"Property rights are a requisite to a functioning democracy"
Well, thats a nice sweeping statement, shame it doesn't mean anything. If you think it does, define the words "property", "functioning" and "democracy" - as precisely as possible.
Does the emergence of property rights in China make it more democratic? Does the fact that many EU countries have a larger public sector than, say, Russia mean that they are less democratic? Is it democratic for the population to vote for an inheritance tax?
This is the problem with ideological rhetoric. It all sounds very good, and is carefully phrased to be almost impossible to disagree with, but is devoid of any useful underlying meaning.
...is always more profitable than working, because you hardly have any overheads. You just need to supply the occasional fawn for your lawyers to swallow whole, before going into torpor until their next court date.
At some point, our leaders and their pet intellectuals are going to have to deal with the fact that one of the most basic assumptions behind our societies - that profitability is equivalent to economic success - is fundamentally flawed.
The input IS diminishing, due to peak oil. Neither renewables, fission, or fusion are moving fast enough to replace fossil fuels. Denying this is just putting your head in the sand.
Infinitely many new things that are worth money? Got any evidence of that, or just mouthing off?
Give even *one* example of something that does not depend at all on prior work.
Ultimately, an economy does one thing; it converts natural resources into output. Services can redistribute this output, and perhaps this redistribution can increase the total output - but the game is still, ultimately, a big complex heat engine.
If you invent a better widget machine, you can get more output for your input. But you are still limited by a) the amount of input available, which is diminishing and b) physical limits for how much output can be got per unit input, which assuming you pick the innovations with the best returns first, also diminishes.
Maybe if the US were not so thoroughly entranced by the myth of the self-made entrepreneur (for a modern technological society, pretty much a contradiction in terms. Nothing worth money is entirely 100% new) then you guys - and the rest of western civilisation - might be able to address the structural problems that have become clear to everyone since 2008
A little unfair. Tiangong 1 is quite a bit more sophisticated than the Agena Target Vehicle, and Shenzhou 8 can perform an automated docking whilst Gemini could not.
Another retard thinking he understands physics (rather than knows physics).
Statistical mechanics works because molecule A is the same as molecule B, repeat for 10^23 molecules. You cannot characterise people in that way, as evidenced by the outstanding success of statistical mechanics, and the outstanding failure of economics.
An idiot comparing molecules to human minds gets modded 'Insightful'?
Statistical mechanics works because when molecules interact they do so in probabilistic ways that you can easily work out. Humans don't operate like that. Human interactions are, shockingly, more complex than a molecule bumping into another.
Don't worry, when peak oil bites, and we see a horrific Malthusian overshoot (that was only avoided previously by an injection of fossil fuel energy into the agricultural system) peoples lack of critical thinking won't be an issue. Nature will 'correct' us in the only way it knows how.
There are getting on for 7 billion people on this planet, each of them too complex for even one of them to have their behaviour modelled (see the lack of any AI for details). Any economist who claims to be taking into account human action is taking complete bullshit, and anybody claiming their favourite economist makes accurate predictions is counting the hits and forgetting the misses.
So, peak oil arrives, there is a superflu pandemic, 99942 Apophis impacts and blocks out the Sun, etc. etc. we all die.
...then, centuries later, technological civilisation reemerges, and starts analysing data storage devices they dig up. Most of them are unreadable, but they do get fragments of data with which they can start to piece together what happened before The Event.
And what do they find? Pictures of people listening to iPods at the Battle of Stalingrad and Asimo raising the flag at Iwo Jima.
Even assuming Falcon Heavy is ready on time, SpaceX is still in business in 2014, and they haven't started multiplying their prices after they have gone public - even then, Falcon Heavy simply does not have the payload capability for manned, deep space flight.
By "Known to man" I meant via direct personal experience i.e. visited. I wasn't being very clear there, I realise.
Anyhow, how can you conceive on anything being routine if it has never been done at all? Human operations on the moon thus far have been seriously limited so far.
This is the kind of thinking one might expect from a climate change denier.
If you launch into a 90 degree polar orbit, you need an inclination change to get your stuff anywhere else in the solar system. You have 0 velocity in the direction you need for an equatorial orbit, so you need to gain 100% of that velocity - which removes the point of accelerating on the surface in the first place!
Worse, you need to kill your velocity in the vertical plane. Your genius idea means that *after* getting into orbit with your polar mass driver, you need to spend DOUBLE the delta V you would need to enter lunar orbit, with a rocket! It would actually be more sensible to blast off from the surface using fuel.
Seeing as you failed elementary dynamics just now, please consider that your AGW denialism might not be based on sound scientific judgement...
A terawatt is a terawatt. I understand perfectly what you meant, I was just mocking your use of language because it demonstrates your unfamiliarity with the technical world you are claiming to be an expert with.
Actually, over time, matter inherently becomes more deregulated - its called entropy. The heat death of the universe is the ultimate triumph of the free market, and its desired end point!
The shuttle was a technosocialist piece of shit comparable to what we have ended up with if Langley could have set up a bike shop in Ohio to put the Wright Brothers out of business.
Technosocialist? How cute.
Oxygen is abundant in lunar rock.
And there it stays until an industrial process removes it. Generating breathing oxygen thus eats into your colonies industrial capacity before you have even started.
Human-breathable atmosphere is a plus for humans but is a minus for the industrial processes upon which modern technological civilization is increasingly founded.
Some industrial processes like a vacuum. Some don't. Most of them like human supervision, and humans don't like vacuum so much. Most industrial processes like lubrication too (oil tends to evaporate in a vacuum...) And constant temperature. And having a supply of spare parts less than 300,000km away. Having a marginally easier time using electron beams is hardly compensation for all this.
The black body temperature of the universe is cryogenic and the temperatures easily achievable by a gossamer parabolic reflector in zero gravity experiencing no weather is near that of the surface of the sun.
I think its ever so sweet how you've found the wikipedia page on the Carnot cycle and now you think you have a perfect command of industrial engineering. I'm not an engineer myself, but I know enough to say that things in the real world are a little more complicated than that. Having a heat source and a cold sink does not an industrial base make.
If you think 1.5 is the insolation factor gain, you failed completely to understand the importance of continuous availability in a zero gravity environment with no weather -- which goes beyond a mere gain (much more than 1.5) in insolation, but includes much lower costs of upgrading that power to industrially useful levels.
Upgrading the power? What are you blathering about, power is power. Its the rate of change of energy over time.
Its all beside the point. The bonuses of having slightly better solar power and readily accessible vacuum are tiny compared to the costs of operating in space.
As for the so-called "space station" -- again, it is as though you think bureaucrats building advanced devices in space is somehow representative of what is achievable. Much better models are available in the advancement of flight subsequent to the Kelley Act and the advancement of satellite communications subsequent to the NASA act that barred NASA from competing with the private sector in communications satellites.
The ISS is a representation of what is achievable. Even the most ludicrously ambitious private sector alternative (the bigelow station) is hardly different in underlying technology. The only extra technology, btw, is something that company bought off NASA.
Here is the thing: You are a moron (No, that isn't an ad hominem, I've destroyed your 'argument' completely independently of this insult) - the only path of intellectual development available is for you to recognise you are a moron. Read aloud what you have written. Try to understand what a drooling retard you truly are, because only then can you actually begin to learn things.
Lets redefine 'easy' to include 'building a 300km long, horrifically power hungry, device never before constructed that cant be tested on Earth, in the most hostile environment known to man.
Also, you seem to be insinuating that being cautious about the prospect of this device creating atomic-bomb-sized impact events on Earth is just some risk-averse, big-government winging instead of a valid concern. Wrong.
His maths is sound. Yes, he makes ridiculous assumptions, but that is the point - to demonstrate that the current order is ridiculous.
You don't want to address his arguments because you can't. Physical reality, as eloquently explained by someone who studies it for a living, does not fit with your ideological notions - and therefore reality must bend to your whim, right?
Firstly, take a long, hard look at a 747. Then at a Space Shuttle. Now back to the 747. Get it yet? Travelling to orbit is NOT transcontinental flight, or anything close.
Places on Earth have free, practically limitless oxygen. They have pressure regulated to with a few millibars. The temperature in most places varies by 10s of Kelvins, rather than by 100s. There is also, thankfully, not enough cosmic radiation at the surface to sterilise you. You think having a 1.5 factor increase in solar power compensates for all this?
Note also, that the incredibly complex ECLSS, which you don't need on Earth, needs constant maintenance. You are dismissing this as a trivial problem that will be solved by having more consistent and more powerful solar flux? Nice armchair engineering.
It is most important for you, at first, to understand how little you know. Only then can you learn anything.
Its no secret that certain people in Europe (mostly politicians) want to be able to take unilateral military action. In the modern era, having your own GPS network is part of this.
Slashdot Mirror
"Property rights are a requisite to a functioning democracy"
Well, thats a nice sweeping statement, shame it doesn't mean anything. If you think it does, define the words "property", "functioning" and "democracy" - as precisely as possible.
Does the emergence of property rights in China make it more democratic? Does the fact that many EU countries have a larger public sector than, say, Russia mean that they are less democratic? Is it democratic for the population to vote for an inheritance tax?
This is the problem with ideological rhetoric. It all sounds very good, and is carefully phrased to be almost impossible to disagree with, but is devoid of any useful underlying meaning.
...is always more profitable than working, because you hardly have any overheads. You just need to supply the occasional fawn for your lawyers to swallow whole, before going into torpor until their next court date.
At some point, our leaders and their pet intellectuals are going to have to deal with the fact that one of the most basic assumptions behind our societies - that profitability is equivalent to economic success - is fundamentally flawed.
The input IS diminishing, due to peak oil. Neither renewables, fission, or fusion are moving fast enough to replace fossil fuels. Denying this is just putting your head in the sand.
Infinitely many new things that are worth money? Got any evidence of that, or just mouthing off?
Give even *one* example of something that does not depend at all on prior work.
Ultimately, an economy does one thing; it converts natural resources into output. Services can redistribute this output, and perhaps this redistribution can increase the total output - but the game is still, ultimately, a big complex heat engine.
If you invent a better widget machine, you can get more output for your input. But you are still limited by a) the amount of input available, which is diminishing and b) physical limits for how much output can be got per unit input, which assuming you pick the innovations with the best returns first, also diminishes.
Maybe if the US were not so thoroughly entranced by the myth of the self-made entrepreneur (for a modern technological society, pretty much a contradiction in terms. Nothing worth money is entirely 100% new) then you guys - and the rest of western civilisation - might be able to address the structural problems that have become clear to everyone since 2008
A little unfair. Tiangong 1 is quite a bit more sophisticated than the Agena Target Vehicle, and Shenzhou 8 can perform an automated docking whilst Gemini could not.
In any case, what is the rush?
Another retard thinking he understands physics (rather than knows physics).
Statistical mechanics works because molecule A is the same as molecule B, repeat for 10^23 molecules. You cannot characterise people in that way, as evidenced by the outstanding success of statistical mechanics, and the outstanding failure of economics.
An idiot comparing molecules to human minds gets modded 'Insightful'?
Statistical mechanics works because when molecules interact they do so in probabilistic ways that you can easily work out. Humans don't operate like that. Human interactions are, shockingly, more complex than a molecule bumping into another.
Don't worry, when peak oil bites, and we see a horrific Malthusian overshoot (that was only avoided previously by an injection of fossil fuel energy into the agricultural system) peoples lack of critical thinking won't be an issue. Nature will 'correct' us in the only way it knows how.
There are getting on for 7 billion people on this planet, each of them too complex for even one of them to have their behaviour modelled (see the lack of any AI for details). Any economist who claims to be taking into account human action is taking complete bullshit, and anybody claiming their favourite economist makes accurate predictions is counting the hits and forgetting the misses.
So, peak oil arrives, there is a superflu pandemic, 99942 Apophis impacts and blocks out the Sun, etc. etc. we all die.
...then, centuries later, technological civilisation reemerges, and starts analysing data storage devices they dig up. Most of them are unreadable, but they do get fragments of data with which they can start to piece together what happened before The Event.
And what do they find? Pictures of people listening to iPods at the Battle of Stalingrad and Asimo raising the flag at Iwo Jima.
Even assuming Falcon Heavy is ready on time, SpaceX is still in business in 2014, and they haven't started multiplying their prices after they have gone public - even then, Falcon Heavy simply does not have the payload capability for manned, deep space flight.
Right on track? I presume you want to demolish the Department of Education because you yourself were unable to benefit from it?
I'm highly amused by the arrogant snark that piece of mathematical illiteracy was delivered with.
V=4/3*pi*t^3
E=a*b^(ct)
One is a cubic function, the other is an exponential. Which one of these eventually wins?
I want to seriously know something here:
This project was in part, inspired by libertarian economic ideology. Has anybody, witnessing this event, changed their mind - even slightly?
I'm not wanting to hear from people reaffirming their beliefs. Is anyone out there re-evaluating anything in light of new data?
By "Known to man" I meant via direct personal experience i.e. visited. I wasn't being very clear there, I realise.
Anyhow, how can you conceive on anything being routine if it has never been done at all? Human operations on the moon thus far have been seriously limited so far.
This is the kind of thinking one might expect from a climate change denier.
If you launch into a 90 degree polar orbit, you need an inclination change to get your stuff anywhere else in the solar system. You have 0 velocity in the direction you need for an equatorial orbit, so you need to gain 100% of that velocity - which removes the point of accelerating on the surface in the first place!
Worse, you need to kill your velocity in the vertical plane. Your genius idea means that *after* getting into orbit with your polar mass driver, you need to spend DOUBLE the delta V you would need to enter lunar orbit, with a rocket! It would actually be more sensible to blast off from the surface using fuel.
Seeing as you failed elementary dynamics just now, please consider that your AGW denialism might not be based on sound scientific judgement...
A terawatt is a terawatt. I understand perfectly what you meant, I was just mocking your use of language because it demonstrates your unfamiliarity with the technical world you are claiming to be an expert with.
Actually, over time, matter inherently becomes more deregulated - its called entropy. The heat death of the universe is the ultimate triumph of the free market, and its desired end point!
Technosocialist? How cute.
And there it stays until an industrial process removes it. Generating breathing oxygen thus eats into your colonies industrial capacity before you have even started.
Some industrial processes like a vacuum. Some don't. Most of them like human supervision, and humans don't like vacuum so much. Most industrial processes like lubrication too (oil tends to evaporate in a vacuum...) And constant temperature. And having a supply of spare parts less than 300,000km away. Having a marginally easier time using electron beams is hardly compensation for all this.
I think its ever so sweet how you've found the wikipedia page on the Carnot cycle and now you think you have a perfect command of industrial engineering. I'm not an engineer myself, but I know enough to say that things in the real world are a little more complicated than that. Having a heat source and a cold sink does not an industrial base make.
Upgrading the power? What are you blathering about, power is power. Its the rate of change of energy over time.
Its all beside the point. The bonuses of having slightly better solar power and readily accessible vacuum are tiny compared to the costs of operating in space.
The ISS is a representation of what is achievable. Even the most ludicrously ambitious private sector alternative (the bigelow station) is hardly different in underlying technology. The only extra technology, btw, is something that company bought off NASA.
Here is the thing: You are a moron (No, that isn't an ad hominem, I've destroyed your 'argument' completely independently of this insult) - the only path of intellectual development available is for you to recognise you are a moron. Read aloud what you have written. Try to understand what a drooling retard you truly are, because only then can you actually begin to learn things.
Lets redefine 'easy' to include 'building a 300km long, horrifically power hungry, device never before constructed that cant be tested on Earth, in the most hostile environment known to man.
Also, you seem to be insinuating that being cautious about the prospect of this device creating atomic-bomb-sized impact events on Earth is just some risk-averse, big-government winging instead of a valid concern. Wrong.
Physics professor: Here is some maths explaining, in detail, my point - with all assumptions stated and justified
Random slashdotter: Here is my unsupported statement that the physics professor is a moron.
Take a wild guess which way I'm leaning in this dispute...
Ad Hominem
His maths is sound. Yes, he makes ridiculous assumptions, but that is the point - to demonstrate that the current order is ridiculous.
You don't want to address his arguments because you can't. Physical reality, as eloquently explained by someone who studies it for a living, does not fit with your ideological notions - and therefore reality must bend to your whim, right?
LOL
Firstly, take a long, hard look at a 747. Then at a Space Shuttle. Now back to the 747. Get it yet? Travelling to orbit is NOT transcontinental flight, or anything close.
Places on Earth have free, practically limitless oxygen. They have pressure regulated to with a few millibars. The temperature in most places varies by 10s of Kelvins, rather than by 100s. There is also, thankfully, not enough cosmic radiation at the surface to sterilise you. You think having a 1.5 factor increase in solar power compensates for all this?
Note also, that the incredibly complex ECLSS, which you don't need on Earth, needs constant maintenance. You are dismissing this as a trivial problem that will be solved by having more consistent and more powerful solar flux? Nice armchair engineering.
It is most important for you, at first, to understand how little you know. Only then can you learn anything.
The US can disable Galileo in time of war. Europe can disable GPS in time of war. Europe wasn't screwed here.
Its no secret that certain people in Europe (mostly politicians) want to be able to take unilateral military action. In the modern era, having your own GPS network is part of this.