You need people who have no interest in having children. Or have already had their children, i.e. "old people". You need people who don't see a qualitative difference between living in the Mom's basement downloading porn all day and living in a tin can 100 million miles from home and downloading porn all day. All real work in extreme environments should be done by robots. Very few humans are needed to work around the speed-of-light propagation delays in running everything from back on Earth, i.e. humans are only needed to handle unexpected situations.
The ocean floor is a heck of a lot easier to work on and still be home in time for dinner! Remote controlling equipment even in the deepest part of the ocean gives you a lot better ping times then remote controlling equipment in the asteroid belt, i.e. milliseconds versus months of round-trip delay time. The solar system is fucking BIG!
I'm joking. The real answer is that "America" shouldn't be paying for space exploration, "Earth" should be paying for space exploration. It is only because we have militarized space that every country feels they need their own private space program. Get everybody to work together for a common goal, and nobody else will give a shit about the decline of the American empire, which has already started, by the way. Within the next few decades, China will become the leading economic superpower, then they can foot the lion's share of the bill for space exploration. Your problem is your clinging to the viewpoint of wanting only what is best for America, rather than what is best for the human species as a whole.
Once again, that "return to Earth" is your biggest money waster. One-way trips are an order of magnitude cheaper. Big, slow vehicles with a multitude of redundant robotic self-replicating explorer/miners are the way to go. If they can find enough material to make copies of themselves faster than they break down, than the whole operation is self sustaining. Just don't be surprised in a few thousand years when they evolve to the point where they come back and take over the Earth!
Why manned? Sending robots on a one-way mission is always going to be an order of magnitude cheaper than sending humans and safely bringing them back home. However, sending humans on a one-way mission may be cheaper still!
We've got the worlds best military. When we run out of money, we just invade some other puny little countries and take their stuff. What part of being the world's biggest bully do you not understand?
You forge the gold into a landing module and use a mass-accelerate to bring it back to earth. You leave your mining equipment out there to get more precious materials until it stops functioning. Bringing your labor force back to Earth is a mistake; then you have to pay them! Actually, you use robotic miners so you don't have to recover them. Ever heard of Self-replicating machines?
Picture the old grizzled prospector and his faithful burro, quickly asphyxiating due to lack of oxygen! It's a lot easier to get air and climate control into even a 10-mile deep hole in the ground than it is to get it out to the asteroid belt.
I think you can go down pretty damn deep before "easily mined" from asteroids becomes more cost effective than "easily mined" here on Earth! You need to mine the asteroids for resources to use in orbit, not to send back to Earth.
I prefer to just sit there in the middle of the asteroids, spinning around while shooting missiles at them to break them into smaller and smaller pieces...
If your goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies independent of Earth, the asteroid belt is the best place to do it. But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime.
How much of that $10,000 is the cost of the Solar Power? Photovoltaics, inverters, and batteries ain't cheap. As far as the crane, they've got plenty of those on site for the build anyway, so it's a shared expense. The labor is presumably all volunteer.
On the Current TV documentary last night, the organizers themselves said it had gone from being a counter-culture event to a mainstream cultural event. I still like the idea of a gift economy, but think I think most music festivals operate at least partially on that principle. For any gathering to survive, as the number of attendees goes way up you need to implement some fascist rules just to maintain public safety, e.g. "Don't climb the 100-foot tall artwork" and "Don't stand so close to the Burning Man that it lands on you when it collapses".
Burning man is about freedom to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedom of others. If what you want to do is play with your GSM phone rather than indulge in all the music, art, alcohol, drugs, and sex that is going on, well then more power to you, you pathetic little nerd.
I mis-stated that, it should have been "Those would only be available as embryonic stem cells if you saved some at birth." I apologize for the source of confusion; I think we actually agree.
Yes, that is definitely the way to go, because then you can use your own cells. The only drawback is you need to be very careful you don't propagate any genetic errors accumulated over the years.
Slashdot Mirror
Is that you, Stephen Hawking?
Dude, haven't you heard?
All these worlds
are yours except
Europa
Attempt no
landing there
Use them together
Use them in peace
Frickin' lameness filter...
Thank you for explaining the joke to our slower slashdot readers...
You need people who have no interest in having children. Or have already had their children, i.e. "old people". You need people who don't see a qualitative difference between living in the Mom's basement downloading porn all day and living in a tin can 100 million miles from home and downloading porn all day. All real work in extreme environments should be done by robots. Very few humans are needed to work around the speed-of-light propagation delays in running everything from back on Earth, i.e. humans are only needed to handle unexpected situations.
The ocean floor is a heck of a lot easier to work on and still be home in time for dinner! Remote controlling equipment even in the deepest part of the ocean gives you a lot better ping times then remote controlling equipment in the asteroid belt, i.e. milliseconds versus months of round-trip delay time. The solar system is fucking BIG!
I'm joking. The real answer is that "America" shouldn't be paying for space exploration, "Earth" should be paying for space exploration. It is only because we have militarized space that every country feels they need their own private space program. Get everybody to work together for a common goal, and nobody else will give a shit about the decline of the American empire, which has already started, by the way. Within the next few decades, China will become the leading economic superpower, then they can foot the lion's share of the bill for space exploration. Your problem is your clinging to the viewpoint of wanting only what is best for America, rather than what is best for the human species as a whole.
Once again, that "return to Earth" is your biggest money waster. One-way trips are an order of magnitude cheaper. Big, slow vehicles with a multitude of redundant robotic self-replicating explorer/miners are the way to go. If they can find enough material to make copies of themselves faster than they break down, than the whole operation is self sustaining. Just don't be surprised in a few thousand years when they evolve to the point where they come back and take over the Earth!
Why manned? Sending robots on a one-way mission is always going to be an order of magnitude cheaper than sending humans and safely bringing them back home. However, sending humans on a one-way mission may be cheaper still!
We've got the worlds best military. When we run out of money, we just invade some other puny little countries and take their stuff. What part of being the world's biggest bully do you not understand?
You forge the gold into a landing module and use a mass-accelerate to bring it back to earth. You leave your mining equipment out there to get more precious materials until it stops functioning. Bringing your labor force back to Earth is a mistake; then you have to pay them! Actually, you use robotic miners so you don't have to recover them. Ever heard of Self-replicating machines?
Sure, but you've really go to watch out for those giant worms hiding in caves in the asteroids!
Picture the old grizzled prospector and his faithful burro, quickly asphyxiating due to lack of oxygen! It's a lot easier to get air and climate control into even a 10-mile deep hole in the ground than it is to get it out to the asteroid belt.
I think you can go down pretty damn deep before "easily mined" from asteroids becomes more cost effective than "easily mined" here on Earth! You need to mine the asteroids for resources to use in orbit, not to send back to Earth.
Can I have my own autograph? No, but you can have this red "FAIL" sticker I have handy...
Best way to deal with food thieves is to poison some food and go ahead and leave it out for them...
I prefer to just sit there in the middle of the asteroids, spinning around while shooting missiles at them to break them into smaller and smaller pieces...
If your goal is to set up self-sufficient colonies independent of Earth, the asteroid belt is the best place to do it. But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime.
How much of that $10,000 is the cost of the Solar Power? Photovoltaics, inverters, and batteries ain't cheap. As far as the crane, they've got plenty of those on site for the build anyway, so it's a shared expense. The labor is presumably all volunteer.
On the Current TV documentary last night, the organizers themselves said it had gone from being a counter-culture event to a mainstream cultural event. I still like the idea of a gift economy, but think I think most music festivals operate at least partially on that principle. For any gathering to survive, as the number of attendees goes way up you need to implement some fascist rules just to maintain public safety, e.g. "Don't climb the 100-foot tall artwork" and "Don't stand so close to the Burning Man that it lands on you when it collapses".
Burning man is about freedom to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on the freedom of others. If what you want to do is play with your GSM phone rather than indulge in all the music, art, alcohol, drugs, and sex that is going on, well then more power to you, you pathetic little nerd.
Don't know what your problem is... My wife went there and she got LOTS of sex and drugs! ;-)
How 'bout you just assume it ISN'T secure, and don't do any drug deals or order any mob hits over the phone while you're at Burning Man, ok?
Wow. We're old.
I mis-stated that, it should have been "Those would only be available as embryonic stem cells if you saved some at birth." I apologize for the source of confusion; I think we actually agree.
Yes, that is definitely the way to go, because then you can use your own cells. The only drawback is you need to be very careful you don't propagate any genetic errors accumulated over the years.