If you think that judging a comment based on the amount of time a person has been on Slashdot is a good way to go, I suspect your opinions are worth less than his.
Or, you know, people don't bring their 'home defense gun' to school, or to a camp. Because that would be incredibly stupid. So the fact that people have guns at home doesn't matter in the slightest when some nut starts walking around shooting people.
It's nice to see somebody else who felt that way. It would suck for the transitional generation, it's true, but in general people were stronger, healthier and smarter. How is that bad?
Sorry, but you're full of shit. My Uncle used to work for a company that produced gelled consumables - stuff like ketchup. He designed bottles that would avoid high adhesion at the bottom. See, it turns out that people get really annoyed when they can't get that last bit out of the bottle. Enough to switch brands, even.
Hmm. I think you're mixing up two different books. Only one of them involved throwing rocks, and the other involved flying lobsters.
One is 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,' the other is 'Accelerando.'
If I remember my readings about this system correctly, the thermal load is expected to be much smaller than the shuttle ever experienced. Since the SABER engines use liquid hydrogen, the tanks are absolutely massive - and on reentry, they're mostly empty. So it's much larger and much lighter than the shuttle. Light, massive objects slow down much, much faster on reentry.
Spare me the name calling. Given humanity's past, there's every reason to believe that humanity will not rise to any challenge that might reduce the standard of living of any large segment of the population. People just don't work that way. 'Mitigating the effects' of consumption is a plan born for failure.
Space based infrastructure is a workaround. If we could mine large asteroids instead of tearing up mountainsides, if we could use the space-based resources to build solar power satellites instead of damning rivers, burning coal and building crappy nuke plants, we might have a chance.
It might be a Hail Mary, but it's still more likely than your proposal.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think that judging a comment based on the amount of time a person has been on Slashdot is a good way to go, I suspect your opinions are worth less than his.
Or, you know, people don't bring their 'home defense gun' to school, or to a camp. Because that would be incredibly stupid. So the fact that people have guns at home doesn't matter in the slightest when some nut starts walking around shooting people.
It's nice to see somebody else who felt that way. It would suck for the transitional generation, it's true, but in general people were stronger, healthier and smarter. How is that bad?
Sorry, but you're full of shit. My Uncle used to work for a company that produced gelled consumables - stuff like ketchup. He designed bottles that would avoid high adhesion at the bottom. See, it turns out that people get really annoyed when they can't get that last bit out of the bottle. Enough to switch brands, even.
Hmm. I think you're mixing up two different books. Only one of them involved throwing rocks, and the other involved flying lobsters. One is 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,' the other is 'Accelerando.'
If I remember my readings about this system correctly, the thermal load is expected to be much smaller than the shuttle ever experienced. Since the SABER engines use liquid hydrogen, the tanks are absolutely massive - and on reentry, they're mostly empty. So it's much larger and much lighter than the shuttle. Light, massive objects slow down much, much faster on reentry.
Space based infrastructure is a workaround. If we could mine large asteroids instead of tearing up mountainsides, if we could use the space-based resources to build solar power satellites instead of damning rivers, burning coal and building crappy nuke plants, we might have a chance.
It might be a Hail Mary, but it's still more likely than your proposal.