Succeeding generations of Pilgrims had (and still have) the option of returning to where they came from.
A "generation ship" has no such luxury. It's NOT going to be possible for somebody to return once the mission is underway. You and your progeny are stuck while Sir Isaac Newton and possibly Einstein are driving. There are no ships home coming within your lifetime. For you it's a one way trip and other than killing yourself, you have zero say about how your life will be spent.
Is it moral and ethical to do this kind of thing to generations? Effectively force them to be slaves of the "mission" like it or no? I'm not so sure we can absolutely say it is.
So for any mission that lasts longer than the expected lifetime of the people that choose to go, there are some thorny ethical questions to ask and resolve.
So you are proposing that we push the space craft along by detonating nuclear devices behind it?
Well that might actually work in theory, but there ARE some serious potential problems to discuss.... What is pushing the craft along? In this case it seems it would be both radiation and high speed matter impacting the craft. This doesn't seem like a long term solution, because neutron radiation is pretty destructive in the long term because it can change the chemistry of the stuff it hits, is really hard to effectively shield (or at least such shields are really heavy), and the physical heating/cooling of the outside of the craft will be a serious long term risk due to work hardening of the metals.
The real problem ends up really being duration. It's not that radiation shielding doesn't exist, but that given the time frames we are discussing are in the order of multiple decades to centuries, the current technology wears out long before the mission would be over.
Remember, there is no resupply, no sending spare parts or refueling, you have to take everything needed with you when you depart the solar system. And what you take will need to last half a century or more....
We are talking about something like 100 parts per million increase in C02 over the last century of burning fossil fuels... That 100 ppm sits on top the natural CO2 in the atmosphere and really only represents a few percent of what is there naturally. Yes it's up, but we are discussing a dynamic system that deals with CO2 naturally, and as you point out it's effectively dealing with the bulk of the extra we put out. One would *expect* the concentration to increase a lot more, given what we are pumping into the air. The system will achieve steady state again, likely with a higher CO2 concentration than we see in the past records, but not above what the Earth has survived before, even if we burned every last scrap of fossil fuels we could find in one day.
We are having an effect, but how much can an extra 100 parts per million actually do? It's seriously nearly nothing, both in the amount of carbon following though the cycle each year and the net affect it can possibly have. I know some folks are totally freaked out over this, but when you look at the grand scheme of things and realize the really small of a fraction this really is of our atmosphere and start looking at the scales on all those alarming graphs and charts with the red arrows going straight up, it's not really all that likely to be a problem. Certainly it's not a problem you can hobble your economy and national security in a vain effort to fix but I digress.
Why do you need to turn your garage into a huge electromagnet to do that? Also, do you have ANY idea how much power that EV of yours actually wants to suck in and what this system is safely capable of? If you want to charge your car with a 15A 110V extension cord, you will do better than what this thing can deliver. If you have a high power charger that can recharge your battery in a couple of hours, this system won't be able to deliver the power your car wants at all..
30 seconds? Why you giving him that long. You are likely going to wait longer for the garage door opener to open or close than it takes to plug in most electric cars.
Don't take any device that couples magnetic energy in there. No credit cards, no spinning hard disks, a lot of electronic devices will be toasted upon entry and should you happen to have any leftover metal parts from some past surgery (staples, clips, knees or hips) you don't likely want to try and enter either... Figure on having similar entry restrictions as MRI machines, including the faraday shielded room for this thing.. I wonder what a set of wire rimmed glasses will do in there, in fact anything that approximates a loop of wire could have serious issues if it's conductive.
Basically they put you INSIDE a huge electromagnet with fairly high flux values. They resonate the whole thing to a specific frequency by inserting some capacitance, then size their collector (which is still larger than most cell phones) can collect power from the magnetic fields. Room size will be limited, basically because of the power density required to get useful power transfer is still really high and it will approach unsafe levels as the room gets larger.
Not to mention... I dare you to grab the center pole.... It's going to have more than hundred amps flowing though it at RF (1.3 Mhz) frequencies that, despite what they say in their "safety" calculations, sure seems to be at power levels that can cause serious RF burns...
I'm talking about the *current* state of technology... If we do this *now* what could we reasonably expect and make the trip in less than 50 years using our most efficient solution currently in development (or flying).
There is a theory that until we get round trip times down to 50 years or less, it's not worth trying.. Why? Because it is expected that advancing technology will likely make future trips possible at a faster speed and missions using that extra speed will likely pass the previous mission in route and return BEFORE the slower mission with the head start.
Apart from the ethical and moral problems that generation ships present, we are nowhere near being able to engineer a self sustaining ecosystem. We haven't even yet demonstrated enough proficiency in doing this on the ground, much less in space. "Generational ships" are nothing more than a pipe dream, and will never happen. The moral and ethical questions alone should make that obvious. How can you condemn future generations to carry a mission they didn't have any say about, may not wish to participate in, and didn't accept the risks associated with the mission? How will such ships be governed? Is it moral to send such missions out with zero means of return and nearly zero chance of success?
Your fossil fuel statements are pretty much hysteria... The fraction of CO2 in our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is nearly insignificant. In fact, I'm told most plant growth is CO2 limited... (Meaning it is the lack of CO2 that limits their growth). Plant growth is what most fossil fuels came from, during a time when CO2 was a LOT more plentiful than it is now. In short, I think you are falling for a bit of hype, then inventing some wild theory about CO2 being responsible for such large amounts of retained heat... The fraction of CO2 that is man sourced in the atmosphere, pales in comparison to the *natural* amount that is necessary to keep plants growing.
You get 56K???? I can only manage 53K myself, on a good day with a tail wind...
Ah, those where the days... Screeching modem negotiation tones followed by "You got Mail!" (And a smile from Meg.... That would be a good movie idea..)
Necessity isn't the mother of invention these days... it's marketing!
You are almost right. Actually... Marketing creates Necessity which then gives birth to invention...Those who fail at any step in this process, go out of business.
And what makes you think the rest of the universe is 1. good and 2. reachable?
Our most efficient drive system to date (in terms of how much acceleration you get for the amount of propellant used) are plasma/ion engines. They run on electrical power. If you do some rough calculations on the size and weight of a manned space craft with provisions enough to make even a short (say 12 light years or so) trip, the power requirements of the engines alone will exceed the total generation capacity of the world's electrical grid....
But you can bet there will be a bunch of space cadets saying we should mount a mission to explore these "earth like" planets in our intergalactic back yard.. Never mind that it will take tens of thousands of years with current technology to actually get there and back at the speeds we can manage right now...
Even more.. They are estimating the size and orbits of these planets and using all this estimation they figured that one or more of these planets *might* have liquid water on the surface. So assuming all their decades of observations are enough to correct out all the observation errors are good enough and matches their math close enough, they are likely right.
However, you are correct, we are not detecting these using any kind of direct observation but though inference from other observations that might indirectly indicate the presence of some number of planets.
I think it's interesting that AMD finally got this CPU off the drawing board and actually onto silicon, finally. It has been a long time in development and has suffered many delays along the way, both from management changes and financial difficulty. They have put all their CPU eggs in this basket and I sure hope they have a good design here because Intel needs a bit of competition.
I'm confident that AMD will make a go of this new architecture. It was a totally clean sheet design and has some unique and innovative features which may spur another round of slugging it out with Intel. What I find interesting here is the price point. Where I'm positive Intel has been racking in profit on their current offerings and will easily match AMD's prices, I'm hopeful that AMD will be able to press this new design into better performance than Intel can manage with their current technology at this price point.
If history is any indicator, AMD will not be able to keep up once they wake the sleeping giant that's Intel. Where I'm not sure Intel really cares about the PC market (which is lagging a lot) they do care about profit. The question really becomes how much will this hurt Intel? I'm not sure it will be all that much, because Intel is diversified, doing lots of stuff in their own fabs. AMD has no fabs of their own anymore and really only have two business lines where they are the distant second player.
Will it last for AMD? Will this put them back into an increasing market share and profitability? I hope so, but the guys over at Intel surely already have a good idea what they will do and what affect this will have on their bottom line. AMD may be off the mat, but they are seriously out classed by a company with deep pockets and technical ability.
If the money is spent paying Google, Netflix, Verizon, or other engineers, we end up with newer infrastructure, better services, and the like. If it's spent building rockets to circle the moon, then we still pay this (not just "we pay it in taxes", but the labor is spent and the labor is compensated--we work and we exchange our time for this), and what do we receive?
Wasteful spending reduces the amount of stuff you receive for the work you do. That's true across an entire economy for obvious reasons (if half the farmers instead make war machines, half the food doesn't get made, and you pay for war machines that only go out to get blown up). What are we gaining by spending $23 billion here?
You cannot be serious... Do you have any idea what kinds of technology advancement NASA has been a primary driver of? The list is long, varied and many things invented for our space programs of the 1960-70's are ubiquitous now. Ever used Velcro? Ceramics? Digital cameras? Miniaturized solid state RF communications devices? Anything that depends on something in orbit (GPS, Most Syndicated Radio programs, most remote Sports TV coverage...). Need I go on?
One would expect a new space program would have similar benefits to humanity, consider it an infrastructure project. So YES, money well spent.
Been there... Done that.... Plus, it's a whole new kettle of fish when you start trying to land on return and surviving the trip.
Maybe if we billed it as a "dress rehearsal" for a Mars mission.... Go out and orbit the moon for the duration of a Mars trip, go to the surface, return and orbit the moon some more to simulate the trip home.... All within a quick (a couple of days) return distance of home... Maybe that would sell the PR better?
We've already done this a couple of times... The public will just throw up their hands and say "Nothing new to see here! Move along!" Even landing on the moon wouldn't be enough here.
Where I applaud the effort here and believe the money would be well spent doing this, In order to get this kind of thing funded at NASA, we are going to need a better narrative for the press to run with. Something that seems new and exciting. Sadly, because we have been running NASA on less than a shoestring budget for over a decade now, this is about as new and exciting as we can get. Look at our new space craft! It can circle the moon like we did 50 years ago, only with modern technology...
Are you with a long term partner and don't have kids?
If not then stfu because I am and I get shit all the time including from strangers about why I'm so selfish and horrible for not having children.
You're an ignorant ass.
I am? For agreeing that you should do what you want to you call me names? LOL, the old "I'm rubber and you are glue" saying comes to mind here. PLEASE don't have kids.... Thanks!
Satellites already exist for data connections and are quasi profitable. However there are technical issues with satellites for broad band internet service, and the biggest is the available spectral space is quite limiting for vast tracts of the developed world. Basically the issues with satellites are more than just cost
But that begs the question here really.. Is this new approach of using temporary balloon based distribution with the effort? I'm not so sure. Where I see the advantage of this idea, how's the operating cost of such a system going to be less than the existing cell network? What spectrum space are they planning to use? How will they obtain the rights to that space unless they buy it? Perhaps they plan to use 802.11 A/N spectrum under what ever passes as FCC part 15 in the UK?
If they are buying spectrum, they will go broke before they begin because the will be bidding with the Cell companies for the same space... If they are using unlicensed 802.11 a/n, then I wish them luck but I don't support their effort. 802.11 a/n is congested bad enough now, we don't need more emitters floating around making matters worse. Plus as a Amateur radio licensee, I have rights to a lot of that spectrum and thus have priority over part 15 users, and I actually do use some of that space and would not welcome their unlicensed intrusion.
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Succeeding generations of Pilgrims had (and still have) the option of returning to where they came from.
A "generation ship" has no such luxury. It's NOT going to be possible for somebody to return once the mission is underway. You and your progeny are stuck while Sir Isaac Newton and possibly Einstein are driving. There are no ships home coming within your lifetime. For you it's a one way trip and other than killing yourself, you have zero say about how your life will be spent.
Is it moral and ethical to do this kind of thing to generations? Effectively force them to be slaves of the "mission" like it or no? I'm not so sure we can absolutely say it is.
So for any mission that lasts longer than the expected lifetime of the people that choose to go, there are some thorny ethical questions to ask and resolve.
So you are proposing that we push the space craft along by detonating nuclear devices behind it?
Well that might actually work in theory, but there ARE some serious potential problems to discuss.... What is pushing the craft along? In this case it seems it would be both radiation and high speed matter impacting the craft. This doesn't seem like a long term solution, because neutron radiation is pretty destructive in the long term because it can change the chemistry of the stuff it hits, is really hard to effectively shield (or at least such shields are really heavy), and the physical heating/cooling of the outside of the craft will be a serious long term risk due to work hardening of the metals.
The real problem ends up really being duration. It's not that radiation shielding doesn't exist, but that given the time frames we are discussing are in the order of multiple decades to centuries, the current technology wears out long before the mission would be over.
Remember, there is no resupply, no sending spare parts or refueling, you have to take everything needed with you when you depart the solar system. And what you take will need to last half a century or more....
And your side isn't guessing? LOL
We are talking about something like 100 parts per million increase in C02 over the last century of burning fossil fuels... That 100 ppm sits on top the natural CO2 in the atmosphere and really only represents a few percent of what is there naturally. Yes it's up, but we are discussing a dynamic system that deals with CO2 naturally, and as you point out it's effectively dealing with the bulk of the extra we put out. One would *expect* the concentration to increase a lot more, given what we are pumping into the air. The system will achieve steady state again, likely with a higher CO2 concentration than we see in the past records, but not above what the Earth has survived before, even if we burned every last scrap of fossil fuels we could find in one day.
We are having an effect, but how much can an extra 100 parts per million actually do? It's seriously nearly nothing, both in the amount of carbon following though the cycle each year and the net affect it can possibly have. I know some folks are totally freaked out over this, but when you look at the grand scheme of things and realize the really small of a fraction this really is of our atmosphere and start looking at the scales on all those alarming graphs and charts with the red arrows going straight up, it's not really all that likely to be a problem. Certainly it's not a problem you can hobble your economy and national security in a vain effort to fix but I digress.
I heard this somewhere: "Dogs have owners, cats have staff."
That's the truth because you live in THEIR house, so it's THEIR rules. Which is why I will NEVER own a cat or let one own me.
Why do you need to turn your garage into a huge electromagnet to do that? Also, do you have ANY idea how much power that EV of yours actually wants to suck in and what this system is safely capable of? If you want to charge your car with a 15A 110V extension cord, you will do better than what this thing can deliver. If you have a high power charger that can recharge your battery in a couple of hours, this system won't be able to deliver the power your car wants at all..
Or insert a goddam plug. OMG, that takes 30 seconds!
Lazy fat entitled millenial fucking pansy hiptards.
30 seconds? Why you giving him that long. You are likely going to wait longer for the garage door opener to open or close than it takes to plug in most electric cars.
He's digging a hole to bury it next to SpaceX..
Don't take any device that couples magnetic energy in there. No credit cards, no spinning hard disks, a lot of electronic devices will be toasted upon entry and should you happen to have any leftover metal parts from some past surgery (staples, clips, knees or hips) you don't likely want to try and enter either... Figure on having similar entry restrictions as MRI machines, including the faraday shielded room for this thing.. I wonder what a set of wire rimmed glasses will do in there, in fact anything that approximates a loop of wire could have serious issues if it's conductive.
Basically they put you INSIDE a huge electromagnet with fairly high flux values. They resonate the whole thing to a specific frequency by inserting some capacitance, then size their collector (which is still larger than most cell phones) can collect power from the magnetic fields. Room size will be limited, basically because of the power density required to get useful power transfer is still really high and it will approach unsafe levels as the room gets larger.
Not to mention... I dare you to grab the center pole.... It's going to have more than hundred amps flowing though it at RF (1.3 Mhz) frequencies that, despite what they say in their "safety" calculations, sure seems to be at power levels that can cause serious RF burns...
I'm talking about the *current* state of technology... If we do this *now* what could we reasonably expect and make the trip in less than 50 years using our most efficient solution currently in development (or flying).
There is a theory that until we get round trip times down to 50 years or less, it's not worth trying.. Why? Because it is expected that advancing technology will likely make future trips possible at a faster speed and missions using that extra speed will likely pass the previous mission in route and return BEFORE the slower mission with the head start.
Apart from the ethical and moral problems that generation ships present, we are nowhere near being able to engineer a self sustaining ecosystem. We haven't even yet demonstrated enough proficiency in doing this on the ground, much less in space. "Generational ships" are nothing more than a pipe dream, and will never happen. The moral and ethical questions alone should make that obvious. How can you condemn future generations to carry a mission they didn't have any say about, may not wish to participate in, and didn't accept the risks associated with the mission? How will such ships be governed? Is it moral to send such missions out with zero means of return and nearly zero chance of success?
Your fossil fuel statements are pretty much hysteria... The fraction of CO2 in our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is nearly insignificant. In fact, I'm told most plant growth is CO2 limited... (Meaning it is the lack of CO2 that limits their growth). Plant growth is what most fossil fuels came from, during a time when CO2 was a LOT more plentiful than it is now. In short, I think you are falling for a bit of hype, then inventing some wild theory about CO2 being responsible for such large amounts of retained heat... The fraction of CO2 that is man sourced in the atmosphere, pales in comparison to the *natural* amount that is necessary to keep plants growing.
There are Lies, damn lies and statistics you know.. I'm sure Apple isn't going to share the actual statistics here...
Because there is no central place where one must get Android apps, we will never know.
Me too, and the family for three I-Phones and 2 I-Pads for a total of 5 I-devices... We don't buy apps...
SOMEBODY must be spending a lot on this junk if the average it $40/phone...
You get 56K???? I can only manage 53K myself, on a good day with a tail wind...
Ah, those where the days... Screeching modem negotiation tones followed by "You got Mail!" (And a smile from Meg.... That would be a good movie idea..)
Necessity isn't the mother of invention these days... it's marketing!
You are almost right. Actually... Marketing creates Necessity which then gives birth to invention...Those who fail at any step in this process, go out of business.
And what makes you think the rest of the universe is 1. good and 2. reachable?
Our most efficient drive system to date (in terms of how much acceleration you get for the amount of propellant used) are plasma/ion engines. They run on electrical power. If you do some rough calculations on the size and weight of a manned space craft with provisions enough to make even a short (say 12 light years or so) trip, the power requirements of the engines alone will exceed the total generation capacity of the world's electrical grid....
What is different about these planets?
They are closer than any other ones we have found...
But you can bet there will be a bunch of space cadets saying we should mount a mission to explore these "earth like" planets in our intergalactic back yard.. Never mind that it will take tens of thousands of years with current technology to actually get there and back at the speeds we can manage right now...
Even more.. They are estimating the size and orbits of these planets and using all this estimation they figured that one or more of these planets *might* have liquid water on the surface. So assuming all their decades of observations are enough to correct out all the observation errors are good enough and matches their math close enough, they are likely right.
However, you are correct, we are not detecting these using any kind of direct observation but though inference from other observations that might indirectly indicate the presence of some number of planets.
I think it's interesting that AMD finally got this CPU off the drawing board and actually onto silicon, finally. It has been a long time in development and has suffered many delays along the way, both from management changes and financial difficulty. They have put all their CPU eggs in this basket and I sure hope they have a good design here because Intel needs a bit of competition.
I'm confident that AMD will make a go of this new architecture. It was a totally clean sheet design and has some unique and innovative features which may spur another round of slugging it out with Intel. What I find interesting here is the price point. Where I'm positive Intel has been racking in profit on their current offerings and will easily match AMD's prices, I'm hopeful that AMD will be able to press this new design into better performance than Intel can manage with their current technology at this price point.
If history is any indicator, AMD will not be able to keep up once they wake the sleeping giant that's Intel. Where I'm not sure Intel really cares about the PC market (which is lagging a lot) they do care about profit. The question really becomes how much will this hurt Intel? I'm not sure it will be all that much, because Intel is diversified, doing lots of stuff in their own fabs. AMD has no fabs of their own anymore and really only have two business lines where they are the distant second player.
Will it last for AMD? Will this put them back into an increasing market share and profitability? I hope so, but the guys over at Intel surely already have a good idea what they will do and what affect this will have on their bottom line. AMD may be off the mat, but they are seriously out classed by a company with deep pockets and technical ability.
How would the money be well spent?
If the money is spent paying Google, Netflix, Verizon, or other engineers, we end up with newer infrastructure, better services, and the like. If it's spent building rockets to circle the moon, then we still pay this (not just "we pay it in taxes", but the labor is spent and the labor is compensated--we work and we exchange our time for this), and what do we receive?
Wasteful spending reduces the amount of stuff you receive for the work you do. That's true across an entire economy for obvious reasons (if half the farmers instead make war machines, half the food doesn't get made, and you pay for war machines that only go out to get blown up). What are we gaining by spending $23 billion here?
You cannot be serious... Do you have any idea what kinds of technology advancement NASA has been a primary driver of? The list is long, varied and many things invented for our space programs of the 1960-70's are ubiquitous now. Ever used Velcro? Ceramics? Digital cameras? Miniaturized solid state RF communications devices? Anything that depends on something in orbit (GPS, Most Syndicated Radio programs, most remote Sports TV coverage...). Need I go on?
One would expect a new space program would have similar benefits to humanity, consider it an infrastructure project. So YES, money well spent.
Been there... Done that.... Plus, it's a whole new kettle of fish when you start trying to land on return and surviving the trip.
Maybe if we billed it as a "dress rehearsal" for a Mars mission.... Go out and orbit the moon for the duration of a Mars trip, go to the surface, return and orbit the moon some more to simulate the trip home.... All within a quick (a couple of days) return distance of home... Maybe that would sell the PR better?
We've already done this a couple of times... The public will just throw up their hands and say "Nothing new to see here! Move along!" Even landing on the moon wouldn't be enough here.
Where I applaud the effort here and believe the money would be well spent doing this, In order to get this kind of thing funded at NASA, we are going to need a better narrative for the press to run with. Something that seems new and exciting. Sadly, because we have been running NASA on less than a shoestring budget for over a decade now, this is about as new and exciting as we can get. Look at our new space craft! It can circle the moon like we did 50 years ago, only with modern technology...
I can see it now... (slow hand clap)...
Are you with a long term partner and don't have kids?
If not then stfu because I am and I get shit all the time including from strangers about why I'm so selfish and horrible for not having children.
You're an ignorant ass.
I am? For agreeing that you should do what you want to you call me names? LOL, the old "I'm rubber and you are glue" saying comes to mind here. PLEASE don't have kids.... Thanks!
Satellites already exist for data connections and are quasi profitable. However there are technical issues with satellites for broad band internet service, and the biggest is the available spectral space is quite limiting for vast tracts of the developed world. Basically the issues with satellites are more than just cost
But that begs the question here really.. Is this new approach of using temporary balloon based distribution with the effort? I'm not so sure. Where I see the advantage of this idea, how's the operating cost of such a system going to be less than the existing cell network? What spectrum space are they planning to use? How will they obtain the rights to that space unless they buy it? Perhaps they plan to use 802.11 A/N spectrum under what ever passes as FCC part 15 in the UK?
If they are buying spectrum, they will go broke before they begin because the will be bidding with the Cell companies for the same space... If they are using unlicensed 802.11 a/n, then I wish them luck but I don't support their effort. 802.11 a/n is congested bad enough now, we don't need more emitters floating around making matters worse. Plus as a Amateur radio licensee, I have rights to a lot of that spectrum and thus have priority over part 15 users, and I actually do use some of that space and would not welcome their unlicensed intrusion.