So, the author of TFA has some interesting thoughts, but I doubt he's researched them very thoroughly.
He says:
The Nautilus has a huge deep-space antenna where laser transmission may make more sense. It also has a shuttle-derived remote manipulator arm which also seems like excess weight.
...which sounds good from a layman's standpoint, but isn't necessarily true. Laser communications cost a lot in terms of power budget. If you are going to be strapping multiple laser communication systems (for redundancy) onto a deep space mission, you are going to need to scale up the size of the solar arrays quite a bit. It is very likely that the extra mass needed for extra solar arrays is greater than that needed for a high power radio antenna. The folks at NASA get paid to crunch numbers for trade studies like this, and I would wager they took that into account.
As for the manipulator arm, yes, it is excess weight. Excess weight isn't necessarily a bad thing if you are already going to be lifting a lot of mass to orbit. If, say, one launch for constructing this vehicle required a Dragon, HTV, Progress, or some other supply vehicle to be lifted (for the purposes of a lifeboat, or some such thing), one could piggy back the manipulator arm on as an extra payload and outfit it to the new spacecraft. If the arm would require an extra launch then, yes, it is an expensive addition. However, in the event that this spacecraft would be landing a crew and then picking them back up again, the manipulator arm would not be unnecessary mass, but, in that case, a critical system for redocking surface-to-orbit ferries.
The oddest thing about that assessment by the author is when he says this previously in the article:
To significantly lower mass and therefore reduce transit time, why not simply send unmanned landers ahead and put them into a parking orbit to wait until the crew arrives.
If the spacecraft is supposed to be linking up with landers in a parking orbit at the destination, you can bet your sweet ass that a manipulator arm will be necessary to capture the landers. Of course, alternatively, the crew could also take a ferry to the on-orbit lander modules instead, but then you'd be carrying around the crew ferries rather than the landers and/or the arm, which means, again, a trade study should be conducted and the folks at NASA have probably already done so.
One other thing to consider is that while a higher mass requires a higher delta-v to hop from orbit to orbit, if the excess mass is a small enough fraction, it may not make a practical difference. Rocket engines that are in production produce a certain amount of thrust. If that thrust can boost "up to X many kg of mass to this delta-v" then reducing your mass below X is somewhat unnecessary, unless you need or want a higher delta-v margin.
It's important to remember that the first European colonists to North America didn't land on the East Coast and then drag race to the Pacific. Rather, they established a colonial foothold in the East first (like we should in LEO) and then, after developing their on-continent infrastructure some, they set off to explore further. Baby-steps lead towards progress. One off, epic publicity stunts lead to debt.
You might just want to suggest to your daughter that she up her standards. I've met my fair share of stupid 19 year olds (hell, 6 years ago I used to be one), but make no mistake, there are quite a few intelligent and literate ones out there as well. As a general rule of thumb, guys that are working hard towards something (difficult college major, promising career path, etc.) tend to be less likely to smoke themselves stupid and dress like a main character from 8 Mile. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.
Okay, I understand it is important to note why some specific area of research (Earth's core speed) is important research (relates to magnetosphere, amongst other things). But can we please leave out stupid addenda to summaries like, "Without our magnetic field...life would not be able to exist." The interesting news story here relates to geology, geophysics, and planetary models (something becoming more and more relevant as we explore further portions of our solar system). I would much rather see a discussion relating to those topics, than see a number of completely off-topic threads about whether or not life would or would not exist without the magnetosphere. Yes, that's an interesting question, but the existence of life has little to do with this research. And, as such, establishing a connection between the existence of life and the geophysical model of the Earth in the summary is little more than mild flamebait (off-topic-bait?).
What I am curious about is what, specifically, this type of research can do for our understanding of the magnetic poles traveling, our understanding of climate models, our understanding of other planetary bodies which we suspect might have a liquid core. Considering that life exists now (with the core being slower than we thought) and life existed within earlier models (when the core speed was suspected to be higher) I don't think these findings have much, if anything, to do with the potential for the existence of life. So can we please try to keep discussions on topic?
...they can create large clouds of antiparticles, compress them and make specially tailored beams for a variety of uses."
And mad scientists all over the world rejoice at the thought of building their first orbital, antimatter death ray.
On a less sinister note, if they can guide an anti- beam in a controlled manner to impact a regular beam they could take the first steps towards some sort of epic anti-matter based propulsion system.
I would wager that low voter turnout has very little to do with the ability to make it to the polls on time, and a whole hell of a lot to do with people just feeling like their vote doesn't matter anymore. At All. Period.
SGU was good because it *didn't* follow the SG mantra. I'm not a Stargate fan. I loved SGU.
It was your Deep Space Nine. It's a shame Stargate fans weren't able to expand their horizons a bit and embrace something new.
So, you're saying that you don't actually like science fiction, but, rather, soap operas? If they're in space, that's just an exciting background right? Face it, SGU was the sci-fi show made for the Twilight generation. It was high school drama in space, and that's why it sucked. At least the original two series had competent and intelligent women in them who were able to solve problems and look good while doing it.
That's the stupidest theoretical trash I've ever heard. I'm an engineer (not a professor), and I can tell you that engineering is science, a very practical, applied science:
Science: Formulate a hypothesis. Design an experiment. Conduct experiment. Gather data. Analyze results. Form conclusion.
Engineering: Formulate a hypothesis (This system can solve this problem). Design an experiment (Build the system). Conduct experiment (Test system in operational environment or appropriate simulation of environment). Gather data (Analyze system dynamics, performance, and control signals). Analyze results (Was all the gathered data within expected envelope? Did we find any unaccounted for modes? Did the damn thing explode?). Form conclusion (It worked in the test, it should work in the real world! Shit! It exploded! Let's redesign the crappy part that failed!)
Anyone who says engineering is not a science has never actually engineered anything.
You shouldn't insult Firefly fans like that. They fancy themselves freedom fighters and rebels and will gladly kick your ass to the edges of the 'verse for such a low blow.
It means the author is one of those "normies" that manages to function in the meatspace and actually has a social circle outside of their mother and their cat.;)
You mean, I won't be able to send out generic, "I love you Babe, you're so special to me!" emails to my multitude of girlfriends without them finding out about one another anymore? Oh the horror!
Wow, way to be a downer. Did you stop to consider the possibility that, in every 1/100 of these habitable planets, there could actually be thriving, intelligent space faring civilizations that are either
A) So advanced in technology that we simply do not possess the means to recognize them as being a civilization.
B) So far away that their communication signals have simply become too weak and/or distorted to be recognized by the time they reach us.
C) So far removed in time (evolved to spacefaring, lasted for thousands of years, and still died off before we stopped throwing rocks at each other) that we simply missed the evidence that they existed.
D) Or, finally, so far ahead of us in terms of cultural maturity that they have, thus far, decided to hide themselves from our view until a later time when we can accept them as a civilization?
There are 1,001 reasons that there could be advanced, sustaining, prolonged civilizations which exist in our galaxy, but which are still undetectable by our current means. When it comes right down to it, the only way we are really going to determine if there are advanced spacefaring species in our galaxy is by becoming one ourselves, and going out and looking with the level of technology required to become a spacefaring species. So don't give up hope and go slit your wrists just yet. There is absolutely no reason to assume that we will fail in our endeavors in space. Thus far, humanity has a great track record at achieving that which was once thought impossible, even if those journeys all had their minor setbacks.
There is _so_ much to do and learn here, in biology geology climatology medicine physics (oh my god the list goes on and not to mention Douglas Englebart's incredibly important pet project that we're really just getting started with), that I just don't understand how anyone can think it's a let down, or a display of lack of ambition, that we're not on Mars yet.
Yes, there is amazing, cool, epic shit going on right now on this planet. There is no doubt about that. But the reason why it is a let down that we are not putting meatbags on Mars right now is because all the cool, amazing, epic science shit we are doing on this planet is not being done in space, on other worlds, on undiscovered frontiers, in places where no human has ever set foot before, in places and environments that we have only started to imagine.
If you don't understand why that's a let down in and of itself, then you probably never will. It all boils down to the spirit of exploration, in the most literal sense.
You might want to get your billionaires straight. Branson is the one building space planes. Carmack is building rockets. Robert Bigelow is building the space hotels.;)
And that's how we raise a whole new generation of estranged children who grow up feeling like there is something wrong with them that makes people ignore them. And here I was hoping emo music would die out once and for all...
I have a couple of friends who have been the victims of some rather nasty burn injuries. They've come out of the experience healthy and dandy well down the road, but each one of them counts the experience as a life-changing event. Any technology that can help severe burn victims should be released to the civilian sector as well.
But that's the rub isn't it? The system was designed to make the federal government inefficient, but all it seems to have done is resulted in a system that is efficient at fucking us over. The Congress critters never seem to fight each other to a standstill on any particular issue in a good way. Rather, when they do come together to pass something, we, the citizenry get royally boned. They rest of the time they just get to play around in their yachts.
I'm not tired of the fact that the government is inefficient. I am tired of the fact that it seems to be increasing in it's efficiency at screwing over the rest of us.
Oh stop with the name-calling. My rant wasn't directed at you in particular. It was quite apparent from your post that you weren't trying to say that such a feat is impossible. You merely stated that many people are starting to worry that it could be impossible. My rant was directed at those people. I'm sick of the people who wallow around in our society and say things like, "Well deploying high speed internet in the U.S. is so much harder than anywhere else in the world," like it is some sort of excuse for our abominable lagging in this area. I realize what kind of investments had to be made to develop the projects I listed. I also realize they were not funded by an, "everybody pays the same," model, but, rather, the costs were shouldered by different social entities at different times (sometimes companies, sometimes customers, sometimes certain taxpayer brackets, etc.).
That said, it will cost a lot to develop a strong internet infrastructure. But once it is there, maintenance should be able to be funded by monthly fees (even if that does have to be on a per byte basis).
And yes, I know Net Neutrality will not be the wooden stake in the telco vampires hearts. But it's a step.
The way I see it, it took the government break up of Ma Bell to keep a telco monopoly from fucking us over once. It will probably also take government intervention to keep the current telco conglomerates from fucking us over again.
That's okay, there are probably issues that you care about that I don't give a fuck about either, because, in my opinion, they are probably just nerd issues.;)
... lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources....
Well than that thought needs to be purged from everyone's mind like puss from a zit on a HS kid's prom night. It is not impossible to build and deploy a nation-wide infrastructure capable of delivering high quality service to every part of this country. We've done it before. We've done it multiple times before. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) electricity network in this country that could reach every single home, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) water delivery infrastructure to every home and business in this country, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) interstate and state level highway system that could deliver transport goods to just about anywhere in the country. We build the rails before that and (at the time) they were very high quality. We built and deployed the telephone network, and managed to rig it to deliver high quality analog voice signals to every damn place in this country!
There was a time (there were multiple times) when the United States invested in developing itself. There was a time when we weren't piss scared to spend the money to connect every freakin' corner of this country to the latest technology of the period. We have the man power. We have the resources. We have the know how. We can and should build and deploy a high capacity, high speed network system of computer (internet) because it is the next great investment in the future. Internet access, hands down, is the world-changing infrastructure of our era. As the leaders of the free world (supposedly) and the premier technology power in the world (supposedly) it should not take this much politicking, bullshitting, and corporate cock sucking to deploy free (as in libre) and open internet access to the whole fucking country!
How the hell has our population been convinced that this is somehow acceptable or normal? America used to be capable of seizing upon a new invention (rail, steam engine, internal combustion engine, electricity, telephony) and deploying it, broadly and fairly, to the whole fucking population. And yet today we piss away one of the greatest infrastructure opportunities (cheap, open, frree (as in libre) access to the world's whole sum of knowledge) all because a few sacred telco monopolies have convinced us "It's just too hard, nigh, impossible to undertake such a large project."
Fuck That!
We built the transcontinental railroad. We built the interstate system. We let Ma Bell build the telephony system and then broke them up when they abused their monopoly powers. We have built nuclear power plants and the Alaskan pipeline. We built the California Aqueduct. We put a human being on the fucking moon for Christ's sake and we're going to accept the notion that we, as a country and society, cannot get fast, unfettered access to the internet like every other first world country?
Bullshit!
Will it cost money? Yes! Will it take a lot of hard work? Yes! Will it take time, higher taxes, and the spine to tell the multinational telco's to go fuck themselves? Yes!
But will it pay off in the end? Anyone who thinks it won't is stuck in the stone age, fooling themselves, or just downright lying.
You bet your sweet ass that we could build and deploy a strong, open access platform for the internet nation wide. The only problem seems to be that people are too chicken shit scared or stupid to push for it.
Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point. They never, ever seem capable of doing anything useful, or beneficial for the citizens of this country anymore. It's exhausting. Every single time a story pops up (on Slashdot or anywhere else) that involves politics or a political decision, you can basically just assume that it's going to screw over everyone in the country that isn't already a politician.
Being a U.S. citizen today feels just like playing the role of Sisiphus, consistently pushing a boulder uphill (trying to improve the world by being a responsible citizen, voting, jury duty, etc.) only to realize that you have to push it up again when you reach the top (Congress critters keep passing bills that fuck things up even more). It's exhausting, to keep reading about how those folks we elect to power just stumble around and fuck things up so badly....It's so consistent that it very nearly serves as a dataset to debunk that old meme of, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."
Our leaders are just fucking terrible. It's exhausting.
Slashdot Mirror
He says:
The Nautilus has a huge deep-space antenna where laser transmission may make more sense. It also has a shuttle-derived remote manipulator arm which also seems like excess weight.
As for the manipulator arm, yes, it is excess weight. Excess weight isn't necessarily a bad thing if you are already going to be lifting a lot of mass to orbit. If, say, one launch for constructing this vehicle required a Dragon, HTV, Progress, or some other supply vehicle to be lifted (for the purposes of a lifeboat, or some such thing), one could piggy back the manipulator arm on as an extra payload and outfit it to the new spacecraft. If the arm would require an extra launch then, yes, it is an expensive addition. However, in the event that this spacecraft would be landing a crew and then picking them back up again, the manipulator arm would not be unnecessary mass, but, in that case, a critical system for redocking surface-to-orbit ferries.
The oddest thing about that assessment by the author is when he says this previously in the article:
To significantly lower mass and therefore reduce transit time, why not simply send unmanned landers ahead and put them into a parking orbit to wait until the crew arrives.
If the spacecraft is supposed to be linking up with landers in a parking orbit at the destination, you can bet your sweet ass that a manipulator arm will be necessary to capture the landers. Of course, alternatively, the crew could also take a ferry to the on-orbit lander modules instead, but then you'd be carrying around the crew ferries rather than the landers and/or the arm, which means, again, a trade study should be conducted and the folks at NASA have probably already done so.
One other thing to consider is that while a higher mass requires a higher delta-v to hop from orbit to orbit, if the excess mass is a small enough fraction, it may not make a practical difference. Rocket engines that are in production produce a certain amount of thrust. If that thrust can boost "up to X many kg of mass to this delta-v" then reducing your mass below X is somewhat unnecessary, unless you need or want a higher delta-v margin.
It's important to remember that the first European colonists to North America didn't land on the East Coast and then drag race to the Pacific. Rather, they established a colonial foothold in the East first (like we should in LEO) and then, after developing their on-continent infrastructure some, they set off to explore further. Baby-steps lead towards progress. One off, epic publicity stunts lead to debt.
That's just a standard acronym, not a backronym. Backronyms use the acronym as a word in the full phrase. For example: WINE: WINE Is Not an Emulator.
The only difference between a space station and a space exploration spacecraft is which body it is orbiting.
You might just want to suggest to your daughter that she up her standards. I've met my fair share of stupid 19 year olds (hell, 6 years ago I used to be one), but make no mistake, there are quite a few intelligent and literate ones out there as well. As a general rule of thumb, guys that are working hard towards something (difficult college major, promising career path, etc.) tend to be less likely to smoke themselves stupid and dress like a main character from 8 Mile. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.
Okay, I understand it is important to note why some specific area of research (Earth's core speed) is important research (relates to magnetosphere, amongst other things). But can we please leave out stupid addenda to summaries like, "Without our magnetic field...life would not be able to exist." The interesting news story here relates to geology, geophysics, and planetary models (something becoming more and more relevant as we explore further portions of our solar system). I would much rather see a discussion relating to those topics, than see a number of completely off-topic threads about whether or not life would or would not exist without the magnetosphere. Yes, that's an interesting question, but the existence of life has little to do with this research. And, as such, establishing a connection between the existence of life and the geophysical model of the Earth in the summary is little more than mild flamebait (off-topic-bait?).
What I am curious about is what, specifically, this type of research can do for our understanding of the magnetic poles traveling, our understanding of climate models, our understanding of other planetary bodies which we suspect might have a liquid core. Considering that life exists now (with the core being slower than we thought) and life existed within earlier models (when the core speed was suspected to be higher) I don't think these findings have much, if anything, to do with the potential for the existence of life. So can we please try to keep discussions on topic?
Funny, I remember reading in a Steinback novel how companies destroyed crops worth of food during the Great Depression while people were starving too.
...they can create large clouds of antiparticles, compress them and make specially tailored beams for a variety of uses."
And mad scientists all over the world rejoice at the thought of building their first orbital, antimatter death ray.
On a less sinister note, if they can guide an anti- beam in a controlled manner to impact a regular beam they could take the first steps towards some sort of epic anti-matter based propulsion system.
I would wager that low voter turnout has very little to do with the ability to make it to the polls on time, and a whole hell of a lot to do with people just feeling like their vote doesn't matter anymore. At All. Period.
Maybe I'll try the Super NES' Link to the Past next.
For what it's worth, that was the only title in the franchise that I ever actually enjoyed. So, maybe you just missed the diamond in the rough. ;)
SGU was good because it *didn't* follow the SG mantra. I'm not a Stargate fan. I loved SGU.
It was your Deep Space Nine. It's a shame Stargate fans weren't able to expand their horizons a bit and embrace something new.
So, you're saying that you don't actually like science fiction, but, rather, soap operas? If they're in space, that's just an exciting background right? Face it, SGU was the sci-fi show made for the Twilight generation. It was high school drama in space, and that's why it sucked. At least the original two series had competent and intelligent women in them who were able to solve problems and look good while doing it.
That's the stupidest theoretical trash I've ever heard. I'm an engineer (not a professor), and I can tell you that engineering is science, a very practical, applied science:
Science: Formulate a hypothesis. Design an experiment. Conduct experiment. Gather data. Analyze results. Form conclusion.
Engineering: Formulate a hypothesis (This system can solve this problem). Design an experiment (Build the system). Conduct experiment (Test system in operational environment or appropriate simulation of environment). Gather data (Analyze system dynamics, performance, and control signals). Analyze results (Was all the gathered data within expected envelope? Did we find any unaccounted for modes? Did the damn thing explode?). Form conclusion (It worked in the test, it should work in the real world! Shit! It exploded! Let's redesign the crappy part that failed!)
Anyone who says engineering is not a science has never actually engineered anything.
You shouldn't insult Firefly fans like that. They fancy themselves freedom fighters and rebels and will gladly kick your ass to the edges of the 'verse for such a low blow.
It means the author is one of those "normies" that manages to function in the meatspace and actually has a social circle outside of their mother and their cat. ;)
You mean, I won't be able to send out generic, "I love you Babe, you're so special to me!" emails to my multitude of girlfriends without them finding out about one another anymore? Oh the horror!
*insert Slashdot virginity jokes here*
Wow, way to be a downer. Did you stop to consider the possibility that, in every 1/100 of these habitable planets, there could actually be thriving, intelligent space faring civilizations that are either
A) So advanced in technology that we simply do not possess the means to recognize them as being a civilization.
B) So far away that their communication signals have simply become too weak and/or distorted to be recognized by the time they reach us.
C) So far removed in time (evolved to spacefaring, lasted for thousands of years, and still died off before we stopped throwing rocks at each other) that we simply missed the evidence that they existed.
D) Or, finally, so far ahead of us in terms of cultural maturity that they have, thus far, decided to hide themselves from our view until a later time when we can accept them as a civilization?
There are 1,001 reasons that there could be advanced, sustaining, prolonged civilizations which exist in our galaxy, but which are still undetectable by our current means. When it comes right down to it, the only way we are really going to determine if there are advanced spacefaring species in our galaxy is by becoming one ourselves, and going out and looking with the level of technology required to become a spacefaring species. So don't give up hope and go slit your wrists just yet. There is absolutely no reason to assume that we will fail in our endeavors in space. Thus far, humanity has a great track record at achieving that which was once thought impossible, even if those journeys all had their minor setbacks.
There is _so_ much to do and learn here, in biology geology climatology medicine physics (oh my god the list goes on and not to mention Douglas Englebart's incredibly important pet project that we're really just getting started with), that I just don't understand how anyone can think it's a let down, or a display of lack of ambition, that we're not on Mars yet.
Yes, there is amazing, cool, epic shit going on right now on this planet. There is no doubt about that. But the reason why it is a let down that we are not putting meatbags on Mars right now is because all the cool, amazing, epic science shit we are doing on this planet is not being done in space, on other worlds, on undiscovered frontiers, in places where no human has ever set foot before, in places and environments that we have only started to imagine.
If you don't understand why that's a let down in and of itself, then you probably never will. It all boils down to the spirit of exploration, in the most literal sense.
You might want to get your billionaires straight. Branson is the one building space planes. Carmack is building rockets. Robert Bigelow is building the space hotels. ;)
And that's how we raise a whole new generation of estranged children who grow up feeling like there is something wrong with them that makes people ignore them. And here I was hoping emo music would die out once and for all...
I have a couple of friends who have been the victims of some rather nasty burn injuries. They've come out of the experience healthy and dandy well down the road, but each one of them counts the experience as a life-changing event. Any technology that can help severe burn victims should be released to the civilian sector as well.
But that's the rub isn't it? The system was designed to make the federal government inefficient, but all it seems to have done is resulted in a system that is efficient at fucking us over. The Congress critters never seem to fight each other to a standstill on any particular issue in a good way. Rather, when they do come together to pass something, we, the citizenry get royally boned. They rest of the time they just get to play around in their yachts.
I'm not tired of the fact that the government is inefficient. I am tired of the fact that it seems to be increasing in it's efficiency at screwing over the rest of us.
Spaz.
Oh stop with the name-calling. My rant wasn't directed at you in particular. It was quite apparent from your post that you weren't trying to say that such a feat is impossible. You merely stated that many people are starting to worry that it could be impossible. My rant was directed at those people. I'm sick of the people who wallow around in our society and say things like, "Well deploying high speed internet in the U.S. is so much harder than anywhere else in the world," like it is some sort of excuse for our abominable lagging in this area. I realize what kind of investments had to be made to develop the projects I listed. I also realize they were not funded by an, "everybody pays the same," model, but, rather, the costs were shouldered by different social entities at different times (sometimes companies, sometimes customers, sometimes certain taxpayer brackets, etc.).
That said, it will cost a lot to develop a strong internet infrastructure. But once it is there, maintenance should be able to be funded by monthly fees (even if that does have to be on a per byte basis).
And yes, I know Net Neutrality will not be the wooden stake in the telco vampires hearts. But it's a step.
The way I see it, it took the government break up of Ma Bell to keep a telco monopoly from fucking us over once. It will probably also take government intervention to keep the current telco conglomerates from fucking us over again.
That's okay, there are probably issues that you care about that I don't give a fuck about either, because, in my opinion, they are probably just nerd issues. ;)
... lurking in the back of everyone's mind is the simple possibility that it might not be possible to pay for a non-tiered, flat-rate, uniform quality-of-service internet of sufficient capacity to deliver on-demand HD video or SIP telephone from any particular content provider in the US, independent of geography and service provider, to every terminal in the United States with flat monthly or even per-byte pricing on either end. The costs of building and maintaing the system simply don't map to consumption of the system's resources....
Well than that thought needs to be purged from everyone's mind like puss from a zit on a HS kid's prom night. It is not impossible to build and deploy a nation-wide infrastructure capable of delivering high quality service to every part of this country. We've done it before. We've done it multiple times before. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) electricity network in this country that could reach every single home, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) water delivery infrastructure to every home and business in this country, rural or urban, that wanted it. We managed to build and deploy a high quality (at the time) interstate and state level highway system that could deliver transport goods to just about anywhere in the country. We build the rails before that and (at the time) they were very high quality. We built and deployed the telephone network, and managed to rig it to deliver high quality analog voice signals to every damn place in this country!
There was a time (there were multiple times) when the United States invested in developing itself. There was a time when we weren't piss scared to spend the money to connect every freakin' corner of this country to the latest technology of the period. We have the man power. We have the resources. We have the know how. We can and should build and deploy a high capacity, high speed network system of computer (internet) because it is the next great investment in the future. Internet access, hands down, is the world-changing infrastructure of our era. As the leaders of the free world (supposedly) and the premier technology power in the world (supposedly) it should not take this much politicking, bullshitting, and corporate cock sucking to deploy free (as in libre) and open internet access to the whole fucking country!
How the hell has our population been convinced that this is somehow acceptable or normal? America used to be capable of seizing upon a new invention (rail, steam engine, internal combustion engine, electricity, telephony) and deploying it, broadly and fairly, to the whole fucking population. And yet today we piss away one of the greatest infrastructure opportunities (cheap, open, frree (as in libre) access to the world's whole sum of knowledge) all because a few sacred telco monopolies have convinced us "It's just too hard, nigh, impossible to undertake such a large project."
Fuck That!
We built the transcontinental railroad. We built the interstate system. We let Ma Bell build the telephony system and then broke them up when they abused their monopoly powers. We have built nuclear power plants and the Alaskan pipeline. We built the California Aqueduct. We put a human being on the fucking moon for Christ's sake and we're going to accept the notion that we, as a country and society, cannot get fast, unfettered access to the internet like every other first world country?
Bullshit!
Will it cost money? Yes! Will it take a lot of hard work? Yes! Will it take time, higher taxes, and the spine to tell the multinational telco's to go fuck themselves? Yes!
But will it pay off in the end? Anyone who thinks it won't is stuck in the stone age, fooling themselves, or just downright lying.
You bet your sweet ass that we could build and deploy a strong, open access platform for the internet nation wide. The only problem seems to be that people are too chicken shit scared or stupid to push for it.
Does anyone else just feel worn out by all political BS in the U.S these days? I mean, it seems like Congress is nothing more than a group of professional trolls at this point. They never, ever seem capable of doing anything useful, or beneficial for the citizens of this country anymore. It's exhausting. Every single time a story pops up (on Slashdot or anywhere else) that involves politics or a political decision, you can basically just assume that it's going to screw over everyone in the country that isn't already a politician.
Being a U.S. citizen today feels just like playing the role of Sisiphus, consistently pushing a boulder uphill (trying to improve the world by being a responsible citizen, voting, jury duty, etc.) only to realize that you have to push it up again when you reach the top (Congress critters keep passing bills that fuck things up even more). It's exhausting, to keep reading about how those folks we elect to power just stumble around and fuck things up so badly....It's so consistent that it very nearly serves as a dataset to debunk that old meme of, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."
Our leaders are just fucking terrible. It's exhausting.