Loopholes exist for everyone, including the guy you replied to. People smart enough to use them become rich. People that are not smart enough whine about it.
Most of the loopholes require a lot of money or assets.
It's kind of hard to live off of cash you borrowed against your stock holdings if your stock holdings are worth less than your living expenses.
And moving your money to an off-shore tax haven only makes sense if your tax savings would be larger than the accountant's fees you'd have to pay to do so, plus the amount of the risk of any changes in the tax code here or there.
Those humans are letting smugglers through... but they haven't caught a single terrorist yet.
I'd say that almost all of the "additional security" since the WTC attack is only "security theatre". Aside from the improved flight deck doors and increased passenger involvement.
But you can exclude those that don't fit 1,2 and 4 before even sending a probe. And you can probably exclude at least some that don't fit 3.
That's the lottery part. What if there aren't any asteroids that fit all four requirements?
That plan depends upon there being at least one (and that one having a payoff that funds the entire project) or more (with a total payoff that funds the entire project).
Kind of like hoping to find a winning lottery ticket at the shop you just drove to so you can pay off the car you just bought to drive to that shop.
Skip that. If you can mine an asteroid then you can mine the Moon.
Isn't it really more like buying a lottery ticket when it's already known that it won something?
Sure you have to spend something for this probe, but you don't have to launch it at an asteroid until you know that it's close to Earth and your observations indicate it could be worth something.
That's the lottery part. You buy the probe and hope that you find something.
And that the something you find is worth MORE than the cost of the probe AND the cost of mining it.
Sure not every rock they target will be worth it, but the odds are a whole lot better then with the lottery.
It's different because the investment to mine the asteroid is so HUGE in the first place.
So what is required is: 1. Near Earth 2. Moving slow enough to mine 3. Valuable enough to pay for the mining operation 4. Small enough to be maneuverable by weak engines
Hitting all four of those requirements seems pretty unlikely.
With water, once you drink it you excrete it. A recycling system should be able to slow any loss to almost nothing.
And while the Moon does have a gravity well, the lunar lander successfully launched from it with humans and life support and a very small drive. Setting up a launch system that relied upon solar energy (lots of it there) should be cheap enough.
Wouldn't it be easier to just set up on the Moon and process it there and then ship it to NASA if they want to pay for it?
But then you'd have a MOON BASE and the space station would look kind of redundant. Why not move the astronauts to the moon base and use the water there?
If you take the current price of platinum and multiply it by the amount that you could obtain from asteroid mining.
My question is more along the lines of what is it that we cannot do right now that requires more platinum. Or that is prohibitively expensive based upon the current price of platinum.
And for that matter, is there that much of a market for it? Will we all be wearing platinum belt buckles in 50 years?
Exactly. Bringing down more gold or platinum will initially depress the price of such. What, on Earth, requires more gold than is currently available?
Those guys have enough money to throw at something like this and never show a cent profit... for a while.
I think the fascination on/. with this is more driven by bad science fiction than by an understanding of the science behind it.
From TFA:
The key point is that their plan is not to simply mine precious metals and make millions or billions of dollarsâ" though thatâ(TM)s a long-range goal. If that were the only goal, it would cost too much, be too difficult, and probably not be attainable.
Okay, I can agree with that. Mining asteroids is not cheap.
The first is to make a series of small space telescopes to observe and characterize asteroids. Lewicki said the first of these is the Arkyd 101, a 22 cm (9â) telescope in low-Earth orbit that will be aboard a tiny spacecraft just 40 x 40 cm (16â) in size.
Okay.
This telescope will be used both to look for and observe known Near-Earth asteroids, and can also be pointed down to Earth for remote sensing operations.
I'm seeing scope creep already.
If they hitch a ride with a satellite destined for a 40,000 km (24,000 mile) geosynchronous orbit, the motor can be used to take the telescope â" now a space probe â" out of Earth orbit and set on course for a pre-determined asteroid destination.
And now we're getting into the "floor wax and dessert topping" area.
Many asteroids pass close to the Earth with a low enough velocity that one of these probes could reach them. Heck, some are easier to reach in that sense than the Moon!
And that's where I think they will fail. They're hoping that the rocks that will be valuable are already in the "Near-Earth" and big enough and moving slow enough and...
Kind of like hoping that a winning scratch lottery ticket is in your local store and in the game you're playing and within X tickets of the edge where the money you'll spend on them is X or greater.
It's their money and more space science won't hurt. But I'd rather see them accomplish something visible.
This is going to sound "ageist" but... the only advantage young programmers have is that they're willing to work 20 hour days and 7 day weeks for months at a time. And do it for less money.
So you need about 10,000 hours of working in a field to become an "expert". If you believe that article (and I do). And someone who is an "expert" has, hopefully, seen enough mistakes and errors over those 10,000 hours to be able to head them off when they show up again.
That's what you're paying for when you hire the experienced programmers. The knowledge of what errors people usually make and why they make them.
So you get code with fewer errors and fewer re-writes to take out the errors that never got in in the first place.
The asteroid belt is over a THOUSAND times further from the Earth than the Moon is. It's over 200 million miles away.
The asteroids in the asteroid belt are about SIXTEEN times further BETWEEN THEM than the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
What that means is that going from asteroid A to asteroid B is about the same distance as going from Earth orbit to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the Moon and back to Earth orbit.
And that's just between TWO asteroids.
Getting to the asteroids in the first place is the same as going from Earth orbit to the moon and back to Earth orbit and back to the moon...repeat 1,000 times and back to Earth orbit.
To quote Douglas Adams:
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
If you haven't hollowed out the Moon before mining Mars before mining the asteroids then you do not have a grasp of how far away the asteroids are.
To use lunar resources you have to land and take off in a gravity well.
Yet the old lunar lander could do that. The Moon's gravity well is VERY weak. So weak that it cannot hold much of an atmosphere. If air gets blown off of the Moon then it's not really a factor for getting stuff off of the Moon.
Distance matters much less than delta-V for space operations.
You need a high delta-V for getting out of strong gravity wells.
After that, a high delta-V means that you can cover the HUGE distances in space faster than with a low delta-V.
But the issue really is distance. And the Moon is a LOT closer than the asteroids.
Asteroids are differentiated. Some are mostly pure nickel-iron. Never heard of that being available on the moon.
Why wouldn't there be a vein of iron ore on the Moon? There are veins of it on the Earth.
Sure, you might have to dig a bit for it. But digging on the Moon means a LOT less travel than scouting the asteroid belt.
overly right wing? I think my opinion on this is left wing, actually.
WTF? Where did that come from?
not that it is profitable right now, but that it is a possible backup plan to get resources(ore) should we need them in the future.
The rock we are sitting on right now is HUGE. In order to get a comparable amount of ore they would have to mine a comparable amount of material.
In other words, they'd have to mine an Earth's worth of asteroids to get an amount of ore currently available on Earth.
Fuck that. Mine the Moon first it getting ore is your goal. It's a LOT closer than the asteroids.
another thing is that we wouldn't necessarily want the resources to be dumped back to earth just to shoot them up to space again, but use them in space.
Yeah. There's the Moon already up there and close to us and it probably has the same materials as the asteroids do.
They eliminated a competitor and (more or less) bought their user-base
Maybe. Although I'd expect that most of Instagram's userbase is already part of Facebook's userbase. So they'd be paying a billion dollars for access to people that they already had access to.
Which is the point. If they can get that for a billion dollars, can they get the same for less?
Can they get BETTER for less?
And by "for less" I'm talking about a hundred million dollars. Which is why I think that this is part of the new "bubble" and not a wise or reasonable business investment.
Perhaps Facebook was afraid that Instagram was quickly becoming the go-to social network for sharing photos. Taking them out of the equation would have been worth it.
Or you dump 1/10th of that money ($100 million) into creating your own app that does the exact same thing and is tied to Facebook.
And you've saved $900 million. Which can be used for other projects or acquisitions.
Of course since we're asking these questions about valuation, I have reason to believe we at least learned SOMETHING from the last tech bubble.
If we have, I don't see it.
The dotcom bubble was all about the IPO or selling to someone bigger and becoming an instant multi-millionaire.
We have the huge IPO's again and now we're seeing the massive purchase prices of systems without viable revenue streams.
Are you saying that Macs are not obscure now? Because, according to TFA, they only have 6.5% market share.
Or are you saying that they were never "obscure" but no one else had been able to compromise them on a mass scale because most Mac users did NOT run anti-virus software?
Or are you attempting to mock the person who's prediction failed and so he changed the numbers and assumptions until his prediction reflected the current situation?
In fact, said Stephenson, we already have much of the fundamental technology we need to fulfill such science fiction ambitions as large scale solar power production, or routine space flight.
Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.
We've accomplished all the easy, flashy stuff.
Now comes the not-as-easy-as-before-but-still-possible stuff. Like the first man (or woman) on Mars. Even if it is a one way trip for now.
We're not focused on it because it takes the resources of at least one nation to do so. And we've already set the bar (man on the moon). But there are other nations.
1. A cheap way to launch supplies into Earth orbit. No people will be shipped this way so even a huge cannon would be good.
2. Prep the supplies from #1 in orbit (need a space station or shuttle for this) and use cheap, slow engines to get them to Mars.
3. The supplies enter Mars orbit and stay there until they are signalled from the ground to come down.
Keep up a steady stream and roll any improvements into the system and you should be able to supply a mission for however long you want to keep them alive.
Getting them back to Earth will be a problem. Are there any volunteers for a one-way mission? At least until they can assemble their own launch pad to get their people back into orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of just looking for loopholes how about LOBBYING to get new loopholes added specifically for your company or situation?
The average middle-class citizen does not have the money to lobby Congress for changes to the tax law that will help him.
So why do corporations and the wealthy get to do so?
Most of the loopholes require a lot of money or assets.
It's kind of hard to live off of cash you borrowed against your stock holdings if your stock holdings are worth less than your living expenses.
And moving your money to an off-shore tax haven only makes sense if your tax savings would be larger than the accountant's fees you'd have to pay to do so, plus the amount of the risk of any changes in the tax code here or there.
SSL just encrypts the channel.
SSL does not fix anything else.
How could it?
Crap code on a website is still crap code on a website whether you have an encrypted channel or clear text channel.
Those humans are letting smugglers through ... but they haven't caught a single terrorist yet.
I'd say that almost all of the "additional security" since the WTC attack is only "security theatre". Aside from the improved flight deck doors and increased passenger involvement.
Get rid of the TSA.
Terrorists in Israel often attack buses and restaurants.
Even in America, a couple guys with a rifle can terrorize an entire city.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks
That's the lottery part. What if there aren't any asteroids that fit all four requirements?
That plan depends upon there being at least one (and that one having a payoff that funds the entire project) or more (with a total payoff that funds the entire project).
Kind of like hoping to find a winning lottery ticket at the shop you just drove to so you can pay off the car you just bought to drive to that shop.
Skip that.
If you can mine an asteroid then you can mine the Moon.
If you're planning on converting water into transportation fuel on the Moon then you're wasting a lot of resources.
Go with a rail gun (the Navy has one) and use cheap solar energy to power it.
Or use a laser to beam the energy to a remote vehicle and use cheap solar energy to power the laser.
There are lots of other ways.
That's the lottery part. You buy the probe and hope that you find something.
And that the something you find is worth MORE than the cost of the probe AND the cost of mining it.
It's different because the investment to mine the asteroid is so HUGE in the first place.
So what is required is:
1. Near Earth
2. Moving slow enough to mine
3. Valuable enough to pay for the mining operation
4. Small enough to be maneuverable by weak engines
Hitting all four of those requirements seems pretty unlikely.
With oil, once you burn it it is gone.
With water, once you drink it you excrete it. A recycling system should be able to slow any loss to almost nothing.
And while the Moon does have a gravity well, the lunar lander successfully launched from it with humans and life support and a very small drive. Setting up a launch system that relied upon solar energy (lots of it there) should be cheap enough.
We already know where there is ice on the Moon.
Wouldn't it be easier to just set up on the Moon and process it there and then ship it to NASA if they want to pay for it?
But then you'd have a MOON BASE and the space station would look kind of redundant. Why not move the astronauts to the moon base and use the water there?
My question is more along the lines of what is it that we cannot do right now that requires more platinum. Or that is prohibitively expensive based upon the current price of platinum.
Exactly. Bringing down more gold or platinum will initially depress the price of such. What, on Earth, requires more gold than is currently available?
And not just happening but turning a profit.
Those guys have enough money to throw at something like this and never show a cent profit ... for a while.
I think the fascination on /. with this is more driven by bad science fiction than by an understanding of the science behind it.
From TFA:
Okay, I can agree with that. Mining asteroids is not cheap.
Okay.
I'm seeing scope creep already.
And now we're getting into the "floor wax and dessert topping" area.
And that's where I think they will fail. They're hoping that the rocks that will be valuable are already in the "Near-Earth" and big enough and moving slow enough and ...
Kind of like hoping that a winning scratch lottery ticket is in your local store and in the game you're playing and within X tickets of the edge where the money you'll spend on them is X or greater.
It's their money and more space science won't hurt.
But I'd rather see them accomplish something visible.
This is going to sound "ageist" but ... the only advantage young programmers have is that they're willing to work 20 hour days and 7 day weeks for months at a time. And do it for less money.
http://norvig.com/21-days.html
So you need about 10,000 hours of working in a field to become an "expert". If you believe that article (and I do). And someone who is an "expert" has, hopefully, seen enough mistakes and errors over those 10,000 hours to be able to head them off when they show up again.
That's what you're paying for when you hire the experienced programmers. The knowledge of what errors people usually make and why they make them.
So you get code with fewer errors and fewer re-writes to take out the errors that never got in in the first place.
Let's look at the real numbers.
The asteroid belt is over a THOUSAND times further from the Earth than the Moon is. It's over 200 million miles away.
The asteroids in the asteroid belt are about SIXTEEN times further BETWEEN THEM than the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
What that means is that going from asteroid A to asteroid B is about the same distance as going from Earth orbit to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the Moon
and back to Earth orbit.
And that's just between TWO asteroids.
Getting to the asteroids in the first place is the same as going from Earth orbit to the moon ...repeat 1,000 times
and back to Earth orbit
and back to the moon
and back to Earth orbit.
To quote Douglas Adams:
If you haven't hollowed out the Moon before mining Mars before mining the asteroids then you do not have a grasp of how far away the asteroids are.
Yet the old lunar lander could do that. The Moon's gravity well is VERY weak. So weak that it cannot hold much of an atmosphere. If air gets blown off of the Moon then it's not really a factor for getting stuff off of the Moon.
You need a high delta-V for getting out of strong gravity wells.
After that, a high delta-V means that you can cover the HUGE distances in space faster than with a low delta-V.
But the issue really is distance. And the Moon is a LOT closer than the asteroids.
Why wouldn't there be a vein of iron ore on the Moon? There are veins of it on the Earth.
Sure, you might have to dig a bit for it. But digging on the Moon means a LOT less travel than scouting the asteroid belt.
WTF? Where did that come from?
The rock we are sitting on right now is HUGE. In order to get a comparable amount of ore they would have to mine a comparable amount of material.
In other words, they'd have to mine an Earth's worth of asteroids to get an amount of ore currently available on Earth.
Fuck that. Mine the Moon first it getting ore is your goal. It's a LOT closer than the asteroids.
Yeah. There's the Moon already up there and close to us and it probably has the same materials as the asteroids do.
What are they going to find on a rock in space that is not already available on THIS rock in space?
And a shorter distance.
And with an atmosphere.
And so on and so forth.
Maybe things in Washington state are different but even our senators reply to written mail.
Maybe not to the President, for all of your elected officials below him it does seem to work.
Maybe. Although I'd expect that most of Instagram's userbase is already part of Facebook's userbase. So they'd be paying a billion dollars for access to people that they already had access to.
Which is the point. If they can get that for a billion dollars, can they get the same for less?
Can they get BETTER for less?
And by "for less" I'm talking about a hundred million dollars. Which is why I think that this is part of the new "bubble" and not a wise or reasonable business investment.
Or you dump 1/10th of that money ($100 million) into creating your own app that does the exact same thing and is tied to Facebook.
And you've saved $900 million. Which can be used for other projects or acquisitions.
If we have, I don't see it.
The dotcom bubble was all about the IPO or selling to someone bigger and becoming an instant multi-millionaire.
We have the huge IPO's again and now we're seeing the massive purchase prices of systems without viable revenue streams.
So it sold for a billion dollars.
It must have had some serious revenue to make it worth that much.
It didn't?
Then we've learned nothing from the last bubble.
Are you saying that Macs are not obscure now? Because, according to TFA, they only have 6.5% market share.
Or are you saying that they were never "obscure" but no one else had been able to compromise them on a mass scale because most Mac users did NOT run anti-virus software?
Or are you attempting to mock the person who's prediction failed and so he changed the numbers and assumptions until his prediction reflected the current situation?
Horror works by capturing the fears of the majority at that point in time.
Afraid of losing your job to a machine?
Robot horror fiction.
Afraid of being nuked by an enemy country?
Radiation mutant horror fiction.
Afraid of losing your middle class status?
Dystopian future horror fiction.
To correct the horror fiction you need to "fix" the underlying fear that is feeding it.
He's focused too much on America.
From TFA:
Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.
We've accomplished all the easy, flashy stuff.
Now comes the not-as-easy-as-before-but-still-possible stuff. Like the first man (or woman) on Mars. Even if it is a one way trip for now.
We're not focused on it because it takes the resources of at least one nation to do so. And we've already set the bar (man on the moon). But there are other nations.
1. A cheap way to launch supplies into Earth orbit. No people will be shipped this way so even a huge cannon would be good.
2. Prep the supplies from #1 in orbit (need a space station or shuttle for this) and use cheap, slow engines to get them to Mars.
3. The supplies enter Mars orbit and stay there until they are signalled from the ground to come down.
Keep up a steady stream and roll any improvements into the system and you should be able to supply a mission for however long you want to keep them alive.
Getting them back to Earth will be a problem.
Are there any volunteers for a one-way mission?
At least until they can assemble their own launch pad to get their people back into orbit.