The Shuttle Program, like all of the manned space programs before it, delivered an immense amount of technology development that has advanced our knowledge of materials sciences and engineering in general beyond any level before it.
Sure it did. Can you name an example?
By the way, without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope would have died long ago.
And they would have been able to afford to launch several replacements for the Hubble in that time. Same goes for the International Space Station, involving the Shuttle drove up the cost a lot.
When I look at what didn't happen because they had an expensive Space Shuttle instead of a space program, I have to say "good riddance" to it.
So they may well violate your 5th amendmend rights
I don't see it since the primary aspect of the Fifth Amendment is constraints on forcing self-incrimination. Evidence provided by other parties just doesn't qualify, even if it originally came from you, unless it requires you to register evidence of a crime (say a federal law requiring Facebook users to register with Facebook any illegal drug trades they conduct via Facebook). Maybe you're speaking of the Fourth Amendment which is about constraints on searches and seizures?
I don't see that. I see fusion research squandering a lot of money for little gain. To be even more frank than the fantasy presented above, my take is that if fusion research had been funded to the desired level, it would be an epic fail for a very simple reason. They wouldn't be building a design that could be commercially viable. That's the only justification for spending that much money.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure everyone pushing for secession believes their region will benefit from the break-up, but that's probably not the case; just like with Yugoslavia, there will probably be some winners and some losers.
The winners in Yugoslavia tended to be secessionists and the losers tended to be the ones advocating for union. Secessions don't happen just because it's the fad or whatever, but because there's deep problems with the union in question, such as the ethic favoritism of the last days of Yugoslavia.
If the US breaks up, it'll be because the country has deeply failed - not because some people on the fringe were feeling their oats. Such a move won't be entertained lightly.
Only if you including working together under coercion, which I don't think is what the GP meant.
Save for few exceptions, from Reconstruction to Obamacare, Americans "work together" when government is involved, forcing the unwilling parts of the population to go along.
Most cities and businesses ever created in the US are great counterexamples to this vapid assertion. Was Slashdot built on slavery? Did Masta' crack the whip and order you to post ten trolls by dinner or it'd be 50 lashes tied to the post? Do you need to turn these trolls into the Bureau of Clueless Posting in order to get the meal credits you need to survive?
What kind of legally recognized, mental handicap does one have which causes one to ignore blatantly obvious evidence of widespread non-governmental cooperation and working together of people to long before the dawn of the US?
That's your assumption. I don't have to assume any such.
That may not be your assumption, but it is the assumption for many of your fellow Americans. Many of them actually believe that if they go after the rich, there would be more for the rest of them.
Well, many of my fellow Americans are clueless fucks who can't understand that simple behavior changes on their part would help them become wealthier without needing to rob some rich guy in the process. For example, learning how to show up for work on time; using recreational drugs in moderation, legal or otherwise; or learning how to save money on a regular basis.
...and globalization doesn't help American labor either. So it's no wonder those Americans are flocking to socialism, being amongst those who want to go after the rich.
American labor is part of the developed world labor. Of course, it doesn't help the overpriced labor when it has to compete with cheaper labor. So what?
Because he's an American in reality, while you talk about an idealized American. Now, maybe you're an idealized American yourself, but that doesn't change that he isn't.
Basically, your argument boils down to "Stupid people often hold stupid opinions". I can't be bothered to care, as you might have guessed from my use of technical terms to describe this state of mind such as "clueless fucks". A bad or dumb idea even if supported by several hundred million people remains a bad or dumb idea.
Having lots of money and possessions is somehow exclusive? I don't see this "by definition". And it ignores the point I made which was that people don't need to be kept poor in order for someone to become rich.
The propellant mass required to accelerate it to a Mars transfer orbit will be pretty enormous
No reason the propellant couldn't be part of the radiation shield mass. After all, you will need some propellant, if you plan to land anything on Mars larger than a small rover.
So it's a one-way shielded trip to Mars.
Unless you produce propellant on Mars or Phobos for the return trip.
It might even be possible to send the return spacecraft (unmanned) on a large looping orbit that upon intersecting Mars changes into a fast Mars-Earth transfer orbit.
Secession would be the last thing anyone would want.
Except for the people wanting secession, of course.
1: If people think the US is in trouble now, wait until the economic repercussions of losing states. This hasn't happened since Yugoslavia, and it would utterly destroy the state fragments, economically.
The people wanting secession wouldn't stay in the US, of course. So they'd be in the pieces which are more likely to benefit from the break up. As to the Yugoslavia break up, everyone except the two core pieces, Serbia and Montenegro, came out of it better than they were going in.
My paranoid mind wonders sometimes: With the fact that SCOTUS allows for foreign "investment" in politicians in the US, who is to keep someone from making a company out of a tax haven country, then via a PAC, hand over large campaign contributions in order for a candidate to do his/her best to damage/destroy government and US interests?
Nobody knows for sure, but the teabaggers seem to be acting for some other country's interest, and not the US.
Well, if you're really into that, consider that the last people to get large amounts of small, untraceable donations were Obama (in 2008 and 2012) and Howard Dean (2004, Democrat primaries). On the Republican side, Romney appears to have received some interesting primary support from vote tabulation machines.
I notice that every other reply currently dodges the issue, but that's a great idea. A third of a trillion dollars every year for a military that is clearly oversized for what it is supposed to do is not a bad place to start. Then I'd move on to the entitlement spending and nail that too.
It's because of space restrictions. Something like solid lead can pack a lot more protons in a small area. For applications like spacecraft. density is not such an essential need. A giant bag of low pressure hydrogen is a viable shield in space (even with some degree of micrometeor damage).
...never mind that, measured by the tax burden as a percentage of GDP, that "big government" was the smallest it had been in a long time. Teabagger protests were about Obamacare and taxes, about which their complaints were factually wrong, not about civil liberties.
That's not actually true. You have to include mandatory spending.
What got the "Tea Party" started was a toxic brew of ignorance, racism, and astroturf.
When I hear people say that, I have to wonder what rock they've been hiding under for the past fifty years. Bad and ineffective government spending doesn't just affect the old, angry, white guys. It affects everyone who depends on government spending.
Similarly, how do you feel about that NSA spying? Or some Republican getting into office and using the same bullshit excuses that Obama currently does for ignoring laws and doing their own thing?
As I see it, most people has some degree of common cause with the Tea Parties, but most are too stupid to realize it yet.
One merely needs to look at US history to see that has never been true.
The American Dream (TM) is that anyone can make it, but the assumption is for one person to get rich others must remain poor.
That's your assumption. I don't have to assume any such. In practice, those who get rich by providing valuable services whether in the US or elsewhere make others rich as well. The zero-sum game is imaginary.
Anything that might push wages up or interfere with someone getting rich, like unionising, is strongly discouraged.
Unionizing in the US has a recent history of not helping its members. For example, the connections between unions and organized crime or the self-destructive behavior of auto worker unions.
Also, things that might "push wages up" have a history of not actually doing so. Minimum wage is a classic example, resulting in a substantial unemployment rate among young adults who aren't worth employing at minimum wage levels.
Meanwhile globalization has a long history of pushing wages up to the current day. It just doesn't push up wages in the developed world where the whiners are.
Almost every debate comes down to "why should I pay for someone else?" or "if it doesn't directly benefit me it shouldn't be funded".
Let us note these are excellent observations. Why aren't you making them?
The problem is that Americans don't trust each other, and they never have.
What's this babble about "trust"? There are things that work a lot better than trust does, such as being aware of self-interest and designing systems that align self-interest and society. The "needle" of the US is one such.
America managed to prosper despite the fact that the country folk and the city folk seem to despise each other.
I think it's evolutionary and not specific to any society. The rural society is resource oriented to the point that it affects society and mating behavior. The urban society has mating behavior detached from the acquiring of concrete resources.
As a result, I think in the urban environment the arms race of mating has gone a lot further with culture (for example, there's always something going on in a city no matter the time of day or week), status signaling (fancy toys and clothes, public displays of culture, for example), and other sophisticated behavior that wouldn't be viable in the rural environment.
Also various sorts of human interaction parasitism can go on viably in an urban environment since one can interact with many vulnerable strangers. A mugger doesn't have to mug Mom in order to get by.
There's also the economic differences such as the substantial economies of scale in a city and a bit more wealth. But I think for culture and attitude differences, these just don't matter that much. I don't see the cultural differences of cities and rural areas coming from the ability to concentrate, say, all HVAC industry in one place.
a. Spending billions on infrastructure for 3 months tops of high volume and then getting ripped to shreds in the press for 'wasting' all that money. or...
The problem here is the service needs to be around for that three months. The way it's set up is that there's a three month window for open enrollment. Same thing will happen next year.
The car analogy is "can you ever be 'safe' on the road?" You can be safer than some arbitrary probability, but you'll never be as safe as you are in your house. So it's *never* 'safe', but also can be low enough risk to call 'safe' (in which case, 'safe' becomes a subjective word with little useful meaning).
So you don't understand the meaning of "safe". "Safe" doesn't mean that there is no risk, but rather that you understand the level of risk and accept it. Further, that you've taken sensible measures to reduce risks that you don't need to have. Dangerous activities can be safe because the participants understand the unusually high level of risk, accept it, and have taken sensible measures to reduce the risks of the activity.
Because I do. Risk management is about identifying and quantifying risk.
You didn't in your first post when you claimed "There is no such thing as "safe" radiation". There's no identification or quantify of risk there. If you don't want to be interpreted as being ignorant of risk management, then don't write posts that show considerable ignorance of risk management.
"good enough" is very very poor risk management. "a 0.00001% chance of disease fatal 40% of the time, sometime in the next 40 years" is better risk management.
And your reason for this claim is? After all, a 0.00001% chance is well below detection limits even for the global population unless the model is really solid or the effect unusually peculiar (low level radiation exposure models and their supposed health consequences don't qualify). That isn't better risk management.
I am not saying they should, but it is more likely that what comes next is not a Signapore style open free market, but rather, single payer. Which the rest of the western world has in some form or another.
I suppose so. I guess I'm upset because I see Obamacare as a subversion of the insurance system, whether deliberate or not, It seems to me that it'll be cheaper and far less painful to simply enable a working insurance system. Then when single payer comes in, I have an abiding suspicion that it'll be greatly screwed up in some way that even strong advocates of single payer will wash their hands of it. I'd just rather avoid the decades long train wreck.
Okay, but just to be clear, you can't compare the exposure on a 12 hour flight to solar/space radiation to living near Fukushima long term with radioactive material getting inside you, right?
Sure, you can. Keep in mind that there are a bunch of people who fly regularly who get a larger lifetime dose of internal ionizing particles from increased exposure due to flying than they would from ingesting or breathing small amounts of dirt from Fukushima.
Even if we grant the very dubious claim that any level of radiation causes net harm to the human body, "safe" doesn't mean the complete elimination of a harmful thing, but rather the reduction or mitigation of the risk to a level which is acceptable.
so eliminating all man-made causes is a good thing
Because man-made radiation never comes with a benefit that needs to be considered. You can also eliminate a number of "background" natural radiation by living in a submarine. Maybe to be "safe", you should go the Captain Nemo route.
For some reason, I thought you understood both risk management and the perils of measuring stuff at or below the threshold of detection.
This is only a good plan until you hit the wall when too few people can afford the rates, then you have completed the spiral and you are out of business. There is some evidence that insurance companies were very close to this wall.
I see some people don't get the point of a market. A market isn't to be nice to insurance companies, it is to create and compete for the best product and markets. Those businesses that fail make room for those that can succeed. This aspect of Obamacare was a bailout for insurance companies that should have failed.
And given how badly the US federal government screwed this up (actually making fundamental problems like high health care costs worse) why should they
be trusted with single payer or some similar scheme?
The lowest tier plans along with subsidies should work as intended to promote preventive care and health partnerships instead of bankrupting folks going to emergency rooms
Until health care costs grow enough to make that unattractive even with subsidies. And who is paying for these subsidies anyway?
It's not terribly hard to get your own platform. I haven't bothered myself, preferring to dirty Slashdot, but then I haven't been the one complaining about posting complaints on other peoples' websites.
Slashdot Mirror
The Shuttle Program, like all of the manned space programs before it, delivered an immense amount of technology development that has advanced our knowledge of materials sciences and engineering in general beyond any level before it.
Sure it did. Can you name an example?
By the way, without the Shuttle Program, the Hubble Telescope would have died long ago.
And they would have been able to afford to launch several replacements for the Hubble in that time. Same goes for the International Space Station, involving the Shuttle drove up the cost a lot.
When I look at what didn't happen because they had an expensive Space Shuttle instead of a space program, I have to say "good riddance" to it.
So they may well violate your 5th amendmend rights
I don't see it since the primary aspect of the Fifth Amendment is constraints on forcing self-incrimination. Evidence provided by other parties just doesn't qualify, even if it originally came from you, unless it requires you to register evidence of a crime (say a federal law requiring Facebook users to register with Facebook any illegal drug trades they conduct via Facebook). Maybe you're speaking of the Fourth Amendment which is about constraints on searches and seizures?
I don't see that. I see fusion research squandering a lot of money for little gain. To be even more frank than the fantasy presented above, my take is that if fusion research had been funded to the desired level, it would be an epic fail for a very simple reason. They wouldn't be building a design that could be commercially viable. That's the only justification for spending that much money.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure everyone pushing for secession believes their region will benefit from the break-up, but that's probably not the case; just like with Yugoslavia, there will probably be some winners and some losers.
The winners in Yugoslavia tended to be secessionists and the losers tended to be the ones advocating for union. Secessions don't happen just because it's the fad or whatever, but because there's deep problems with the union in question, such as the ethic favoritism of the last days of Yugoslavia.
If the US breaks up, it'll be because the country has deeply failed - not because some people on the fringe were feeling their oats. Such a move won't be entertained lightly.
Only if you including working together under coercion, which I don't think is what the GP meant.
Save for few exceptions, from Reconstruction to Obamacare, Americans "work together" when government is involved, forcing the unwilling parts of the population to go along.
Most cities and businesses ever created in the US are great counterexamples to this vapid assertion. Was Slashdot built on slavery? Did Masta' crack the whip and order you to post ten trolls by dinner or it'd be 50 lashes tied to the post? Do you need to turn these trolls into the Bureau of Clueless Posting in order to get the meal credits you need to survive?
What kind of legally recognized, mental handicap does one have which causes one to ignore blatantly obvious evidence of widespread non-governmental cooperation and working together of people to long before the dawn of the US?
That's your assumption. I don't have to assume any such.
That may not be your assumption, but it is the assumption for many of your fellow Americans. Many of them actually believe that if they go after the rich, there would be more for the rest of them.
Well, many of my fellow Americans are clueless fucks who can't understand that simple behavior changes on their part would help them become wealthier without needing to rob some rich guy in the process. For example, learning how to show up for work on time; using recreational drugs in moderation, legal or otherwise; or learning how to save money on a regular basis.
...and globalization doesn't help American labor either. So it's no wonder those Americans are flocking to socialism, being amongst those who want to go after the rich.
American labor is part of the developed world labor. Of course, it doesn't help the overpriced labor when it has to compete with cheaper labor. So what?
Because he's an American in reality, while you talk about an idealized American. Now, maybe you're an idealized American yourself, but that doesn't change that he isn't.
Basically, your argument boils down to "Stupid people often hold stupid opinions". I can't be bothered to care, as you might have guessed from my use of technical terms to describe this state of mind such as "clueless fucks". A bad or dumb idea even if supported by several hundred million people remains a bad or dumb idea.
By definition, most people cannot be rich.
Having lots of money and possessions is somehow exclusive? I don't see this "by definition". And it ignores the point I made which was that people don't need to be kept poor in order for someone to become rich.
The propellant mass required to accelerate it to a Mars transfer orbit will be pretty enormous
No reason the propellant couldn't be part of the radiation shield mass. After all, you will need some propellant, if you plan to land anything on Mars larger than a small rover.
So it's a one-way shielded trip to Mars.
Unless you produce propellant on Mars or Phobos for the return trip.
It might even be possible to send the return spacecraft (unmanned) on a large looping orbit that upon intersecting Mars changes into a fast Mars-Earth transfer orbit.
Buzz Aldrin called this the Mars cycler.
Secession would be the last thing anyone would want.
Except for the people wanting secession, of course.
1: If people think the US is in trouble now, wait until the economic repercussions of losing states. This hasn't happened since Yugoslavia, and it would utterly destroy the state fragments, economically.
The people wanting secession wouldn't stay in the US, of course. So they'd be in the pieces which are more likely to benefit from the break up. As to the Yugoslavia break up, everyone except the two core pieces, Serbia and Montenegro, came out of it better than they were going in.
My paranoid mind wonders sometimes: With the fact that SCOTUS allows for foreign "investment" in politicians in the US, who is to keep someone from making a company out of a tax haven country, then via a PAC, hand over large campaign contributions in order for a candidate to do his/her best to damage/destroy government and US interests?
Nobody knows for sure, but the teabaggers seem to be acting for some other country's interest, and not the US.
Well, if you're really into that, consider that the last people to get large amounts of small, untraceable donations were Obama (in 2008 and 2012) and Howard Dean (2004, Democrat primaries). On the Republican side, Romney appears to have received some interesting primary support from vote tabulation machines.
You mean inflation is another form of default.
The phrase "default ... by inflation" pretty much says it all.
I notice that every other reply currently dodges the issue, but that's a great idea. A third of a trillion dollars every year for a military that is clearly oversized for what it is supposed to do is not a bad place to start. Then I'd move on to the entitlement spending and nail that too.
It's because of space restrictions. Something like solid lead can pack a lot more protons in a small area. For applications like spacecraft. density is not such an essential need. A giant bag of low pressure hydrogen is a viable shield in space (even with some degree of micrometeor damage).
...never mind that, measured by the tax burden as a percentage of GDP, that "big government" was the smallest it had been in a long time. Teabagger protests were about Obamacare and taxes, about which their complaints were factually wrong, not about civil liberties.
That's not actually true. You have to include mandatory spending.
What got the "Tea Party" started was a toxic brew of ignorance, racism, and astroturf.
When I hear people say that, I have to wonder what rock they've been hiding under for the past fifty years. Bad and ineffective government spending doesn't just affect the old, angry, white guys. It affects everyone who depends on government spending.
Similarly, how do you feel about that NSA spying? Or some Republican getting into office and using the same bullshit excuses that Obama currently does for ignoring laws and doing their own thing?
As I see it, most people has some degree of common cause with the Tea Parties, but most are too stupid to realize it yet.
The biggest obstacle in going to Mars will likely prove to be shielding a spacecraft from extreme radiation over the long transit time.
You need mass with protons in it.
Working together is un-American.
One merely needs to look at US history to see that has never been true.
The American Dream (TM) is that anyone can make it, but the assumption is for one person to get rich others must remain poor.
That's your assumption. I don't have to assume any such. In practice, those who get rich by providing valuable services whether in the US or elsewhere make others rich as well. The zero-sum game is imaginary.
Anything that might push wages up or interfere with someone getting rich, like unionising, is strongly discouraged.
Unionizing in the US has a recent history of not helping its members. For example, the connections between unions and organized crime or the self-destructive behavior of auto worker unions.
Also, things that might "push wages up" have a history of not actually doing so. Minimum wage is a classic example, resulting in a substantial unemployment rate among young adults who aren't worth employing at minimum wage levels.
Meanwhile globalization has a long history of pushing wages up to the current day. It just doesn't push up wages in the developed world where the whiners are.
Almost every debate comes down to "why should I pay for someone else?" or "if it doesn't directly benefit me it shouldn't be funded".
Let us note these are excellent observations. Why aren't you making them?
The problem is that Americans don't trust each other, and they never have.
What's this babble about "trust"? There are things that work a lot better than trust does, such as being aware of self-interest and designing systems that align self-interest and society. The "needle" of the US is one such.
America managed to prosper despite the fact that the country folk and the city folk seem to despise each other.
I think it's evolutionary and not specific to any society. The rural society is resource oriented to the point that it affects society and mating behavior. The urban society has mating behavior detached from the acquiring of concrete resources.
As a result, I think in the urban environment the arms race of mating has gone a lot further with culture (for example, there's always something going on in a city no matter the time of day or week), status signaling (fancy toys and clothes, public displays of culture, for example), and other sophisticated behavior that wouldn't be viable in the rural environment.
Also various sorts of human interaction parasitism can go on viably in an urban environment since one can interact with many vulnerable strangers. A mugger doesn't have to mug Mom in order to get by.
There's also the economic differences such as the substantial economies of scale in a city and a bit more wealth. But I think for culture and attitude differences, these just don't matter that much. I don't see the cultural differences of cities and rural areas coming from the ability to concentrate, say, all HVAC industry in one place.
a. Spending billions on infrastructure for 3 months tops of high volume and then getting ripped to shreds in the press for 'wasting' all that money. or...
The problem here is the service needs to be around for that three months. The way it's set up is that there's a three month window for open enrollment. Same thing will happen next year.
The car analogy is "can you ever be 'safe' on the road?" You can be safer than some arbitrary probability, but you'll never be as safe as you are in your house. So it's *never* 'safe', but also can be low enough risk to call 'safe' (in which case, 'safe' becomes a subjective word with little useful meaning).
So you don't understand the meaning of "safe". "Safe" doesn't mean that there is no risk, but rather that you understand the level of risk and accept it. Further, that you've taken sensible measures to reduce risks that you don't need to have. Dangerous activities can be safe because the participants understand the unusually high level of risk, accept it, and have taken sensible measures to reduce the risks of the activity.
Because I do. Risk management is about identifying and quantifying risk.
You didn't in your first post when you claimed "There is no such thing as "safe" radiation". There's no identification or quantify of risk there. If you don't want to be interpreted as being ignorant of risk management, then don't write posts that show considerable ignorance of risk management.
"good enough" is very very poor risk management. "a 0.00001% chance of disease fatal 40% of the time, sometime in the next 40 years" is better risk management.
And your reason for this claim is? After all, a 0.00001% chance is well below detection limits even for the global population unless the model is really solid or the effect unusually peculiar (low level radiation exposure models and their supposed health consequences don't qualify). That isn't better risk management.
I am not saying they should, but it is more likely that what comes next is not a Signapore style open free market, but rather, single payer. Which the rest of the western world has in some form or another.
I suppose so. I guess I'm upset because I see Obamacare as a subversion of the insurance system, whether deliberate or not, It seems to me that it'll be cheaper and far less painful to simply enable a working insurance system. Then when single payer comes in, I have an abiding suspicion that it'll be greatly screwed up in some way that even strong advocates of single payer will wash their hands of it. I'd just rather avoid the decades long train wreck.
Okay, but just to be clear, you can't compare the exposure on a 12 hour flight to solar/space radiation to living near Fukushima long term with radioactive material getting inside you, right?
Sure, you can. Keep in mind that there are a bunch of people who fly regularly who get a larger lifetime dose of internal ionizing particles from increased exposure due to flying than they would from ingesting or breathing small amounts of dirt from Fukushima.
There is no such thing as "safe" radiation
Even if we grant the very dubious claim that any level of radiation causes net harm to the human body, "safe" doesn't mean the complete elimination of a harmful thing, but rather the reduction or mitigation of the risk to a level which is acceptable.
so eliminating all man-made causes is a good thing
Because man-made radiation never comes with a benefit that needs to be considered. You can also eliminate a number of "background" natural radiation by living in a submarine. Maybe to be "safe", you should go the Captain Nemo route.
For some reason, I thought you understood both risk management and the perils of measuring stuff at or below the threshold of detection.
This is only a good plan until you hit the wall when too few people can afford the rates, then you have completed the spiral and you are out of business. There is some evidence that insurance companies were very close to this wall.
I see some people don't get the point of a market. A market isn't to be nice to insurance companies, it is to create and compete for the best product and markets. Those businesses that fail make room for those that can succeed. This aspect of Obamacare was a bailout for insurance companies that should have failed.
And given how badly the US federal government screwed this up (actually making fundamental problems like high health care costs worse) why should they be trusted with single payer or some similar scheme?
The lowest tier plans along with subsidies should work as intended to promote preventive care and health partnerships instead of bankrupting folks going to emergency rooms
Until health care costs grow enough to make that unattractive even with subsidies. And who is paying for these subsidies anyway?
It's not terribly hard to get your own platform. I haven't bothered myself, preferring to dirty Slashdot, but then I haven't been the one complaining about posting complaints on other peoples' websites.
The real question is: is it not sad that we need a prize for being a good human being at all?
Given how easy it is to be a bad human and how hard it is to be a good human, I'd say it's not sad.