Do you know who edits your text books? I mean, there's a name, but how do you know they're competent, unbiased? How do you even know the name is real? Wikipedia is no different, the veracity of information you receive fom any source should be questioned. The difference with wikis is that this particular problem is evident rather than hidden.
If it costs $10000/lb to send something to orbit, the ISS is worth its weight in gold.
Nope. A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay, it's costs are irrelevant. There's no such thing as intrinsic value.
That means you have to start with... What is someone willing to pay for a week in orbit? Then ask how many people can we get into the thing, how long will it last. Then you have an approximate measure of what the ISS might be worth to a space hotel operator.
There are no space hotel operators at the moment and nobody else really knows what to do with the thing, which means that if the ISS were abandoned tomorrow, it would literally be worthless.
And funnily enough, completely to my surprise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Guvnor of California has done what's required.
What he's done is create a market in permission to pollute, much like the already existing Europe wide market which does exactly the same thing. What happens now is that those who pollute lots have to buy these permissions. It costs them money which goes to those selling excess permissions that they have or to those who manage carbon sinks. The result is that the big polluters start losing money, the greenies start making it.
Now... A few things need to happen:
the cap in permission to pollute just needs to be set to start reducing levels of CO2.
We need to get the rest of the US states involved, as well as developing countries like China and India
Neither of which are particularly easy to do. However you don't need to do anything special, just keep your eye on prices and switch to cheaper products and services as you would do normally. The polluters products and services will automatically start becoming more expensive, the more efficiently produced products and services will automatically become relatively cheaper and the world will be saved because green products and services will be cheaper, more competitive than the others.
It gets its value chiefly because the government is there to back that value up.
Nope, it gets it's value because the supply is limited and demand high. If it was simply because the government backed it up, surely a dollar today would be worth the same as a dollar 50 years ago. It isn't the dollar 50 years ago was worth more, it could buy more, it had more value. The reason today's dollar is worth less is inflation, and inflation happens because the government produces more dollars, the supply has increased so the value of an individual dollar has decreased. Money is subject to the laws of supply and demand exactly like any other commodity, just like a one off super rare sword in a game.
However, that whole way of thinking about things breaks down a little when someone pays $10K on a grilled cheese sandwich because it has a burn mark that looks like jesus.
Eh? It doesn't break down at all. Who decides what something is worth? Who decides value? The individual does. It's worth $10k to him, it's worth less than 10k to you, so you sell it to him. That is how all trade works, how supply and demand works.
There's no difference between "real" money, monopoly money and this "super rare item". They are all bits of data which reside on computers somewhere. They can all be replicated a million times at the press of a key.
There is NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. There is only supply and demand, this applies to "real" money just as much as it applies to monopoly money and "super rare items".
Going to be big, eventually. Try epinions.com or rateit.com. The problem is their rating systems are still very crude indeed.
At some point someone will come up with a reputation system which will allow everything down to individuals to be rated. Perhaps different aspects of a product, service or individual. Possibly classifying the user by their ratings as well in order to more closely predict what someone will like or dislike, just because you like coke doesn't mean that the next guy thinks that pepsi is rubbish, or that the democrats are crap because you're a republican. Hmm, least squares regression I reckon.
They are cheaper for low prices/volumes. The DTI have a comparison web site comparing the processing companies for small businesses: http://www.electronic-payments.co.uk/
My sole point in our discussion has been that no rocket based solution comes close to a space elevator in terms of the ability to put heavy things into orbit, or fling spacecraft out of Earth's gravity well. The space elevator would open up the solar system in a way no modern launch solution could ever hope to (if it were possible to construct one, which it isn't yet).
And my point is that you have absolutely no idea of construction costs, running costs, performamce, reliability. We don't even have estimates which are consistent to within an order of magnitude of each other. All of which are absolutely vital if it's going to be economically viable.
however I also know from history that commerce follows government (or military) funded R&D, not the other way around.
And I know from history that most innovation, commerce and investment has been instigated by the private sector, it's really only since the second world war that the national governments have become so important, and that is down to the fact that the can print money.
What do you think made those possible? All the first order research was done by NASA, or it's counterparts, decades ago. Without that hard work and "wasted" money we would neve have developed the requisite launch technology.
Um. All the first order research was done by the military. In particular the German military.
In terms of energy losses, the elevators are generally accepted to be more effecient (admittedly this is theoretical).
I'm going to assume you're including the efficiency of the electricity generation in that calculation. i.e. Start at around 35% efficient and get worse from there. It will almost certainly require a dedicated nuclear power station to run.
Rocket fuels aren't cheap, and aren't going to get cheaper.
Rocket fuel is not the expensive part of the operation, the fuel cost is negligible compared to the cost of the administration and infrastructure. i.e. the NASA bureaucracy. The shuttle should of course have been scrapped decades ago and replaced by an unmanned heavy lifter, but that's NASA for you. Atlas V, Proton etc can both handle payloads about as big as the shuttle and for a tiny fraction of the price.
then your arguement that "by the time we can build the space elevator, we'll have better tech"
Um, I haven't made that argument. My argument is that by the time a space elevator comes around, rockets and rocket launches will be on a production line and their costs will be amortised over far more launches than currently. Commercialising the launch business will bring cheap space flight, NASA never will.
Same applies for launch vehicles. If they were cheaper, we wouldn't need NASA to develop them, now, would we? Yet virtually all first order space research is done by them, or other national space agencies.
There are several commercial launchers... Despite the subsidised national space agencies.
"Remember that any one shot or resuable lauch vehicle using chemical propulsion has the unavoidable cost of fuel,"
What do you think a space elevator will use, fairy dust? It will consume vast quantities of energy both to build and to operate.
The goal is more like having a vertical subway system that can handle a million passengers *per day*. Think of the New York City subway system... only vertical. *Thats* the long term dream/goal of people who are into the concept of the space elevator.
Right... And the mods didn't mod you "Completely Insane"... BTW where is the "Completely Insane" moderation option. I think Slashdot would benefit hugely from that particular one.
Say it costs 1 trillion dollars to build. The first ride up would cost $1T. The second ride up would cost $500B
Really. And, there are no running costs, no infrastructure to be maintained, no personnel costs. No repairs to the structure of the elevator? Nothing has to be replaced over the 20, 30, 100 years of daily use? And you have to remember this is a 35,000km rail line. How long does it take to get to orbit, how many simultaneous launches are running? And remember it's only going to be able to lift things, not bring them down because that would tie up the elevator for several days or a week, maybe two, how fast are the vehicles going to travel up that 35,000km cable? How do you power the lifts, nuclear power station ?
So how many launches would it take to be competitive with a rocket launch vehicle, not the shuttle, lets talk about commercial launch vehicles instead since we're talking economic viability. It isn't really clear a space elevator will ever be able to reduce it's costs to be competitive with commercial launch vehicles as they become cheaper.
The government just prints more money when it needs some. Simple... Ok it's not that simple, really they usually borrow it, that's why you're 8.5 trillion USD in debt.
Would be required to make a space elevator economically viable? Bearing in mind that a simple tin can in space cost around 100 billion up to around 2000.
The ISP placed their data centre near a major fault line. OK i've heard of bravado but that's taking the piss. "Hahaha mother nature, we have six lines. SIX! Mwhaahaha... Do your worst!" CEO gestures at the ground cackling wildly.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know who edits your text books? I mean, there's a name, but how do you know they're competent, unbiased? How do you even know the name is real? Wikipedia is no different, the veracity of information you receive fom any source should be questioned. The difference with wikis is that this particular problem is evident rather than hidden.
This differs from any other form of publication?
Wiki based educational books on just about everything.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
Nope. A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay, it's costs are irrelevant. There's no such thing as intrinsic value.
That means you have to start with... What is someone willing to pay for a week in orbit? Then ask how many people can we get into the thing, how long will it last. Then you have an approximate measure of what the ISS might be worth to a space hotel operator.
There are no space hotel operators at the moment and nobody else really knows what to do with the thing, which means that if the ISS were abandoned tomorrow, it would literally be worthless.
And funnily enough, completely to my surprise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Guvnor of California has done what's required.
What he's done is create a market in permission to pollute, much like the already existing Europe wide market which does exactly the same thing. What happens now is that those who pollute lots have to buy these permissions. It costs them money which goes to those selling excess permissions that they have or to those who manage carbon sinks. The result is that the big polluters start losing money, the greenies start making it.
Now... A few things need to happen:
Neither of which are particularly easy to do. However you don't need to do anything special, just keep your eye on prices and switch to cheaper products and services as you would do normally. The polluters products and services will automatically start becoming more expensive, the more efficiently produced products and services will automatically become relatively cheaper and the world will be saved because green products and services will be cheaper, more competitive than the others.
Nope, it gets it's value because the supply is limited and demand high. If it was simply because the government backed it up, surely a dollar today would be worth the same as a dollar 50 years ago. It isn't the dollar 50 years ago was worth more, it could buy more, it had more value. The reason today's dollar is worth less is inflation, and inflation happens because the government produces more dollars, the supply has increased so the value of an individual dollar has decreased. Money is subject to the laws of supply and demand exactly like any other commodity, just like a one off super rare sword in a game.
Eh? It doesn't break down at all. Who decides what something is worth? Who decides value? The individual does. It's worth $10k to him, it's worth less than 10k to you, so you sell it to him. That is how all trade works, how supply and demand works.
There's no difference between "real" money, monopoly money and this "super rare item". They are all bits of data which reside on computers somewhere. They can all be replicated a million times at the press of a key.
There is NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. There is only supply and demand, this applies to "real" money just as much as it applies to monopoly money and "super rare items".
The same is true of real money. There is no intrinsic value, only supply and demand.
Someone's written an article on reputation systems and it even mentions slashdot's karma.
i ndex.html
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/
Going to be big, eventually. Try epinions.com or rateit.com. The problem is their rating systems are still very crude indeed.
At some point someone will come up with a reputation system which will allow everything down to individuals to be rated. Perhaps different aspects of a product, service or individual. Possibly classifying the user by their ratings as well in order to more closely predict what someone will like or dislike, just because you like coke doesn't mean that the next guy thinks that pepsi is rubbish, or that the democrats are crap because you're a republican. Hmm, least squares regression I reckon.
You kill the character. Isn't that half the point of mmorpgs?
Use nochex
http://www.nochex.com/
They are cheaper for low prices/volumes. The DTI have a comparison web site comparing the processing companies for small businesses:
http://www.electronic-payments.co.uk/
Nochex, worldpay or whatever.
they sell advertising... in exchange for money.
And my point is that you have absolutely no idea of construction costs, running costs, performamce, reliability. We don't even have estimates which are consistent to within an order of magnitude of each other. All of which are absolutely vital if it's going to be economically viable.
And I know from history that most innovation, commerce and investment has been instigated by the private sector, it's really only since the second world war that the national governments have become so important, and that is down to the fact that the can print money.
Um. All the first order research was done by the military. In particular the German military.
I'm going to assume you're including the efficiency of the electricity generation in that calculation. i.e. Start at around 35% efficient and get worse from there. It will almost certainly require a dedicated nuclear power station to run.
Rocket fuel is not the expensive part of the operation, the fuel cost is negligible compared to the cost of the administration and infrastructure. i.e. the NASA bureaucracy. The shuttle should of course have been scrapped decades ago and replaced by an unmanned heavy lifter, but that's NASA for you. Atlas V, Proton etc can both handle payloads about as big as the shuttle and for a tiny fraction of the price.
Um, I haven't made that argument. My argument is that by the time a space elevator comes around, rockets and rocket launches will be on a production line and their costs will be amortised over far more launches than currently. Commercialising the launch business will bring cheap space flight, NASA never will.
There are several commercial launchers... Despite the subsidised national space agencies.
What do you think a space elevator will use, fairy dust? It will consume vast quantities of energy both to build and to operate.
A "power" user. *sigh*
Right... And the mods didn't mod you "Completely Insane"... BTW where is the "Completely Insane" moderation option. I think Slashdot would benefit hugely from that particular one.
It won't need tax payer funding, now will it? Someone will make a lot of money building one and economic forces will drive business it's way.
Really. And, there are no running costs, no infrastructure to be maintained, no personnel costs. No repairs to the structure of the elevator? Nothing has to be replaced over the 20, 30, 100 years of daily use? And you have to remember this is a 35,000km rail line. How long does it take to get to orbit, how many simultaneous launches are running? And remember it's only going to be able to lift things, not bring them down because that would tie up the elevator for several days or a week, maybe two, how fast are the vehicles going to travel up that 35,000km cable? How do you power the lifts, nuclear power station ?
So how many launches would it take to be competitive with a rocket launch vehicle, not the shuttle, lets talk about commercial launch vehicles instead since we're talking economic viability. It isn't really clear a space elevator will ever be able to reduce it's costs to be competitive with commercial launch vehicles as they become cheaper.
The government just prints more money when it needs some. Simple... Ok it's not that simple, really they usually borrow it, that's why you're 8.5 trillion USD in debt.
Would be required to make a space elevator economically viable? Bearing in mind that a simple tin can in space cost around 100 billion up to around 2000.
If you expect and plan for failure. design your systems so that failure doesn't take you out.
The ISP placed their data centre near a major fault line. OK i've heard of bravado but that's taking the piss. "Hahaha mother nature, we have six lines. SIX! Mwhaahaha... Do your worst!" CEO gestures at the ground cackling wildly.