Bad times on Earth can indeed be riskier (and a lot more unpleasant) than good times on Mars.
duh! it would be more relevant to compare good times on both Earth and Mars, and bad times on both Earth and Mars. of course good times on Mars are going to be more pleasant than bad times on Earth, otherwise they wouldn't be considered bad times.
Too little risk can be just as bad as too much.
if you like a bit of risk, there are much cheaper ways to satisfy it on Earth
Human greed and conflict of interest is a solved problem
you don't get out much do you? i would seriously doubt that even you could be stupid enough to believe such nonsense. just switch on the news or google "greed" and "conflict of interest" and "let the real world do the talking".
One could make the same argument against building schools, "Someone could go in and shoot the kids!"
but i didn't make that argument. it is possible that someone could go in a shoot kids in schools, but what does that have to do with this thread? you seem to be implying that just because i don't agree with your arguments about sustainability of humanity through colonization of the solar system that i'm generally a pessimist. seems pretty desperate.
civilization has to worsen the negative parts of humanity
google "war", "religious extremism", "organized crime", "corporate greed", "political corruption", "rape", etc, etc, etc. there are plenty of examples of the negative aspects of humanity having been demonstrated devastatingly clearly.
All launches are to be on commercial vehicles from the US
commercial space activities won't happen until space is more accessible. if shareholder apathy doesn't kill them, government regulation and insurance costs will. no corporation will develop SSTO capabilities because the risk from ripoffs by competition is too great (and you thought competition was a good thing!). if lockheed martin can't do it, nobody can. even spacex is just another government contractor (by their own admission via their "launch manifest"). virgin galactic is just a joyride service for wealthy adrenaline junkies.
on the other hand, private companies will be key players in offering services in established space stations.
sounds good. might be a bit riskier and more of an engineering challenge than operations on the moon, and unless mining is automated, any manned craft would require substantial life support facilities for trips out to the asteroid belt.
asteroid belt mining might be more energy efficient, but I can see us mining the moon beforehand as an inefficient but practically simpler first step.
You still are looking at a lot less suck than someone having to deal with the fallout from a collapse of Earth civilization
i disagree, but whatever (i would actually love to live on a Mars base if I had the opportunity, but I think it would be much riskier than anything we might face on Earth)
Your argument doesn't get any stronger.
you're right. illustrating or clarifying my argument doesn't change it at all. it was strong enough to begin with.
And do you know why corporations don't act like they do in Avatar? Because there are consequences for their actions such as getting thrown into jail or losing assets.
you keep telling yourself that, ignorant fool.
If things don't go the way you want them to go, then you claim something bad will happen.
i'm simply offering a different point of view to yours. just because you don't like it doesn't mean i lack anything that you have. at least i'm not living in fantasy land and can accept the reality that humanity is its own worst enemy. that's not "intellectual cowardice"; it's called pragmatism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism) and it is the balancing argument of airy-fairy bullshit like yours.
It's also in their nature to cooperate and build civilizations
true, an humanity has achieved great things, but also at great cost. when you put a bunch of people together, you can have good things happen, but you also get bad things (human nature is to be greedy, violent, competitive, discriminatory, etc). to focus on the good things and ignore the bad things is a sure fire way to increase the cost more than necessary. often in movies the good guys win, but in reality "nice guys finish last". film producers tend to gloss over that simple fact as well.
A Mars mission will be hugely expensive regardless of when it happens, and money channeled into a Mars program will affect funding for domestic expenses like healthcare etc, so I'm curious if you were the President, how many people would you be willing to sacrifice on Earth so that you could have a Mars city?
Your post was sent to this discussion 2 minutes after the story was posted.
wow! that is pretty quick. the timestamps are above in black and white. the guy must have been hitting his refresh button like my wife redials the doctor's office to try get an appointment.
i can see it now:
random chick: what do you do for fun?
gstoddart: oh, i try very hard to get first post on slashdot. wanna be my gf?
random chick: ummm.... i'm just gunna go over here now... by myself... n stuff... bye
Funny, according to my calculations, it's 21 C (70 F) in that Martian city. Unless someone leaves the thermostat a bit high.
yeah, until someone shoots a hole in the outer skin
Proof by crap movie?
it wasn't proof by any means. it was merely illustration. if you deny that corporations would behave like that, you are an ignorant fool.
I think a simpler solution here would be for you to grow some balls.
What has "balls" got to do with anything here?
The great distances of the Solar System don't magically create more destructive weapons
no, but they don't magically create self-sustainable space stations either, so the time it takes for colonization of the solar system is plenty for development of such weapons
People don't automatically destroy each other just because bad space movies are made.
no, they do it because its in their nature to. movies merely illustrate that nature
To make a round trip to the Moon, you need to burn fuel to get there, burn fuel to slow down and land, burn fuel to launch back.
The real value of the Moon is mining its resources for use in space stations (primarily for smelting steel and glass), which means you only have to lift materials with 1/6 the fuel than would be required from Earth, and you only need to transport it to the nearest Lagrange point between the Earth and Moon, which is a mere 60,000 km from the Moon. From a Lagrange space station (with spacecraft production facilities), missions to Mars become much more economical.
The moon would be the perfect place to mine minerals like iron, silicon, magnesium and aluminium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_composition) and establish smelting foundries for important structural materials like steel and glass. Transporting billets of these materials would be much more economical with 1/6 gravity of Earth, and construction of large-scale space stations at Lagrange points would become a possibility, which would then of course make for an ideal platform from which to launch missions to Mars.
The likes of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Textron, BAE Systems, Steyer, Thales, Mauser, and hundreds of other arms manufacturers who also contribute to election campaigns in various countries, as well as their suppliers, contractors, and key shareholders, would all disagree with you.
Would you rather be living in a city on Mars or suffering through several years of endless winter on Earth?
"Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about -87 [degrees] C (-125 [degrees] F) during the polar winters to highs of up to -5 [degrees] C (23 [degrees] F) in summers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Climate
I vote that several years of winter on Earth is much better than an eternity of winter on Mars.
creating the future of humanity
...or creating new revenue streams for megalomaniac corporations to take advantage of (similar to the "unobtanium" mining subplot of James Cameron's recent film "Avatar").
If your economy is spread over a considerable portion of the Solar System, then it's much less an issue, if one region suffers a large disaster
The problem is you're limiting your assumption to localized natural disasters. Human nature is the worst and most certain disaster that you have failed to account for. Weapons will exist in a colonized solar system, along with a desire to wage war with them. The US is a warmongering state merely because not making use of its hugely expensive war machine would be a waste (financially and politically), and because some of the largest corporations and political lobbyists in the US are responsible for manufacturing weapons.
Wars will simply become interplanetary. Humanity started off with tribal conflict (sticks and stones), and then when the means was developed we progressed to empire-building with armies of legions and horsemen, and conquering by sea (triremes, galleons, ironclads, etc), then by air (fighters, cruise missiles, long range bombers and ICBMs).
Space will be the final (war) frontier, and newer, more devastating weapons will be developed to wreak havoc on it, and the eventual self-destruction of humanity would not only be possible, but probable, even over the vast distances of the solar system.
I personally think it will be all over for us long before we get to interplanetary warfare, but miracles can happen.
I'm a space fanatic, but I'm also a pragmatist. While ideally the gp is wrong, realistically he's 100% correct.
There are so many problems here on earth that are so much more important than space travel, and this will never change.
When 15% of a supposedly first world country like the US is living below the poverty line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States), $700 million will always be better spent on domestic issues than on a political space stunt disguised in the name of science.
When we do eventually colonize space, it won't be pretty; war, crime, religious extremism, corporate greed, and political corruption will all expand to fill the void of space, and very little of what may be discovered will benefit the average person.
The highs of innovation and progress are finished. There is little doubt that people around the world make various scientific breakthroughs but keep them secret because there is no incentive for them to release their findings. Corruption is rife, corporations have no ethics, and the patent and justice systems of the world are broken.
I agree that space is the final frontier of human endeavor, and colonization of space is our destiny, but the probability of humanity destroying itself long before achieving a permanently self-sustainable presence in space, or before extinction from a natural cause or event, is practically a certainty.
Moral of the story: If you can't beat it, join it; look after yourself and your family, and the rest of the world can go to hell.
i quoted real for emphasis, not for sarcasm, but i can see how confusion is possible, particularly for those poor retards with no sense of humor.
A person with a brain would use the products that he deems necessary, by judging their worth through use and their application
I do, and microsoft isn't necessary. most people are trapped into thinking they need microsoft products, and there's nothing nerdy about that. real nerds explore other possibilities and use tools that they need that are the most cost effective (only those that don't know any better pay for something they don't have to).
Microsoft brands other products, such as the XBOX and Zune, which completely nulls your entire flawed argument
my argument isn't flawed, and microsoft branding other products has nothing to do with my argument, so your argument is flawed
the amount of people using Linux as their only desktop OS, for legitimate reasons, are extremely low
the number of people using Windows for anything other than to play freecell, browse porn and edit their resume in Word is extremely low, because windows is pretty useless for anything else. you exclude development and web hosting as legitimate uses of a desktop operating system, but neglect to mention what you consider to be a legitmate use. linux can be used for any number of applications, including (but not limited to) anything that windows can be used for. the fact that windows is limited to use as a desktop OS is just that; a limitation.
You must be ESL because you a) have horrible grammar and b) you have no reading comprehension. If you aren't ESL, well, you're just an imbecile.
my grammar isn't horrible (you can read it just fine), you're just grasping at straws by judging me on the quotation of a single word, which is pretty desperate, but go figure (you're a microsoft shill). I'm not ESL, and I can't be ESL, assuming ESL in this case means English as a Second Language; now who's the grammar retard? english is my first language, and i can speak and type it quite fine. if you have a problem with my english, go fuck youself. i'm also not an imbecile. you are an imbecile. you will disagree, but i don't get too concerned about the opinions of lower lifeforms.
the underlying meaning of my comment would be obvious to most such that further explanation or refuting isn't necessary (i was more or less stating the obvious)
Also, as pointed out elsewhere in the comments, the performance balked at by the OP above is quite possible. It may not be as cheap or simple as we might imagine, but it's hard to say something is impossible, given enough time and effort (read: money). It's just a large transaction processor.
most corporations don't spend a lot of revenue on R&D, because shareholders don't like it much and it is very risky (if another company rips off your invention, its difficult to take action without return on investment to fund the legal battle), so they spend government grants and rip off innovations resulting from government grants won by other corporations.
don't be surprised if multinationals apply for this grant so they can use it to develop technology that can be sold to other governments around the world. its not about solving any problems, its about making more money, but if developing a technology will make more money you can be sure something will be developed, and patented to boot.
there are many social problems, many caused by technology, but the definition of a social problem is a little subjective in itself; what some people perceive to be a problem may not be to others. i see people watching a lot of reality, soap opera, cartoons and talk shows on TV to be a social problem. the solutions to this problem could come from anywhere. all you need to do is lure these people away from their TV, but in doing so you may merely adjust the problem slightly. Some might argue that social networking has lured a large number of TV couch potatoes away from their TV sets, and while they may only be staring at a different screen, it is possibly better to have them in a more interactive experience than just soaking up one-way brainwashing from the idiot box.
you appear to read it as anyone who uses linux avoids microsoft, which I do somewhat agree with, but I'll assume you meant that morons use windows (obviously).
I imagine your confusion is because you don't get out and mingle with real people much.
who the fuck in their right mind "likes Windows" enough to be "happy to pay $200-500" for a new copy of it, especially if they already have a legitimate OEM license for it? Did you eat retard-bran for breakfast this morning?
i have a whole bunch of valid Windows XP Pro OEM keys but I can't use them because I don't have a Windows XP Pro OEM install disc. I have full, upgrade and home install discs, but they don't work. You would think someone who went out and paid for any Windows disc could use that disc for multiple legit OEM keys as well. silly me
might be the case for laptops, but i can go down to my local computer outlet and buy a bunch of bits for less than half the cost of the equivalent OEM box. only ignorant fools buy an OEM desktop for linux
Slashdot Mirror
Bad times on Earth can indeed be riskier (and a lot more unpleasant) than good times on Mars.
duh! it would be more relevant to compare good times on both Earth and Mars, and bad times on both Earth and Mars. of course good times on Mars are going to be more pleasant than bad times on Earth, otherwise they wouldn't be considered bad times.
Too little risk can be just as bad as too much.
if you like a bit of risk, there are much cheaper ways to satisfy it on Earth
Human greed and conflict of interest is a solved problem
you don't get out much do you? i would seriously doubt that even you could be stupid enough to believe such nonsense. just switch on the news or google "greed" and "conflict of interest" and "let the real world do the talking".
One could make the same argument against building schools, "Someone could go in and shoot the kids!"
but i didn't make that argument. it is possible that someone could go in a shoot kids in schools, but what does that have to do with this thread? you seem to be implying that just because i don't agree with your arguments about sustainability of humanity through colonization of the solar system that i'm generally a pessimist. seems pretty desperate.
civilization has to worsen the negative parts of humanity
google "war", "religious extremism", "organized crime", "corporate greed", "political corruption", "rape", etc, etc, etc. there are plenty of examples of the negative aspects of humanity having been demonstrated devastatingly clearly.
All launches are to be on commercial vehicles from the US
commercial space activities won't happen until space is more accessible. if shareholder apathy doesn't kill them, government regulation and insurance costs will. no corporation will develop SSTO capabilities because the risk from ripoffs by competition is too great (and you thought competition was a good thing!). if lockheed martin can't do it, nobody can. even spacex is just another government contractor (by their own admission via their "launch manifest"). virgin galactic is just a joyride service for wealthy adrenaline junkies.
on the other hand, private companies will be key players in offering services in established space stations.
yes, but i don't really feel like congratulating them for it any more than i have to
sounds good. might be a bit riskier and more of an engineering challenge than operations on the moon, and unless mining is automated, any manned craft would require substantial life support facilities for trips out to the asteroid belt.
asteroid belt mining might be more energy efficient, but I can see us mining the moon beforehand as an inefficient but practically simpler first step.
You still are looking at a lot less suck than someone having to deal with the fallout from a collapse of Earth civilization
i disagree, but whatever (i would actually love to live on a Mars base if I had the opportunity, but I think it would be much riskier than anything we might face on Earth)
Your argument doesn't get any stronger.
you're right. illustrating or clarifying my argument doesn't change it at all. it was strong enough to begin with.
And do you know why corporations don't act like they do in Avatar? Because there are consequences for their actions such as getting thrown into jail or losing assets.
you keep telling yourself that, ignorant fool.
If things don't go the way you want them to go, then you claim something bad will happen.
i'm simply offering a different point of view to yours. just because you don't like it doesn't mean i lack anything that you have. at least i'm not living in fantasy land and can accept the reality that humanity is its own worst enemy. that's not "intellectual cowardice"; it's called pragmatism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism) and it is the balancing argument of airy-fairy bullshit like yours.
It's also in their nature to cooperate and build civilizations
true, an humanity has achieved great things, but also at great cost. when you put a bunch of people together, you can have good things happen, but you also get bad things (human nature is to be greedy, violent, competitive, discriminatory, etc). to focus on the good things and ignore the bad things is a sure fire way to increase the cost more than necessary. often in movies the good guys win, but in reality "nice guys finish last". film producers tend to gloss over that simple fact as well.
A Mars mission will be hugely expensive regardless of when it happens, and money channeled into a Mars program will affect funding for domestic expenses like healthcare etc, so I'm curious if you were the President, how many people would you be willing to sacrifice on Earth so that you could have a Mars city?
Your post was sent to this discussion 2 minutes after the story was posted.
wow! that is pretty quick. the timestamps are above in black and white. the guy must have been hitting his refresh button like my wife redials the doctor's office to try get an appointment.
i can see it now:
random chick: what do you do for fun?
gstoddart: oh, i try very hard to get first post on slashdot. wanna be my gf?
random chick: ummm.... i'm just gunna go over here now... by myself... n stuff... bye
troll at best, shill at worst.
how hard is it to type "fuck off you creepy old bastard"?
APK
Funny, according to my calculations, it's 21 C (70 F) in that Martian city. Unless someone leaves the thermostat a bit high.
yeah, until someone shoots a hole in the outer skin
Proof by crap movie?
it wasn't proof by any means. it was merely illustration. if you deny that corporations would behave like that, you are an ignorant fool.
I think a simpler solution here would be for you to grow some balls.
What has "balls" got to do with anything here?
The great distances of the Solar System don't magically create more destructive weapons
no, but they don't magically create self-sustainable space stations either, so the time it takes for colonization of the solar system is plenty for development of such weapons
People don't automatically destroy each other just because bad space movies are made.
no, they do it because its in their nature to. movies merely illustrate that nature
no, actually the eighth circle of hell is reserved for facebook
so when you lose your job, do you sign up to their corporate welfare office?
if i were a shareholder of such corporation, I would think it were a good idea
corporations have no ethics. we would all wind up being slaves to corporate gluttony
To make a round trip to the Moon, you need to burn fuel to get there, burn fuel to slow down and land, burn fuel to launch back.
The real value of the Moon is mining its resources for use in space stations (primarily for smelting steel and glass), which means you only have to lift materials with 1/6 the fuel than would be required from Earth, and you only need to transport it to the nearest Lagrange point between the Earth and Moon, which is a mere 60,000 km from the Moon. From a Lagrange space station (with spacecraft production facilities), missions to Mars become much more economical.
in the "new world" there wasn't a continually imminent risk of running out of oxygen, food and water
The moon would be the perfect place to mine minerals like iron, silicon, magnesium and aluminium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#Elemental_composition) and establish smelting foundries for important structural materials like steel and glass. Transporting billets of these materials would be much more economical with 1/6 gravity of Earth, and construction of large-scale space stations at Lagrange points would become a possibility, which would then of course make for an ideal platform from which to launch missions to Mars.
trillions of dollars are spent on useless wars
The likes of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Textron, BAE Systems, Steyer, Thales, Mauser, and hundreds of other arms manufacturers who also contribute to election campaigns in various countries, as well as their suppliers, contractors, and key shareholders, would all disagree with you.
Would you rather be living in a city on Mars or suffering through several years of endless winter on Earth?
"Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about -87 [degrees] C (-125 [degrees] F) during the polar winters to highs of up to -5 [degrees] C (23 [degrees] F) in summers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Climate
I vote that several years of winter on Earth is much better than an eternity of winter on Mars.
creating the future of humanity
If your economy is spread over a considerable portion of the Solar System, then it's much less an issue, if one region suffers a large disaster
The problem is you're limiting your assumption to localized natural disasters. Human nature is the worst and most certain disaster that you have failed to account for. Weapons will exist in a colonized solar system, along with a desire to wage war with them. The US is a warmongering state merely because not making use of its hugely expensive war machine would be a waste (financially and politically), and because some of the largest corporations and political lobbyists in the US are responsible for manufacturing weapons.
Wars will simply become interplanetary. Humanity started off with tribal conflict (sticks and stones), and then when the means was developed we progressed to empire-building with armies of legions and horsemen, and conquering by sea (triremes, galleons, ironclads, etc), then by air (fighters, cruise missiles, long range bombers and ICBMs).
Space will be the final (war) frontier, and newer, more devastating weapons will be developed to wreak havoc on it, and the eventual self-destruction of humanity would not only be possible, but probable, even over the vast distances of the solar system.
I personally think it will be all over for us long before we get to interplanetary warfare, but miracles can happen.
Humans, all self-replicating life, wants to survive, both as individuals and collectively.
I'm a space fanatic, but I'm also a pragmatist. While ideally the gp is wrong, realistically he's 100% correct.
There are so many problems here on earth that are so much more important than space travel, and this will never change.
When 15% of a supposedly first world country like the US is living below the poverty line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States), $700 million will always be better spent on domestic issues than on a political space stunt disguised in the name of science.
When we do eventually colonize space, it won't be pretty; war, crime, religious extremism, corporate greed, and political corruption will all expand to fill the void of space, and very little of what may be discovered will benefit the average person.
The highs of innovation and progress are finished. There is little doubt that people around the world make various scientific breakthroughs but keep them secret because there is no incentive for them to release their findings. Corruption is rife, corporations have no ethics, and the patent and justice systems of the world are broken.
I agree that space is the final frontier of human endeavor, and colonization of space is our destiny, but the probability of humanity destroying itself long before achieving a permanently self-sustainable presence in space, or before extinction from a natural cause or event, is practically a certainty.
Moral of the story: If you can't beat it, join it; look after yourself and your family, and the rest of the world can go to hell.
A person with a brain would use the products that he deems necessary, by judging their worth through use and their application
I do, and microsoft isn't necessary. most people are trapped into thinking they need microsoft products, and there's nothing nerdy about that. real nerds explore other possibilities and use tools that they need that are the most cost effective (only those that don't know any better pay for something they don't have to).
Microsoft brands other products, such as the XBOX and Zune, which completely nulls your entire flawed argument
my argument isn't flawed, and microsoft branding other products has nothing to do with my argument, so your argument is flawed
the amount of people using Linux as their only desktop OS, for legitimate reasons, are extremely low
the number of people using Windows for anything other than to play freecell, browse porn and edit their resume in Word is extremely low, because windows is pretty useless for anything else. you exclude development and web hosting as legitimate uses of a desktop operating system, but neglect to mention what you consider to be a legitmate use. linux can be used for any number of applications, including (but not limited to) anything that windows can be used for. the fact that windows is limited to use as a desktop OS is just that; a limitation.
You must be ESL because you a) have horrible grammar and b) you have no reading comprehension. If you aren't ESL, well, you're just an imbecile.
my grammar isn't horrible (you can read it just fine), you're just grasping at straws by judging me on the quotation of a single word, which is pretty desperate, but go figure (you're a microsoft shill). I'm not ESL, and I can't be ESL, assuming ESL in this case means English as a Second Language; now who's the grammar retard? english is my first language, and i can speak and type it quite fine. if you have a problem with my english, go fuck youself. i'm also not an imbecile. you are an imbecile. you will disagree, but i don't get too concerned about the opinions of lower lifeforms.
bye fucker.
Why bother to refute the claim itself
the underlying meaning of my comment would be obvious to most such that further explanation or refuting isn't necessary (i was more or less stating the obvious)
Also, as pointed out elsewhere in the comments, the performance balked at by the OP above is quite possible. It may not be as cheap or simple as we might imagine, but it's hard to say something is impossible, given enough time and effort (read: money). It's just a large transaction processor.
most corporations don't spend a lot of revenue on R&D, because shareholders don't like it much and it is very risky (if another company rips off your invention, its difficult to take action without return on investment to fund the legal battle), so they spend government grants and rip off innovations resulting from government grants won by other corporations.
don't be surprised if multinationals apply for this grant so they can use it to develop technology that can be sold to other governments around the world. its not about solving any problems, its about making more money, but if developing a technology will make more money you can be sure something will be developed, and patented to boot.
there are many social problems, many caused by technology, but the definition of a social problem is a little subjective in itself; what some people perceive to be a problem may not be to others. i see people watching a lot of reality, soap opera, cartoons and talk shows on TV to be a social problem. the solutions to this problem could come from anywhere. all you need to do is lure these people away from their TV, but in doing so you may merely adjust the problem slightly. Some might argue that social networking has lured a large number of TV couch potatoes away from their TV sets, and while they may only be staring at a different screen, it is possibly better to have them in a more interactive experience than just soaking up one-way brainwashing from the idiot box.
i said real nerds avoid microsoft and use linux
you appear to read it as anyone who uses linux avoids microsoft, which I do somewhat agree with, but I'll assume you meant that morons use windows (obviously).
I imagine your confusion is because you don't get out and mingle with real people much.
who the fuck in their right mind "likes Windows" enough to be "happy to pay $200-500" for a new copy of it, especially if they already have a legitimate OEM license for it? Did you eat retard-bran for breakfast this morning?
i have a whole bunch of valid Windows XP Pro OEM keys but I can't use them because I don't have a Windows XP Pro OEM install disc. I have full, upgrade and home install discs, but they don't work. You would think someone who went out and paid for any Windows disc could use that disc for multiple legit OEM keys as well. silly me
might be the case for laptops, but i can go down to my local computer outlet and buy a bunch of bits for less than half the cost of the equivalent OEM box. only ignorant fools buy an OEM desktop for linux
delete bloatware
idiot
If you like Windows
idiot