There is zero urgency to colonize space, plenty of urgency to master it with unmanned systems, and given the relative costs sending meat at the moment is worse than romantic silliness, it COSTS TOO MUCH relative to the return from remotely manned missions.
Even the Air Force has figured out leaving the meat puppet back in a control van is a good idea and the benefits more important than the romance of ghey aerial duels.
Dead astronauts are merely a political problem. We not so long ago accepted splattering aircraft test pilots quite often.
The expensive systems required to send space tourists mean that when (not if) one goes "boom" it's a blow to the program. Robots OTOH can be sent cheaply and needn't return,
The major reason people want to send astronauts now is romance, adventure, and vicarious wanking. If we wanted to explore space we'd send more machines. We should make every effort to distinguish between actually exploring space (appropriate given our limited efforts so far) and what is purely human sustainment. We need robots now for many tasks, we need to develop technology that removes any requirement for humans to do anything except make decisions because human physical labor is inefficient, and we don't (urgently) need to send gawkers into orbit.
We should remove the public burden of sending people by letting it default to commercial outfits, while using government funds for pure research and exploration. Commercial space fatalities won't be seen as failure of government, an extra bonus.
"I have wood working machines from the early 1900's that are more durable, accurate, and mammoth than the cheap plastic shit you buy today."
Woodworking was much more important in the early 1900s, labor was cheap, and people who purchased machinery were usually mechanically literate, professional users. They expected commercial quality gear when they bought machines, while the home hobbyist carpenter could make do with hand tools instead. Mass production has made inexpensive, capable, but non-commercial-quality gear available to the consumer.
The materials, btw, were NOT necessarily inferior. Ever wonder why the metal on many old tools and on farm equipment doesn't rust much but develops a nice patina instead? Different metallurgy. Those nice old castings were over-engineered because welding was not as highly developed as it is today and sand casting was less hassle.
"So while you might hope for and preach a revival, the vast majority of our race NEVER subscribed to it and is quite justified in letting it lie in it's grave."
Looks like someone confused "Flamebait" for "Disagree". I guess that's easier than attacking your post, whose assertions are well-proven.
Religion is what the religious do that they connect with their superstition. It is perfectly practical to connect superstition to anything one wishes and interpret it to suit. Those not wishing to be indentified with co-religionists who espouse and do things they do not like are perfectly free to renounce their nonsense, give up their imaginary friends, and seek truth outside someone else's construct.
"I think Americans have a special fetishism of the frontier that gives fleshy-contact primacy"
Precisely, but even in space there is no fleshy-contact because there must be barriers to protect humans from a totally hostile environment.
Space isn't Earth. No matter how far we go, we'll still have to live in a protective package and do most interaction with sensors. Best to spend a hundred years or so perfecting robots as opposed to chasing an adventure for the (extremely) few at the expense of the many.
[quote] This "Send Robots Instead" nonsense is just that -- Nonsense. Mankind's Manifest Destiny may have nothing but an unmarked grave in your hearts, [/quote]
Your asserted conclusion does not make it so. We can, by leading with robots, learn much and learn it cheaply. We can then use it to eventually send humans AFTER we perfect doing the heavy lifting remotely.
Sending humans early on is an artifact of Cold War penis-waving coupled with the primitive technology of the times. Now, just as we are removing pilots from direct combat by using UAVs, we can remotely work in space. We need to improve robots much more than we need to rush prematurely to send tourists into space. Back in the days when people and wooden ships were expendable, using them to explore Earth made sense. Now, humans are a severe burden on tech development. Master space with robots, and we gain better robots we'll need anyway because space is hostile to humans.
Adventure? Fuck adventure. Pay a commercial outfit if you want to be entertained. This makes sense, because tourism is a powerful commercial incentive. Exploration is not, so leave that to NASA.
A "win/win" would be abandoning manned space flight and advancing space exploration (which is different from "human sustainment experiments") for rapid development of robot systems which can much more quickly advance both what we know about space and how we may exploit offworld resources.
I'd like to see our manned programs fail so badly that we are forced to do the smart thing and not send meat tourists into space for many years. For the billions we waste on systems whose costs are bloated by the need to carry and return humans, we could send MANY robot systems. Since the hostile climate of space means humans must be physically isolated from it to perform tasks, they may as well be in a control room on Terra.
"When is the last time you've seen a typewriter or for that matter a secretary. "
A computer + printer IS effectively a typewriter, and secretaries are still quite common (for example an assistant who fills that role in a physicians office).
"The current education system is setup for teaching people to be factory workers."
Bullshit. Trades education has largely moved to community colleges and vo-tech schools. The current education system is set up to teach people enough to get into of college.
"It is easy for us on Slashdot to see how stupid this is. But you are talking about a country where a large portion of the population prides themselves in being ignorant and rejecting good science for 'alternative theories'."
But, but that's only RIGHT-wingers who do that! My crystals told me so,
"take your comic books, light them on fire and shove them up your faggot ass."
While that's a wee bit harsh, we don't have even the slightest immediate need for manned missions.
Robots are what we should be developing. Sending people to do a machines job so others can live out Buck Rogers fantasies is an appropriate task for COMMERCIAL space outfits. Learning about space is an appropriate use for robots, which we will require to exploit the resources that are the main reason for going offworld in the first place.
If the card has a fan, remove the HSF and epoxy an old passive heatsink in its place. Epoxy works well enough (no need for thermal paste) and if you use enough you don't need heatsink brackets. Just slather away.:)
"Life in America has gotten so easy that most people will grasp at straws so they can be outraged about something. You know... To keep them busy and feel like they are actually doing something important... "
Nonsense! I'd reply at more length but I've a Town Hall meeting to picket. We must stop Obamessianic Socialism!
Were that practical, why not? I am a consumer. I want tasty flesh and will pay for it. The process of obtaining that flesh is inefficient and awkward. It often involves suffering for the beast or fowl. The goal of a nutritious, tasty, genetically engineered flesh pod is perfectly reasonable.
"As I look around my room I see all the books that I have finished or want to read. When I have finished a paper book, I see the pages dwindling as I reach the end. The book has weight and after I've read it I feel that heft and know that I've done something worth while."
Very well for those with the money and storage space. I don't care to pay for a book I'll read once and either have to store, sell, give away, or take to be recycled.
The dumb ones will dive into the toilet of their own accord, but before they do they help make school a Hellmouth.
The bright kids shouldn't have to suffer merely to make the dumbshits feel good when it is smart folk who advance mankind. Nurture the intelligent and don't hold them back to make the worthless feel good. We have program after program to make the parents of Johnny Window-Licker feel good by pretending he won't be a mop-actuating doorstop, while gifted kids are merely pressured to conform.
Many Slashdotters are well aware how the US education system exalts the stupid. No surprise that bright parents who value their children send them to boarding schools or home school them. The first step in helping the gifted is to rescue them from the herd.
"Cheap, glossy, exterior-grade white paint often reflects in excess of 90% of the light back."
I didn't measure the difference, but exterior-grade latex roof coating (might as well be paint) also makes a DRAMATIC change in the interior temp of my 40-foot ISO container shop.
Even if you aren't expecting the RIAA to lase your house, consider saving energy with a white roof coating.
"You're sending them there on a one trip for one reason and one reason only: saving money."
It would be cheaper and more effective to send generations of machines before we send the tourists.
It is in no way necessary to send people to explore space directly. They can come long after we refine unmanned systems. Terrestrial exploration was fine to do with cheap wooden ships and expendable human crews, but manned ships are punishingly expensive. Wait a hundred years and use the time to build superb robots, then send people at leisure and at low risk.
"The shuttles have taught us a great deal about what you need to be designing into a SHUTTLE rather than a single use rocket."
It taught that single-use rockets can evolve more quickly and don't need to be refurbished. It taught us that locking ourselves into a design to be used for decades is silly since technology isn't static.
It OUGHT to teach us to send generation after generation of rapidly improving UNmanned systems so we can explore space vs. sending humans to be entertained by space. Let someone else eat the cost of sending meat tourists. We don't need a manned space program to learn about anything but sending people on a commute to places we should first explore and then master with machines.
"He said that while it may have appeared over the last day or so that the Observatory was being neglected, that they never lost sight of the importance of Mount Wilson's preservation and it is now their highest priority."
They need to remember that after the fire and cut a suitable firebreak around anything they want to save in future. There wouldn't be a fire nearby without fuel, so remove the damn fuel. Hearing of wildfire after wildfire aggravated by piss-poor management doesn't excite my sympathy. Cut the shit down.
Slashdot Mirror
There is zero urgency to colonize space, plenty of urgency to master it with unmanned systems, and given the relative costs sending meat at the moment is worse than romantic silliness, it COSTS TOO MUCH relative to the
return from remotely manned missions.
Even the Air Force has figured out leaving the meat puppet back in a control van is a good idea and the benefits more important than the romance of ghey aerial duels.
Dead astronauts are merely a political problem. We not so long ago accepted splattering aircraft test pilots
quite often.
The expensive systems required to send space tourists mean that when (not if) one goes "boom" it's a blow to the program. Robots OTOH can be sent cheaply and needn't return,
The major reason people want to send astronauts now is romance, adventure, and vicarious wanking.
If we wanted to explore space we'd send more machines. We should make every effort to distinguish between actually exploring space (appropriate given our limited efforts so far) and what is purely human sustainment. We need robots now for many tasks, we need to develop technology that removes any requirement for humans to do anything except make decisions because human physical labor is inefficient, and we don't (urgently) need to send gawkers into orbit.
We should remove the public burden of sending people by letting it default to commercial outfits, while using government funds for pure research and exploration. Commercial space fatalities won't be seen as failure of government, an extra bonus.
"I have wood working machines from the early 1900's that are more durable, accurate, and mammoth than the cheap plastic shit you buy today."
Woodworking was much more important in the early 1900s, labor was cheap, and people who purchased machinery were usually mechanically literate, professional users. They expected commercial quality gear when they bought machines, while the home hobbyist carpenter could make do with hand tools instead. Mass production has made inexpensive, capable, but non-commercial-quality gear available to the consumer.
The materials, btw, were NOT necessarily inferior. Ever wonder why the metal on many old tools and on farm equipment doesn't rust much but develops a nice patina instead? Different metallurgy. Those nice old castings were over-engineered because welding was not as highly developed as it is today and sand casting was less hassle.
"So while you might hope for and preach a revival, the vast majority of our race NEVER subscribed to it and is quite justified in letting it lie in it's grave."
Looks like someone confused "Flamebait" for "Disagree". I guess that's easier than attacking your post, whose assertions are well-proven.
Religion is what the religious do that they connect with their superstition. It is perfectly practical to connect superstition to anything one wishes and interpret it to suit. Those not wishing to be indentified with co-religionists who espouse and do things they do not like are perfectly free to renounce their nonsense, give up their imaginary friends, and seek truth outside someone else's construct.
"I think Americans have a special fetishism of the frontier that gives fleshy-contact primacy"
Precisely, but even in space there is no fleshy-contact because there must be barriers to protect humans from a totally hostile environment.
Space isn't Earth. No matter how far we go, we'll still have to live in a protective package and do most interaction with sensors. Best to spend a hundred years or so perfecting robots as opposed to chasing an adventure
for the (extremely) few at the expense of the many.
[quote]
This "Send Robots Instead" nonsense is just that -- Nonsense. Mankind's Manifest Destiny may have nothing but an unmarked grave in your hearts,
[/quote]
Your asserted conclusion does not make it so. We can, by leading with robots, learn much and learn it cheaply. We can then use it to eventually send humans AFTER we perfect doing the heavy lifting remotely.
Sending humans early on is an artifact of Cold War penis-waving coupled with the primitive technology of the times. Now, just as we are removing pilots from direct combat by using UAVs, we can remotely work in space. We need to improve robots much more than we need to rush prematurely to send tourists into space. Back in the days when people and wooden ships were expendable, using them to explore Earth made sense. Now, humans are a severe burden on tech development. Master space with robots, and we gain better robots we'll need anyway because space is hostile to humans.
Adventure? Fuck adventure. Pay a commercial outfit if you want to be entertained. This makes sense, because tourism is a powerful commercial incentive. Exploration is not, so leave that to NASA.
A "win/win" would be abandoning manned space flight and advancing space exploration (which is different from "human sustainment experiments") for rapid development of robot systems which can much more quickly advance both what we know about space and how we may exploit offworld resources.
I'd like to see our manned programs fail so badly that we are forced to do the smart thing and not send meat tourists into space for many years. For the billions we waste on systems whose costs are bloated by the need to carry and return humans, we could send MANY robot systems. Since the hostile climate of space means humans must be physically isolated from it to perform tasks, they may as well be in a control room on Terra.
"When is the last time you've seen a typewriter or for that matter a secretary. "
A computer + printer IS effectively a typewriter, and secretaries are still quite common (for example an assistant who fills that role in a physicians office).
"The current education system is setup for teaching people to be factory workers."
Bullshit. Trades education has largely moved to community colleges and vo-tech schools.
The current education system is set up to teach people enough to get into of college.
"Some folks really need to get a life, if they feel they have to snoop on their significant other like this."
Pre-emptive snooping is a bit much, but when an SO turns evil then all bets are off. After that, all that matters is self-defense and not the enemy.
"Cue lawsuits as the wife starts getting targeted advertisements for 'hot sluts in your area' due to the husbands chatting habits..."
Cue divorces as husbands start getting targeted advertisements for 'hot sluts in your area' displaying their wives.
"It is easy for us on Slashdot to see how stupid this is. But you are talking about a country where a large portion of the population prides themselves in being ignorant and rejecting good science for 'alternative theories'."
But, but that's only RIGHT-wingers who do that! My crystals told me so,
"take your comic books, light them on fire and shove them up your faggot ass."
While that's a wee bit harsh, we don't have even the slightest immediate need for manned missions.
Robots are what we should be developing. Sending people to do a machines job so others can live out Buck Rogers fantasies is an appropriate task for COMMERCIAL space outfits. Learning about space is an appropriate use for robots, which we will require to exploit the resources that are the main reason for going offworld in the first place.
If the card has a fan, remove the HSF and epoxy an old passive heatsink in its place. :)
Epoxy works well enough (no need for thermal paste) and if you use enough you don't need heatsink brackets.
Just slather away.
"Life in America has gotten so easy that most people will grasp at straws so they can be outraged about something. You know... To keep them busy and feel like they are actually doing something important... "
Nonsense!
I'd reply at more length but I've a Town Hall meeting to picket. We must stop Obamessianic Socialism!
"Population radiation exposure is greater form a coal fired plant than a nuclear plant."
(Shriek!)
No Three Mile Chernobyls! Karen Silkwood died for our sins!
We must power our civilization with solar, ponies, and solar ponies.
Were that practical, why not?
I am a consumer. I want tasty flesh and will pay for it. The process of obtaining that flesh is inefficient and awkward. It often involves suffering for the beast or fowl. The goal of a nutritious, tasty, genetically engineered flesh pod is perfectly reasonable.
"As I look around my room I see all the books that I have finished or want to read. When I have finished a paper book, I see the pages dwindling as I reach the end. The book has weight and after I've read it I feel that heft and know that I've done something worth while."
Very well for those with the money and storage space. I don't care to pay for a book I'll read once and either have to store, sell, give away, or take to be recycled.
"you are flushing the dumb ones down the toilet."
The dumb ones will dive into the toilet of their own accord, but before they do they help make school a Hellmouth.
The bright kids shouldn't have to suffer merely to make the dumbshits feel good when it is smart folk who advance mankind. Nurture the intelligent and don't hold them back to make the worthless feel good. We have program after program to make the parents of Johnny Window-Licker feel good by pretending he won't be a mop-actuating doorstop, while gifted kids are merely pressured to conform.
Many Slashdotters are well aware how the US education system exalts the stupid. No surprise that bright parents who value their children send them to boarding schools or home school them. The first step in helping the gifted is to rescue them from the herd.
"Today's "hottie" will probably be a "fatty" by the time she's 30 or 40"
As the saying goes, "men get distinguished, women get disgusting". (ducks)
"Cheap, glossy, exterior-grade white paint often reflects in excess of 90% of the light back."
I didn't measure the difference, but exterior-grade latex roof coating (might as well be paint) also makes a DRAMATIC change in the interior temp of my 40-foot ISO container shop.
Even if you aren't expecting the RIAA to lase your house, consider saving energy with a white roof coating.
"You're sending them there on a one trip for one reason and one reason only: saving money."
It would be cheaper and more effective to send generations of machines before we send the tourists.
It is in no way necessary to send people to explore space directly. They can come long after we refine
unmanned systems. Terrestrial exploration was fine to do with cheap wooden ships and expendable human crews, but
manned ships are punishingly expensive. Wait a hundred years and use the time to build superb robots, then
send people at leisure and at low risk.
"The shuttles have taught us a great deal about what you need to be designing into a SHUTTLE rather than a single use rocket."
It taught that single-use rockets can evolve more quickly and don't need to be refurbished.
It taught us that locking ourselves into a design to be used for decades is silly since technology isn't static.
It OUGHT to teach us to send generation after generation of rapidly improving UNmanned systems so we can explore space vs. sending humans to be entertained by space. Let someone else eat the cost of sending meat tourists. We don't need a manned space program to learn about anything but sending people on a commute to places we should first explore and then master with machines.
"He said that while it may have appeared over the last day or so that the Observatory was being neglected, that they never lost sight of the importance of Mount Wilson's preservation and it is now their highest priority."
They need to remember that after the fire and cut a suitable firebreak around anything they want to save in future.
There wouldn't be a fire nearby without fuel, so remove the damn fuel. Hearing of wildfire after wildfire aggravated by piss-poor management doesn't excite my sympathy. Cut the shit down.
"if the US Gov gets any more czars"
Fuck the Czars, worry about the Rasputins!