I pretty much agree on terraforming Mars. OTOH, the planet has a reasonable rotation rate so if it can be given water and Oxygen, it won't have searing days and frigid nights which is what would happen with a more slowly rotating body like our moon. Best bet for terraforming in a reasonable time frame would seem to be a sequence of carefully tailored lifeforms that are fruitful and multiply and change the surface of the rock into what we humans want it to be. We surely can't do that today or any time soon, but I'm far from sure that it won't be doable a century or two from now.
"Just last year I saw a documentary on how to grow potatoes in Mars on shit"
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would apply the term "living" to an existence based on consumption of what might grow on Mars -- potatoes... kale.. what else?
I'd surely be inclined to overcome any doubts I might have about GMO crops.
Doesn't have to keep an atmosphere forever y'know. A few thousand years should be plenty and realistically it'd be good for quite a few million years. Shouldn't take all that long to figure out that Mars is less attractive as a homestead than Detroit.
First of all, nobody is going to Mars for a lot longer than most people think. Costs too much now. Costs will drop slowly, And second, once people get there, most exploration will surely be done by robotic rovers -- probably controlled from orbit. AFAICS, there won't be any colonies until some terraforming is done. At the very least, getting rid of the toxic perchlorates that are said to be prsent in the soil. And hopefully some Oxygenation of the virtually nonexistent atmosphere. There may be a (very) few research stations on the surface and those will likely be militaristic. Think Antarctica -- which, BTW, is what the Martian climate will be like except that Antarctica is warmer and you can breath Antarctic air if you are careful about frostbite.
Don't be silly, Paul Allen couldn't do that all by himself. He had help. Some folks claim it was the illuminati who did it. Others blame Hillary Clinton. I'm told there's video of her in an old fashioned diving suit meticulously killing individual coral polyps with a poison dagger of some sort that she took off Vince Foster after doing him in. Me? I'm keeping an open mind.
Errh... The Indian Ocean and GBR are where they looked. Nowhere does it say they wouldn't have found plastic pollution to be a problem in Biscayne Bay (Florida) had they looked there.
"The dilemma is that with petroleum based plastics..."
Nitpicky, I know, but at least in the US, most plastics are made from Methane or Ethane -- i.e. Natural Gas. You CAN make them from petroleum or coal, but NG or Natural Gas Liquids (Ethane, Propane, Butane) are cheaper feedstocks.
Biodegradable plastics? Nifty idea. But how do you keep them from biodegrading on the shelf? Most folks want containers to... like.. contain.
I actually do think that overuse of plastic is a genuine problem, even if I don't have any answer for what to do about it.... Maybe significant refundable deposits and significant non-refundable recycling fees on every plastic product...
A lot of plastic is colored and even the "clear" plastics can develop scratched surfaces that block some light. It's not clear that will bother reef corals, but the algae that coexist with, and presumably help nourish, the corals might not be happy with less light. In any case, most reef corals feed at night. I know that causer the Internet told me so.
Actually, I think the reason kids (and adults) are turned off by programming is that after you've learned a bunch of rather abstract rules and persuaded you computing device to print or display "hello world", there's nothing useful you can do with your knowledge. Scripting routine tasks might be useful. But your OS, applications software, and web browser will probably have defenses in depth to make scripting as difficult as possible. If they don't prevent it entirely.
"We're not spending billions of dollars keeping young mathmeticians in LEO"
I believe that, incredible as it may sound, many mathematicians are able to work effectively even with gravity constantly dragging blood out of their brains. Were that not true, they'd work standing on their heads.
As far as I can tell, it's $2500 per pound, (0.45 kg) not $2500 per kg) kilogram. That's roughly $5000 per kg. That's comparable with other launch systems. Probably a bit less if you can figure out how to compare as fairly as possible.
It's reasonable to expect some improvement over time.
Launch costs are pretty hazy for a lot of reasons. Wikipedia took them out of its tables five or six years ago, but you can dig the old version out of the Internet Archive if you really wish to. Best guess I could work out from what was there is that we'll probably hit affordable ($200/kg) around 2070 or 2080. And cheap enough to really do stuff without being crippled by launch costs ($20/kg) early in the next century.
Pessimistic? I suppose so. OTOH, it's been just about 50 years since Apollo and we've gone through two comparably costly (in current dollars) efforts -- the Space Shuttle and the ISS. We can still just barely get a few folks (safely) to orbit and back. I can't see why -- other than wishful thinking -- anyone thinks that situation is going to change any time soon.
I think many of those favoring a funding cut plan to spend the money on revisiting the moon. And not in a sensible way with a bunch of lunar rovers that will tell us what's there and whether there is any point in sending people. They want to wave flags and brag about going back to the moon.
"Musk's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will make launches cheap enough for that to be feasible."
Same thing they told us about the %$#@% Space Shuttle. They promised weekly launches and cost of a few hundred dollars a kg to LEO. The best they ever did was 9 launches in 1985. And the average cost to LEO was $60000/kg.
But this time it's different.... How different? Most likely, not very
Aside from which, most of what we need to know about people, manufacturing, etc in space was determined in the 1970s by Skylab.
A new Skylab type mission every decade or two might be worth doing. The Space station was a near total waste of money and resources.
Humans in space? Maybe in the 22nd century. Right now, we'd do better to focus human exploration on great unknowns closer to home. Like the oceans that cover 70% of the planet. Leave exploring space to machines that can do it cheaper and better.
They could award him 6.8 billion in Zimbabwe Dollars, pay him with a Trillion ZWD note, and tell him to keep the change. I'm sure Mr Dotcom would appreciate the irony.
No offense, but aren't Excel macros (VBA based, right?) a bit of a problem in Libre Office? IIRC, Libre Office macros are sort of Pythonish -- which is fine with me. But I would think that would be a problem with financial folk who, in my experience, love spreadsheets, and often have huge supply of pet VBA macros that they love more than their own children. The problem here is that in the places I worked, the financial folks were heavily involved in the decision making process and they are unlikely to embrace a "solution" that causes them a lot of grief.
Perhaps the world has moved on and that's no longer a problem? I sure hope so.
I suppose there are projects -- blasting mankind back to the stone age for example -- where presumed lower costs of rental outweigh the risks that the software you are locked into will become inaccessible, unusable, or extortionately expensive. But in general, depending on rental software without guarantees of perpetual good behavior from its purveyor strikes me as being exceedingly imprudent. Therefore I project that the idea will be exceedingly popular amongst MBAs and similar lower life forms.
Readers should be aware that Zero-hedge is NOT a mainstream financial publication. Not that it's necessarily wrong. But you aren't looking at the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times here. There's a wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that doesn't seem to be wildly unbalanced.
FWIW, tulip bulbs -- which have some utility -- seem to be selling for about $200 USD per bushel. There are a LOT of tulip bulbs in a bushel (35 liters). AFAICS, Bitcoin has less utility than tulips and you can probably put millions of Bitcoin into a bushel basket. On that basis, I expect the post mania price of Bitcoin to be pretty low.
OK then... time for the **BIG** guns. We're gonna play the Kale Card. No doubt that kale can kill the little cretins. Only problem is how to get them to eat it.
The point is surely that if you plan for the economics to work, Norway probably needs to be able to sell these things outside Norway -- In the EU, US, Japan, China. And to do that, they are going to need airworthiness certifications including FAA.
But overall, I think you're correct. When you try to scale up a small scale demo, not everything scales by the same factor. Scaling an electric model plane up to an airliner surely is NOT just a matter of multiplying all the specs by 60.
Caveat -- I am in no way shape or form an Aeronautical Engineer. But neither, I suspect, are the folks pushing/defending this scheme.
"What idiot would have a fleet of one or two hour only aircraft?"
Norwegian idiots apparently.
Personally, I'd wait until I had a few years experience with electric aircraft in a variety of environments and weather conditions before I decreed liquid fuel to be passe.
BTW, how many kwhr do they plan to stuff into these things in how many minutes in order to turn their aircraft around for a return flight?
Slashdot Mirror
I pretty much agree on terraforming Mars. OTOH, the planet has a reasonable rotation rate so if it can be given water and Oxygen, it won't have searing days and frigid nights which is what would happen with a more slowly rotating body like our moon. Best bet for terraforming in a reasonable time frame would seem to be a sequence of carefully tailored lifeforms that are fruitful and multiply and change the surface of the rock into what we humans want it to be. We surely can't do that today or any time soon, but I'm far from sure that it won't be doable a century or two from now.
"Just last year I saw a documentary on how to grow potatoes in Mars on shit"
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would apply the term "living" to an existence based on consumption of what might grow on Mars -- potatoes ... kale .. what else?
I'd surely be inclined to overcome any doubts I might have about GMO crops.
Doesn't have to keep an atmosphere forever y'know. A few thousand years should be plenty and realistically it'd be good for quite a few million years. Shouldn't take all that long to figure out that Mars is less attractive as a homestead than Detroit.
First of all, nobody is going to Mars for a lot longer than most people think. Costs too much now. Costs will drop slowly, And second, once people get there, most exploration will surely be done by robotic rovers -- probably controlled from orbit. AFAICS, there won't be any colonies until some terraforming is done. At the very least, getting rid of the toxic perchlorates that are said to be prsent in the soil. And hopefully some Oxygenation of the virtually nonexistent atmosphere. There may be a (very) few research stations on the surface and those will likely be militaristic. Think Antarctica -- which, BTW, is what the Martian climate will be like except that Antarctica is warmer and you can breath Antarctic air if you are careful about frostbite.
Don't be silly, Paul Allen couldn't do that all by himself. He had help. Some folks claim it was the illuminati who did it. Others blame Hillary Clinton. I'm told there's video of her in an old fashioned diving suit meticulously killing individual coral polyps with a poison dagger of some sort that she took off Vince Foster after doing him in. Me? I'm keeping an open mind.
Errh ... The Indian Ocean and GBR are where they looked. Nowhere does it say they wouldn't have found plastic pollution to be a problem in Biscayne Bay (Florida) had they looked there.
"The dilemma is that with petroleum based plastics ..."
Nitpicky, I know, but at least in the US, most plastics are made from Methane or Ethane -- i.e. Natural Gas. You CAN make them from petroleum or coal, but NG or Natural Gas Liquids (Ethane, Propane, Butane) are cheaper feedstocks.
Biodegradable plastics? Nifty idea. But how do you keep them from biodegrading on the shelf? Most folks want containers to ... like .. contain.
I actually do think that overuse of plastic is a genuine problem, even if I don't have any answer for what to do about it. ... Maybe significant refundable deposits and significant non-refundable recycling fees on every plastic product ...
A lot of plastic is colored and even the "clear" plastics can develop scratched surfaces that block some light. It's not clear that will bother reef corals, but the algae that coexist with, and presumably help nourish, the corals might not be happy with less light. In any case, most reef corals feed at night. I know that causer the Internet told me so.
Actually, I think the reason kids (and adults) are turned off by programming is that after you've learned a bunch of rather abstract rules and persuaded you computing device to print or display "hello world", there's nothing useful you can do with your knowledge. Scripting routine tasks might be useful. But your OS, applications software, and web browser will probably have defenses in depth to make scripting as difficult as possible. If they don't prevent it entirely.
"We're not spending billions of dollars keeping young mathmeticians in LEO"
I believe that, incredible as it may sound, many mathematicians are able to work effectively even with gravity constantly dragging blood out of their brains. Were that not true, they'd work standing on their heads.
"the Falcon 9 only costs about $2500/kg to LEO"
As far as I can tell, it's $2500 per pound, (0.45 kg) not $2500 per kg) kilogram. That's roughly $5000 per kg. That's comparable with other launch systems. Probably a bit less if you can figure out how to compare as fairly as possible.
It's reasonable to expect some improvement over time.
Launch costs are pretty hazy for a lot of reasons. Wikipedia took them out of its tables five or six years ago, but you can dig the old version out of the Internet Archive if you really wish to. Best guess I could work out from what was there is that we'll probably hit affordable ($200/kg) around 2070 or 2080. And cheap enough to really do stuff without being crippled by launch costs ($20/kg) early in the next century.
Pessimistic? I suppose so. OTOH, it's been just about 50 years since Apollo and we've gone through two comparably costly (in current dollars) efforts -- the Space Shuttle and the ISS. We can still just barely get a few folks (safely) to orbit and back. I can't see why -- other than wishful thinking -- anyone thinks that situation is going to change any time soon.
I think many of those favoring a funding cut plan to spend the money on revisiting the moon. And not in a sensible way with a bunch of lunar rovers that will tell us what's there and whether there is any point in sending people. They want to wave flags and brag about going back to the moon.
"Musk's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will make launches cheap enough for that to be feasible."
Same thing they told us about the %$#@% Space Shuttle. They promised weekly launches and cost of a few hundred dollars a kg to LEO. The best they ever did was 9 launches in 1985. And the average cost to LEO was $60000/kg.
But this time it's different. ... How different? Most likely, not very
Aside from which, most of what we need to know about people, manufacturing, etc in space was determined in the 1970s by Skylab.
A new Skylab type mission every decade or two might be worth doing. The Space station was a near total waste of money and resources.
Humans in space? Maybe in the 22nd century. Right now, we'd do better to focus human exploration on great unknowns closer to home. Like the oceans that cover 70% of the planet. Leave exploring space to machines that can do it cheaper and better.
They could award him 6.8 billion in Zimbabwe Dollars, pay him with a Trillion ZWD note, and tell him to keep the change. I'm sure Mr Dotcom would appreciate the irony.
No offense, but aren't Excel macros (VBA based, right?) a bit of a problem in Libre Office? IIRC, Libre Office macros are sort of Pythonish -- which is fine with me. But I would think that would be a problem with financial folk who, in my experience, love spreadsheets, and often have huge supply of pet VBA macros that they love more than their own children. The problem here is that in the places I worked, the financial folks were heavily involved in the decision making process and they are unlikely to embrace a "solution" that causes them a lot of grief.
Perhaps the world has moved on and that's no longer a problem? I sure hope so.
I suppose there are projects -- blasting mankind back to the stone age for example -- where presumed lower costs of rental outweigh the risks that the software you are locked into will become inaccessible, unusable, or extortionately expensive. But in general, depending on rental software without guarantees of perpetual good behavior from its purveyor strikes me as being exceedingly imprudent. Therefore I project that the idea will be exceedingly popular amongst MBAs and similar lower life forms.
How about intel compensating everyone whos brought one of their flawed chips?"
That'd be about 25% of the people on the planet, right?
Might affect the stock price and bonuses, right?
Nonstarter.
Sure. But if crypto-currencies collapse, you're gonna be up to your neck in cheap high-end video cards, right?
Readers should be aware that Zero-hedge is NOT a mainstream financial publication. Not that it's necessarily wrong. But you aren't looking at the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times here. There's a wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that doesn't seem to be wildly unbalanced.
FWIW, tulip bulbs -- which have some utility -- seem to be selling for about $200 USD per bushel. There are a LOT of tulip bulbs in a bushel (35 liters). AFAICS, Bitcoin has less utility than tulips and you can probably put millions of Bitcoin into a bushel basket. On that basis, I expect the post mania price of Bitcoin to be pretty low.
"Birds are intelligent. They can learn from mistakes."
Yep, it is the ability to learn from mistakes that distinguishes them from humans. ... Well ... that ... and feathers.
OK then ... time for the **BIG** guns. We're gonna play the Kale Card. No doubt that kale can kill the little cretins. Only problem is how to get them to eat it.
The point is surely that if you plan for the economics to work, Norway probably needs to be able to sell these things outside Norway -- In the EU, US, Japan, China. And to do that, they are going to need airworthiness certifications including FAA.
"How long do you think the lead time for commercial aircraft is?"
Based on China's Comac C919 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) , a decade -- maybe a bit more.
But overall, I think you're correct. When you try to scale up a small scale demo, not everything scales by the same factor. Scaling an electric model plane up to an airliner surely is NOT just a matter of multiplying all the specs by 60.
Caveat -- I am in no way shape or form an Aeronautical Engineer. But neither, I suspect, are the folks pushing/defending this scheme.
"What idiot would have a fleet of one or two hour only aircraft?"
Norwegian idiots apparently.
Personally, I'd wait until I had a few years experience with electric aircraft in a variety of environments and weather conditions before I decreed liquid fuel to be passe.
BTW, how many kwhr do they plan to stuff into these things in how many minutes in order to turn their aircraft around for a return flight?