If it could be done, it would have already been done.
Why would it already be done? What government or private citizen would have spent the funds necessary for this to have been done? Just because it's physically/scientifically possible doesn't it politically feasible at this time.
We don't have space craft with parts that will last thousands of years. We don't have batteries or fuel to last thousands of years. We don't have city sized space craft that would be necessary so its inhabitants don't go nuts. We don't have deflector shields for micro meteors and radiation.
How long would an ion thruster take to accelerate up to 0.1c? 10,000 years? Where would it get energy from to power the engine for thousands of years? How many thrusters would you need to move something the size of a small city?
Yeah, you watch too many movies.
In the mid 1970's they built a spaceship that was able to survive 35 years with no repairs, going from the inner solar system, past the outer planets, through the Kuiper belt and pierce the edge of the solar system itself. Do you really think we can do no better now? Keep everything simple, and as low-tech as possible. Food, water filtration, oxygen, etc could be mostly biological as opposed to manufactured or chemical. For the technology, make it as solid as possible and have redundant systems and spare parts. Again, if the ship can attain an appreciable fraction of light speed, the journey will only be centuries, not millennia, and we have systems here on Earth that are still functional after several centuries of use.
Are you under the impression I am claiming we could go out right this minute and build a generational spaceship and fly it to Alpha Centauri ourselves? Because that is not what I claimed. It may take a century (or three) to build the ship and stock it with food and fuel. But that isn't transit time.
As for the energy source to speed the ship on its way, why do you assume I mean ion thrusters? A better candidate would be thrust using nuclear explosions, which despite your quip about movies, is actually feasible. Others include using nuclear power plants to superheat non-reactive propellent. And as I posted earlier, a system similar in concept to the space shuttle's external rockets could be used to get it moving and then left behind to reduce mass. This could be what is powered by the nuclear explosions, so any damage to it would not be done to the spaceship itself, which by design would be protected from any such issue.
Finally, surely you realize these ships would not be built on Earth. They would not be built near Earth. They would probably be built in orbit around Jupiter, just to reduce the amount of thrust needed when it is time to move them. Not to mention some of the material used would be mined from Jupiter or its moons.
So, overall, I reject your reasoning in its entirety for being short sighted. Your arguments would have kept mankind in the Dark Ages, since no exploration by ship would have been undertaken. But I do thank you for your time.
Can you not conceive of a ship we could build with our current technology that could be pushed to.01c? At 1% of the speed of light, the journey is shortened from 72,000 years, to 400-500 years. And with relativity kicking in, the people inside the ship age slower than the rest of the universe (though I don't know to what degree).
Even at a speed of one tenth of that, the Centauri system is reachable. It would take a few millennia instead of centuries, but it certainly isn't impossible.
It's called a generation spaceship, and it's not a new concept. Scientists and science fiction writers have been describing this for almost a century now. The 'enough fuel? enough power? enough space(????*)? enough food and water?' theatrics is just juvenile hand-waving. The only real concerns would be the initial phase of starting it moving, simply solved with a booster mechanism, and the protection from your 'nasty' radiation and debris. So you point out one valid issue which would actually need to be resolved, and talk out of your ass for the rest of your post. Great job.
*Note: Really, I have no idea what your point is with this one. Will we have enough space for what? Where will this shortage of space be, while travelling through intersteller space? We have millions of people crammed into cities all around this globe, wanting more space, but not leaving the city for the countryside. I don't think space is the big problem here.
...space ship that can travel at a sustained 40,000mph (the approximate fastest speed we've ever achieved in any spacecraft),....
You do realize the ship isn't traveling on rubber tires along a highway? Right? There are several different technologies that could be used to build up speed over that 40,000mph. Even continually accelerate until the ship was moving at an appreciable fraction of c.
And, yes, that is with today's technology. Hell, that is with last century's technology. Today's technology just makes it cheaper to implement.
Well, I'll be. I missed that one. Although I did stipulate the budget be "a sensible one", which that one isn't.
But let me add a point your snippet didn't cover, as to why the Republicans are not in favor of a conference committee at this time.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said there should at least be an agreement between Ryan and Murray before a conference is launched.
“To go to conference before you have any sense of whether there is any chance of getting an outcome strikes us as not making much sense,” he said.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that it is customary to make such arrangements before staring a conference and pointed out that under House rules, if the committee were to fail to resolve differences after 20 days, any member could gum up the House floor with motions to instruct conferees.
"It is ‘regular order’ for the budget chairs to agree to a framework before conferees are named, and Chairman Ryan and Sen. Murray are having those conversations. It is difficult to see what Sen. Reid’s stunt today will do to help if Senate Democrats don’t even agree we need to balance the budget in the first place," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Tuesday.
So, basically, it's politics as usual from the leadership of both parties, while the country goes to hell.
We waste a ton of money on nonsensical programs that should (and would) be done by the private sector.
No, we're not going to get rid of the national debt by cutting PBS, we're not going to save much money by closing the Washington Monument for tours. But there is a ton of waste, but its in the stuff that the politicians don't want to touch (welfare, the military, farm subsidies, financial sector, etc.) because the public is either ignorant about it or enjoys getting free money at the expense of everyone else.
Also, the public is engaged in the two-party name calling as in the thread above. Almost everyone has to defend their party, and attack the other party, while ignoring the fact that everything is caving in around them.
They'd be fighting about the proper way to rearrange the deck-chairs on the Titanic until they all fall in the sea together, and blaming the other for the need of it.
The only reason we are "spending more" this year is because mandatory entitlement programs (unaffected by the sequester) are included in the federal budget.
Technically, we haven't had a 'federal budget' in years. Harry Reid won't allow a sensible one to come to the floor of the Senate. He only allows Obama's jokes to be entered, which event the Democrats can't bring themselves to vote for.
You are thinking of Sara Palin, the Bible-thumping running mate of John McCain, who was parodied on SNL by Tina Fey who stole Sarah's identity and clouded the minds of many people such as yourself.
It's immoral and reprehensible to have a social welfare state, I have seen a number of them collapse during my time here, hopefully I enjoy watching a few more collapsing.
Well, just stick around a couple years. You'll see a large one implode soon enough.
You phrased that poorly. Please allow me to rewrite it.
Right. Because the big reason I smoke the dried leaves of a plant, and don't smoke the remnants of various substances including lye, match tips, phosphorus, drain cleaner, brake fluid, and hydrochloric acid, is because meth is illegal.
I also like to ask people if they think people would want to smoke meth if pot wasn't illegal. The current crop of meth addicts would still be hooked, but in the future how many pot-heads would switch to meth-heads?
Re:And people with CS degrees can be just as cluel
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
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· Score: 1
You just have to slow down a bit there nate.
Re:also need to cut fluff and filler from Educatio
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
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· Score: 1
I think Johnny 5 speaks very well for a four day old.
Let me start by saying I agree with the main annoyances you are writing about. Cigarette smoke makes my throat tighten up, further aggravating a breathing problem I have. And it doesn't matter which side of a smoker I am at, the damn smoke always goes towards me. With that said, and with no animosity towards you, I still do not like your argument, and think smoking bans are the wrong solution to this problem.
If I am sitting somewhere already why should a smoker have the right to impose their smoke on me.
Because it is a legal activity. It may annoy you, and me for that matter, but it isn't illegal to smoke. Annoyance isn't enough to outlaw something.
If you think the situation is actually an attack on your health, the proper response is to have tobacco itself outlawed, not simply its use near you. I would be fine if tobacco was outlawed. But I know it won't be, because the states make too much tax money from it. This is another part of the hypocrisy (from the government this time) of banning smoking that I hate.
I am not talking about going to where they are, I am talking about them coming to where I am at the time. I can be sitting on a bench enjoying a nice day, waiting at a bus stop etc but it becomes my job and many others jobs to move because a smoker chose that spot to light up.
I do wish there was a better way to separate smokers and non-smokers in public areas. But it seems no one can come up with a sensible, and feasible, solution. Besides that, in a city, the car exhaust is far more prevalent than cigarette smoke, so to me it seems banning internal combustion cars/trucks is the better alternative.
Also it isn't exactly just a personal desire given that we have very good evidence on the damage of second hand smoke. They have the right to harm themselves not others and people that don't want to be harmed should not have the onus placed on them to accommodate the smokers at every turn.
As I say, work to have it outlawed completely. Unfortunately the non-smokers have decided to instead have it banned in all businesses, whether they have ever been in them or not. I believe that if a guy wants to open a bar, and he wants to allow people to smoke in there, it is his choice, not yours or mine. Sorry if I sound like a broken record there, but that is the only laws they have been able to pass, taking everyone's choice from them in the name of "the greater good".
You ever notice in movies, a guy pulls a gun out and fires a shot in a large public area, and the idiots on the left run to the right, and the idiots on the right run to the left?
I hope in real life everyone's path is more or less away from the man waving the gun around.
Maybe he simply meant "clothing/uniforms from the colonial times". And Britain had more colonies than a dozen on the northwest Atlantic coast, so that allows a broad range of possibilities.
I do think we need laws about you smoking around other people though. That is something I find very annoying how can you be sitting somewhere and someone will come up to you and smoke. They have the right to harm themselves, they don't have the right to harm you.
As someone who doesn't smoke, I hate your argument and entire line of reasoning. I don't need your government forcing people to accommodate my personal desires related to smoking cigarettes. Forcing all businesses to go smoke-free is asinine. Especially since every business had the opportunity to be smoke-free by their own decision, and almost none did. A few restaurants and nightclubs tried, and changed their mind when revenue plunged.
I find it strange that only about 20% of adults smoke, but a restaurant that bans smoking loses business to the others that allow it. How is 80% of a possible customer base not enough to keep a restaurant afloat? I'm not saying 80% of their former customers, but the base number of potential customers. It seems lie all the people who want smoking banned would flock to such a location. But they all follow the crowds into the smoke-filled restaurants where "the cool people" hang out.
As for the "they don't have the right to harm you" line, if you actually believed that you would be calling for a ban on driving. Cars have hurt me far more than second hand smoke has.
Slashdot Mirror
No, in the US now NSFW in a picture of anyone in a bikini.
My daughter's high school drama/theater class has a t-shirt like that. I forget the exact wording, but some theater variation of the fight club thing.
That's OK, it will be a short demonstration of which one can't figure out where the Safety actually is. Then this thread will have one less bot in it.
If it could be done, it would have already been done.
Why would it already be done? What government or private citizen would have spent the funds necessary for this to have been done? Just because it's physically/scientifically possible doesn't it politically feasible at this time.
We don't have space craft with parts that will last thousands of years. We don't have batteries or fuel to last thousands of years. We don't have city sized space craft that would be necessary so its inhabitants don't go nuts. We don't have deflector shields for micro meteors and radiation.
How long would an ion thruster take to accelerate up to 0.1c? 10,000 years? Where would it get energy from to power the engine for thousands of years? How many thrusters would you need to move something the size of a small city?
Yeah, you watch too many movies.
In the mid 1970's they built a spaceship that was able to survive 35 years with no repairs, going from the inner solar system, past the outer planets, through the Kuiper belt and pierce the edge of the solar system itself. Do you really think we can do no better now? Keep everything simple, and as low-tech as possible. Food, water filtration, oxygen, etc could be mostly biological as opposed to manufactured or chemical. For the technology, make it as solid as possible and have redundant systems and spare parts. Again, if the ship can attain an appreciable fraction of light speed, the journey will only be centuries, not millennia, and we have systems here on Earth that are still functional after several centuries of use.
Are you under the impression I am claiming we could go out right this minute and build a generational spaceship and fly it to Alpha Centauri ourselves? Because that is not what I claimed. It may take a century (or three) to build the ship and stock it with food and fuel. But that isn't transit time.
As for the energy source to speed the ship on its way, why do you assume I mean ion thrusters? A better candidate would be thrust using nuclear explosions, which despite your quip about movies, is actually feasible. Others include using nuclear power plants to superheat non-reactive propellent. And as I posted earlier, a system similar in concept to the space shuttle's external rockets could be used to get it moving and then left behind to reduce mass. This could be what is powered by the nuclear explosions, so any damage to it would not be done to the spaceship itself, which by design would be protected from any such issue.
Finally, surely you realize these ships would not be built on Earth. They would not be built near Earth. They would probably be built in orbit around Jupiter, just to reduce the amount of thrust needed when it is time to move them. Not to mention some of the material used would be mined from Jupiter or its moons.
So, overall, I reject your reasoning in its entirety for being short sighted. Your arguments would have kept mankind in the Dark Ages, since no exploration by ship would have been undertaken. But I do thank you for your time.
Can you not conceive of a ship we could build with our current technology that could be pushed to .01c? At 1% of the speed of light, the journey is shortened from 72,000 years, to 400-500 years. And with relativity kicking in, the people inside the ship age slower than the rest of the universe (though I don't know to what degree).
Even at a speed of one tenth of that, the Centauri system is reachable. It would take a few millennia instead of centuries, but it certainly isn't impossible.
It's called a generation spaceship, and it's not a new concept. Scientists and science fiction writers have been describing this for almost a century now. The 'enough fuel? enough power? enough space(????*)? enough food and water?' theatrics is just juvenile hand-waving. The only real concerns would be the initial phase of starting it moving, simply solved with a booster mechanism, and the protection from your 'nasty' radiation and debris. So you point out one valid issue which would actually need to be resolved, and talk out of your ass for the rest of your post. Great job.
*Note: Really, I have no idea what your point is with this one. Will we have enough space for what? Where will this shortage of space be, while travelling through intersteller space? We have millions of people crammed into cities all around this globe, wanting more space, but not leaving the city for the countryside. I don't think space is the big problem here.
...space ship that can travel at a sustained 40,000mph (the approximate fastest speed we've ever achieved in any spacecraft), ....
You do realize the ship isn't traveling on rubber tires along a highway? Right? There are several different technologies that could be used to build up speed over that 40,000mph. Even continually accelerate until the ship was moving at an appreciable fraction of c.
And, yes, that is with today's technology. Hell, that is with last century's technology. Today's technology just makes it cheaper to implement.
Well, I'll be. I missed that one. Although I did stipulate the budget be "a sensible one", which that one isn't.
But let me add a point your snippet didn't cover, as to why the Republicans are not in favor of a conference committee at this time.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said there should at least be an agreement between Ryan and Murray before a conference is launched.
“To go to conference before you have any sense of whether there is any chance of getting an outcome strikes us as not making much sense,” he said.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that it is customary to make such arrangements before staring a conference and pointed out that under House rules, if the committee were to fail to resolve differences after 20 days, any member could gum up the House floor with motions to instruct conferees.
"It is ‘regular order’ for the budget chairs to agree to a framework before conferees are named, and Chairman Ryan and Sen. Murray are having those conversations. It is difficult to see what Sen. Reid’s stunt today will do to help if Senate Democrats don’t even agree we need to balance the budget in the first place," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Tuesday.
So, basically, it's politics as usual from the leadership of both parties, while the country goes to hell.
And you typically work 24/7 at your job? Wow, you are hard core, dude.
We waste a ton of money on nonsensical programs that should (and would) be done by the private sector.
No, we're not going to get rid of the national debt by cutting PBS, we're not going to save much money by closing the Washington Monument for tours. But there is a ton of waste, but its in the stuff that the politicians don't want to touch (welfare, the military, farm subsidies, financial sector, etc.) because the public is either ignorant about it or enjoys getting free money at the expense of everyone else.
Also, the public is engaged in the two-party name calling as in the thread above. Almost everyone has to defend their party, and attack the other party, while ignoring the fact that everything is caving in around them.
They'd be fighting about the proper way to rearrange the deck-chairs on the Titanic until they all fall in the sea together, and blaming the other for the need of it.
The only reason we are "spending more" this year is because mandatory entitlement programs (unaffected by the sequester) are included in the federal budget.
Technically, we haven't had a 'federal budget' in years. Harry Reid won't allow a sensible one to come to the floor of the Senate. He only allows Obama's jokes to be entered, which event the Democrats can't bring themselves to vote for.
When did he say dismantle state agencies?
Such poor reading skills.
It was a joke.
in bed with --> mate --> running mate
S&L --> SNL
crook --> stolen identity
I thought that was all pretty obvious, tongue in cheek, play on words. I would let it go, but I just can't.
By the way, who the hell is John Keating?
Man, how wrong can a post be?
You are thinking of Sara Palin, the Bible-thumping running mate of John McCain, who was parodied on SNL by Tina Fey who stole Sarah's identity and clouded the minds of many people such as yourself.
I hope this clears up the confusion.
It's immoral and reprehensible to have a social welfare state, I have seen a number of them collapse during my time here, hopefully I enjoy watching a few more collapsing.
Well, just stick around a couple years. You'll see a large one implode soon enough.
You phrased that poorly. Please allow me to rewrite it.
Right. Because the big reason I smoke the dried leaves of a plant, and don't smoke the remnants of various substances including lye, match tips, phosphorus, drain cleaner, brake fluid, and hydrochloric acid, is because meth is illegal.
I also like to ask people if they think people would want to smoke meth if pot wasn't illegal. The current crop of meth addicts would still be hooked, but in the future how many pot-heads would switch to meth-heads?
You just have to slow down a bit there nate.
I think Johnny 5 speaks very well for a four day old.
I have one small nit to pick with your statement. The .com bubble didn't burst "about the year 2000."
It burst in the year 2000.
Early in 2000 to be accurate.
March 10, 2000 to be precise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble#The_bubble_bursts
.
Other than that pet peeve of mine, I liked your comment.
Never mind that. Do you know if he paid his taxes for the last ten years?
Let me start by saying I agree with the main annoyances you are writing about. Cigarette smoke makes my throat tighten up, further aggravating a breathing problem I have. And it doesn't matter which side of a smoker I am at, the damn smoke always goes towards me. With that said, and with no animosity towards you, I still do not like your argument, and think smoking bans are the wrong solution to this problem.
If I am sitting somewhere already why should a smoker have the right to impose their smoke on me.
Because it is a legal activity. It may annoy you, and me for that matter, but it isn't illegal to smoke. Annoyance isn't enough to outlaw something.
If you think the situation is actually an attack on your health, the proper response is to have tobacco itself outlawed, not simply its use near you. I would be fine if tobacco was outlawed. But I know it won't be, because the states make too much tax money from it. This is another part of the hypocrisy (from the government this time) of banning smoking that I hate.
I am not talking about going to where they are, I am talking about them coming to where I am at the time. I can be sitting on a bench enjoying a nice day, waiting at a bus stop etc but it becomes my job and many others jobs to move because a smoker chose that spot to light up.
I do wish there was a better way to separate smokers and non-smokers in public areas. But it seems no one can come up with a sensible, and feasible, solution. Besides that, in a city, the car exhaust is far more prevalent than cigarette smoke, so to me it seems banning internal combustion cars/trucks is the better alternative.
Also it isn't exactly just a personal desire given that we have very good evidence on the damage of second hand smoke. They have the right to harm themselves not others and people that don't want to be harmed should not have the onus placed on them to accommodate the smokers at every turn.
As I say, work to have it outlawed completely. Unfortunately the non-smokers have decided to instead have it banned in all businesses, whether they have ever been in them or not. I believe that if a guy wants to open a bar, and he wants to allow people to smoke in there, it is his choice, not yours or mine. Sorry if I sound like a broken record there, but that is the only laws they have been able to pass, taking everyone's choice from them in the name of "the greater good".
You ever notice in movies, a guy pulls a gun out and fires a shot in a large public area, and the idiots on the left run to the right, and the idiots on the right run to the left?
I hope in real life everyone's path is more or less away from the man waving the gun around.
So...
How was Guam?
Maybe he simply meant "clothing/uniforms from the colonial times". And Britain had more colonies than a dozen on the northwest Atlantic coast, so that allows a broad range of possibilities.
So long as you only harm yourself I agree.
I do think we need laws about you smoking around other people though. That is something I find very annoying how can you be sitting somewhere and someone will come up to you and smoke. They have the right to harm themselves, they don't have the right to harm you.
As someone who doesn't smoke, I hate your argument and entire line of reasoning. I don't need your government forcing people to accommodate my personal desires related to smoking cigarettes. Forcing all businesses to go smoke-free is asinine. Especially since every business had the opportunity to be smoke-free by their own decision, and almost none did. A few restaurants and nightclubs tried, and changed their mind when revenue plunged.
I find it strange that only about 20% of adults smoke, but a restaurant that bans smoking loses business to the others that allow it. How is 80% of a possible customer base not enough to keep a restaurant afloat? I'm not saying 80% of their former customers, but the base number of potential customers. It seems lie all the people who want smoking banned would flock to such a location. But they all follow the crowds into the smoke-filled restaurants where "the cool people" hang out.
As for the "they don't have the right to harm you" line, if you actually believed that you would be calling for a ban on driving. Cars have hurt me far more than second hand smoke has.