Normally, I'm very much in agreement with those who point out false dichotomies. But in this case - do you have any idea how much establishing a self-sustaining colony on another planet would cost? We're talking about establishing both a functioning economy and ecosystem in a very hostile environment millions of miles away. There's no way we can afford that by itself.
Dude, the entire western budget for NASCAR and porn (and all other hollywood products, and the rest of the entertainment budget, and a lot of currently useful social services, etc, etc) wouldn't get you a self-sustaining Martian colony. Getting all the stuff to Mars that that would require would be astronomically (so to speak) expensive - consider how much it costs just to get automated probes there... and those are very small and light. You'd need to haul lots of people, life support equipment, greenhouses, plants, fertilizer (not much fixed nitrogen on Mars), capital equipment, buildings, energy generation systems - an entire ECONOMY - to Mars. If you think you're going to get that done by cutting back on NASCAR and porn... better look at the numbers.
I tend to doubt that colonization could be done at a cost any currently living population could bear, given that they'll see none of the benefits.
... to worry about your children and grandchildren. But what obligation do we have to far distant descendants? "Short-sightedness" when discussing payoff times in the very, very distant future don't actually sound so bad after all. And the fact that we can't know how long we have before some species-ending disaster makes it that much harder to figure out how seriously to take this problem.
I actually think the American electorate is more rational about this topic than you give them credit for.
How much should today's population of humans sacrifice for the good of future humans? We know that at some point, the universe is going to experience heat death, so our species (and every other one) is guaranteed to die out eventually. If what we're talking about is moving the survival date of our descendants from 1,000,000 AD to 2,000,000 AD (by which time we are not likely to even be the same species any more)... well, suffice it to say that I wouldn't be interested in paying higher taxes to support that.
... you'll see this response to the GP. It's hardly "human-hating" to point out that it would make a lot more sense to stop screwing up our own planet than it would to use this one up and throw it away. For one thing, it's a lot cheaper. Not to mention the fact that in any conceivable space colonization strategy, a LOT of people are going to remain on earth. Which means ceasing to foul our own nest is not exactly the human-hating thing to do.
Colonizing space may or may not be a cost-effective strategy for currently living humans, but whether it is or not, it's definitely a smart idea to take better care of this, the only planet known to have the capability of supporting billions of us.
And a properly picked sphere of the earth a mile in diameter would contain the same. And it would be so much cheaper to extract and refine. Which is why we're still mining the earth and not asteroids.
Someone did the math in an earlier discussion here - platinum is the most expensive of precious metals that's routinely traded, and at reasonable estimates of costs to get to Mars and back, even if there were pre-refined bars of platinum lying about there, it wouldn't be cost-effective to go pick them up. I can't imagine it's cheaper to go to the asteroid belt, and bear in mind that in a real world situation you'd have to add costs of prospecting and refining.
The only substance obtainable in space that's not readily obtainable on earth is He3, and 1) it's not that obtainable on the moon either, and 2) we don't have any practical use for it until fusion power is perfected (if it ever is). All the other bodies in the solar system* are made of iron, nickel, silicates, etc - just like the earth. You'd have to lop several zeros off the cost for that to become practical.
*Excepting the gas giants. But we have all the hydrogen we can use on earth, thanks. And if we wanted to bring back more, how would you extract it from, say, Jupiter? At a cost you could live with?
... it's true. There are plenty of places on earth that are pretty Mars-like, so why not save the trouble and expense and just retire in, say, the Gobi desert? You wouldn't even have to worry about air to breathe.
Of course, even this is facing a great deal of friction in Congress. As one of the linked articles in the summary states, the current NASA bill in the House of Representatives has the entire commercial spaceflight program struggling with just $150M over 3 years, while the government-designed/operated heavy-lift and crew capsule program gets $13B over that same timeframe.
Q: Why does the commercial spaceflight program need even $150M to get going?
A: Because going to space isn't profitable.
Space colonization is a fun thing to think about, but there's no money in it, which pretty much means it's not happening.
And so is the rest of the "let's colonize Mars" crowd - because there's simply no reason to colonize Mars. For one thing, even if the wildest dreams of SpaceX become true (and here's a hint: they probably won't, at least not completely), getting a colony to Mars is going to be unbelievably expensive. You need to not only haul the people, but all their life support equipment, capital goods (they're going to have to earn a living, right?), at least some minimal housing, energy generation, startup food, plants, greenhouses for the plants, fertilizer for the plants (unlike you're going to find fixed nitrogen on Mars, for one thing), minimal personal possessions, etc, etc, etc.
And once you've spent the trillions of dollars that would require, then what? How are you ever going to recoup your investment? Mars is mostly made of the same stuff as earth - iron, silicon, oxygen, carbon, etc. What are you going to find or make there that's worth the enormous expense to do it? The answer, pretty much, is that there isn't anything.
I doubt there's any realistic hope of retirement communities there either. The Gobi desert, for example, is a lot easier and cheaper to get to, has the advantage of a breathable atmosphere, and looks about the same as Mars (less pink), but I haven't seen a flood of Happy Acres Assisted Living developments going in there.
Look, I get that space colonization is all cool and romantic and stuff. The problem is that it's not remotely practical, and most likely won't ever be.
The only systems I'm aware of are the military's "Active Denial" and LRAD systems. Active Denial is essentially a microwave beam, and the military describes it as "less lethal". Obviously, there's a very serious risk of severe burns at the ranges you'd be talking about. Probably illegal, and dangerous to have in your house in any case - what if you set it off yourself?
LRAD is an acoustic system that emits very powerful sound beams. No real risk of lethality, but deafness is certainly a potential problem, both for you and any intruders. Again, probably illegal. And your neighbors are likely to get pissed off in the event of false alarms, when the 100dB device goes off in the middle of the night.
I'm not sure if you were just kidding about the locking in the thieves part or the whole pain-field thing.
Realistically, there are two aspects to the security problem: one is defending your property, and the other is defending your person (and family). The approach discussed above is for the situation of burglary when you're not home, and it works fine for that. But when someone breaks in while you're home... who knows what they're going to do? In that situation, you really need a dog or a gun or something.
When thinking about a gun, though, bear in mind that the cure can be worse than the disease. In most US neighborhoods, a home invasion situation is tremendously unlikely. How likely is it that your kids are going to get ahold of your pistol? Or that you'll accidentally shoot a family member coming in late at night?
Shooting to kill is not a matter of avoiding legal consequences - it's your own safety at risk. If the situation is so far gone that you need to shoot someone to make them stop what they're doing or about to do - shooting to wound just won't do. You almost certainly won't be able to do it - about your only choice would be to hit them in the leg, and you're highly likely to miss.
If you need to shoot someone to protect yourself, you need to put two bullets in their center of mass, and that's probably going to kill them. If you can't deal with that, don't shoot.
Ditch the pistol and just go with the shotgun. Even well-trained police don't hit the target that well with a pistol - your chance of doing it in the excitement of a home invasion is pretty minimal. It's a lot harder to miss with a shotgun.
For home defense load your 12-gauge shotgun with fine birdshot loads, like number 40
I do a lot of hunting and I've never even heard of #40 - the smallest I've ever seen is #8, and that's pretty fine.
I have several guns, and they are all traceable because I bought them legally.
Sure, they're traceable... to you. Not to the guys who stole them from you, or to the guys the thief sold them to. So when they get used in a crime, and either the shell casings or the weapon itself are recovered... it's your door the police will be knocking on.
Large gangs breaking into a home to get guns is almost unheard of. They might hit a pawnshop or gun store, but not an individual's house.
The biggest source of weapons used in crimes is various sorts of illegal sales, but still, around 10% of them are no kidding stolen weapons. It's hardly unheard of.
Yes actually... I have a right to get healthcare, if I want it. Mandatory takes away that right of choice. I can choose to not have healthcare and die in a ditch if I want. Mandatory is the opposite of personal freedom.
Dude, this is mind-bogglingly dumb. Sure, you have the right to go die in a ditch. You also have the right to stop eating and starve, or the right to hold your breath until you pass out. Practically speaking, though, no one chooses to die in a ditch, starve, or pass out (with certain minor exceptions, and in those cases I doubt you really care what the government has to say about it anyway). What drives me crazy about libertarianism is that they prioritize the "freedom" to do something absolutely no one wants to do over the freedom of access to things people actually do want - like health care.
One of these things is not like the others
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Why Wave Failed
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... namely Orkut. Sure, it never caught on in the US, but overseas, it's big.
Oh well. I still use Gmail, Docs, Reader, Bookmarks, and Picasa pretty heavily. I'm waiting for them to come up with a good Dropbox clone. Paying for extra space would be more attractive if I knew I could spread it amongst that many services rather than buying more space for each type of thing I use.
No kidding. I'm never going to use all my Gmail space, so it would be nice to be able to use it for something else. Also: an Evernote clone would be another thing I'd like to see. Being able to tie all this stuff together in one place would be handy.
The Verizons and AT&Ts of the world conflate the two aspects of neutrality you're talking about. They claim they're concerned about being able to provide appropriate QoS for VOIP applications, but then try to get the rules written so they can discriminate by content provider. Good for Google for making this distinction clear.
The Gulf of Mexico didn't "break Aunt Hilda's internet."
No, it caused billions of dollars in damage to the fishing and tourism industries all throughout the Gulf states, putting thousands of people out of work. The response of one Texas rep: apologizing to BP for how mean the administration had been to them.
If that didn't get people marching on BP corporate offices, having "problems with the internet" (again) is surely not going to get them marching on Verizon's office.
Maryland's I-95 through Baltimore. Rich people can pay extra and take the express lane, and then the Annapolis government gets to keep the money to pay off its debt.
This is evil and greedy? Since the road construction fairy is not likely to build and maintain roads for you, the state of Maryland is probably going to have to do it. Given that, the choices are: 1) pay for the roads using tolls, 2) pay for the roads using gas taxes, or 3) just take the money out of the general fund. I'm 100% in favor of a combination of 1) and 2) - since that way the people who use the roads are paying for it.
And the analogy to the internet is not that great - the "roadways" of the internet were built using government funds, subsidies, and in-kind assets like rights of way. Maintenance funds are coming from consumer ISP payments. The attempts of various ISPs to extract even more money from content providers really is evil, greedy rent-seeking, and I hope that Congress and/or the FCC put a stop to it.
Sure, being flexible enough to run on a bunch of different platforms can get you more market share, which is good for developers... but it can also make it hard to figure out whether an application or feature is actually going to work on a given platform... which is bad for developers. Consider something as simple as causing a laptop to sleep when you close the lid. In Powerbooks/MacBooks: just works. In Windows machines: well, who knows? I haven't owned a Windows laptop in a few years, so maybe things have improved, but it used to be that you could practically never get them to wake up properly after sleep. And the reason is that there were so many different models of Windows machines that you could never possibly test them all. I'm not saying that Apple's model of control is definitely superior - maybe the Android model will win out. But it's suggestive that Mac market share is grown steadily for the past several years.
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Normally, I'm very much in agreement with those who point out false dichotomies. But in this case - do you have any idea how much establishing a self-sustaining colony on another planet would cost? We're talking about establishing both a functioning economy and ecosystem in a very hostile environment millions of miles away. There's no way we can afford that by itself.
Dude, the entire western budget for NASCAR and porn (and all other hollywood products, and the rest of the entertainment budget, and a lot of currently useful social services, etc, etc) wouldn't get you a self-sustaining Martian colony. Getting all the stuff to Mars that that would require would be astronomically (so to speak) expensive - consider how much it costs just to get automated probes there... and those are very small and light. You'd need to haul lots of people, life support equipment, greenhouses, plants, fertilizer (not much fixed nitrogen on Mars), capital equipment, buildings, energy generation systems - an entire ECONOMY - to Mars. If you think you're going to get that done by cutting back on NASCAR and porn... better look at the numbers.
I tend to doubt that colonization could be done at a cost any currently living population could bear, given that they'll see none of the benefits.
... to worry about your children and grandchildren. But what obligation do we have to far distant descendants? "Short-sightedness" when discussing payoff times in the very, very distant future don't actually sound so bad after all. And the fact that we can't know how long we have before some species-ending disaster makes it that much harder to figure out how seriously to take this problem.
I actually think the American electorate is more rational about this topic than you give them credit for.
How much should today's population of humans sacrifice for the good of future humans? We know that at some point, the universe is going to experience heat death, so our species (and every other one) is guaranteed to die out eventually. If what we're talking about is moving the survival date of our descendants from 1,000,000 AD to 2,000,000 AD (by which time we are not likely to even be the same species any more)... well, suffice it to say that I wouldn't be interested in paying higher taxes to support that.
... you'll see this response to the GP. It's hardly "human-hating" to point out that it would make a lot more sense to stop screwing up our own planet than it would to use this one up and throw it away. For one thing, it's a lot cheaper. Not to mention the fact that in any conceivable space colonization strategy, a LOT of people are going to remain on earth. Which means ceasing to foul our own nest is not exactly the human-hating thing to do.
Colonizing space may or may not be a cost-effective strategy for currently living humans, but whether it is or not, it's definitely a smart idea to take better care of this, the only planet known to have the capability of supporting billions of us.
And a properly picked sphere of the earth a mile in diameter would contain the same. And it would be so much cheaper to extract and refine. Which is why we're still mining the earth and not asteroids.
Someone did the math in an earlier discussion here - platinum is the most expensive of precious metals that's routinely traded, and at reasonable estimates of costs to get to Mars and back, even if there were pre-refined bars of platinum lying about there, it wouldn't be cost-effective to go pick them up. I can't imagine it's cheaper to go to the asteroid belt, and bear in mind that in a real world situation you'd have to add costs of prospecting and refining.
The only substance obtainable in space that's not readily obtainable on earth is He3, and 1) it's not that obtainable on the moon either, and 2) we don't have any practical use for it until fusion power is perfected (if it ever is). All the other bodies in the solar system* are made of iron, nickel, silicates, etc - just like the earth. You'd have to lop several zeros off the cost for that to become practical.
*Excepting the gas giants. But we have all the hydrogen we can use on earth, thanks. And if we wanted to bring back more, how would you extract it from, say, Jupiter? At a cost you could live with?
... it's true. There are plenty of places on earth that are pretty Mars-like, so why not save the trouble and expense and just retire in, say, the Gobi desert? You wouldn't even have to worry about air to breathe.
Q: Why does the commercial spaceflight program need even $150M to get going?
A: Because going to space isn't profitable.
Space colonization is a fun thing to think about, but there's no money in it, which pretty much means it's not happening.
And so is the rest of the "let's colonize Mars" crowd - because there's simply no reason to colonize Mars. For one thing, even if the wildest dreams of SpaceX become true (and here's a hint: they probably won't, at least not completely), getting a colony to Mars is going to be unbelievably expensive. You need to not only haul the people, but all their life support equipment, capital goods (they're going to have to earn a living, right?), at least some minimal housing, energy generation, startup food, plants, greenhouses for the plants, fertilizer for the plants (unlike you're going to find fixed nitrogen on Mars, for one thing), minimal personal possessions, etc, etc, etc.
And once you've spent the trillions of dollars that would require, then what? How are you ever going to recoup your investment? Mars is mostly made of the same stuff as earth - iron, silicon, oxygen, carbon, etc. What are you going to find or make there that's worth the enormous expense to do it? The answer, pretty much, is that there isn't anything.
I doubt there's any realistic hope of retirement communities there either. The Gobi desert, for example, is a lot easier and cheaper to get to, has the advantage of a breathable atmosphere, and looks about the same as Mars (less pink), but I haven't seen a flood of Happy Acres Assisted Living developments going in there.
Look, I get that space colonization is all cool and romantic and stuff. The problem is that it's not remotely practical, and most likely won't ever be.
The only systems I'm aware of are the military's "Active Denial" and LRAD systems. Active Denial is essentially a microwave beam, and the military describes it as "less lethal". Obviously, there's a very serious risk of severe burns at the ranges you'd be talking about. Probably illegal, and dangerous to have in your house in any case - what if you set it off yourself?
LRAD is an acoustic system that emits very powerful sound beams. No real risk of lethality, but deafness is certainly a potential problem, both for you and any intruders. Again, probably illegal. And your neighbors are likely to get pissed off in the event of false alarms, when the 100dB device goes off in the middle of the night.
I'm not sure if you were just kidding about the locking in the thieves part or the whole pain-field thing.
Realistically, there are two aspects to the security problem: one is defending your property, and the other is defending your person (and family). The approach discussed above is for the situation of burglary when you're not home, and it works fine for that. But when someone breaks in while you're home... who knows what they're going to do? In that situation, you really need a dog or a gun or something.
When thinking about a gun, though, bear in mind that the cure can be worse than the disease. In most US neighborhoods, a home invasion situation is tremendously unlikely. How likely is it that your kids are going to get ahold of your pistol? Or that you'll accidentally shoot a family member coming in late at night?
Shooting to kill is not a matter of avoiding legal consequences - it's your own safety at risk. If the situation is so far gone that you need to shoot someone to make them stop what they're doing or about to do - shooting to wound just won't do. You almost certainly won't be able to do it - about your only choice would be to hit them in the leg, and you're highly likely to miss.
If you need to shoot someone to protect yourself, you need to put two bullets in their center of mass, and that's probably going to kill them. If you can't deal with that, don't shoot.
I think that would be a good idea. #8's are really quite small - #40 would have to be like dust.
Ditch the pistol and just go with the shotgun. Even well-trained police don't hit the target that well with a pistol - your chance of doing it in the excitement of a home invasion is pretty minimal. It's a lot harder to miss with a shotgun.
I do a lot of hunting and I've never even heard of #40 - the smallest I've ever seen is #8, and that's pretty fine.
Sure, they're traceable... to you. Not to the guys who stole them from you, or to the guys the thief sold them to. So when they get used in a crime, and either the shell casings or the weapon itself are recovered... it's your door the police will be knocking on.
The biggest source of weapons used in crimes is various sorts of illegal sales, but still, around 10% of them are no kidding stolen weapons. It's hardly unheard of.
Have they ever taken your picture? If so, you probably do have Facebook photos.
Dude, this is mind-bogglingly dumb. Sure, you have the right to go die in a ditch. You also have the right to stop eating and starve, or the right to hold your breath until you pass out. Practically speaking, though, no one chooses to die in a ditch, starve, or pass out (with certain minor exceptions, and in those cases I doubt you really care what the government has to say about it anyway). What drives me crazy about libertarianism is that they prioritize the "freedom" to do something absolutely no one wants to do over the freedom of access to things people actually do want - like health care.
... namely Orkut. Sure, it never caught on in the US, but overseas, it's big.
No kidding. I'm never going to use all my Gmail space, so it would be nice to be able to use it for something else. Also: an Evernote clone would be another thing I'd like to see. Being able to tie all this stuff together in one place would be handy.
I have to say that that's the single most astonishing thing I've ever read on Slashdot.
The Verizons and AT&Ts of the world conflate the two aspects of neutrality you're talking about. They claim they're concerned about being able to provide appropriate QoS for VOIP applications, but then try to get the rules written so they can discriminate by content provider. Good for Google for making this distinction clear.
No, it caused billions of dollars in damage to the fishing and tourism industries all throughout the Gulf states, putting thousands of people out of work. The response of one Texas rep: apologizing to BP for how mean the administration had been to them.
If that didn't get people marching on BP corporate offices, having "problems with the internet" (again) is surely not going to get them marching on Verizon's office.
This is evil and greedy? Since the road construction fairy is not likely to build and maintain roads for you, the state of Maryland is probably going to have to do it. Given that, the choices are: 1) pay for the roads using tolls, 2) pay for the roads using gas taxes, or 3) just take the money out of the general fund. I'm 100% in favor of a combination of 1) and 2) - since that way the people who use the roads are paying for it.
And the analogy to the internet is not that great - the "roadways" of the internet were built using government funds, subsidies, and in-kind assets like rights of way. Maintenance funds are coming from consumer ISP payments. The attempts of various ISPs to extract even more money from content providers really is evil, greedy rent-seeking, and I hope that Congress and/or the FCC put a stop to it.
Sure, being flexible enough to run on a bunch of different platforms can get you more market share, which is good for developers... but it can also make it hard to figure out whether an application or feature is actually going to work on a given platform... which is bad for developers. Consider something as simple as causing a laptop to sleep when you close the lid. In Powerbooks/MacBooks: just works. In Windows machines: well, who knows? I haven't owned a Windows laptop in a few years, so maybe things have improved, but it used to be that you could practically never get them to wake up properly after sleep. And the reason is that there were so many different models of Windows machines that you could never possibly test them all. I'm not saying that Apple's model of control is definitely superior - maybe the Android model will win out. But it's suggestive that Mac market share is grown steadily for the past several years.