossings long before

    Yes, that part is right.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  66. Energy cost [Re:Cost of access is key.] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

    In other words, you can't cheat gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. No one seems to listen, but my initial assessment is that the shear amount of energy required to launch a viable space colony is going to be prohibitive.

    Orbital velocity is about 7.8 km/sec, so the energy cost of getting into orbit is 1/2mv^2 = 30 MJ/kg, or about 8.5 kW-hr/kg. At an energy cost of 10 cents per kilowatt hour, that would be an energy cost slightly under a dollar a kilogram.

    Energy cost, in and of itself, is not the problem.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
    1. Re:Energy cost [Re:Cost of access is key.] by plopez · · Score: 1

      Where are you getting $0.10 per KWH? The other poster gave some enlightening information on boosters and propellants please give us more details.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    2. Re:Energy cost [Re:Cost of access is key.] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 1

      Where are you getting $0.10 per KWH?

      http://www.eia.gov/electricity...

      The other poster gave some enlightening information on boosters and propellants please give us more details.

      I was not addressing boosters or propellants. I was addressing a single point, that "the shear amount of energy" is the problem. There are indeed reasons that getting into orbit is expensive. But the amount of energy, in itself, is not a major cost.

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  67. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    The return is high relative to the return they would be getting without government funding, which is close to zero.

    No, it isn't. They could do some other commercial work and potentially get higher profits, but with higher risks. They do government contracting because it's low risk, not because there's a lot of profit in it.

    You seem to be implying that without government funding, corporations would simply go belly-up. That's ludicrous in the extreme.

  68. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    Oh, it's classic AlecStaar, all right--always evoking violent imagery--"smashed", "totalled", "beat", "destroyed". And always coming back an hour or two later pretending to be a different AC who just happens to agree with him, and just happens to use the same kind of phrasing. He's been following the exact same pattern for at least ten years. In part he's still trying to get even with Ars Technica and numerous other forums for banning him and his sockpuppet accounts.

    Now you know why, whenever anybody else happens to voice agreement with anyone critical of him, he immediately accuses them of using sockpuppets. And why he goes to such great pains to make real sure everyone knows it's him, while posting AC (unless, of course, he's following up by trying to pretend to be some random helpful AC who just happens to... well, you get the idea).

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  69. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  70. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What I see that is amusing is none of you trolls ever manage to validly technically prove apk wrong. He does you though. Coren22 is proof.

  71. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    No, it isn't. They could do some other commercial work and potentially get higher profits, but with higher risks.

    Companies like Lockheed Martin are specialized in areas that are of interest only to governments. They have neither the management, nor the patent portfolio, nor the facilities, nor the employees to successfully compete in other areas. That is, their resources are substantially misallocated, and that misallocation requires substantial amounts of money and time to fix.

    They do government contracting because it's low risk, not because there's a lot of profit in it.

    A nominally average return at low risk is actually a high return. Furthermore, I'm not sure why you think that their profits are low. Perhaps you are looking at profit margins, but that's not really a useful number for defense contractors, since they are probably inflating their costs; you need to look at other numbers. Lockheed-Martin's return on equity, for example, is an obscene 125%.

  72. By Neruos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    crossing water, any monkey can do that and many do.
    crossing space or leaving orbit, not the same thing, very very hard and only humans can do it.

  73. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your egypt-south america cocaine reference has long been debunked; they were using subio s chemical signatures and an extended reach of process-of-elimination to identify the alkaloids present, and further studies refines the guess to plants native to Egypt and no connection to south america. There may have been isolated pockets of trade but no trade route between the two continents and no evidence to support such a claim.

  74. Circular reasoning is circular by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So if the only economically feasible reason to go to space is asteroid mining, and the only reason to mine asteroids is for use in space, tell me again how it is economically feasible to go to space?

  75. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  76. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  77. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  78. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  79. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  80. Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "I've been asked to further clarify so for the record yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "I guess we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else can I programmatically update hosts?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts needs it vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I literally say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    What others like Dog-Cow (old acc't. not a new sockpuppet from you) thinks of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  81. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know what is sadder.

    APK's total technical incompetence or his constant spamming and posting like he is someone else.

    What a sad sack of shit.

  82. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fron by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Still the cost of platinum per pound is about $1500. The cost to put anything in space is ~$10k/lbs without even returning anything. Say that you need at least 2000lbs of mining material and people going up and down on a regular basis (and you whittle the cost down to a cool $1M/launch) to mine 500lbs of platinum, your .5M worth of platinum would have to cost 1M before profits. In addition, if you sold at market prices hoping to improve your profits in the future by technological advances you would pressure the market cost of platinum due to excess availability so your platinum would be as worthless as gold or silver and cost you a pretty penny.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  83. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fron by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    The thing is, you're not going to mine 500 lbs of platinum, it's quite possible you're going to mine millions of pounds of it, along with other valuable metals. Yes, you wouldn't be able to dump that on the market too fast, but you would put all the existing platinum mines out of business quickly. And with lower prices for platinum, more uses would be found for it, increasing the demand. More people would want it for jewelry and aesthetics probably, but also it's quite likely new industrial uses would be found for it which were previously unexplored due to its extremely high cost. You have to think more long-term about these things, which it doesn't look like you're doing with your analysis. An endeavor like this isn't going to be something small, it's going to be absolutely huge, and mining a single asteroid will span for decades most likely.

    Finally, look at the environmental aspect: mining is terrible ecologically. Wouldn't it be better to do as much mining in space as we can, so we aren't digging giant holes in the ground, polluting groundwater and rivers, shearing the tops off mountains, etc.? We just had a bad incident with river pollution in one of the western states (CO I think), and mining always has problems with environmental opposition in advanced nations (and in backwards nations causes all kinds of problems, like fueling conflicts as with coltan). Environmentalists won't care if you break up asteroids for mineral resources.

  84. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by mvdwege · · Score: 1

    Columbus could well have found the balance of the funding from other private investors

    But he didn't

    This reminds me of libertards like roman_mir who continue to insist that without DARPA and the NSF, private parties might have built the Internet. The point is, when the time came, they didn't. Counterfactuals are nice and all, but we only have one history, and that says you're wrong.

    --
    "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
  85. The almighty magic science negro has spoken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Never! Magic science negro never wrong.
    In all ways he is just, right, and good.
    Good! He a good magic science negro.
    Genius is the work of the magic science negro.
    Even when magic science negro is wrong, magic science negro is right.
    Realize his omnipotence, and revere his words.
    Submit to his teachings and become a follower of the magic science negro.

  86. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22's proved technically incompetent here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... who's butthurt by his signatures projecting it.

  87. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apk's right though. It's impossible to deny. Apk quoted Coren22 and trashed each quote of Coren22's easily. Coren22's signature does the rest showing he's butthurt.

  88. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Truth I see is apk shot you down Coren22 using your words to do it http://slashdot.org/comments.p... your butthurt signature does the rest.

  89. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    But he didn't. [...] Counterfactuals are nice and all, but we only have one history, and that says you're wrong.

    My argument doesn't rely on "counterfactuals". deGrasse-Tyson's argument is that private investors are unwilling to take the risk of exploration. When more than half of his funding came from sources that were unquestionably private, his argument is obviously wrong: that is, private investors clearly are willing to take that risk, both because more than half of the voyage was financed by private investors, and because the risk was entirely insured by private insurance companies. To make that point, it doesn't matter whether 50% or 100% of Columbus's voyage was privately financed, any large percentage of private financing illustrates the point. With that observation, it isn't necessary to even argue the point that Queen Isabelle was acting like a private investor (which she did) and not like a modern government.

    Even if we were going to take Columbus' voyage as an exact model for space exploration, then NASA should not start any project until such a project is at least 50% financed through private investors and 100% privately insured again failure. What Columbus's voyage clearly does not support is anything like the current NASA funding model, or any model in which US tax payers act as an insurer for space launches, which is what deGrasse-Tyson is arguing for. That is, 0% private financing and 0% private insurance is clearly "counterfactual".

    who continue to insist that without DARPA and the NSF, private parties might have built the Internet. The point is, when the time came, they didn't.

    What are you talking about? Almost the entire Internet as it exists today is privately built and owned. The original ARPANET and NSFNET were also privately invented and built (albeit with government financing). The primary effect the US government had on the Internet was to delay its widespread adoption by several decades because of the communications monopolies it had granted to companies like AT&T.

    This reminds me of libertards like roman_mir

    It should. I'm a libertarian and I make no excuses about it. I understand your confusion: I used to be a progressive and a believer in government programs myself until I actually bothered to get the facts and read up on the history. Keep at it, you hopefully will figure it out sooner or later.

  90. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    [citation needed]

  91. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Alex, it has come to my attention that you're using my name in your posts. I would appreciate it if you would stop doing this. This is a public denouncement of the above post. The quote from me is taken out of context.

    If you have any questions, Alex, please contact me by email. Leave my company and site out of your posting or your application will be removed from the site.

    -Steve

  92. NDT ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This coming from the Astrophysicist who is telling the Planetologists what they can call a planet based on misinterpreting what he things he knows from Orbital dynamicists ?

  93. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny, you must be reading something different than me. I see nothing APK actually proved. I see lots of random quotes that don't actually disprove anything though.

  94. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using a host file to block unwanted ads and what not is like killing a fly with a sledgehammer.

    It is stupid, it is not able to granularily control things and has zero heuristic ability.

    APK has no technical skills whatsoever.

  95. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Environmentalists wont care if you break up asteroids for resources" you sure about that, though?

  96. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fro by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

    Yes. Are you just being argumentative or something?

  97. Re: Private companies don't do exploration of fro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess. I'll cite the refutation as soon as you cite the evidence that there was such trade. Otherwise I'm not sure how to look it up. But when challenging the entire timeline of Atlantic trade one does not do so without evidence and then demand references from those who question you.

  98. Re:anti-business liberal scoring points by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I believe the GP is referring to the general principle of a "fiduciary responsibility". And yes, the majority, the vast, huge, overwhelming majority of CxO's would interpret their fiduciary responsibilities as including, "don't get involved in projects with high costs, no timeline to profitability, no clear mechanism of profitability, no exit strategy and high risk of total loss of invested capital."

  99. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1

    I think they need a new slashdot achievement. The "Successfully make APK go insane" award.

  100. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by mvdwege · · Score: 1

    You have the causal relationship all wrong: Columbus deliberately sought out the support of Fernando and Isabella, without their support he would have no product to sell to his investors; one part of the deal was that he would gain authority over whatever resources he could claim in name of the crown.

    And the Internet was developed by State action. To claim it was a private venture before Al Gore took the initiative to bring it to the market is historical revisionism of the highest sort. Anyone claiming that is a libertard indeed.

    --
    "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
  101. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    You have the causal relationship all wrong: Columbus deliberately sought out the support of Fernando and Isabella, without their support he would have no product to sell to his investors; one part of the deal was that he would gain authority over whatever resources he could claim in name of the crown.

    In fact, Columbus got the private investments before going to Queen Isabella. You're confabulating facts ("without their support", "part of the deal") to support your erroneous ideas.

    And the Internet was developed by State action. To claim it was a private venture before Al Gore took the initiative to bring it to the market is historical revisionism of the highest sort. Anyone claiming that is a libertard indeed.

    What I said is correct: Almost the entire Internet as it exists today is privately built and owned. The original ARPANET and NSFNET were also privately invented and built (albeit with government financing). That's just a fact. Your claim that private parties "didn't build the Internet" is clearly wrong.

    Since your original statement was untenable, you now try to obfuscate and put up another straw man by talking vaguely about it being "developed by State action". In fact, the Internet was developed by software and hardware developers, most of them in private employ. Al Gore's 1991 bill just handed out money, mostly to universities and telecoms. Its crowning achievement was that it allowed Andreesen to clone Berners-Lee's browser with government funds, then make a shitload of money on it by taking it proprietary. The results were "brought to market" by Netscape and Microsoft. The original inventors of the technology were left hanging out to dry. Crony capitalism Al Gore style.

  102. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    who's butthurt by his signatures projecting it.

    Since you are the one complaining about my signatures, I am guessing you are the one butthurt by my signatures.

    http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    Look, you have been disowned!

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  103. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    That would make me smile. It has been quite the achievement already though.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  104. Or an elevator. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too busy banging on about how impossible it is to think of anything else, were we?

  105. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Been trying to get APKTools to install for ages, but each time I run it it complains about some missing DLL called "VBRUN300.DLL". What gives? Why don't you just include that in the core installer package (if I can call it that, .BAT file, srsly?) if it's needed, it's obviously not something that comes with Windows.

  106. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't see a statement here to that effect http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... so Coren22 you can keep your fake posts defending yourself to yourself. They're not working.

  107. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    APK must have some serious mental or personality disorder.

    Defending yourself by pretending to be someone else is not the sign of a healthy mind.

    Seek help fuckstain

  108. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Doesn't look it to me Coren22. Reads quite different here and your words in it in with giant mistakes show otherwise http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

  109. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by mvdwege · · Score: 1

    So if the government pays a private firm to execute some action, it suddenly isn't government action anymore. That is more or less your thesis, stripped from its verbiage. Yeah, I'm going to come right out and say you're an idiot, a real libertard. I'm not going to argue, like arguing with flat-earthers and Young Earth creationists, you are too stupid to waste good arguments on.

    --
    "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
  110. Re:Private companies don't do exploration of front by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 1

    So if the government pays a private firm to execute some action, it suddenly isn't government action anymore.

    Of course the act of government paying a private firm is a government action, just like shooting people, imprisoning people, regulating people, and putting propaganda on TV are "government action". And the government involved can be autocratic, totalitarian, democratic, progressive, fascist, or one of many other forms. And government action can have many motivations and consequences.

    Tyson's error is not that he referred to Queen Isabelle's investment as "government action", it is generalize from one government action to another. A monarchical ruler investing a few million dollars (in modern terms) one time with the expectation of making a positive return is a kind of government action, but it is a very different government action from US Congress creating agencies and subsidizing private companies to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year with the stated expectation of making no return at all. You can't justify the latter with the former.

    That is more or less your thesis, stripped from its verbiage

    You didn't "strip verbiage", you added meaningless abstractions in order to hide invalid generalizations.

    I'm not going to argue, like arguing with flat-earthers and Young Earth creationists

    That is exactly what you are: an economic flat-earther and a Young Earth creationist. I've pointed that out to you before, although unlike your parroting of the term, in your case, I justified those terms by relating them to the nature of the errors in your arguments. If you want to criticize my views concisely, come up with something that actually fits.

  111. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What are you talking about? That link is still live and says apk's ware was tested and is safe.You've stooped to new lows Coren22 if your childish signature isn't enough proof of that.

  112. Coren22 you have crapped on yourself... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From: services@it-mate.co.uk
    > To: apk4776239@hotmail.com
    > Subject: RE: I have a new build ready also (adds ALL the filters both Henry & yourself gave me + more on the /. troll Coren22 now GLOATING)... apk
    > Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 16:13:50 +0000
    >
    > Alex,
    > I've never even registered for SlashDot, much less posted on it ;o)

    APK

    P.S.=> How fucking LOW can you go, for Pete's sake, Coren22? Impersonating a RESPECTED MEMBER OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY NOW TOO ontop of your libelous lying immature childish signatures about me?? You're low & no man... apk

  113. Coren22 shits on himself impersonating others by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From: services@it-mate.co.uk
    > To: apk4776239@hotmail.com
    > Subject: RE: I have a new build ready also (adds ALL the filters both Henry & yourself gave me + more on the /. troll Coren22 now GLOATING)... apk
    > Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 16:13:50 +0000
    >
    > Alex,
    > I've never even registered for SlashDot, much less posted on it ;o)

    APK

    P.S.=> How fucking LOW can you go, for Pete's sake, Coren22? Impersonating a RESPECTED MEMBER OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY NOW TOO ontop of your libelous lying immature childish signatures about me?? You're low & no man - you're a butthurt libelous LYING scumbag online... apk

  114. Coren22's IMPERSONATION "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  115. Eat your words you little shit, lol... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  116. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Learn to correctly interpret what you read. Coren22 quoted shot down by apk is in black and white. Impossible to deny.

  117. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aw poor Coren22 doesn't like getting caught impersonating a Malwarebytes employee http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

  118. Coren22's impersonation "APKolypse" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  119. Coren22's impersonation "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  120. Coren22's impersonation "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  121. Coren22's impersonation "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  122. Coren22's impersonation "APKolypse" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  123. Coren22 impersonation "APKolypse" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  124. Coren22's impersonation "APKolypse" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coren22 IMPERSONATES RESPECTED MEMBERS OF THE SECURITY COMMUNITY http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    ---

    "privilege escalation's a bad thing" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

    How else programmatically update it?

    "requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

    Hypocrite later admits it - hosts do vs. WFP/SFP not my ware. Users set it not programmatic impersonation. Security wares need it.

    ---

    "secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code & said it looked all good" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes

    "yes I've seen the code & yes it is safe." FROM http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi...

    ---

    "we should avoid your crap it looks like malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

    60++ reputable sources say different:

    64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    &

    Installer-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

    ---

    "MiTM... his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

    Hardcoded favs users provide = REVERSE DNS verified & my ware filters 5,500++ false positives - security site hosts data = false positives filtered.

    ---

    "Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

    Show us where I say it? Not illogic logic but where I say it. I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

    http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

    See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there.

    APK

    P.S.=>

    "modding you down for trolling in your signature" - by Dog-Cow (21281) on Wednesday November 25, 2015

    Dog-Cow's (old acc't. no new sockpuppet from you) thoughts of your signatures about me

    ... apk

  125. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    I would recommend you install real security software such as Adblock Plus and a decent virus scanner. Hosts files cause a serious degradation of any name resolution not found in the hosts file as every single time it has to search the entire hosts file, Windows does not handle hosts files well for the use APK puts it to.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  126. AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

    1.) Protect vs. bad sites (past ads)
    2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talk
    3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talk
    4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talk
    5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
    6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
    7.) Protect vs. trackers
    8.) Protect vs. spam
    9.) Protect vs. phish
    10.) Protect vs. caps
    11.) Get you past dns blocks
    12.) Keep you off dns request logs
    13.) Speed up surfing (adblock & hardcoded favs)
    14.) Works on anything webbound multiplatform.
    15.) EZ data control
    16.) Do all that & block ads better vs. addons more efficiently

    * ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = on devices natively.

    APK

    P.S.=> Ab+ does less vs. hosts less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN operation (as 1st resolver).

    ---

    Ab+'s a 128-151mb memory hog http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts use 3-11mb w/ my program initially). Even FireFox 41 adblock eats 65++mb http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/...

    ---

    ClarityRay defeats it seeing addons used via native browser methods!

    ---

    Ab+'s bribed not to work by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

    ---

    Ab+ adds complexity in slower usermode (w/ more messagepassing overhead + context switch vs. hosts in kernelmode).

    ---

    AdBlock's SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions...

    ---

    What's best?

    APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

    MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

    &

    It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    +

    a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    & its installer -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

    ... apk

  127. WRONG: Here's how + why... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Hosts files cause a serious degradation of any name resolution not found in the hosts file as every single time it has to search the entire hosts file, Windows does not handle hosts files well for the use APK puts it to." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015 @09:43AM (#51026313)

    See subject: Hosts cached in ram locally = fastest for 95%++ accuracy for favorite sites users supply that are reverse dns verified placed @ top of hosts read in fastest in kernelmode transactions LOCALLY & not slower usermode for speed!

    Especially on where you SPEND MOST OF YOUR TIME ONLINE in those favorite sites no less!

    (It's the fastest & most efficient, capable trustworthy method you personally have the most control over...)

    The rest of hosts data entries are blocked known threats online from 10 reputable security community sites protecting you (which are false positives filtered in my APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o... & in the security community data as well! )

    Lastly:

    DNS has massive security + complexity issues vs. hosts locally AND consume far more power & hosts overcome those issues + even lighten DNS server loads (dns goes down a LOT (especially if setup as a separate machine -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )).

    APK

    P.S.=> There's no touching hosts files' all-around utility - & when combined with a good patched current system + a firewall AND a filtering patched vs. kaminsky flaw REMOTE dns (Open DNS) you can't lose on all fronts for more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity + control w/ ease of use and understanding (not regex bs OR dns rules tables)... apk

  128. Re:AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. host by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    8.) Protect vs. spam
    9.) Protect vs. phish

    Last I checked, hosts files could not stop spam, and the phising email would still be received, the link could be blocked. That is if you even know about the site in advance, as often these campaigns are directed, which is called spear phishing or whaling. You also can't clock against IP addresses, and you can't block dynamically generated DNS names. That means the hosts file block is easy to get around, a DNS block with *.example.com would work far better as it would block any attempt at the malware domain, this is clearly something hosts files cannot do.

    10.) Protect vs. caps

    Clearly it didn't protect against your all cap speech, so I am not sure what you mean. It also cannot be used to protect against baseball caps.

    13.) Speed up surfing (adblock & hardcoded favs)

    Due to the way Windows handles hosts files, this is a carefully crafted lie. Beyond the hard coded favorites, including any subsequent requests caused by your favorites, all other web browsing is dramatically slowed. It would be far faster to hard code everything in your hosts file into a DNS server as they are better at branching tree algorithms which allows for faster name resolution of numerous entries. Your 2 million + line hosts file makes EVERY query run through the entire hosts file before it fails out to DNS, whereas DNS only has to go through a few entries to get to the address (.com, example, www), so it is much faster for all resolutions other than the first three entries in your hosts file.

    You also failed to mention, Adblock Plus does something your hosts file will never be able to do. It will block ads served up by the site itself. You can't ever do this, as one connection to www.example.com is the same as another to the hosts file, but to Adblock, it can tell what are ads and what are not.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  129. Wrong on ALL counts point by point Coren22 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Last I checked, hosts files could not stop spam, and the phising email would still be received, the link could be blocked" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015

    I do know of spam/phish in advance from data from malwarebytes hpHosts & other sources (as well as malicious payloads links in the junkmail ones I get here too in my junkmails) - they DO break out which ones are spam mails etc. there -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... stupid!

    "Clearly it didn't protect against your all cap speech, so I am not sure what you mean. It also cannot be used to protect against baseball caps." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015

    Bandwidth caps are alleviated blocking ads dumbass.

    "Beyond the hard coded favorites" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015

    Hardcoded favorites (as I outlined it here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ) work EXACTLY like I stated & they ARE WHERE YOU SPEND 95++% of your time online so you get superior locally resolved reverse dns verified accurate speed & reliability.

    "It will block ads served up by the site itself. " - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015

    Ads served from the same site don't pay - which is why you don't SEE them much @ all (IF @ all) - advertisers don't trust webmasters' alleged clickcounts (& I don't blame them actually).

    Bottom-line: Hosts do FAR MORE than AlmostALLAdsBlocked sold out to advertisers & crippled by default AND FOR FAR LESS for more speed, security, reliability & anonymity online for users.

    APK

    P.S.=> You can't win Coren22 - you don't possess the saavy of networking or programming I do... apk

    1. Re:Wrong on ALL counts point by point Coren22 by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I wrote up a concise reply to you, but encountered the lameness filter, it just seems the subject of Hosts is too lame for Slashdot. Every one of your replies is incorrect, and you know it. Hosts files cannot stop spam, spear phishing or whaling, just as I replied, but you failed to actually support your assertion.

      Bandwidth caps are alleviated just as much by Adblock Plus, so how is this something that hosts files do better?

      Hosts files dramatically decrease the performance of computers, the only increased resolution speed is in the first three records of a hosts file, which is why you hard code your favorites. Every other entry is much slower to resolve than a DNS server with the same exact entries.

      Ads served from the same site do pay, this is they way the industry will go next to try and get around blocking. The site you are going to can proxy the connection to the ad network and get around every bit of blocking you are attempting.

      Bottom line, Adblock Plus with DNS kicks hosts files to the curb and leaves them bloody.

      P.S.=> You can't win Coren22 - you don't possess the saavy of networking or programming I do... apk

      Says the person who claims to use a Network Bridge and not a Proxy server and doesn't know the difference between the two. Also, how can you claim to be better at programming when you can't even design a decent installer, and don't even use a proper programming language for your software?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  130. Show me where I said BRIDGE specifically by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject stupid rookie noob: The word bridge is involved but I never said a BRIDGE specifically (& there's more ways than that that are less complex + faster - you're just TOO STUPID to FIGURE THEM OUT)... lol!

    It's your assburgers outism literal readings that do you in every single time (damaged goods brain).

    AlmostALLAdsBlocked is crippled by default & adblock doesn't do a FRACTION of what hosts do for FAR LESS no less -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... from a higher cpu serviced level of operations MINUS addons detectability (& blockability easily by ClarityRAY) in kernelmode vs. less cpu serviced usermode (slower).

    DNS has security issues hosts overcome & do better locally resolving for more speed than remote DNS provides (with less complexity by far as well as power & resources consumption) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    APK

    P.S.=> Keep trying your "phantasyland" THEORETICALS Coren22 - I'll stick to reality, & the reality is that ADS SERVED FROM THE SAME SITE DON'T PAY (which is why you don't see many IF ANY of them) since advertisers rightfully don't trust webmasters ALLEGED clickcounts - admen want to have control of that themselves & I don't blame them from THEIR SIDE on THEIR servers... apk/b

    1. Re:Show me where I said BRIDGE specifically by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I'll just leave this here:

      http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

      AlmostALLAdsBlocked is crippled by default & adblock doesn't do a FRACTION of what hosts do for FAR LESS no less -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org] from a higher cpu serviced level of operations MINUS addons detectability (& blockability easily by ClarityRAY) in kernelmode vs. less cpu serviced usermode (slower).

      Yes, Hosts files is dramatically slower, thank you for agreeing.

      DNS has security issues hosts overcome & do better locally resolving for more speed than remote DNS provides (with less complexity by far as well as power & resources consumption) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]

      Oh? An up to date DNS installation has security issues? Just like your hosts file? Interesting how that works. DNS is far less complex, and you admit you run it in that very post you link to. Are you saying you run DNS when you "know" it has security issues?

      We will see where ad networks go in the future, for now you are speculating, and I am speculating, so complaining that I am in "phantasyland" while you are in reality is quite funny.

      Here is an example of Ads hosted on the web site, that apparently don't pay:

      https://www.google.com/#q=Wind...

      Care to explain how no one does it, when Google clearly does do it?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  131. Show us where I said "bridge" specifically, lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject - well? You can't stupid, lol... bridging is involved, not proxies (only 1 of 3-4 possible ways too, others being less complex)...

    "Yes, Hosts files is dramatically slower, thank you for agreeing - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015

    LMAO: WRONG!

    Retarded assburgers brain - When you place your favorites into hosts @ THE TOP OF THE HOSTSFILE(reverse dns verified by my program no less & false positives filtered in my program AND the hosts data providers too) it's where users SPEND a GOOD 95++% of their time online - it resolves FASTER LOCALLY CACHED IN RAM in pure kernelmode transactions (IP stack & diskcache) the way I do it with larger hosts files, by far, vs. remote DNS vs. slower usermode for starters!

    "Just like your hosts file? Interesting how that works. DNS is far less complex, and you admit you run it in that very post you link to" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 30, 2015

    Good luck altering hosts beyond WFP/SFP protection Windows has AND my program protecting it above that (I've tried, not doable in usermode).

    LMAO - take a peek @ a dns rules table vs. hosts easy to use & easily edited internal format, & tell us another one... lol! Tell us another one on how many parts in programs, data etc. that local DNS entails along w/ power use too (excessive & unnecessary for most users).

    I use REMOTE DNS for the RARE sub 4% times I miss a lookup (very rare as I use my favorites as noted above the most per my browser & router log histories).

    APK

    P.S.=> As far as your "reaching" on "phantasyland" theoreticals? Hasn't happened yet so you can 'speculate' all you want in your DIM assburgers outism retard brain - I'll stick to CURRENT reality instead, & that reality is that YOU FAIL vs. me as always Coren22... lol!

    ... apk

    1. Re:Show us where I said "bridge" specifically, lol by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Reading comprehension for the win!

      You fail at reading and life, please go back to start.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    2. Re:Show us where I said "bridge" specifically, lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like you fail at reading and can't produce what's asked of you Coren22. You fail at life and you always lose to apk http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    3. Re:Show us where I said "bridge" specifically, lol by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Except that I did post exactly what you asked for. Just because you have forgotten your reading glasses today doesn't make my point invalid. You claimed to use bridges, not I. You defended bridges being used as "not proxies" to get around Slashdot's posting limits. You are the one who posted about it, I didn't make it up. You think you are so clever, but I have proved my point.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  132. LMAO - bullshit... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I gave you a clue once "Have you seen the BRIDGE" by Led Zeppelin but I never ONCE said I used a network bridge (bridging is 1 way of probably 3-4 to do it) & no proxies, dumbshit... lol!

    APK

    P.S.=> You're a trolling fool, nothing more - & you said it was "FUN" to do your signatures about me? Let ME tell YOU what this is - it is the GREATEST FUN seeing you "SQUIRM" trolling worm vs. your many technical fails + lies about me http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (as well as showing you're technically incompetent now also as well as illiterate, taking that LITERALLY as "bridge" you stupid fuck - lol, it's bridging & it's more complex than other means no less, especially proxies which is all your limited mind can come up with & YOU DOUBTLESS USE YOURSELF scumbag, projecting it no less)... apk

    1. Re:LMAO - bullshit... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I linked to a different post where you come out and talk about bridging and how it is one way to do it.

      What you fail to realize is that what you are talking about the bridge doing is proxying the connection, that is what it is called. Just because you aren't using a SOCKs proxy does not mean you are not proxying.

      So, when did you see me squirm? Do you have a camera in my work!?

      I'm not squirming, I'm not the one making shit up, you are. A bridge is a device like a router that connects two networks. In and of itself, it cannot get past Slashdot's AC posting limitations. The 3-4 other ways to do it are all different types of proxying, which you have yourself proven because you are afraid to talk about what they actually are that isn't proxying. You refuse to talk about it because you know I will tear you a new one since you don't know anything about networking.

      Keep trying to claim I am misquoting you, while not actually proving me wrong, it is funny seeing you twist and squirm trying to get around your failure of networking knowledge.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    2. Re:LMAO - bullshit... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You fail to realize is that whatever apk does works and you're too stupid to figure it out. It's not proxies at all you project you use. I can figure it out. Why can't you? You're too stupid is why.

    3. Re:LMAO - bullshit... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Of course you can figure it out, you built it. As you say it isn't a proxy, I say BULLSHIT! The only response to that is that you don't know what proxy means. This isn't my failure here bub, it is yours.

      It does not make me stupid to not be able to read your mind over what you are using. It does make you stupid to not understand that you are using a proxy. It doesn't matter what the device is literally called, it is proxying your connection, so it is a proxy.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    4. Re:LMAO - bullshit... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He never said he actually used a bridge. He pointed out bridging is a way but not best way. He didn't say he used proxies like you project you do. How's apk do it Coren22? Of course you'll be dumbstruck stupid again in response.

  133. Re:AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. host by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, as I said I wanted to tell which solution was better (maybe try both?) but I can't find that VBRUN300.DLL file APKTools complains about anywhere.

    Also the instructions said I have to download Netscape Navigator 3.0. That's really old, can't I just use Firefox or Chrome?

  134. Impossible on VB runtimes... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My programs in freeware./shareware are done in Delphi - it has no runtime dependencies on VB runtimes stupid!

    Coren22's also gone silent on how I do my unlimited ac posting too... "gosh, will wonders NEVER cease" (not - he's an incompetent stooge noob rookie).

    APK

    P.S.=> This shows EVERYONE how lame & weak Coren22 + his sockpuppets, fellow trolls, & proxied ac posts are vs. myself more than anything else does possibly, lol... apk

    1. Re:Impossible on VB runtimes... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK but that doesn't answer my question! Where do I get VBRUN300.DLL from?? Every time I click on the icon it comes up with a message about VBRUN300.DLL being missing. Couldn't you just include it in your installer DOS script?

      I was able to get Netscape 3 BTW, I found an old AOL disk with it on believe it or not! Slashdot looks really strange in it. So just need that DLL and I'll be able to test!

    2. Re:Impossible on VB runtimes... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DOS doesn't use VB runtimes anymore than Delphi does. Give up. You failed against apk as always Coren22.

    3. Re:Impossible on VB runtimes... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow if this is the level of "tech support" I get. I don't even understand your answer. What does DOS or "VB runtimes" or Delphi have to do with it? The only mention of DOS I made was the installer - which is a DOS .BAT file - and that was asking why it didn't install the DLL. I never mentioned the other two I don't even know what they are. And no I'm not Coren22, I don't even agree with him on most things.

      All I'm asking is where to get VBRUN300.DLL from so I can run APKTools? Where do I get it from and why isn't it installed by the DOS installer?

    4. Re:Impossible on VB runtimes... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Coren22 goes silent as his assburgers brain has no solution here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... since he's retarded. Proven by his being told a fact that Delphi doesn't use VBRUNx.DLLs but his dullard damaged retarded brain can't seem to digest it even though it's been posted to him several times. You witness the retard in action named Coren22: Trolling liar and unskilled in computing wannabe extraordinaire!

    5. Re:Impossible on VB runtimes... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you still insult me with gobbledigook (what the fuck is Delphi? That's a car parts thing, right? Or is that your code name for your stupid APKTools garbage?) And yeah, I'll call it garbage because it crashes every time complaining about "VBRUN300.DLL" rather than ever doing anything useful.

      Fix it, jackass. And if this is the level of "tech support" you give, LOL.

  135. Re:Coren22's "APKolypse"... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are one sad piece of shit.

    APK defends himself by pretending to be someone else.