Things will start to get interesting when astronauts can create semiconductors in in space
Things will also get even more interesting when the full range of 3D printing materials can be used in microgravity. From ceramics to metals, polymers of various types... it will soon become possible to make virtually anything in space.
When things really start to get interesting is when we can also create these 3D printing materials in space, from in-situ space resources like asteroids and lunar surface mines. When we can do the whole prociss up there, without needing to "up-mass" anything from Earth, that will be a major turning point for humanity.
I'm very curious to see how various chemical processes, such as distillation, might be adapted to a microgravity environment. But I'm sure somebody will figure it out.
because it has the potential to make "transportation service" a commodity, and rescue suburbia from rising fuel costs. If you don't have to pay for a driver, then taxi service essentially becomes short-term car rental. And if your main expenditure is the fuel/energy to run errands, then it would be very easy to live without a car, and probably cheaper too.
Let's just hope the "killer app" status doesn't refer to its safety record.
Moon is actually higher up the gravity well than the LEO
It depends on where (to/from) you're going, but there are many ways for that to be true. There's a handy table of origins and destinations on Wikipedia. If you're comparing the advantages of asteroid mining over lunar mining, the most likely delivery points will be LEO, Luna, and the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.
I would imagine a fleet of privately operated fuel depots in LEO, being supplied from mining operations at, say, EML2 and also on the lunar surface. In this case, EML2 wins at 3.43km/s of delta-v required for the one way trip, compared to 5.93km/s to/from the lunar surface. Over the long term, EML2 will emerge as a real "hub" of the Earth-Moon system, as LEO becomes more crowded with human activity.
Luna will also be a hub of activity, especially in the early years. But as more asteroids are brought in for mining, the market will eventually push out the more expensive Lunar resources (unless they can beat the gravity deficit with a rail-gun launcher). Even so, there are numerous other advantages to Luna which will ensure a persistent human presence, from tourism to research, etc..
Your point is well made, but I think it's a case of semantics. Elon had "enough" resources to get the job done, with help from others. If he hadn't put $100M of his own money into SpaceX nobody else would have put in $100K, let alone the millions more it took to get where they are today. The fact that even Elon occasionally needs help from others doesn't strike me as a particularly important criticism.
NASA still makes great strides in space, it's just not in the "logistics" business anymore. Their focus is on gathering the most data from the most places, not just about how to build rockets. And for that goal, their transportation needs are pretty generic. Whoever can deliver the most cargo on orbit, on time, at the lowest price will get the job.
What sets Elon apart is his unilateral will to act, combined with the resources to take action at a grand scale. Call it the Tony Stark Effect... SpaceX is the only entity currently operating such large-scale space launch activities with such a small, agile, and vertically integrated organization. He's humiliating all competition because he's not even playing the same game. They're all about how to shave off a few percent cost to gain a bit of advantage over that competitor... SpaceX is like, "Fuck that, we're going to Mars, bitches!"
And methodically, like clockwork, once or twice every year or two, they roll out another key innovation that takes their "grand project" a step closer to fruition. And once they do, you can be sure that NASA will be first in line to send astronauts to make use of that service.
Not just parking, but the whole transportation "task" can be offloaded to the machine. And with no driver to pay, the ride can be as cheap as engineering can make possible. A fleet of electric Smart Cars could probably deliver you anywhere in the city for less cost-per-mile than your own car, if you include fuel, insurance, upkeep, etc.. Even the extra cost for a ride home from the city (after a night of drinking, say) would be a bargain compared to other options. Cheap, safe, driverless taxi service would make it practically effortless to do the right thing with respect to driving and drinking, and that would be great news for everyone.
And as someone who is lucky enough to live in a city with excellent public transit, I can attest to the liberation one feels when not burdened by vehicle maintenance. Here are some things I spend zero time doing (and very little time even thinking about): 1. Parking; 2. Driving (except when I want to); 3. Filling up with gas; 4. Plugging in the EV; 5. Washing the car; 6. Vacuuming the car; 7. Changing the oil; 8. Checking the fluids, tires, etc.; ETC... There is also a monetary cost associated with most of these things, but leave that aside for the moment. Just consider how much more unfettered time I have because of this.
I just came home from visiting a friend in another city, a few hours away. I have a 10-minute walk to the MRT station, from whence I ride four or five stops on the subway, then walk about 50 meters to the bus for his city. From my "primordial-mindset" point of view, I walked to my friend's house yesterday, and walked back today. Yes, there were a few "shortcuts" along the way involving motorized vehicles, but essentially I walked there and back.
Good point. I wonder what the trade is like between acres of cooling vanes vs. acres of solar panels. I guess it would depend on the efficiency of both. Mars's atmosphere is thin, but the temperature is very cold... seems like there ought to be a way to take advantage of that.
Thank you. Makes sense. OTOH, on Mars you've got an atmosphere, so this wouldn't be a problem anyway. But eventually large-scale power will be needed in the outer solar system. I suppose by then we'll have figured out fusion or something like that.
So it'll be a fair while before we need nukes, better to focus available funding on something else.
Something I've always wondered about nukes in space: where does the heat go? In order to extract work from a nuclear reactor you need a heat gradient. But vacuum is an excellent insulator.
I can understand if you're using the nuke to heat a propellant, because then the propellant carries away the heat. But as a constant, reliable power source, you wouldn't want it to be limited by an expendable resource, you'd want it to be a more solid-state or closed-loop design. TOPAZ seems to fit the bill, but I've never seen a discussion of how it deals with the heat dissipation issue. Is thermionic conversion so efficient that there's not much waste heat to get rid of?
Are the KDE/Gnome wars winding down yet? It seems like both have made a lot of progress in recent years, to the point where both are pretty solid and flexible. Is there really a "difference" anymore for the average user?
Exactly as happened with SARS. Most of the infections were among health workers.
the rate of transmission is phenomenal. The death rate upon infection is phenomenal.
Yes, the death rate is high, but the transmission rate is low. The common flu is far more transmissible. And even though its death rate is much lower, the flu kills many times more people each year than Ebola will ever affect in the USA.
As someone who lived through the SARS panic in Asia, I would say no, we're not "there" yet. Apparently it has taken a bit longer than it should have for the rank-and-file health workers in the USA to get clued in on this, but I would venture to say that the number of them who remain unaware of this threat today is approximately zero. If anything, I'd expect to see a lot more "false alarms" than actual infections in the next few weeks.
Once the public is aware, the infection rate will plummet. Because of SARS, I still avoid doorknobs and elevator buttons whenever possible (use your keys, lighter, sleeve, etc. to buffer such contact), it just makes sense to do so. Once the protocols for avoiding Ebola become widely known, this so-called "epidemic" will quickly dissipate.
In my experience, it varies from region to region. Some have trouble with V, some don't; some mix up L and R, some don't; most have trouble with terminal consonants. Even when speaking their so-called "common" language, Mandarin, the regional accents can be almost incomprehensible (the way a Texan might have trouble in Ireland, or a Welshman in Wyoming). A perfect example of this was Deng Xiaoping, who was notoriously hard to understand.
This is why Chinese language TV stations (incl. Taiwan, HK, etc) tend to have Chinese subtitles for their Chinese content. A lot of folks, especially in the older generation, just don't speak Mandarin all that well.
Your logic is sound, but it doesn't address the question of whether Musk is a "con man" as the GP suggests. The parent poster rebuts the "con man" argument with an appeal to Musk's sincerity, but as you point out, good intentions are not sufficient. (A con man could have very "sincere" motives for taking your money -- to feed his kids, for example.)
For me the deciding factor is the quality of Musk's work. He delivers excellent products at a reasonable price. Even if he did so for "greedy" motives, the fairness of the deal would disqualify him as a "con" man.
Dr. Robert Lustig has a pretty detailed discussion of the differences between glucose and fructose metabolism about halfway through this lecture. You've got the big picture about right. I would just add that fructose translates (via the liver) into VLDL cholesterol, which is a "prime suspect" in the increase in atherosclerosis.
According to another post this plutonium could not be used to make a bomb, and the explanation makes sense to me. So even if they change the constitution they won't be making any bombs, at least not with this plutonium.
I don't think "full auto" is required. This is more like Tesla's "autopilot" concept than Google's "driverless" car. This would get used most often on the interstate, not so much in cities, and it's a pretty good fit for that application. I can do some work (or take a nap) between cities and take the wheel a few minutes before the exit ramp. (Or I could program certain conditions such as weather or traffic to trigger an alarm.) But even this level of automation would dramatically reduce highway casualties.
What I'm curious about is how they sense certain road conditions, such as "black ice" that can fool even the most experienced human driver. OTOH, with a broad range of sensing like RADAR and echolocation, you could plow through pea-soup fog without much worry.
cabs are too expensive for everyday use
I'm lucky to live in a place (Taipei) where public transportation is cheap and ubiquitous. Even taxis are plentiful and cheap here. I don't even own a single motorized vehicle. Why bother, when I can get to anyplace I want with less than 20min walking and $2 in fees, and I can get home from anywhere in the city for less than $10, anytime, day or night?
This is where "full auto" is required: bringing this kind of convenience to the broad, "midwestern" spaces of America. When you can make the round-trip to/from your local watering hole for less than 15 bucks, why would anyone take the risk of driving drunk?
I think Google is smart to be investing so heavily in this tech, because once we pass that tipping point, this is going to be the biggest "killer app" of all time. And in the meantime, Tesla is also smart to be pursuing their autopilot tech, because it will be a huge selling point.
I read somewhere, years ago, that Shulgin had an "informal understanding" with the authorities: he would keep his "recipes" obscure enough to prevent casual duplication by anyone without a PhD in organic chemistry, and in return "they" would leave him alone to do his work -- and they would also reap the benefits of his research via his copious and detailed lab notes and trip reports.
I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds nice.
Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise.
Based on recent developments, costs could plummet. IMHO, the only reason Google is even talking about this now is because SpaceX recently flew a (theoretically) reusable first stage. Of course, "practical" reusability is still in the works, but Musk is tight with the gurus of Google, and it doesn't cost them much in the short run to flog their "visionary" quest to bring broadband to the masses. And if Musk succeeds with reusability (which seems likely) they'll be able to deploy this constellation at a fraction of the currently advertised cost.
It'll be a while before we start towing asteroids into Earth orbit. Earth-Moon Lagrange points will be the first destinations, then after we get good at that we'll gradually allow more and bigger rocks closer to Earth.
As for kinetic bombardment from orbit, the energy budget is not promising for this scenario. The amount of reaction mass needed to de-orbit a large boulder is "non trivial" to say the least. I suppose you could build a rail-gun and shoot a small mass at high velocity in order nudge a bigger rock into decay, but unless you've got a really huge capacitor, you'll have a tough time "dropping" a rock from orbit that would do much more damage than a standard cruise missile.
It's trivial to track such changes in velocity. So if you can't "drop" your boulder directly on target without taking a couple of orbits to decay, then the weapon loses it's surprise/initiative. The target could simply nuke it in space before it has a chance to de-orbit.
Then you've got the problem of cross-range deflection. Unless you don't mind waiting a few hours (or days, or weeks) until your rock's orbit takes it right over your target, you're going to need some way to widen your zone. The rail-gun can do some of this work, but you're going to need an "aerodynamic" rock in order to hit a precision target.
I'm not saying this is impossible, I just don't think it's very likely, given how many other (much easier) ways we already have to do the same job.
If you're not familiar with potholer54 you should check out his videos on climate change. He cuts through the BS/hype on both sides of the issue, and is reasonably amusing too. Very worth the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Things will start to get interesting when astronauts can create semiconductors in in space
Things will also get even more interesting when the full range of 3D printing materials can be used in microgravity. From ceramics to metals, polymers of various types... it will soon become possible to make virtually anything in space.
When things really start to get interesting is when we can also create these 3D printing materials in space, from in-situ space resources like asteroids and lunar surface mines. When we can do the whole prociss up there, without needing to "up-mass" anything from Earth, that will be a major turning point for humanity.
I'm very curious to see how various chemical processes, such as distillation, might be adapted to a microgravity environment. But I'm sure somebody will figure it out.
because it has the potential to make "transportation service" a commodity, and rescue suburbia from rising fuel costs. If you don't have to pay for a driver, then taxi service essentially becomes short-term car rental. And if your main expenditure is the fuel/energy to run errands, then it would be very easy to live without a car, and probably cheaper too.
Let's just hope the "killer app" status doesn't refer to its safety record.
Moon is actually higher up the gravity well than the LEO
It depends on where (to/from) you're going, but there are many ways for that to be true. There's a handy table of origins and destinations on Wikipedia. If you're comparing the advantages of asteroid mining over lunar mining, the most likely delivery points will be LEO, Luna, and the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.
I would imagine a fleet of privately operated fuel depots in LEO, being supplied from mining operations at, say, EML2 and also on the lunar surface. In this case, EML2 wins at 3.43km/s of delta-v required for the one way trip, compared to 5.93km/s to/from the lunar surface. Over the long term, EML2 will emerge as a real "hub" of the Earth-Moon system, as LEO becomes more crowded with human activity.
Luna will also be a hub of activity, especially in the early years. But as more asteroids are brought in for mining, the market will eventually push out the more expensive Lunar resources (unless they can beat the gravity deficit with a rail-gun launcher). Even so, there are numerous other advantages to Luna which will ensure a persistent human presence, from tourism to research, etc..
Your point is well made, but I think it's a case of semantics. Elon had "enough" resources to get the job done, with help from others. If he hadn't put $100M of his own money into SpaceX nobody else would have put in $100K, let alone the millions more it took to get where they are today. The fact that even Elon occasionally needs help from others doesn't strike me as a particularly important criticism.
NASA is why we can't make big steps into space.
NASA still makes great strides in space, it's just not in the "logistics" business anymore. Their focus is on gathering the most data from the most places, not just about how to build rockets. And for that goal, their transportation needs are pretty generic. Whoever can deliver the most cargo on orbit, on time, at the lowest price will get the job.
What sets Elon apart is his unilateral will to act, combined with the resources to take action at a grand scale. Call it the Tony Stark Effect... SpaceX is the only entity currently operating such large-scale space launch activities with such a small, agile, and vertically integrated organization. He's humiliating all competition because he's not even playing the same game. They're all about how to shave off a few percent cost to gain a bit of advantage over that competitor... SpaceX is like, "Fuck that, we're going to Mars, bitches!"
And methodically, like clockwork, once or twice every year or two, they roll out another key innovation that takes their "grand project" a step closer to fruition. And once they do, you can be sure that NASA will be first in line to send astronauts to make use of that service.
Not just parking, but the whole transportation "task" can be offloaded to the machine. And with no driver to pay, the ride can be as cheap as engineering can make possible. A fleet of electric Smart Cars could probably deliver you anywhere in the city for less cost-per-mile than your own car, if you include fuel, insurance, upkeep, etc.. Even the extra cost for a ride home from the city (after a night of drinking, say) would be a bargain compared to other options. Cheap, safe, driverless taxi service would make it practically effortless to do the right thing with respect to driving and drinking, and that would be great news for everyone.
And as someone who is lucky enough to live in a city with excellent public transit, I can attest to the liberation one feels when not burdened by vehicle maintenance. Here are some things I spend zero time doing (and very little time even thinking about): 1. Parking; 2. Driving (except when I want to); 3. Filling up with gas; 4. Plugging in the EV; 5. Washing the car; 6. Vacuuming the car; 7. Changing the oil; 8. Checking the fluids, tires, etc.; ETC... There is also a monetary cost associated with most of these things, but leave that aside for the moment. Just consider how much more unfettered time I have because of this.
I just came home from visiting a friend in another city, a few hours away. I have a 10-minute walk to the MRT station, from whence I ride four or five stops on the subway, then walk about 50 meters to the bus for his city. From my "primordial-mindset" point of view, I walked to my friend's house yesterday, and walked back today. Yes, there were a few "shortcuts" along the way involving motorized vehicles, but essentially I walked there and back.
Good point. I wonder what the trade is like between acres of cooling vanes vs. acres of solar panels. I guess it would depend on the efficiency of both. Mars's atmosphere is thin, but the temperature is very cold... seems like there ought to be a way to take advantage of that.
Thank you. Makes sense. OTOH, on Mars you've got an atmosphere, so this wouldn't be a problem anyway. But eventually large-scale power will be needed in the outer solar system. I suppose by then we'll have figured out fusion or something like that.
So it'll be a fair while before we need nukes, better to focus available funding on something else.
Something I've always wondered about nukes in space: where does the heat go? In order to extract work from a nuclear reactor you need a heat gradient. But vacuum is an excellent insulator.
I can understand if you're using the nuke to heat a propellant, because then the propellant carries away the heat. But as a constant, reliable power source, you wouldn't want it to be limited by an expendable resource, you'd want it to be a more solid-state or closed-loop design. TOPAZ seems to fit the bill, but I've never seen a discussion of how it deals with the heat dissipation issue. Is thermionic conversion so efficient that there's not much waste heat to get rid of?
Are the KDE/Gnome wars winding down yet? It seems like both have made a lot of progress in recent years, to the point where both are pretty solid and flexible. Is there really a "difference" anymore for the average user?
Yes! I saw a video lecture on this last year. Been wondering when we'd hear some news on this project.
Highly trained workers are getting infected.
Exactly as happened with SARS. Most of the infections were among health workers.
the rate of transmission is phenomenal. The death rate upon infection is phenomenal.
Yes, the death rate is high, but the transmission rate is low. The common flu is far more transmissible. And even though its death rate is much lower, the flu kills many times more people each year than Ebola will ever affect in the USA.
As someone who lived through the SARS panic in Asia, I would say no, we're not "there" yet. Apparently it has taken a bit longer than it should have for the rank-and-file health workers in the USA to get clued in on this, but I would venture to say that the number of them who remain unaware of this threat today is approximately zero. If anything, I'd expect to see a lot more "false alarms" than actual infections in the next few weeks.
Once the public is aware, the infection rate will plummet. Because of SARS, I still avoid doorknobs and elevator buttons whenever possible (use your keys, lighter, sleeve, etc. to buffer such contact), it just makes sense to do so. Once the protocols for avoiding Ebola become widely known, this so-called "epidemic" will quickly dissipate.
In my experience, it varies from region to region. Some have trouble with V, some don't; some mix up L and R, some don't; most have trouble with terminal consonants. Even when speaking their so-called "common" language, Mandarin, the regional accents can be almost incomprehensible (the way a Texan might have trouble in Ireland, or a Welshman in Wyoming). A perfect example of this was Deng Xiaoping, who was notoriously hard to understand.
This is why Chinese language TV stations (incl. Taiwan, HK, etc) tend to have Chinese subtitles for their Chinese content. A lot of folks, especially in the older generation, just don't speak Mandarin all that well.
Found this video on YouTube...
Your logic is sound, but it doesn't address the question of whether Musk is a "con man" as the GP suggests. The parent poster rebuts the "con man" argument with an appeal to Musk's sincerity, but as you point out, good intentions are not sufficient. (A con man could have very "sincere" motives for taking your money -- to feed his kids, for example.)
For me the deciding factor is the quality of Musk's work. He delivers excellent products at a reasonable price. Even if he did so for "greedy" motives, the fairness of the deal would disqualify him as a "con" man.
Sorry, no citations,
Dr. Robert Lustig has a pretty detailed discussion of the differences between glucose and fructose metabolism about halfway through this lecture. You've got the big picture about right. I would just add that fructose translates (via the liver) into VLDL cholesterol, which is a "prime suspect" in the increase in atherosclerosis.
According to another post this plutonium could not be used to make a bomb, and the explanation makes sense to me. So even if they change the constitution they won't be making any bombs, at least not with this plutonium.
I was thinking some hardliners in Japan's military might have stashed it somewhere, "just in case" it's ever needed.
Fully automated vehicles, that is.
I don't think "full auto" is required. This is more like Tesla's "autopilot" concept than Google's "driverless" car. This would get used most often on the interstate, not so much in cities, and it's a pretty good fit for that application. I can do some work (or take a nap) between cities and take the wheel a few minutes before the exit ramp. (Or I could program certain conditions such as weather or traffic to trigger an alarm.) But even this level of automation would dramatically reduce highway casualties.
What I'm curious about is how they sense certain road conditions, such as "black ice" that can fool even the most experienced human driver. OTOH, with a broad range of sensing like RADAR and echolocation, you could plow through pea-soup fog without much worry.
cabs are too expensive for everyday use
I'm lucky to live in a place (Taipei) where public transportation is cheap and ubiquitous. Even taxis are plentiful and cheap here. I don't even own a single motorized vehicle. Why bother, when I can get to anyplace I want with less than 20min walking and $2 in fees, and I can get home from anywhere in the city for less than $10, anytime, day or night?
This is where "full auto" is required: bringing this kind of convenience to the broad, "midwestern" spaces of America. When you can make the round-trip to/from your local watering hole for less than 15 bucks, why would anyone take the risk of driving drunk?
I think Google is smart to be investing so heavily in this tech, because once we pass that tipping point, this is going to be the biggest "killer app" of all time. And in the meantime, Tesla is also smart to be pursuing their autopilot tech, because it will be a huge selling point.
I read somewhere, years ago, that Shulgin had an "informal understanding" with the authorities: he would keep his "recipes" obscure enough to prevent casual duplication by anyone without a PhD in organic chemistry, and in return "they" would leave him alone to do his work -- and they would also reap the benefits of his research via his copious and detailed lab notes and trip reports.
I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds nice.
In any case, well played, Sasha... RIP.
Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise.
Based on recent developments, costs could plummet. IMHO, the only reason Google is even talking about this now is because SpaceX recently flew a (theoretically) reusable first stage. Of course, "practical" reusability is still in the works, but Musk is tight with the gurus of Google, and it doesn't cost them much in the short run to flog their "visionary" quest to bring broadband to the masses. And if Musk succeeds with reusability (which seems likely) they'll be able to deploy this constellation at a fraction of the currently advertised cost.
Sounds like a win-win for all concerned...
> SpaceX want to remove the parachutes, too?
No, they are not removing the parachutes, they'll be kept as a backup system in case the landing thrusters fail.
It'll be a while before we start towing asteroids into Earth orbit. Earth-Moon Lagrange points will be the first destinations, then after we get good at that we'll gradually allow more and bigger rocks closer to Earth.
As for kinetic bombardment from orbit, the energy budget is not promising for this scenario. The amount of reaction mass needed to de-orbit a large boulder is "non trivial" to say the least. I suppose you could build a rail-gun and shoot a small mass at high velocity in order nudge a bigger rock into decay, but unless you've got a really huge capacitor, you'll have a tough time "dropping" a rock from orbit that would do much more damage than a standard cruise missile.
It's trivial to track such changes in velocity. So if you can't "drop" your boulder directly on target without taking a couple of orbits to decay, then the weapon loses it's surprise/initiative. The target could simply nuke it in space before it has a chance to de-orbit.
Then you've got the problem of cross-range deflection. Unless you don't mind waiting a few hours (or days, or weeks) until your rock's orbit takes it right over your target, you're going to need some way to widen your zone. The rail-gun can do some of this work, but you're going to need an "aerodynamic" rock in order to hit a precision target.
I'm not saying this is impossible, I just don't think it's very likely, given how many other (much easier) ways we already have to do the same job.
If you're not familiar with potholer54 you should check out his videos on climate change. He cuts through the BS/hype on both sides of the issue, and is reasonably amusing too. Very worth the time.