The purpose of this special session is to deliberately derail the referendum drive so that the effort to put this onto the ballot in November is completely wiped out. Right now there is an effort to collect about 100,000 signatures state-wide to put this onto the general election ballot this year (which is normally just for municipal elections in Utah) and that effort is gaining steam and public support.
Very likely, if this stays in the public spotlight, it will mean the end of the elective office careers of many of these state legislators, and they know it. It is also likely that this legislation is going to be repealed through the ballot box, and these guys want to stop that process.
What they are trying to do here is to repeal the law that has all of these signatures and will be defeated by the voters of this state, and instead introduce a whole new law to take its place... a law that says essentially the very same thing and causes the same problems that is gaining all of the attention. As a new law, they can quash the referendum drive completely.
A really cute thing about this tactic is that the laws in Utah governing the ability to put up a referendum do not take into account legislation put forward in a special session, so effectively they are vetoing the will of the citizens at the ballot box on this particular issue. If it weren't for the fact that I'm so ticked off at the legislators pulling these tactics and the fact they wrote these exemptions explicitly to keep the public under their heels, I would call this stinking brilliant. Brilliant like a dictator, but none the less brilliant. The Supreme Soviet was never this good at ignoring public opinion.
Mostly correct. The question being raised is if there is a Peak of Eternal Light and/or a Crater of Eternal Darkness. That such a geographic (for lack of a better word) feature exists on the Moon raises the possibility that something of that nature also exists on Mercury. What is more, the two features can be rather close to each other or even part of the same structure overall.
The Moon on the south pole area has something a bit more unique where a major crater carved out a substantial basin that is nearly one of the largest impact craters in the entire Solar System (on the order of Hellas Basin). Anything larger, and it would have obliterated the body such as how the Moon was thought to have formed in the first place. While Mercury has some large craters, I don't think such a major feature has been discovered which can distort the physical features to such an extent.
What helps out here with such features is that light elements such as Hydrogen, Oxygen, and other "volatile" substances like water ice might be found in such a baisn. The peaks of eternal light can offer continuous electrical power for any effort to use or extract those resources, and certainly such materials opens the possibility of human outposts to be established there.
I'd call Mercury right on the edge of potential human habitation if that is even possible, but it is an interesting idea to think about none the less.
The hydrogen is being produced in an abnormal condition, due to the extreme temperatures in the core when it was produced. What is happening here is that as the water is hitting the core, rather than being turned into steam it is turning into hydrogen + oxygen gasses directly as it is cracking the water upon impact with the core. The Oxygen is also oxidizing the core at the same time (and causing its own problems), but that luckily is also absorbing a huge amount of heat energy in the process still.
As the hydrogen is being produced, it goes into the pipes normally intended for steam generation... but at much higher pressures and temperatures than they were intended. This hydrogen gas also contains bits of the core as well because its formation is rather violent on a physical level. As the core cools, eventually the water "merely" turns into steam and the production of hydrogen stops, but then the problem is what to do with all of the hydrogen gas that has been produced and is full of other radioactive elements. A simple flare in the overall environment isn't going to be sufficient here.
Keep in mind that the temperatures in the core here are hot enough to melt and/or vaporize just about any known substance.... which is why it has been said that these reactors are in a partial melt-down. That is also why the technicians are being desperate and simply pouring sea water into the core... knowing full well that by doing so they are performing an emergency measure that destroys the potential of ever using that reactor again for anything productive. None of these reactors is ever expected to go on-line again for electricity production.
The bone-headed move by the engineers who built these reactors is that they put the back-up generators (which use Diesel fuel) in a location that could be wiped out by the tsunami. In other words, it wasn't the earthquake but rather the tsunami which killed these reactors. When the earthquake happened, the reactors were cut off from the main power grid in the country, and then the tsunami killed the back-up power that was supposed to keep the reactor core cool. With the coolant pumps turned off, the core was allowed to heat up to these extreme temperatures that thus created the Hydrogen gas.... while the core was also melting apart. That is where the engineering mistake was made, not to mention that perhaps some other way to cool down the core ought to have been thought up first in an emergency situation.
The scary thing about the hydrogen gas is that it is being formed from the water hitting the core at such extreme temperatures that it produces not just steam but rather ionized hydrogen and oxygen in a disassociated state.... plus a few extra goodies along the way that get dislodged from the core with these gasses. If you think about it, that is some pretty extreme temperatures we are talking about, and the Japanese officials are citing that at least a partial melt-down has happened in these plants.
The temperature required to do that is in the thousands of degrees (F, C, or K doesn't matter except to a purists at these temperatures) and is most certainly not a normal condition for these reactors.
This is much more like Three Mile Island than Chernobyl, but it is still real bad, and Three Mile Island didn't have the outer containment building blow up in an explosive fashion.
Chernobyl, on the other hand, did expose the raw core to the outside environment in one huge explosive plume. While not a nuclear bomb, it certainly produced enough atmospheric radioactive material that it might as well have been a nuke blowing up. All that was missing was the heat and the larger destructive behavior of a nuclear bomb.
The first time one of these things detonates on the pad, or augurs into the the ground on re-entry, the party will be over. No one will want anything to do with them.
So every time an airplane crashes the whole of aviation is shut down world-wide?
There will most certainly be an accident review board if something happens, and if there is reason to blame the engineering of the vehicle there will be perhaps a suspension (temporary or permanent) for that type of spacecraft until the problem is fixed or the spacecraft is pulled from the market. That is true for any aircraft right now as well.
This is of course the reason there needs to be multiple groups of engineers trying very different designs and approaches too, so if one particular design doesn't work then you still have other ways to get around. That was the problem with the Space Shuttle, where a mishap shut the program down for years and there wasn't an alternative.
I was merely pointing out that ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in a court room. Yes, I happen to agree with you that it is absurd that any given individual actually have memorized the entire legal code and all judicial rulings (especially in a "common law" country or region) that pertain to a particular situation.
On the other hand, if I ever get a ticket or have to go into a court room, nearly the first thing I have done in order to prepare a defense is to read the actual legal code and as many judicial rulings on the incident that I can. Far more often than not if a police officer has issued a ticket to me or I've been cited for something, I usually decide after reading the code that yes I am guilty of the offense. This isn't to say that a police officer is always correct (they certainly aren't trained lawyers), but a professional law enforcement officer more often than not does now the laws regarding the situations they commonly deal with.
Still, when it comes to juvenile courts, judges tend to be much more lenient in criminal situations and do take into account ignorance of the law knowing full well that ordinary children are still trying to learn things about this world of ours and that sometimes they do impulsive and irresponsible behavior merely because they didn't know any better. If it was a civil dispute (aka a lawsuit trying to enforce some fine or penalty) and it turns out that a child is one of the parties involved, the typical reaction of most judges based both on common practice and in most cases statutory law.... they will decide in favor of the child or simply dismiss the case altogether if somebody is trying to sue the child. Children simply are not held liable for those kind of issues.
Property damage by a child can and does involve the parents of that child, and I know full well that if my kids do mayhem that I am responsible for that damage, but a child can't sign a contract. That is the point and those who are trying to argue that a kid can consent to a contract simply don't get it.
While this is getting very much off-topic from the main point of the thread, I think the problem here is the difference between confirming identity and establishing identity.
Establishment of identity needs to be done in person, where that established identity is then certified in some manner with strong crypto-security such as a public/private encryption method. I'm talking something much stronger than a 512-bit or better yet a 4096-bit hash (SHA-2 or equivalent) that is algorithmicly difficult to perform. Such identity establishment is almost never done, and I am asserting that such identity establishment can't be performed on-line. It is a mistake to believe that it ever could be.
As for who would be responsible for establishing such identity, that could either be a government agency or a private business (my preference) that could perform such a service. A bank, for instance, could offer such a service for its customers where you would have to physically go down to a bank branch office and meet some bank officer who would certify your identity, look at your driver's license photo, perform a retinal scan, or do something else similar where the identity is firmly established for who you are. If an imposter tries to assume your identity, it would be easily caught. Retinal scans, for instance, would catch even identical twins trying to pass off as the other twin assuming identity.
Once the identity is established, using the "key" for on-line transactions certainly could be done, where you "sign" the document with a hash that can be unlocked proving that you in fact were the one who engaged in the contract. Using a government issued serial number isn't the same kind of proof. Credit cards have a 4-digit "hash" and often checksums are but a single digit. How hard is it to brute force a search of acceptable "passwords" if you have as few as 10k possible options? Let's be real here. That isn't "proof" of identity, it was merely a lucky guess and such information is often in the public domain of available knowledge. Information such as your mother's maiden name or the name of your 3rd grade teacher is in theory publicly available information and can be obtained if somebody really wants to know something about your life.
The issue here isn't access to a bunch of cash. I know full well where my wallet is most of the time, although I know it is the same thing with a credit card. Presumably if I had a huge pile of cash, I'd keep it at a bank or in a safe that my kids wouldn't know the combination.
The issue here is should I be bound to honor a contract that promises payment for services I didn't agree to in the first place, and to which that contract wasn't signed by me. Moreover, if the contract was knowingly and willingly entered into by the business where they knew full well that it is clearly a child who has agreed to the terms of the contract, why should they expect that contract to be honored?
Children are not capable of understanding the full meaning of a contract, and there are people who prey upon that fact by setting up conditions that are deliberately difficult to understand yet are embarrassingly easy to run up charges without even thinking about it. That is why the Federal Trade Commission is deliberately going after these guys and trying to impose regulations on this whole mess.... because these businesses are deliberately trying to take advantage of a vulnerable age group.
I see similar problems with college freshmen getting piles of credit card applications and charging up a mountain of debt that hangs with them for the rest of their lifetime, but by that point in their life they ought to be able to comprehend the concept of a contract. Unfortunately even then a kid is usually not taught about such contracts until it is too late to do anything about it. Targeting grade school kids is just over the top and should be stopped.
Yes, I get the notion that parents should discipline their kids too and teach them not to get involved in scams at an early age. I certainly try to teach my kids about this issue even now and warn them not to get hyped up over this kind of activity. Still, there is no reason the contract should be honored if it wasn't signed by an adult.
If it is an on-line game that allows you to sign up via a common web browser and the kid somehow finds your credit card while you are sleeping, should you be required to honor those charges? Clearly your kid was "stealing your identity" when the contract was signed in a situation like that, but I say the problem is also that "on-line identity" is a difficult problem without some sort of biometric feedback.
I consider "biometric" identity to be the only real proof, be that a signature scribbled by pen, a finger print, retinal scan, or DNA sample. The problem with "identity theft" is when "proof of identity" has not been properly established. Knowing the maiden name of somebody's mother is not "proof of identity", nor is knowledge of bank account numbers or government issued certificate numbers. If you can't really prove who really entered into the contract, it is a joke that the contract actually means something.
I agree with your point, however, that you shouldn't open yourself up to potential dangers by setting up some system where a child can rack up charges on an unlimited basis, be that micro transactions in a game or text messages on a cell phone. For cell phones, I buy the pre-paid cell phones for my kids, and when they use up all of the minutes, I simply say "tough luck" as they have to wait until I can afford to put some more air-time on the phone. If I would permit my kids to play an on-line game, it would have to be in a similar situation where I would assign some trivial amount of money to an account and when it hit the limit, I would not feel obliged to be paying any more.
BTW, I got into a similar tiff with a mail-order book publisher where my kid signed up for a "monthly subscription" when he purchased a book through his elementary school teacher (one of those semi-annoying fliers that teachers often send home with the kids from book publishers) and then a series of other things started to arrive at our home with his name on it. He purchased the book with his allowance money (it was about $10 or so) and filled out his name and stuff without even running it by me. After about six months, I got this annoying bill collector who got on my case demanding payment of about $100 for this extra stuff. I basically told the idiot "I'll see you in court if you care" as the contract was signed by a minor and that the merchandise was unsolicited mail. The guy on the phone said he would ruin my credit rating, and then I responded "How?". It never showed up on my credit report (I did check) and I never got a subpoena to appear in court. Essentially, the company took the loss and ignored me, as I've ignored them.
This is implying that you live in a place where the rule of law prevails instead of thuggery and oppression of a strong bully who simply bashes your head in because he hates the way you smell or got turned down for sex from his wife last night. "Civilized world" does not happen for all people in all places, and unfortunately even in places like America it can be a problem where life is less than civilized. Some times even police officers are little better than semi-organized gang bangers who largely get away with tactics and principles normally ascribed to "organized criminal syndicates". The reason that happens less often is largely because some police officers do try to put on a professional attitude and grow a conscience. Police and military officials who submit to civilian authority tend to be less of a concern, but clearly that is not always true.
If an intelligent judge looks at a "contract" that a child has supposedly entered into, the proper response is that the kid didn't have the experience or necessary tools to be able to understand the subtle requirements of the legal system. It is said that ignorance of the law is not an excuse if you break laws, but that gets ridiculous if you expect an eight year old to be able to intelligently read much less comprehend contract law and be able to make a rational decision based upon legal fine print.
Considering that the printing press itself was a relatively new invention at the time, I have a hard time believing there was much in terms of ancient common law tradition that applied to something even related to "the right to print a copy".
There may have been "gentleman's agreements" and traditions between members of the official printing guilds not to print each other's works, but the tradition to duplicate books was well in hand and well established by tradition much earlier. The "right to copy" depended upon the physical owner of the book, which is where any sort of copyright tradition came from. That makes sense too back when books were transcribed by hand using a quill, where an unauthorized copy was literally theft as you had to steal a physical book to make a copy.
Within 100 years of the introduction of printing by Gutenberg, the number of books available in Europe grew almost 100 times what was available previously, with the definition of a book meaning something about the size and number of words as the Bible.
By the time of the Queen Anne statues, there became a serious problem with "gray market" printing where books would be physically printed in other countries, usually in Holland, and then "smuggled" into England and sold without regards to the printing guilds. Incredibly subversive books like the Bible and Greek legends were common. Printing a copy of the Bible, particularly one in the English language, was punishable by death. Even having a copy was illegal and was a life spent in prison.
The point of the Statue of Queen Anne was to try and stop this flood of books coming across the English Channel, as the guilds were most certainly not getting their cut. While the concept of "unauthorized duplication" of a printed work was perhaps a lesser issue, it really was an attempt to get a legal monopoly on the printing business where only the main guild members, particularly the London printers, would be getting the work. In other words, it was the publishers, not the artists, authors, or anybody connected with creating the content which was being protected but rather making sure only union members would be involved with the printing and non-union print shops (not members of the guild) would be shut down. All sorts of thuggery including assault, murder, theft, extortion, and other means were employed and condoned by the government to enforce these principles.
If there was formal common law, it was to protect the "rights" of the printer, not the author.
In fairness, there are other recent developments by the teams themselves that deserve some recognition, although settling down on a "final" list of teams is something reasonable. If you want to try and claim the prize at this point but are just starting out, it would be better to work with one of the existing teams rather than trying to start out completely from scratch so I think the finalization is a good thing.
Hardware is being built, test videos are showing up on YouTube and elsewhere, and it looks like at least somebody might make the deadline although I am not so sure who might get that accomplished. I don't see a team like Scaled Composites that is so far ahead of the rest of the competition that other teams don't have a chance to catch up. There are a couple of teams I'd consider hopeless in terms of being able to make it to the Moon, but even those teams seem to be in better shape than many of the original X-Prize teams shooting for the 100 km prize.
The one "dark horse" that might be able to come in and make a huge difference is Armadillo Aerospace, as they clearly have a lander capable of going to the Moon, but to the best of my knowledge isn't actively involved with this effort. Armadillo has their plate full at the moment with some paying customers and an aggressive schedule to get their sub-orbital business going, so I do understand why John Carmack doesn't want to take the focus off of his current efforts to this interesting diversion. Still, if they decided to wait until next year before getting serious on a vehicle design, I think they could meet the final deadline in terms of actually landing something on the Moon.
I think you could fly some of these Moon landing hoax idiots to the Moon, have them see the flag that Buzz Aldrin put up on the Moon, look at the very footsteps of Neil Armstrong and "touch" those footprints, and they'd still call the whole thing a hoax with the site set up as a part of the ruse to perpetuate the conspiracy.
I agree with you that there is no possible way to convince these people that the Apollo landings were genuine as bashing them in the head with a Moon rock is certainly not convincing enough. Obviously Nazi Germany got there first and is directing the Bavarian Illuminati to take over the world... if you want to believe a couple of other similar conspiracies.
Add to that where the Soviet Union did end up sending a robotic rover on the Moon, and that was supposedly after the Apollo landings. They even sent up a spacecraft which did a fetch and retrieve mission to collect some Moon rocks.
The findings of the Soviet effort to study lunar rocks? The samples collected by the American astronauts really were rocks from the same planetary body with roughly identical chemical composition and age. Yeah, if there was a way for the Soviet Union to scream that the whole thing was a fraud, they would have had the means and the motive to get that accomplished.
If anything, the manned spaceflight effort sort of validated the concept of manned space exploration, as the Apollo selenology survey provided a much more diverse and varied collection of samples than the Soviet effort. It was so varied that the rocks are even today still being actively studied to gain an understanding of the minerals that are found on the Moon.
Between the pre-game shows, the post-game show, and the sum total of nearly all of commercials combined, I'm sure that Fox Television pulled in at least a revenue of over $100 million for what was just a one day event. Comparisons between that the costs for spaceflight are interesting to say the least.
Most people are more interested in watching football than watching some guy play golf on the Moon, so it should be obvious where the money is going. It turns out that spaceflight is more expensive than even putting on a spectacle like the Super Bowl too.
Most spaceflight activities usually are a fiscal black hole. It is a dirty little secret that the rest of the world already knows full well.
My comment about ARCA is that at least they are trying to figure out things from a fresh perspective, and that at least they have flying hardware and a steady rate of progress on their vehicles. They are also one of the official Google Lunar X-Prize teams, hence the relevance to the main topic of conversation here. As to if this is a responsible way for tax dollars or other money raised in Romania to be spent, I'll have to leave that to the Romanian people. They are one of the leading groups that I believe has a legitimate chance of winning the big prize, so certainly it is a group to watch.
As an American, I'm glad that tax dollars are regularly spent on spaceflight even if the entire budget of ARCA since its inception is routinely misappropriated and embezzled on a daily basis with the American spaceflight program. Then again, America has much more money than Romania, so that isn't a fair comparison either.
The real news of the day isn't the contest itself, which has been discussed elsewhere including on Slashdot previously. The big deal is that a contract for a flight to the Moon has been inked and a launch slot set aside to put the vehicle up there.
I don't know how much this particular group is going to be making in terms of a profit, but they got their rocket and have some serious money behind them in terms of helping to finance this trip. This particular team is also the one to beat, or at least a top contender as well. I'm sure that over the next few months that several other teams are going to be announcing flight schedules too.
The low-cost launcher to watch for that might turn a "profit" is ARCA who has already launched a vehicle and has a rather unique approach for orbital spaceflight. Stuff is happening and money is being spent, so this is a good question to ask.
It would be simply awesome if you could have a vehicle be able to remain on the Moon and operational for more than a year. A Soviet crawler/lander stayed up there for about five months, which is the current "record" in terms of survival on the Moon at the moment for even a robotic vehicle. Yes, the environment on the Moon is that harsh.
20 years would be a huge accomplishment, which would be able to at least demonstrate that sustained operations on the Moon would be possible. I don't really care what or who goes back, noting that anything going back to the Moon is a huge step forward at the moment.
There still is a rather obscure part of the U.S. Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I don't know what part of "congress shall make no law" those guys can't figure out, but making a law to prohibit the publication of the names of people is unconstitutional. It says so right there.
Then again, if they don't give a damn about the constitution and are willing to be so bold as to shut down a media outlet by legislation, they also don't give a damn about ex-post facto laws either.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
(Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4)
Some people thought it was idiotic and wasting time to actually read aloud this document at the beginning of the current session of Congress. Frankly, I don't think it gets pounded into their heads enough and that should be an annual tradition.
Existing manned spacecraft are explicitly designed to do one task, and one task only: To take people from the surface of the Earth and bring them to low-Earth orbit, and to bring them safely back. They don't need fancy radiation shields as the Earth's magnetosphere does a pretty good job of shielding most of the really bad radiation hazards with the exception of perhaps cosmic rays. Even then, the radiation hazards that exist can be dealt with too.
The radiation hazards certainly are something that can be tested here on the Earth, and are a known issue that can be engineered in terms of building spacecraft that are designed explicitly for interplanetary spaceflight. If you think that a bunch of people are going to be crammed into a capsule like the Apollo program and live that way for months at a time on a trip to Mars, I'd have to say you are nuts. Spaceships to other planets are going to look a whole lot different, and will present many different challenges.
There still are other unknowns, however, regarding reproduction and rearing children in a spaceflight environment that do need to be answered. What I find horrifying is that those who should be asking these questions, and conducting legitimate experiments to find the answers to these questions, are simply not doing so because they find the topic of sexual reproduction either offensive or at least they feel politically uncomfortable finding out about these issues. It doesn't have to be an untested and unproven hypothesis as the tools and facilities to discover the answers to these questions can be found. It is just that those who might perform these studies refuse to do so.
My argument is also that some long-term planning needs to happen in terms of if this is even an issue, as planning for potential pregnancies of people going into space by means of something other than forced sterilization is something I think that ought to happen... or at least get something of a clue ahead of time. Unfortunately, and this is where I think it is flawed scientific discussion, those who are making the case for forced sterilization of potential astronauts going to Mars or elsewhere are doing so based upon purely philosophical grounds and not upon any sort of established and valid experimental research. If they are making these sort of assumptions that have no basis in fact, there is no reason to even listen to these "observers" who I describe as being purely "clueless" as they are truly without a clue or experimentally established scientific fact to back up their claims.
Radiation exposure is hardly the most pressing issue for spaceflight, particularly as it is a known hazard that can be engineered against. It is the issues we don't know that we should be worried about instead of this lame excuse for why people shouldn't be in space.
Travel to other stars is centuries away... if that will ever happen at all except as a desperation ploy or somebody is just super adventurous. The leap from interplanetary travel to interstellar travel is so vast that it is about the equivalent of being able to fly the Montgolfier balloon to being able to land on the Moon. Not only is the engineering and computational resources to make the trip significantly lacking, but even the energy sources or experience in general space travel completely lacking for such a trip. Any speculation about travel to another star system is about on the level like Jules Verne had when he considered a trip to the Moon.
I dare say that it may even take a millennium or more before somebody is brave enough to do that, and in the meantime mankind is going to be self-absorbed with our own solar system and the challenges it will take to be a multi-planet species. There are plenty of worlds to explore within our own solar system to satisfy the wanderlust of almost anybody wanting to "boldly go where no man has gone before".
I agree with you that at least in broad theory there are likely going to be some interesting target stars that may be approachable in terms of human habitation, but we need to explore more of the Universe first before we even can think of getting there.
So why aren't you dead now with all of the radiation in the environment pounding down upon you at this very instant?
If the presumption is that the radiation hazards are present when in a space suit trying to run around during an EVA while a solar flare is hitting.... I'd agree that is a really stupid thing to do. Trying to put together a spacesuit that holds back all radiation is a hopeless task.
On the other hand, people live and work around nuclear fusion reactors all of the time where radiation levels inside of those reactors is much worse than you will find with any solar storm. So why do people live in spite of that? Why can't you put at least the equivalent shielding on a spacecraft that is put on a nuclear submarine? The pressure difference between a nuclear submarine and the sea is much higher than the pressure difference between the inside of a spacecraft at normal atmospheric pressure and the vacuum of space. You also have "room" to put radiation shields, and a blanket of water around the living quarters a foot or so thick is plenty of protection from most forms of radiation.... and the water has many other uses besides being a radiation shield too.
The Fed has pumped several trillion dollars into the economy as direct purchases of the securities involved. I'm not sure where you are coming from in terms of the money charts, but this is from the direct intervention by the Fed into the markets.
As to if that is going to have any long term impacts.... I'm not really sure. Money has certainly been sucked out of the economy as debt is being paid off in various ways. I'll admit that the velocity of the U.S. Dollar has dropped significantly... which is in turn reducing technically the amount of money available.
I'll admit it gets sort arcane in terms of how much money is floating around, but the Fed certainly has been instituting a very loose money supply right now with incredibly low interest rates. The only real difference, particularly for housing prices, is that obtaining a home loan is now considerably harder to obtain than it was in the past with a much larger down payment and far better credit history than was previously required for a house loan. That is certainly drying up the housing market as bad if not worse than had interest rates gone up.
There are many reasons for why the housing prices have gone down but food and consumer prices have gone up, where much of it is related to supply/demand issues. The supply of money for food and other consumer goods has not gone down, but the supply of money for buying homes certainly has.
Aerobic exercise certainly helps quite a bit in terms of survival in space. It keeps the heart moving and the muscle tone strong and active. That is why treadmills and other exercise equipment has been installed in the ISS and that equipment is regularly used.
The issue with bone loss is a big deal, however, and something that exercise doesn't seem to help with, and on that point I'd have to agree.
If you can simulate gravity via a rotating platform, on the other hand, the acceleration would be roughly the same as gravity.... which is functionally the same thing. Your body wouldn't know the difference.
A greater issue would be living on Mars or the Moon where a rotating spacecraft wouldn't be available and the gravitational acceleration would be less than 9.8 m/s^2. The Moon has a gravity well of about 2 m/s^2 and Mars has about 4 m/s^2. If a partial gravity environment is a problem, it sure would be nice to know what issues to expect. Unfortunately there have been no long-term studies of a reduced gravity environment to find out.
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The purpose of this special session is to deliberately derail the referendum drive so that the effort to put this onto the ballot in November is completely wiped out. Right now there is an effort to collect about 100,000 signatures state-wide to put this onto the general election ballot this year (which is normally just for municipal elections in Utah) and that effort is gaining steam and public support.
Very likely, if this stays in the public spotlight, it will mean the end of the elective office careers of many of these state legislators, and they know it. It is also likely that this legislation is going to be repealed through the ballot box, and these guys want to stop that process.
What they are trying to do here is to repeal the law that has all of these signatures and will be defeated by the voters of this state, and instead introduce a whole new law to take its place... a law that says essentially the very same thing and causes the same problems that is gaining all of the attention. As a new law, they can quash the referendum drive completely.
A really cute thing about this tactic is that the laws in Utah governing the ability to put up a referendum do not take into account legislation put forward in a special session, so effectively they are vetoing the will of the citizens at the ballot box on this particular issue. If it weren't for the fact that I'm so ticked off at the legislators pulling these tactics and the fact they wrote these exemptions explicitly to keep the public under their heels, I would call this stinking brilliant. Brilliant like a dictator, but none the less brilliant. The Supreme Soviet was never this good at ignoring public opinion.
The patent on Edison's invention would have expired by now. Still, an interesting thought there.
Mostly correct. The question being raised is if there is a Peak of Eternal Light and/or a Crater of Eternal Darkness. That such a geographic (for lack of a better word) feature exists on the Moon raises the possibility that something of that nature also exists on Mercury. What is more, the two features can be rather close to each other or even part of the same structure overall.
The Moon on the south pole area has something a bit more unique where a major crater carved out a substantial basin that is nearly one of the largest impact craters in the entire Solar System (on the order of Hellas Basin). Anything larger, and it would have obliterated the body such as how the Moon was thought to have formed in the first place. While Mercury has some large craters, I don't think such a major feature has been discovered which can distort the physical features to such an extent.
What helps out here with such features is that light elements such as Hydrogen, Oxygen, and other "volatile" substances like water ice might be found in such a baisn. The peaks of eternal light can offer continuous electrical power for any effort to use or extract those resources, and certainly such materials opens the possibility of human outposts to be established there.
I'd call Mercury right on the edge of potential human habitation if that is even possible, but it is an interesting idea to think about none the less.
The hydrogen is being produced in an abnormal condition, due to the extreme temperatures in the core when it was produced. What is happening here is that as the water is hitting the core, rather than being turned into steam it is turning into hydrogen + oxygen gasses directly as it is cracking the water upon impact with the core. The Oxygen is also oxidizing the core at the same time (and causing its own problems), but that luckily is also absorbing a huge amount of heat energy in the process still.
As the hydrogen is being produced, it goes into the pipes normally intended for steam generation... but at much higher pressures and temperatures than they were intended. This hydrogen gas also contains bits of the core as well because its formation is rather violent on a physical level. As the core cools, eventually the water "merely" turns into steam and the production of hydrogen stops, but then the problem is what to do with all of the hydrogen gas that has been produced and is full of other radioactive elements. A simple flare in the overall environment isn't going to be sufficient here.
Keep in mind that the temperatures in the core here are hot enough to melt and/or vaporize just about any known substance.... which is why it has been said that these reactors are in a partial melt-down. That is also why the technicians are being desperate and simply pouring sea water into the core... knowing full well that by doing so they are performing an emergency measure that destroys the potential of ever using that reactor again for anything productive. None of these reactors is ever expected to go on-line again for electricity production.
The bone-headed move by the engineers who built these reactors is that they put the back-up generators (which use Diesel fuel) in a location that could be wiped out by the tsunami. In other words, it wasn't the earthquake but rather the tsunami which killed these reactors. When the earthquake happened, the reactors were cut off from the main power grid in the country, and then the tsunami killed the back-up power that was supposed to keep the reactor core cool. With the coolant pumps turned off, the core was allowed to heat up to these extreme temperatures that thus created the Hydrogen gas.... while the core was also melting apart. That is where the engineering mistake was made, not to mention that perhaps some other way to cool down the core ought to have been thought up first in an emergency situation.
The scary thing about the hydrogen gas is that it is being formed from the water hitting the core at such extreme temperatures that it produces not just steam but rather ionized hydrogen and oxygen in a disassociated state.... plus a few extra goodies along the way that get dislodged from the core with these gasses. If you think about it, that is some pretty extreme temperatures we are talking about, and the Japanese officials are citing that at least a partial melt-down has happened in these plants.
The temperature required to do that is in the thousands of degrees (F, C, or K doesn't matter except to a purists at these temperatures) and is most certainly not a normal condition for these reactors.
This is much more like Three Mile Island than Chernobyl, but it is still real bad, and Three Mile Island didn't have the outer containment building blow up in an explosive fashion.
Chernobyl, on the other hand, did expose the raw core to the outside environment in one huge explosive plume. While not a nuclear bomb, it certainly produced enough atmospheric radioactive material that it might as well have been a nuke blowing up. All that was missing was the heat and the larger destructive behavior of a nuclear bomb.
The first time one of these things detonates on the pad, or augurs into the the ground on re-entry, the party will be over. No one will want anything to do with them.
So every time an airplane crashes the whole of aviation is shut down world-wide?
There will most certainly be an accident review board if something happens, and if there is reason to blame the engineering of the vehicle there will be perhaps a suspension (temporary or permanent) for that type of spacecraft until the problem is fixed or the spacecraft is pulled from the market. That is true for any aircraft right now as well.
This is of course the reason there needs to be multiple groups of engineers trying very different designs and approaches too, so if one particular design doesn't work then you still have other ways to get around. That was the problem with the Space Shuttle, where a mishap shut the program down for years and there wasn't an alternative.
I was merely pointing out that ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in a court room. Yes, I happen to agree with you that it is absurd that any given individual actually have memorized the entire legal code and all judicial rulings (especially in a "common law" country or region) that pertain to a particular situation.
On the other hand, if I ever get a ticket or have to go into a court room, nearly the first thing I have done in order to prepare a defense is to read the actual legal code and as many judicial rulings on the incident that I can. Far more often than not if a police officer has issued a ticket to me or I've been cited for something, I usually decide after reading the code that yes I am guilty of the offense. This isn't to say that a police officer is always correct (they certainly aren't trained lawyers), but a professional law enforcement officer more often than not does now the laws regarding the situations they commonly deal with.
Still, when it comes to juvenile courts, judges tend to be much more lenient in criminal situations and do take into account ignorance of the law knowing full well that ordinary children are still trying to learn things about this world of ours and that sometimes they do impulsive and irresponsible behavior merely because they didn't know any better. If it was a civil dispute (aka a lawsuit trying to enforce some fine or penalty) and it turns out that a child is one of the parties involved, the typical reaction of most judges based both on common practice and in most cases statutory law.... they will decide in favor of the child or simply dismiss the case altogether if somebody is trying to sue the child. Children simply are not held liable for those kind of issues.
Property damage by a child can and does involve the parents of that child, and I know full well that if my kids do mayhem that I am responsible for that damage, but a child can't sign a contract. That is the point and those who are trying to argue that a kid can consent to a contract simply don't get it.
While this is getting very much off-topic from the main point of the thread, I think the problem here is the difference between confirming identity and establishing identity.
Establishment of identity needs to be done in person, where that established identity is then certified in some manner with strong crypto-security such as a public/private encryption method. I'm talking something much stronger than a 512-bit or better yet a 4096-bit hash (SHA-2 or equivalent) that is algorithmicly difficult to perform. Such identity establishment is almost never done, and I am asserting that such identity establishment can't be performed on-line. It is a mistake to believe that it ever could be.
As for who would be responsible for establishing such identity, that could either be a government agency or a private business (my preference) that could perform such a service. A bank, for instance, could offer such a service for its customers where you would have to physically go down to a bank branch office and meet some bank officer who would certify your identity, look at your driver's license photo, perform a retinal scan, or do something else similar where the identity is firmly established for who you are. If an imposter tries to assume your identity, it would be easily caught. Retinal scans, for instance, would catch even identical twins trying to pass off as the other twin assuming identity.
Once the identity is established, using the "key" for on-line transactions certainly could be done, where you "sign" the document with a hash that can be unlocked proving that you in fact were the one who engaged in the contract. Using a government issued serial number isn't the same kind of proof. Credit cards have a 4-digit "hash" and often checksums are but a single digit. How hard is it to brute force a search of acceptable "passwords" if you have as few as 10k possible options? Let's be real here. That isn't "proof" of identity, it was merely a lucky guess and such information is often in the public domain of available knowledge. Information such as your mother's maiden name or the name of your 3rd grade teacher is in theory publicly available information and can be obtained if somebody really wants to know something about your life.
The issue here isn't access to a bunch of cash. I know full well where my wallet is most of the time, although I know it is the same thing with a credit card. Presumably if I had a huge pile of cash, I'd keep it at a bank or in a safe that my kids wouldn't know the combination.
The issue here is should I be bound to honor a contract that promises payment for services I didn't agree to in the first place, and to which that contract wasn't signed by me. Moreover, if the contract was knowingly and willingly entered into by the business where they knew full well that it is clearly a child who has agreed to the terms of the contract, why should they expect that contract to be honored?
Children are not capable of understanding the full meaning of a contract, and there are people who prey upon that fact by setting up conditions that are deliberately difficult to understand yet are embarrassingly easy to run up charges without even thinking about it. That is why the Federal Trade Commission is deliberately going after these guys and trying to impose regulations on this whole mess.... because these businesses are deliberately trying to take advantage of a vulnerable age group.
I see similar problems with college freshmen getting piles of credit card applications and charging up a mountain of debt that hangs with them for the rest of their lifetime, but by that point in their life they ought to be able to comprehend the concept of a contract. Unfortunately even then a kid is usually not taught about such contracts until it is too late to do anything about it. Targeting grade school kids is just over the top and should be stopped.
Yes, I get the notion that parents should discipline their kids too and teach them not to get involved in scams at an early age. I certainly try to teach my kids about this issue even now and warn them not to get hyped up over this kind of activity. Still, there is no reason the contract should be honored if it wasn't signed by an adult.
If it is an on-line game that allows you to sign up via a common web browser and the kid somehow finds your credit card while you are sleeping, should you be required to honor those charges? Clearly your kid was "stealing your identity" when the contract was signed in a situation like that, but I say the problem is also that "on-line identity" is a difficult problem without some sort of biometric feedback.
I consider "biometric" identity to be the only real proof, be that a signature scribbled by pen, a finger print, retinal scan, or DNA sample. The problem with "identity theft" is when "proof of identity" has not been properly established. Knowing the maiden name of somebody's mother is not "proof of identity", nor is knowledge of bank account numbers or government issued certificate numbers. If you can't really prove who really entered into the contract, it is a joke that the contract actually means something.
I agree with your point, however, that you shouldn't open yourself up to potential dangers by setting up some system where a child can rack up charges on an unlimited basis, be that micro transactions in a game or text messages on a cell phone. For cell phones, I buy the pre-paid cell phones for my kids, and when they use up all of the minutes, I simply say "tough luck" as they have to wait until I can afford to put some more air-time on the phone. If I would permit my kids to play an on-line game, it would have to be in a similar situation where I would assign some trivial amount of money to an account and when it hit the limit, I would not feel obliged to be paying any more.
BTW, I got into a similar tiff with a mail-order book publisher where my kid signed up for a "monthly subscription" when he purchased a book through his elementary school teacher (one of those semi-annoying fliers that teachers often send home with the kids from book publishers) and then a series of other things started to arrive at our home with his name on it. He purchased the book with his allowance money (it was about $10 or so) and filled out his name and stuff without even running it by me. After about six months, I got this annoying bill collector who got on my case demanding payment of about $100 for this extra stuff. I basically told the idiot "I'll see you in court if you care" as the contract was signed by a minor and that the merchandise was unsolicited mail. The guy on the phone said he would ruin my credit rating, and then I responded "How?". It never showed up on my credit report (I did check) and I never got a subpoena to appear in court. Essentially, the company took the loss and ignored me, as I've ignored them.
This is implying that you live in a place where the rule of law prevails instead of thuggery and oppression of a strong bully who simply bashes your head in because he hates the way you smell or got turned down for sex from his wife last night. "Civilized world" does not happen for all people in all places, and unfortunately even in places like America it can be a problem where life is less than civilized. Some times even police officers are little better than semi-organized gang bangers who largely get away with tactics and principles normally ascribed to "organized criminal syndicates". The reason that happens less often is largely because some police officers do try to put on a professional attitude and grow a conscience. Police and military officials who submit to civilian authority tend to be less of a concern, but clearly that is not always true.
If an intelligent judge looks at a "contract" that a child has supposedly entered into, the proper response is that the kid didn't have the experience or necessary tools to be able to understand the subtle requirements of the legal system. It is said that ignorance of the law is not an excuse if you break laws, but that gets ridiculous if you expect an eight year old to be able to intelligently read much less comprehend contract law and be able to make a rational decision based upon legal fine print.
Considering that the printing press itself was a relatively new invention at the time, I have a hard time believing there was much in terms of ancient common law tradition that applied to something even related to "the right to print a copy".
There may have been "gentleman's agreements" and traditions between members of the official printing guilds not to print each other's works, but the tradition to duplicate books was well in hand and well established by tradition much earlier. The "right to copy" depended upon the physical owner of the book, which is where any sort of copyright tradition came from. That makes sense too back when books were transcribed by hand using a quill, where an unauthorized copy was literally theft as you had to steal a physical book to make a copy.
Within 100 years of the introduction of printing by Gutenberg, the number of books available in Europe grew almost 100 times what was available previously, with the definition of a book meaning something about the size and number of words as the Bible.
By the time of the Queen Anne statues, there became a serious problem with "gray market" printing where books would be physically printed in other countries, usually in Holland, and then "smuggled" into England and sold without regards to the printing guilds. Incredibly subversive books like the Bible and Greek legends were common. Printing a copy of the Bible, particularly one in the English language, was punishable by death. Even having a copy was illegal and was a life spent in prison.
The point of the Statue of Queen Anne was to try and stop this flood of books coming across the English Channel, as the guilds were most certainly not getting their cut. While the concept of "unauthorized duplication" of a printed work was perhaps a lesser issue, it really was an attempt to get a legal monopoly on the printing business where only the main guild members, particularly the London printers, would be getting the work. In other words, it was the publishers, not the artists, authors, or anybody connected with creating the content which was being protected but rather making sure only union members would be involved with the printing and non-union print shops (not members of the guild) would be shut down. All sorts of thuggery including assault, murder, theft, extortion, and other means were employed and condoned by the government to enforce these principles.
If there was formal common law, it was to protect the "rights" of the printer, not the author.
In fairness, there are other recent developments by the teams themselves that deserve some recognition, although settling down on a "final" list of teams is something reasonable. If you want to try and claim the prize at this point but are just starting out, it would be better to work with one of the existing teams rather than trying to start out completely from scratch so I think the finalization is a good thing.
Hardware is being built, test videos are showing up on YouTube and elsewhere, and it looks like at least somebody might make the deadline although I am not so sure who might get that accomplished. I don't see a team like Scaled Composites that is so far ahead of the rest of the competition that other teams don't have a chance to catch up. There are a couple of teams I'd consider hopeless in terms of being able to make it to the Moon, but even those teams seem to be in better shape than many of the original X-Prize teams shooting for the 100 km prize.
The one "dark horse" that might be able to come in and make a huge difference is Armadillo Aerospace, as they clearly have a lander capable of going to the Moon, but to the best of my knowledge isn't actively involved with this effort. Armadillo has their plate full at the moment with some paying customers and an aggressive schedule to get their sub-orbital business going, so I do understand why John Carmack doesn't want to take the focus off of his current efforts to this interesting diversion. Still, if they decided to wait until next year before getting serious on a vehicle design, I think they could meet the final deadline in terms of actually landing something on the Moon.
I think you could fly some of these Moon landing hoax idiots to the Moon, have them see the flag that Buzz Aldrin put up on the Moon, look at the very footsteps of Neil Armstrong and "touch" those footprints, and they'd still call the whole thing a hoax with the site set up as a part of the ruse to perpetuate the conspiracy.
I agree with you that there is no possible way to convince these people that the Apollo landings were genuine as bashing them in the head with a Moon rock is certainly not convincing enough. Obviously Nazi Germany got there first and is directing the Bavarian Illuminati to take over the world... if you want to believe a couple of other similar conspiracies.
Add to that where the Soviet Union did end up sending a robotic rover on the Moon, and that was supposedly after the Apollo landings. They even sent up a spacecraft which did a fetch and retrieve mission to collect some Moon rocks.
The findings of the Soviet effort to study lunar rocks? The samples collected by the American astronauts really were rocks from the same planetary body with roughly identical chemical composition and age. Yeah, if there was a way for the Soviet Union to scream that the whole thing was a fraud, they would have had the means and the motive to get that accomplished.
If anything, the manned spaceflight effort sort of validated the concept of manned space exploration, as the Apollo selenology survey provided a much more diverse and varied collection of samples than the Soviet effort. It was so varied that the rocks are even today still being actively studied to gain an understanding of the minerals that are found on the Moon.
Between the pre-game shows, the post-game show, and the sum total of nearly all of commercials combined, I'm sure that Fox Television pulled in at least a revenue of over $100 million for what was just a one day event. Comparisons between that the costs for spaceflight are interesting to say the least.
Most people are more interested in watching football than watching some guy play golf on the Moon, so it should be obvious where the money is going. It turns out that spaceflight is more expensive than even putting on a spectacle like the Super Bowl too.
Most spaceflight activities usually are a fiscal black hole. It is a dirty little secret that the rest of the world already knows full well.
My comment about ARCA is that at least they are trying to figure out things from a fresh perspective, and that at least they have flying hardware and a steady rate of progress on their vehicles. They are also one of the official Google Lunar X-Prize teams, hence the relevance to the main topic of conversation here. As to if this is a responsible way for tax dollars or other money raised in Romania to be spent, I'll have to leave that to the Romanian people. They are one of the leading groups that I believe has a legitimate chance of winning the big prize, so certainly it is a group to watch.
As an American, I'm glad that tax dollars are regularly spent on spaceflight even if the entire budget of ARCA since its inception is routinely misappropriated and embezzled on a daily basis with the American spaceflight program. Then again, America has much more money than Romania, so that isn't a fair comparison either.
The real news of the day isn't the contest itself, which has been discussed elsewhere including on Slashdot previously. The big deal is that a contract for a flight to the Moon has been inked and a launch slot set aside to put the vehicle up there.
I don't know how much this particular group is going to be making in terms of a profit, but they got their rocket and have some serious money behind them in terms of helping to finance this trip. This particular team is also the one to beat, or at least a top contender as well. I'm sure that over the next few months that several other teams are going to be announcing flight schedules too.
The low-cost launcher to watch for that might turn a "profit" is ARCA who has already launched a vehicle and has a rather unique approach for orbital spaceflight. Stuff is happening and money is being spent, so this is a good question to ask.
It would be simply awesome if you could have a vehicle be able to remain on the Moon and operational for more than a year. A Soviet crawler/lander stayed up there for about five months, which is the current "record" in terms of survival on the Moon at the moment for even a robotic vehicle. Yes, the environment on the Moon is that harsh.
20 years would be a huge accomplishment, which would be able to at least demonstrate that sustained operations on the Moon would be possible. I don't really care what or who goes back, noting that anything going back to the Moon is a huge step forward at the moment.
There still is a rather obscure part of the U.S. Constitution:
I don't know what part of "congress shall make no law" those guys can't figure out, but making a law to prohibit the publication of the names of people is unconstitutional. It says so right there.
Then again, if they don't give a damn about the constitution and are willing to be so bold as to shut down a media outlet by legislation, they also don't give a damn about ex-post facto laws either.
(Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4)
Some people thought it was idiotic and wasting time to actually read aloud this document at the beginning of the current session of Congress. Frankly, I don't think it gets pounded into their heads enough and that should be an annual tradition.
Existing manned spacecraft are explicitly designed to do one task, and one task only: To take people from the surface of the Earth and bring them to low-Earth orbit, and to bring them safely back. They don't need fancy radiation shields as the Earth's magnetosphere does a pretty good job of shielding most of the really bad radiation hazards with the exception of perhaps cosmic rays. Even then, the radiation hazards that exist can be dealt with too.
The radiation hazards certainly are something that can be tested here on the Earth, and are a known issue that can be engineered in terms of building spacecraft that are designed explicitly for interplanetary spaceflight. If you think that a bunch of people are going to be crammed into a capsule like the Apollo program and live that way for months at a time on a trip to Mars, I'd have to say you are nuts. Spaceships to other planets are going to look a whole lot different, and will present many different challenges.
There still are other unknowns, however, regarding reproduction and rearing children in a spaceflight environment that do need to be answered. What I find horrifying is that those who should be asking these questions, and conducting legitimate experiments to find the answers to these questions, are simply not doing so because they find the topic of sexual reproduction either offensive or at least they feel politically uncomfortable finding out about these issues. It doesn't have to be an untested and unproven hypothesis as the tools and facilities to discover the answers to these questions can be found. It is just that those who might perform these studies refuse to do so.
My argument is also that some long-term planning needs to happen in terms of if this is even an issue, as planning for potential pregnancies of people going into space by means of something other than forced sterilization is something I think that ought to happen... or at least get something of a clue ahead of time. Unfortunately, and this is where I think it is flawed scientific discussion, those who are making the case for forced sterilization of potential astronauts going to Mars or elsewhere are doing so based upon purely philosophical grounds and not upon any sort of established and valid experimental research. If they are making these sort of assumptions that have no basis in fact, there is no reason to even listen to these "observers" who I describe as being purely "clueless" as they are truly without a clue or experimentally established scientific fact to back up their claims.
Radiation exposure is hardly the most pressing issue for spaceflight, particularly as it is a known hazard that can be engineered against. It is the issues we don't know that we should be worried about instead of this lame excuse for why people shouldn't be in space.
Travel to other stars is centuries away... if that will ever happen at all except as a desperation ploy or somebody is just super adventurous. The leap from interplanetary travel to interstellar travel is so vast that it is about the equivalent of being able to fly the Montgolfier balloon to being able to land on the Moon. Not only is the engineering and computational resources to make the trip significantly lacking, but even the energy sources or experience in general space travel completely lacking for such a trip. Any speculation about travel to another star system is about on the level like Jules Verne had when he considered a trip to the Moon.
I dare say that it may even take a millennium or more before somebody is brave enough to do that, and in the meantime mankind is going to be self-absorbed with our own solar system and the challenges it will take to be a multi-planet species. There are plenty of worlds to explore within our own solar system to satisfy the wanderlust of almost anybody wanting to "boldly go where no man has gone before".
I agree with you that at least in broad theory there are likely going to be some interesting target stars that may be approachable in terms of human habitation, but we need to explore more of the Universe first before we even can think of getting there.
So why aren't you dead now with all of the radiation in the environment pounding down upon you at this very instant?
If the presumption is that the radiation hazards are present when in a space suit trying to run around during an EVA while a solar flare is hitting.... I'd agree that is a really stupid thing to do. Trying to put together a spacesuit that holds back all radiation is a hopeless task.
On the other hand, people live and work around nuclear fusion reactors all of the time where radiation levels inside of those reactors is much worse than you will find with any solar storm. So why do people live in spite of that? Why can't you put at least the equivalent shielding on a spacecraft that is put on a nuclear submarine? The pressure difference between a nuclear submarine and the sea is much higher than the pressure difference between the inside of a spacecraft at normal atmospheric pressure and the vacuum of space. You also have "room" to put radiation shields, and a blanket of water around the living quarters a foot or so thick is plenty of protection from most forms of radiation.... and the water has many other uses besides being a radiation shield too.
The Fed has pumped several trillion dollars into the economy as direct purchases of the securities involved. I'm not sure where you are coming from in terms of the money charts, but this is from the direct intervention by the Fed into the markets.
As to if that is going to have any long term impacts.... I'm not really sure. Money has certainly been sucked out of the economy as debt is being paid off in various ways. I'll admit that the velocity of the U.S. Dollar has dropped significantly... which is in turn reducing technically the amount of money available.
I'll admit it gets sort arcane in terms of how much money is floating around, but the Fed certainly has been instituting a very loose money supply right now with incredibly low interest rates. The only real difference, particularly for housing prices, is that obtaining a home loan is now considerably harder to obtain than it was in the past with a much larger down payment and far better credit history than was previously required for a house loan. That is certainly drying up the housing market as bad if not worse than had interest rates gone up.
There are many reasons for why the housing prices have gone down but food and consumer prices have gone up, where much of it is related to supply/demand issues. The supply of money for food and other consumer goods has not gone down, but the supply of money for buying homes certainly has.
Aerobic exercise certainly helps quite a bit in terms of survival in space. It keeps the heart moving and the muscle tone strong and active. That is why treadmills and other exercise equipment has been installed in the ISS and that equipment is regularly used.
The issue with bone loss is a big deal, however, and something that exercise doesn't seem to help with, and on that point I'd have to agree.
If you can simulate gravity via a rotating platform, on the other hand, the acceleration would be roughly the same as gravity.... which is functionally the same thing. Your body wouldn't know the difference.
A greater issue would be living on Mars or the Moon where a rotating spacecraft wouldn't be available and the gravitational acceleration would be less than 9.8 m/s^2. The Moon has a gravity well of about 2 m/s^2 and Mars has about 4 m/s^2. If a partial gravity environment is a problem, it sure would be nice to know what issues to expect. Unfortunately there have been no long-term studies of a reduced gravity environment to find out.