Keep your common-sense, fact and physics-based nit-picking to yourself. Rutan will undoubtedly be able to accelerate his contraption from 1500mph to 27,000 mph. It's just a case of carrying enough tyre rubber and kerosene! Surely the Rutan-powered moon-base can't be far away now!
Oh wait, that's all bollocks, isn't it. Hey ho, back to reality...
You may be right from the grammar nazi PoV, but I have to tell you that in English usage defines syntax, and the "Don't Fox..." construct is the standard colloquial usage, around here at any rate.
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Luckily for you guys the technology's going to be much cheaper, more reliable and efficient by the time we're done filling the north sea with wind turbines.
Jesus wept. +4 insightful? What is this, straw-chewers weekly? I thought a basic general knowledge grasp of physics was expected around here, but when I see posts like that I gots to wonders
Ha! Yes, exactly, I was actually thinking how reminiscent this story is of the 'missile gap' nonsense as I wrote the comment. Congratulations, you must be nearly as old as I am;)
You could make the same argument for a scheme to build a roof over the entire country. Wouldn't the spin-offs be more likely to have useful applications on earth if the funds went to, say, a crash project to improve sustainable power generation?
America is left without any ability to waste hundreds of millions of dollars firing people into low earth orbit where they go round and round for a few months whilst doing "experiments". The only useful experiment on ISS is how long you can subject highly intelligent skilled experts to pointless tedium before they pop the airlock and go suck vac. That, at least, might be of some use when it comes to "colonising the moon".
Well, no, actually we all joined the WTO, which was then subverted to implement neo-imperialist rule on the globe in the name of the Great American Public. We are all very grateful, by the way, we had a real shortage of laws - thank god for the EUCD and other international laws "inspired by" the need to not get blockaded from world trade by the U.S.
Look, it doesn't matter if you get your medical information from the side of a cereal packet, the National Enquirer or YouTube; if you believe bullshit then sorry, thanks for playing, you're out of the game. If only there was as efficient a means to rid the population of the useless two-thirds who believe in god, ghosts, "crystal energy vibrations" or say "I'm deeply spiritual cos I, like, meditate once a week for 30 minutes?" Roll on the day someone engineers a bacteria that only kills fuckwits.
There's a chap where I work who's involved in the Radio Amateurs Emergency Network (RAEnet) which provides emergency comms in situations exactly like this, as well as providing backup to the police & emergency services in less dramatic scenarios. At one point he had a relay in his car providing a live feed via a Google maps mashup so we could see where he was when he didn't turn up in the office. He just *loves* it when we call him "rubber duck" ask about his "twenty" and refer to him as a "good buddy". Ahh, simple pleasures...
Actually, the Spanish empire imploded spectacularly in the 17th century, despite pillaging so much gold and silver from South America (in the form of incredible artwork which was hammered flat or tossed into crucibles, but that's neither here nor there) that it completely fscked the international bullion price for decades. Why so? Believe it or not, a succession of monarchs frittered it all away in debt-funded foreign wars driven by theology and imperial ambition. No, really, I'm not making this stuff up... look it up.
You know, eventually you're going to witness an epidemic of some infectious disease (as opposed to the lifestyle diseases that kill most of us off these days.) I suspect that shortly after people have witnessed mass burials via dumper truck, a la "Necropolis" in 2000AD if I can get a witness here?, there's gonna be a sudden, Damascene conversion to the wisdom of this crazy notion called "public health". You might be able to afford anti-biotics, but you're not going to be very happy when there's no-one to collect your garbage or sell you your cheezburger because you stepped over their rotting corpses on the way out to the ATM. Believe me, once you've got some cadaverine-rich fluids squished onto your trouser leg, that smell will follow you around for days. Don't go there. Nationalise your health care, like the rest of the civilised world.
Although I consider myself Captain GumpyBastard when it comes to manned spaceflight in general, even I have to grant the proponents one thing - it's damn cool. That and the technology spin-offs are the only "pro" arguments going. (The technology-spin-offs argument doesn't wash, anyway. If you want to stimulate R&D in, let's say, advanced materials, there are plenty of projects that would have equal or greater spin-off benefits that would help us here on earth more directly. Renewable energy, say f'rinstance. And the spin-offs that would result from a crash programme in renewal energy would be more likely to have other uses here on earth, compared to manned spaceflight spin-offs - radiation-hardened avionics, say, or some unexpected way to make radiation shielding light enough to make a man to Mars practical. We've got tiny computers already, thanks. Ion drives and solar sails are very nice (indeed I myself have put actual folding cash money towards the Planetary Society solar sail experiment, http://www.planetary.org/, give generously!) but they're not much use to us here and now, facing spiralling energy and raw materials costs, collapsing climate and so forth.
Put it this way - a massive, well funded programme might be able to do a successful manned mission by the early 2030s. (That's NASAs current working timeframe in their design reference mission plans.) By then I think it's going to be pretty clear that the Greenland ice-shelf's going fast and that you're looking at 7m sea-level rise in the next few decades. Now, you need to pretty much evacuate and abandon all those nice expensive cities that everyone's got their capital tied up in, which are all along the coasts and naviagable (tidal) rivers. Whoa, and international trade just collapsed cos there's no shipping industry left to speak of (what with all the ports being under water, and all.) Now, pretend you're the King of America. What are you going to spend your rapidly diminishing tax take on - apart from a fortified retreat in the rockies, that is?
This may come as a surprise to you, but money "spent on Mars" is not literally handed over to little green men on the planet Mars. It goes to aerospace contractors here on Earth, many of which have facilities scattered across the mid-west and all sorts of odd out-of-the-way places which - surprise! - elect congress-critters.
I agree with you completely, but I don't agree with the reasons you give for it except this one:
There is no way a colony can survive without assistance from Earth, probably for centuries before it could be self-sustaining. This is why, although I can just about imagine some parallel-universe future where humans travel and even live on the surface of Mars, there's absolutely no way humans will ever go further than that. Beyond Mars you've got gas giants, none of which are particularly interesting places for humans even if there weren't radiation that would fry kill you very dead indeed. (Don't give me that "space mining" crap - look around you, what the fuck do you think this planet's made of? rocks. Where do metals come from? Ore, ie., rocks. Short of someone inventing Doctor Whazzoo's Marvellous Combined Gravity-Null-o-Tron and Force Field, commercial mining that involves getting up out of the gravity well hasn't got a whelk's chance in a supernova.)
Extrasolar human exploration is purely for the nutters and kiddies to dream of. And if anyone here thinks different and would like to put real cash folding money on it, I'll take that bet *any* time.
Slashdot Mirror
Before you get on your high horse and start saying it's just a theory, or a conspiracy by envirofascists or something, how about learning a bit about what we do know, what we don't know, and the degrees of uncertainty to each. Great. You now have what we call an "informed opinion"... and as such you recognise that you didn't actually have a clue what you were talking about when you posted that comment.
well, duh! to me then! :)
Oh wait, that's all bollocks, isn't it. Hey ho, back to reality...
You may be right from the grammar nazi PoV, but I have to tell you that in English usage defines syntax, and the "Don't Fox..." construct is the standard colloquial usage, around here at any rate.
$ whois brawndo.com
[...]
Domain Name: BRAWNDO.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS5.WEBCONTROLCENTER.COM
Name Server: NS6.WEBCONTROLCENTER.COM
[...]
Updated Date: 05-dec-2007
Creation Date: 11-jan-2007
Expiration Date: 11-jan-2008
Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BRAWNDO.COM
Created on: 11-Jan-07
Expires on: 11-Jan-08
Last Updated on: 05-Dec-07
Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration BRAWNDO.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2599
Technical Contact:
Private, Registration BRAWNDO.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2599
Domain servers in listed order:
NS5.WEBCONTROLCENTER.COM
NS6.WEBCONTROLCENTER.COM
It must be true, I saw it on the Internets....
And how much more appropriate that would have been.
Luckily for you guys the technology's going to be much cheaper, more reliable and efficient by the time we're done filling the north sea with wind turbines.
Jesus wept. +4 insightful? What is this, straw-chewers weekly? I thought a basic general knowledge grasp of physics was expected around here, but when I see posts like that I gots to wonders
Uhh, I think you replied to the wrong comment dude.
Ha! Yes, exactly, I was actually thinking how reminiscent this story is of the 'missile gap' nonsense as I wrote the comment. Congratulations, you must be nearly as old as I am ;)
You could make the same argument for a scheme to build a roof over the entire country. Wouldn't the spin-offs be more likely to have useful applications on earth if the funds went to, say, a crash project to improve sustainable power generation?
One day, you're gonna die. Get over yourself.
America is left without any ability to waste hundreds of millions of dollars firing people into low earth orbit where they go round and round for a few months whilst doing "experiments". The only useful experiment on ISS is how long you can subject highly intelligent skilled experts to pointless tedium before they pop the airlock and go suck vac. That, at least, might be of some use when it comes to "colonising the moon".
Well, no, actually we all joined the WTO, which was then subverted to implement neo-imperialist rule on the globe in the name of the Great American Public. We are all very grateful, by the way, we had a real shortage of laws - thank god for the EUCD and other international laws "inspired by" the need to not get blockaded from world trade by the U.S.
Look, it doesn't matter if you get your medical information from the side of a cereal packet, the National Enquirer or YouTube; if you believe bullshit then sorry, thanks for playing, you're out of the game. If only there was as efficient a means to rid the population of the useless two-thirds who believe in god, ghosts, "crystal energy vibrations" or say "I'm deeply spiritual cos I, like, meditate once a week for 30 minutes?" Roll on the day someone engineers a bacteria that only kills fuckwits.
There's a chap where I work who's involved in the Radio Amateurs Emergency Network (RAEnet) which provides emergency comms in situations exactly like this, as well as providing backup to the police & emergency services in less dramatic scenarios. At one point he had a relay in his car providing a live feed via a Google maps mashup so we could see where he was when he didn't turn up in the office. He just *loves* it when we call him "rubber duck" ask about his "twenty" and refer to him as a "good buddy". Ahh, simple pleasures...
this story is baloney.
Actually, the Spanish empire imploded spectacularly in the 17th century, despite pillaging so much gold and silver from South America (in the form of incredible artwork which was hammered flat or tossed into crucibles, but that's neither here nor there) that it completely fscked the international bullion price for decades. Why so? Believe it or not, a succession of monarchs frittered it all away in debt-funded foreign wars driven by theology and imperial ambition. No, really, I'm not making this stuff up... look it up.
You know, eventually you're going to witness an epidemic of some infectious disease (as opposed to the lifestyle diseases that kill most of us off these days.) I suspect that shortly after people have witnessed mass burials via dumper truck, a la "Necropolis" in 2000AD if I can get a witness here?, there's gonna be a sudden, Damascene conversion to the wisdom of this crazy notion called "public health". You might be able to afford anti-biotics, but you're not going to be very happy when there's no-one to collect your garbage or sell you your cheezburger because you stepped over their rotting corpses on the way out to the ATM. Believe me, once you've got some cadaverine-rich fluids squished onto your trouser leg, that smell will follow you around for days. Don't go there. Nationalise your health care, like the rest of the civilised world.
Put it this way - a massive, well funded programme might be able to do a successful manned mission by the early 2030s. (That's NASAs current working timeframe in their design reference mission plans.) By then I think it's going to be pretty clear that the Greenland ice-shelf's going fast and that you're looking at 7m sea-level rise in the next few decades. Now, you need to pretty much evacuate and abandon all those nice expensive cities that everyone's got their capital tied up in, which are all along the coasts and naviagable (tidal) rivers. Whoa, and international trade just collapsed cos there's no shipping industry left to speak of (what with all the ports being under water, and all.) Now, pretend you're the King of America. What are you going to spend your rapidly diminishing tax take on - apart from a fortified retreat in the rockies, that is?
This may come as a surprise to you, but money "spent on Mars" is not literally handed over to little green men on the planet Mars. It goes to aerospace contractors here on Earth, many of which have facilities scattered across the mid-west and all sorts of odd out-of-the-way places which - surprise! - elect congress-critters.
Extrasolar human exploration is purely for the nutters and kiddies to dream of. And if anyone here thinks different and would like to put real cash folding money on it, I'll take that bet *any* time.
Hence the rapid decline of Switzerland, that stagnant, impoverished backwater, once they gave up aggressively colonising non-European continents.