it wastes their time and money and produces data that's more suited for internal political manipulation than for sensible foreign policy.
There's no such thing as 'wasting money' when you work for the government. The more money you spend, the more money you get next year, the more people you get to hire, and the more power you have.
Movement in space is cheap compared to getting things into space, if you're not in a hurry. Stick an ion engine on the back, let it run for a couple of years (with no-one on board, due to the radiation belts it has to pass through), and wait for it to get to L5.
My question is.. Why? Unless you intend to broadcast in real-time, why do you even need real-time post-processing?
So you can see what the heck the footage you're shooting is going to look like in the finished movie, when it's really just an actor in front of a green screen?
I don't think that has anything to do with us buying minerals from them. people hate the US because it is rich. we are also mostly christian and not muslim.
Yet most of these people didn't hate America before 2001. They wanted Green Cards so they could move there and become rich too.
It's not just oil - will our new Apple products come with the label: "Designed by Apple in a country which undertakes secret rendition, torture and massive online surveillance and privacy invasion."?
"And we're not allowed to tell you whether it's spying on you."
Just like we sent ships to America to bring all the resources back home, rather than move there and use them ourselves.
The only place most of those resources have value is in space. Gold was valuable enough to justify shipping it back across the Atlantic, but few other things were. There's probably nothing in space valuable enough to justify sending robots out to bring it back to Earth.
Our eco-system only took a few billion years to reach this point, and I'm sure we could do it much faster.
Indeed.
The most likely thing to trash it is us. If that happens, then to hell with the human race.
The most likely thing to trash it is an asteroid impact. Humans just aren't that good at destroying things.
But your apparent hatred of the human race probably explains why you don't want us to spread across the universe. That's another reason why we have to get out of here before someone like you does try to kill us off.
What has happened to mankind's sense of adventure?
Nothing.
What's happened is that putting a human into space costs about $50,000,000. If it cost $50,000, adventurers would already be spreading out all across the solar system.
Because living in benign environments like the top of Mt. Everest and Antarctica is easy compared to a harsh environment like space. Consider it a warm-up exercise.
Where are all the people queueing up to live on Mt Everest or in Antarctica?
Both of those things would be easy if anyone cared enough to do them; we've had a permanent presence in Antarctica for decades, and expansion is limited by international treaties. Neither would provide any useful technology for living in space, becuase the conditions are so different.
Full disclosure: I work on NASA science missions using spaced based observatories
The odds are strongly in favor that we will never actually live on another planet or moon, other than maybe some experimental stations, so I think it is in our interest to learn how to live more in tune with the only planet we ever will live on.
That people working for NASA believe this explains a lot about why NASA has gone nowhere in the last couple of decades.
The New World had untapped resources and (most of all) habitable lands up for grabs
About 99.99999999999999999% of all the resources in the universe are above our heads. The only benefit Earth has is that we don't need to build our own eco-system to survive here.
The downside is that any number of things could completely trash that eco-system, then we all die.
We should have a bustling casino perched atop Mount Everest and a fully self-sufficient megalopolis on Antarctica long before we consider colonizing other planets.
Hiking to the top of that mountain costs a lot more energy than sitting at home looking at pictures of it on Wikipedia, but the cost isn't really the point now, is it?
Sure, if you happen to have $500,000,000,000 to give to NASA so they can send someone to Mars.
Back in the real world, that money comes from taxpayers, who can think of many better things to do with it.
The engineering problem of sending a human to another planet is very different from that of sending a robot. And the resulting knowledge will be different too. Why not do both?
Because sending the human currently costs hundreds of times as much as sending the robot. And the media will be full of stories for months after you kill a human crew in deep space, whereas a failed unmanned mission makes a brief story on page ten for a day.
What we want to do is get the heck off this planet. Fortunately SpaceX is working hard to reduce launch costs to the point where it makes sense, whereas Congress is telling NASA to build a massively expensive rocket that no-one will ever be able to afford to fly on.
Bingo. A 'driverless' car is worthless if it requires a driver.
If the car is driving itself, no-one's going to be sitting there ready to take over the instant it runs into something it can't handle. We've seen what a disaster that's been with autopilots for aircraft, where the crew typically have a minute or more to resolve the problem before they crash, rather than, perhaps, a few seconds in a car.
Do you really think Google hasn't thought of this? I have no doubt that the algorithm makes use of all available options and without a doubt does so much faster and more efficiently than any human ever could.
So...
Google Car is rolling along at 150km/h. There's a baby in the road. Car can either run over the baby or crash into a concrete block and probably kill the people inside.
So explain why increasing the minimum wage actually does help the economy?
It doesn't. And it certainly doesn't help the poor, who will be replaced by machines if they're not productive enough to justify the increased wages.
Hint: rich people don't 'sit on their money' like Scrooge McDuck in your comic books. They invest it in the businesses that provide jobs for those poor people.
You could raise the wage to $15/hour and the price of a bigmac to produce would go up a few cents.
So why not raise it to $100 and make everyone rich?
Slashdot Mirror
Screw that. Simple 1 time pad will do the trick. Uncrackable by even the best crypto minds on the planet.
Not if you use an insecure random number generator (i.e. pretty much anything that's pure software with no hardware component) to generate the pad.
it wastes their time and money and produces data that's more suited for internal political manipulation than for sensible foreign policy.
There's no such thing as 'wasting money' when you work for the government. The more money you spend, the more money you get next year, the more people you get to hire, and the more power you have.
Easy.
The NSA have got files on everyone.
Which politician is going to take them on and see all their dirty laundry thrown to the media?
Movement in space is expensive.
Movement in space is cheap compared to getting things into space, if you're not in a hurry. Stick an ion engine on the back, let it run for a couple of years (with no-one on board, due to the radiation belts it has to pass through), and wait for it to get to L5.
My question is.. Why? Unless you intend to broadcast in real-time, why do you even need real-time post-processing?
So you can see what the heck the footage you're shooting is going to look like in the finished movie, when it's really just an actor in front of a green screen?
That might be a problem if they were banning these minerals, but they're not.
If slippery slopes weren't a logical fallacy, the next step after compulsory labeling would be the compulsory ban.
I don't think that has anything to do with us buying minerals from them. people hate the US because it is rich. we are also mostly christian and not muslim.
Yet most of these people didn't hate America before 2001. They wanted Green Cards so they could move there and become rich too.
It's not just oil - will our new Apple products come with the label: "Designed by Apple in a country which undertakes secret rendition, torture and massive online surveillance and privacy invasion."?
"And we're not allowed to tell you whether it's spying on you."
What's the point of these kinds of laws?
I suspect the answer will come if you ask yourself: cui bono?
I doubt it's the poor people in these countries who'll be out of a job when they can't sell materials to America.
So the history of the 21st century will be America going to war for Apple rather than oil?
Makes sense.
To be fair, anyone smart should have seen the writing on the wall years ago and left.
So let's send some robots to get them.
Just like we sent ships to America to bring all the resources back home, rather than move there and use them ourselves.
The only place most of those resources have value is in space. Gold was valuable enough to justify shipping it back across the Atlantic, but few other things were. There's probably nothing in space valuable enough to justify sending robots out to bring it back to Earth.
Our eco-system only took a few billion years to reach this point, and I'm sure we could do it much faster.
Indeed.
The most likely thing to trash it is us. If that happens, then to hell with the human race.
The most likely thing to trash it is an asteroid impact. Humans just aren't that good at destroying things.
But your apparent hatred of the human race probably explains why you don't want us to spread across the universe. That's another reason why we have to get out of here before someone like you does try to kill us off.
What has happened to mankind's sense of adventure?
Nothing.
What's happened is that putting a human into space costs about $50,000,000. If it cost $50,000, adventurers would already be spreading out all across the solar system.
Yeah, like spend it on the military.
American taxpayers love the military. At least most of those I know.
Oh I'm sorry, were you under the impression that the taxpayers got to decide where the money goes?
Here's an idea: you go and stand for Congress on a pledge of giving $500,000,000,000 to NASA to put an astronaut on Mars. Let's see how it goes.
Because living in benign environments like the top of Mt. Everest and Antarctica is easy compared to a harsh environment like space. Consider it a warm-up exercise.
Where are all the people queueing up to live on Mt Everest or in Antarctica?
Both of those things would be easy if anyone cared enough to do them; we've had a permanent presence in Antarctica for decades, and expansion is limited by international treaties. Neither would provide any useful technology for living in space, becuase the conditions are so different.
Full disclosure: I work on NASA science missions using spaced based observatories
The odds are strongly in favor that we will never actually live on another planet or moon, other than maybe some experimental stations, so I think it is in our interest to learn how to live more in tune with the only planet we ever will live on.
That people working for NASA believe this explains a lot about why NASA has gone nowhere in the last couple of decades.
The New World had untapped resources and (most of all) habitable lands up for grabs
About 99.99999999999999999% of all the resources in the universe are above our heads. The only benefit Earth has is that we don't need to build our own eco-system to survive here.
The downside is that any number of things could completely trash that eco-system, then we all die.
We should have a bustling casino perched atop Mount Everest and a fully self-sufficient megalopolis on Antarctica long before we consider colonizing other planets.
Why?
Hiking to the top of that mountain costs a lot more energy than sitting at home looking at pictures of it on Wikipedia, but the cost isn't really the point now, is it?
Sure, if you happen to have $500,000,000,000 to give to NASA so they can send someone to Mars.
Back in the real world, that money comes from taxpayers, who can think of many better things to do with it.
The engineering problem of sending a human to another planet is very different from that of sending a robot. And the resulting knowledge will be different too. Why not do both?
Because sending the human currently costs hundreds of times as much as sending the robot. And the media will be full of stories for months after you kill a human crew in deep space, whereas a failed unmanned mission makes a brief story on page ten for a day.
What we want to do is get the heck off this planet. Fortunately SpaceX is working hard to reduce launch costs to the point where it makes sense, whereas Congress is telling NASA to build a massively expensive rocket that no-one will ever be able to afford to fly on.
Bingo. A 'driverless' car is worthless if it requires a driver.
If the car is driving itself, no-one's going to be sitting there ready to take over the instant it runs into something it can't handle. We've seen what a disaster that's been with autopilots for aircraft, where the crew typically have a minute or more to resolve the problem before they crash, rather than, perhaps, a few seconds in a car.
Do you really think Google hasn't thought of this? I have no doubt that the algorithm makes use of all available options and without a doubt does so much faster and more efficiently than any human ever could.
So...
Google Car is rolling along at 150km/h. There's a baby in the road. Car can either run over the baby or crash into a concrete block and probably kill the people inside.
Which will it pick?
They'll fart unicorns, too.
So explain why increasing the minimum wage actually does help the economy?
It doesn't. And it certainly doesn't help the poor, who will be replaced by machines if they're not productive enough to justify the increased wages.
Hint: rich people don't 'sit on their money' like Scrooge McDuck in your comic books. They invest it in the businesses that provide jobs for those poor people.
You could raise the wage to $15/hour and the price of a bigmac to produce would go up a few cents.
So why not raise it to $100 and make everyone rich?