Sure, it looks cool, but imagine the same kind of device some thousands of times smaller. What do you have? A mechanical TV screen...
Using nanotechnology you could use this kind of mechanism to create screens of incredible resolution to whatever scale you wanted without any kind of distortion or loss of quality. If nanotechnology ever takes off, I reckon that this sort of screen will be one of the more useful applications. Want to turn every wall in your house into a screen? Sure, no problem:)
... is something we've been hearing about for a long time - remember those old 50s shows that portrayed everyone in silver suits sitting around in uncomfortable looking chairs whilst unlikely-looking robots catered for our every need:) And yet the average house of today is little different from what it was 30 years ago - there are more gadgets but its still the same idea.
Now we have several companies offering us amazing new products which will turn our houses into networks constantly linked to the outside world through broadband connections. But the thing I wonder is - is the demand there yet?
For sure there'll be those of us who like gadgets - most of/. for instance - for whom a setup like this will be almost irresitable. But for the average homeowner having all of this is still somewhat redundant - they just don't need an entire house connected via wireless links. As of now there isn't any real need for having your fridge/cooker/whatever connected to the rest of the house. Sure, there are advantages, but not enough for anyone to lay out the kind of money this will take.
So apart from a few of us who like flashy new equipment, the take-up of this kind of technology will most likely to be pretty slow. Still, if it gets built into new houses then it'll gradually become the norm, but I don't think it'll become the next "must have" thing.
My fault- I thought you believed in "that stuff" as you refer to it. I see now that you are just refering to the theories- a much more tenable position to be in.
Yeah, my take on Tipler's stuff is that: a) it's all very tenuous, sort of like a house of cards; and b) even if the physics is right it still relies on certain conditions to do with physical constants. And given that it doesn't take into account recent developments such as M-theory I doubt that we have the knowledge currently to make such sweeping conclusions. Still, it was quite an interesting read, but it shouldn't be taken too seriously.
You where talking of your "some kind of Turing Machine" which you did not present in your original arguement.
A universal Turing machine could do anything given enough energy... that's the real crunch though. Without infinite energy you can't do infinite calculations and thus you don't have a universal Turing machine. I think.
Or do you mean about learning some MATHS- ALL Mathematicians know that Physicists use mathematics to prove their "pet" theories when they have already formulated the "subjective" hypotheses in their own heads to begin with, then they go out and somehow find their empirical evidence. (this is a gross generalization but not to far from the truth)
If I had the time and money I'd go back and do another degree in maths, I almost did the first time around... So what are your views on things like superstring theory/M-theory which makes use of all kinds of advanced maths and indeed has come up with some new maths of its own (duality relations)?
Did you know that speed actually increases the uptake of short-term to long-term memory? So if you're not seriously caning it, it can help your memory and recall...
So you are a theorectical physicist!- oh know better stop the arguement here we have (a wait for it!!!)a CLAIM TO AUTHORITY.
No, that's just how you took it. I just said that I had some knowledge of the field. Anyone who thinks they know everything is an idiot.
It is amazing how much you know about me when I read your email I put my hands on the screen and my ulcer just went away!!
What email would that be?
Thanks for the laughs and the insults, I plan to print this out and show it to the Theoretical Physics faculty at Macquarie University!!
Yeah, well I'm sure they're well used to your histrionics by now...
I suppose this theory of your's is being peer reviewed somewhere in a Physical Review Letters or can't the rest of us mere mortals perform peer review on your groundbreaking research. Even other physicist learn from each other.
And what theory would that be? If your talking about Tipler's stuff, then you're way off, because I don't believe in it myself! Huh, how's about that? I never said I had any theory at all, I was just mentioning some speculative things I've read. I didn't claim they were true.
Come on now surely who have heard of the singularity theory of Black Holes. It is also sometimes called Penroses theory come on genius it has only been around since 1964. Check it out, do the math see for yourself. Oh that's right you are a physicist. Learn some MATHS then!!
Being serious, what exactly do you mean here? I've done a fair bit of general relativity stuff to do with black holes and read a lot of Penrose's and Hawking's work on the subject, and it could just be that you're calling it something other than what I am.
By the way on the English thing it is spelt Sentence, if you are going to use a) and b) use double dots before time eg. time: a)I am so superior b) I have my head stuck up my ass.
True, but the start of your sentence should read "By the way, on the...". Two can play at that game...
Speculative is that what they call BULLSHIT where you come from....
*sigh* Calm down, you'll give yourself an ulcer if you get this stressed over every little thing. Speculative means "maybe true" in my book, and I don't actually recall ever saying I believed he was correct, did I? I personally don't think he's correct, but its worth a read anyway simply for some of the more scientific parts of the book.
It is quite amazing how many cranks there are that revert to using Quantum Physics without truly understanding it's implications shit there are only a couple of thousand people who can seriously grasp the complexity of the whole thing.
And you're one of them? Please explain how I am wrong in what I was saying since your intellect obviously dwarfs mine.
"Subjective Time" - refer to the Theory of Relativity you dolt or read some Einstein, Penrose, Hawking, Davies etc ad infinitum. Your not telling us anything new.
What are you talking about? By subjective time I mean the time in which an emulation running on some kind of universal Turing machine perceives time as opposed to the proper time it takes to actually calculate the emulation for that time. It's got more to do with computer science than with relativity.
In case you are stuck back in the 1800's please read some recent findings into the nature of our Universe, might I suggest NASA or even the MIT websites, if that is to much why not watch some Discovery channel!!!
Or I could just use the stuff I learnt doing theoretical physics as a degree eh?
By the way your Black Hole thing you will still suffer the same fate that of becoming part of the singularity which they emanate from (now this is speculation but alot better than your pseudo-bullshit!!)
What black hole thing? You are now devolving into complete gibberish which makes no sense. Feel free to reply but this time a) talking sense and b) using English sentances. It makes a real difference to how you look you know.
The Physics of Immortality? Last time I checked,/. has Science category but not Crackpot Science. But of course there are always secret sids...
Well, I certainly don't agree with a lot of the conclusions he draws in the book, but then again neither does he apparently. But the bits about the availability of energy from gravitational shear in a collapsing Universe may have validity - I don't know enough about global general relativity or quantum cosmology to know for sure:)
As for the second possibility, I really don't know. Don't quantum effects prevent you from running on arbitrary low power, or something?
In what sense? I suppose that since energy is quantised there is a lower bound to the amount you can use in one go, but when you aren't concerned with timescales then the amount doesn't matter. Or what about a way to extract energy from the expansion of space-time? That's a real "last ditch" energy source:)
Well, there are speculative ways to avoid the final death of life in the Universe...
If we are headed for a Big Crunch then given certain conditions it may turn out that Tipler is right after all, and an infinite amount of computation may be possible before the end, allowing everyone to be resurrected as perfect emulations by his Omega Point God. Although proper time would be finite, subjective time would be infinite due to the infinite computational power available. See his book The Physics of Immortality for more information.
OTOH if we live in an open Universe then we face the inevitability of heat death. In this case survival becomes a matter of firstly aborbing energy from stars as they cool from white dwarves to black dwarves, then from neutron stars and finally from the massive black holes that will be the only thing left (apart from a few stray electrons and positrons)... In this increasingly low energy-density situation you survive by slowing your subjective time down - each second of thought actually takes a millenia in proper time. To you it makes no difference. As for form, it can be made up from nets of electrons or positrons (probably the only remaining matter) or pure quantum wave-functions...
Well, unfortunately the current model on which the music industry is run means that an artist requires the backing of a major label to reach an audience of more than a couple of thousand. Thanks to the way in which they've sown up the market from recording to distribution, an artist who is outside of their hegemony is going to find it extremely hard to gain popularity or even just exposure.
Whilst the net is changing this, allowing artists to reach a potentially far larger audience without the "backing" of a major label, at the moment the key word is potential. Nobody denies that the net has potential, especially not the RIAA/MPAA, but people are still trying to work out workable models that benefit both artists and consumers. A lot of people are happy with MP3.com's business model, but I'm sure there will be a lot more progress in the next few years.
Unfortunately for us, the RIAA/MPAA have realised this huge potential at a time when it is still vulnerable to pre-emptive legislation. They want to chain and guide this potential whilst they still can and their resources are up to the challenge.
What does this mean? Basically, if the uptake of the net as a tool for artists takes off over the next couple of years, it will become next to impossible for the conglomerates to stop. We just need to get through these challenges.
Yeah, I'm pretty much in the newbie stage at the moment, and being able to use RPMs (I'm running Mandrake 7.1), DEBs etc. is much easier than building my own apps at the moment...
Well, this is great news for the community since like it or not, public perception of Linux comes from what RedHat are doing more than any other organisation - hence this'll be seen as Linux 7.0, which sounds better to the newbie than Linux 2.4.0-test3:)
It does seem that people who are long-term Linux users don't use RedHat anymore, maybe because it has been geared towards the "newbie", but at the end of the day surely Linux is Linux, and you can set up any distribution how you like given a bit of time.
Still Linux does need something aimed at helping newer users overcome the initial "fear factor" of running Linux. Whether you like it or not, by doing so they're doing everyone a favour in the long run. So although I don't use it, I wish them all the best and hope this release goes well for them.
Yeah, I use vim for general editing of config files and the like, emacs is just waaay too bloaty for doing something quick like that, although I use it for editing code.
Well firstly because my PC is so fucked I can't plug my mouse into it...:)
But seriously although a mouse is a useful tool for many things it is just a hell of a lot more convenient to use the keyboard for most tasks, even in a GUI - task switching, menus, navigating around dialogs etc. Its quicker and doesn't require me to move my hands from the keyboard.
Up until a while ago I was using Windows, which has a pretty decent set of k/b shortcuts - you don't need a mouse at all and in general the shortcuts used are consistent across applications (except for Borland products...). Moving to Linux and KDE I've found that keyboard shortucts are a lot more hit and miss, and application consistency has a long way to go.
And getting used to Emacs finger contortions is taking a while as well...:)
It's a banged up old PC where the motherboard is half dead, so I'm not really fussed about buying anything for it... I've got a mouse just can't plug it in:)
I've recently started using KDE and the one thing that bugs me is the lack of keyboard shortcuts for many things. I don't currently own a mouse and one of the nice things under Windows is that you can emulate the mouse using the keyboard - tricky, but better than nothing. Considering *NIX is the home of the CLI it seems strange that KDE is so keyboard-unfriendly...
Does anyone know whether this is going to improve or not, or if there are any utilities which can help in this matter?
Since these "plastic lasers" can be made in the form of a film or "microdiscs" (of which over 6000 can fit in a single inch) the uses for these are amazing - they can be used for display devices such as monitors or even as optical switches and transmitters for computer circuits.
But since it appears likely that the plastic laser will be able to produce light with smallers wavelengths than conventional lasers it also means a jump in the potential for storing data using the same techniques as CDs and DVDs. A smaller wavelength means a greater density is possible, which is always a good thing.
I guess you never played Dungeon Master on the Atari ST then? That game could be nerve-wracking, everytime you heard a noise, you knew it was because something had just opened a door or set a trap of...
What do you think that the increasing commercialisation of the net is going to lead to? In particular do you think that the work the various standards bodies do is becoming increasingly ignored when it comes to what actually gets used on the net?
It needs to have a terminal in space, sufficiently radiation shielded, like in the book, and also sufficient thrust to get back up into orbit. However, don't anchor the Earth terminal, leave it free floating, as a platform.
I didn't think that the cables in the Mars books were fixed to the ground - they sort of floated in a fixed jacket or something.
I'm not much of a scientist, so I don't know how good the balancing effects are for a spacebound end, if it would be able to keep the Earthbound end floating freely or if the Earthbound part would drag the whole thing down.
I doubt they'd make it if it was going to fall down...:) It should be kept up by its rotational motion - centrifugal forces...
gosh I hate Outlook! It's so amazing to me to see people like it. I'm not trying to flame you or troll, I just want to understand: How can you like both Linux and Outlook? Linux has command lines, and transparent ascii text for config files and for mailfiles. Outlook is completely proprietary, hides information, doesn't do simple things like show the email address of correspondents, doesn't obey simple preferences like "plain text" formatting... oh I could go on.
It's what you're used to I suppose. At work I've always been stuck with NT systems and Outlook is waaay better than Lotus Scroates. And the Notes bit is quite handy for little lists and reminders. I'm easily pleased by small things:) Anyway, it works for what I do at work. Now Exchange OTOH is a pile of crap we could all do without.
Lookout linux: sounds like you want Linux to add all the features I was fleeing from.
Yeah, but those are the things that PHBs look for when ordering computers. I'm not saying it's desirable, but it will increase corporate adoption. And you can still use a command line whenever you want:)
What we really need is a Mission (with a capital M).
And colonising Mars wouldn't be a Mission? I think the idea of having people living on another planet would be enough to capture the public's imagination, even in today's cynical atmosphere.
And as for the asteroid belt? Well the sheer amount of raw resources there makes it a prime target for anyone looking to make money. And by the time we get around to it I'm sure that robotic mining techniques will have improved dramatically.
All it takes is a reasonably small increase in the level of technology for these things to become feasible. It's not beyond our imagination at all.
In the case of composite materials, it has been observed that the transport of radiation has been higher than predicted, especially with the lower energy particles (the ones that deposit more charge and are more dangerous to human beings).
Really? Any more info on that? Still, I'm sure that they'll come up with something in the next 20 years... of course that's if just IMHO:)
I'm not going to argue with your calculations, at least not without some of the textbooks I've got at home:) But advances in lightwieght materials may render the cost within our reach within the next 20 years.
But yeah, at the moment NASA are doing what they should - a few, relatively cheap scientific missions and funding some research into new technologies that may pay off in the future when we actually get the will to use them...
We have no means to protect our astronauts effectively from space radiation.
It depends on how long the journey takes really. Even today we've had men in space for a year and no more protection than our Mars ship would have. But still, a manned craft would have more shielding, they're not going to want to have people die from radiation sickness half way there are they?:)
As for on Mars itself, surface activity isn't going to be viable for a long time (assuming terraforming). Structures erected on Mars will obviously be hardened against radiation. Although this will take more material, any long-term Mars mission will have carry the means to mine materials and make its own structures.
We are afraid to have anyone die while visiting Mars.
True, but I thing in the longer term this won't be so much of a factor. Anyway, the political spin that it'll be given should ease most people's worries about disaster. It was easy enough for the Apollo missions to carry on after near-disaster wasn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, it looks cool, but imagine the same kind of device some thousands of times smaller. What do you have? A mechanical TV screen...
Using nanotechnology you could use this kind of mechanism to create screens of incredible resolution to whatever scale you wanted without any kind of distortion or loss of quality. If nanotechnology ever takes off, I reckon that this sort of screen will be one of the more useful applications. Want to turn every wall in your house into a screen? Sure, no problem :)
... is something we've been hearing about for a long time - remember those old 50s shows that portrayed everyone in silver suits sitting around in uncomfortable looking chairs whilst unlikely-looking robots catered for our every need :) And yet the average house of today is little different from what it was 30 years ago - there are more gadgets but its still the same idea.
Now we have several companies offering us amazing new products which will turn our houses into networks constantly linked to the outside world through broadband connections. But the thing I wonder is - is the demand there yet?
For sure there'll be those of us who like gadgets - most of /. for instance - for whom a setup like this will be almost irresitable. But for the average homeowner having all of this is still somewhat redundant - they just don't need an entire house connected via wireless links. As of now there isn't any real need for having your fridge/cooker/whatever connected to the rest of the house. Sure, there are advantages, but not enough for anyone to lay out the kind of money this will take.
So apart from a few of us who like flashy new equipment, the take-up of this kind of technology will most likely to be pretty slow. Still, if it gets built into new houses then it'll gradually become the norm, but I don't think it'll become the next "must have" thing.
My fault- I thought you believed in "that stuff" as you refer to it. I see now that you are just refering to the theories- a much more tenable position to be in.
Yeah, my take on Tipler's stuff is that: a) it's all very tenuous, sort of like a house of cards; and b) even if the physics is right it still relies on certain conditions to do with physical constants. And given that it doesn't take into account recent developments such as M-theory I doubt that we have the knowledge currently to make such sweeping conclusions. Still, it was quite an interesting read, but it shouldn't be taken too seriously.
You where talking of your "some kind of Turing Machine" which you did not present in your original arguement.
A universal Turing machine could do anything given enough energy... that's the real crunch though. Without infinite energy you can't do infinite calculations and thus you don't have a universal Turing machine. I think.
Or do you mean about learning some MATHS- ALL Mathematicians know that Physicists use mathematics to prove their "pet" theories when they have already formulated the "subjective" hypotheses in their own heads to begin with, then they go out and somehow find their empirical evidence. (this is a gross generalization but not to far from the truth)
If I had the time and money I'd go back and do another degree in maths, I almost did the first time around... So what are your views on things like superstring theory/M-theory which makes use of all kinds of advanced maths and indeed has come up with some new maths of its own (duality relations)?
Did you know that speed actually increases the uptake of short-term to long-term memory? So if you're not seriously caning it, it can help your memory and recall...
So you are a theorectical physicist!- oh know better stop the arguement here we have (a wait for it!!!)a CLAIM TO AUTHORITY.
No, that's just how you took it. I just said that I had some knowledge of the field. Anyone who thinks they know everything is an idiot.
It is amazing how much you know about me when I read your email I put my hands on the screen and my ulcer just went away!!
What email would that be?
Thanks for the laughs and the insults, I plan to print this out and show it to the Theoretical Physics faculty at Macquarie University!!
Yeah, well I'm sure they're well used to your histrionics by now...
I suppose this theory of your's is being peer reviewed somewhere in a Physical Review Letters or can't the rest of us mere mortals perform peer review on your groundbreaking research. Even other physicist learn from each other.
And what theory would that be? If your talking about Tipler's stuff, then you're way off, because I don't believe in it myself! Huh, how's about that? I never said I had any theory at all, I was just mentioning some speculative things I've read. I didn't claim they were true.
Come on now surely who have heard of the singularity theory of Black Holes. It is also sometimes called Penroses theory come on genius it has only been around since 1964. Check it out, do the math see for yourself. Oh that's right you are a physicist. Learn some MATHS then!!
Being serious, what exactly do you mean here? I've done a fair bit of general relativity stuff to do with black holes and read a lot of Penrose's and Hawking's work on the subject, and it could just be that you're calling it something other than what I am.
By the way on the English thing it is spelt Sentence, if you are going to use a) and b) use double dots before time eg. time: a)I am so superior b) I have my head stuck up my ass.
True, but the start of your sentence should read "By the way, on the ...". Two can play at that game...
Please reply, this is fun :)
Speculative is that what they call BULLSHIT where you come from....
*sigh* Calm down, you'll give yourself an ulcer if you get this stressed over every little thing. Speculative means "maybe true" in my book, and I don't actually recall ever saying I believed he was correct, did I? I personally don't think he's correct, but its worth a read anyway simply for some of the more scientific parts of the book.
It is quite amazing how many cranks there are that revert to using Quantum Physics without truly understanding it's implications shit there are only a couple of thousand people who can seriously grasp the complexity of the whole thing.
And you're one of them? Please explain how I am wrong in what I was saying since your intellect obviously dwarfs mine.
"Subjective Time" - refer to the Theory of Relativity you dolt or read some Einstein, Penrose, Hawking, Davies etc ad infinitum. Your not telling us anything new.
What are you talking about? By subjective time I mean the time in which an emulation running on some kind of universal Turing machine perceives time as opposed to the proper time it takes to actually calculate the emulation for that time. It's got more to do with computer science than with relativity.
In case you are stuck back in the 1800's please read some recent findings into the nature of our Universe, might I suggest NASA or even the MIT websites, if that is to much why not watch some Discovery channel!!!
Or I could just use the stuff I learnt doing theoretical physics as a degree eh?
By the way your Black Hole thing you will still suffer the same fate that of becoming part of the singularity which they emanate from (now this is speculation but alot better than your pseudo-bullshit!!)
What black hole thing? You are now devolving into complete gibberish which makes no sense. Feel free to reply but this time a) talking sense and b) using English sentances. It makes a real difference to how you look you know.
The Physics of Immortality? Last time I checked, /. has Science category but not Crackpot Science. But of course there are always secret sids...
Well, I certainly don't agree with a lot of the conclusions he draws in the book, but then again neither does he apparently. But the bits about the availability of energy from gravitational shear in a collapsing Universe may have validity - I don't know enough about global general relativity or quantum cosmology to know for sure :)
As for the second possibility, I really don't know. Don't quantum effects prevent you from running on arbitrary low power, or something?
In what sense? I suppose that since energy is quantised there is a lower bound to the amount you can use in one go, but when you aren't concerned with timescales then the amount doesn't matter. Or what about a way to extract energy from the expansion of space-time? That's a real "last ditch" energy source :)
Well, there are speculative ways to avoid the final death of life in the Universe...
Well, unfortunately the current model on which the music industry is run means that an artist requires the backing of a major label to reach an audience of more than a couple of thousand. Thanks to the way in which they've sown up the market from recording to distribution, an artist who is outside of their hegemony is going to find it extremely hard to gain popularity or even just exposure.
Whilst the net is changing this, allowing artists to reach a potentially far larger audience without the "backing" of a major label, at the moment the key word is potential. Nobody denies that the net has potential, especially not the RIAA/MPAA, but people are still trying to work out workable models that benefit both artists and consumers. A lot of people are happy with MP3.com's business model, but I'm sure there will be a lot more progress in the next few years.
Unfortunately for us, the RIAA/MPAA have realised this huge potential at a time when it is still vulnerable to pre-emptive legislation. They want to chain and guide this potential whilst they still can and their resources are up to the challenge.
What does this mean? Basically, if the uptake of the net as a tool for artists takes off over the next couple of years, it will become next to impossible for the conglomerates to stop. We just need to get through these challenges.
Yeah, I'm pretty much in the newbie stage at the moment, and being able to use RPMs (I'm running Mandrake 7.1), DEBs etc. is much easier than building my own apps at the moment...
Well, this is great news for the community since like it or not, public perception of Linux comes from what RedHat are doing more than any other organisation - hence this'll be seen as Linux 7.0, which sounds better to the newbie than Linux 2.4.0-test3 :)
It does seem that people who are long-term Linux users don't use RedHat anymore, maybe because it has been geared towards the "newbie", but at the end of the day surely Linux is Linux, and you can set up any distribution how you like given a bit of time.
Still Linux does need something aimed at helping newer users overcome the initial "fear factor" of running Linux. Whether you like it or not, by doing so they're doing everyone a favour in the long run. So although I don't use it, I wish them all the best and hope this release goes well for them.
Yeah, I use vim for general editing of config files and the like, emacs is just waaay too bloaty for doing something quick like that, although I use it for editing code.
Well firstly because my PC is so fucked I can't plug my mouse into it... :)
But seriously although a mouse is a useful tool for many things it is just a hell of a lot more convenient to use the keyboard for most tasks, even in a GUI - task switching, menus, navigating around dialogs etc. Its quicker and doesn't require me to move my hands from the keyboard.
Up until a while ago I was using Windows, which has a pretty decent set of k/b shortcuts - you don't need a mouse at all and in general the shortcuts used are consistent across applications (except for Borland products...). Moving to Linux and KDE I've found that keyboard shortucts are a lot more hit and miss, and application consistency has a long way to go.
And getting used to Emacs finger contortions is taking a while as well... :)
And how do you get there using the keyboard? :)
It's a banged up old PC where the motherboard is half dead, so I'm not really fussed about buying anything for it... I've got a mouse just can't plug it in :)
I've recently started using KDE and the one thing that bugs me is the lack of keyboard shortcuts for many things. I don't currently own a mouse and one of the nice things under Windows is that you can emulate the mouse using the keyboard - tricky, but better than nothing. Considering *NIX is the home of the CLI it seems strange that KDE is so keyboard-unfriendly...
Does anyone know whether this is going to improve or not, or if there are any utilities which can help in this matter?
Apart from this gripe though, KDE is nice :)
Since these "plastic lasers" can be made in the form of a film or "microdiscs" (of which over 6000 can fit in a single inch) the uses for these are amazing - they can be used for display devices such as monitors or even as optical switches and transmitters for computer circuits.
But since it appears likely that the plastic laser will be able to produce light with smallers wavelengths than conventional lasers it also means a jump in the potential for storing data using the same techniques as CDs and DVDs. A smaller wavelength means a greater density is possible, which is always a good thing.
More information can be found here.
And an eery ambiance that has yet to be copied.
I guess you never played Dungeon Master on the Atari ST then? That game could be nerve-wracking, everytime you heard a noise, you knew it was because something had just opened a door or set a trap of...
What do you think that the increasing commercialisation of the net is going to lead to? In particular do you think that the work the various standards bodies do is becoming increasingly ignored when it comes to what actually gets used on the net?
It needs to have a terminal in space, sufficiently radiation shielded, like in the book, and also sufficient thrust to get back up into orbit. However, don't anchor the Earth terminal, leave it free floating, as a platform.
I didn't think that the cables in the Mars books were fixed to the ground - they sort of floated in a fixed jacket or something.
I'm not much of a scientist, so I don't know how good the balancing effects are for a spacebound end, if it would be able to keep the Earthbound end floating freely or if the Earthbound part would drag the whole thing down.
I doubt they'd make it if it was going to fall down... :) It should be kept up by its rotational motion - centrifugal forces...
gosh I hate Outlook! It's so amazing to me to see people like it. I'm not trying to flame you or troll, I just want to understand: How can you like both Linux and Outlook? Linux has command lines, and transparent ascii text for config files and for mailfiles. Outlook is completely proprietary, hides information, doesn't do simple things like show the email address of correspondents, doesn't obey simple preferences like "plain text" formatting... oh I could go on.
It's what you're used to I suppose. At work I've always been stuck with NT systems and Outlook is waaay better than Lotus Scroates. And the Notes bit is quite handy for little lists and reminders. I'm easily pleased by small things :) Anyway, it works for what I do at work. Now Exchange OTOH is a pile of crap we could all do without.
Lookout linux: sounds like you want Linux to add all the features I was fleeing from.
Yeah, but those are the things that PHBs look for when ordering computers. I'm not saying it's desirable, but it will increase corporate adoption. And you can still use a command line whenever you want :)
What we really need is a Mission (with a capital M).
And colonising Mars wouldn't be a Mission? I think the idea of having people living on another planet would be enough to capture the public's imagination, even in today's cynical atmosphere.
And as for the asteroid belt? Well the sheer amount of raw resources there makes it a prime target for anyone looking to make money. And by the time we get around to it I'm sure that robotic mining techniques will have improved dramatically.
All it takes is a reasonably small increase in the level of technology for these things to become feasible. It's not beyond our imagination at all.
In the case of composite materials, it has been observed that the transport of radiation has been higher than predicted, especially with the lower energy particles (the ones that deposit more charge and are more dangerous to human beings).
Really? Any more info on that? Still, I'm sure that they'll come up with something in the next 20 years... of course that's if just IMHO :)
I'm not going to argue with your calculations, at least not without some of the textbooks I've got at home :) But advances in lightwieght materials may render the cost within our reach within the next 20 years.
But yeah, at the moment NASA are doing what they should - a few, relatively cheap scientific missions and funding some research into new technologies that may pay off in the future when we actually get the will to use them...
We have no means to protect our astronauts effectively from space radiation.
It depends on how long the journey takes really. Even today we've had men in space for a year and no more protection than our Mars ship would have. But still, a manned craft would have more shielding, they're not going to want to have people die from radiation sickness half way there are they? :)
As for on Mars itself, surface activity isn't going to be viable for a long time (assuming terraforming). Structures erected on Mars will obviously be hardened against radiation. Although this will take more material, any long-term Mars mission will have carry the means to mine materials and make its own structures.
We are afraid to have anyone die while visiting Mars.
True, but I thing in the longer term this won't be so much of a factor. Anyway, the political spin that it'll be given should ease most people's worries about disaster. It was easy enough for the Apollo missions to carry on after near-disaster wasn't it?