patrick.net

New Renter says

I also recognize the reality of what is out there - hard vacuum, lethal radiation, tiny rocks moving at speeds that make bullets look pedestrian, temperatures extreme enough to liquify helium or ionize anything with very little compromise.

You forgot to mention the deadly probes.

New Renter says

You say we have to get off the earth - I ask TO WHERE?

yeah, the truth here is that there's no shortage of anything here really.

Just artificial scarcity, and going to the moon isn't going to change that.

Anyplace on Antarctica or in the middle of the Sahara would be tons more habitable than anywhere we can get to off this rock.

Per-capita GDP now is over $40,000. That should be enough for everyone to live a productive, happy life here. We just have a distribution problem.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cZZ

Bellingham Bill says

Anyplace on Antarctica or in the middle of the Sahara would be tons more habitable than anywhere we can get to off this rock.

True, even the bottom of the ocean is more habitable than any known extraterrestrial real estate.

UCD and UCSD

The Professor says

New Renter says

You say we have to get off the earth - I ask TO WHERE?

Start with the moon.

It is the perfect off-planet base to start with. It has no atmosphere and less gravity than earth making it easier to launch from. In addition the same side always faces us with the remainder facing the universe.

Then on to Mars.

The technology will evolve to meet the challenges. Innovators will continue to solve problems and open new doors.

Mars would be the obvious next step.

Something to consider here. Many years ago my father put the costs involved with getting stuff just into a low earth orbit (~300 miles). The costs involved were roughly equivalent to the value of the object if it were made of pure gold. The costs to get to the moon? Much, much more than that.

As you point out the moon has no atmosphere. That means nothing to breathe. Sure you can manufacture a breathable atmosphere but for how long? Even here on earth enclosed biodomes have had very poor success.

Having the same side facing earth is of little importance.

Mars? Raise the moon colony costs by at least 1000x. There is also the issue of trying to get a living breathing astronaut team just to survive the trip.

The Professor says

The technology will evolve to meet the challenges. Innovators will continue to solve problems and open new doors.

Perhaps but until we find or invent a stargate, or some kind of FTL drive the best option for the foreseeable future is to send unmanned probes. That is unless we are visited by friendly aliens who are willing to give us a lift.

I am confident we can use technology and innovation to solve things like cancer and STDs; to make nuclear power 100% safe and reliable. To travel to the stars? I'll believe it when I see it.

The Professor says

Still, this big blue marble is finite and the population keeps increasing.

For now. Prosperity usually brings lower birth rates.

The Professor says

The war pigs keep growing, the bankers get fatter, and cannibal anarchy gets closer.

Historically speaking 2/3s of this is not true.

New Renter says

True, even the bottom of the ocean is more habitable than any known extraterrestrial real estate.

For life in general perhaps, but I believe that the bottom of the ocean is a more difficult place for a man to get to and survive than the moon.

leo707 says

New Renter says

True, even the bottom of the ocean is more habitable than any known extraterrestrial real estate.

For life in general perhaps, but I believe that the bottom of the ocean is a more difficult place for a man to get to and survive than the moon.

With just an engine block and a rope and I can show you just how easy it is to get to the bottom of the ocean. Surviving? Actually that's not so difficult either. With the magic of nuclear power, modern materials and awesome engineering one could build a submersible that would have the ability to remain on station for years generating air, drinkable water and heat for the crew. Food could be dropped from the surface or harvested locally. Giant squid burger anyone?

Now the moon is MUCH harder to get to. There is also no reliable source of air, water, or food. Climate control would be difficult as well as there is no atmosphere or ocean to act as a heat sink.

Given my choice I'd take the bottom of the ocean.

NASA is working on a warp drive.

http://techland.time.com/2012/09/19/nasa-actually-working-on-faster-than-light-warp-drive/

New Renter says

With just an engine block and a rope and I can show you just how easy it is to get to the bottom of the ocean.

The only thing that makes it easier to get to the bottom of the ocean is gravity. The energy to escape the earths orbit is the huge cost of going to space. It costs about 8 million to drop one person in a cramped cockpit to the bottom of the ocean.

3 people (one trip had two), and 2 unmanned trips have been to the bottom of the ocean. Hundreds of people have been to space. 12 people have walked on the moon, over 9 missions. We have people living in an orbiting space station. No one has ever walked on the bottom of the ocean.

New Renter says

Surviving? Actually that's not so difficult either. With the magic of nuclear power, modern materials and awesome engineering one could build a submersible that would have the ability to remain on station for years generating air, drinkable water and heat for the crew. Food could be dropped from the surface or harvested locally. Giant squid burger anyone?

First off giant squids only reach a depth of maybe 4000ft, and the deepest fish exist at around 14,000ft. Past 3000ft there is no sunlight to grow food. This is a long way off from the bottom at around 36,000ft.

The crush depth for the deepest models of nuclear submarines is about 5000ft. The deepest test depths for the current US fleet of subs is 2,000ft. (Note: a US nuclear sub costs more to build than a space shuttle, the total NASA budget is significantly less than the cost of the nuke sub budget--and those subs never got that deep)

New Renter says

Now the moon is MUCH harder to get to. There is also no reliable source of air, water, or food. Climate control would be difficult as well as there is no atmosphere or ocean to act as a heat sink.

At the bottom the pressure is over 8 tons per square inch. There is no food, no air at the bottom. Any attempt to "harvest" water at the bottom would require a system that can handle the 8 tons per square inch of pressure, and then you would need to desalinate it. As I am sure you know desalinization in and of itself is not cheap or easy. Living on a nuclear reactor would make this easier.

Yes, the ocean is a heat sink, and that is not a bonus with the freezing temperatures at the bottom. Any habitat, plumbing, etc. would have to be constantly heated.

New Renter says

Given my choice I'd take the bottom of the ocean.

You will probably have the choice to move to a moon colony before you get the opportunity to live in a colony at the bottom of the ocean.

leo707 says

The only thing that makes it easier to get to the bottom of the ocean is gravity.

Great - eliminate gravity and all our space exploration problems are solved.

leo707 says

The energy to escape the earths orbit is the huge cost of going to space. It costs about 8 million to drop one person in a cramped cockpit to the bottom of the ocean.

3 people (one trip had two), and 2 unmanned trips have been to the bottom of the ocean. Hundreds of people have been to space. 12 people have walked on the moon, over 9 missions. We have people living in an orbiting space station.

And it cost $450M for each shuttle mission just to get to low earth orbit and many billions for the space station.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_program

leo707 says

No one has ever walked on the bottom of the ocean.

No-one has ever walked at the far edge of the universe either which is the true comparison of the extremes of distance here.

Just for fun lets make this comparison. The universe is estimate to be 93B light years across. For the sake of simplicity lets approximate it as a sphere. That makes it 47B light years from here to there. That's 2.7x 10^26 miles. Compare that to the 6.2 miles to the bottom of the ocean. The distance to the moon relative to the edge of the universe is comparable to about 10 ATTOmeters to the absolute bottom of the ocean.

That is 1/175th the diameter of a proton.

The bottom of the ocean is any portion of the earth's surface covered by ocean water just as "space" is anywhere outside of the earths atmosphere. I have already traveled to the bottom of the ocean many times as have untold millions over human history and it costs nearly nothing. The same cannot be said for a trip to space.

leo707 says

First off giant squids only reach a depth of maybe 4000ft, and the deepest fish exist at around 14,000ft. Past 3000ft there is no sunlight to grow food. This is a long way off from the bottom at around 36,000ft.

Who needs sunlight when you have chemotrophs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotrophic

The Professor says

"Space the final frontier.

To explore strange new worlds

To seek out new life and new civilizations

To boldly go where no man has gone before"

Send probes. Set up the Moon and Mars Colonies. Figure out how to survive without terrestrial support. Continue the theoretical and practical research. Reach for our potential.

...Spout inspirational platitudes with no thought to the economic or indeed physical realities...

The Professor says

Kennedy dreamed of a moon landing. Less than a decade later we took that 1st small step.

Kennedy...what ever happened to him?

Dan8267 says

It's amazing what science and engineering can do, and what religion and superstition cannot.

Science is a religion. Your unwavering dedication further proves my point.

Currency is a religion. Look what it can do. The belief of the mass is so powerful that you may as well subscribe to epistemological subjectivism.

New Renter says

Given my choice I'd take the bottom of the ocean.

Melmakian says

Where's my flying car? Hell, where the fuck is my space colony!

Only private enterprise in a business environment w/o government screwing things up can deliver either of those to real life.

It is mainly the diversion of resources from long-term goals to short-term profiteering caused by capitalism that prevented us from developing space colonies.

Capitalism is inherently short-term. We could have had mp3 players back in the 1960s and fiber optic Internet connections in the 1980s. Business does not make long-term investments.

Here's how capitalism works. An idea comes about and lays dormant for years, decades, even centuries because no resources are devoted to it. No resources are devoted to it because there is no expectation for profits until years or decades later.

Eventually technological advancement reaches a point where is becomes plausible to profit on the idea with a few years. Then a game a chicken occurs. No one wants to be the first person to contribute resources to developing the idea since it's still a few years off. No one is willing to spend even a few years developing the idea even though once developed, it will return the investment many times over. It's still too long of a horizon.

As technology continues to advance and become cheaper, there comes a tipping point where all of a sudden everyone wants to immediately develop the idea as fast as possible before someone else capitalizes on it. A land rush occurs. The idea is implemented in a rushed manner with all corners cut, quality is shit, and smoke and mirrors are used in place of actual working components. The same assholes who wouldn't look at the idea a year or two ago, now expect the engineers to do all the work implementing the idea in a few months. The engineers, of course, have to do a rushed, crappy job as a result.

And that's how capitalism works. It's a short-sighted resource allocation algorithm that results in substandard development, incorrect architecture, shotty products, and great wasteful of time and resources. Yeah, other economic systems may be worse, but capitalism sure as hell isn't the best we can do, especially in the technology age.

I guarantee you that once space travel becomes relatively cheap, there will be a tipping point where mega corporations try to land grab all the asteroids and planets for their natural resources. There's more gold in asteroids alone than has been mined in all of human history.

Melmakian says

Only private enterprise in a business environment w/o government screwing things up can deliver either of those to real life.

Another thing about private enterprise, it will never, ever give us a cure for AIDS or cancer. It is far more profitable to treat a life-long life-threatening disease than it is to cure it. Private enterprise has a huge profit motive to keep AIDS and cancer patients on drugs for the rest of their lives rather than curing the disease.

Peter P says

Dan8267 says

It's amazing what science and engineering can do, and what religion and superstition cannot.

Science is a religion. Your unwavering dedication further proves my point.

Ah, expanding the false argument "atheism is a religion" to "science is a religion". It's still a ridiculous claim and for the exact same reason as illustrated by this video.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/2gCJn85isxE

As long as the religious keep fucking that chicken, I'll keep posting the above video.

Dan8267 says

Another thing about private enterprise, it will never, ever give us a cure for AIDS or cancer. It is far more profitable to treat a life-long life-threatening disease than it is to cure it. Private enterprise has a huge profit motive to keep AIDS and cancer patients on drugs for the rest of their lives rather than curing the disease.

Yep. Healthcare needs to be provided by the government.

Private enterprises can still compete in niche markets. (like luxury clinics, lifestyle procedures, etc)

Dan8267 says

And that's how capitalism works. It's a short-sighted resource allocation algorithm that results in substandard development, incorrect architecture, shotty products, and great wasteful of time and resources. Yeah, other economic systems may be worse, but capitalism sure as hell isn't the best we can do, especially in the technology age.

Capitalism is the only system that will withstand time.

There is no such thing as "correct" architecture. Correct for what?

The only problem with capitalism in the world is that it is not applied far enough.

Peter P says

Capitalism is the only system that will withstand time.

That's a bold statement. What proof do you have that there is no other possible economic system that could withstand time?

Dan8267 says

Peter P says

Capitalism is the only system that will withstand time.

That's a bold statement. What proof do you have that there is no other possible economic system that could withstand time?

I just know it. Wait until the end of time to prove me wrong.

Peter P says

Dan8267 says

Peter P says

Capitalism is the only system that will withstand time.

That's a bold statement. What proof do you have that there is no other possible economic system that could withstand time?

I just know it. Wait until the end of time to prove me wrong.

That's a really bad reason to believe that no other economic system could possibly be invented that would be better than capitalism. It's also a real bad reason to never try.

Considering that there have only been three economic systems ever tried, it seems a bit premature to say that no other economic system could be better than capitalism.

The only three economic systems ever tried are
- Market (capitalism)
- Command (communism)
- Traditional (feudalism)
and mixtures of these three systems.

That's it. That's everything. Three ideas. Seems a bit soon to stop research.

It would be like trying three foods (head cheese, haggis, and a McDonald's quarter ponder) and concluding that the McDonald's quarter ponder is the best possible food you could ever eat.

Capitalism is the only system that is compatible with human nature. Hence the world will always revert back to this system no matter what you try.

Other systems are based on wishful thinking and/or willful ignorance.

People are individuals. Only capitalism (or a close derivative) can make individuals work together.

And only socialism can enable them to live together.

Boy, your pronouncement-out-my-ass style is fun!

Ppl, if you want science & engineering to advance, then we need more naturally born billionaires like Tony Starks or Bruce Wayne. In other words, brilliant, pioneering types who have so many diversified assets across the board, that they don't need to make money off their inventions in the pure or applied sciences. During prior times, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Goethe were sponsored by landed noblemen. If ppl like them are around today, they'd be recruited to do spreadsheets at a Morgan & Stanley or GE Capital.

Thus, it's not capitalism per se, which is the problem, but the fact that not all creative minds are born into a rich family. I believe Maxwell & Darwin were the last of the smart fellas, born into money. Even Einstein had to work as a Patent Agent.

Peter P says

Only capitalism (or a close derivative) can make individuals work together.

Is that your idea of an epiphany ?

Even Russia and communist China have capitalism. The question isn't whether capitalism works.

A far more specific and interesting question is, are there better ways to make capitalism work well ? Surely we are nowhere close to reaching that. And I guarantee that in the long run, governemt's role is here to stay (even if we briefly swing towards too much privatization and fascism).

Some coldly argue for social darwinism, and for the harsh view that poverty is in a sense necessary, to provide an ample source of cheap labor to our capitalist system. And they argue that too many programs supporting the poor (through taxation ) are evil and anti capitalistic.

I think the question is: Is it possibly to have a fairer and more economically sound (capatalist) system while still having plenty of room for incentivising hard work and rewarding talent appropriately?

I too believe that the money that we spend on prisons and on programs supporting the poor could be better spent other ways. And I believe that under a different system, many people who are in prisons or on "welfare" now could be gainfully employed and paying taxes instead.

marcus says

A far more specific and interesting question is, are there better ways to make capitalism work well ?

"[Henry George] built up the most complete and most impregnable defense of the rights of capital that was ever constructed, and if the capitalists of his day had had sense enough to dig in behind it, their successors would not now be squirming under the merciless exactions which collectivism is laying on them, and which George would have no scruples whatever about describing as sheer highwaymanry." Alfred J Nock

http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/Capitalism_Refining.html

marcus says

programs supporting the poor could be better spent other ways.

problem is that 80% (?) of our welfare is just pass-through to the economic actors victimizing them, eg:

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choice_voucher_program_section_8

Funny thing is that we only need space exploration to get away from all the landlords!

There is land out there with no title on it yet! Imagine that!

But TBH, there's land at the bottom of the ocean that is also title-free, and I would think it would be more economical (and safer) to colonize that than to colonize the Moon.

Hell, Antarctica also fills that bill.

The Professor says

There is water at the bottom of the ocean. Land starts at shore.

No, the entire surface of the planet is "land" in the economic sense.

Land (Economics)

The Professor says

Any way you look at it Earth is finite. The universe is infinite.

Actually, human stupidity is infinite. The universe is unbounded, but finite. There's actually enough stuff here for all of us, so far. Economics won't drive us off this planet, just stupidity.

The most uneconomic patch of the Sahara is more economically viable than any other (known) place you can point to up in space.

The Professor says

The universe is infinite.

The universe is only as big as the perception of its existence.

Bellingham Bill says

Hell, Antarctica also fills that bill.

Bellingham Bill says

The most uneconomic patch of the Sahara is more economically viable than any other (known) place you can point to up in space.

Breathable air, temperature always in a range above the condensation point of oxygen yet below the boiling point of lead, earthlike gravity, tolerable radiation levels, no monsters...

What's not to love?

The problem with the space program was the Space Shuttle. It didn't perform as advertised (we should be at STS-1000+ by now, not 133), with a 3-4 month turnaround per mission. Instead it was more like a year and a half-two year turnaround. It's also a very expensive way of getting payloads into space.

The Space Shuttle is the reason NASA lost a great deal of income, and the USAF had to step in just to launch their own needs as the Shuttle's schedule kept falling so far behind that military-critical satellite launches were delayed by years.

What we need are our heavy rockets back.

The program kept going because it was a big boondoggle for certain congressional districts. It was a good technology demonstrator, but the concept should have been retired 20-25 years ago.

We need to get our ass to Mars because it's there. And it should be a one-way trip with no expectation of return for the first astronauts, like other exploration missions. There would be no shortage of qualified volunteers, who could all be 55+.

Unlike the Shuttle, the Mars Rovers actually performed many times beyond their estimated life time, so we're ahead of the 8 ball there.

No Company is going to spend $50-100B a year over 10 years just to land somebody on Mars.

Melmakian says

They took a blow torch to a space shuttle tile and then pressed the tile to a student's hand to show it wasn't even warm.

You caught that show too?

The Professor says

Kennedy dreamed of a moon landing. Less than a decade later we took that 1st small step.

Nixon is the only President that put a man on the moon.

He was also the only president impeached for lying.

Coincidence? I think not!

Peter P says

Capitalism is the only system that is compatible with human nature. Hence the world will always revert back to this system no matter what you try.

Other systems are based on wishful thinking and/or willful ignorance.

Two more bold statements. Again, what reasoning are you using that no other economic system could ever be created that is "compatible with human nature" or based on anything but "wishful thinking and/or willful ignorance"?