You obsession with my feelings is a bit ridiculous. I've already pointed out that my feelings on the subject don't matter. But rather than arguing against that, you chose to ignore it and carry on in self delusion.
Which is patently false since your argument is based on your feelings.
A robot can't be a living bandicoot on Mars either. Your point is?
And if I were intent on colonizing bandicoots on Mars, that would mean that sending robots wouldn't do that either.
You want it, but you can't provide any reason beyond "I want it". You can't otherwise explain why the rest of us should fund it - or you can explain it , but for whatever obscure reason, have chosen not to. Consequently, you won't get that funding , because until there is a valid reason to send a human, we will keep sending robots instead of humans.
There's no point to your verbiage. "Because I want to" is a sufficient argument. Of course, I have reasons why I want it. And if I were, say, trying to convince you to want Mars colonization as well, then I'd expound on them. But I'm not.
Nope. I've made it clear that if people want to engage in historical reenactments using the space technology of yesteryear, then i don't care - as long as they do it on their own dime, and don't cut into the budget associated with science or space exploration. I've no problem with self funded hobbies.
Why do your hobbies get public funding and mine don't? I don't have problems with self-funded hobbies either. Space science for the sake of space science is just another hobby. Please, by all means pay for it yourself out of your own budget.
You apparently think it's significant that I travel for pleasure - however you can't explain why.
Let me make myself clear. I don't care why you travel. I just verified that you do. Because you wrote originally:
Now is the time to embrace the fact that, like manufacturing, information processing, transport, medicine , the future for space travel lies not in the hands of astronauts/taikonauts/cosmonauts but in the grip of machines.
By the fact that you still travel, no matter the reason, then there is something that the "grip" of machines isn't doing for you.
I don't mind you being amazed and exploring the universe on your own dime either. But you ignore your own words when you write things like " we'll get on with the science". That science uses other peoples' money. You're not paying for it.
That, at least is true. If we correctly manage their expectations so that they have a realistic picture of life on Mars, then they won't want to go. Problem solved.
There's this weird blinder thing going on. Why do you think that will happen? I recall all the bad things you said (such as claiming without justification that one's lifespan on Mars would be 24 months). I get the impression you just hope you're right and that no one goes to Mars and actually has fun.
Because I'm a human and consequently I feel things like compassion and empathy for the suffering of others.
Humans also have a capacity to not feel that stuff. I don't see what's even remotely useful about empathy in a scenario like this where allegedly a bunch of idiots get into epic levels of trouble that no one can bail them out of.
Fascinating. Do you just randomly insert this topic into every conversation or am I just blessed by being subjected to you bizarre and randomised philosophical meanderings about people of whom I know nothing and care even less?
You're one of those people, given your last line about "know nothing and care even less". That's classic navel gazing outlook.
The universe is amazing, I'm amazed and excited by the things we are learning about it, and your views on it are worthless, your notion that only the information that impacts you personally is important is contemptible.
So that's why you wrote:
So having commenced on the trip they then discover that in fact, Mars is not the glorious new dawn they expected, and that in fact life on the way there and upon arrival is basically drudgery with nothing too look at and no future to look forward to.
or
Mars is boring, there's no exciting pioneering life, no fame or fortune. Just drudgery and the fear that food supplies will run out and the water purifier will break.
So is Mars "amazing" or "boring"? Those choices seem mutually exclusive to me. There seems to be a lot of contradictory bullshit in your opinions here.
Do you know how much effort it would take to get 2 billion people on board and not have a single woman or older person? It could be done but you'd REALLY have to be doing that on purpose.
They could just be pouring through health records for adults who serve or might serve in one of the world's militaries.
Even if they were doing that deliberately, what would your point be? Sample bias is bias whether it is accidental or not.
On the contrary, increasing the sample size to big data sizes of say 2 billion subjects would definitely fix that bias problem.
Not at all. For example, try extrapolating behavior from 2 billion young men to older women. You can have huge sample sizes and yet still have sample bias simply because you've excluded an important category (such as the people you actually wanted to study).
The failure of the rational market economists is that they just study large, very well organized markets dominated by professionals that are now mostly run by computers - the finanancial markets (because there's a shit load of publically available data). So of course, the market looks completely rational.
In other words, their "failure" is that they use models which are descriptive of the markets that they study. That sounds more like science in action than failure to me.
They then extrapolated their finding to everything else - even to people buying that new house that they just "fell in love with".
Your feelings are irrelevant to pretty much everybody.
Pretty much everybody is not everybody. It doesn't include me. You are just arguing that your feelings and opinions should be more important to me than my own. That isn't the case.
What matters is your ability to formulate an argument touching upon (a) The reason why we should send a human to do something that a robot can do better, and cheaper (b) The reasons why that human should be you.
I've already answered these questions. A robot can't be a human living on Mars. And it's not important that I personally go to Mars.
"I should have it because I want it" is not a valid answer once you pass 5 years old.
And an argument irrelevant to this thread. I'm not arguing from entitlement. I want and I will try to get it as a result. That is all. There is no expectation that I should get it merely because I want it. But similarly, I don't appreciate the placement of frivolous obstructions or objections to my goals based solely on petty and myopic philosophical distinctions.
At the moment, there is a tiny group of people who still cling to the pre-Apollo notion that space travel should include humans. This group of people aren't particularly rich (at least on the scale of the finances required), and aren't noticeably expanding in number or in influence.
Your argument is based on the assumption that manned spaceflight will always be out of reach of the resources of this group. I think it's worth noting that need not be so. The barrier to entry is slowly going down. I wouldn't be surprised if within our lifetimes space travel becomes possible for someone of moderate means and strong competence just due to advances in small group-scale manufacture.
No it isn't, you've just failed to listen. Read my remarks again.
You already admitted that you travel, despite claiming that machines obsoleted any reason for you to travel. I think your remarks are just not that useful in this area.
However, with an experience like that, wherein there is a high expectation that does not match with reality, the human mind is likely to progress through phases much like the stages of grief.
Then this is a case of expectation management which is a solved problem. For those who don't choose to solve this particular problem, there's always popcorn.
1. A person travelling to Mars would have to have accepted their own death as inevitable (the expected lifespan on Mars being on the order of 24 months)
Or 50 years, being another number you could have stuffed in there. I really don't see a claim for one or the other being valid in the absence of context.
So having commenced on the trip they then discover that in fact, Mars is not the glorious new dawn they expected, and that in fact life on the way there and upon arrival is basically drudgery with nothing too look at and no future to look forward to.
Or they might not experience that situation.
They will plead for rescue, and we won't send rescue, and we will feel guilt, and they will feel anger and betrayal. They will starve, they will die painfully of radiation sickness, they will die in accidents, asphyxiation, they will commit suicide.
You will feel guilt why? Sounds like the makings of a good reality show. And it'll be a great example for the next shipload of idealists to help with their expectation management.
and no-one who remembers it will ever advocate going to Mars again.
Bullshit. It'll just mean that we'll have to plan next time. I'm fuzzy on why a bad first try will convince us all that it's not worth doing. In most fields of endeavor, instead we would try again, while trying not to repeat the mistakes of past attempts. That's a pretty good approach and it works.
Are you saying scientific missions (like Voyager, Cassini Huygens, MESSENGER, Spirit and Opportunity etc etc) are not important? That astronomy is not important? If so, then you are unambiguously, and utterly wrong. If not, then perhaps you should explain yourself.
Science is not important in itself. It is important because of how it affects our lives and those who use that science down the road. If the only thing that is ever present in space past Earth orbit are a few space probes, then such things will be irrelevant to us on Earth and our lives - unless of course, you happen to be one of the handful of people building or operating the space probe.
Quite frankly, that makes no sense at all. Who (or what) are these navel gazers? Why would science matter more to people on Mars than it does to people on Earth?
The navel gazers are the people whose lives are solely provincial and more or less self-centered. That's most of us, perhaps all of us at one time or another.
As to your second question, because on Mars that science would lead directly to survival and better living conditions. It's like how research on the biological effects of coal dust is more relevant to a coal miner than it is to a beachcomber or a tax accountant. People who live on Mars would be intimately helped by science done on Mars and its environment. But people on Earth would not.
Therefore, you need a reason to support it that isn't based on personal feelings and the desire for a joy ride to somewhere unusual.
So that reason has to be based on your personal feelings instead? No, doesn't work that way.
In fact I rarely, if ever, travel except for pleasure or personal reasons.
There we go.
And I don't travel on someone else's dime.
I noticed you mention this a couple of times. This is a different argument than the "machines obsolete us wanting to do anything". I don't mind the rest of society not putting in for my space fetishes. Obviously, there's a lot of people who think that if trillions a year are burned on things they don't care about, then part of it should be burned on things they do care about. But I think that's a typical problem of having public funding around and not particular to manned spaceflight.
Whilst the uniqueness of the experience would be sure to exhilarate for a while, after a time I imagine that space travel would gall.
How long would that take? If it takes longer than a human lifetime for the involved parties, then there's not a problem.
I hope we don't progress to a mars colony, not matter how brief. Because I think that the reality of the experience cannot be covered up: unlike the apollo mission which was a few days of adrenaline, and then back home, travelling to Mars will give people time to reflect on what they left behind. It will be an agonising experience to watch those idealists implode before our eyes, as the truth of it sinks in. Mars is boring, there's no exciting pioneering life, no fame or fortune. Just drudgery and the fear that food supplies will run out and the water purifier will break. Eventually something goes wrong and you're dead. Brutal and uncompromised by happy hollywood endings.
So why would it be like that? I find the rationalizing behind this argument intriguing. Where else would we "hope" that someone doesn't do something merely because they might not like it?
I think seeing that will set back not just manned attempts but the important stuff, the scientific missions.
You forgot the scare quotes on "important". It won't matter to the navel gazers, if Mars exists or not. A lot of them probably never even saw the place in the sky. The people for whom that science will matter will be the people doing stuff on Mars, not necessarily in person, but not necessarily not in person.
The fact renders manned spaceflight unnecessary and redundant, just as electronic computers have rendered human computers redundant.
If I want to go to Mars, then manned spaceflight is on the critical path. And a lot of people want to go to Mars. There's an example of the need.
That also nixes the "redundant" argument. There is no other way to get to Mars except by crossing the intervening space. There's no other way to get to Mars. So manned spaceflight is not redundant.
Absolutely. For example, I send emails instead of walking to the desk of a colleague, I ring people, I teleconference. It is nothing to me to communicate with 60 people in an hour dispersed across a country the size of a continent. Something that would be impossible if I had to be physically present at every gathering and for every conversation. Which I would need to do were it not for the aid of machines. My everyday life is enabled because we ignored the naysayers who irrationally assume that no interaction can take place except by physical presence.
No, I didn't ask if you travel less, but rather if you stopped traveling at all.
Now is the time to embrace the fact that, like manufacturing, information processing, transport, medicine , the future for space travel lies not in the hands of astronauts/taikonauts/cosmonauts but in the grip of machines.
And what does that "fact" have to do with manned space flight? We didn't actually stop doing anything of those things just because we have machines to help us. In particular, did you stop traveling just because that is in the "grip" of machines?
And you should lump the development cost in there too. Low marginal cost claims are an often effective political gimmick for glossing over the high front end costs of development. But you can only take advantage of those low marginal costs, if you actually make the plane in volume. Both of those jets failed to meet the promised volume numbers.
As an experiment, it is close to pointless. As a technology demonstration it has somewhat more value, though perhaps not enough to justify its inclusion. You could do this a hundred times in those basements and it would still not be done on Mars. For a technology to be demonstrated in a particular unusual situation or environment, then it sooner or later has to be deployed in that situation or environment.
You know, when I was a young tech who was just bumbling his way around a corporate cube farm I had to deal with someone who thought like this.
I'm not saying I'll do this personally, but rather the whole of human endeavor would. Given that they actually did do it (just with NASA's signature on a few of the funding checks), then that's vastly different from your coworkers point of view. NASA didn't actually do the vast majority of that work, it was done by contractors. And I believe that those contractors or their competitors would have done the work anyway.
Those ones are obvious, and easy to trace in their benefits, long term and short.
The spin off argument is deeply flawed. For example, every single one of these technologies would have been developed anyway. NASA is just a flavor of funding.
But more important than any one single benefit, eventually we will run out of room.
That's an argument for long term population control, not space development. After all, the Earth isn't actually getting any smaller. And if you don't mind the occasional mass die offs, you don't even have to care about population control.
The metrics don't include failures so infrequent that they aren't expected to happen in our lifetimes. That sort of infrequent failure was precisely what I was speaking of.
I think the thing that bugs me here, as usual with this topic is the adversarial and somewhat ignorant nature of the debate. The original research that mdsolar spoke of, may well be accurate. But I don't see his condemnation of that research (as undermining the credibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) based on the actual content. That's more a problem with mdsolar's point of view than with the NRC.
As to your current arguments, I find them a lot better quality.
To elaborate, my view on this is that moving bytes just doesn't take that much energy. A heavily loaded network doesn't consume much more energy than a lightly loaded network.
In hindsight there are other issues. For example, you have to set up what you have on that SD. If you're downloading music on demand from the network, you can just change your demands in order to change what you hear. For an SD, you have to manage it, adding and removing stuff. Sure, you get more control over what you hear, but similarly, you get more work.
Finally, there's the matter of what happens when the SD gets destroyed. A server farm with backup and redundancy takes a lot less work to set up per person it serves than individual people managing SDs with redundancy.
You really don't know your history if you think that WWII happened because "the world didn't have the balls to stop German and Japanese aggression when it would have been easy". WWI was still fresh in the minds of the people, the great depression was in full swing, Germany was not aggressive, Japan was still (for the most part) keeping to its self.
The obvious counter is that Germany was aggressive (both with a vast military buildup and multiple invasions and forced annexations before the Second World War officially began) and Japan was not keeping to itself (such as their invasions of Korea and China and their well-telegraphed war with the US and the UK).
And a military push by France in 1936 to reverse the remilitarization of the Rhine, would have been pretty easy. But having said that, it would be easy to underestimate Nazi Germany in 1936. They had over the course of a few years rebuilt a world-class military from the stunted post-Versailles remnants. I believe the Second World War would have been easy to prevent in 1936 or 1937, but I also believe that it wasn't that clear what course to take.
Still when one looks at the bizarre things that France did, such as building a vast and expensive defensive network of fortresses (the Maginot line), but not actually defending against the invasion path taken in the previous war (and which Nazi Germany used again), it's painfully clear that they weren't making good decisions even given the uncertainty of the times.
Now, though, I'd say that the people who will use the opportunity will be the ones like Strelkov and Borodai
And do what? They have no power base outside of the Ukraine. And a few thousand "battle-hardened fighters" won't make much of a difference politically or militarily.
I'd look rather at the people surrounding Putin or domestic unrest.
Actually, it is a case of "in anger". The term has nothing to do with anyone's emotional state or any particular defense/offense scenario under which they might find themselves. "Used in anger" with respect to a weapon means that the weapon is being used as designed with intent to kill someone.
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You obsession with my feelings is a bit ridiculous. I've already pointed out that my feelings on the subject don't matter. But rather than arguing against that, you chose to ignore it and carry on in self delusion.
Which is patently false since your argument is based on your feelings.
A robot can't be a living bandicoot on Mars either. Your point is?
And if I were intent on colonizing bandicoots on Mars, that would mean that sending robots wouldn't do that either.
You want it, but you can't provide any reason beyond "I want it". You can't otherwise explain why the rest of us should fund it - or you can explain it , but for whatever obscure reason, have chosen not to. Consequently, you won't get that funding , because until there is a valid reason to send a human, we will keep sending robots instead of humans.
There's no point to your verbiage. "Because I want to" is a sufficient argument. Of course, I have reasons why I want it. And if I were, say, trying to convince you to want Mars colonization as well, then I'd expound on them. But I'm not.
Nope. I've made it clear that if people want to engage in historical reenactments using the space technology of yesteryear, then i don't care - as long as they do it on their own dime, and don't cut into the budget associated with science or space exploration. I've no problem with self funded hobbies.
Why do your hobbies get public funding and mine don't? I don't have problems with self-funded hobbies either. Space science for the sake of space science is just another hobby. Please, by all means pay for it yourself out of your own budget.
You apparently think it's significant that I travel for pleasure - however you can't explain why.
Let me make myself clear. I don't care why you travel. I just verified that you do. Because you wrote originally:
Now is the time to embrace the fact that, like manufacturing, information processing, transport, medicine , the future for space travel lies not in the hands of astronauts/taikonauts/cosmonauts but in the grip of machines.
By the fact that you still travel, no matter the reason, then there is something that the "grip" of machines isn't doing for you.
And I don't travel on someone else's dime.
I don't mind you being amazed and exploring the universe on your own dime either. But you ignore your own words when you write things like " we'll get on with the science". That science uses other peoples' money. You're not paying for it.
That, at least is true. If we correctly manage their expectations so that they have a realistic picture of life on Mars, then they won't want to go. Problem solved.
There's this weird blinder thing going on. Why do you think that will happen? I recall all the bad things you said (such as claiming without justification that one's lifespan on Mars would be 24 months). I get the impression you just hope you're right and that no one goes to Mars and actually has fun.
Because I'm a human and consequently I feel things like compassion and empathy for the suffering of others.
Humans also have a capacity to not feel that stuff. I don't see what's even remotely useful about empathy in a scenario like this where allegedly a bunch of idiots get into epic levels of trouble that no one can bail them out of.
Fascinating. Do you just randomly insert this topic into every conversation or am I just blessed by being subjected to you bizarre and randomised philosophical meanderings about people of whom I know nothing and care even less?
You're one of those people, given your last line about "know nothing and care even less". That's classic navel gazing outlook.
The universe is amazing, I'm amazed and excited by the things we are learning about it, and your views on it are worthless, your notion that only the information that impacts you personally is important is contemptible.
So that's why you wrote:
So having commenced on the trip they then discover that in fact, Mars is not the glorious new dawn they expected, and that in fact life on the way there and upon arrival is basically drudgery with nothing too look at and no future to look forward to.
or
Mars is boring, there's no exciting pioneering life, no fame or fortune. Just drudgery and the fear that food supplies will run out and the water purifier will break.
So is Mars "amazing" or "boring"? Those choices seem mutually exclusive to me. There seems to be a lot of contradictory bullshit in your opinions here.
Do you know how much effort it would take to get 2 billion people on board and not have a single woman or older person? It could be done but you'd REALLY have to be doing that on purpose.
They could just be pouring through health records for adults who serve or might serve in one of the world's militaries.
Even if they were doing that deliberately, what would your point be? Sample bias is bias whether it is accidental or not.
And I've seen applications that are ridiculous.
Then give an example rather than just make empty allegations. Henry Ford wasn't an economist.
On the contrary, increasing the sample size to big data sizes of say 2 billion subjects would definitely fix that bias problem.
Not at all. For example, try extrapolating behavior from 2 billion young men to older women. You can have huge sample sizes and yet still have sample bias simply because you've excluded an important category (such as the people you actually wanted to study).
The failure of the rational market economists is that they just study large, very well organized markets dominated by professionals that are now mostly run by computers - the finanancial markets (because there's a shit load of publically available data). So of course, the market looks completely rational.
In other words, their "failure" is that they use models which are descriptive of the markets that they study. That sounds more like science in action than failure to me.
They then extrapolated their finding to everything else - even to people buying that new house that they just "fell in love with".
This is a strawman. They don't actually do this.
Your feelings are irrelevant to pretty much everybody.
Pretty much everybody is not everybody. It doesn't include me. You are just arguing that your feelings and opinions should be more important to me than my own. That isn't the case.
What matters is your ability to formulate an argument touching upon (a) The reason why we should send a human to do something that a robot can do better, and cheaper (b) The reasons why that human should be you.
I've already answered these questions. A robot can't be a human living on Mars. And it's not important that I personally go to Mars.
"I should have it because I want it" is not a valid answer once you pass 5 years old.
And an argument irrelevant to this thread. I'm not arguing from entitlement. I want and I will try to get it as a result. That is all. There is no expectation that I should get it merely because I want it. But similarly, I don't appreciate the placement of frivolous obstructions or objections to my goals based solely on petty and myopic philosophical distinctions.
At the moment, there is a tiny group of people who still cling to the pre-Apollo notion that space travel should include humans. This group of people aren't particularly rich (at least on the scale of the finances required), and aren't noticeably expanding in number or in influence.
Your argument is based on the assumption that manned spaceflight will always be out of reach of the resources of this group. I think it's worth noting that need not be so. The barrier to entry is slowly going down. I wouldn't be surprised if within our lifetimes space travel becomes possible for someone of moderate means and strong competence just due to advances in small group-scale manufacture.
No it isn't, you've just failed to listen. Read my remarks again.
You already admitted that you travel, despite claiming that machines obsoleted any reason for you to travel. I think your remarks are just not that useful in this area.
However, with an experience like that, wherein there is a high expectation that does not match with reality, the human mind is likely to progress through phases much like the stages of grief.
Then this is a case of expectation management which is a solved problem. For those who don't choose to solve this particular problem, there's always popcorn.
1. A person travelling to Mars would have to have accepted their own death as inevitable (the expected lifespan on Mars being on the order of 24 months)
Or 50 years, being another number you could have stuffed in there. I really don't see a claim for one or the other being valid in the absence of context.
So having commenced on the trip they then discover that in fact, Mars is not the glorious new dawn they expected, and that in fact life on the way there and upon arrival is basically drudgery with nothing too look at and no future to look forward to.
Or they might not experience that situation.
They will plead for rescue, and we won't send rescue, and we will feel guilt, and they will feel anger and betrayal. They will starve, they will die painfully of radiation sickness, they will die in accidents, asphyxiation, they will commit suicide.
You will feel guilt why? Sounds like the makings of a good reality show. And it'll be a great example for the next shipload of idealists to help with their expectation management.
and no-one who remembers it will ever advocate going to Mars again.
Bullshit. It'll just mean that we'll have to plan next time. I'm fuzzy on why a bad first try will convince us all that it's not worth doing. In most fields of endeavor, instead we would try again, while trying not to repeat the mistakes of past attempts. That's a pretty good approach and it works.
Are you saying scientific missions (like Voyager, Cassini Huygens, MESSENGER, Spirit and Opportunity etc etc) are not important? That astronomy is not important? If so, then you are unambiguously, and utterly wrong. If not, then perhaps you should explain yourself.
Science is not important in itself. It is important because of how it affects our lives and those who use that science down the road. If the only thing that is ever present in space past Earth orbit are a few space probes, then such things will be irrelevant to us on Earth and our lives - unless of course, you happen to be one of the handful of people building or operating the space probe.
Quite frankly, that makes no sense at all. Who (or what) are these navel gazers? Why would science matter more to people on Mars than it does to people on Earth?
The navel gazers are the people whose lives are solely provincial and more or less self-centered. That's most of us, perhaps all of us at one time or another.
As to your second question, because on Mars that science would lead directly to survival and better living conditions. It's like how research on the biological effects of coal dust is more relevant to a coal miner than it is to a beachcomber or a tax accountant. People who live on Mars would be intimately helped by science done on Mars and its environment. But people on Earth would not.
"I want to go" is not a good enough reason.
For you. It's quite valid for other people.
Therefore, you need a reason to support it that isn't based on personal feelings and the desire for a joy ride to somewhere unusual.
So that reason has to be based on your personal feelings instead? No, doesn't work that way.
In fact I rarely, if ever, travel except for pleasure or personal reasons.
There we go.
And I don't travel on someone else's dime.
I noticed you mention this a couple of times. This is a different argument than the "machines obsolete us wanting to do anything". I don't mind the rest of society not putting in for my space fetishes. Obviously, there's a lot of people who think that if trillions a year are burned on things they don't care about, then part of it should be burned on things they do care about. But I think that's a typical problem of having public funding around and not particular to manned spaceflight.
Whilst the uniqueness of the experience would be sure to exhilarate for a while, after a time I imagine that space travel would gall.
How long would that take? If it takes longer than a human lifetime for the involved parties, then there's not a problem.
I hope we don't progress to a mars colony, not matter how brief. Because I think that the reality of the experience cannot be covered up: unlike the apollo mission which was a few days of adrenaline, and then back home, travelling to Mars will give people time to reflect on what they left behind. It will be an agonising experience to watch those idealists implode before our eyes, as the truth of it sinks in. Mars is boring, there's no exciting pioneering life, no fame or fortune. Just drudgery and the fear that food supplies will run out and the water purifier will break. Eventually something goes wrong and you're dead. Brutal and uncompromised by happy hollywood endings.
So why would it be like that? I find the rationalizing behind this argument intriguing. Where else would we "hope" that someone doesn't do something merely because they might not like it?
I think seeing that will set back not just manned attempts but the important stuff, the scientific missions.
You forgot the scare quotes on "important". It won't matter to the navel gazers, if Mars exists or not. A lot of them probably never even saw the place in the sky. The people for whom that science will matter will be the people doing stuff on Mars, not necessarily in person, but not necessarily not in person.
GPS is a military spinoff not a NASA spinoff.
The fact renders manned spaceflight unnecessary and redundant, just as electronic computers have rendered human computers redundant.
If I want to go to Mars, then manned spaceflight is on the critical path. And a lot of people want to go to Mars. There's an example of the need.
That also nixes the "redundant" argument. There is no other way to get to Mars except by crossing the intervening space. There's no other way to get to Mars. So manned spaceflight is not redundant.
Absolutely. For example, I send emails instead of walking to the desk of a colleague, I ring people, I teleconference. It is nothing to me to communicate with 60 people in an hour dispersed across a country the size of a continent. Something that would be impossible if I had to be physically present at every gathering and for every conversation. Which I would need to do were it not for the aid of machines. My everyday life is enabled because we ignored the naysayers who irrationally assume that no interaction can take place except by physical presence.
No, I didn't ask if you travel less, but rather if you stopped traveling at all.
a stupid argument made by shills
Because Lockheed Martin would rather sell low margin F-16s than high margin F-35s, amirite?
Now is the time to embrace the fact that, like manufacturing, information processing, transport, medicine , the future for space travel lies not in the hands of astronauts/taikonauts/cosmonauts but in the grip of machines.
And what does that "fact" have to do with manned space flight? We didn't actually stop doing anything of those things just because we have machines to help us. In particular, did you stop traveling just because that is in the "grip" of machines?
And you should lump the development cost in there too. Low marginal cost claims are an often effective political gimmick for glossing over the high front end costs of development. But you can only take advantage of those low marginal costs, if you actually make the plane in volume. Both of those jets failed to meet the promised volume numbers.
As an experiment, it is close to pointless. As a technology demonstration it has somewhat more value, though perhaps not enough to justify its inclusion. You could do this a hundred times in those basements and it would still not be done on Mars. For a technology to be demonstrated in a particular unusual situation or environment, then it sooner or later has to be deployed in that situation or environment.
You know, when I was a young tech who was just bumbling his way around a corporate cube farm I had to deal with someone who thought like this.
I'm not saying I'll do this personally, but rather the whole of human endeavor would. Given that they actually did do it (just with NASA's signature on a few of the funding checks), then that's vastly different from your coworkers point of view. NASA didn't actually do the vast majority of that work, it was done by contractors. And I believe that those contractors or their competitors would have done the work anyway.
Those ones are obvious, and easy to trace in their benefits, long term and short.
The spin off argument is deeply flawed. For example, every single one of these technologies would have been developed anyway. NASA is just a flavor of funding.
But more important than any one single benefit, eventually we will run out of room.
That's an argument for long term population control, not space development. After all, the Earth isn't actually getting any smaller. And if you don't mind the occasional mass die offs, you don't even have to care about population control.
The metrics don't include failures so infrequent that they aren't expected to happen in our lifetimes. That sort of infrequent failure was precisely what I was speaking of.
I think the thing that bugs me here, as usual with this topic is the adversarial and somewhat ignorant nature of the debate. The original research that mdsolar spoke of, may well be accurate. But I don't see his condemnation of that research (as undermining the credibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) based on the actual content. That's more a problem with mdsolar's point of view than with the NRC.
As to your current arguments, I find them a lot better quality.
To elaborate, my view on this is that moving bytes just doesn't take that much energy. A heavily loaded network doesn't consume much more energy than a lightly loaded network.
In hindsight there are other issues. For example, you have to set up what you have on that SD. If you're downloading music on demand from the network, you can just change your demands in order to change what you hear. For an SD, you have to manage it, adding and removing stuff. Sure, you get more control over what you hear, but similarly, you get more work.
Finally, there's the matter of what happens when the SD gets destroyed. A server farm with backup and redundancy takes a lot less work to set up per person it serves than individual people managing SDs with redundancy.
And the "I" is India.
You really don't know your history if you think that WWII happened because "the world didn't have the balls to stop German and Japanese aggression when it would have been easy". WWI was still fresh in the minds of the people, the great depression was in full swing, Germany was not aggressive, Japan was still (for the most part) keeping to its self.
The obvious counter is that Germany was aggressive (both with a vast military buildup and multiple invasions and forced annexations before the Second World War officially began) and Japan was not keeping to itself (such as their invasions of Korea and China and their well-telegraphed war with the US and the UK).
And a military push by France in 1936 to reverse the remilitarization of the Rhine, would have been pretty easy. But having said that, it would be easy to underestimate Nazi Germany in 1936. They had over the course of a few years rebuilt a world-class military from the stunted post-Versailles remnants. I believe the Second World War would have been easy to prevent in 1936 or 1937, but I also believe that it wasn't that clear what course to take.
Still when one looks at the bizarre things that France did, such as building a vast and expensive defensive network of fortresses (the Maginot line), but not actually defending against the invasion path taken in the previous war (and which Nazi Germany used again), it's painfully clear that they weren't making good decisions even given the uncertainty of the times.
Now, though, I'd say that the people who will use the opportunity will be the ones like Strelkov and Borodai
And do what? They have no power base outside of the Ukraine. And a few thousand "battle-hardened fighters" won't make much of a difference politically or militarily.
I'd look rather at the people surrounding Putin or domestic unrest.
Self defense is not "in anger."
Actually, it is a case of "in anger". The term has nothing to do with anyone's emotional state or any particular defense/offense scenario under which they might find themselves. "Used in anger" with respect to a weapon means that the weapon is being used as designed with intent to kill someone.