Except it would not be true. Nobody has a right to tell me what I can do with something I have purchased from them, unless I made an agreement with them. The law may purport to give them such a right, but that does not make it so.
I'm a literal (6000-year) creationist, and I fail to see how the Creation rules out life on other planets. It just isn't in the original text, although I suppose a lot of people (both religious and non-religious) have tried to read it into it.
That's interesting. I'm a fundamentalist Christian, and intensely interested in finding life on Mars. (And in sending manned missions, too; see my recent posting history.) What exactly will I be proved wrong about if/when life is discovered on Mars?
Re:Oh shut the fuck up please.
on
Game with God
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· Score: 1
I define true Christianity by proving it against the Bible. The Catholic Church's own Bible condemns them. Size and numbers have nothing to do with it. I'm just identifying true Christianity as those who actually follow the tenets of their religion.
Very quick way to check this: I Timothy 3 states that a bishop must be married. Does the Catholic Church do that?
I guess n-1/n is the percentage of them being wrong (where n is the number of sects, n -> infinite).
It should be a simple thing for someone, even one who does not accept the Bible, to compare a church against its teachings and see if they are really the church talked about in the Bible or not. What might be far harder is covering all N churches in one lifetime.:)
I realize Zubrin may be quite overoptimistic. But NASA's Mars Design Reference Mission, based on Mars Direct, comes in at 50 billion dollars for three missions. (Zubrin says 20 billion dollars for one.) And this was estimated by the same team within NASA that estimated the 90 day report mission to Mars plan from 1989 at 450-500 billion dollars. I'm taking NASA's word for it, not Zubrin's.
much of the technology he depends on is nothing but vaporware
That is so untrue as to make me question whether you have truly examined Zubrin's plans. (Admittedly I have not finished examining Zubrin's plans, so if you have something concrete to back up this assertion, provide it.) Mars Direct was based on the technology of the day (so circa 1990 technology). There are some specific rockets and components and such that have not been built, but they are not out of the realm of existing technology. The fuel production process has only been prototyped, but it is simple chemistry and all evidence indicates it would work, and it would in any case be sent to Mars well in advance of the actual crew.
Meanwhile it is NASA's plans that rely on vaporware technology: on-orbit assembly of spacecraft larger than ever before built; space stations (far larger than what we've got) and moon bases; nuclear powered propulsion. Zubrin deliberately avoids all of this stuff in his plan because it has never been tried.
his plans are great if all you want is another sterile stunt, but they are unsustainable
Goodness; do you even know the details of his plans? At a time when NASA was considering a multi year mission that would provide only 30 days on Mars, Zubrin proposed a mission to give them an extended stay of a year (or so... don't have the figures before me). Far from a stunt, Zubrin proposes repeatedly putting teams on Mars and exploring the whole planet. Every two years (at an estimated cost of $2 billion beyond the initial startup costs), he would send another team to Mars and another return vehicle. Eventually he wants someone to just stay, if a large enough base gets built.
Do you have some concrete reason to call his plans unsustainable, based on your own examination of them? Or were you simply unaware that he planned extensive exploration missions with repeated launches every two years for the indefinite future?
Ask me for references on any of this, if you want; or check out my posting history and take the links I gave someone else the other day.
Personally, I think Zubrin is *way* too optimistic about the development cost of a number of things... I'm with the more pessimistic people at NASA on this one when I say "no way".:)
Maybe you didn't notice where the people at NASA more or less agreed with Zubrin's estimate?
A Mars mission would not need to ship nuclear power plants, at least not according to the Mars Direct plan. Maybe you should review it. Mars Direct does not call for any technology that did not exist at the time it was planned.
You keep handing me the same info, and I keep handing you Mars Direct, and you keep indicating you are unfamiliar with its particulars.
Re:Semi-serious?
on
Game with God
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I am a Christian.
Here's the thing: original sin is a disgusting idea for the simple fact that it blames descendents of a pair of people 2,000 years down the line, for the actions of those two people (assuming the myth is taking as wholly true).
Agreed, and I believe the "myth" is true. The fact is, Original Sin is not in the Bible and is contradicted by the Bible (in many places like, for example, Ezekiel 18). To go back up a few posts, the original assertion that you would go to hell if you lived a perfect life is just plain WRONG.
Sorry; I wasn't paying attention to which of my posts you replied to. Please see this one to see what I was talking about in my response earlier today.
Note that, if we really want to, we can finance going to Mars and continue invading countries. I'll leave finding money to finance invasion of additional countries to other more interested parties.
You are talking about NASA's older plan; I am talking about Mars Direct. I am not arguing that costs have decreased; only that better mission plans exist. What has advanced is not the technology or the financial situation, but the plan.
The reason I say your figures are out of date is that (unless I misunderstand) they come from the 90-day report of ca. 1989/90. Since then, NASA has itself considered Zubrin's Mars Direct plan and adopted based on it the "Mars Design Reference Mission," with costs about twice that of Mars Direct (so, 40 billion dollars). Reference here. I found the Design Reference Mission plan document itself in.gov but could not find the official estimates; the plan itself breaks down by percentage but not dollars.) So as you can see, costs of 400-500 billion dollars are way off.
And there is no need for a moon base before we go to Mars. This is part of the foundation of Mars Direct.
I encourage you to get ahold of the book A Case For Mars, which lays out the Mars Direct (though only at layman-level detail). Even NASA does not now believe Mars will take 400-500 billion dollars.
Going to Mars can be done for 20 billion dollars, not 400 billion dollars. You are citing a figure that is a decade out of date. We can and should appropriate the money right now and get started.
For $2 billion a year, perpetually, NASA could send an exploratory mission to Mars every other year and establish a colony. Sounds good to me. I'm sure if we looked we could find a $2 billion project to scrap that doesn't have near the return in basic technology improvements as an actual manned Mars exploration program would.
Supposedly, space stations were needed for on-orbital assembly of spacecraft to take us to Mars, a reprehensible, wasteful idea that was demonstrated to be obsolete a decade ago by Robert Zubrin. I'm sure we're learning a lot from it, but if we scrapped it we could put the money toward something useful, like getting to Mars.
I have been reading Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct (borrowed from my father-in-law) and yesterday I came to a conclusion. I must mention that I have some very deeply held political ideology: I am a strong anarcho-libertarian. I believe all taxation ought to be repealed, the purpose of government ought to be limited to defense of rights against aggression, important government projects like space exploration ought to be handled through voluntary donation and/or private enterprise, and government ought to relinquish its monopoly and allow competing governments to be set up within the same geographic region.
HOWEVER
Reading Mars Direct yesterday I suddenly found myself just amazingly mad. Yes, space exploration ought to be handled by private enterprise... but the reforms needed to bring about the ideal libertarian society I believe would handle this are decades off and will probably not occur in my lifetime. Meanwhile, the government is still taking our money... and what are we getting for it? Mankind has not set foot on the moon in my lifetime, and even if he did I'm not sure what it would accomplish. But Mars has been sitting there, waiting. How many billions of dollars have been spent on the space program since man landed on the moon in 1969, and why have those billions of dollars not gotten us to Mars?
If they are going to take my money away to support space exploration, something I would have voluntarily given my contributions for, they ought to at least produce what they promise to deliver. But we're sitting on earth, noone is in transit to Mars, and noone is there to look at these emissions of ammonia and methane to see if it's rocks or life.
And the saddest thing of all is... for a mere 20 billion dollars, someone could be sitting there right now to answer our questions for us. That's awful.
So yesterday I threw a lot of my principles out the window. Yes, I don't believe space exploration should be handled by governments instead of private industry... but for crying out loud, it ought to be handled, somehow! And we shouldn't have to wait until my grandchildren have grandchildren to see it. It can be done, now for $20 billion. It ought to start TODAY. George Bush (I like him; I know many of you do not) should be on the news, announcing that we have a plan to take us to Mars in less than 10 years for 20 billion dollars, and it starts today. Congress ought to be passing the paperwork as we speak. This is more important than just about any other political issue. This is about the future of the human race. Are we going to stagnate, or are we going to explore the new frontier?
And you know what? That $20 billion is trivial. Governments spend that all the time. That's less than 1% of the national debt. And after all the trouble we went to to get a balanced budget, we're currently running a deficit again. Look, if we can pay off $3 trillion (that was the national debt when I was about 15; I don't know what it is, now) at some unidentified future date, we can pay off another $20 billion at some unidentified future date. Quit whining, borrow the money, and do it! The plans are sitting on your desk.
NASA could be scrapped and we'd free up $15.5 billion for this project. But actually if we spread the plan out over ten years, it's only $2 billion. Half of NASA's plans are silly float humans in LEO plans that are doing nothing, anyway. (Many of these are designed to research irrelevant Mars mission scenarios, like long term effects to zero-g. Mars Direct provides for spinning the transit vehicle (duh!) to provide gravity. What a waste!) Drop a few of those, free up the money, and do it. Better yet, forget NASA altogether. Let NASA go ahead with their work (yes, much of it is excellent; I'm just in rant mode; the rovers are great, the probes are great, but the places we are sending humans stink). Meanwhile, we could just increase
I don't understand. Why should his thoughts and his speech (though reprehensible) be a crime? Why should playing in a chess tournament be a crime?
I am totally unfamiliar with the case, but I have the feeling there's a lot of things the slashdot writeup assumes I should know. Maybe I should go read the article.
Hmm, got mixed opinions. "Voluntary" is a magic word that can almost mean this could possibly be all right, but there are issues like minor children and such that complicate matters. Restricting it away from criminal law would at least mean there wouldn't be any removed hands or executions, right?
As a thought experiment, wouldn't the explusion of women who refuse to live by sharia law from the community be a good thing, in your opinion? Don't you want that community to shrink? (Yes, it would have severe consequences for the women, but there is a larger community outside that should (presumably) be helping them.)
No, I'm not defending sharia law, just trying to look at issues. (And educate myself... I had no idea your country was even considering this possibility, and I'm still flabbergasted.)
I'll wager that turns out to be the case. In addition, it's been stated somewhere (perhaps that original episode) that the treaty with the Romulans was basically negotiated by proxy or something, such that the sides never personally saw each other.
I know that the novels Spock's World and The Romulan Way established that the Romulans were an extremely xenophobic group of Vulcans that left the Vulcan homeworld after the twin events of Surak's promulgation of logic as the way to live and Vulcan's first contact with an alien race.
Yikes; I cannot help it; the parallels are so striking:
1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.
2 And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.
3 And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days` journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.
4 And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? get you unto your burdens.
5 And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.
6 And the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying,
7 Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.
8 And the number of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof: for they are idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.
9 Let heavier work be laid upon the men, that they may labor therein; and let them not regard lying words.
10 And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw.
11 Go yourselves, get you straw where ye can find it: for nought of your work shall be diminished.
12 So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw.
13 And the taskmasters were urgent saying, Fulfil your works, [your] daily tasks, as when there was straw.
14 And the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh`s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and to-day, in making brick as heretofore?
15 Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?
16 There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault it in thine own people.
17 But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and sacrifice to Jehovah.
18 Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the number of bricks.
19 And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case, when it was said, Ye shall not diminish aught from your bricks, [your] daily tasks.
To summarize, assuming you don't want to wade through the archaic English of the (believe it or not) 1901 American Standard Version Bible: when Moses came to Pharoah demanding on God's authority that the Israelite slaves be freed, the Pharaoh responded by withdrawing the supply of straw that was vital for the brick-making task the slaves were assigned to, yet insisting that they continue to produce the same number of bricks each day. The people were beaten for failing to produce their quotas. This is one of the parts of the Bible that has some supporting evidence through archaelogy: slave-built buildings from ancient Egypt have been uncovered where the bricks at the bottom are made with straw and then, as you go up, there is less straw in the middle, and finally none.
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In other words, only a privileged class of experts will be allowed to do this. The unwashed masses will have no recourse.
Except it would not be true. Nobody has a right to tell me what I can do with something I have purchased from them, unless I made an agreement with them. The law may purport to give them such a right, but that does not make it so.
Actually, it is you who fail to see. I know why people do not share my view, but you do not know why people do not share yours.
I'm a literal (6000-year) creationist, and I fail to see how the Creation rules out life on other planets. It just isn't in the original text, although I suppose a lot of people (both religious and non-religious) have tried to read it into it.
That's interesting. I'm a fundamentalist Christian, and intensely interested in finding life on Mars. (And in sending manned missions, too; see my recent posting history.) What exactly will I be proved wrong about if/when life is discovered on Mars?
I define true Christianity by proving it against the Bible. The Catholic Church's own Bible condemns them. Size and numbers have nothing to do with it. I'm just identifying true Christianity as those who actually follow the tenets of their religion.
Very quick way to check this: I Timothy 3 states that a bishop must be married. Does the Catholic Church do that?
I guess n-1/n is the percentage of them being wrong (where n is the number of sects, n -> infinite).
Well, Jesus said in the Bible that not many would be saved and also that many who call him Lord would discover on the last day that they were wrong. The Bible further states that there would be false prophets among Christians constantly. So while the math you posted above might be counterintuitive, it is at least consistent with the tenets of the religion.
It should be a simple thing for someone, even one who does not accept the Bible, to compare a church against its teachings and see if they are really the church talked about in the Bible or not. What might be far harder is covering all N churches in one lifetime. :)
So while the math you postulated aboveDo be aware that Zubrin's costs are quite low
I realize Zubrin may be quite overoptimistic. But NASA's Mars Design Reference Mission, based on Mars Direct, comes in at 50 billion dollars for three missions. (Zubrin says 20 billion dollars for one.) And this was estimated by the same team within NASA that estimated the 90 day report mission to Mars plan from 1989 at 450-500 billion dollars. I'm taking NASA's word for it, not Zubrin's.
much of the technology he depends on is nothing but vaporware
That is so untrue as to make me question whether you have truly examined Zubrin's plans. (Admittedly I have not finished examining Zubrin's plans, so if you have something concrete to back up this assertion, provide it.) Mars Direct was based on the technology of the day (so circa 1990 technology). There are some specific rockets and components and such that have not been built, but they are not out of the realm of existing technology. The fuel production process has only been prototyped, but it is simple chemistry and all evidence indicates it would work, and it would in any case be sent to Mars well in advance of the actual crew.
Meanwhile it is NASA's plans that rely on vaporware technology: on-orbit assembly of spacecraft larger than ever before built; space stations (far larger than what we've got) and moon bases; nuclear powered propulsion. Zubrin deliberately avoids all of this stuff in his plan because it has never been tried.
his plans are great if all you want is another sterile stunt, but they are unsustainable
Goodness; do you even know the details of his plans? At a time when NASA was considering a multi year mission that would provide only 30 days on Mars, Zubrin proposed a mission to give them an extended stay of a year (or so ... don't have the figures before me). Far from a stunt, Zubrin proposes repeatedly putting teams on Mars and exploring the whole planet. Every two years (at an estimated cost of $2 billion beyond the initial startup costs), he would send another team to Mars and another return vehicle. Eventually he wants someone to just stay, if a large enough base gets built.
Do you have some concrete reason to call his plans unsustainable, based on your own examination of them? Or were you simply unaware that he planned extensive exploration missions with repeated launches every two years for the indefinite future?
Ask me for references on any of this, if you want; or check out my posting history and take the links I gave someone else the other day.
Personally, I think Zubrin is *way* too optimistic about the development cost of a number of things ... I'm with the more pessimistic people at NASA on this one when I say "no way". :)
Maybe you didn't notice where the people at NASA more or less agreed with Zubrin's estimate?
A Mars mission would not need to ship nuclear power plants, at least not according to the Mars Direct plan. Maybe you should review it. Mars Direct does not call for any technology that did not exist at the time it was planned.
You keep handing me the same info, and I keep handing you Mars Direct, and you keep indicating you are unfamiliar with its particulars.
I am a Christian.
Here's the thing: original sin is a disgusting idea for the simple fact that it blames descendents of a pair of people 2,000 years down the line, for the actions of those two people (assuming the myth is taking as wholly true).
Agreed, and I believe the "myth" is true. The fact is, Original Sin is not in the Bible and is contradicted by the Bible (in many places like, for example, Ezekiel 18). To go back up a few posts, the original assertion that you would go to hell if you lived a perfect life is just plain WRONG.
For the record, true Christianity does not believe original sin.
Sorry; I wasn't paying attention to which of my posts you replied to. Please see this one to see what I was talking about in my response earlier today.
Note that, if we really want to, we can finance going to Mars and continue invading countries. I'll leave finding money to finance invasion of additional countries to other more interested parties.
You are talking about NASA's older plan; I am talking about Mars Direct. I am not arguing that costs have decreased; only that better mission plans exist. What has advanced is not the technology or the financial situation, but the plan.
The reason I say your figures are out of date is that (unless I misunderstand) they come from the 90-day report of ca. 1989/90. Since then, NASA has itself considered Zubrin's Mars Direct plan and adopted based on it the "Mars Design Reference Mission," with costs about twice that of Mars Direct (so, 40 billion dollars). Reference here. I found the Design Reference Mission plan document itself in .gov but could not find the official estimates; the plan itself breaks down by percentage but not dollars.) So as you can see, costs of 400-500 billion dollars are way off.
And there is no need for a moon base before we go to Mars. This is part of the foundation of Mars Direct.
I encourage you to get ahold of the book A Case For Mars, which lays out the Mars Direct (though only at layman-level detail). Even NASA does not now believe Mars will take 400-500 billion dollars.
More references:
A design reference mission based on Zubrin's proposal, but considerably scaled up in personnel and equipment landed on Mars, was costed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who estimated the cost at around $50 billion for three missions. (emphasis added)
It was essentially a compromise between Mars Direct and the Ninety Day Report, and became known as the Reference Mission. A cost estimate even emerged from the Reference Mission design: $55 billion.
They then produced a cost estimate for what a Mars exploration program based upon this expanded Mars Direct would cost. Their result; $50 billion, with the estimate produced by the same costing group that assigned a $400 billion price tag to the traditional cumbersome approach to human Mars exploration embodied in NASA's 1989 "90 Day Report."
Mars Direct homepage
My rant Friday on the subject (I was hot about this issue at the time; still am, though I've cooled off somewhat)
That's one option.
Note that I also pointed out we could do the entire thing with deficit spending with a less than 1% increase to the national debt.
Going to Mars can be done for 20 billion dollars, not 400 billion dollars. You are citing a figure that is a decade out of date. We can and should appropriate the money right now and get started.
And you are illiterate. Obviously didn't make it past the first paragraph.
For $2 billion a year, perpetually, NASA could send an exploratory mission to Mars every other year and establish a colony. Sounds good to me. I'm sure if we looked we could find a $2 billion project to scrap that doesn't have near the return in basic technology improvements as an actual manned Mars exploration program would.
Supposedly, space stations were needed for on-orbital assembly of spacecraft to take us to Mars, a reprehensible, wasteful idea that was demonstrated to be obsolete a decade ago by Robert Zubrin. I'm sure we're learning a lot from it, but if we scrapped it we could put the money toward something useful, like getting to Mars.
I have been reading Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct (borrowed from my father-in-law) and yesterday I came to a conclusion. I must mention that I have some very deeply held political ideology: I am a strong anarcho-libertarian. I believe all taxation ought to be repealed, the purpose of government ought to be limited to defense of rights against aggression, important government projects like space exploration ought to be handled through voluntary donation and/or private enterprise, and government ought to relinquish its monopoly and allow competing governments to be set up within the same geographic region.
HOWEVER
Reading Mars Direct yesterday I suddenly found myself just amazingly mad. Yes, space exploration ought to be handled by private enterprise ... but the reforms needed to bring about the ideal libertarian society I believe would handle this are decades off and will probably not occur in my lifetime. Meanwhile, the government is still taking our money ... and what are we getting for it? Mankind has not set foot on the moon in my lifetime, and even if he did I'm not sure what it would accomplish. But Mars has been sitting there, waiting. How many billions of dollars have been spent on the space program since man landed on the moon in 1969, and why have those billions of dollars not gotten us to Mars?
If they are going to take my money away to support space exploration, something I would have voluntarily given my contributions for, they ought to at least produce what they promise to deliver. But we're sitting on earth, noone is in transit to Mars, and noone is there to look at these emissions of ammonia and methane to see if it's rocks or life.
And the saddest thing of all is ... for a mere 20 billion dollars, someone could be sitting there right now to answer our questions for us. That's awful.
So yesterday I threw a lot of my principles out the window. Yes, I don't believe space exploration should be handled by governments instead of private industry ... but for crying out loud, it ought to be handled, somehow! And we shouldn't have to wait until my grandchildren have grandchildren to see it. It can be done, now for $20 billion. It ought to start TODAY. George Bush (I like him; I know many of you do not) should be on the news, announcing that we have a plan to take us to Mars in less than 10 years for 20 billion dollars, and it starts today. Congress ought to be passing the paperwork as we speak. This is more important than just about any other political issue. This is about the future of the human race. Are we going to stagnate, or are we going to explore the new frontier?
And you know what? That $20 billion is trivial. Governments spend that all the time. That's less than 1% of the national debt. And after all the trouble we went to to get a balanced budget, we're currently running a deficit again. Look, if we can pay off $3 trillion (that was the national debt when I was about 15; I don't know what it is, now) at some unidentified future date, we can pay off another $20 billion at some unidentified future date. Quit whining, borrow the money, and do it! The plans are sitting on your desk.
NASA could be scrapped and we'd free up $15.5 billion for this project. But actually if we spread the plan out over ten years, it's only $2 billion. Half of NASA's plans are silly float humans in LEO plans that are doing nothing, anyway. (Many of these are designed to research irrelevant Mars mission scenarios, like long term effects to zero-g. Mars Direct provides for spinning the transit vehicle (duh!) to provide gravity. What a waste!) Drop a few of those, free up the money, and do it. Better yet, forget NASA altogether. Let NASA go ahead with their work (yes, much of it is excellent; I'm just in rant mode; the rovers are great, the probes are great, but the places we are sending humans stink). Meanwhile, we could just increase
I don't understand. Why should his thoughts and his speech (though reprehensible) be a crime? Why should playing in a chess tournament be a crime?
I am totally unfamiliar with the case, but I have the feeling there's a lot of things the slashdot writeup assumes I should know. Maybe I should go read the article.
Hmm, got mixed opinions. "Voluntary" is a magic word that can almost mean this could possibly be all right, but there are issues like minor children and such that complicate matters. Restricting it away from criminal law would at least mean there wouldn't be any removed hands or executions, right?
As a thought experiment, wouldn't the explusion of women who refuse to live by sharia law from the community be a good thing, in your opinion? Don't you want that community to shrink? (Yes, it would have severe consequences for the women, but there is a larger community outside that should (presumably) be helping them.)
No, I'm not defending sharia law, just trying to look at issues. (And educate myself ... I had no idea your country was even considering this possibility, and I'm still flabbergasted.)
Where can I read the story behind this?
If it's the liberals in your country who want to allow Sharia law, I'd shudder to know what the conservatives want ... and I'm a conservative.
I'll wager that turns out to be the case. In addition, it's been stated somewhere (perhaps that original episode) that the treaty with the Romulans was basically negotiated by proxy or something, such that the sides never personally saw each other.
I know that the novels Spock's World and The Romulan Way established that the Romulans were an extremely xenophobic group of Vulcans that left the Vulcan homeworld after the twin events of Surak's promulgation of logic as the way to live and Vulcan's first contact with an alien race.
Yes, because, after all, when people spend money it just disappears into the ether.
Look, how exactly do you think tech jobs get created?
Yikes; I cannot help it; the parallels are so striking:
1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. 2 And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go. 3 And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days` journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword. 4 And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. 5 And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and ye make them rest from their burdens. 6 And the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, 7 Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8 And the number of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof: for they are idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. 9 Let heavier work be laid upon the men, that they may labor therein; and let them not regard lying words. 10 And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. 11 Go yourselves, get you straw where ye can find it: for nought of your work shall be diminished. 12 So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. 13 And the taskmasters were urgent saying, Fulfil your works, [your] daily tasks, as when there was straw. 14 And the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh`s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and to-day, in making brick as heretofore? 15 Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? 16 There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault it in thine own people. 17 But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and sacrifice to Jehovah. 18 Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the number of bricks. 19 And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case, when it was said, Ye shall not diminish aught from your bricks, [your] daily tasks.
To summarize, assuming you don't want to wade through the archaic English of the (believe it or not) 1901 American Standard Version Bible: when Moses came to Pharoah demanding on God's authority that the Israelite slaves be freed, the Pharaoh responded by withdrawing the supply of straw that was vital for the brick-making task the slaves were assigned to, yet insisting that they continue to produce the same number of bricks each day. The people were beaten for failing to produce their quotas. This is one of the parts of the Bible that has some supporting evidence through archaelogy: slave-built buildings from ancient Egypt have been uncovered where the bricks at the bottom are made with straw and then, as you go up, there is less straw in the middle, and finally none.
They tried it in The Phantom Menace; it was called a "podrace."