Weird - because you described tinned humans as "the raison d'etre of space travel" - and you threatened the future of space exploration if you didn't get your little fantasy funded. Actions speak louder than words - and the words speak pretty loud as well.
Passion isn't religion.
Passions can be articulated: people who are passionate about something can always explain why they are passionate about that thing, whether it be a sport, or a hobby, or a person. Yet 5 posts in, and you have yet to describe even one objective benefit arising from tinning humans. Your "passion" is completely without rational basis - a limbic response to the threat posed to your dream by the harsh reality of advanced machinery.
Let me put it another way: if your "passion" for tinned humans was a religion, how would your response to my original post have been different?
Way to address the substance of my argument. Well done.
Here's the thing, and perhaps this response from you illustrates this : nobody cares about your religion. You chose to come here and post stuff : you seem dreadfully offended that I didn't take an afternoon to read through your guff. Space nutters aren't priests, or sages, and the whole topic that entrances you - of how somehow tinned humans flying around the moon leads inevitably to star trek like universes of settled planets in other star systems, green aliens and magical technology - not that interested, sorry, it's just another hollywood story to most of us.
Of course. I am a technologist and very very interested in technology and space exploration and have been for a log time, and always happy to put in the time and effort to make things work.
You're not that interested in it, since you insist that space exploration should not be funded unless you get your historical re-enactments along with it. You might as well be dead against it, for the amount of support your are actually offering.
And what a magnificent and well played strawman you make. Read any other posts I've made in this story?
No. Why would I?
Read any other posts I've made in this story? I do support robotic space exploration. I support it as long as it is in conjunction with manned effort.
That is like saying "I support space exploration as long as we are also funding my pet project to fling trout into space". Firstly it is not all clear to me that your "support" is desirable or something we've sought. Let alone enough to be worth the billions upon billions you are asking for to buy that support. Secondly, I find it reprehensible that you tie your support for something which has an objective benefit for our species to something you want because when you were a kid you didn't learn the difference between movie space and actual space.
Nah - you don't understand many (most) space junkies.
Some might be the word you are looking for there.
With humans in space, I support defense department type funding. Your dream of no humans. I support a budget of exactly $0.00.
So basically, you intend to hold the dream of exploring space to ransom because you like the comedic circus which is human spaceflight. You think spectacle is more important than actual, objective advancement.
For me, and the growing crowd of robotic advocates like me, it's a zero sum. Taking money that could be used for space exploration and diverting it to tinned humans with webcams is just the same as taking that money and giving it to tobacco farmers, or buggy whip manufacturers, or whatever anachronistic government program designed to the purposes of nostalgia.
"We want to" is not a good enough reason to suck the lifeblood out of actual space exploration (i.e. using robots) to waste it on tinned humans.
Politicians will do ANYTHING to ensure they (themselves) stay in a powerful position, so that they can get on the track towards committee membership, and then industry contacts, and then the big money that they can wallow in before and after leaving office, thanks to the gratitude and patronage of their powerful backers.
Trump is the least popular president ever at this stage of the presidency. He is somewhere between "a liability a mid term risk" and "enough of a liability that impeachment is less of a risk" and only heading in one direction. And politicians will do ANYTHING to save their purses.
Let me relate what happened in Australia. The current "government" (the blue shirts) came to power after the previous disaster of a government (the red shirts) panicked and knifed their leader - only to knife the new one 3 years later. The blue shirts came to power swearing on all that is holy and eternal, on the lives of their ancestors, that they would never turn against their chosen leader. Except they did. And now there is talk of doing it again. Why? Because it's understood that liability to yourself is the paramount concern and sometimes it's better to move early and risk a public remembering it than to ride the disaster into the ground, and have the disaster in play when elections occur. This gamble is certainly on the minds of republicans right now.
Well, you're sort of right, in that people have other priorities. They are very pro-humans-in-space in general, as mentioned in the link here. There isn't a lot of support for increasing NASA's funding, but there is broad support of around 60% for current levels of funding (or more). [pewresearch.org]
Being 'FOR' NASA doesn't imply being 'FOR' canned humans. Perhaps people like the interesting things that NASA does with science, e.g. Mars Probes, Cassini etc. Oh, and NASA happens to be involved in the circus that is sending humans to a vacuum where they fumble around and make fools of themselves. This embarrassing sideline to the main game of space exploration is probably something most people just overlook, like the unfortunate flatulence of a favourite erudite and humorous uncle.
Perhaps people would be more enthusiastic about NASA if they weren't engaged in the wasteful and absurd clown act that is human spaceflight? Maybe, if you introduced it, people who are 'FOR' human spaceflight will be happy to accept trout instead - given that the objective benefits of the proposed trout spaceflight are the same as those enumerated for human spaceflight, but delivered cheaper?
Perhaps there are more people like me, who see space as a grand adventure, as a wondrous place for us to explore and discover and learn - but feel constantly frustrated because the funding that should go to that exploration (i.e. unmanned missions to the outer and inner planets) keeps getting diverted to fund the circus, which carries on even though the crowds have moved on?
It's a goal on the level with advancing the art of keeping trout alive in deep space. Or Snails. Or gerbils.
Well, we sent dogs and monkeys up before humans, so I'm not getting your point.
My point is that advocates of canned humans in space have not demonstrated that canning humans is a better idea than canning trouts, or dogs, or mushrooms, or any other random object that weighs less than a human, and thus is cheaper to fling into space. Pencils. Screwdrivers. Chipped teacups. Bicycle seats. All of them present a better value proposition (compared to humans) and fulfill the purpose just as well.
No one is suggesting that as a goal. The goal is not to send trout to Mars, it is to send humans to Mars. If, for some reason, sending trout to Mars somehow advances the goal, then so be it - but you are using the strawman technique in this case; the only person mentioning trout in space is you.
If a bunch of people advocating for something magically makes that "a goal" then sending trout to Mars is as much "a goal" as sending humans. I'm sure you aware of the basic landscape:
1. A small minority if people care about going to Mars, mostly for religious and semi-religious reasons (reasons steeped in mythology, stories and legends).
2. These people have not convinced the rest of us (a number in the billions) that this plan is a good one and worth sacrificing our resources to, and worth abandoning the other things we are trying to do, like fix climate change, or end the scourge of easily preventable diseases in the LDCs.
3. The reasons there has not even been an attempt at sending even a symbolic mission (with humans) to Mars is that the idea is not compelling enough to move past being an idea to being a plan. One reason it is not compelling is that supporters have never been able to articulate a practical benefit, and as a general concept ("we just want to do it") it has the same appeal as sending trout.
And so far, people generally agree that space is worth spending money on. I happen to think it is very compelling.
No, they do not. "Space" as a concept, sure. But the idea of sending humans to space far less so, this is a concept that arises from movie producers wanting to make movies about space and needing to include humans for the human interest element - much to the distraction of the point of going to space in the first place. The point being to explore and learn, and perhaps use the resources that are there. All of those goals are achieved by using robots, neither humans nor trout add anything to the equation.
It's cheaper or at least competitive here in Australia to go off grid with your own solar install comparative to a new grid connection - especially if you live in rural and semi-rural areas. Utilities charge exorbitant prices to maintain the grid connection because they upgraded the networks anticipating another 40 years of coal, only to have coal fade from the scene and the new grid underutilized (costing them money, which is passed on to consumers). You'd be a moron to connect to the grid these days, unless you are in the suburbs.
It's not useless if one of your goals is to advance the art of keeping people alive in deep space. Is that a useless goal?
It's a goal on the level with advancing the art of keeping trout alive in deep space. Or Snails. Or gerbils.
We spend money on art and on making our neighborhoods pretty.
We also generally agree that those are good things to do. We don't agree that lobbing trout into space is a good use of our money.
I just came back from a vacation where I packed my whole family into an aluminum tube with wings and we flew to England just to see shit that we haven't seen before. Utterly useless, but hey, it was fun. Just for fun, I make little projects with my kids - model rockets, little robots, an arcade cabinet. Useless, but fun.
You also paid for that yourself. If you want to lob canned humans at mars you are welcome to do so - if you pay for it yourself.
The problem with manned expeditions to mars is not so much that there is no rational benefit from it - although that is certainly a significant issue. The issue is that even the irrational reasons are not convincing or compelling.
As much as people love to blame companies, they're not alone in this. Activists have politicized the issue too. Being the petulant children that they (quite literally) are they're so convinced they know everything and that everyone else is wrong, that they have radicalized the whole debate to a point where opposing views are (a little less literally) the devil.
Absolutely. The denialist movement was bankrolled by big business, but the activist deniers are responsible for their own lies as well.
Coupled with the whole recent "science is infallible" religious movement the whole issue has become a clusterfuck devoid of facts and full of us-vs-them.
Absolutely. The denialist movement is completely divorced from any basis in science - ask any of them to prove their assertions, and you won't see them for the dust of their retreat.
The Real Lies website has damaged the credibility of government funded Big Science. Most people wish they could grade their own papers in college the same way. Imagine everyone graduates summa cum laude despite despite years of financial dissolution and academic cheating.
No idea what you are talking about, sorry.
Farmers Almanac does a better job on prediction. It's based on solar activity.
That comment has nothing to do with alarmism. Alarmisim is saying:
1. That climate models can't meaningfully predict future climate (that is, the impacts of climate change could be far worse then the models predict)
OR
2. That acting to mitigate climate change will have a devastating effect on the world economy (much higher than the 2-3% predicted by economists) or that it's too late and we might as well do nothing (that is, lay down and die).
I'll take the bet: I'll eat my shoe if the models produced by climate change deniers produce more accurate results over 10 years than the models produced by consensus science. If it's the other way, you can eat your shoe.
What are you talking about, where did you get that?
I guess I made an assumption that you weren't saying the alternative, which is that Lindzen was postulating theories without evidence - guess that a lesson that I should have learnt from the 'gravitational lensing' nonsense he peddled prior.
I didn't say anything about Richard Lindzen having a model, learn to read, no wonder science gives you so much trouble, your reading comprehension sucks. Holy fuck I swear you didn't understand a word I said.
You seem upset. Emotions get the better of all of us from time to time, but just be conscious of the fact that insulting me is unlikely to be a helpful step toward your goal of convincing me that your (or Lindzens) alternate hypothesis to explain the recent warming and the impacts of secondary feedbacks is correct and the consensus view is incorrect.
The last time we spoke you were quoting an article that claimed that climate model predictions did not correlate to actual temperature (and therefore the results of CO2 induced warming could be worse than the models predict). Now you say that Richard Lindzen has a model that's accurate.
I googled "Lindzen climate model source code" and couldn't find the source code for his model: nor indeed, any peer reviewed article in which either the function of the model itself is described nor the predictions versus actuals.
Sounds like a snake oil model to me at first glance. Do you have a cite for this claim?
Did their models accurately predict that there would be a leveling off of global temperatures throughout most of the '2000's?
How did YOUR predictive model perform?
Don't have one? In that case, what you are saying is you don't know what is going to happen - and the results could be worse than the models predict. Is that your argument?
What do you make of the consistent failure of the denialist community to come up with any explanation for the recent warming trend that wasn't trivially debunked ? What about the dismal failure of every theory that they have wanted us to believe: e.g. ther is no warming, it's warming due to the sun, it's gravitational lensing, it's warming but there's some problem with some model blah blah so somehow the theory is invalid etc. etc. and for every dismal failure, they've failed to admit they were wrong and next time through, just expected us, to believe them again?
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That's good, because I have no religion.
Weird - because you described tinned humans as "the raison d'etre of space travel" - and you threatened the future of space exploration if you didn't get your little fantasy funded. Actions speak louder than words - and the words speak pretty loud as well.
Passion isn't religion.
Passions can be articulated: people who are passionate about something can always explain why they are passionate about that thing, whether it be a sport, or a hobby, or a person. Yet 5 posts in, and you have yet to describe even one objective benefit arising from tinning humans. Your "passion" is completely without rational basis - a limbic response to the threat posed to your dream by the harsh reality of advanced machinery.
Let me put it another way: if your "passion" for tinned humans was a religion, how would your response to my original post have been different?
Here's the thing, and perhaps this response from you illustrates this : nobody cares about your religion. You chose to come here and post stuff : you seem dreadfully offended that I didn't take an afternoon to read through your guff. Space nutters aren't priests, or sages, and the whole topic that entrances you - of how somehow tinned humans flying around the moon leads inevitably to star trek like universes of settled planets in other star systems, green aliens and magical technology - not that interested, sorry, it's just another hollywood story to most of us.
Of course. I am a technologist and very very interested in technology and space exploration and have been for a log time, and always happy to put in the time and effort to make things work.
You're not that interested in it, since you insist that space exploration should not be funded unless you get your historical re-enactments along with it. You might as well be dead against it, for the amount of support your are actually offering.
And what a magnificent and well played strawman you make. Read any other posts I've made in this story?
No. Why would I?
Read any other posts I've made in this story? I do support robotic space exploration. I support it as long as it is in conjunction with manned effort .
That is like saying "I support space exploration as long as we are also funding my pet project to fling trout into space". Firstly it is not all clear to me that your "support" is desirable or something we've sought. Let alone enough to be worth the billions upon billions you are asking for to buy that support. Secondly, I find it reprehensible that you tie your support for something which has an objective benefit for our species to something you want because when you were a kid you didn't learn the difference between movie space and actual space.
Nah - you don't understand many (most) space junkies.
Some might be the word you are looking for there.
With humans in space, I support defense department type funding. Your dream of no humans. I support a budget of exactly $0.00.
So basically, you intend to hold the dream of exploring space to ransom because you like the comedic circus which is human spaceflight. You think spectacle is more important than actual, objective advancement.
For me, and the growing crowd of robotic advocates like me, it's a zero sum. Taking money that could be used for space exploration and diverting it to tinned humans with webcams is just the same as taking that money and giving it to tobacco farmers, or buggy whip manufacturers, or whatever anachronistic government program designed to the purposes of nostalgia.
"We want to" is not a good enough reason to suck the lifeblood out of actual space exploration (i.e. using robots) to waste it on tinned humans.
Not loading down the spaceship with useless baggage is always a good idea. Hopefully Orion will continue to be unmanned.
Politicians will do ANYTHING to ensure they (themselves) stay in a powerful position, so that they can get on the track towards committee membership, and then industry contacts, and then the big money that they can wallow in before and after leaving office, thanks to the gratitude and patronage of their powerful backers.
Trump is the least popular president ever at this stage of the presidency. He is somewhere between "a liability a mid term risk" and "enough of a liability that impeachment is less of a risk" and only heading in one direction. And politicians will do ANYTHING to save their purses.
Let me relate what happened in Australia. The current "government" (the blue shirts) came to power after the previous disaster of a government (the red shirts) panicked and knifed their leader - only to knife the new one 3 years later. The blue shirts came to power swearing on all that is holy and eternal, on the lives of their ancestors, that they would never turn against their chosen leader. Except they did. And now there is talk of doing it again. Why? Because it's understood that liability to yourself is the paramount concern and sometimes it's better to move early and risk a public remembering it than to ride the disaster into the ground, and have the disaster in play when elections occur. This gamble is certainly on the minds of republicans right now.
Are you sure?
All fired, correct?
Well, you're sort of right, in that people have other priorities. They are very pro-humans-in-space in general, as mentioned in the link here. There isn't a lot of support for increasing NASA's funding, but there is broad support of around 60% for current levels of funding (or more). [pewresearch.org]
Being 'FOR' NASA doesn't imply being 'FOR' canned humans. Perhaps people like the interesting things that NASA does with science, e.g. Mars Probes, Cassini etc. Oh, and NASA happens to be involved in the circus that is sending humans to a vacuum where they fumble around and make fools of themselves. This embarrassing sideline to the main game of space exploration is probably something most people just overlook, like the unfortunate flatulence of a favourite erudite and humorous uncle.
Perhaps people would be more enthusiastic about NASA if they weren't engaged in the wasteful and absurd clown act that is human spaceflight? Maybe, if you introduced it, people who are 'FOR' human spaceflight will be happy to accept trout instead - given that the objective benefits of the proposed trout spaceflight are the same as those enumerated for human spaceflight, but delivered cheaper?
Perhaps there are more people like me, who see space as a grand adventure, as a wondrous place for us to explore and discover and learn - but feel constantly frustrated because the funding that should go to that exploration (i.e. unmanned missions to the outer and inner planets) keeps getting diverted to fund the circus, which carries on even though the crowds have moved on?
It's a goal on the level with advancing the art of keeping trout alive in deep space. Or Snails. Or gerbils.
Well, we sent dogs and monkeys up before humans, so I'm not getting your point.
My point is that advocates of canned humans in space have not demonstrated that canning humans is a better idea than canning trouts, or dogs, or mushrooms, or any other random object that weighs less than a human, and thus is cheaper to fling into space. Pencils. Screwdrivers. Chipped teacups. Bicycle seats. All of them present a better value proposition (compared to humans) and fulfill the purpose just as well.
No one is suggesting that as a goal. The goal is not to send trout to Mars, it is to send humans to Mars. If, for some reason, sending trout to Mars somehow advances the goal, then so be it - but you are using the strawman technique in this case; the only person mentioning trout in space is you.
If a bunch of people advocating for something magically makes that "a goal" then sending trout to Mars is as much "a goal" as sending humans. I'm sure you aware of the basic landscape:
1. A small minority if people care about going to Mars, mostly for religious and semi-religious reasons (reasons steeped in mythology, stories and legends).
2. These people have not convinced the rest of us (a number in the billions) that this plan is a good one and worth sacrificing our resources to, and worth abandoning the other things we are trying to do, like fix climate change, or end the scourge of easily preventable diseases in the LDCs.
3. The reasons there has not even been an attempt at sending even a symbolic mission (with humans) to Mars is that the idea is not compelling enough to move past being an idea to being a plan. One reason it is not compelling is that supporters have never been able to articulate a practical benefit, and as a general concept ("we just want to do it") it has the same appeal as sending trout.
And so far, people generally agree that space is worth spending money on. I happen to think it is very compelling.
No, they do not. "Space" as a concept, sure. But the idea of sending humans to space far less so, this is a concept that arises from movie producers wanting to make movies about space and needing to include humans for the human interest element - much to the distraction of the point of going to space in the first place. The point being to explore and learn, and perhaps use the resources that are there. All of those goals are achieved by using robots, neither humans nor trout add anything to the equation.
It's cheaper or at least competitive here in Australia to go off grid with your own solar install comparative to a new grid connection - especially if you live in rural and semi-rural areas. Utilities charge exorbitant prices to maintain the grid connection because they upgraded the networks anticipating another 40 years of coal, only to have coal fade from the scene and the new grid underutilized (costing them money, which is passed on to consumers). You'd be a moron to connect to the grid these days, unless you are in the suburbs.
It's not useless if one of your goals is to advance the art of keeping people alive in deep space. Is that a useless goal?
It's a goal on the level with advancing the art of keeping trout alive in deep space. Or Snails. Or gerbils.
We spend money on art and on making our neighborhoods pretty.
We also generally agree that those are good things to do. We don't agree that lobbing trout into space is a good use of our money.
I just came back from a vacation where I packed my whole family into an aluminum tube with wings and we flew to England just to see shit that we haven't seen before. Utterly useless, but hey, it was fun. Just for fun, I make little projects with my kids - model rockets, little robots, an arcade cabinet. Useless, but fun.
You also paid for that yourself. If you want to lob canned humans at mars you are welcome to do so - if you pay for it yourself.
The problem with manned expeditions to mars is not so much that there is no rational benefit from it - although that is certainly a significant issue. The issue is that even the irrational reasons are not convincing or compelling.
As much as people love to blame companies, they're not alone in this. Activists have politicized the issue too. Being the petulant children that they (quite literally) are they're so convinced they know everything and that everyone else is wrong, that they have radicalized the whole debate to a point where opposing views are (a little less literally) the devil.
Absolutely. The denialist movement was bankrolled by big business, but the activist deniers are responsible for their own lies as well.
Coupled with the whole recent "science is infallible" religious movement the whole issue has become a clusterfuck devoid of facts and full of us-vs-them.
Absolutely. The denialist movement is completely divorced from any basis in science - ask any of them to prove their assertions, and you won't see them for the dust of their retreat.
Feel free to live free from science - in a cave and die at 23 from some easily preventable disease.
The Real Lies website has damaged the credibility of government funded Big Science. Most people wish they could grade their own papers in college the same way. Imagine everyone graduates summa cum laude despite despite years of financial dissolution and academic cheating.
No idea what you are talking about, sorry.
Farmers Almanac does a better job on prediction. It's based on solar activity.
Does this mean you'll take the bet?
That comment has nothing to do with alarmism. Alarmisim is saying:
1. That climate models can't meaningfully predict future climate (that is, the impacts of climate change could be far worse then the models predict)
OR
2. That acting to mitigate climate change will have a devastating effect on the world economy (much higher than the 2-3% predicted by economists) or that it's too late and we might as well do nothing (that is, lay down and die).
Do we have a wager?
yes of course: it's a vast, time travelling conspiracy. It's so obvious to me now!
Good or bad, what proof is there, this is indeed "human-caused"?
Whose fault is it if you are ignorant of the basic science of climate?
Manifest Destiny is a faith - a faith that I, and many others, do not share.
You know the most interesting thing about manifest destiny is that it doesn't exist. It's just a made up thing.
What are you talking about, where did you get that?
I guess I made an assumption that you weren't saying the alternative, which is that Lindzen was postulating theories without evidence - guess that a lesson that I should have learnt from the 'gravitational lensing' nonsense he peddled prior.
I didn't say anything about Richard Lindzen having a model, learn to read, no wonder science gives you so much trouble, your reading comprehension sucks. Holy fuck I swear you didn't understand a word I said.
You seem upset. Emotions get the better of all of us from time to time, but just be conscious of the fact that insulting me is unlikely to be a helpful step toward your goal of convincing me that your (or Lindzens) alternate hypothesis to explain the recent warming and the impacts of secondary feedbacks is correct and the consensus view is incorrect.
I googled "Lindzen climate model source code" and couldn't find the source code for his model: nor indeed, any peer reviewed article in which either the function of the model itself is described nor the predictions versus actuals.
Sounds like a snake oil model to me at first glance. Do you have a cite for this claim?
Did their models accurately predict that there would be a leveling off of global temperatures throughout most of the '2000's?
How did YOUR predictive model perform?
Don't have one? In that case, what you are saying is you don't know what is going to happen - and the results could be worse than the models predict. Is that your argument?
What do you make of the consistent failure of the denialist community to come up with any explanation for the recent warming trend that wasn't trivially debunked ? What about the dismal failure of every theory that they have wanted us to believe: e.g. ther is no warming, it's warming due to the sun, it's gravitational lensing, it's warming but there's some problem with some model blah blah so somehow the theory is invalid etc. etc. and for every dismal failure, they've failed to admit they were wrong and next time through, just expected us, to believe them again?
Any comments?