Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that we launch people into space to save room on earth. I was suggesting that we use the resources of space to support more people on earth.
Your faith in technology you don't even understand is not going to save us. People who have studied these things say we're in trouble if we continue to polute the planet as we are, and if some major, concerted effort is not made to move from oil and coal to fusion and hydrogen we're all seriously screwed. Fusion power is a technology with a roadmap that will be ready around the time the oil runs dry and until then we have other, efficient, non-poluting ways to make hydrogen. We have solar, wind, and methane hydrates. Hydrogen fuel cells we can move to today, we just need more platinum (or a new way of making fuel cells that doesn't need platinum, and unfortunately there are no indications of that happening anytime soon). We can get that platinum from space using technology we've had for over 30 years.
Ok, so now that you're interested I'm going to direct you to the book Moonrush where Dennis Wingo spells out a solution to the oil crisis by jump starting the hydrogen economy by collecting platinum-group metals from the Moon where they are vastly more common than here on earth. With the people of earth's energy needs refocused on electrical power we would immediately see the technological advance of fusion power accelerated such that CO2 production over the next 50 years is dramatically reduced. And the final icing on the cake, is that once commercially viable fusion reactors are online we can begin sending helium3 from the moon to earth.. the cleanest, most efficient fuel known to human kind.
All the other problems of earth stem from energy production.
Yes, that's what we're talking about. The earth's resources are being maxed out, at a faster and faster pace every year. We're destroying the planet and there's only two ways out: stop living as we are and watch every year as our standards of living drop or head out into space and bring the vast resources available back to earth.
Wow. Way to jump into the middle of a conversation. We're talking about exhausting the earth's resources. It doesn't matter how much "wealth" you create if there aint enough resources to go around. That's the point. We're reaching a point in history where the earth can't support the current population and things are only going to get worse from here.
I should just make it plain that I'm not suggesting we just shuffle people off into space, I'm suggesting that we go to space, get the resources and bring them back to earth. Then the earth will be able to support a much bigger population and growth can continue. However, if you are of the opinion that growth can, will, or should stop without expansion off the earth then I'm afraid you're going to have to give up your computer, your car and, if you're in a third world nation, probably your life. Technology, bound to the earth, can only do so much, then we run out of resources.
The only way to get rid of poverty is for the people who are rich to give up their standard of living to help those who are less fortunate. If you consider the earth a closed system, then it is a zero sum game.
So true. Unfortunately there was one thing about BeOS that made it so much more than just "threaded everything".. the realtime support in the kernel. Linux has some hacks for realtime support, but not in Linus' tree.
Look, Seaquest DSV told us everything we needed to know about the oceans OK? Train a dolphin to speak english and all they ever talk about is fish. Build cities at the bottom of the sea and all you get are people complaining that the slightest crack in their domes will kill them and it's really really cold. Not to mention the dorky kids who are so geeky they even make me cringe.
Re:Space travel - no kidding
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I prefer to put it another way. If you're not for space exploration they you must be for a conservation of resources. That is, you must be for a scaling back of population growth on earth and per capita energy consumption. This is just obvious. If the population of the earth keeps growing we won't have enough resources to maintain our current level of living conditions. Studies of population have shown that as the affluence of the society increases, the birth rate slows to match the death rate and population stablises. Or to put it less tactfully: poor people breed faster than rich people. So if you consider the earth as a closed system you have to either raise the standard of living around the world to a level where population growth ceases "naturally" or you have to commit the resources of the rich into forcing the poor not to breed. Would anyone care to guess which is more likely? Right, so if we're willing to agree that considering the earth as a closed system leads to the logical conclusion that the world population growth must be controlled by force, then I can sum up your two options right now..
You are either for the expansion of growth of the human population off the earth and into space or you are for mass murder and restricted personal liberty to control population growth here on earth.
Personally I don't think there's a choice. We must expand into space. Of course, there's also the third option. The so called what, me worry? approach. Which is to just pop your hands over your ears and sing "lalalalalala" and hope the whole issue will go away. Thing is, we can afford to do this, but chances are that the next generation won't.
I recently read M o o n r u s h. The renouned commercial spaceflight author Dennis Wingo makes the argument that for a $20 billion investment humans could return to the Moon perminately, mine precious metals needed to kickstart the hydrogen economy and eventually turn a profit. That much investment includes all the launches and all the equipment needed. Of course, it won't happen with some angel investor handing over that much capital at once with some vague hope of a return on investment. No, the way it will happen is with small incremental missions with each returning an investment. Dennis Wingo's current project is Orbital Recovery. They're developing a space tug to station keep satellites when their fuel runs out to keep them operational beyond their designated decommission dates. The space tug that is developed as a result is an integral part of the return to the moon system. How long? Give it 20 years.
You mean the guy who thinks functionality is more important than freedom? The guy who has no problem with DRM in the linux kernel? Theo de Raadt may be an asshole and he may have declared his hate for the FSF on more than one occasion but at least he's always stood up for freedom... that's why he deserved to win last year's award.
Lemonade? Please. I made it just for you. You are my best friend. Mm, this really hits the spot. Doesn't it, though. You make really good lemonade, Scratchy. Oh, thank you, Itchy.
1. I agreed with you already. 2. Have you considered that manned space flight is currently pointless because we can't go anywhere? And we can't go anywhere cause we havn't done enough research into manned space flight?
I think manned space flight could be useful. If we went and mined the moon or the asteroids or we send field biologists to mars or whatever. So what do we need to do this? Hmm.. guess we're gunna have people living in space for a long time.. and people tend to get really fucked up by being in space for a long time. So maybe if we spinned them around a lot it would be enough like gravity that they wouldn't get fucked up.. but what's that gunna do to their brains? Ok, research points numbers one and two. Then ya need shields and food right. Great, there's some more research stuff. Then there's all that research that you don't need the ISS for which is on the ISS page for no apparent reason.. Yep, that is pointless.
Of course, there's no reason for NASA to do any of this stuff because they get their money for nothin'. The US tax payer gets to pony up the cash.. so they don't need to justify their existance. Would a commercial entity do this better if they just put in the initial investment already? Yeah, probably, but there's too much risk at the moment. So here's a plan. When the current crop of commercial launch companies get through their milk-the-pork stage, they might actually start looking at how to get some of them sweet space-cheese gigs. They'll probably try to do it entirely with robots and learn that we don't have the technology for that either. So they'll ramp up a manned mission. Unfortunately what will keep them grounded isn't the cost, it's the laws that currently stand in their way or fail to recognise resources collected from space as property.
Hey, I'm just like you, I don't get told anything different. If the manned space program delivers anything more than Tang and Velcro they aint sayin'. That is not to say that there's nothing in space worth going out there for. The resources available in the space around our planet far exceed anything on earth but government spending is the worst way to go about getting them.
The problem is government spending. The problem is the taxes that a government with more power than the people they represent can demand. Doesn't matter if they're sending people up in the air or buying bombs to drop on foreign countries. Big government is nothing but big problems.
Ya know, he shouldn't really have to. You should just go to the NASA web site and read about the research they are doing on the ISS. Of course, the next thing you'll say is that none of this research is necessary.. or that it could be done better with instruments. Unfortunately, you're probably right.
Yep, and it's this attitude which will doom the US space program, sooner or later. The problem is that the people in charge happen to think the same as you. Space is just a really really really big lab for doing science as far as NASA is concerned. They don't even care if or when that science results in benefits for the whole of human kind. That's why average people have no idea what the space program achieves. How could they, NASA isn't required to justify its existance and therefore it doesn't.
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Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that we launch people into space to save room on earth. I was suggesting that we use the resources of space to support more people on earth.
Your faith in technology you don't even understand is not going to save us. People who have studied these things say we're in trouble if we continue to polute the planet as we are, and if some major, concerted effort is not made to move from oil and coal to fusion and hydrogen we're all seriously screwed. Fusion power is a technology with a roadmap that will be ready around the time the oil runs dry and until then we have other, efficient, non-poluting ways to make hydrogen. We have solar, wind, and methane hydrates. Hydrogen fuel cells we can move to today, we just need more platinum (or a new way of making fuel cells that doesn't need platinum, and unfortunately there are no indications of that happening anytime soon). We can get that platinum from space using technology we've had for over 30 years.
Ok, so now that you're interested I'm going to direct you to the book Moonrush where Dennis Wingo spells out a solution to the oil crisis by jump starting the hydrogen economy by collecting platinum-group metals from the Moon where they are vastly more common than here on earth. With the people of earth's energy needs refocused on electrical power we would immediately see the technological advance of fusion power accelerated such that CO2 production over the next 50 years is dramatically reduced. And the final icing on the cake, is that once commercially viable fusion reactors are online we can begin sending helium3 from the moon to earth.. the cleanest, most efficient fuel known to human kind.
All the other problems of earth stem from energy production.
Yes, that's what we're talking about. The earth's resources are being maxed out, at a faster and faster pace every year. We're destroying the planet and there's only two ways out: stop living as we are and watch every year as our standards of living drop or head out into space and bring the vast resources available back to earth.
Wow. Way to jump into the middle of a conversation. We're talking about exhausting the earth's resources. It doesn't matter how much "wealth" you create if there aint enough resources to go around. That's the point. We're reaching a point in history where the earth can't support the current population and things are only going to get worse from here.
I should just make it plain that I'm not suggesting we just shuffle people off into space, I'm suggesting that we go to space, get the resources and bring them back to earth. Then the earth will be able to support a much bigger population and growth can continue. However, if you are of the opinion that growth can, will, or should stop without expansion off the earth then I'm afraid you're going to have to give up your computer, your car and, if you're in a third world nation, probably your life. Technology, bound to the earth, can only do so much, then we run out of resources.
The only way to get rid of poverty is for the people who are rich to give up their standard of living to help those who are less fortunate. If you consider the earth a closed system, then it is a zero sum game.
So true. Unfortunately there was one thing about BeOS that made it so much more than just "threaded everything".. the realtime support in the kernel. Linux has some hacks for realtime support, but not in Linus' tree.
Look, Seaquest DSV told us everything we needed to know about the oceans OK? Train a dolphin to speak english and all they ever talk about is fish. Build cities at the bottom of the sea and all you get are people complaining that the slightest crack in their domes will kill them and it's really really cold. Not to mention the dorky kids who are so geeky they even make me cringe.
You are either for the expansion of growth of the human population off the earth and into space or you are for mass murder and restricted personal liberty to control population growth here on earth.
Personally I don't think there's a choice. We must expand into space. Of course, there's also the third option. The so called what, me worry? approach. Which is to just pop your hands over your ears and sing "lalalalalala" and hope the whole issue will go away. Thing is, we can afford to do this, but chances are that the next generation won't.
I recently read M o o n r u s h. The renouned commercial spaceflight author Dennis Wingo makes the argument that for a $20 billion investment humans could return to the Moon perminately, mine precious metals needed to kickstart the hydrogen economy and eventually turn a profit. That much investment includes all the launches and all the equipment needed. Of course, it won't happen with some angel investor handing over that much capital at once with some vague hope of a return on investment. No, the way it will happen is with small incremental missions with each returning an investment. Dennis Wingo's current project is Orbital Recovery. They're developing a space tug to station keep satellites when their fuel runs out to keep them operational beyond their designated decommission dates. The space tug that is developed as a result is an integral part of the return to the moon system. How long? Give it 20 years.
cock smoker.
Well, they're right, if you'd just scripted the GIMP it would have taken you minutes.
Now I know how "normal" people feel when I start talking about code.
You mean the guy who thinks functionality is more important than freedom? The guy who has no problem with DRM in the linux kernel? Theo de Raadt may be an asshole and he may have declared his hate for the FSF on more than one occasion but at least he's always stood up for freedom... that's why he deserved to win last year's award.
The teens are growing up genius and they aint changing their mode of speech.
Lemonade? Please. I made it just for you. You are my best friend. Mm, this really hits the spot. Doesn't it, though. You make really good lemonade, Scratchy.
Oh, thank you, Itchy.
It's set in a boys reform school. So surely gang rape and circle jerks are necessary to maintain immersion.
1. I agreed with you already. 2. Have you considered that manned space flight is currently pointless because we can't go anywhere? And we can't go anywhere cause we havn't done enough research into manned space flight?
I think manned space flight could be useful. If we went and mined the moon or the asteroids or we send field biologists to mars or whatever. So what do we need to do this? Hmm.. guess we're gunna have people living in space for a long time.. and people tend to get really fucked up by being in space for a long time. So maybe if we spinned them around a lot it would be enough like gravity that they wouldn't get fucked up.. but what's that gunna do to their brains? Ok, research points numbers one and two. Then ya need shields and food right. Great, there's some more research stuff. Then there's all that research that you don't need the ISS for which is on the ISS page for no apparent reason.. Yep, that is pointless.
Of course, there's no reason for NASA to do any of this stuff because they get their money for nothin'. The US tax payer gets to pony up the cash.. so they don't need to justify their existance. Would a commercial entity do this better if they just put in the initial investment already? Yeah, probably, but there's too much risk at the moment. So here's a plan. When the current crop of commercial launch companies get through their milk-the-pork stage, they might actually start looking at how to get some of them sweet space-cheese gigs. They'll probably try to do it entirely with robots and learn that we don't have the technology for that either. So they'll ramp up a manned mission. Unfortunately what will keep them grounded isn't the cost, it's the laws that currently stand in their way or fail to recognise resources collected from space as property.
Hey, I'm just like you, I don't get told anything different. If the manned space program delivers anything more than Tang and Velcro they aint sayin'. That is not to say that there's nothing in space worth going out there for. The resources available in the space around our planet far exceed anything on earth but government spending is the worst way to go about getting them.
The problem is government spending. The problem is the taxes that a government with more power than the people they represent can demand. Doesn't matter if they're sending people up in the air or buying bombs to drop on foreign countries. Big government is nothing but big problems.
Ya know, he shouldn't really have to. You should just go to the NASA web site and read about the research they are doing on the ISS. Of course, the next thing you'll say is that none of this research is necessary.. or that it could be done better with instruments. Unfortunately, you're probably right.
Yep, and it's this attitude which will doom the US space program, sooner or later. The problem is that the people in charge happen to think the same as you. Space is just a really really really big lab for doing science as far as NASA is concerned. They don't even care if or when that science results in benefits for the whole of human kind. That's why average people have no idea what the space program achieves. How could they, NASA isn't required to justify its existance and therefore it doesn't.
That's the end of manned space flight in the US. I don't even think commercial manned space flight will be permitted.
Blah, if you RTFA you'd know what the standard was.