"Redefine?" Um, no, the problem is defining it in the first place - aka: THE hard problem for neuroscientists and AI researchers. Folks like Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris write whole books on the topic, and still can't nail down a firm definition.
The effort to answer that question may seem eccentric or even pointless, but it's not stupid.
Yes, in our four-dimensional space-time world they are conduits of information, but in the n-dimensional "world" of a universal consciousness they could simply be the firings of cosmic synapses, no?
Depends on the definition of consciousness, doesn't it? AFAIK we still don't really understand that yet in ourselves, so answering the same question for the universe seems a bit premature at this point. That said, here is the one snippet from the fine summary that actually rings true to me, or at least potentially true:
Goff believes quantum entanglement -- the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they're separated by such immense distances there can't be a causal signal between them -- suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts.
Whether that counts as consciousness or not is anybody's guess. What is perhaps more accessible to study is our human propensity for seeking consciousness... or rather, attributing consciousness to natural phenomena. Talk about "first world problems"... this is like a cargo cult for our technologically advanced society.
I'm just going by public info on price per vehicle ($62M) and capacity to LEO (22,800kg) which works out to $2,719/kg (I "guesstimated" $2,500 above, but used a calculator this time).
50 years since Apollo and we've gone through two comparably costly (in current dollars) efforts -- the Space Shuttle and the ISS. We can still just barely get a few folks (safely) to orbit and back. I can't see why -- other than wishful thinking -- anyone thinks that situation is going to change any time soon.
Well... assuming SpaceX can get the Dragon 2 capsule approved for human flight in the next year or so, would that not satisfy your criteria? I suppose it's still only launching "a few folks" at a time, but at a huge cost savings compared to what the Russians are charging.
If you're just talking about NASA spending, that's one thing. But the point of this whole thread is that private industry can do it better and cheaper. That has clearly been happening in recent years, and not just at SpaceX (they're just the most "visible" in the media).
Yes, I'd say this time is different. Moving space programs into the private sector is likely the solution to beating $60000/kg.
In fact, SpaceX has already beaten that price by an order of magnitude. Even in expendable mode, the Falcon 9 only costs about $2500/kg to LEO; in reusable mode, they can probably shave another third off of that price. Falcon heavy can probably add another 25~50% savings on top of that (in reusable mode). But I'm afraid that's about all for the Falcon series, since they've abandoned 2nd-stage reusability in favor of the BFR approach.
Of course, once the BFR is flying, the cost of access to space will really drop. But even now, the GGP's notion of a private space station is already quite feasible. Bigelow Aerospace already has them ready to go, they're just waiting for a cheap taxi service to make the market. As long as the Russians are charging $70M a seat, there aren't a lot of potential customers, but if SpaceX can get you there for, say, $8M a seat... shit, the porn industry alone would be enough to fund multiple stations.;-)
And that is all just around the corner. Both SpaceX and Boeing are on track for crewed test flights later this year.
For almost 20 years I've been using "lwn.net" to ping-test my internet connection, just because it's easy and quick to type on the command line. It's probably been 15 years since I actually read anything on the site, but I just pinged them a few weeks ago.
A trio of optically deficient rodents A trio of optically deficient rodents Observe the manner of their locomotion Observe the manner of their locomotion They pursued the female spouse of the agronomist Who severed their hindmost cartilaginous appendages with a culinary instrument Have you ever observed such a spectacle in your existence as A trio of optically deficient rodents
Who said anything about "developing" a 3rd stage? This is just a PR stunt, after all... grab some spare parts and slap something together and hope it works when you get to Mars.
Or... Figure out some way to keep kerosene from freezing, perhaps with a fuel additive that doesn't cause too much "indigestion" in the Merlin engine.
Or... Perhaps they've been developing just such a vehicle for the last few years, and haven't told anyone about it yet.
Or... Buy whatever's available off the shelf, and figure out a way to strap it to the roadster so it won't fall off before getting to Mars.
Or... Who knows? There are lots of ways to skin this cat. But Elon did say "mars orbit", so I think it's safe to assume they're going to at least try something. We'll just have to wait and see what they do.
the second stage uses kerosene as fuel, and it will be frozen solid by the time they get to Mars
I would assume they're going to need some kind of "3rd-stage" to enter Mars orbit, but the 2nd stage should be sufficient for trans-Mars-injection.
All three boosters should land back on Earth, if everything goes according to plan.
Sorry, I was using the word "booster" loosely to refer to whatever vehicle(s) they use to get from LEO to Mars orbit. (I was hoping that would be apparent from context... or maybe I was just too lazy to be specific.)
Getting a video feed will be difficult due to large distances.
I had thought of that too (again, too lazy to write clearly...) and I figure they could stash a few terabytes of storage inside the roadster (or in/on whatever "booster" vehicle they use enter Mars orbit) as a buffer station. Shoot all the video you want, then download it over the next few months whenever the existing DSN assets are available.
This could be the bursting of his bubble, which is nearing that point anyway.
Perhaps that is true for some folks, but only a small minority. I'd say most people barely even know that Musk exists, and most who do simply see him as an eccentric, geeky billionaire who builds cool toys for other rich people. (Kinda like Steve Jobs...) But even if he does "burst his bubble" with that minority of naysayers, the up-side of this kind of stunt, from a PR perspective, could be huge with the rest of the population.
This is the sort of stunt that gets you invited onto chat shows, where you'll have plenty of time to explain everything and answer questions. So from that perspective, I guess you could say there's no such thing as bad PR. I really don't see how this ends up being anything but a huge win for Musk (assuming the rocket doesn't explode, of course).
The roadster is only about 1.4 tons of mass, so they should have plenty of leeway on the delta-v budget. Hell, that's not much more than the Curiosity rover weighed, and that was launched on an Atlas-V. I'm just curious if they'll do anything more with it, once they get there.
For instance, will they leave it attached to the second stage in Mars orbit, or detach it, leaving only the roadster in orbit? In that case, would they try to get some video of the car, with Mars in the background, as the booster floats away? (Pretty awesome PR stunt for Tesla...)
And what about the booster? Would they leave that in orbit too, or send it to burn up in the atmosphere? That could make for some cool imagery too.
In a few years, EVs will be cheaper anyway, even without any subsidies. The price of battery storage (in $/kwh) has been declining steadily at about 15%/yr for the last couple of decades. By 2022~23 there will be several EVs on the market for around $20k, simply because the batteries will be that cheap by then.
At that point, it's getting close to 'game over' territory for the ICE vehicle market. If EVs are cheaper all around, they will win. (Not to mention that they also tend to be far more reliable, because they only have a few dozen moving parts, rather than thousands.)
A Stanford lecturer, Tony Seba, wrote a book about this upcoming market shift, called "Clean Disruption." He also does a lecture on the topic, which you can find on YouTube. Pretty interesting stuff.
if SpaceX could turn back time they would have skipped the development of FH altogether and focused entirely on BFR
The deciding factor seems to have been second-stage recovery. About a year ago, I recall Elon saying something about trying to recover a 2nd stage "next year" (2018). Then, a few months later, he announced his intention to reveal a new, scaled-down version of the BFR at this year's IAC.
Like Falcon Heavy, recovering that second stage turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Meanwhile, they'd just completed a ton of work on figuring out the BFR's lifting-body spaceship, which is a combination of 2nd stage and payload all in one vehicle. Why waste time and resources on 2nd stage recovery when you've already got the whole reusability enchilada figured out?
I think the real "light-bulb moment" for Elon was realizing that his grand vision for Mars didn't have to be so grand as to be impractical for the existing space market. Instead of building "old fashioned" stick-and-capsule rockets to pay for the development of the BFR, a slightly smaller BFR could eventually pay for itself.
That said, however, they really need the FH to be successful. They've sunk a lot of time into it, and they already have several customers lined up for it. Assuming it works, it will still be a huge step forward, both in payload capacity and launch costs. With F9 and FH, they can lead the market quite comfortably for the next few years as they work on the new BFR.
Seriously, when you're being compared to notoriously expensive "cost-plus" contracts with (largely) military contractors, it's not hard to emerge as the cheaper option.
Paper ballots are used here in Taiwan, and they are counted, by hand, in public view immediately after polls close. Results are usually complete within a few hours. Ironically, this system was instituted under the KMT single-party regime to facilitate vote buying.
The voting is done by putting a stamp in a square on the paper, rather than filling in a circle with a pen (or punching a hole, etc.). So, by stamping the ballot in a particular way -- say, in the upper left corner, slanted to the left -- you'd indicate to the vote buyer that you'd fulfilled your end of the bargain. Vote buying is now pretty much a thing of the past, but the legacy of this highly open and public system has served the country well in its transition to one of the more thriving democracies in the region.
But this is not unique to Taiwan, lots of countries use paper ballots. The USA is really "backward" in this regard.
Speaking of Klingons, my #1 gripe with ST:D is that the Klingons now look like the 'engineers' from Alien/Prometheus. The only reason I can think of for doing this would be to "leech" off the popularity of those movies. In the same vein, the opening title sequence for ST:D looks like it was designed by the same team that did it for Westworld. Oh yeah, and Ex Machina was really popular, so let's put a robot/cyborg on the bridge crew too... it'll be great!
I found out the other day that the character of Lt. Stamets (the "magick spores" wrangler) is based on a real person. And the same guy was also the inspiration for a character in an episode of Hannibal Lecter as well. There's a brief discussion of both characters in this recent Joe Rogan interview. Fascinating stuff... the truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.
My dad emailed a link today about how the Guardian is protected from "outside influence" by a trust fund that was set up back in the 1930s. I'd be curious to hear what others think about this setup, and how well it has succeeded in that goal.
It might also be useful for some small-office business customers. If you work from home but spend a fair amount of time out in the field, you could give Amazon access to your garage, for example. I reckon there may well be enough of these niche applications to lure that 5% of Prime members. If you get more than a couple of Amazon deliveries a week, you might even build a delivery "shed" for the purpose. But frankly I think most people already have some sort of solution in place for deliveries. It'll be interesting to see how much of a market there is for this service.
Another important milestone was the recent name-check on Elon Musk in Star Trek: Discovery. In ep.4, the captain says (paraphrasing): "The Wright brothers, Elon Musk, Zephram Cochran... do you want to be remembered in that group or be forgotten as just another obscure scientist?"
My point is that even pop culture is beginning to realize that we're entering a new paradigm for space flight, and that Musk is the most visible proponent of it. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of Elon's vision will be realized. But if, in 10 or 15 years it's possible to buy a ticket to an orbit for less than $100k, it will certainly be enabled by the "entrepreneurial" space industry, and not by any government effort. And, for better or worse, Elon is the poster-boy for that industry.
I think we're talking about two different but related things: the "it" I'm referring to is YouTube demonetizing videos, whereas you seem to be talking about groups of people deliberately flagging videos as offensive.(?) My only point is that the demonetizing happens to everybody, not just the left or the right.
Slashdot Mirror
"Redefine?" Um, no, the problem is defining it in the first place - aka: THE hard problem for neuroscientists and AI researchers. Folks like Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris write whole books on the topic, and still can't nail down a firm definition.
The effort to answer that question may seem eccentric or even pointless, but it's not stupid.
Yes, in our four-dimensional space-time world they are conduits of information, but in the n-dimensional "world" of a universal consciousness they could simply be the firings of cosmic synapses, no?
Presumably, quantum entanglements are not conduits for information signaling, rather they are signals themselves...?
Note: I'm not a strong proponent of this theory, but I do find it intriguing.
Depends on the definition of consciousness, doesn't it? AFAIK we still don't really understand that yet in ourselves, so answering the same question for the universe seems a bit premature at this point. That said, here is the one snippet from the fine summary that actually rings true to me, or at least potentially true:
Goff believes quantum entanglement -- the finding that certain particles behave as a single unified system even when they're separated by such immense distances there can't be a causal signal between them -- suggests the universe functions as a fundamental whole rather than a collection of discrete parts.
Whether that counts as consciousness or not is anybody's guess. What is perhaps more accessible to study is our human propensity for seeking consciousness... or rather, attributing consciousness to natural phenomena. Talk about "first world problems"... this is like a cargo cult for our technologically advanced society.
I'm just going by public info on price per vehicle ($62M) and capacity to LEO (22,800kg) which works out to $2,719/kg (I "guesstimated" $2,500 above, but used a calculator this time).
50 years since Apollo and we've gone through two comparably costly (in current dollars) efforts -- the Space Shuttle and the ISS. We can still just barely get a few folks (safely) to orbit and back. I can't see why -- other than wishful thinking -- anyone thinks that situation is going to change any time soon.
Well... assuming SpaceX can get the Dragon 2 capsule approved for human flight in the next year or so, would that not satisfy your criteria? I suppose it's still only launching "a few folks" at a time, but at a huge cost savings compared to what the Russians are charging.
If you're just talking about NASA spending, that's one thing. But the point of this whole thread is that private industry can do it better and cheaper. That has clearly been happening in recent years, and not just at SpaceX (they're just the most "visible" in the media).
Yes, I'd say this time is different. Moving space programs into the private sector is likely the solution to beating $60000/kg.
In fact, SpaceX has already beaten that price by an order of magnitude. Even in expendable mode, the Falcon 9 only costs about $2500/kg to LEO; in reusable mode, they can probably shave another third off of that price. Falcon heavy can probably add another 25~50% savings on top of that (in reusable mode). But I'm afraid that's about all for the Falcon series, since they've abandoned 2nd-stage reusability in favor of the BFR approach.
Of course, once the BFR is flying, the cost of access to space will really drop. But even now, the GGP's notion of a private space station is already quite feasible. Bigelow Aerospace already has them ready to go, they're just waiting for a cheap taxi service to make the market. As long as the Russians are charging $70M a seat, there aren't a lot of potential customers, but if SpaceX can get you there for, say, $8M a seat... shit, the porn industry alone would be enough to fund multiple stations. ;-)
And that is all just around the corner. Both SpaceX and Boeing are on track for crewed test flights later this year.
For almost 20 years I've been using "lwn.net" to ping-test my internet connection, just because it's easy and quick to type on the command line. It's probably been 15 years since I actually read anything on the site, but I just pinged them a few weeks ago.
A trio of optically deficient rodents
A trio of optically deficient rodents
Observe the manner of their locomotion
Observe the manner of their locomotion
They pursued the female spouse of the agronomist
Who severed their hindmost cartilaginous appendages with a culinary instrument
Have you ever observed such a spectacle in your existence as
A trio of optically deficient rodents
So basically it's like a Beowulf cluster of Falcon 9s.
Who said anything about "developing" a 3rd stage? This is just a PR stunt, after all... grab some spare parts and slap something together and hope it works when you get to Mars.
Or... Figure out some way to keep kerosene from freezing, perhaps with a fuel additive that doesn't cause too much "indigestion" in the Merlin engine.
Or... Perhaps they've been developing just such a vehicle for the last few years, and haven't told anyone about it yet.
Or... Buy whatever's available off the shelf, and figure out a way to strap it to the roadster so it won't fall off before getting to Mars.
Or... Who knows? There are lots of ways to skin this cat. But Elon did say "mars orbit", so I think it's safe to assume they're going to at least try something. We'll just have to wait and see what they do.
the second stage uses kerosene as fuel, and it will be frozen solid by the time they get to Mars
I would assume they're going to need some kind of "3rd-stage" to enter Mars orbit, but the 2nd stage should be sufficient for trans-Mars-injection.
All three boosters should land back on Earth, if everything goes according to plan.
Sorry, I was using the word "booster" loosely to refer to whatever vehicle(s) they use to get from LEO to Mars orbit. (I was hoping that would be apparent from context... or maybe I was just too lazy to be specific.)
Getting a video feed will be difficult due to large distances.
I had thought of that too (again, too lazy to write clearly...) and I figure they could stash a few terabytes of storage inside the roadster (or in/on whatever "booster" vehicle they use enter Mars orbit) as a buffer station. Shoot all the video you want, then download it over the next few months whenever the existing DSN assets are available.
This could be the bursting of his bubble, which is nearing that point anyway.
Perhaps that is true for some folks, but only a small minority. I'd say most people barely even know that Musk exists, and most who do simply see him as an eccentric, geeky billionaire who builds cool toys for other rich people. (Kinda like Steve Jobs...) But even if he does "burst his bubble" with that minority of naysayers, the up-side of this kind of stunt, from a PR perspective, could be huge with the rest of the population.
This is the sort of stunt that gets you invited onto chat shows, where you'll have plenty of time to explain everything and answer questions. So from that perspective, I guess you could say there's no such thing as bad PR. I really don't see how this ends up being anything but a huge win for Musk (assuming the rocket doesn't explode, of course).
The roadster is only about 1.4 tons of mass, so they should have plenty of leeway on the delta-v budget. Hell, that's not much more than the Curiosity rover weighed, and that was launched on an Atlas-V. I'm just curious if they'll do anything more with it, once they get there.
For instance, will they leave it attached to the second stage in Mars orbit, or detach it, leaving only the roadster in orbit? In that case, would they try to get some video of the car, with Mars in the background, as the booster floats away? (Pretty awesome PR stunt for Tesla...)
And what about the booster? Would they leave that in orbit too, or send it to burn up in the atmosphere? That could make for some cool imagery too.
In a few years, EVs will be cheaper anyway, even without any subsidies. The price of battery storage (in $/kwh) has been declining steadily at about 15%/yr for the last couple of decades. By 2022~23 there will be several EVs on the market for around $20k, simply because the batteries will be that cheap by then.
At that point, it's getting close to 'game over' territory for the ICE vehicle market. If EVs are cheaper all around, they will win. (Not to mention that they also tend to be far more reliable, because they only have a few dozen moving parts, rather than thousands.)
A Stanford lecturer, Tony Seba, wrote a book about this upcoming market shift, called "Clean Disruption." He also does a lecture on the topic, which you can find on YouTube. Pretty interesting stuff.
if SpaceX could turn back time they would have skipped the development of FH altogether and focused entirely on BFR
The deciding factor seems to have been second-stage recovery. About a year ago, I recall Elon saying something about trying to recover a 2nd stage "next year" (2018). Then, a few months later, he announced his intention to reveal a new, scaled-down version of the BFR at this year's IAC.
Like Falcon Heavy, recovering that second stage turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Meanwhile, they'd just completed a ton of work on figuring out the BFR's lifting-body spaceship, which is a combination of 2nd stage and payload all in one vehicle. Why waste time and resources on 2nd stage recovery when you've already got the whole reusability enchilada figured out?
I think the real "light-bulb moment" for Elon was realizing that his grand vision for Mars didn't have to be so grand as to be impractical for the existing space market. Instead of building "old fashioned" stick-and-capsule rockets to pay for the development of the BFR, a slightly smaller BFR could eventually pay for itself.
That said, however, they really need the FH to be successful. They've sunk a lot of time into it, and they already have several customers lined up for it. Assuming it works, it will still be a huge step forward, both in payload capacity and launch costs. With F9 and FH, they can lead the market quite comfortably for the next few years as they work on the new BFR.
An example that comes to mind is "gray market" areas such as PirateBay... how would a Russian DNS system respond to requests to block them?
Will he successfully make it to Brighton this time?
Seriously, when you're being compared to notoriously expensive "cost-plus" contracts with (largely) military contractors, it's not hard to emerge as the cheaper option.
Paper ballots are used here in Taiwan, and they are counted, by hand, in public view immediately after polls close. Results are usually complete within a few hours. Ironically, this system was instituted under the KMT single-party regime to facilitate vote buying.
The voting is done by putting a stamp in a square on the paper, rather than filling in a circle with a pen (or punching a hole, etc.). So, by stamping the ballot in a particular way -- say, in the upper left corner, slanted to the left -- you'd indicate to the vote buyer that you'd fulfilled your end of the bargain. Vote buying is now pretty much a thing of the past, but the legacy of this highly open and public system has served the country well in its transition to one of the more thriving democracies in the region.
But this is not unique to Taiwan, lots of countries use paper ballots. The USA is really "backward" in this regard.
Speaking of Klingons, my #1 gripe with ST:D is that the Klingons now look like the 'engineers' from Alien/Prometheus. The only reason I can think of for doing this would be to "leech" off the popularity of those movies. In the same vein, the opening title sequence for ST:D looks like it was designed by the same team that did it for Westworld. Oh yeah, and Ex Machina was really popular, so let's put a robot/cyborg on the bridge crew too... it'll be great!
I found out the other day that the character of Lt. Stamets (the "magick spores" wrangler) is based on a real person. And the same guy was also the inspiration for a character in an episode of Hannibal Lecter as well. There's a brief discussion of both characters in this recent Joe Rogan interview. Fascinating stuff... the truth is indeed sometimes stranger than fiction.
My dad emailed a link today about how the Guardian is protected from "outside influence" by a trust fund that was set up back in the 1930s. I'd be curious to hear what others think about this setup, and how well it has succeeded in that goal.
It might also be useful for some small-office business customers. If you work from home but spend a fair amount of time out in the field, you could give Amazon access to your garage, for example. I reckon there may well be enough of these niche applications to lure that 5% of Prime members. If you get more than a couple of Amazon deliveries a week, you might even build a delivery "shed" for the purpose. But frankly I think most people already have some sort of solution in place for deliveries. It'll be interesting to see how much of a market there is for this service.
Another important milestone was the recent name-check on Elon Musk in Star Trek: Discovery. In ep.4, the captain says (paraphrasing): "The Wright brothers, Elon Musk, Zephram Cochran... do you want to be remembered in that group or be forgotten as just another obscure scientist?"
My point is that even pop culture is beginning to realize that we're entering a new paradigm for space flight, and that Musk is the most visible proponent of it. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of Elon's vision will be realized. But if, in 10 or 15 years it's possible to buy a ticket to an orbit for less than $100k, it will certainly be enabled by the "entrepreneurial" space industry, and not by any government effort. And, for better or worse, Elon is the poster-boy for that industry.
I think we're talking about two different but related things: the "it" I'm referring to is YouTube demonetizing videos, whereas you seem to be talking about groups of people deliberately flagging videos as offensive.(?) My only point is that the demonetizing happens to everybody, not just the left or the right.