Our civilization,right now, we're the only chance. Sure, leaving Eden is a horrible burden. Suckit up. We have to go. Now.
People who say stuff like this usually have no idea the distances involved. It would probably take us MILLIONS of years to reach the nearest planet that's even remotely habitable. We don't have any kind of technology that could possibly survive that long, much less that could keep fragile human bodies alive that long.
We're just stuck here. Don't feel bad, though. We're going to go extinct eventually, even if we made it out into space. If an asteroid doesn't get you, the heat death of the universe certainly will.
If we can make habitable asteroids, the time scale is in decades, certainly less than 100 years. Terraforming Mars and Venus, probably thousands of years to get to shirtsleeve weather on at least part of the surface.
If we make it to the heat death of the universe, I suspect one of two things: 1) we will discover that we were wrong about the heat death of the universe, or 2) by then, we will be able to cheat that result as well.
Except that space is HARD. It's really expensive to get there and it is a high-vacuum radiation hell. It would take a long time and an expensive, sustained effort to construct off-planet habitats - a *tremendous* amount of effort and money before there is any payoff at all.
Studies were done for sustained underwater habitats (cities under the sea), conclusion: impractical, unsustainable, and that's with an easy source of water, food, air to breathe, short travel times, etc.
Or, we can continue toasting marshmallows at the planet's one-time-only oil burning party.
It's my party, and I'll _______ if I want to....
Seriously, look at what percentage of the planet can't think past next Friday's paycheck, (or next Quarter's stock payout...) Do you think that these people can even conceptualize that their actions today have consequences for their grandchildren? Of the minority that can actually hold that thought in their head long enough to potentially take action on it, what percentage of them do you think actually care?
The business model mentioned in the article above is just heavy duty assholery attempting to bypass existing laws and screw customers over.
Easy answer: don't buy it. Though, I would appreciate some legislation regarding labeling of single use content sold at retail in a package that somebody's mom thinks is just like that awesome thing they spent all last summer playing and trading among their friends...
Yes that is wrong, because I as a customer have no desire to pay the same or higher price for a reduced value. I will download pirated copies or go without before I willfully entrap myself in this DRM/license pay-per-use dystopia being advanced by IP Rights Holders.
Do what I did to the recording industry, I dropped my annual music purchasing outlay from ~$500 in 1990 to ~$25 today. In part, because I already have a big library of owned content, but also in large part because I found the DRM'ed products offensive, the non-DRM'ed products overpriced, and the general quality of the content no more appealing than what I already owned.
Someone's been reading "How to Lie with Statistics"!
It's not a lie, in the 1960s, 10% of US GDP went out on military spending, in 2007, it was less than 5%, I'd call that progress regardless of whether or not I think the number should be more like 2% in today's world.
By the way, drones are helping to push that spending number down without creating the political instability that would result from a massive US military shutdown.
What nobody seems to be mentioning here is that remote controlled war robots will make civilian areas legitimate targets.
This has been true since the Blitz in WWII, all of London was a "legitimate target", as was anything else. There were occasional moments of spontaneous decency on both sides, but churches still got bombed by all.
Economic sanctions target the entire population, why wouldn't you expect retaliation in-kind?
Not quite sure there's an easy or gentle way of letting little Susie know that her cool little science experiment was responsible for 3 million lives lost. Good luck with that.
Every life "lost" on the other side is lives "saved" on the side of righteousness and virtue. Old spin, heavily practiced and usually accepted by little Susie, especially if you can prejudice her against the opponent.
"Besides that US, I don't think any other country has the kind of robotic arsenal you're dreaming of."
The US spends almost as much each year on the military as the entire rest of the world combined. It's hard to even count how many conflicts we're currently involved in. We're the trendsetters. And robotic warfare is the trend we're setting.
The U.S. spends 5% of GDP on military endeavors, down from 10% 50 years ago. Perhaps still too much, but less than a lot of countries.
"Under Article 8(2)(a)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), adopted in July 1998 and entered into force 1 July 2002; "Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" is a war crime."
Huge difference between designing weapons and participating actively in hostilities.
See: Remote Control War, available on Netflix watch it now. It may not be the robotic arsenal _you_ are dreaming of, it's a different one, and probably bigger and more capable than you imagine.
Something you design yourselves (as a couple) would be very cool, if one of you paints, you could collaborate on a painting - if the wedding is sensibly small you could even hand-paint each invitation, if one of you has the skills to do a pop-up folded paper design, that could be cool too - and both of you could collaborate on what it will look like.
If you're both maniacal pyromaniacs, you might add conductive ink and a fairly strong battery to the card design to start a small fire upon opening, how to fit that into the theme of everlasting love is up to you.
Just hack one of those talking greeting / birthday cards. Yank the electronics and put them in your own card. I know there are cards that let you record exactly what you want on them, but they're a bit more expensive than the others.
Wedding invitations are not typically compatible with absolute spendthrift impulses.
If any of the above is true, get yourself some cold feet and send out the cancellation notices, right now. Marriage is for adults, the above is childish nonsense. Lots of childish people get married, see: Divorce statistics.
When you get home, nobody is cleaning and making food... but at home I have no time for computer hobbies.
Bzzzzzt. You need to watch closely some television from the "Leave it to Beaver" generation, it's a perfectly valid lifestyle, and Ward wasn't the only happy family member.
Great plan below here, but from a politician with elections coming up in less than 2/4/6 years, a) tl/dr, b) what kind of payback horizon are you talking about? Will my voters see anything worthwhile in their lifetime? In their children's lifetime?, c) take anything the far out science guys say, and multiply the schedule x3, the budget x12, and the tangible taxable benefits x0.2, does it still sound good? Good enough to get me re-elected? "We're going to Mars!" was a dud for W., why should I think I'll get more bang out of supporting this?
Short version: build a bridge, one plank at a time, and get to several something usefuls along the way - pie in the sky is going to stay there.
tl;dr: Robots first, mine the asteroids for building materials.
The proper plan is to start mining Near Earth Asteroids for supplies. Why NEO's? They take less velocity to reach than the Moon's surface for some of them, and all of the velocity can be done with highly efficient electric thrusters. The Moon is physically closer, but distance is not what costs in space, it's velocity and fuel. Haul back surface dust and rocks from your chosen asteroid with a solar powered tug, and have the extraction equipment in Earth orbit. Why here? it's close enough to be remote controlled by humans on the ground. Depending which asteroid and it's composition you can get: metals, glass, oxygen, fuel for more mining trips, carbon, silicon for solar panels, even water in some of them. Also sheer bulk rock gives you radiation shielding.
Once you learn to extract useful stuff, and build up a supply, you use that to build a habitat, including a greenhouse using the glass for windows and carbon to feed the plants. *Then* you start sending people. Until then you send the minimum crew you can get away with, possibly zero. With people up there and their life support taken care of long term, you can start building space elevators in Earth orbit and Lunar orbit out of the carbon you extract. Not the sci-fi one at Earth that goes all the way to the ground, that takes materials we can't make yet. You can reach 30% of the way to the ground in velocity terms at Earth, and all the way on the Moon, cause it's smaller. 30% in velocity means 50% in energy for a vehicle starting from the ground. You can now build single stage to orbit vehicles easily. At the moon you don't need vehicles at all as far as propulsion, just a pressure cabin. Now you can send people all the way from Earth to the Moon at reasonable cost. You can also send habitat parts made in orbit down to the Moon, and start building up your infrastructure there.
We already know a lot about mining and manufacturing on Earth. The main thing we have to learn is how to do it remotely, and possibly in zero gee (you can always spin things if you need gravity).
...and then I would expect a Mars Lander like rate of success.
Huh? A Mars lander rate of success is fantastic -- Spirit and Opportunity were only designed to last six months. You're way too optomistic.
How many landers had to be sent and crashed before Spirit and Opportunity made it? I stand by the analogy, many early failures followed by something that is finally overengineered to the point that it performs well past expectations.
I am curious about the origin of the sacrificial goat expression. Whenever there is any talk of non-human sacrifice it is this particular animal that is immediately brought up. Is it because goats are more commonly available? Why not cows? If I remember correctly, the bible mentions male sheep as the sacrifices used. So where did the goat originate from?
I know that if I was a god, I would prefer something more exotic and harder to obtain in order for my followers to prove their devotion. Farm animals and humans are so easily obtained that it would be boring and routine. For my sacrifices I would require something rare like an albino tiger or dangerous to obtain like young, fully grown elephant. My blessings are not cheap!
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Our civilization,right now, we're the only chance. Sure, leaving Eden is a horrible burden. Suckit up. We have to go. Now.
People who say stuff like this usually have no idea the distances involved. It would probably take us MILLIONS of years to reach the nearest planet that's even remotely habitable. We don't have any kind of technology that could possibly survive that long, much less that could keep fragile human bodies alive that long.
We're just stuck here. Don't feel bad, though. We're going to go extinct eventually, even if we made it out into space. If an asteroid doesn't get you, the heat death of the universe certainly will.
If we can make habitable asteroids, the time scale is in decades, certainly less than 100 years. Terraforming Mars and Venus, probably thousands of years to get to shirtsleeve weather on at least part of the surface.
If we make it to the heat death of the universe, I suspect one of two things: 1) we will discover that we were wrong about the heat death of the universe, or 2) by then, we will be able to cheat that result as well.
Life is Maxwell's Demon, intelligent life moreso.
Except that space is HARD. It's really expensive to get there and it is a high-vacuum radiation hell. It would take a long time and an expensive, sustained effort to construct off-planet habitats - a *tremendous* amount of effort and money before there is any payoff at all.
Studies were done for sustained underwater habitats (cities under the sea), conclusion: impractical, unsustainable, and that's with an easy source of water, food, air to breathe, short travel times, etc.
Or, we can continue toasting marshmallows at the planet's one-time-only oil burning party.
It's my party, and I'll _______ if I want to....
Seriously, look at what percentage of the planet can't think past next Friday's paycheck, (or next Quarter's stock payout...) Do you think that these people can even conceptualize that their actions today have consequences for their grandchildren? Of the minority that can actually hold that thought in their head long enough to potentially take action on it, what percentage of them do you think actually care?
Not enough to make it happen, I'm afraid.
The business model mentioned in the article above is just heavy duty assholery attempting to bypass existing laws and screw customers over.
Easy answer: don't buy it. Though, I would appreciate some legislation regarding labeling of single use content sold at retail in a package that somebody's mom thinks is just like that awesome thing they spent all last summer playing and trading among their friends...
Yes that is wrong, because I as a customer have no desire to pay the same or higher price for a reduced value. I will download pirated copies or go without before I willfully entrap myself in this DRM/license pay-per-use dystopia being advanced by IP Rights Holders.
Do what I did to the recording industry, I dropped my annual music purchasing outlay from ~$500 in 1990 to ~$25 today. In part, because I already have a big library of owned content, but also in large part because I found the DRM'ed products offensive, the non-DRM'ed products overpriced, and the general quality of the content no more appealing than what I already owned.
You misunderstand the word software. The software that has the most value in the iPhone is iOS, by far, not any app you can find.
So, then, of the 300,000,000 U.S. Americans, how many can find gainful employment writing iOS, and iOS like, software? Far less than 1%, I'd guess.
AT&T already lost me as a customer permanently based on their high rates and higher opinion of themselves and their quality of service.
Double 'em, Triple 'em, that'll show the consumer!
In all fairness, there is a heck of a lot more value in software than in hardware. Hardware is now a commodity, nothing more.
Yes, but... how much software do you really need?
How many games are in the App store?
How many are having even 1% of Angry Birds' success?
Someone's been reading "How to Lie with Statistics"!
It's not a lie, in the 1960s, 10% of US GDP went out on military spending, in 2007, it was less than 5%, I'd call that progress regardless of whether or not I think the number should be more like 2% in today's world.
By the way, drones are helping to push that spending number down without creating the political instability that would result from a massive US military shutdown.
According to this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
the US outspends everyone on a GDP basis except Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Iraq, Oman, Israel, Eritrea, and Chad.
And on an actual dollar basis, the difference is truly staggering.
According to this page, a big part of that U.S. military spending can be attributed to the fact that we pay our soldiers, rather than conscript them.
What nobody seems to be mentioning here is that remote controlled war robots will make civilian areas legitimate targets.
This has been true since the Blitz in WWII, all of London was a "legitimate target", as was anything else. There were occasional moments of spontaneous decency on both sides, but churches still got bombed by all.
Economic sanctions target the entire population, why wouldn't you expect retaliation in-kind?
Not quite sure there's an easy or gentle way of letting little Susie know that her cool little science experiment was responsible for 3 million lives lost. Good luck with that.
Every life "lost" on the other side is lives "saved" on the side of righteousness and virtue. Old spin, heavily practiced and usually accepted by little Susie, especially if you can prejudice her against the opponent.
"Besides that US, I don't think any other country has the kind of robotic arsenal you're dreaming of."
The US spends almost as much each year on the military as the entire rest of the world combined. It's hard to even count how many conflicts we're currently involved in. We're the trendsetters. And robotic warfare is the trend we're setting.
The U.S. spends 5% of GDP on military endeavors, down from 10% 50 years ago. Perhaps still too much, but less than a lot of countries.
I would say that every use of children for military purposes of any kind is a violation of international human rights: Military_use_of_children#International_human_rights_law
and especially interseting part is:
"Under Article 8(2)(a)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), adopted in July 1998 and entered into force 1 July 2002; "Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" is a war crime."
Huge difference between designing weapons and participating actively in hostilities.
See: Remote Control War, available on Netflix watch it now. It may not be the robotic arsenal _you_ are dreaming of, it's a different one, and probably bigger and more capable than you imagine.
Something you design yourselves (as a couple) would be very cool, if one of you paints, you could collaborate on a painting - if the wedding is sensibly small you could even hand-paint each invitation, if one of you has the skills to do a pop-up folded paper design, that could be cool too - and both of you could collaborate on what it will look like.
If you're both maniacal pyromaniacs, you might add conductive ink and a fairly strong battery to the card design to start a small fire upon opening, how to fit that into the theme of everlasting love is up to you.
Just hack one of those talking greeting / birthday cards. Yank the electronics and put them in your own card. I know there are cards that let you record exactly what you want on them, but they're a bit more expensive than the others.
Wedding invitations are not typically compatible with absolute spendthrift impulses.
This. Basically, what the fuck are you doing getting involved in designing ANYTHING to do with the wedding? You do realise that if it's not exactly as your fiancée wants it, you're up shit-creek for the rest of your life, right? Every. Single. Argument. Is. Lost. Because you ruined "her special day". Either that, or you can save yourself a shit load of money by having a civil ceremony, as your wife-to-be isn't part of the whole "OMG WEDDIN IZ BEZT DAY OV MAH LYEF!" crowd. In which case, invitation by email. She'll understand.
I'll just leave this comedy sketch by Ed Byrne here for you.
If any of the above is true, get yourself some cold feet and send out the cancellation notices, right now. Marriage is for adults, the above is childish nonsense. Lots of childish people get married, see: Divorce statistics.
When you get home, nobody is cleaning and making food... but at home I have no time for computer hobbies.
Bzzzzzt. You need to watch closely some television from the "Leave it to Beaver" generation, it's a perfectly valid lifestyle, and Ward wasn't the only happy family member.
I still do, but only some of the time - get on a busy Interstate and you can have it, thanks.
Last time we were pulled over, it was to notify us that our surfboard was loose on the roof racks - no ticket, no warning, just a helpful notice.
Turn on the lights behind the car and it'll either pull itself over or the driver will turn off auto pilot and pull over, no need for remote exploits.
I don't know about you, but if I had a certified auto-driver, my first use for it would be to sleep while in transit, otherwise, what's the point?
Great plan below here, but from a politician with elections coming up in less than 2/4/6 years, a) tl/dr, b) what kind of payback horizon are you talking about? Will my voters see anything worthwhile in their lifetime? In their children's lifetime?, c) take anything the far out science guys say, and multiply the schedule x3, the budget x12, and the tangible taxable benefits x0.2, does it still sound good? Good enough to get me re-elected? "We're going to Mars!" was a dud for W., why should I think I'll get more bang out of supporting this?
Short version: build a bridge, one plank at a time, and get to several something usefuls along the way - pie in the sky is going to stay there.
tl;dr: Robots first, mine the asteroids for building materials.
The proper plan is to start mining Near Earth Asteroids for supplies. Why NEO's? They take less velocity to reach than the Moon's surface for some of them, and all of the velocity can be done with highly efficient electric thrusters. The Moon is physically closer, but distance is not what costs in space, it's velocity and fuel. Haul back surface dust and rocks from your chosen asteroid with a solar powered tug, and have the extraction equipment in Earth orbit. Why here? it's close enough to be remote controlled by humans on the ground. Depending which asteroid and it's composition you can get: metals, glass, oxygen, fuel for more mining trips, carbon, silicon for solar panels, even water in some of them. Also sheer bulk rock gives you radiation shielding.
Once you learn to extract useful stuff, and build up a supply, you use that to build a habitat, including a greenhouse using the glass for windows and carbon to feed the plants. *Then* you start sending people. Until then you send the minimum crew you can get away with, possibly zero. With people up there and their life support taken care of long term, you can start building space elevators in Earth orbit and Lunar orbit out of the carbon you extract. Not the sci-fi one at Earth that goes all the way to the ground, that takes materials we can't make yet. You can reach 30% of the way to the ground in velocity terms at Earth, and all the way on the Moon, cause it's smaller. 30% in velocity means 50% in energy for a vehicle starting from the ground. You can now build single stage to orbit vehicles easily. At the moon you don't need vehicles at all as far as propulsion, just a pressure cabin. Now you can send people all the way from Earth to the Moon at reasonable cost. You can also send habitat parts made in orbit down to the Moon, and start building up your infrastructure there.
We already know a lot about mining and manufacturing on Earth. The main thing we have to learn is how to do it remotely, and possibly in zero gee (you can always spin things if you need gravity).
Huh? A Mars lander rate of success is fantastic -- Spirit and Opportunity were only designed to last six months. You're way too optomistic.
How many landers had to be sent and crashed before Spirit and Opportunity made it? I stand by the analogy, many early failures followed by something that is finally overengineered to the point that it performs well past expectations.
Why is it always a goat?
I am curious about the origin of the sacrificial goat expression. Whenever there is any talk of non-human sacrifice it is this particular animal that is immediately brought up. Is it because goats are more commonly available? Why not cows? If I remember correctly, the bible mentions male sheep as the sacrifices used. So where did the goat originate from?
I know that if I was a god, I would prefer something more exotic and harder to obtain in order for my followers to prove their devotion. Farm animals and humans are so easily obtained that it would be boring and routine. For my sacrifices I would require something rare like an albino tiger or dangerous to obtain like young, fully grown elephant. My blessings are not cheap!
Today we just donate money... goats were handy.
(Dark side of the moon; more mining friendly?)
You do realize that it's not really dark, right? It is only "dark" in relation to the Earth, not the sun.
There is no Dark Side of the Moon, really.... Matter of fact, it's all dark.
--- Pink Floyd.
Actually, the poles are pretty low on the solar radiation, and I think they think that's where the water is too.