When it comes to funding - probably pretty much impossible; at least when it comes to "any time soon" / "in my lifetime".
Anyway, the really sexy thing for now will be destructive interferometry (or some starshade, whatever) of light from a star & spectroscopy of the planet; we should be able to notice a biosphere. And, over many observations, images not too dissimilar to current Pluto ones should be relatively easy, that's not so bad.
But perhaps some "evolved Kindle" is, in the end, all the tablet many people would need? TFS speculates about new, "faster" screens; size / weight / CPU / battery life / price - things influencing this will improve. Throw in a good browser (what Amazon seems to be starting to do), and "even" with webapps you might end up with good enough tablet.
Yeah, it's too early to push Kindle that way; but perhaps Amazon is eyeing on it after all, in the long term?
Aren't webapps all the rage now, supposedly? With a better browser (I think it even wasn't Webkit previously?) and "more interactive" screen in the next version, we would have basically the Google tablet...certainly quite general purpose.
For some time, probably. But while you still can get dedicated calculators, portable audio players, lowest-end digicams, dedicated GPS units, "dumbphones"...those things seem to start fading away for general consumers, in the long run. Would Amazon be content with such fate for Kindle? (they did improve the browser this time, apparently - to be fair largely also because it was far from good - but hey, with some future version with "faster" screen + webapps?)
That's one device where I wouldn't like such hacks - free 3G in many countries (finally, since quite recently) is way too nice. Also a possible impediment to "full" tablet - Amazon would have to suddenly move away from free 3G, somehow, for bandwith-heavy uses.
At that point, basically any really conceivable (to us) notion of "immortality"...most likely loses meaning. Probably at least to the point which makes the present state, "we live forever in what we do, what we leave behind", damn close.
And generally - beliefs of imminent salvation aren't new...
You can bet on some unrest, but it won't help much with scarcity - which, for a long time, won't have anything to do with resource scarcity - doing complex things takes time, attention of many people, etc. Now compare such realities with the typical number of people dying every day (a number which will only go up). Throw in some groups wanting to ban it and/or destroy what's already there. And hey, most of the world has some funny ideas, due to fear of death, all the time; at least with the ironic case, that you mention, it might have a nice twist regarding game theory: if they would fall during the uprising, it doesn't matter anyway; but success...
Maybe not - if you're the kind of civilisation that can apply enough delta-v, to such body, to capture it safely into MEO, you might be high enough on the Kardashev scale to not care much about such exercises. If not high enough - it's probably better to move some bootstrapping machinery towards the asteroid; avoids Kessler Syndrome where you really don't want it, too (minining in basically 0g could be a bit messy)
Well, some potential, unfortunate combination of the few factors he mentions perhaps has a slight chance of ending in something quite, hm, entertaining;p (especially if coupled with unavoidable, in such case, massive unrest)
"Think of your children" also doesn't convey properly the scales, the stakes involved - most recent common ancestor of us all lived basically in historical times, possibly in Antiquity or so. If looking just at a group like "europeans and those at least partially descended from them", it's a matter of millenium. Even with low fertility rates, quite a lot of people could carry traces of your DNA in 2 centuries; with greater mobility nowadays... Not to mention the possibility for huge number of "spiritual descendants" - we are a civilisation after all, the idea seems to be also to leave a bit more than individual genes.
Especially considering the best part: think how large portion out of 6.7 billion people now living you "know"/etc. in any way? How many out of probably around 100 billion humans that have ever lived you can individually recall? What interesting can you tell about your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother? (the one from the side of your father, then grandmother, then great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-great-grandmother, and great-great-great-great-great-grandfather) Do you even know on which continent she lived? In which century? Even if it got recorded by some wild chance, would you care enough to remember even something so basic? (nvm how the recorded family history and how the genes really flowed would break down fairly quickly)
It's not about you, me, the "individuals." Never was, never will be (assuming predictable future, when we will be still mostly human) - so thinking about the "real" future in any other scope than that of humanity is quite unfounded.
Why would that be a problem? From quickly glancing, it seems the man is in Georgia. A state with enough people willing to kill somebody (who most likely doesn't want it) in a controlled, clinical setting, and with enough doctors willing to set it all up and be present nearby. They would have a problem with this case? (and hey, if doctors really want to preserve appearances, it's certainly possible - for example: administering anesthetic is fine, exposing corotid arteries also, and afterwards the no-pledge-man gets told "clamp those arteries while we watch the EEG")
"Blurring" as in making highly pixelated images look somewhat more natural. It is all about practical limits FFS - impracticability of maintaining very tight separation tolerances for large constellation of telescopes; that's what put plans for one such (very small, just 3; and quite tightly dispersed) ESA mission on hold. And yup, sure, occultation (and spectroscopy) doesn't tell us anything - we already know the atmospheric compositions/etc. of all nearby terrestrial planets; heh. If you're not buying circumstances of real world - fine, go ahead, just won't be surprised at being frustrated at "those stupid space agencies" again and again (hey, maybe one will put you in charge one day...); it's a simple reality that very expensive telescopes, with their very expensive time, need to prioritize targets. If that telescope is for small targets, with small angular FOV, then we need to know where it's most beneficial to point it; we need an instrument which observes wide area and gives a nice list of promising systems. Spectroscopy doesn't need resolving of continents or clouds anyway...
I'm sure a modus operandi of ignoring constraints of reality would get us really far... (like ignoring how Kepler is an important, invaluable step - instead you seem to have convinced yourself that I'm saying we will never need anything different, ever, and Kepler will be all we can ever want...heh) How much are you pro-science instead of hoping for some impressive achievement that looks good? It's not how progress is made. Progress which depends on many interweaving areas - for example, sure, asteroid industry sounds nice...but ususally glances over what kinds of energy obtaining methods it would need; and once we have them, we can have almost anything we want on Earth or other largish bodies. Nevermind "Asteroid Kessler Syndrome", if on a significant scale.
Grumbling about what societies (everything is a reflection of them) choose to do won't do much. Any reasonable changes require timescales of generations. And of organic growth, not some shiny crash projects (valuing shiny, on many levels, is what gets us in a lot mess in the first place)
Less control could still be irritating sometimes - when I see a stretch where higher torque at the wheels might get handy, I want to have it instantly at the push of gas pedal; hence downshifting in advance. Heck, with how often I use the engine to return steering wheel to "neutral" after a bend, I probably prefer to be sure that the gear ratio will certainly remain constant.
Now, if only people tought themselves to regularly brake with an engine; that's, I guess, a beauty of automatic - it kinda goes with it?
How does basically the same consequence in some places, death penalty, work so far?
(besides, there is in reality plenty of much more common things than gunshots which could, perhaps, cause an uncontrolled ignition at a gas station; how often does that actually happen?)
Ehh...relatively speaking when compared to getting a "normal" color. Because new pink ones, too, seemed less popular when buying them; with price slightly reflecting that. Enough of a difference for a beer or two, in pub prices.
Accidentally, it is my strong impression that such "shameful" details can actually pay off with, basically, an antithesis of people you imagine; with hetero girls. Cute things, and all that. Not nearly enough in itself of course, but if you quickly turn out to be somebody confident enough to not care about such nonsense - yeah, that tends to pay off:P
Somebody at some bike rental place would be probably even more impresed;)
Seriously, that's sort of the mode of transport I'm settling on lately - it's easy with good quality folding bikes which aren't much more expensive from good quality "normal" ones. Even when getting at some general distant desitnation is practical only with a car, having a bike in the trunk at all times is not much of a problem, even in a small car (well, not Yaris; but Fabia Kombi isn't far off). And often gets handy.
Did you really just put this disclaimer in a reply to the post ending with "I really hate it when people start prattling along about errors with statistics when they don't bother looking at the actual statistics"?...
Slashdot Mirror
...and probably 10 years behind spy sats on which it was based? (to be fair, "20 years ahead" in some things, too)
The problem of separation is what put on hold few recent plans for such missions, indefinitely (until it will be figured out, if practically possible)
When it comes to funding - probably pretty much impossible; at least when it comes to "any time soon" / "in my lifetime".
Anyway, the really sexy thing for now will be destructive interferometry (or some starshade, whatever) of light from a star & spectroscopy of the planet; we should be able to notice a biosphere. And, over many observations, images not too dissimilar to current Pluto ones should be relatively easy, that's not so bad.
But perhaps some "evolved Kindle" is, in the end, all the tablet many people would need? TFS speculates about new, "faster" screens; size / weight / CPU / battery life / price - things influencing this will improve. Throw in a good browser (what Amazon seems to be starting to do), and "even" with webapps you might end up with good enough tablet.
Yeah, it's too early to push Kindle that way; but perhaps Amazon is eyeing on it after all, in the long term?
Aren't webapps all the rage now, supposedly? With a better browser (I think it even wasn't Webkit previously?) and "more interactive" screen in the next version, we would have basically the Google tablet...certainly quite general purpose.
For some time, probably. But while you still can get dedicated calculators, portable audio players, lowest-end digicams, dedicated GPS units, "dumbphones"...those things seem to start fading away for general consumers, in the long run. Would Amazon be content with such fate for Kindle? (they did improve the browser this time, apparently - to be fair largely also because it was far from good - but hey, with some future version with "faster" screen + webapps?)
That's one device where I wouldn't like such hacks - free 3G in many countries (finally, since quite recently) is way too nice. Also a possible impediment to "full" tablet - Amazon would have to suddenly move away from free 3G, somehow, for bandwith-heavy uses.
Not enough other robots relying the messages though (what, only 2?)
At that point, basically any really conceivable (to us) notion of "immortality"...most likely loses meaning. Probably at least to the point which makes the present state, "we live forever in what we do, what we leave behind", damn close.
And generally - beliefs of imminent salvation aren't new...
Hence why the level of civilisation, humanity, was the focus. But also our ancestors - most of your genes are decently spread already.
And hey, Omega point doesn't need non-extinction ;p (for that matter, we might as well already exist in it; how do you like your "forever life"? ;) )
You can bet on some unrest, but it won't help much with scarcity - which, for a long time, won't have anything to do with resource scarcity - doing complex things takes time, attention of many people, etc. Now compare such realities with the typical number of people dying every day (a number which will only go up). Throw in some groups wanting to ban it and/or destroy what's already there. And hey, most of the world has some funny ideas, due to fear of death, all the time; at least with the ironic case, that you mention, it might have a nice twist regarding game theory: if they would fall during the uprising, it doesn't matter anyway; but success...
Maybe not - if you're the kind of civilisation that can apply enough delta-v, to such body, to capture it safely into MEO, you might be high enough on the Kardashev scale to not care much about such exercises. If not high enough - it's probably better to move some bootstrapping machinery towards the asteroid; avoids Kessler Syndrome where you really don't want it, too (minining in basically 0g could be a bit messy)
Well, some potential, unfortunate combination of the few factors he mentions perhaps has a slight chance of ending in something quite, hm, entertaining ;p (especially if coupled with unavoidable, in such case, massive unrest)
"Think of your children" also doesn't convey properly the scales, the stakes involved - most recent common ancestor of us all lived basically in historical times, possibly in Antiquity or so. If looking just at a group like "europeans and those at least partially descended from them", it's a matter of millenium. Even with low fertility rates, quite a lot of people could carry traces of your DNA in 2 centuries; with greater mobility nowadays... Not to mention the possibility for huge number of "spiritual descendants" - we are a civilisation after all, the idea seems to be also to leave a bit more than individual genes.
Especially considering the best part: think how large portion out of 6.7 billion people now living you "know"/etc. in any way? How many out of probably around 100 billion humans that have ever lived you can individually recall? What interesting can you tell about your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother? (the one from the side of your father, then grandmother, then great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-great-grandmother, and great-great-great-great-great-grandfather) Do you even know on which continent she lived? In which century? Even if it got recorded by some wild chance, would you care enough to remember even something so basic? (nvm how the recorded family history and how the genes really flowed would break down fairly quickly)
It's not about you, me, the "individuals." Never was, never will be (assuming predictable future, when we will be still mostly human) - so thinking about the "real" future in any other scope than that of humanity is quite unfounded.
Why would that be a problem? From quickly glancing, it seems the man is in Georgia. A state with enough people willing to kill somebody (who most likely doesn't want it) in a controlled, clinical setting, and with enough doctors willing to set it all up and be present nearby. They would have a problem with this case? (and hey, if doctors really want to preserve appearances, it's certainly possible - for example: administering anesthetic is fine, exposing corotid arteries also, and afterwards the no-pledge-man gets told "clamp those arteries while we watch the EEG")
"Blurring" as in making highly pixelated images look somewhat more natural. It is all about practical limits FFS - impracticability of maintaining very tight separation tolerances for large constellation of telescopes; that's what put plans for one such (very small, just 3; and quite tightly dispersed) ESA mission on hold. And yup, sure, occultation (and spectroscopy) doesn't tell us anything - we already know the atmospheric compositions/etc. of all nearby terrestrial planets; heh. If you're not buying circumstances of real world - fine, go ahead, just won't be surprised at being frustrated at "those stupid space agencies" again and again (hey, maybe one will put you in charge one day...); it's a simple reality that very expensive telescopes, with their very expensive time, need to prioritize targets. If that telescope is for small targets, with small angular FOV, then we need to know where it's most beneficial to point it; we need an instrument which observes wide area and gives a nice list of promising systems. Spectroscopy doesn't need resolving of continents or clouds anyway...
I'm sure a modus operandi of ignoring constraints of reality would get us really far... (like ignoring how Kepler is an important, invaluable step - instead you seem to have convinced yourself that I'm saying we will never need anything different, ever, and Kepler will be all we can ever want...heh) How much are you pro-science instead of hoping for some impressive achievement that looks good? It's not how progress is made. Progress which depends on many interweaving areas - for example, sure, asteroid industry sounds nice...but ususally glances over what kinds of energy obtaining methods it would need; and once we have them, we can have almost anything we want on Earth or other largish bodies. Nevermind "Asteroid Kessler Syndrome", if on a significant scale.
Grumbling about what societies (everything is a reflection of them) choose to do won't do much. Any reasonable changes require timescales of generations. And of organic growth, not some shiny crash projects (valuing shiny, on many levels, is what gets us in a lot mess in the first place)
Less control could still be irritating sometimes - when I see a stretch where higher torque at the wheels might get handy, I want to have it instantly at the push of gas pedal; hence downshifting in advance. Heck, with how often I use the engine to return steering wheel to "neutral" after a bend, I probably prefer to be sure that the gear ratio will certainly remain constant.
Now, if only people tought themselves to regularly brake with an engine; that's, I guess, a beauty of automatic - it kinda goes with it?
Ceres which, for some time, was a "full" planet. For a long time nobody has a problem with how it ceased to be classified like that.
How does basically the same consequence in some places, death penalty, work so far?
(besides, there is in reality plenty of much more common things than gunshots which could, perhaps, cause an uncontrolled ignition at a gas station; how often does that actually happen?)
Ehh...relatively speaking when compared to getting a "normal" color. Because new pink ones, too, seemed less popular when buying them; with price slightly reflecting that. Enough of a difference for a beer or two, in pub prices.
Accidentally, it is my strong impression that such "shameful" details can actually pay off with, basically, an antithesis of people you imagine; with hetero girls. Cute things, and all that. Not nearly enough in itself of course, but if you quickly turn out to be somebody confident enough to not care about such nonsense - yeah, that tends to pay off :P
Somebody at some bike rental place would be probably even more impresed ;)
Seriously, that's sort of the mode of transport I'm settling on lately - it's easy with good quality folding bikes which aren't much more expensive from good quality "normal" ones. Even when getting at some general distant desitnation is practical only with a car, having a bike in the trunk at all times is not much of a problem, even in a small car (well, not Yaris; but Fabia Kombi isn't far off). And often gets handy.
I'm betting most people don't strictly plan it...
Did you really just put this disclaimer in a reply to the post ending with "I really hate it when people start prattling along about errors with statistics when they don't bother looking at the actual statistics"?...
Societal norms would quickly change anyway. Less than a century ago, in western culture, blue was the color for girls...and pink for boys.
The risk is very negligible compared to the risk of doing, in the first place, armed carjackings.