I would disagree with you on Space: 1999 and argue strongly that The Prisoner really isn't even science fiction at all nor is really I Dream of Jeannie. Still, a strong attempt with nearly a hundred other shows that it is competing against.
The reason season two was retooled is mainly because the show was cancelled but at the last minute one of the network executives changed their mind. The only actor they could get to come back on a regular contract was Loren Green, but they needed to recast pretty much the rest of the show. That of course gave the disaster which was Galactica 1980, where the only episode worth watching was the one where Dirk Benedict came back as a guest star for one episode.
Not all shows go through this, but it does happen when networks get sort of schizophrenic about what they want and push their agenda on the series producers. The rural purge is an extreme example of what can happen in that situation to trash the entire schedule including otherwise successful and popular shows. Sometimes merely the threat that the series will be next is enough to force this retooling you are talking about.
Worst Sci Fi series ever? I can name several candidates for that, including "Logan's Run" (the TV series) or some of the really awful stuff pushed onto Saturday morning kids programming (is Scooby Doo considered SF?) Ever hear of "Land of the Lost"? Heck, what about Doctor Who from the 1970's?
At the time it was made, there was little you could point to as episodic series that were any better. If you can name more than five shows that were of superior quality.... far superior quality that almost anybody would agree with you... please feel free to name them. They must have been made before 1980 though. I don't think you can. After 1980 there have been many shows that were better, but you are looking at it from the wrong perspective if you make that comparison.
I have to admit, it did suck pretty badly, even considering the state of s.f. television back then.
I don't think you remember the state of sci fi television in the late 1970's. It was mainly Star Trek reruns and really horrible stuff like Lost in Space, I Dream of Jeanie (fitting a very loose description of science fiction) or real classics like "It came from Outer Space" or "The Attack of the 50' Woman" and even "The Absent Minded Professor" on late-night television. This is when the Herbie movies were being made. Other TV series contemporary with this include "Electro Woman and DynaGirl" and "Jason of Star Command".
Compared to most of the other stuff, Battlestar Galactica was in comparison pretty hardcore SF. It was done in a style rather similar to Star Wars, but with its own mythos. If you are saying this was cheesy and comical, so was Star Wars by nearly every one of the same metrics. They took some liberties due to the episodic nature of the series, but it wasn't nearly as bad as you or your friends thought.... or your memories are fading quite a bit from what other stuff during that era was like. It certainly is unfair to compare this to Firefly or Farscape.
While partially true, there were a great many mechanical analog computers which did a great many things and were widespread in the early 20th Century... including when this particular machine was made.
A good video that shows how some of those mechanical computers were made can be found in this U.S. Navy training film:
Computers like this were used as early as the Spanish-American War and the Crimean War. A much older computer was found in the form of the Antikythera mechanism.
Yes, there were also people who were called computers as a job title as well, but the mechanical variety existed as well before ENIAC, and were commonly used as well.
Far more relevant in the 1880s is the United States Census for 1880 that took over 12 years to compile. The U.S. Census Bureau realized they would continue to fall behind unless they made some substantive changes to how they compiled the statistics which Congress insisted upon, not to mention plotting out the data needed for making district maps for Congress as required by the Constitution.
That is how you got Herman Hollerith who made the punch card through a system that census workers would input data about each person in America in a digital format that could be mechanically tabulated. He also started up a tiny little company that became known as IBM. The 1890 census was far more successful, and each census since then has been done more efficiently.
Ever hear of nanosats? Mere mortals can buy them even and put them into orbit (certainly a modest kickstarter campaign can get one built).
There is also the OSCAR series of amateur radio satellites that are generally available if you have qualifications as a ham radio operator.
Or for that matter, perhaps you want to watch the X-37B that the U.S. Air Force has sent up to try and figure out what they are doing?
In other words, there are plenty of applications for this kind of technology, especially if it was cheap enough to build that small "hacker" teams could pool resources and make it happen.
So your complaint is about NASA allowing Google to base their air fleet at Moffett in the first place? That is a valid complaint. Your complaint about the jet fuel is groundless though. Yes, the fuel trucks could drive across the bay instead (on the toll bridges, etc. for multiple additional charges) but this isn't otherwise hindering private enterprise.
What you are suggesting is that these pilots are going to be casually flying around for the hell of it where flying to another airport in the Bay Area first before taking their clients (aka the Google executive staff) to their final destination. I'm not freaking clueless about these things, just pointing out that Moffett Field has minimal services oriented towards servicing government flights instead of commercial ones, hence the reason why Google was using the same system when at that air field.
That is companies who sold fuel at other airports, perhaps in that region, potentially lost money because Google executives didn't buy their fuel at those other airports first and then flew the planes into Moffett Field. That sounds like a major inconvenience and a waste of time as well. It isn't as if there were other fuel providers at this particular airfield.
How much should they have paid for the property in your opinion? How did you arrive at that figure?
Keep in mind Google needs to maintain the capacity of the field as an air strip, maintain Hanger One as a historical building, and other factors that make this more than just ordinary commercial real estate. In the end, Google still doesn't own the property and when that lease comes up in 60 years a whole lot of things could change with regards to Silicon Valley and the state of industry there. Either it will turn into the next armpit of America and resemble Detroit or perhaps the land will become even more valuable.
Anybody else could have also put a bid for the air field, even though you can legitimately argue perhaps that notification of such a lease opportunity may not have been as widely advertised as you might like. If it really was such a steal of a deal, it sounds more like you missed a golden opportunity yourself by not starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds and flip the property to make some money or make a huge windfall to a charity of your choice. I really doubt you could have made much money by trying to outbid Google and in turn offering the land to other companies instead.
Except that Google has been parking their private jets at Moffett Field for years now. The only difference is that they no longer need an act of Congress to keep them at the field.
Sort of true. More than 50% of the value of the company has been distributed to public shareholders, but the founders and a small group of people have voting rights on almost anything that matters where the other investors only get profits and little say in public governance.
Why you would bother investing in such a company is sort of beyond me, but then again it is something you should know when investing in Google stock. Those shares with voting rights, however, are very valuable indeed.
For an airbase that dates back to World War One, I'd dare say that NASA and the federal government deserve to do some hazmat cleanup of their own mess in this situation. Why do you think it should all be dumped onto Google in this case?
The folks that really should be paying for that cleanup, if any funds are targeted at a specific agency, should be the U.S. Navy. It is an old airship hanger that predates NASA by decades.
I hope they start at the Foundation itself, at least in terms of Hari Seldon establishing the original Foundation with the holographic recordings and the sense of excitement that happened when the first of these recordings started to play. Prelude to Foundation sort of ruins the whole
My hope is that they don't rush the Mule into existence soon in the series. It is a great story arc, but something that definitely needs to be about season 3-4.
Having the second foundation sort of hinted throughout the first season would be delicious though... if only in passing. The mental telepathy and manipulation of the second foundation would be a little tough to visualize, but I'm sure something could be made that way. Then again, keep it firmly in the background and only hinted at for diehard fans of the series to notice from time to time until the big reveal that would happen about season 6 (assuming it gets that far).
On the other hand, Prelude to Foundation could be used to flesh out production details for what Trantor actually looks like and some of the political situations on that planet. It doesn't need to include Hari Seldon's tour of the planet, but it is great source material that should be remembered for an eventual prequel if the production team ever wants to go that route.... or make a special "made for TV" feature length movie using the setting.
At least that is the way I'd do the production if I were the executive producer. I hope HBO doesn't screw this one up.
The gravity on Mars is such that a stay there of any duration (say, 12 earth months) will mean returning to earth will kill you. There won't be any return trips.
There is absolutely no scientific research to show this is true. It simply hasn't even been done. For crying out loud, there are people who will be going into the ISS to stay there for more than a year in basically a microgravity environment for that length of time. I'm not saying there will be zero impact, but it seems highly unlikely that 12 months of living on Mars is going to make it impossible to return to the Earth.
At the very least, cite your source of info. When living on Mars, you will still need to have your heart pump extra hard climbing stairs or doing other forms of physical exertions that simply is not true for people on the ISS, and there have not been human-sized centrifuges capable of simulating Martian acceleration.
Mars is bathed in deadly radiation.
So is the Earth. Perhaps they will need to dig down a little bit, and being on Mars will certainly be better than sitting inside of a spaceship under any circumstance. Radiation is not the big problem you make it out to be and are demonizing a problem that already exists even on the Earth. It is a problem already being addressed by spacecraft construction and something dealt with literally daily by those on the ISS. Of all of the problems that are going to face settlers on Mars, radiation is the one thing that everybody already knows how it will be dealt with and how it can be compensated for by those going to Mars.
It is also one problem that can also abundantly be dealt with by building shelters with local materials.
BTW, Aluminum smelters may very well show up on Mars and be there sooner than later. Mars is also covered with silica in various forms, so glass is also something that can be made with local materials. The problems you are posting here are sort of just getting downright silly at this point.
If it was certain that we as a species need to leave the Earth in 5-10 years or face complete extinction, we would need to make some significant changes in political policy in regards to a number of different things. Luckily, that isn't the case and the general presumption is that we have many centuries left before a civilization collapse, much less a mass extinction event.
On the other hand, should we, collectively, be spending about the same level of resources toward potentially saving the species by moving a portion of mankind to another planet as is currently being spent on lipstick or shaving cream? I think that sounds like a reasonable proposition. Let's at least do that and get say one or two people out of ten thousand working on that problem or contributing resources to such an endeavor.
even mining gold on Earth is cheaper than an on asteroid.
You are aware that many of the mineral deposits on the Earth that have high quantities of rare minerals likely have an extra terrestrial origin. In other words, companies have been mining asteroids for decades already.
What you miss in your presumption that it is so easy to get minerals from the crust of the Earth is that you have to deal with a constant 10 m/s^2 acceleration for stuff you do here on the Earth. Most of the really easy to reach deposits have already been exploited on the Earth, so what is happening now are activities to extract those resources by digging down deeper into the crust or literally removing whole mountains to get at that stuff. It isn't cheap or nearly so easy as you are suggesting.
Rio Tinto, to give an example of an existing mining company here on the Earth, already spends many billions of dollars simply to open up a basic mining operation to extract simple resources like copper or gold. Such deposits that can be done productively in that same manner are increasingly hard to find as well I might add. No doubt there are still as of yet undiscovered major deposits of some of these minerals, but surface minerals that can be easily mined and sorted out to various elements in not nearly as easy as you are suggesting either. If you can find a deposit of iron that is 5% or so in concentration, there are several companies I could point to right now that would buy that land and dig it up.... if that was easily obtained from surface extraction methods.
My point is that building a mining operation on an asteroid with current technology for spaceflight is on roughly the same scale of costs as is needed now for doing a terrestrial mining operation for much poorer quality of raw materials. Many of the asteroids that can be mined practically pass right by the Earth, and in a few cases even pass between the Earth & the Moon. Those can be efficiently mined in total, where some of them definitely have minerals far more concentrated in some rare elements than is the case on the Earth. Those will be the first extraterrestrial mining targets.
Of course one of the most valuable minerals in space right now is simply ordinary water, usually in the form of ice. It is cheaper and easier to capture ice from the outer Solar System or even from passing comets than it is to launch it from the Earth. That happens to be the business plan for Planetary Resources, who unfortunately lost their first spacecraft in the explosion of the Antares rocket built by Orbital Science. They have actual hardware going into space, which should show they are serious about the idea and are willing to spend some big bucks to get there.
It will really be the market place that will decide if it is worth the cost of mining asteroids or not, and I will find it interesting to see what people pontificating about this concept will say a century from now. I don't think those space-based mining operators need to be subsidized either, and some people with money are trying to make it happen regardless of what you think about the idea.
You will not be able to pay the cost of your transfer to Mars (including the tons of food and supplies needed to keep you alive there).
Elon Musk has suggested the cost of a round-trip passage to Mars is likely going to cost about $500k. That may seem like a whole lot, but it is comparable in price for somebody from a modern 1st world country to what people were paying in the 18th Century for passage to European colonies in terms of needing to literally sell everything they had including their house, save up for years, and then put all of that money on the line for a trip to the colonies.
As for the "tons of supplies needed to keep you alive there", only the first few colonists are going to need that mountain of supplies. Even then, such colonies will simply fail unless they are able to use local resources to produce literally everything they are going to need for survival. Food and the air that everybody will breathe on Mars will by necessity need to come from local resources and can't be reasonably brought from the Earth. Other supplies like clothing, toiletries, and even building materials for shelters will much sooner than later need to come from local materials as well, and will be required to come from local materials once more than a dozen or so people are on Mars.
It will not be like the Apollo missions when people go to Mars.
As for money on Mars, I'm sure the people who will live on Mars will figure out a currency among themselves for the allocation of scarce resources. Your presumption that there will be no means to "make money" simply shows a lack of understanding of economics.
I don't even know how to respond to the rest of your essay here. Mars has more area to roam upon than the land area of the Earth. I'm sure that is plenty of room for various kinds of political philosophies, from hardcore communism to libertarian utopias and everything in between. It won't be easy to do any of this, and mistakes will be made. If you don't want to be involved, I don't mind nor should you be required to pay for any of it (in my opinion). Just stay the hell away from me or anybody else who tries to do this is all I ask.
The gravity of Mars is only 2/3rds that of the Earth. Less than the Earth to be sure and could cause some problems, but the bones of people and their genetic stress loads were forged by evolutionary pressures here on the Earth. Perhaps a million or more years from now another species of the Homo genus that evolves from Homo Sapiens might live on Mars and have difficulty adapting to life on the Earth, but over the course of a few thousand years those living on Mars will have no problem at all in terms of returning back to the Earth. DNA just doesn't change that quickly.
Most definitely children who may be born on Mars in the 21st Century will have no problem returning to the land of their grandparents and taking a hike through the Grand Canyon or climbing the Alps. They may need some endurance training like is sort of the case for some inner city youth who don't get much physical exercise, but that is more the analogy that you would need to worry about.
Certainly don't apply lessons presumed for the birth of animals in a microgravity environment (aka on the ISS) to what is going to happen for those creatures born on Mars. Such studies haven't even been done yet. Yes, I am making a presumption here that all will be fine but I am making the assumption that this is something controlled by DNA, not by gravity. Placental mammals in particular are nurtured in a neutral buoyancy environment before birth, which is why I really doubt that especially gestational development matters much in terms of the gravitational environment they are developed in. Ditto for kids raised on Mars, other than they will develop a very healthy respect for air locks or face Darwinian selection for screwing around with those kind of dangerous parts of their living space.
In many cases the early explorers simply didn't even know what to expect. There were many sailors on the voyages of Christopher Columbus who died of scurvy, something that continued to persist for nearly a century even after many well established colonies existed in New Spain. The settlement of Jamestown in Virginia also died out largely due to malnutrition, in a region that is now a major agriculture production area I might add too. Some of the problems happened due to a failure of understanding of the environment, or that there were things they needed to know before hand but largely couldn't until they got there.
I'm afraid that much of the same situation will happen on Mars, there are things we simply don't know that can cause some problems. On the other hand, people discovered how to survive and thrive in those areas of the world where previously people died by the thousands. The cause of and the cure for Malaria was found eventually, a cure for scurvy was found by simply eating citrus fruit and eventually other solutions too, and in the long run the knowledge of all of these things have improved the lives for everybody.
Something very simple that can and ought to be tested is simply the problems of sexual reproduction of placental mammals and simply getting that to be investigated. I can think of far more things that need to be studied as well. This is very fundamental and basic research that needs to take place.
Bootstrapping an industrial base is something that similarly can have some very positive benefits around the world, where the concepts on how to bootstrap an industrial society on Mars can also be done in Liberia, Somalia, or even Alaska and arguably even Detroit. I could see some real benefit to teaching children in high school or even middle school how to use tools that make tools and teaching them how to rebuild society if necessary, or at least as an educational experience to learn how things can be made.
Most of the things that still need to be done in terms of going to Mars don't cost that much money, but do take some substantial changes in attitude towards how things are done. I do like the fact that some people have started and are trying to pick off the low hanging fruit in terms of studying the effects of long term isolation or trying to figure out what kind of EVA missions will likely need to be done on Mars. Much more could be done though.
If you are really paranoid about such things, one of the best places in the USA to avoid all of that is the city of Blanding, Utah It is geologically stable (very few earthquakes), enough older mountains to keep tornadoes from spawning, and far enough away from any ocean that any hurricanes that might form are at worst a mild tropical storm dropping some extra rain. There aren't even major rivers nearby that can cause significant flooding and it is far enough from major metro areas that you likely could survive even a major nuclear war. It is dry enough that even major forest fires are seldom things to cause problems. There isn't much else to do in the town either, but I suppose that is the price you pay for such a mundane location in the world.
I've lived in both earthquake country and in the tornado belt (southern California and southern Minnesota respectively). Neither one really has all that much predictability, although tornadoes generally (from my experience) do much more localized damage than earthquakes.
Floods are by far more destructive than either one, where I've seen flood waters come up gradually over the course of a day or two and gradually wipe out entire neighborhoods. You can take things out of such homes (even get a U-haul to move stuff while the flood is still rising), but destruction is all but certain for anything remaining. While I've been in earthquakes that have knocked me off my feet, the homes and businesses around me still stood up and everybody went back to work, school, or doing whatever it was that they did before. That was definitely not the case with floods where I've seen half the city cut off from the other half disrupting commerce and even daily commutes for people needing to work on either side of the flood or for those businesses or homes drowned out in that flood.
Tornadoes just make for some excitement or panic for a little bit when the sirens go off. My grandmother said it reminded her of bombing air raids during World War II.
I still don't get the distinction. Tesla is deliberately trying for creature comforts similar to a high-end BMW or Lexus. That is why they have an internet connection in every car with a built-in web browser, high-end seats, and other features where you travel in style. What other luxury frills are missing? Gold-plated consoles and hummingbird tongues?
What Ronald Reagan arguably did wasn't the speech, but his massive expansion of the U.S. military including the thousand ship navy and expanding the other branches as much too. It was something that Russia had to match and basically went bankrupt trying to do so (and America nearly did as well). It is hard to say that Reagan had no impact upon the events surrounding the fall of the wall, although another significant event that had a major role was the disarmament talks that happened in Iceland a little bit later... and Reagan just walking out in the middle of those talks.
Nobody is saying it was the speech that caused the wall to go down, but it was due to the fact that East Germany didn't fear the Soviet Union was going to crush any independent expression on the part of its leaders that caused the wall to go down. I doubt that would have happened under an extended presidency of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.
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I would disagree with you on Space: 1999 and argue strongly that The Prisoner really isn't even science fiction at all nor is really I Dream of Jeannie. Still, a strong attempt with nearly a hundred other shows that it is competing against.
The reason season two was retooled is mainly because the show was cancelled but at the last minute one of the network executives changed their mind. The only actor they could get to come back on a regular contract was Loren Green, but they needed to recast pretty much the rest of the show. That of course gave the disaster which was Galactica 1980, where the only episode worth watching was the one where Dirk Benedict came back as a guest star for one episode.
Not all shows go through this, but it does happen when networks get sort of schizophrenic about what they want and push their agenda on the series producers. The rural purge is an extreme example of what can happen in that situation to trash the entire schedule including otherwise successful and popular shows. Sometimes merely the threat that the series will be next is enough to force this retooling you are talking about.
Worst Sci Fi series ever? I can name several candidates for that, including "Logan's Run" (the TV series) or some of the really awful stuff pushed onto Saturday morning kids programming (is Scooby Doo considered SF?) Ever hear of "Land of the Lost"? Heck, what about Doctor Who from the 1970's?
At the time it was made, there was little you could point to as episodic series that were any better. If you can name more than five shows that were of superior quality.... far superior quality that almost anybody would agree with you... please feel free to name them. They must have been made before 1980 though. I don't think you can. After 1980 there have been many shows that were better, but you are looking at it from the wrong perspective if you make that comparison.
I have to admit, it did suck pretty badly, even considering the state of s.f. television back then.
I don't think you remember the state of sci fi television in the late 1970's. It was mainly Star Trek reruns and really horrible stuff like Lost in Space, I Dream of Jeanie (fitting a very loose description of science fiction) or real classics like "It came from Outer Space" or "The Attack of the 50' Woman" and even "The Absent Minded Professor" on late-night television. This is when the Herbie movies were being made. Other TV series contemporary with this include "Electro Woman and DynaGirl" and "Jason of Star Command".
Compared to most of the other stuff, Battlestar Galactica was in comparison pretty hardcore SF. It was done in a style rather similar to Star Wars, but with its own mythos. If you are saying this was cheesy and comical, so was Star Wars by nearly every one of the same metrics. They took some liberties due to the episodic nature of the series, but it wasn't nearly as bad as you or your friends thought.... or your memories are fading quite a bit from what other stuff during that era was like. It certainly is unfair to compare this to Firefly or Farscape.
While partially true, there were a great many mechanical analog computers which did a great many things and were widespread in the early 20th Century... including when this particular machine was made.
A good video that shows how some of those mechanical computers were made can be found in this U.S. Navy training film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4
Computers like this were used as early as the Spanish-American War and the Crimean War. A much older computer was found in the form of the Antikythera mechanism.
Yes, there were also people who were called computers as a job title as well, but the mechanical variety existed as well before ENIAC, and were commonly used as well.
Far more relevant in the 1880s is the United States Census for 1880 that took over 12 years to compile. The U.S. Census Bureau realized they would continue to fall behind unless they made some substantive changes to how they compiled the statistics which Congress insisted upon, not to mention plotting out the data needed for making district maps for Congress as required by the Constitution.
That is how you got Herman Hollerith who made the punch card through a system that census workers would input data about each person in America in a digital format that could be mechanically tabulated. He also started up a tiny little company that became known as IBM. The 1890 census was far more successful, and each census since then has been done more efficiently.
Ever hear of nanosats? Mere mortals can buy them even and put them into orbit (certainly a modest kickstarter campaign can get one built).
There is also the OSCAR series of amateur radio satellites that are generally available if you have qualifications as a ham radio operator.
Or for that matter, perhaps you want to watch the X-37B that the U.S. Air Force has sent up to try and figure out what they are doing?
In other words, there are plenty of applications for this kind of technology, especially if it was cheap enough to build that small "hacker" teams could pool resources and make it happen.
So your complaint is about NASA allowing Google to base their air fleet at Moffett in the first place? That is a valid complaint. Your complaint about the jet fuel is groundless though. Yes, the fuel trucks could drive across the bay instead (on the toll bridges, etc. for multiple additional charges) but this isn't otherwise hindering private enterprise.
What you are suggesting is that these pilots are going to be casually flying around for the hell of it where flying to another airport in the Bay Area first before taking their clients (aka the Google executive staff) to their final destination. I'm not freaking clueless about these things, just pointing out that Moffett Field has minimal services oriented towards servicing government flights instead of commercial ones, hence the reason why Google was using the same system when at that air field.
That is companies who sold fuel at other airports, perhaps in that region, potentially lost money because Google executives didn't buy their fuel at those other airports first and then flew the planes into Moffett Field. That sounds like a major inconvenience and a waste of time as well. It isn't as if there were other fuel providers at this particular airfield.
It really is a baseless complaint.
How much should they have paid for the property in your opinion? How did you arrive at that figure?
Keep in mind Google needs to maintain the capacity of the field as an air strip, maintain Hanger One as a historical building, and other factors that make this more than just ordinary commercial real estate. In the end, Google still doesn't own the property and when that lease comes up in 60 years a whole lot of things could change with regards to Silicon Valley and the state of industry there. Either it will turn into the next armpit of America and resemble Detroit or perhaps the land will become even more valuable.
Anybody else could have also put a bid for the air field, even though you can legitimately argue perhaps that notification of such a lease opportunity may not have been as widely advertised as you might like. If it really was such a steal of a deal, it sounds more like you missed a golden opportunity yourself by not starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds and flip the property to make some money or make a huge windfall to a charity of your choice. I really doubt you could have made much money by trying to outbid Google and in turn offering the land to other companies instead.
Except that Google has been parking their private jets at Moffett Field for years now. The only difference is that they no longer need an act of Congress to keep them at the field.
Sort of true. More than 50% of the value of the company has been distributed to public shareholders, but the founders and a small group of people have voting rights on almost anything that matters where the other investors only get profits and little say in public governance.
Why you would bother investing in such a company is sort of beyond me, but then again it is something you should know when investing in Google stock. Those shares with voting rights, however, are very valuable indeed.
For an airbase that dates back to World War One, I'd dare say that NASA and the federal government deserve to do some hazmat cleanup of their own mess in this situation. Why do you think it should all be dumped onto Google in this case?
The folks that really should be paying for that cleanup, if any funds are targeted at a specific agency, should be the U.S. Navy. It is an old airship hanger that predates NASA by decades.
I hope they start at the Foundation itself, at least in terms of Hari Seldon establishing the original Foundation with the holographic recordings and the sense of excitement that happened when the first of these recordings started to play. Prelude to Foundation sort of ruins the whole
My hope is that they don't rush the Mule into existence soon in the series. It is a great story arc, but something that definitely needs to be about season 3-4.
Having the second foundation sort of hinted throughout the first season would be delicious though... if only in passing. The mental telepathy and manipulation of the second foundation would be a little tough to visualize, but I'm sure something could be made that way. Then again, keep it firmly in the background and only hinted at for diehard fans of the series to notice from time to time until the big reveal that would happen about season 6 (assuming it gets that far).
On the other hand, Prelude to Foundation could be used to flesh out production details for what Trantor actually looks like and some of the political situations on that planet. It doesn't need to include Hari Seldon's tour of the planet, but it is great source material that should be remembered for an eventual prequel if the production team ever wants to go that route.... or make a special "made for TV" feature length movie using the setting.
At least that is the way I'd do the production if I were the executive producer. I hope HBO doesn't screw this one up.
The gravity on Mars is such that a stay there of any duration (say, 12 earth months) will mean returning to earth will kill you. There won't be any return trips.
There is absolutely no scientific research to show this is true. It simply hasn't even been done. For crying out loud, there are people who will be going into the ISS to stay there for more than a year in basically a microgravity environment for that length of time. I'm not saying there will be zero impact, but it seems highly unlikely that 12 months of living on Mars is going to make it impossible to return to the Earth.
At the very least, cite your source of info. When living on Mars, you will still need to have your heart pump extra hard climbing stairs or doing other forms of physical exertions that simply is not true for people on the ISS, and there have not been human-sized centrifuges capable of simulating Martian acceleration.
Mars is bathed in deadly radiation.
So is the Earth. Perhaps they will need to dig down a little bit, and being on Mars will certainly be better than sitting inside of a spaceship under any circumstance. Radiation is not the big problem you make it out to be and are demonizing a problem that already exists even on the Earth. It is a problem already being addressed by spacecraft construction and something dealt with literally daily by those on the ISS. Of all of the problems that are going to face settlers on Mars, radiation is the one thing that everybody already knows how it will be dealt with and how it can be compensated for by those going to Mars.
It is also one problem that can also abundantly be dealt with by building shelters with local materials.
BTW, Aluminum smelters may very well show up on Mars and be there sooner than later. Mars is also covered with silica in various forms, so glass is also something that can be made with local materials. The problems you are posting here are sort of just getting downright silly at this point.
If it was certain that we as a species need to leave the Earth in 5-10 years or face complete extinction, we would need to make some significant changes in political policy in regards to a number of different things. Luckily, that isn't the case and the general presumption is that we have many centuries left before a civilization collapse, much less a mass extinction event.
On the other hand, should we, collectively, be spending about the same level of resources toward potentially saving the species by moving a portion of mankind to another planet as is currently being spent on lipstick or shaving cream? I think that sounds like a reasonable proposition. Let's at least do that and get say one or two people out of ten thousand working on that problem or contributing resources to such an endeavor.
even mining gold on Earth is cheaper than an on asteroid.
You are aware that many of the mineral deposits on the Earth that have high quantities of rare minerals likely have an extra terrestrial origin. In other words, companies have been mining asteroids for decades already.
What you miss in your presumption that it is so easy to get minerals from the crust of the Earth is that you have to deal with a constant 10 m/s^2 acceleration for stuff you do here on the Earth. Most of the really easy to reach deposits have already been exploited on the Earth, so what is happening now are activities to extract those resources by digging down deeper into the crust or literally removing whole mountains to get at that stuff. It isn't cheap or nearly so easy as you are suggesting.
Rio Tinto, to give an example of an existing mining company here on the Earth, already spends many billions of dollars simply to open up a basic mining operation to extract simple resources like copper or gold. Such deposits that can be done productively in that same manner are increasingly hard to find as well I might add. No doubt there are still as of yet undiscovered major deposits of some of these minerals, but surface minerals that can be easily mined and sorted out to various elements in not nearly as easy as you are suggesting either. If you can find a deposit of iron that is 5% or so in concentration, there are several companies I could point to right now that would buy that land and dig it up.... if that was easily obtained from surface extraction methods.
My point is that building a mining operation on an asteroid with current technology for spaceflight is on roughly the same scale of costs as is needed now for doing a terrestrial mining operation for much poorer quality of raw materials. Many of the asteroids that can be mined practically pass right by the Earth, and in a few cases even pass between the Earth & the Moon. Those can be efficiently mined in total, where some of them definitely have minerals far more concentrated in some rare elements than is the case on the Earth. Those will be the first extraterrestrial mining targets.
Of course one of the most valuable minerals in space right now is simply ordinary water, usually in the form of ice. It is cheaper and easier to capture ice from the outer Solar System or even from passing comets than it is to launch it from the Earth. That happens to be the business plan for Planetary Resources, who unfortunately lost their first spacecraft in the explosion of the Antares rocket built by Orbital Science. They have actual hardware going into space, which should show they are serious about the idea and are willing to spend some big bucks to get there.
It will really be the market place that will decide if it is worth the cost of mining asteroids or not, and I will find it interesting to see what people pontificating about this concept will say a century from now. I don't think those space-based mining operators need to be subsidized either, and some people with money are trying to make it happen regardless of what you think about the idea.
You will not be able to pay the cost of your transfer to Mars (including the tons of food and supplies needed to keep you alive there).
Elon Musk has suggested the cost of a round-trip passage to Mars is likely going to cost about $500k. That may seem like a whole lot, but it is comparable in price for somebody from a modern 1st world country to what people were paying in the 18th Century for passage to European colonies in terms of needing to literally sell everything they had including their house, save up for years, and then put all of that money on the line for a trip to the colonies.
As for the "tons of supplies needed to keep you alive there", only the first few colonists are going to need that mountain of supplies. Even then, such colonies will simply fail unless they are able to use local resources to produce literally everything they are going to need for survival. Food and the air that everybody will breathe on Mars will by necessity need to come from local resources and can't be reasonably brought from the Earth. Other supplies like clothing, toiletries, and even building materials for shelters will much sooner than later need to come from local materials as well, and will be required to come from local materials once more than a dozen or so people are on Mars.
It will not be like the Apollo missions when people go to Mars.
As for money on Mars, I'm sure the people who will live on Mars will figure out a currency among themselves for the allocation of scarce resources. Your presumption that there will be no means to "make money" simply shows a lack of understanding of economics.
I don't even know how to respond to the rest of your essay here. Mars has more area to roam upon than the land area of the Earth. I'm sure that is plenty of room for various kinds of political philosophies, from hardcore communism to libertarian utopias and everything in between. It won't be easy to do any of this, and mistakes will be made. If you don't want to be involved, I don't mind nor should you be required to pay for any of it (in my opinion). Just stay the hell away from me or anybody else who tries to do this is all I ask.
The gravity of Mars is only 2/3rds that of the Earth. Less than the Earth to be sure and could cause some problems, but the bones of people and their genetic stress loads were forged by evolutionary pressures here on the Earth. Perhaps a million or more years from now another species of the Homo genus that evolves from Homo Sapiens might live on Mars and have difficulty adapting to life on the Earth, but over the course of a few thousand years those living on Mars will have no problem at all in terms of returning back to the Earth. DNA just doesn't change that quickly.
Most definitely children who may be born on Mars in the 21st Century will have no problem returning to the land of their grandparents and taking a hike through the Grand Canyon or climbing the Alps. They may need some endurance training like is sort of the case for some inner city youth who don't get much physical exercise, but that is more the analogy that you would need to worry about.
Certainly don't apply lessons presumed for the birth of animals in a microgravity environment (aka on the ISS) to what is going to happen for those creatures born on Mars. Such studies haven't even been done yet. Yes, I am making a presumption here that all will be fine but I am making the assumption that this is something controlled by DNA, not by gravity. Placental mammals in particular are nurtured in a neutral buoyancy environment before birth, which is why I really doubt that especially gestational development matters much in terms of the gravitational environment they are developed in. Ditto for kids raised on Mars, other than they will develop a very healthy respect for air locks or face Darwinian selection for screwing around with those kind of dangerous parts of their living space.
In many cases the early explorers simply didn't even know what to expect. There were many sailors on the voyages of Christopher Columbus who died of scurvy, something that continued to persist for nearly a century even after many well established colonies existed in New Spain. The settlement of Jamestown in Virginia also died out largely due to malnutrition, in a region that is now a major agriculture production area I might add too. Some of the problems happened due to a failure of understanding of the environment, or that there were things they needed to know before hand but largely couldn't until they got there.
I'm afraid that much of the same situation will happen on Mars, there are things we simply don't know that can cause some problems. On the other hand, people discovered how to survive and thrive in those areas of the world where previously people died by the thousands. The cause of and the cure for Malaria was found eventually, a cure for scurvy was found by simply eating citrus fruit and eventually other solutions too, and in the long run the knowledge of all of these things have improved the lives for everybody.
Something very simple that can and ought to be tested is simply the problems of sexual reproduction of placental mammals and simply getting that to be investigated. I can think of far more things that need to be studied as well. This is very fundamental and basic research that needs to take place.
Bootstrapping an industrial base is something that similarly can have some very positive benefits around the world, where the concepts on how to bootstrap an industrial society on Mars can also be done in Liberia, Somalia, or even Alaska and arguably even Detroit. I could see some real benefit to teaching children in high school or even middle school how to use tools that make tools and teaching them how to rebuild society if necessary, or at least as an educational experience to learn how things can be made.
Most of the things that still need to be done in terms of going to Mars don't cost that much money, but do take some substantial changes in attitude towards how things are done. I do like the fact that some people have started and are trying to pick off the low hanging fruit in terms of studying the effects of long term isolation or trying to figure out what kind of EVA missions will likely need to be done on Mars. Much more could be done though.
If you are really paranoid about such things, one of the best places in the USA to avoid all of that is the city of Blanding, Utah It is geologically stable (very few earthquakes), enough older mountains to keep tornadoes from spawning, and far enough away from any ocean that any hurricanes that might form are at worst a mild tropical storm dropping some extra rain. There aren't even major rivers nearby that can cause significant flooding and it is far enough from major metro areas that you likely could survive even a major nuclear war. It is dry enough that even major forest fires are seldom things to cause problems. There isn't much else to do in the town either, but I suppose that is the price you pay for such a mundane location in the world.
I've lived in both earthquake country and in the tornado belt (southern California and southern Minnesota respectively). Neither one really has all that much predictability, although tornadoes generally (from my experience) do much more localized damage than earthquakes.
Floods are by far more destructive than either one, where I've seen flood waters come up gradually over the course of a day or two and gradually wipe out entire neighborhoods. You can take things out of such homes (even get a U-haul to move stuff while the flood is still rising), but destruction is all but certain for anything remaining. While I've been in earthquakes that have knocked me off my feet, the homes and businesses around me still stood up and everybody went back to work, school, or doing whatever it was that they did before. That was definitely not the case with floods where I've seen half the city cut off from the other half disrupting commerce and even daily commutes for people needing to work on either side of the flood or for those businesses or homes drowned out in that flood.
Tornadoes just make for some excitement or panic for a little bit when the sirens go off. My grandmother said it reminded her of bombing air raids during World War II.
I still don't get the distinction. Tesla is deliberately trying for creature comforts similar to a high-end BMW or Lexus. That is why they have an internet connection in every car with a built-in web browser, high-end seats, and other features where you travel in style. What other luxury frills are missing? Gold-plated consoles and hummingbird tongues?
What Ronald Reagan arguably did wasn't the speech, but his massive expansion of the U.S. military including the thousand ship navy and expanding the other branches as much too. It was something that Russia had to match and basically went bankrupt trying to do so (and America nearly did as well). It is hard to say that Reagan had no impact upon the events surrounding the fall of the wall, although another significant event that had a major role was the disarmament talks that happened in Iceland a little bit later... and Reagan just walking out in the middle of those talks.
Nobody is saying it was the speech that caused the wall to go down, but it was due to the fact that East Germany didn't fear the Soviet Union was going to crush any independent expression on the part of its leaders that caused the wall to go down. I doubt that would have happened under an extended presidency of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.