Why don't they sell rights to the mass? If it costs 4K$/lb to get mass into low-earth orbit and you've got 60 satellites w ith, say 300 lbs of usable mass each then isn't that 72 *million* dollars worth of mass? Seems to me that a robot could be designed by now to act as a mass scavenger, dropping by a satellite, cutting off little bits at a time, dropping them into a furnace (solar powered of course) and using a magnetic separator to divide the stuff into component materials, then leave it in place for the creation of gross structures like radiation shielding, extruded beams, etc. Send up three types of little solar powered robots, the cutter-upper, the separator, and the tugs to pull the resulting ingots/beams/whatever into a higher parking orbit.
Once you own the rights to old mass you could just keep sending up ever more little scurrying scavengers and be far further on the way to a non-government space station. Rememeber, you've got plenty of time. If you use a laser torch, then you've got almost no moving parts and the units can just keep working away 24/7 for years, meaning they don't have to be very fast, or big, or even efficient.
So go ahead, tell me why CMU, Caltech, or even Mondo-tronics for that matter, couldn't, with a twenty-million dollar budget and a mandate to use proven tech like simple ion engines, couldn't build this. Then tell me that Beal Aerospace couldn't get 'em up there.
My first reflex is to agree with you but, no; enough already. The issue of SF movies having the same old plots over was dead when Sturgeon's Law was new. What makes you think that the typical/. reader gains from more than a sentence about "boring plot, same old, same old." ?
If you don't like it, then do your own movie. I don't mean this facetiously and in fact we in the thinking classes really need to give this some thought. Roughnecks proves that we're only a few years from moviemaking the way that Prince or Trent Reznor do music. Lay down the bass, go back, lay down vocals, etc.
With Poser, Bryce, Strata, etc. and motion sensor rigs getting cheaper there's no longer any valid excuse for sob stories about how big bad Hollywood won't let good movies be made. Kevin Smith, Robert Rogriguez, et al blow away any claims that live action costs that much either. Distribution? Please. Gimme a fat pipe,a good pair of goggles and I don't need no stinkin' multiplex. Gimme some Beenz or better token system and you've got a business model.
Of course, I live in the heart of the beast (being an employee of Time/Warner/AOL/Compuserve.....) so maybe I'm just naive. But don't bet on it.
So Jon, you're a Big Time Published Author; let's see your chops. You've written a lot about the cluelessness and vapidity of American society. Tell me your opinion of Courtney Love's piece on intellectual property, tell what YOU'RE going to do to help make independant artistic projects viable and we'll go from there.
If not, then get out of the way brother and let the revolution happen without you because I can tell you that among the actual moviemakers I've met being so very concerned about the long-term prevalence of pap rates somewhere between "did I ever find that roll of gaffer's tape?" and "should I have another beer?'.
Do you have any plans to increase the size of Sealand and if so on what timeine and of what materials and will the expansion be bouyant or suspended from one or both of the support columns?
Have you spoken at all with any companies like Real Goods Trading Company, Patagonia, or even Harbor Freight for crying out loud to gear you guys out for the long haul in return for an endorsement?
has anybody offered to attach their boat/barge/platform to Sealand?
What is Havenco's power setup? Have you looked into tidal, wind, or temperature differential systems?
Are you shielded against EMP?
It is my impression that in close quarters such as submarines, Biosphere II, Mir, or even a big communal house functional effectiveness frequently is determined by social factors. How much planning and instituting of procedures have you done along those lines? Are any of you trained as chefs? How big a video reserve do you have? How much thought have you given to compatability in terms of tastes, work hours, etc.?
Are you working with any other self-contained systems folks such as Columbia Univ.'s Biosphere II folks, the Rocky Mountain Institute, or NASA?
What is your setup for exercise?
How many of your team have previously spent a winter in the North Atlantic?
Here's another vote for Cringely's Accidental Empires. I'ld also suggest Tracy Kidder's Soul Of A New Machine. Gotta say, though, as many posts have commented, if you want stuff on the history of OSes, then look online. The RTFM and FAQ archives at Stanford (forget not the ancient days of SAIL my son), MIT, and CMU have served me well. Remember that a lot of key work was done at corporations that are very happy to document their eminent histories. for Xerox PARC, check out www.parc.xerox.com/parc-go.html For Bell Labs check out www.bell-labs.com/ Also remember that the Patent Office http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html isn't a bad place to go for the paper trail (e-bay and suchlike notwithstanding). Go to http://164.195.100.11/netahtml/search-bool.html and type Tevanian in Inventor name and you'll never doubt the origins of microkernel OSes again. Last but not least, if you really want to understand where OSes came from then check out some of the failures. Find somebody who ran an academic system in the mid-eighties and ask them about VMS and the legendary dumping of the DEC Rainbow. You'll never really have a feel for why open standards are so important until you've felt the pain of, for example "85% DOS compatable" early PC clones. Check out the stuff the corporations aren't so proud of, like Exxon's attempt to become a computer company or the "Oh, it's be fine" compromises of the IBM Peanut and the Apple III (not II, III). And just in case you briefly forget that most pundits and in fact IT departments have consistently grossly misread the future of this business, think of this: it wasn't too many years ago that Richard Stallman and GNU could be seen at computer shows with a tiny little set of tables in the midst of vast wealth being blown off while "real" concerns, like "When will Chicago come out?" and "Isn't it wonderful that Unix is finally in safe hands at Novell" dominated the floor. Good luck and remember to always post your results somewhere just as public as where you posted the questions. -Rustin
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't they sell rights to the mass? If it costs 4K$/lb to get mass into low-earth orbit and you've got 60 satellites w ith, say 300 lbs of usable mass each then isn't that 72 *million* dollars worth of mass? Seems to me that a robot could be designed by now to act as a mass scavenger, dropping by a satellite, cutting off little bits at a time, dropping them into a furnace (solar powered of course) and using a magnetic separator to divide the stuff into component materials, then leave it in place for the creation of gross structures like radiation shielding, extruded beams, etc. Send up three types of little solar powered robots, the cutter-upper, the separator, and the tugs to pull the resulting ingots/beams/whatever into a higher parking orbit.
Once you own the rights to old mass you could just keep sending up ever more little scurrying scavengers and be far further on the way to a non-government space station. Rememeber, you've got plenty of time. If you use a laser torch, then you've got almost no moving parts and the units can just keep working away 24/7 for years, meaning they don't have to be very fast, or big, or even efficient.
So go ahead, tell me why CMU, Caltech, or even Mondo-tronics for that matter, couldn't, with a twenty-million dollar budget and a mandate to use proven tech like simple ion engines, couldn't build this. Then tell me that Beal Aerospace couldn't get 'em up there.
Just my $00.2.
-Rustin the perplexed
My first reflex is to agree with you but, no; enough already. The issue of SF movies having the same old plots over was dead when Sturgeon's Law was new. What makes you think that the typical /. reader gains from more than a sentence about "boring plot, same old, same old." ?
If you don't like it, then do your own movie. I don't mean this facetiously and in fact we in the thinking classes really need to give this some thought. Roughnecks proves that we're only a few years from moviemaking the way that Prince or Trent Reznor do music. Lay down the bass, go back, lay down vocals, etc.
With Poser, Bryce, Strata, etc. and motion sensor rigs getting cheaper there's no longer any valid excuse for sob stories about how big bad Hollywood won't let good movies be made. Kevin Smith, Robert Rogriguez, et al blow away any claims that live action costs that much either. Distribution? Please. Gimme a fat pipe,a good pair of goggles and I don't need no stinkin' multiplex. Gimme some Beenz or better token system and you've got a business model.
Of course, I live in the heart of the beast (being an employee of Time/Warner/AOL/Compuserve.....) so maybe I'm just naive. But don't bet on it.
So Jon, you're a Big Time Published Author; let's see your chops. You've written a lot about the cluelessness and vapidity of American society. Tell me your opinion of Courtney Love's piece on intellectual property, tell what YOU'RE going to do to help make independant artistic projects viable and we'll go from there.
If not, then get out of the way brother and let the revolution happen without you because I can tell you that among the actual moviemakers I've met being so very concerned about the long-term prevalence of pap rates somewhere between "did I ever find that roll of gaffer's tape?" and "should I have another beer?'.
See ya at the box office,
-Rustin
Does Sealand have any dealings with the many oil platforms in the area?
Do you have any plans to increase the size of Sealand and if so on what timeine and of what materials and will the expansion be bouyant or suspended from one or both of the support columns?
Have you spoken at all with any companies like Real Goods Trading Company, Patagonia, or even Harbor Freight for crying out loud to gear you guys out for the long haul in return for an endorsement?
has anybody offered to attach their boat/barge/platform to Sealand?
What is Havenco's power setup? Have you looked into tidal, wind, or temperature differential systems?
Are you shielded against EMP?
It is my impression that in close quarters such as submarines, Biosphere II, Mir, or even a big communal house functional effectiveness frequently is determined by social factors. How much planning and instituting of procedures have you done along those lines? Are any of you trained as chefs? How big a video reserve do you have? How much thought have you given to compatability in terms of tastes, work hours, etc.?
Are you working with any other self-contained systems folks such as Columbia Univ.'s Biosphere II folks, the Rocky Mountain Institute, or NASA?
What is your setup for exercise?
How many of your team have previously spent a winter in the North Atlantic?
Here's another vote for Cringely's Accidental Empires. I'ld also suggest Tracy Kidder's Soul Of A New Machine. Gotta say, though, as many posts have commented, if you want stuff on the history of OSes, then look online. The RTFM and FAQ archives at Stanford (forget not the ancient days of SAIL my son), MIT, and CMU have served me well. Remember that a lot of key work was done at corporations that are very happy to document their eminent histories. for Xerox PARC, check out www.parc.xerox.com/parc-go.html For Bell Labs check out www.bell-labs.com/ Also remember that the Patent Office http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html isn't a bad place to go for the paper trail (e-bay and suchlike notwithstanding). Go to http://164.195.100.11/netahtml/search-bool.html and type Tevanian in Inventor name and you'll never doubt the origins of microkernel OSes again. Last but not least, if you really want to understand where OSes came from then check out some of the failures. Find somebody who ran an academic system in the mid-eighties and ask them about VMS and the legendary dumping of the DEC Rainbow. You'll never really have a feel for why open standards are so important until you've felt the pain of, for example "85% DOS compatable" early PC clones. Check out the stuff the corporations aren't so proud of, like Exxon's attempt to become a computer company or the "Oh, it's be fine" compromises of the IBM Peanut and the Apple III (not II, III). And just in case you briefly forget that most pundits and in fact IT departments have consistently grossly misread the future of this business, think of this: it wasn't too many years ago that Richard Stallman and GNU could be seen at computer shows with a tiny little set of tables in the midst of vast wealth being blown off while "real" concerns, like "When will Chicago come out?" and "Isn't it wonderful that Unix is finally in safe hands at Novell" dominated the floor. Good luck and remember to always post your results somewhere just as public as where you posted the questions. -Rustin