- much of the "science" in Crichton-based movies is actually, at best, superficially plausable handwaving.
- statistics handling in movies in general is kinda painful, with crucial misuse of basic terms and principles.
- the movie of I. Robot is crrrrrap!
- if you really want scientifically plausible s.f. movies and television, then Firefly/Serentity is spot-on, both in technology and plotting that comes from actual adult concerns with ambiguous and untidy endings.
Also, Brainstorm does a wonderful job with things like lab politics, funding issues, etc. Amazing movie, and one that I've heard cited by a number of scientists. Sneakers, while some of the tech is absurd, is otherwise a superb intro into some of the ins and outs of crypto, hacking, and the computer business; iow, wonderful, as long as a knowledgable tech geek is there to provide commentary.
I agree but I strongly recommend reading them in order, starting with Ecotopia Emerging, and then, Ecotopia. Callenbach has some serious politicial and technological missteps in Ecotopia, and it helps if you start with the book written later. Also, if anybody wants to know more, he has now built quite a career on his non-fiction explorations of these same concepts.
That is one of the best posts I've ever seen on Slashdot. detailed, useful, well-written.
But...
Much though I respect Niven and his crowd for their engineering, as pedagogical tools, they are crippled by their handling of human beings. Like Heinlein, but to an even greater degree, that whole cluster of writers is reliably anti-democracy, vastly sexist, and contemptuous of any human worldview but their own. Like Crichton, anybody whose philosophy differs from their male-centric techno-libertarian/protofascist (!)* creed is cowardly, probably homosexual (the horror!) and intellectually bankrupt. Women are sex objects or Heinleinesque cartoon superwomen, usually "coincidentally" extremely young and pretty, etc.
Now, as a male techno-libertarian myself, with my own hyper-cute intellectual superwoman of a girlfriend, I find this stuff really annoying.
Yeah, the Mote books are fascinating and engrossing. But did the only human civilization worthy of respect have to be a Czarist, totalitarian, testosterone fantasyland of uniforms and commands and Very Big Guns?
I have recommended their books before, putting them forward as works like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, where one must live with the bad to get the good, and alienated those who I recommended them to. Personally, I find myself turning to works like mid-period Brunner or Delany or the Alliance/Union/Compact books of C.J. Cherryh. All of those are just as smart, technologically fascinating, but are simply less, well, adolescent than Niven and his crowd.
Do I feel that your recommendations are wrong? No. But best that we note their failings along with their strengths. And I want to note that, oddly enough, in my experience, the farther Niven veers from current and highly specific technology, the more open-minded his characterizations become. So, predicably, Lucifer's Hammer is terrible, from its pro-fission reactor idiocies to the explicit polemics, while Ringworld acknowledges complexity and even encompasses a bit of witty satire.
* I am well aware of the seeming contradiction of my locution, "techno-libertarian/protofascist". Ain't so. Both states, as seen in their books, are variations on "guys like me must be in charge, everyone else is contemptable". The only difference is that when they are writing about far away worlds, they fantasize about the benevolent despotism that "should" be imposed while in writing about near-term Earth, they retreat to truculent rejection of all government or democracy as self-evident tools of the inferior masses "we" are trying to get free of. Neither, may I note, has the sophistication of the considered and explicit libertarianism of works like the Tom Paine Maru books that try to figure out political approaches that respect all people.
C'mon, folks, look at the Canadian papers for five minutes and you'll know what this is really about. Canadians are enraged about "extraordinary rendition" of Canadians and their media has covered the issue intensely for years now. The DEA tried to seize Canadian property because a tunnel for running drugs ran under it. Multiple Canadians have been taken off and disappeared for years at a time, including a frickin' inkjet supply salesman who had the wrong five minute conversation with a guy suspected of being connected to Al Quada.
Canadians are pissed and they're sick of being treated like children by the Bush administration.
So this is tit for tat.
You Americans unfairly persecute Canadians? Fine. Let's see how you like it.
Even Conservatives are coming out in public to decry U.S. policies. Do you really think that none of them will find ways to get political capital out of this?
This isn't about better access to data. It's bloody well the best way yet they've found to show their anger. And don't forget for a moment that all of these cases create a bargaining chip.
"You want your citizens to have freeer access to Canada? Sure. What's in it for us?"
I guarantee you that all over the world people are laughing their asses off about this. And, frankly, I can see their point.
Back in days of yore I saw this sort of thing happen several times and I found one pattern repeated, which was that a young, earnest employee would repeatedly beg his superiors to fix a vulnerability and the continuing contempt that those suggestions got would then be part of what made him disgruntled. Then, when the employee left the company, he then foobared the company using the vulnerability that he, himself, had begged them to fix.
Example A.) Hotshot new company growing really fast decides that legal software is for losers. Earnest young employee (EYE) implores, over and over and over that they get into at least partial compliance, that this new thing called the SPA was hanging people out to dry, and that they were targeting companies just like this one. "Go away kid, ya bother me."
EYE leaves, sits down, writes up list, per station, in detail of exactly what software is on which station for about forty computers, waits a while, calls the SPA. Company goes bankrupt after receiving SPA injunctions.
Example B.) Major new office of database company (rhymes with clavicle) is set up as showcase of how badass they are, everything is state of the art, from the cpus to the variable setting halogen lights. EYE tells them that they're losing sales and vulnerable to hackers because they never configured their expensive new voicemail system, leaving everything in defaults with passwords of "password" and root access for acounts like "admin" with password "admin". The company bigshots' response? "Go away kid, ya bother me."
EYE leaves, and on his last day shuts down the ringers for every sales department phone so they don't even know that they're getting calls and changes all the passwords to something like "fixthistoday", puts a full explanation of how to fix it in his desk drawer and walks out.
Example C.) EYE at a consulting company is put in charge of revamping the training rooms but they refuse to tell him a specific budget or to give him permission to replace key equipment, expecting him to juggle the equipment around to keep the clients from discovering how little of what they're paying for actually works. Then, when a crisis comes, they always end up paying huge amounts to get it fixed right now. EYE begs the partners of the firm, saying that otherwise sometime soon the whole magilla will come crashing down, that band-aid approaches just make it worse, and that it's already costing far more to futz around then it would to shut down for a few days, strip it all out, and start fresh. Response: "Go away kid, ya bother me." EYE follows written instructions to the letter, taking as sincere instructions he knows he was supposed to blow off, and spreads resources out "fairly" instead of creating the Potemkin clusters his higherups want. Finally sends an email to everybody saying "either you pay attention to this and let me really fix it or I quit." and leaves to take sick days and try to calm down. Sure enough a heavy training day comes and the whole system collapses, EYE, when contacted, says, basically, oh, well, too bad, so sad. Gets "fired".
Lesson, if an employee keeps begging and begging that you fix what he or she says is a major problem, pay attention. Whether the assessment is accurate or not, it is worth your time to find out.
My. How handy. Looks like/. now has a thread on just the sort of broadly applicable materials processing I was talking about. So I've kinda lost interest in writing yet more about it. Of course, since I'm in the middle of writing a book on the subject (oops, did I forget to mention that earlier? my bad), I should be more generous with my time but, well, I'm not.
Back to the ion engine efficiency issue, now that I think about it, yeah, I've been assuming some stuff that probably isn't merited, including possibly using collected mass as fuel. So probably better to look at that issue again. Back when I was doing corporate ops, I must admit that folks kept complaining that I tend to jump from step five to step fifty and assume that everybody else also carried around all the relevant data in their heads and was comfortable deriving the intermediate steps. Made for lots of, "Oh, did I forget to write up this aspect?" Okay. My f*ckup. Yes, you're right, fuel as I describe the system is a huge weakness. And I'm too lazy this morning to address it.
But fundamentally, what I'm suspecting here is that you're taking a whole different view of things. I'm looking at this from a "fast, cheap, and out of control" design approach (except that I'm assuming that fifteen to twenty years qualifies as "a short time") and I have a distinct suspicion that you're annoyed that this doesn't work when you try to spec it out as if it were being done by Lockheed to be approved and run by NASA circa 1992.
You're right. Done as a government contract by Morton Thiokol and specced to run to six sigma standards, the whole idea is insane.
Well, you stick to your world, I'll stick to mine and we'll see who looks wiser ten years from now. Me, I'll go back to packing up my thermocouples and planning my algae tanks and I'll see you around.
Well, the whole point of their system is that it takes anything and everything as source, so preselecting only low-hassle feedstock would kinda defeat the purpose. And given that their plant is paid for by the poultry processing plant specifically to handle their waste I think that it's a safe bet that they'll continue to accept that waste. Also, if you read up on it, you'll find that those problems actually are now largely addressed. Look at any issue of, say, Biocycle, and you'll find that handling of organic waste is a huge field that is advancing very quickly indeed.
As I said above, yes, the lack of public disclosure is mighty unsettling. But even Biosphere II had useful lessons to teach. It has been my experience that with projects on this scale that refuse to disclose, typically (like BSII), they are having problems but are not fundamentally faking the system. I have a sneaking suspicion that their "leftovers" aren't quite as benign as they say and I'm betting that somebody (won't be me) will eventully ferret out that trucks periodically leave there full of nasty end-products. I also suspect that somewhere in there are techies convinced that "if we can just get a little more time..."
A friend of mine does corporate fraud law for a living and it impresses me, as we go over the cases, how many of them are not Enron-style scams, created to deceive and completely fake, but rather valid ideas, intended to work and with some degree of real functionality already in place (i.e. Iridium) where the fraud is meant to buy time for the genuinely profitable improved version that the company decisionmakers keep telling each other is just around the corner.
-Rustin
Yes, I have. Well, kinda. Are they running a plant? Yes. Do truckloads of waste (mostly poultry parts) go in and energy come out? Yes. Are they publishing in peer-reviewed journals or filing patents? No. I've been thinking for a while of trying to wangle an invitation to go down there and take a good old up close and personal look at the plant 'cause they certainly aren't saying much about how or what.
I've probably spent about four days on this over the past few years and so far it looks like they are having reasonable rampup problems (such as lots of stink where the trucks go and from the plant) but seem to be for real. To me, this looks viable and I'm tentatively concluding that it's not a scam but I'm not going to be any too comfy until some real replicable, publicly disclosed, lab tests come out.
This was so much easier when it looked like you hadn't read the JE;->
Not sure if I apologize that much for my tone. You weren't exactly Mr. Charming in your first response, but whatever.
Okay, now I can see what's going on here and it looks like it can be blamed on my sloppy writing so, I'll assume that that is what we're dealing with here. FWIW, I am now going to have to go back and rewrite the JE because what you think you saw is probably happening with plenty of other folks. Oh well, so be it.
Now, first of all, delighted though I am with the beloved old High Frontier era ion engines, yes, I was assuming the new designs and since I've stated that they would be getting launched four years from now or later, I was both taking for granted the newer designs and treating them as kinda disposable. From what I've seen, part of the problem with many of the ion engines now made, from my perspective is that, yes, stationkeeping is exactly what they're designed for where as I'm think oh, well, if it lasts fifteen or sixteen months, hey, that's good enough for me. Note that I had assumed that half of the robots, in effective terms, would break down so fast that they would be thought of as failures.
so, no, I don't think that they'll be either all hat long term efficient, or free from breakdown, I just treated them as disposable.
In a perfect world, they themselves would eventually (we're talking years here) make it back to some where that they can themselves become raw materials or simply shoot out of orbit. I'ld be satisfied with their not becoming more space junk. And, yes, I do need to address that better.
Okay, thrust. First of all, I, over and over say that the acquisition rates would average a few pieces of junk a month. Yes, you're right, in some cases, the time required would be insane. I'm gambling, from the distribution data that I've seen (such as the Wikipedia article noted above though I've looked a NASA data over the years too) that there are enough pieces that are reachable faster to allow for a first few sweeps that would get things off to a good start. Again, note that I start by writing off half of what's up there as unreachable. Since velocity does, by and large, correlate with altitude, there should be some degree of practicality to grabbing one, then another, then another, along basically the same orbit. I'm well aware that it's looking more and more like Brownian motion up there but the nature of orbits does help. Also, I'm not assuming a dead start but rather some little initial velocity. A one time very small chemical boost as a sort of JATO. Maybe even two or three pencil-sized one time-use chemical thrusters kept around for special occasions. Again, quick and simple is the order of the day.
As for fuel usage, AFAICT, other than antennae and the scoop itself, this little bugger is basically nothing but PV and engine. Kinda different from, say, a communications satellite.
Now, as for processing, yeah, I rushed, yeah I was sloppy. Now, first of all, I was assuming an intial plant in the JE for use with the ISS. In a case like that the dynamics are totally different. If we're talking about a system just for space debris then the order is reversed. First you ship it to the parking orbit, them, whenever you get around to it, maybe years later, you break it down into component materials. I agree, there is some amount of work needed before we're ready to take on much materials breakdown but we don't need to wait for that day to start collecting mass.
That having been said, well, the first technique I mentioned was thermal depolymerization. Or rather, the sorts of related tech that, for example, Purdue just demonstrated. This deals just fine with your issue of carbon fiber and handles much of the preseparation. And since it's all in a few pressurized tanks, afaict, microgravity and vacuum simply aren't that relevant. And, again, this whole frickin' thing is meant to
Okay, dude, around here we have this quaint custom of reading the post and linked articles before spewing off clueless, pseudo-technical "refutations".
We're not talking vast new research initiatives here. Since I've already laid out the specs more than once in this thread and on this site, I'm not going to do it again here.
I'll just say that since you evidently can't tell the difference between the costs of building and running a robot the size of a breadbox using seventies technology (do you have any idea of how tiny the mass usage of an ion engine is?) and a "space tug", by which I assume you have in mind some vast, multibillion dollar, human-crewed spaceship, you probably wouldn't understand the relevant calculations anyway.
Man, I hate dealing with people without operations experience.
All of this makes a lot more sense if you read the Wikipedia article on space debris. It's got some mighty handy info. A wee bit more useful data than the predictably science-challenged NYT piece.
I forgot one thing. How much of a difference would these make anyway?
Let's assume ten thousand pieces of space junk. We'll cut that in half to only include stuff small enough to be grabbable by theses guys and in half again to only address high density orbits. Put it back up a bit to assume that more crud will turn up, 'cause we know that it will. So we'll assume that we're looking at three thousand relevant pieces of debris.
So, twenty robots per launch, three launches per year, half the robots fail. That gives us thirty robots the first year.
So let's assume one recovery per week. I think that given the inevitable clustering and increasing skill at finding paths over time, this is realistic. That gives us thirty times fifty which means fifteen hundred pieces of debris recovered in the first year of operation.
So, in two years we're done and are ready to address the nastier stuff. All for a total cost of three million bucks. Let's say ten million just to assume the usual government impediments. And assume that it takes four years of collection rather than two. Still looks mighty damn shiny to me.
Anybody got a refutation or is this a very solvable problem?
Okay, I see your point. But the vast majority of the debris is a few grams per piece. So if we allow a device as much as a month to match velocity, a scooper about the size of a chihuahua would do fine.
So, let's spec it out. - Solar panels - Batteries - Radiator surface (PV panels can help with that) - Brain (should fit on three to ten chips on a board the size of an ipod) - Inertial guidance package - IFF - Antennae, both for communications and for sensing - Ion engines (one main engine, itty bitty ones for attitude and such) - Radar (general sensing, see also antennae) - Laser on a chip (close up sensing) - Camera on a chip - Scoop (probably with aerogel inside) - Storage container - Magnet (optional but probably worth it)
I'm too lazy to calculate the size of the propulsion package (motors/PV/batteries/whatnot) but the rest could be built by a freshman engineering class at any half decent school in a year, including calculating the ballistics algorithms, for about a thousand bucks. Make it ten thousand to vacuum harden it and package it for launch, add the cost of propulsion, and, including launch cost if ten or twenty go up at a time (three from each school perhaps), and we're looking at about fifty thousand dollars per robot, or less. Only problems that I see are how "noisy" space would get with all these jobbies puttering about cleaning up debris and pinging every which way and the sh*t fit that the owners of current space hardware, especially the various militaries, would throw at having mere civilians possibly bumping into them and certainly getting close up looks at all their toys.
I agree that we should have robots out there collecting all this stuff. It's a huge volume but the math of volume passed through relative to time and fuel is a textbook problem and very addressable. As to what to do with what is collected, as I've said before, we should be breaking this stuff down to basic compounds and reusing it.
Mass costs ungawdly amounts to get up there and small devices using ion engines powered by sunlight could do the job of getting it back to usable locations. Even accounting for the problems of needing to match velocities, this is very doable. And seeing as how we've already seen cases where serious damage has been done to space craft (such as the shuttle windscreen that got pitted none too long back), this work is long overdue.
It never ceases to amaze me how chowderheaded the folks in charge are to not have started doing this long since.
You do, of course, have a good point. I was autocorrecting for the reliable M$ practice of just barely releasing a product in the year that it is named after. I figured that speaking in mid-January about an event in, what, late December, I should subtract a year, and then maybe another for the delay before the flippin' product was actually usable and in general use. But even that cuts it down to only eight and a half years.
My apologies.
OOh! I'm so impressed! Current products are almost compatible with ones from five years ago! You must be so proud.
Don't mind me, btw, I'm just opening some Quark XPress 2.1 files from 1990 in my new copy of InDesign. I'll use them in my layout with my Filemaker docs from '92 and my Photoshop files from '93.
Yet again an M$ stooge acts as if any functionality at all = best possible option.
Yeah, right.
Kinda like this article. Out here in reality we know that folks like the Long Now Project have been working on these issues for over twenty years. So, as usual, M$ shows up pathetically late, does a slight variation, and announces, Look At Our Brilliant NEW Idea!
Look up a few posts to the two hundred billion dollars in government money that Verizon and friends got from the government for promising to do just exactly what they're now weaseling out of doing. Note, btw, that they still own the majority of Fairpoint so this is all handwaving beynd a certain level. But, as was pointed out a little further up, it is a very effective way to avoid having to kep their promises.
Verizon gets vast favors from government, many of them on the grounds of being the carrier of last resort. Always has. And then they turn around and walk out on any customer who isn't high profit enough. They steal and lie. And they do it with our money.
Now, as for me, I signed up for unlimited service with them a few years back. Y'know, service that is, urm, not limited. I was very very clear with every person I dealt with at Verizon that I needed the full plan and was willing to pay the full price. Y'know, about a hundred bucks a month, unlimited long distance to the U.S. and Canada. As/.ers know, I'm a chatty guy, so I go out of my way, over and over and over to confirm this plan. So Verizon then bills me the full "retail" rate for all of my calls to Canada, which, given that I'm on the phone for a long time working on projects together combined with their charging me over a dollar a minute means that they have been billing me for years for EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS for money that I don't owe. So far the best response I've gotten from them is an offer to split the difference. WTF?
A.) Part of the reason that I was so careful is that this is the third time that they've tried this with me. Twice before it was with a cellphone account. B.) They keep "losing the records", "forgetting" to transfer files, rescheduling reviews because they have previously routed me to the wrong kind of account person, and on and on. Funny how their system worked just fine until they were trying to screw me.
and the real biggie C.) This is not random. I did some asking around. They wanted to make me miserable. They do this on purpose. Y'see, customers like me cost them a fortune. By staying on one call for three or four hours I tie up a connection and like banks, they get their profits by only having enough resources to deal with most customers at any given time not asking for what they pay for. I found a guy in a position to know who admitted that telcos actually pay MBAs to design plans to find customers like me and then make us miserable enough to leave, thereby letting them promise something but not have to deliver it. After all, actually keeping those much publicized promises is contrary to maximizing short-term profits and that is all that really matters.
If they would just be honest and not take taxpayer money for plans they don't intend to carry out and take customer money for services they don't intend to provide then sure, let them pay back what they've stolen and scammed and we'll go our merry separate ways. But until then we will stay pissed.
I knew folks in Montpelier and Plainfield who were talking about some sort of cantenna-based telco coop way back in the late nineties. Did that ever get attempted? Do you think that it will now?
Hmm. Looks like you didn't read my post, actually. Or maybe you just don't read all that well.
Let's try this again, shall we?
The original poster engaged in a serious example of classic Ayn Rand-esque bullshit. He has taken a complex situation, one that those of us who actually study this stuff are well aware has gotten this bad due to quite a few dangerous behaviors, and tried to reduce it down to the all-purpose bugaboo : big organizations = BAD!
Now, in my experience, this is predictably the first step towards, oh, what a surprise, he got there before me, a clueless screed against ALL big organizations. When you're holding a hammer and all that, except here we have a guy who I suspect is mighty reluctant to ever put that hammer down for so much as a minute, let alone try to find a more useful tool.
So, moving right along, I then proceeded to list some of those behaviors that one needs to address to actually deal with such problems. Next I made the point that some very Randite approved groups like the WSJ have long since figured this out. IOW, he needs to get a more recent edition of whatever the Randroid Little Red Book is.
I also pointed out that these kinds of attempts at moral equivalencies are rather offensive to those of us who actually work to address the causes and consequences of totalitarian regimes. Not that I would qualify as such a person.;->
Then I pointed out in what was certainly a far from loving fashion that yes, I have reason to know what I'm talking about. Now, as for my general work history, I think that you know how to find Google but as for that hearing, well, hmmm,
- hearing chaired by Councilmember Gerson
- Gerson states that Dr. M. Clarke is, IIRC, the inspiration for much of what the hearings are about and the creator and articulator of "the precautionary principle", the best hope for dealing with the problems being addressed.
-I'm testifying because, oh, what was the reason again? Oh, now I remember, because I'm the one in charge of managing her research papers (among other things) and she guilted me into testifying.
Or, since yo evidently feel like researching this, you could just look at the transcript and see how many times I was called back to the mike.
So, no, I didn't just wander in from my job at the popsicle stand.
Lastly I asked a simple question. So, you talk big; what have you done about it?
Oh, I certainly agree that five bucks is not anything like the same as "free", I just wanted to contest the misinformation out there about costs. And, btw, most of the cost of distribution if your product is good and not a copycat is plain old smiling and dialing. Makin' love to the electric donut. That and fullfillment which, for a small publisher, need be nowhere near as expensive as it usually is.
For example, price out mailing tubes and then see what you get if you use two empty soup cans with rolled heavy paper between them instead. Stronger, cooler, far more ecologically responsible, and, including the cost of tape and mailing address, about a fifth the price of what you would pay ordering in bulk from Staples.
Hey, Mr. AC person, take a look at commodity books like dictionaries. "Chinese labour and production with a distribution system to match" became the norm over ten years ago now.
Not necessarily. This is what happens if there is no party able to inspire and lead the masses forward - a power vacuum exists and is filled by violent people. Yes. But it's not the only way things can play out, and you'd like us to believe.
Hm... violent people get in because of a "power vacuum", do they?
Russia. Um, no, the Menshiviks were doing better and better until Lenin's goons violently overthrew the closest thing to a legitimately elected government in Russia's history.
China. Um, no. What was that about a "Long March" again? Sun Yat Sen's people may have had their flaws, but given that it took thirty years of bloody warfare for Mao's forces to take over, not quite a "power vacuum".
Oh, say, all of Eastern Europe. Hah. Ask anybody from there about power vacuums and legitimacy. Admittedly, communists did more then their share of fighting against the Nazis but they were far from the only players. Without the Russians it would have been a very different ballgame.
And then we get to countries like Japan, Peru, Italy, Malaysia, and Greece, where communists tried to take power and got their asses kicked. Oh well.
Slashdot Mirror
Summary points:
- much of the "science" in Crichton-based movies is actually, at best, superficially plausable handwaving.
- statistics handling in movies in general is kinda painful, with crucial misuse of basic terms and principles.
- the movie of I. Robot is crrrrrap!
- if you really want scientifically plausible s.f. movies and television, then Firefly/Serentity is spot-on, both in technology and plotting that comes from actual adult concerns with ambiguous and untidy endings.
Also, Brainstorm does a wonderful job with things like lab politics, funding issues, etc. Amazing movie, and one that I've heard cited by a number of scientists. Sneakers, while some of the tech is absurd, is otherwise a superb intro into some of the ins and outs of crypto, hacking, and the computer business; iow, wonderful, as long as a knowledgable tech geek is there to provide commentary.
Cascadia forever!
-Rustin
But...
Much though I respect Niven and his crowd for their engineering, as pedagogical tools, they are crippled by their handling of human beings. Like Heinlein, but to an even greater degree, that whole cluster of writers is reliably anti-democracy, vastly sexist, and contemptuous of any human worldview but their own. Like Crichton, anybody whose philosophy differs from their male-centric techno-libertarian/protofascist (!)* creed is cowardly, probably homosexual (the horror!) and intellectually bankrupt. Women are sex objects or Heinleinesque cartoon superwomen, usually "coincidentally" extremely young and pretty, etc.
Now, as a male techno-libertarian myself, with my own hyper-cute intellectual superwoman of a girlfriend, I find this stuff really annoying.
Yeah, the Mote books are fascinating and engrossing. But did the only human civilization worthy of respect have to be a Czarist, totalitarian, testosterone fantasyland of uniforms and commands and Very Big Guns?
I have recommended their books before, putting them forward as works like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, where one must live with the bad to get the good, and alienated those who I recommended them to. Personally, I find myself turning to works like mid-period Brunner or Delany or the Alliance/Union/Compact books of C.J. Cherryh. All of those are just as smart, technologically fascinating, but are simply less, well, adolescent than Niven and his crowd.
Do I feel that your recommendations are wrong? No. But best that we note their failings along with their strengths. And I want to note that, oddly enough, in my experience, the farther Niven veers from current and highly specific technology, the more open-minded his characterizations become. So, predicably, Lucifer's Hammer is terrible, from its pro-fission reactor idiocies to the explicit polemics, while Ringworld acknowledges complexity and even encompasses a bit of witty satire.
* I am well aware of the seeming contradiction of my locution, "techno-libertarian/protofascist". Ain't so. Both states, as seen in their books, are variations on "guys like me must be in charge, everyone else is contemptable". The only difference is that when they are writing about far away worlds, they fantasize about the benevolent despotism that "should" be imposed while in writing about near-term Earth, they retreat to truculent rejection of all government or democracy as self-evident tools of the inferior masses "we" are trying to get free of. Neither, may I note, has the sophistication of the considered and explicit libertarianism of works like the Tom Paine Maru books that try to figure out political approaches that respect all people.
Canadians are pissed and they're sick of being treated like children by the Bush administration.
So this is tit for tat.
You Americans unfairly persecute Canadians? Fine. Let's see how you like it.
Even Conservatives are coming out in public to decry U.S. policies. Do you really think that none of them will find ways to get political capital out of this?
This isn't about better access to data. It's bloody well the best way yet they've found to show their anger. And don't forget for a moment that all of these cases create a bargaining chip.
"You want your citizens to have freeer access to Canada? Sure. What's in it for us?"
I guarantee you that all over the world people are laughing their asses off about this. And, frankly, I can see their point.
-Rustin
Example A.) Hotshot new company growing really fast decides that legal software is for losers. Earnest young employee (EYE) implores, over and over and over that they get into at least partial compliance, that this new thing called the SPA was hanging people out to dry, and that they were targeting companies just like this one. "Go away kid, ya bother me."
EYE leaves, sits down, writes up list, per station, in detail of exactly what software is on which station for about forty computers, waits a while, calls the SPA. Company goes bankrupt after receiving SPA injunctions.
Example B.) Major new office of database company (rhymes with clavicle) is set up as showcase of how badass they are, everything is state of the art, from the cpus to the variable setting halogen lights. EYE tells them that they're losing sales and vulnerable to hackers because they never configured their expensive new voicemail system, leaving everything in defaults with passwords of "password" and root access for acounts like "admin" with password "admin". The company bigshots' response? "Go away kid, ya bother me."
EYE leaves, and on his last day shuts down the ringers for every sales department phone so they don't even know that they're getting calls and changes all the passwords to something like "fixthistoday", puts a full explanation of how to fix it in his desk drawer and walks out.
Example C.) EYE at a consulting company is put in charge of revamping the training rooms but they refuse to tell him a specific budget or to give him permission to replace key equipment, expecting him to juggle the equipment around to keep the clients from discovering how little of what they're paying for actually works. Then, when a crisis comes, they always end up paying huge amounts to get it fixed right now. EYE begs the partners of the firm, saying that otherwise sometime soon the whole magilla will come crashing down, that band-aid approaches just make it worse, and that it's already costing far more to futz around then it would to shut down for a few days, strip it all out, and start fresh.
Response: "Go away kid, ya bother me."
EYE follows written instructions to the letter, taking as sincere instructions he knows he was supposed to blow off, and spreads resources out "fairly" instead of creating the Potemkin clusters his higherups want. Finally sends an email to everybody saying "either you pay attention to this and let me really fix it or I quit." and leaves to take sick days and try to calm down. Sure enough a heavy training day comes and the whole system collapses, EYE, when contacted, says, basically, oh, well, too bad, so sad. Gets "fired".
Lesson, if an employee keeps begging and begging that you fix what he or she says is a major problem, pay attention. Whether the assessment is accurate or not, it is worth your time to find out.
-Rustin
My. How handy. Looks like /. now has a thread on just the sort of broadly applicable materials processing I was talking about. So I've kinda lost interest in writing yet more about it. Of course, since I'm in the middle of writing a book on the subject (oops, did I forget to mention that earlier? my bad), I should be more generous with my time but, well, I'm not.
Back to the ion engine efficiency issue, now that I think about it, yeah, I've been assuming some stuff that probably isn't merited, including possibly using collected mass as fuel. So probably better to look at that issue again. Back when I was doing corporate ops, I must admit that folks kept complaining that I tend to jump from step five to step fifty and assume that everybody else also carried around all the relevant data in their heads and was comfortable deriving the intermediate steps. Made for lots of, "Oh, did I forget to write up this aspect?" Okay. My f*ckup. Yes, you're right, fuel as I describe the system is a huge weakness. And I'm too lazy this morning to address it.
But fundamentally, what I'm suspecting here is that you're taking a whole different view of things. I'm looking at this from a "fast, cheap, and out of control" design approach (except that I'm assuming that fifteen to twenty years qualifies as "a short time") and I have a distinct suspicion that you're annoyed that this doesn't work when you try to spec it out as if it were being done by Lockheed to be approved and run by NASA circa 1992.
You're right. Done as a government contract by Morton Thiokol and specced to run to six sigma standards, the whole idea is insane.
Well, you stick to your world, I'll stick to mine and we'll see who looks wiser ten years from now. Me, I'll go back to packing up my thermocouples and planning my algae tanks and I'll see you around.
-Rustin
As I said above, yes, the lack of public disclosure is mighty unsettling. But even Biosphere II had useful lessons to teach. It has been my experience that with projects on this scale that refuse to disclose, typically (like BSII), they are having problems but are not fundamentally faking the system. I have a sneaking suspicion that their "leftovers" aren't quite as benign as they say and I'm betting that somebody (won't be me) will eventully ferret out that trucks periodically leave there full of nasty end-products. I also suspect that somewhere in there are techies convinced that "if we can just get a little more time..."
A friend of mine does corporate fraud law for a living and it impresses me, as we go over the cases, how many of them are not Enron-style scams, created to deceive and completely fake, but rather valid ideas, intended to work and with some degree of real functionality already in place (i.e. Iridium) where the fraud is meant to buy time for the genuinely profitable improved version that the company decisionmakers keep telling each other is just around the corner. -Rustin
I've probably spent about four days on this over the past few years and so far it looks like they are having reasonable rampup problems (such as lots of stink where the trucks go and from the plant) but seem to be for real. To me, this looks viable and I'm tentatively concluding that it's not a scam but I'm not going to be any too comfy until some real replicable, publicly disclosed, lab tests come out.
This was so much easier when it looked like you hadn't read the JE ;->
Not sure if I apologize that much for my tone. You weren't exactly Mr. Charming in your first response, but whatever.
Okay, now I can see what's going on here and it looks like it can be blamed on my sloppy writing so, I'll assume that that is what we're dealing with here. FWIW, I am now going to have to go back and rewrite the JE because what you think you saw is probably happening with plenty of other folks. Oh well, so be it.
Now, first of all, delighted though I am with the beloved old High Frontier era ion engines, yes, I was assuming the new designs and since I've stated that they would be getting launched four years from now or later, I was both taking for granted the newer designs and treating them as kinda disposable. From what I've seen, part of the problem with many of the ion engines now made, from my perspective is that, yes, stationkeeping is exactly what they're designed for where as I'm think oh, well, if it lasts fifteen or sixteen months, hey, that's good enough for me. Note that I had assumed that half of the robots, in effective terms, would break down so fast that they would be thought of as failures.
so, no, I don't think that they'll be either all hat long term efficient, or free from breakdown, I just treated them as disposable.
In a perfect world, they themselves would eventually (we're talking years here) make it back to some where that they can themselves become raw materials or simply shoot out of orbit. I'ld be satisfied with their not becoming more space junk. And, yes, I do need to address that better.
Okay, thrust. First of all, I, over and over say that the acquisition rates would average a few pieces of junk a month. Yes, you're right, in some cases, the time required would be insane. I'm gambling, from the distribution data that I've seen (such as the Wikipedia article noted above though I've looked a NASA data over the years too) that there are enough pieces that are reachable faster to allow for a first few sweeps that would get things off to a good start. Again, note that I start by writing off half of what's up there as unreachable. Since velocity does, by and large, correlate with altitude, there should be some degree of practicality to grabbing one, then another, then another, along basically the same orbit. I'm well aware that it's looking more and more like Brownian motion up there but the nature of orbits does help. Also, I'm not assuming a dead start but rather some little initial velocity. A one time very small chemical boost as a sort of JATO. Maybe even two or three pencil-sized one time-use chemical thrusters kept around for special occasions. Again, quick and simple is the order of the day.
As for fuel usage, AFAICT, other than antennae and the scoop itself, this little bugger is basically nothing but PV and engine. Kinda different from, say, a communications satellite.
Now, as for processing, yeah, I rushed, yeah I was sloppy. Now, first of all, I was assuming an intial plant in the JE for use with the ISS. In a case like that the dynamics are totally different. If we're talking about a system just for space debris then the order is reversed. First you ship it to the parking orbit, them, whenever you get around to it, maybe years later, you break it down into component materials. I agree, there is some amount of work needed before we're ready to take on much materials breakdown but we don't need to wait for that day to start collecting mass.
That having been said, well, the first technique I mentioned was thermal depolymerization. Or rather, the sorts of related tech that, for example, Purdue just demonstrated. This deals just fine with your issue of carbon fiber and handles much of the preseparation. And since it's all in a few pressurized tanks, afaict, microgravity and vacuum simply aren't that relevant. And, again, this whole frickin' thing is meant to
We're not talking vast new research initiatives here. Since I've already laid out the specs more than once in this thread and on this site, I'm not going to do it again here.
I'll just say that since you evidently can't tell the difference between the costs of building and running a robot the size of a breadbox using seventies technology (do you have any idea of how tiny the mass usage of an ion engine is?) and a "space tug", by which I assume you have in mind some vast, multibillion dollar, human-crewed spaceship, you probably wouldn't understand the relevant calculations anyway.
Man, I hate dealing with people without operations experience.
All of this makes a lot more sense if you read the Wikipedia article on space debris. It's got some mighty handy info. A wee bit more useful data than the predictably science-challenged NYT piece.
I forgot one thing. How much of a difference would these make anyway?
Let's assume ten thousand pieces of space junk. We'll cut that in half to only include stuff small enough to be grabbable by theses guys and in half again to only address high density orbits. Put it back up a bit to assume that more crud will turn up, 'cause we know that it will. So we'll assume that we're looking at three thousand relevant pieces of debris.
So, twenty robots per launch, three launches per year, half the robots fail. That gives us thirty robots the first year.
So let's assume one recovery per week. I think that given the inevitable clustering and increasing skill at finding paths over time, this is realistic.
That gives us thirty times fifty which means fifteen hundred pieces of debris recovered in the first year of operation.
So, in two years we're done and are ready to address the nastier stuff. All for a total cost of three million bucks. Let's say ten million just to assume the usual government impediments. And assume that it takes four years of collection rather than two. Still looks mighty damn shiny to me.
Anybody got a refutation or is this a very solvable problem?
Anybody? Anybody?
-Rustin
Okay, I see your point. But the vast majority of the debris is a few grams per piece. So if we allow a device as much as a month to match velocity, a scooper about the size of a chihuahua would do fine.
So, let's spec it out.
- Solar panels
- Batteries
- Radiator surface (PV panels can help with that)
- Brain (should fit on three to ten chips on a board the size of an ipod)
- Inertial guidance package
- IFF
- Antennae, both for communications and for sensing
- Ion engines (one main engine, itty bitty ones for attitude and such)
- Radar (general sensing, see also antennae)
- Laser on a chip (close up sensing)
- Camera on a chip
- Scoop (probably with aerogel inside)
- Storage container
- Magnet (optional but probably worth it)
I'm too lazy to calculate the size of the propulsion package (motors/PV/batteries/whatnot) but the rest could be built by a freshman engineering class at any half decent school in a year, including calculating the ballistics algorithms, for about a thousand bucks. Make it ten thousand to vacuum harden it and package it for launch, add the cost of propulsion, and, including launch cost if ten or twenty go up at a time (three from each school perhaps), and we're looking at about fifty thousand dollars per robot, or less.
Only problems that I see are how "noisy" space would get with all these jobbies puttering about cleaning up debris and pinging every which way and the sh*t fit that the owners of current space hardware, especially the various militaries, would throw at having mere civilians possibly bumping into them and certainly getting close up looks at all their toys.
Looks to me like a plan.
-Rustin
Oh, the pain. Man, I'm laughing here, I really am. But only to keep from screaming.
Mass costs ungawdly amounts to get up there and small devices using ion engines powered by sunlight could do the job of getting it back to usable locations. Even accounting for the problems of needing to match velocities, this is very doable. And seeing as how we've already seen cases where serious damage has been done to space craft (such as the shuttle windscreen that got pitted none too long back), this work is long overdue.
It never ceases to amaze me how chowderheaded the folks in charge are to not have started doing this long since.
-Rustin
You do, of course, have a good point. I was autocorrecting for the reliable M$ practice of just barely releasing a product in the year that it is named after. I figured that speaking in mid-January about an event in, what, late December, I should subtract a year, and then maybe another for the delay before the flippin' product was actually usable and in general use. But even that cuts it down to only eight and a half years. My apologies.
OOh! I'm so impressed! Current products are almost compatible with ones from five years ago! You must be so proud.
Don't mind me, btw, I'm just opening some Quark XPress 2.1 files from 1990 in my new copy of InDesign. I'll use them in my layout with my Filemaker docs from '92 and my Photoshop files from '93.
Yet again an M$ stooge acts as if any functionality at all = best possible option.
Yeah, right.
Kinda like this article. Out here in reality we know that folks like the Long Now Project have been working on these issues for over twenty years. So, as usual, M$ shows up pathetically late, does a slight variation, and announces, Look At Our Brilliant NEW Idea!
Bullsh*t.
Look up a few posts to the two hundred billion dollars in government money that Verizon and friends got from the government for promising to do just exactly what they're now weaseling out of doing. Note, btw, that they still own the majority of Fairpoint so this is all handwaving beynd a certain level. But, as was pointed out a little further up, it is a very effective way to avoid having to kep their promises.
/.ers know, I'm a chatty guy, so I go out of my way, over and over and over to confirm this plan.
Verizon gets vast favors from government, many of them on the grounds of being the carrier of last resort. Always has. And then they turn around and walk out on any customer who isn't high profit enough. They steal and lie. And they do it with our money.
Now, as for me, I signed up for unlimited service with them a few years back. Y'know, service that is, urm, not limited. I was very very clear with every person I dealt with at Verizon that I needed the full plan and was willing to pay the full price. Y'know, about a hundred bucks a month, unlimited long distance to the U.S. and Canada. As
So Verizon then bills me the full "retail" rate for all of my calls to Canada, which, given that I'm on the phone for a long time working on projects together combined with their charging me over a dollar a minute means that they have been billing me for years for EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS for money that I don't owe. So far the best response I've gotten from them is an offer to split the difference. WTF?
A.) Part of the reason that I was so careful is that this is the third time that they've tried this with me. Twice before it was with a cellphone account.
B.) They keep "losing the records", "forgetting" to transfer files, rescheduling reviews because they have previously routed me to the wrong kind of account person, and on and on. Funny how their system worked just fine until they were trying to screw me.
and the real biggie
C.) This is not random. I did some asking around. They wanted to make me miserable. They do this on purpose. Y'see, customers like me cost them a fortune. By staying on one call for three or four hours I tie up a connection and like banks, they get their profits by only having enough resources to deal with most customers at any given time not asking for what they pay for. I found a guy in a position to know who admitted that telcos actually pay MBAs to design plans to find customers like me and then make us miserable enough to leave, thereby letting them promise something but not have to deliver it. After all, actually keeping those much publicized promises is contrary to maximizing short-term profits and that is all that really matters.
If they would just be honest and not take taxpayer money for plans they don't intend to carry out and take customer money for services they don't intend to provide then sure, let them pay back what they've stolen and scammed and we'll go our merry separate ways. But until then we will stay pissed.
Understand?
I've wondered that for years. Or, maybe even better, put up a cantenna on a pole by the road and another at your house.
I knew folks in Montpelier and Plainfield who were talking about some sort of cantenna-based telco coop way back in the late nineties. Did that ever get attempted? Do you think that it will now?
Let's try this again, shall we?
The original poster engaged in a serious example of classic Ayn Rand-esque bullshit. He has taken a complex situation, one that those of us who actually study this stuff are well aware has gotten this bad due to quite a few dangerous behaviors, and tried to reduce it down to the all-purpose bugaboo : big organizations = BAD!
Now, in my experience, this is predictably the first step towards, oh, what a surprise, he got there before me, a clueless screed against ALL big organizations. When you're holding a hammer and all that, except here we have a guy who I suspect is mighty reluctant to ever put that hammer down for so much as a minute, let alone try to find a more useful tool.
So, moving right along, I then proceeded to list some of those behaviors that one needs to address to actually deal with such problems. Next I made the point that some very Randite approved groups like the WSJ have long since figured this out. IOW, he needs to get a more recent edition of whatever the Randroid Little Red Book is.
I also pointed out that these kinds of attempts at moral equivalencies are rather offensive to those of us who actually work to address the causes and consequences of totalitarian regimes. Not that I would qualify as such a person. ;->
Then I pointed out in what was certainly a far from loving fashion that yes, I have reason to know what I'm talking about. Now, as for my general work history, I think that you know how to find Google but as for that hearing, well, hmmm,
- hearing chaired by Councilmember Gerson
- Gerson states that Dr. M. Clarke is, IIRC, the inspiration for much of what the hearings are about and the creator and articulator of "the precautionary principle", the best hope for dealing with the problems being addressed.
-I'm testifying because, oh, what was the reason again? Oh, now I remember, because I'm the one in charge of managing her research papers (among other things) and she guilted me into testifying.
Or, since yo evidently feel like researching this, you could just look at the transcript and see how many times I was called back to the mike.
So, no, I didn't just wander in from my job at the popsicle stand.
Lastly I asked a simple question. So, you talk big; what have you done about it?
Funny, no response.
Typical.
Oh, I certainly agree that five bucks is not anything like the same as "free", I just wanted to contest the misinformation out there about costs. And, btw, most of the cost of distribution if your product is good and not a copycat is plain old smiling and dialing. Makin' love to the electric donut. That and fullfillment which, for a small publisher, need be nowhere near as expensive as it usually is.
For example, price out mailing tubes and then see what you get if you use two empty soup cans with rolled heavy paper between them instead. Stronger, cooler, far more ecologically responsible, and, including the cost of tape and mailing address, about a fifth the price of what you would pay ordering in bulk from Staples.
Hey, Mr. AC person, take a look at commodity books like dictionaries. "Chinese labour and production with a distribution system to match" became the norm over ten years ago now.
Hm... violent people get in because of a "power vacuum", do they?
Russia. Um, no, the Menshiviks were doing better and better until Lenin's goons violently overthrew the closest thing to a legitimately elected government in Russia's history.
China. Um, no. What was that about a "Long March" again? Sun Yat Sen's people may have had their flaws, but given that it took thirty years of bloody warfare for Mao's forces to take over, not quite a "power vacuum".
Oh, say, all of Eastern Europe. Hah. Ask anybody from there about power vacuums and legitimacy. Admittedly, communists did more then their share of fighting against the Nazis but they were far from the only players. Without the Russians it would have been a very different ballgame.
And then we get to countries like Japan, Peru, Italy, Malaysia, and Greece, where communists tried to take power and got their asses kicked. Oh well.
So, I'm curious, what are your counterexamples?