Interstellar flight
Toni
George William Herbert <gher...@retro.com> wrote in message
news:a5h5eo$pt6$1...@gw.retro.com...
> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> >Geoffrey A. Landis <geoffre...@sff.net> wrote:
> >> The symposium was on interstellar flight and multi-generational space
> >> ships, and the session organizers said that these weren't necessarily
> >> linked, the interstellar flight part didn't ahve to assume
> >> multi-generational ships. For the most part my piece of it was on the
> >> interstellar flight part, not the multi-generational space ship part,
> >> but most of the news coverage had the opposite emphasis-- the reporters
> >> seemed to think that multi-generational spaceships made a really cool
story.
> >
> >We do not even know is a closed ecology is possible on less than a
> >planetary scale.
>
> That is not true. Complicated closed ecology systems (Biosphere-2)
> have failed to match predictions, but simple ones have operated for
> extended periods (year-plus) at NASA and associated research centers
> with good success. Websearch on "biological CELSS".
>
>
> -george william herbert
> gher...@retro.com
>
People who dream of interstellar travel have their hearts at least in the
right place. By the time we are able to design such interstellar missions
the human race will have reached such a high level of scientific knowledge
and competence that they will be be able to predict with absolute certainty
exactly what they will find when they get there. Therefore one of the prime
motivations for the exercise (scientific exploration) evaporates. If they
were not able to do so, then to send out a large number of personnel on this
quest would be gambling with their lives. What if, after several years in
transit they arrive at SAY Alpha Centauri or Andromeda only to find that
none of the planets will support human life?
What will most likely happen is the gradual collapse of our society. All
civilizations pass; this one is no exception. It does not even have to
disappear in a war or series of conflicts. It is entirely possible that the
present ascendency of science will not endure and some sort of religious
dogma will replace it.
The Earth will eventually be consumed in the fireball when Sol swells out
into a red giant. Even a well-organized interstellar transport system would
only be available to a comparatively small number of Earth's most affluent
technocrats.
By then the world's population will long have shrunk to a tiny fraction of
a percent of what it is today under the influences of disease,
desertification and the inevitable wars over water.
On that last morning when the sky and the land are both eaten up by the
sun's ravening appetite there will be only a few thousand wandering
tribesmen left on earth. They will look up with terror at something they do
not understand, and leave their bleached bones upon the baking and soon to
be consumed plain.
Toni.
Mike Rhino
news:a5jklq$h3e$1...@paris.btinternet.com...
>
> George William Herbert <gher...@retro.com> wrote in message
> news:a5h5eo$pt6$1...@gw.retro.com...
> > Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> > >Geoffrey A. Landis <geoffre...@sff.net> wrote:
> > >> The symposium was on interstellar flight and multi-generational space
> > >> ships, and the session organizers said that these weren't necessarily
> > >> linked, the interstellar flight part didn't ahve to assume
> > >> multi-generational ships. For the most part my piece of it was on
the
> > >> interstellar flight part, not the multi-generational space ship part,
> > >> but most of the news coverage had the opposite emphasis-- the
reporters
> > >> seemed to think that multi-generational spaceships made a really cool
> story.
> > >
> > >We do not even know is a closed ecology is possible on less than a
> > >planetary scale.
> >
> > That is not true. Complicated closed ecology systems (Biosphere-2)
> > have failed to match predictions, but simple ones have operated for
> > extended periods (year-plus) at NASA and associated research centers
> > with good success. Websearch on "biological CELSS".
> >
> >
> > -george william herbert
> > gher...@retro.com
> >
> the human race will have reached such a high level of scientific knowledge
> and competence that they will be be able to predict with absolute
certainty
> exactly what they will find when they get there. Therefore one of the
prime
> motivations for the exercise (scientific exploration) evaporates.
We will most likely send robots before sending humans. The robot survey
need not be that detailed, so humans may learn something there.
> What if, after several years in transit they arrive at SAY
> Alpha Centauri or Andromeda only to find that
> none of the planets will support human life?
Not a problem. They could build O'Neill type colonies out of asteroids.
There would have to be asteroids and other material, but we should know that
before sending people. Terraforming a planet would destroy what you want to
study, so O'Neill colonies may be the better way to go.
> What will most likely happen is the gradual collapse of our society.
Change of subject.
> All civilizations pass;
Do you mean individual nations or the human race as a whole. There is no
precedent for the human race being wiped out.
> this one is no exception. It does not even have to
> disappear in a war or series of conflicts. It is entirely possible that
the
> present ascendency of science will not endure and some sort of religious
> dogma will replace it.
In the past, these civilizations became primitive and were not a threat to
others. Now they can get whatever technology they need.
> The Earth will eventually be consumed in the fireball when Sol swells out
> into a red giant. Even a well-organized interstellar transport system
would
> only be available to a comparatively small number of Earth's most affluent
> technocrats.
This is extremely far into the future. We should be able to send a billions
of people to other stars by then. Nearby stars also have limited life
spans, so we may have to work to stay alive.
> By then the world's population will long have shrunk to a tiny fraction
of
> a percent of what it is today under the influences of disease,
> desertification and the inevitable wars over water.
So you think that they won't solve those problems in the next billion years.
TomKalbfus
>need not be that detailed, so humans may learn something there.
>
Suppose we had the capabilities to send Humans now, but it would take 50 years
to get there. Now lets say your a scientist in his 20s. Lets further suppose we
have large space telescopes that have detected an Earthlike planets that
contains oxygen in its atmosphere and is at a reasonable distance from its star
from the standpoint of supporting human life. Now we don't know exactly whats
on this planet, the telescope can only resolve a small disk with vague
impressions of continents, oceans, and clouds, and can measure the rotation
rate, but that's it, to find out more information we need to send either probes
or people and both will take 50 years to get there. So would you, the 21 year
old scientist rather go yourself and explore the planet first hand, or would
you rather just send the probe and wait 50 years plus 5 or so years for the
signal to get back to Earth.
The Interstellar Probe would have to be completely automatic, it would have to
make decisions on what to explore or what looks interesting without guidance
from mission control. The probe would have to anticipate what question you
might ask without hearing from you. The probe would need a level of human
reasoning that was so advanced, you the 71 year old scientist would be
unemployed and their would be a machine sitting at your desk, doing you work.
You'd probably find out about the results on the equivalent of the Discovery
Channel as you would be out of the loop so to speak.
Also if the probe was a dumb bot, it would have to be preprogrammed on where to
look. You might receive a picture on the telemetry and wish that the probe
would investigate further, but that would be 10 years more to send a signal to
the probe and get a response assuming the probe was still operating and that
your still alive.
I'd rather send a human crew as interstellar probes aren't as useful as
interplanetary ones.
What would happen if the probe landed in the middle of a primitive alien
civilization? The probe might not be programmed for first contact, it would
simply sit there in the town square doing geological surveys, or taking
biological samples assuming the natives don't attack it, thinking it was a
monster.
Tom
Gerry Quinn
>> The Earth will eventually be consumed in the fireball when Sol swells out
>> into a red giant. Even a well-organized interstellar transport system
>would
>> only be available to a comparatively small number of Earth's most affluent
>> technocrats.
>
>This is extremely far into the future. We should be able to send a billions
>of people to other stars by then. Nearby stars also have limited life
>spans, so we may have to work to stay alive.
There's no need to leave the Solar system to survive the Sun's
expansionary phase. Just move out a bit from the fire and come back in
when it calms down.
- Gerry Quinn
Joann Evans
> People who dream of interstellar travel have their hearts at least in the
> right place. By the time we are able to design such interstellar missions
> the human race will have reached such a high level of scientific knowledge
> and competence that they will be be able to predict with absolute certainty
> exactly what they will find when they get there.
How does that follow?
I can see us gaining the ability to see extrasolar planets directly,
perhaps as well as the naked eye can see from Earth's Moon. Don't expect
much better than that before interstellar travel becomes possible, and
possibly not much better ever. (Espically if we're talking beyond 20
light years or so.)
Even big satellite optics in Earth orbit can't tell you with
'absolute certainty' what's happening just a few hundred miles below. If
you know different, there are several three-letter agencies who'd like
to talk to you....
> Therefore one of the prime
> motivations for the exercise (scientific exploration) evaporates.
As any researcher who's examined Lunar material returned by Apollo
might tell you, there's nothing like having actual samples of the place
in hand.
> If they
> were not able to do so, then to send out a large number of personnel on this
> quest would be gambling with their lives. What if, after several years in
> transit they arrive at SAY Alpha Centauri or Andromeda only to find that
> none of the planets will support human life?
Define 'support human life.'
Humans have already lived on the Moon for short times, with nothing
to suggest we couldn't live there (or Mars, or a number of other
locations in this solar system) indefinitely. Yes, it takes
technological support. The house I'm in is heated by a gas furnace, too.
It doesn't have to be a world you can walk around in shirtsleeves to
be habitable, useful or interesting. And I'm sure someone will point out
that by such time, many humans will be living in artificial habitats
here. As long as there's adequate energy and matter, similar things
could be done in other solar systems. There just wouldn't necessairily
be even one already life-bearing world present, which these
explorers/colonizers wouldn't need, anyway.
> What will most likely happen is the gradual collapse of our society.
It may happen, but not because we can't find one nearby, Earth-like
planet. Nor would *locating* one necessairily prevent it.
> All
> civilizations pass; this one is no exception. It does not even have to
> disappear in a war or series of conflicts. It is entirely possible that the
> present ascendency of science will not endure and some sort of religious
> dogma will replace it.
A clear example of how the presence or absence of Earth-like
extrasolar worlds wouldn't change the equation. Remembner, it's only
fairly recently in human history that we've even considered the
question. Civilization could be altered by it, but doesn't hang on it.
> The Earth will eventually be consumed in the fireball when Sol swells out
> into a red giant.
That's what, five billion years away? It matters only if we're still
here (we might not be), if we still care (we may not, we may have
already left [see below], we may have changed into something so
different that the issue is irrelevant), and if we haven't found means
to alter the process of stellar evolution itself, and extend its life.
(Yeah, that's asking a lot, but again that's *billions* of years to
consider the matter.
> Even a well-organized interstellar transport system would
> only be available to a comparatively small number of Earth's most affluent
> technocrats.
By what standards? The 22nd century's? The 42nd century's? Or five
*billion* years from now, when even the notion of 'affluent technocrat'
is stupendously irrelevant?
> By then the world's population will long have shrunk to a tiny fraction of
> a percent of what it is today under the influences of disease,
> desertification and the inevitable wars over water.
Again, your sense of how much time there is between now and when the
Sun leaves the main sequence is badly warped. I'd go so far as to say
that by such time human beings won't exist. Either because we've
destroyed ourselves, external events (asteroidal impact and the like)
has destroyed us, because, with no technology, evolution has its way
with us, and we've changed into something quite different, or because
*long* before that, we used technology (and perhaps some currently
unknown physics) to change *ourselves* into something completely
non-human.
> On that last morning when the sky and the land are both eaten up by the
> sun's ravening appetite there will be only a few thousand wandering
> tribesmen left on earth.
See above. Even if we *do* 'blow ourselves back to the stone age,'
*long* before such time, we'll have either become extinct, or climbed
back up and become God-knows-what. Translate the time involved to the
height of the Empire State Building, and all of human history so far is
as thick as the coat of wax on the first floor....
> They will look up with terror at something they do
> not understand, and leave their bleached bones upon the baking and soon to
> be consumed plain.
>
> Toni.
What happened to all that 'hearts in the right place?'
It's just as well that it can't turn out this way, I'd have no reason
to get out of bed, if I believed it....
Joann Evans
Thanks. I've thought about this before, and I *knew* I was forgetting
an option:
By such time, it should be trivial to move Earth outward to a
comfortable distance, and back. (Or on to another star.)
Impossible by today's standards, but I wouldn't bet on it being so in
the next *thousand* years, much less several billion...
Simon Hibbs
> By such time, it should be trivial to move Earth outward to a
> comfortable distance, and back. (Or on to another star.)
>
> Impossible by today's standards, but I wouldn't bet on it being so in
> the next *thousand* years, much less several billion...
In fact, there's already a known way to do it. You re-direct earth-grazing
asteroids, with roughly circular orbits, into an orbit that comes very close to
the earth in a reverse-slingshot manoeuver. Each time the asteroid comes close
to earth, the asteroid slows down a little and the earth speeds up a little.
the end result is that the radius of the earth's orbit increases slightly,
while the orbit of the asteroid becomes more and more eliptic (it's distance
from the sun, when on the other side of the sun from the earth, gets smaller).
All you're doing is transfering orbital energy from the asteroid to the earth.
It's a very gradual process, but according to the calculations you should
esily out-pace the rate of warming of the sun. The energy it takes to initialy
redirect the asteroids turns out to be a tiny fraction of the energy transfered
to the earth.
Simon Hibbs
Jordan179
> How does that follow?
>
> I can see us gaining the ability to see extrasolar planets directly,
> perhaps as well as the naked eye can see from Earth's Moon. Don't expect
> much better than that before interstellar travel becomes possible, and
> possibly not much better ever. (Espically if we're talking beyond 20
> light years or so.)
>
> Even big satellite optics in Earth orbit can't tell you with
> 'absolute certainty' what's happening just a few hundred miles below. If
> you know different, there are several three-letter agencies who'd like
> to talk to you....
And for _any_ hypothetical level of sensor acuity, the sensor system
will still work better and reveal more information closer to, rather
than farther away, from the target. For instance, even if we had some
sort of "deep radar" which was able to image an extrasolar planet,
right through the crust, down to the level of 1-millimeter "bits" at a
range of 100 LY (which is a level of instrumental capability that not
only IMO would take centuries to reach but might actually be forbidden
by the laws of physics owing to background noise), this uber-telescope
would STILL not enable us to directly study the genetic codes of any
alien life. Or study their microfossils.
(I think that the only way this ubertelescope could work anyway would
be through some sort of tunnelling effect so powerful that it might as
well be a component in a stardrive!)
> As any researcher who's examined Lunar material returned by Apollo
> might tell you, there's nothing like having actual samples of the place
> in hand.
Yep. Otherwise you are merely speculating about composition, etc.
(Even though some of the speculations can be very powerful and
accurate, as in the case of spectroanalysis of stars).
> Define 'support human life.'
>
> Humans have already lived on the Moon for short times, with nothing
> to suggest we couldn't live there (or Mars, or a number of other
> locations in this solar system) indefinitely. Yes, it takes
> technological support. The house I'm in is heated by a gas furnace, too.
>
> It doesn't have to be a world you can walk around in shirtsleeves to
> be habitable, useful or interesting. And I'm sure someone will point out
> that by such time, many humans will be living in artificial habitats
> here. As long as there's adequate energy and matter, similar things
> could be done in other solar systems. There just wouldn't necessairily
> be even one already life-bearing world present, which these
> explorers/colonizers wouldn't need, anyway.
There are two obvious reasons why:
1) The more advanced one's technology, the more one's artificial
habitats can compensate for environmental extremes. We _already_ have
ALMOST a sufficiently advanced technology to allow indefinite survival
in a habitat no more hostile than the near-vacuum in most of our Soalr
System (provided that we have regular access to bodies bearing metals
and volatiles).
2) The more advanced one's technology, the more one's OWN BODY can
compensate for environmental extremes. By the time we solve the
stardrive problem (even the STL stardrive problem) it's quite
possible, even probable that the crew will be augmented or modified to
the degree that they can move freely and with no other protection
through "normal" space (i.e., normal levels of radiation, etc).
> It may happen, but not because we can't find one nearby, Earth-like
> planet. Nor would *locating* one necessairily prevent it.
Indeed, I could see scenarioes in which the scramble for a desirable
planet could set off a disastrous cycle of wars. That's what happened
to Europe, if you substitute "Africa" for "planet."
> > All civilizations pass; this one is no exception. It does not even have to
> > disappear in a war or series of conflicts. It is entirely possible that the
> > present ascendency of science will not endure and some sort of religious
> > dogma will replace it.
>
> A clear example of how the presence or absence of Earth-like
> extrasolar worlds wouldn't change the equation. Remembner, it's only
> fairly recently in human history that we've even considered the
> question. Civilization could be altered by it, but doesn't hang on it.
Much as we wish we were THIS important, human fate does not entirely
hinge upon the fate of "our" (Western) Civilization. It's quite
possible that we'll pass through at least one, maybe more Toynbee
Cycles before we reach the stars, but that would not change the fact
that it was humanity which reached them, nor (if we leave a good
legacy) that the civilization which did was a descendant of ours.
Classical Civilization never reached the Moon, but the first series of
Lunar voyages were carried out by a class of ship called "Apollo."
Think about that.
> That's what, five billion years away? It matters only if we're still
> here (we might not be), if we still care (we may not, we may have
> already left [see below], we may have changed into something so
> different that the issue is irrelevant), and if we haven't found means
> to alter the process of stellar evolution itself, and extend its life.
> (Yeah, that's asking a lot, but again that's *billions* of years to
> consider the matter.
Billions of years is enough time for countless _orders_, not merely
species, genera, or families, let alone civilizations, to rise and
fall. A mere ONE billion years ago, the Earth had no multi-cellular
life!
> > Even a well-organized interstellar transport system would
> > only be available to a comparatively small number of Earth's most affluent
> > technocrats.
>
> By what standards? The 22nd century's? The 42nd century's? Or five
> *billion* years from now, when even the notion of 'affluent technocrat'
> is stupendously irrelevant?
Right. He's making the assumption that the standard of per capita
wealth must remain roughly stationary over time. This isn't even a
good prediction over a human lifetime (we are today several times
wealthier than our grandparents were at our age) and it's a terribly
inaccurate prediction over the lifetime of a civilization, let alone a
species).
> > By then the world's population will long have shrunk to a tiny fraction of
> > a percent of what it is today under the influences of disease,
> > desertification and the inevitable wars over water.
>
> Again, your sense of how much time there is between now and when the
> Sun leaves the main sequence is badly warped. I'd go so far as to say
> that by such time human beings won't exist. Either because we've
> destroyed ourselves, external events (asteroidal impact and the like)
> has destroyed us, because, with no technology, evolution has its way
> with us, and we've changed into something quite different, or because
> *long* before that, we used technology (and perhaps some currently
> unknown physics) to change *ourselves* into something completely
> non-human.
Water, incidentally, is something we're not likely to war much over,
given that hydrogen and oxygen are two of the most abundant elements
in the Universe.
> See above. Even if we *do* 'blow ourselves back to the stone age,'
> *long* before such time, we'll have either become extinct, or climbed
> back up and become God-knows-what. Translate the time involved to the
> height of the Empire State Building, and all of human history so far is
> as thick as the coat of wax on the first floor....
For instance, it took us a mere ten thousand years to climb from
Neolithic agriculture to orbital spaceflight. Why will our descendants
be LESS competent?
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Mike Rhino
news:374990d6.02030...@posting.google.com...
>
> (we are today several times
> wealthier than our grandparents were at our age)
I'm not. I've heard that manual labor wages have been falling for the past
30 years. This is one reason why there are more working mothers than there
used to be -- many men earn less.
Dan Swartzendruber
says...
Mmmm, maybe. My understanding was that the primary factor is the fact
that the tax burden (at all levels) is far far higher than it used to
be. So much so that a man with an okay but not great job really can't
support a family anymore.
A.C.
"Dan Swartzendruber" <dsw...@druber.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16e985119...@news.supernews.net...
> Mmmm, maybe. My understanding was that the primary factor is the fact
> that the tax burden (at all levels) is far far higher than it used to
Except at the corporate level; corporations pay a lot less than they used
to.
--
nomadi...@hotmail.com | http://nomadic.simspace.net
"There are several good protections against temptation, but the
surest is cowardice."--Mark Twain.
Dan Swartzendruber
nomadi...@removethistomailmehotmail.com says...
>
>
> "Dan Swartzendruber" <dsw...@druber.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.16e985119...@news.supernews.net...
>
> > Mmmm, maybe. My understanding was that the primary factor is the fact
> > that the tax burden (at all levels) is far far higher than it used to
>
> Except at the corporate level; corporations pay a lot less than they used
> to.
Most middle-class families are not affected by this.
John Savard
<dsw...@druber.com> wrote, in part:
I've seen that claimed as the reason.
In fact, though, I think that after income tax, we do make more money
than we used to. What's changed is more subtle.
Some of it is taxes, taxes on gasoline, property taxes. But property
values have gone up, and with them rents and mortgages.
People in the 1950s and early 1960s weren't "rich" by our standards.
There were people who couldn't afford refrigerators back then.
Supporting a family didn't mean that you had to be able to afford to
send your children to something other than public schools - or commute
to work from out of town.
A lot of married couples stayed together despite very hard economic
straits.
It isn't so much that after tax wages have gone *down*, as the cost of
"supporting a family" has gone *up*. And the reasons why involve
political incorrectness all over the place to even mention.
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>Much as we wish we were THIS important, human fate does not entirely
>hinge upon the fate of "our" (Western) Civilization. It's quite
>possible that we'll pass through at least one, maybe more Toynbee
>Cycles before we reach the stars, but that would not change the fact
>that it was humanity which reached them, nor (if we leave a good
>legacy) that the civilization which did was a descendant of ours.
>Classical Civilization never reached the Moon, but the first series of
>Lunar voyages were carried out by a class of ship called "Apollo."
>Think about that.
When a technologically advanced civilization crashes, there are such
matters as the depletion of fossil fuels, radiation levels, the
survival of non-human life... what we might leave behind on the way
down might not be enough to start again from.
Of course, the fall of the Roman Empire didn't lead to mass amnesia.
While a few achievements were lost, there was largely a technological
continuity with ancient civilization. So one might imagine a
centuries-long economic depression as marking the division between our
civilization and a successor.
Given the curent situation, though, the downfall of America might well
mean a world ruled by a despotic totalitarianism, say out of China,
that might wind up genetically engineering humanity into a race of
natural slaves. While the Islamic world has had a previous "golden
age", they are not powerful enough to be a genuine threat. (Of course,
there is power, and then there is foolishness. Our awakening from
foolishness does not seem to have lasted.)
Not only for our own sake, but for the sake of succeeding generations,
we must strive to keep our own civilization functioning.
John Hare
I am not going to agree with this at all. A man can easily support a family,
at 1955 levels of comfort. No VCR, cable, computer, extensive home wiring,
multiple bathrooms and cars. Don't confuse rising expectations with
decreasing
income. I'm living much better as an adult than as a child at home. A large
percentage of this perception of dropping wages has to do with the desire
to
keep up with the Joneses. Don't compare lower income families of today with
middle and upper class of yesteryear. Statistics may not support what I say.
For
personal experience, go to an antique car show and compare the features
offered
decades ago with that of today. My current truck is 10 years old, and is
more
comfortable and reliable, with more features than any new vehicle of 40
years ago.
Yes the tax burden is much higher, and average wages may be lower in
relation
to new houses and cars, but not in comparison to what you are getting.
--
John Hare
Lee DeRaud
(John Savard) wrote:
>In fact, though, I think that after income tax, we do make more money
>than we used to. What's changed is more subtle.
>
>Some of it is taxes, taxes on gasoline, property taxes. But property
>values have gone up, and with them rents and mortgages.
That brings up a question: how does the average ratio of net worth to
annual income now compare with pre-1980? Are we perhaps "richer" (in
aggregate terms) by that standard, but "poorer" by a standard that
means more in terms of day-to-day cash flow (e.g. percentage of annual
income spent on food and housing)?
Lee
TomKalbfus
>annual income now compare with pre-1980? Are we perhaps "richer" (in
>aggregate terms) by that standard, but "poorer" by a standard that
>means more in terms of day-to-day
It's not consumer items, but things like Healthcare that are getting to us.
Healthcare keeps rising at double digit rates even during a recession. It is
rising faster than overall inflation, and its rising faster than our incomes,
gobbling up a greater and greater percent of middle class families incomes.
Education is also rising faster than it should, especially since the return on
higher education over time is going down, not up. The only reason people keep
sending their children to college is that the return on only a high school
education is goining down as well. This is no doubt due to increasing
technology in the workplace. The repeditive, unskilled assembly line jobs of
the past are not longer available. Fewer people are into production and more
are into service, they have to be up front with a nice big artificial smile
despite the fact thet they are getting paid less and less for the work they do.
It seems likely that by the time we have Interstellar flight, machines will do
everything. Also less priority will be put toward the most efficient economic
system, and more priority will be put toward living the way we want to live.
John Schilling
>Dan wrote,
>>In article <OIOf8.157$ns.7187@sccrnsc02>, news...@alexanderpics.com
>>says...
>>> I'm not. I've heard that manual labor wages have been falling for the
>>> past 30 years. This is one reason why there are more working mothers than
>>> there used to be -- many men earn less.
>>Mmmm, maybe. My understanding was that the primary factor is the fact
>>that the tax burden (at all levels) is far far higher than it used to
>>be. So much so that a man with an okay but not great job really can't
>>support a family anymore
>I am not going to agree with this at all. A man can easily support a family,
>at 1955 levels of comfort. No VCR, cable, computer, extensive home wiring,
>multiple bathrooms and cars [...] My current truck is 10 years old, and is
>more comfortable and reliable, with more features than any new vehicle of
>40 years ago.
But a man can *not*, at least not easily, buy a new vehicle like those of
fourty years ago. Even if there were a market for it, it almost certainly
would not be legal to manufacture.
And the same is roughly true of many of the other goods and services needed
to support a family at 1955 levels of comfort. Tried finding a house with
one bathroom and minimal wiring, lately? Conveniently located close to
your place of enjoyment, *and* in a good public school district? Possible,
yes. Easy, no.
Between fifty years of aggressive marketing of upscale lifestyles and fifty
years of regulations, it is no longer *easy* to live a 1955 lifestyle. What
is easy, is to live a 2000 lifestyle with major chunks hacked away while
being forced to pay for features you do not want. That's not even close
to living at 1955 levels of comfort, and it sucks.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
TomKalbfus
consumer items are going down. I'm not really worried about buying my next
toaster. Its the manditory expenses needed to stay alive that are going to get
us.
Coridon Henshaw
news:3c7fcac7...@news.ed.shawcable.net:
> When a technologically advanced civilization crashes, there are such
> matters as the depletion of fossil fuels, radiation levels, the
> survival of non-human life... what we might leave behind on the way
> down might not be enough to start again from.
On the other hand, technological civilization leave behind large landfill
sites, huge numbers of cars, and ruins of cities, all of which can be
mined/scraped more easily than the original ores could be removed from the
ground. Fossil fuel depletion is somewhat of a problem, but creating fuel
from biomass isn't that hard.
> Of course, the fall of the Roman Empire didn't lead to mass amnesia.
> While a few achievements were lost, there was largely a technological
> continuity with ancient civilization. So one might imagine a
> centuries-long economic depression as marking the division between our
> civilization and a successor.
I'm inclined to think that a global political collapse would resemble the
world of Snow Crash, except without the extreme high-tech, rather than
absolute anarchy. Authority is distributed widely enough that, barring a
mass die off, control would simply change hands from national governments
to more local entities, be they governmental, mafia, commercial, ethnic or
religious fundamentalist in nature. The technology base would undoubtably
shrink during this process but much of technology would probably be
retained because it's still profitable to sell or useful to the new
authorities in their quest to rule their fiefdoms.
> Given the curent situation, though, the downfall of America might well
> mean a world ruled by a despotic totalitarianism, say out of China,
> that might wind up genetically engineering humanity into a race of
> natural slaves.
I realize this is perilously close to flamebait, but from current trends
I'm far more concerned over a decline in civilization caused by an American
shift to despotic totalitarianism rather than the rise of China. China is
reforming itself (albeit at a snail's pace) while in the wake of Sept 11
the US is running headlong into creating a domestic police state and a
despotic world order based on intimidation.
In the long run, China is a wildcard. They are at least thirty to fifty
years away from having power equal to that of the US; predicting how the
Chinese political system will operate in half a century is not exactly
easy.
> While the Islamic world has had a previous "golden age", they are not
> powerful enough to be a genuine threat.
Agreed. The only risk Islamism poses to civilization is from actions
civilization might perform to protect itself from Islamism. For instance,
by branding opposition to government policy as 'supporting terrorism.' See
Ashcroft and company...
--
Buy Microsoft(R) products. It's not as if you really needed those rights
or that money anyway.
Coridon Henshaw / http://www3.sympatico.ca/gcircle/csbh
JDWill68
It does if they have to make up the difference.
Jordan179
1) Manual labor wages are falling relative to other wages for the
simple reason that manual labor must compete against increasingly
cheap and efficient machinery (including "robots," though alas not the
50's sf-nal ones, yet).
2) In terms of quality of life, we most definitely _are_ wealthier
than our grandparents were at our age -- in the mid 20th century the
average lifestyle did not include many appliances, conveniences,
comforts, and services that we take for granted today. For instance,
TV's and refrigerators were luxuries, the PC had not yet been
invented, and medical care was much less effective.
3) This is even more true if you push the time scale back further.
Since the original poster was talking about centuries or millennia in
the future, compare the way we live today with the way we lived in
Medieval or Bronze Age times.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jordan179
> When a technologically advanced civilization crashes, there are such
> matters as the depletion of fossil fuels, radiation levels, the
> survival of non-human life... what we might leave behind on the way
> down might not be enough to start again from.
On the timescales being considered (centuries to millennia) the only
real issues are:
1) Did homo sapiens survive the collapse, and
2) Fossil fuels.
The first consideration is the most important one. It is possible to
imagine ways in which our civilization could collapse that could
result in the death of all humanity -- at which point, barring
resurrection _Jurassic Park_ style by our successors, the human story
would be over.
The second consideration is significant but less important. There are
alternatives, some of them available at pre Information Age tech
levels, to fuelling industrialization from fossil sources. They _will_
mean a SLOWER economic and technological climb, but they exist. (*)
Non-human life forms are relevant mostly to the question of human
survival -- if enough of an ecology (or artificial replacement
thereof) survives the Collapse that humanity can survive, then
humanity can renew the climb to the stars. Again, as with anything
useful, their absence would slow the process.
Radiation isn't a significant problem over a centuried or millennial
timescale. Assuming that peak levels of radiation didn't wipe humanity
out, whatever radiation is left will be an insignificant, or a very
localized, problem. This derives directly from the physics of
radioactive materials.
Aside from fossil fuels (which when burned degrade to lower-energy
compounds) and helium (which escapes into the atmosphere and thence
into space) (**), the vast majority of raw materials used by the last
cycle of civilization can be mined and re-used by the next one.
Over _billions_ of years (the full timescale the original poster was
talking about), the only issue is whether homo sapiens, or something
resembling him, survives. That's a long enough time for _repeated_
deposits of fossil fuels to form, and for tectonic processes to
utterly recycle any possible pollutants.
Some highly relevent ObSF's here are:
1)_Last and First Men_ by Olaf Stapledon, in which he came to the
correct conclusion regarding fossil fuels (every civilization after
our own had a slower climb through its Enlightenment and Industrial
Age owing to the fact that we'd used them up) but mistakenly thought
that _metals_ could be depleted in the same manner,
2)_Quicksand_ by John Brunner, in which the civilization after our own
has to grow in a situation of depleted natural resources and
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winds up evolving into "the most clever tyranny a race with a long
history of clever tyrants had known," because of the need to create
the equivalent of "hydraulic dictatorships" in every important
commodity; by the era that it's able to build time machines, high-tech
Tyrants rule from colossal fortresses over masses of low-tech
peasantry, and genetically engineer Mankind to suit their whims.
(Brunner got the metals issue wrong, too. Makes me wonder where these
writers imagine the metals GO).
3) _The Mote in God's Eye_, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle,
features an alien civilization, the Moties, who for biological reasons
MORE MAJOR SPOILERS
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are subject to a variant of Toynbee Cycles in which there is NO net
scientific progress. The Moties repeatedly rise to the level of
spacefaring civilization and crash back down to Iron Age barbarism:
their culture is oriented towards providing the next cycle with the
materials needed, in easy-to-use forms, to re-start civilization.
(Niven and Pournelle, as would be expected, got the metals question
right).
(*) Offhand, wind, water, wood, organic oils, geothermal, and (direct
thermal uses of) solar energy. Did I miss any?
(**) Hydrogen does the same thing, but the difference is that hydrogen
is chemically active and the most common element in the Universe, so
on an Earth-sized planet it will never form a bottleneck.
> Of course, the fall of the Roman Empire didn't lead to mass amnesia.
> While a few achievements were lost, there was largely a technological
> continuity with ancient civilization. So one might imagine a
> centuries-long economic depression as marking the division between our
> civilization and a successor.
One might, of course, also argue that Classical civilization was heir
to Minoan, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian civilizations. There is a clear
cultural and technological continuity stretching from 2002 all the way
back to the ages of Agammemnon, Gilgamesh, and Menes.
> Given the curent situation, though, the downfall of America might well
> mean a world ruled by a despotic totalitarianism, say out of China,
> that might wind up genetically engineering humanity into a race of
> natural slaves.
It is doubtful, though, that ALL humans would be slaves (some would
almost have to be masters, warriors, etc) and hence the likely outcome
would be a human subspeciation event, with some of the subspecies
surviving and others perishing after the fall of the Chung Kuo-ish
civilization.
> While the Islamic world has had a previous "golden
> age", they are not powerful enough to be a genuine threat.
Not right now. Though it's possible that they might spawn a cycle
_after_ our successors. And don't count out all sorts of other
cultures and subcultures, some of which might be spawned from our own.
> (Of course,
> there is power, and then there is foolishness. Our awakening from
> foolishness does not seem to have lasted.)
When did we "awake from foolishness," and when did we become "foolish"
again?
> Not only for our own sake, but for the sake of succeeding generations,
> we must strive to keep our own civilization functioning.
I do agree that we have a _better_ chance of reaching the stars if we
do so from the base of our current Western civilization than if we
wait for another Toynbee Cycle. But the reason is simply that there is
(now) a chance of human extermination at each turn of the wheel. I do
NOT think that if our civilization collapsed that all successors would
be doomed to pointless, low-tech courses.
(for one thing, they might discover and successfully exploit
technologies that we have neglected -- just as WE discovered and
successfully exploited technologies that the Classical Civilization
neglected!)
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Robert Lynn
Using lots of such small encounters with asteroids/comets could we move
Venus out past the orbit of Earth without endangering Earth at some
stage - put another way is it possible to have two objects orbiting the
same primary with the same mean orbital radius without there being a
danger of their interferring with each other in a destructive manner,
leaving aside the obvious lagrange point configurations.
Given that this process would probably take hundreds of thousands or
millions of years could we manage it with sufficient dexterity to place
Venus or Mars at an Earth - Sun lagrange point (directly opposite earth,
or leading/lagging earth's orbit) or would such an effort necessarily
result in a collision between Earth and Venus.
Andrew Case
>I am not going to agree with this at all. A man can easily support a family,
>at 1955 levels of comfort. No VCR, cable, computer, extensive home wiring,
>multiple bathrooms and cars. Don't confuse rising expectations with
>decreasing income.
This is a good point. Also the expected lifetime of major consumer goods,
from cars to homes, has gone down. Even though you get a better price on
a car, you have to buy a new one sooner than you used to particularly
at the low end of the price range. This extends into even upper-middle
class goods: the most extreme example being 8000 sq ft homes with a
design life of 15 (!) years. A lot of house for the money, provided you
don't expect to live there for very long.
>A large percentage of this perception of dropping wages has to do with
>the desire to keep up with the Joneses.
The perception of wealth is entirely relative. More people doing well
means the top of the income distribution has to have even more money
in order to maintain their perception of wealth. Conversely the people
at the bottom feel even further down the ladder, despite substantial
improvements in their standard of living.
......Andrew
--
--
Andrew Case |
ac...@plasma.umd.edu |
John Savard
<tonifer...@dataworld.net.ca> wrote, in part:
>By the time we are able to design such interstellar missions
>the human race will have reached such a high level of scientific knowledge
>and competence that they will be be able to predict with absolute certainty
>exactly what they will find when they get there. Therefore one of the prime
>motivations for the exercise (scientific exploration) evaporates.
That is a very unwarranted conclusion.
Interstellar flight, difficult as it may be, is far easier than
predicting the behavior of intelligent beings.
John Savard
<jo...@nearspacetransport.com> wrote, in part:
>For
>personal experience, go to an antique car show and compare the features
>offered
>decades ago with that of today.
Remember, when you buy a car today, you *have* to pay for a catalytic
converter, for airbags, and for a number of other things whether you
want them or not.
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>jsa...@ecn.aSBLOKb.caNADA.invalid (John Savard) wrote in message news:<3c7fcac7...@news.ed.shawcable.net>...
>> (Of course,
>> there is power, and then there is foolishness. Our awakening from
>> foolishness does not seem to have lasted.)
>When did we "awake from foolishness," and when did we become "foolish"
>again?
The answer to your first question is September 11, 2001, as might be
expected.
While it is a good thing that we have calmed down enough to abandon
the immediate emotional reactions on the order of "nuke Afghanistan",
while things are working out well there, it seems as though the
widespread attitudes in the Islamic world - as highlighted by a recent
CNN poll - are no longer seen as a deadly threat, creating conditions
in which more terrorist groups will sprout.
Of course, I may be mistaking finesse for foolishness.
The bottom line, though, is that I do not believe we can, any longer,
afford to tolerate a situation where hatred of non-Muslims is the
prevailing orthodoxy in any part of the world.
While majority Muslim countries should be free to live their culture -
and thus have laws against alcohol, pornography, and so on: it isn't
as if the U.S. didn't have such laws not very long ago - religious
discrimination can no longer be tolerated, since growing up in an
environment where non-Muslims are not equal under the law creates the
psychological ability to regard them as less than equal human beings
in too many people.
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>2) In terms of quality of life, we most definitely _are_ wealthier
>than our grandparents were at our age -- in the mid 20th century the
>average lifestyle did not include many appliances, conveniences,
>comforts, and services that we take for granted today. For instance,
>TV's and refrigerators were luxuries, the PC had not yet been
>invented, and medical care was much less effective.
Well, I am thinking about a short time scale.
It's certainly true we have more toys.
But in terms of some very important elements of quality of life, the
early 1960s were ahead of the present. People didn't need to be in the
upper fraction of the population to afford a house and a car, and to
properly support a family.
John Savard
in part:
>John Hare <jo...@nearspacetransport.com> wrote:
>>A large percentage of this perception of dropping wages has to do with
>>the desire to keep up with the Joneses.
>The perception of wealth is entirely relative. More people doing well
>means the top of the income distribution has to have even more money
>in order to maintain their perception of wealth. Conversely the people
>at the bottom feel even further down the ladder, despite substantial
>improvements in their standard of living.
But what about when access to the really important things in life are
influenced by one's relative wealth, while that wealth itself, and the
toys it can buy, are not themselves the really important things in
life?
Sure, if the measure of wealth were "Do I have a color TV set", then
we're way richer now than we were in 1968.
Try comparing the rate of reproductive success among forklift
operators between now and 1965, however. Then you will be looking at
what creates this concern.
John Hare
>personal experience, go to an antique car show and compare the features
>offered
>decades ago with that of today.
Remember, when you buy a car today, you *have* to pay for a catalytic
converter, for airbags, and for a number of other things whether you
want them or not.
True, but you can also let the first owner pay the premium and reap
the benefits for far less pocket change. If I take the price of a new
car of previous decades, adjust for wage inflation, and shop for
a used car today, I can get one with higher comfort levels and
more miles remaining. This falls apart if you insist on being the first
owner. Personally, I am going to use the vehicle for so long that
it will be well used for 90% of the ownership time even if I
purchased it new. Discressionary income is higher with rational
money management. I probably grew up in a poorer lifestyle
than you remember.
--
John Hare
Rand Simberg
jsa...@ecn.aSBLOKb.caNADA.invalid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>Try comparing the rate of reproductive success among forklift
>operators between now and 1965, however. Then you will be looking at
>what creates this concern.
Will the world come to an end if the forklifting profession
disappears?
--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org
"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Replace first . with @ and throw out the "@trash." to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: postm...@fbi.gov
Karl M. Syring
> On Sat, 02 Mar 2002 15:49:44 GMT, in a place far, far away,
> jsa...@ecn.aSBLOKb.caNADA.invalid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
> my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>
> >Try comparing the rate of reproductive success among forklift
> >operators between now and 1965, however. Then you will be looking at
> >what creates this concern.
>
> Will the world come to an end if the forklifting profession
> disappears?
Surely not, but it is only a metaphor. I think, some years in the future you
will say the same of a lot of clerical jobs that still exist now.
Karl M. Syring
- who mad some good money operating a forklift, impossible today
Michael J Ash
> "Rand Simberg" <simberg.i...@trash.org> schrieb
> > On Sat, 02 Mar 2002 15:49:44 GMT, in a place far, far away,
> > jsa...@ecn.aSBLOKb.caNADA.invalid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
> > my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
> >
> > >Try comparing the rate of reproductive success among forklift
> > >operators between now and 1965, however. Then you will be looking at
> > >what creates this concern.
> >
> > Will the world come to an end if the forklifting profession
> > disappears?
>
> Surely not, but it is only a metaphor. I think, some years in the future you
> will say the same of a lot of clerical jobs that still exist now.
Convince me that this is a bad thing and I'll see what I can do about
becoming a little concerned.
If your job is no longer useful, I see no reason why you should still
expect to make any kind of living from it. Sure, people often don't want
to change, but life sucks in lots of other ways too.
--
"From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon.
And it's not a miracle, we just decided to go." -- Jim Lovell
Mike Ash - <http://www.mikeash.com/>, <mailto:ma...@mikeash.com>
David E. Siegel
If they are actually in the same orbit -- same radius, same
eccentricity, same orientation of major/minor axis, etc; with one
leading by a substantial amount, i think there is little chance for a
crash over a long long time period. the lagrange points simply keep
the lead/lag angle constant and incease the stability factor,
particualrly L4/L5. Given the degree of fine control needed to get
*exactly* the same orbit, you might as weell aim for L4 or L5, it
ought to be perfectly doable.
-DES
Mike Rhino
> millions of years could we manage it with sufficient dexterity to place
> Venus or Mars at an Earth - Sun lagrange point (directly opposite earth,
> or leading/lagging earth's orbit) or would such an effort necessarily
> result in a collision between Earth and Venus.
If you were to put Earth and Venus in the same orbit, I'm inclined to think
that given enough time, say 10 million years, they would collide. You could
avoid this with course corrections.
What happens when you are in the process of changing their orbits? At some
point they would be in orbits that are close, but one would be going around
the sun faster than the other. This would cause a close encounter. I don't
know how close they could get without disaster. There might be a way around
this with elliptical orbits, but I doubt it. When you try to convert the
ellipses into circles, you would run into the same problem.
Another option is to put Earth and Venus in different orbital planes. The
two planes would intersect, but if you timed things properly you could avoid
a close encounter. If your planet moving devices are super powerful, you
could put two planets in the same orbit without a close encounter. If you
could change Venus's distance from the Sun by 5 million miles in 10 years,
you could do it.
Another option is to move Mars and Venus closer to Earth without getting too
close.
Karl M. Syring
> On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Karl M. Syring wrote:
>
> > "Rand Simberg" <simberg.i...@trash.org> schrieb
> > > On Sat, 02 Mar 2002 15:49:44 GMT, in a place far, far away,
> > > jsa...@ecn.aSBLOKb.caNADA.invalid (John Savard) made the phosphor on
> > > my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
> > >
> > > >Try comparing the rate of reproductive success among forklift
> > > >operators between now and 1965, however. Then you will be looking at
> > > >what creates this concern.
> > >
> > > Will the world come to an end if the forklifting profession
> > > disappears?
> >
> > Surely not, but it is only a metaphor. I think, some years in the future
you
> > will say the same of a lot of clerical jobs that still exist now.
>
> Convince me that this is a bad thing and I'll see what I can do about
> becoming a little concerned.
>
> If your job is no longer useful, I see no reason why you should still
> expect to make any kind of living from it. Sure, people often don't want
> to change, but life sucks in lots of other ways too.
In my case, I could earn enough money to go for some time through
university. Students just can't do that anymore and it really sucks, as you
said.
Karl M. Syring
James S. Battista
> John Hare <jo...@nearspacetransport.com> wrote:
>>I am not going to agree with this at all. A man can easily support a family,
>>at 1955 levels of comfort. No VCR, cable, computer, extensive home wiring,
>>multiple bathrooms and cars. Don't confuse rising expectations with
>>decreasing income.
>
> This is a good point. Also the expected lifetime of major consumer goods,
> from cars to homes, has gone down.
They have? People bought cars in 1955 or 1960 expecting them to last
longer than the 150-200,000 miles I can expect even an unreliable car
to last me now? There was a thriving market in cars with more than
75,000 miles on them in 1955?
I suspect you're confusing the modern buying pattern of a new car
every three or four years with the underlying longevity of the
vee-hickle.
--
James S. Coleman Battista
--A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man
(J. Springfield)
James S. Battista
Ah. See, in my timeline, median family income in the US is *checks*
about $63K. I assure you that families earning less than $63K are
fully able to purchase both autos and homes. I certainly don't think
that families earning somewhat less than that are improperly supported.
Brandon Van Every
>
> If you were to put Earth and Venus in the same orbit, I'm inclined to
think
> that given enough time, say 10 million years, they would collide. You
could
> avoid this with course corrections.
What happens when in that 10 million years you get an insufficient quantity
of asteroids for course corrections? I'd think you'd want to prove the
reserve of this asteroid "fuel" before embarking on anything so ambitious.
Also, how do you keep a program like this going for 10 million years?
What happens when you screw up your asteroid redirect and it hits Earth?
--
Cheers, www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
Erik Max Francis
> Given that this process would probably take hundreds of thousands or
> millions of years could we manage it with sufficient dexterity to
> place
> Venus or Mars at an Earth - Sun lagrange point (directly opposite
> earth,
> or leading/lagging earth's orbit) or would such an effort necessarily
> result in a collision between Earth and Venus.
It's unlikely that this can be made to work. It's certainly true that
the Lagrange points are unstable for similar-sized masses, so you're not
going to be able to come to any stable arrangement. There's a bigger
problem, though. While you're maneuvering these bodies into their final
orbits, they're in orbit. The process is very slow since you can only
adjust the planets' orbits very slowly with many encounters.
So when you're just about to reposition Venus into Earth's orbit (when
Earth is still there), you're going to have to have a situation where
Earth is in its normal orbit and Venus is going to be in an orbit that's
just a shade away from Earth's -- but it's going to have a different
orbital radius, so it's going to have a different orbital period, and
you're going to have an encounter. Furthermore, since this is such a
slow, gradual process, that is going to happen many, many times. That
isn't going to do much good for either planets' stability.
It's not immediately clear to me that this scenario of reasonably moving
planets' orbits with planetesimal encounters will work, by the way. Are
we sure there will be enough planetesimals available to do the job?
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Laws are silent in time of war.
\__/ Cicero
Esperanto reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/lang/esperanto/
An Esperanto reference for English speakers.
Mark Atwood
>
> This is a good point. Also the expected lifetime of major consumer goods,
> from cars to homes, has gone down. Even though you get a better price on
> a car, you have to buy a new one sooner than you used to particularly
> at the low end of the price range.
I dont think so.
When my father was young, an automobile *wore out*, repair shop cost
greater than replacement cost, in under 5 years. If you had said the
phrase "7 yr bumper-to-bumber 10 year power-train warrantee" in
Detroit, you would have been laughed out of the country.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
"James S. Battista" <jsb...@jove.acs.unt.edu> wrote in message news:a5r89k$5e1$2...@hermes.acs.unt.edu...
> Ah. See, in my timeline, median family income in the US is *checks*
> about $63K. I assure you that families earning less than $63K are
> fully able to purchase both autos and homes. I certainly don't think
> that families earning somewhat less than that are improperly supported.
True, but these days most families *must* have a car because they
don't work on a farm or within a few miles of a local job. They
commute.
I agree that QoL has changed, though, and that you have to compare
apples to apples and oranges to oranges. But I thought it was worth
pointing out that a car is much more necessary than it was in 1955.
Bruce
Andrew Case
>True, but these days most families *must* have a car because they
>don't work on a farm or within a few miles of a local job. They
>commute.
It seems like the fair comparison would have to include this fact
and probably a couple of other must-haves like phone service. The
apples-to-apples comparison would be income after necessities are
taken care of, allowing for changes in what a 'neccessity' is. I
still think USA 2002 beats USA 1955, though I don't have solid
numbers to back it up.
George William Herbert
>ac...@Glue.umd.edu (Andrew Case) writes:
>> This is a good point. Also the expected lifetime of major consumer goods,
>> from cars to homes, has gone down. Even though you get a better price on
>> a car, you have to buy a new one sooner than you used to particularly
>> at the low end of the price range.
>
>I dont think so.
>
>When my father was young, an automobile *wore out*, repair shop cost
>greater than replacement cost, in under 5 years. If you had said the
>phrase "7 yr bumper-to-bumber 10 year power-train warrantee" in
>Detroit, you would have been laughed out of the country.
There has always been somewhat of a variation between makes
and models in this.
My extended family on my father's side tended to buy US made cars.
None of them purchased in the 60s or 70s survived more than about
7-8 years.
Dad got a Porsche 356 when he graduated from college. He still owns
it, it's got 270-odd thousand miles on it. Has required one partial
rebuild after another driver rear-ended him and two major engine
overhauls but still functions. My parents together bought a Volvo 144
station wagon when I was born in 1969; that car was finally sold off after
I reached college (about 20 years of lifetime), with around 320 thousand
miles on it. It was starting to show signs the frame was losing
stiffness at that point; in all fairness, it had had a full rally
suspension and semi-custom springs set installed when it was relatively
young, had had the engine... upgraded repeatedly, overbored several
times, replaced once after a catastrophic valve head failure (with a
brand new Volvo factory racing-spec valve, too, darn it). Dad had
a tendency to drive it like a race car, with 2 adults, 2 kids, luggage
and 2 large dogs in the car. We routinely blew past Porsches and
Ferraris on our way up to the extended family weekend house on
the back country roads. The combination of driving and loads caused
it to be one of the few Volvos of that era to ever develop fatigue
cracks in the A-arms in the suspension. Driven by slightly less
aggressive drivers, it would probably still have been going at
500,000 miles without the engine change. One aquaintence of ours
did in fact drive theirs past 450,000 miles before they decided
to buy something with air conditioning.
In terms of balancing new car purchase cost versus ongoing maintenance,
that Volvo my family had probably passed the breakeven point at
about 150,000 miles, which is eminently reasonable. Driven by
normal drivers that point would probably have been closer to 200k mi.
US made cars in the 50s and 60s and 70s tended not to last that long.
There was a point in the 70s and 80s where the increasing gas mileage
requirements and emissions requirements and general downsizing of cars
introduced significantly lower reliability all around. By 1990 that
trend had significantly reversed, and cars now are showing very good
life (very low maintenance to 100,000 miles, and reasonably low to 200,000).
Normal drivers with poor to average maintenance behaviour can reasonably
expect cars to last to 100,000 miles, 8-12 years, before maintenance
becomes higher than replacement cost. Well maintained cars will go
for a lot longer.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Rand Simberg
gher...@gw.retro.com (George William Herbert) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>US made cars in the 50s and 60s and 70s tended not to last that long.
>There was a point in the 70s and 80s where the increasing gas mileage
>requirements and emissions requirements and general downsizing of cars
>introduced significantly lower reliability all around. By 1990 that
>trend had significantly reversed, and cars now are showing very good
>life (very low maintenance to 100,000 miles, and reasonably low to 200,000).
>Normal drivers with poor to average maintenance behaviour can reasonably
>expect cars to last to 100,000 miles, 8-12 years, before maintenance
>becomes higher than replacement cost. Well maintained cars will go
>for a lot longer.
I've got an '86 Accord with over 260,000 miles on it, that has had no
major engine work, burns no oil, and is still on its original clutch.
Michael S. Schiffer
<a5qmq5$2...@y.glue.umd.edu>:
>...
>This is a good point. Also the expected lifetime of major consumer
>goods, from cars to homes, has gone down. Even though you get a
>better price on a car, you have to buy a new one sooner than you
Last time I checked on this, it appeared that the average lifespan of
cars had gone from about 11 years in the 70's to 17 years now. Do you
have a source that says differently?
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Phil Fraering
>I've got an '86 Accord with over 260,000 miles on it, that has had no
>major engine work, burns no oil, and is still on its original clutch.
But aren't the CV joints gone on it?
Phil
Rand Simberg
Fraering <p...@globalreach.net> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
>simberg.i...@trash.org (Rand Simberg) writes:
Only on one side...
Have you been reading my weblog? ;-)
Jordan179
> On 1 Mar 2002 14:10:52 -0800, JSBass...@yahoo.com (Jordan179)
> wrote, in part:
>
> >2) In terms of quality of life, we most definitely _are_ wealthier
> >than our grandparents were at our age -- in the mid 20th century the
> >average lifestyle did not include many appliances, conveniences,
> >comforts, and services that we take for granted today. For instance,
> >TV's and refrigerators were luxuries, the PC had not yet been
> >invented, and medical care was much less effective.
>
> Well, I am thinking about a short time scale.
>
> It's certainly true we have more toys.
A lot of these "toys" range from devices of immense personal utility
(such as the PC, which gives one the equivalent of a home print shop,
international message exchange, and bank of filing cabinets, among
other things) to life-saving devices such as oral diabetes
medications, pacemakers, and the like. I'd also hardly call a
refrigerator a "toy" -- and 50 years ago, those were uncommon outside
cities.
> But in terms of some very important elements of quality of life, the
> early 1960s were ahead of the present. People didn't need to be in the
> upper fraction of the population to afford a house and a car, and to
> properly support a family.
Most Americans can afford cars, most middle-class Americans can afford
houses, and last time I looked, there were PLENTY of families. I'm not
sure what you mean by "properly support," but the 1950's average
standard of living would not be considered as such by modern
standards, given all the amenities that it excluded.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jordan179
the last 250 years is a very simple one. Two things have grown faster
than population:
1) The average amount of energy commanded per capita, and
2) The sophistication with which that energy is employed to change the
environment.
In order to stop this trend, either
1) Energy command per capita must stop increasing, or
2) Technological progress must flatten out, or
3) Population must start increasing a LOT faster than either energy or
technology.
(1) seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, as we haven't even yet
harnessed more than a small fraction of our own Sun's output.
(2) is alleged to be imminent by some doomsayers, but then it's been
alleged to be imminent since the late 19th century.
(3) was a popular scenario back in the 1970's (Club of Rome and all
that) but the current trends do not support its likelihood, as
developed countries tend to have LOW population growth rates.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Joann Evans
> What happens when in that 10 million years you get an insufficient quantity
> of asteroids for course corrections? I'd think you'd want to prove the
> reserve of this asteroid "fuel" before embarking on anything so ambitious.
> Also, how do you keep a program like this going for 10 million years?
>
> What happens when you screw up your asteroid redirect and it hits Earth?
Um, you deflect/destroy it before it does?
Thinkable for us, even today. Trivial by then.
Walter Bushell
<SNIP>
>
> It's unlikely that this can be made to work. It's certainly true that
> the Lagrange points are unstable for similar-sized masses, so you're not
> going to be able to come to any stable arrangement. There's a bigger
> problem, though. While you're maneuvering these bodies into their final
> orbits, they're in orbit. The process is very slow since you can only
> adjust the planets' orbits very slowly with many encounters.
>
> So when you're just about to reposition Venus into Earth's orbit (when
> Earth is still there), you're going to have to have a situation where
> Earth is in its normal orbit and Venus is going to be in an orbit that's
> just a shade away from Earth's -- but it's going to have a different
> orbital radius, so it's going to have a different orbital period, and
> you're going to have an encounter. Furthermore, since this is such a
> slow, gradual process, that is going to happen many, many times. That
> isn't going to do much good for either planets' stability.
>
> It's not immediately clear to me that this scenario of reasonably moving
> planets' orbits with planetesimal encounters will work, by the way. Are
> we sure there will be enough planetesimals available to do the job?
My though is any civilization that could do this would have no need to
do it.
OTOH we might move the earth away from the sun, just because
industrilization generates heat, as done by the Puppeteers in Lary
Niven's know space series.
Walter Bushell
<Snip>
> This is a good point. Also the expected lifetime of major consumer goods,
> from cars to homes, has gone down. Even though you get a better price on
> a car, you have to buy a new one sooner than you used to particularly
> at the low end of the price range. This extends into even upper-middle
> class goods: the most extreme example being 8000 sq ft homes with a
> design life of 15 (!) years. A lot of house for the money, provided you
> don't expect to live there for very long.
<SNIP>
With a 30 year mortgage?
<SNIP>
Phil Fraering
>On Sat, 2 Mar 2002 15:59:52 -0600, in a place far, far away, Phil
>Fraering <p...@globalreach.net> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
>such a way as to indicate that:
>>simberg.i...@trash.org (Rand Simberg) writes:
>>
>>>I've got an '86 Accord with over 260,000 miles on it, that has had no
>>>major engine work, burns no oil, and is still on its original clutch.
>>
>>But aren't the CV joints gone on it?
>Only on one side...
>Have you been reading my weblog? ;-)
Yah, I even left a comment, pointing out
a headline seen on slashdot:
"Lance Bass to continue to plague Earth's surface."
I'm still trying to figure out if weblogs are a good idea
or not. I think there are problems with the format.
Phil
Jordan179
rising) but consider what you GET for those high prices ... extra
years of life! Since the dead are not economically productive, but the
elderly often are (*) the net benefit of this in _purely economic
terms is gigantic, both to the individuals whose lives are saved and
to the economy as a whole. Furthermore, economic benefits aren't the
only ones accruing from longer lifespans -- what does it mean to YOU
that you're still alive? Or that your loved ones are?
(*) Remember that elderly investors have more experience choosing wise
investments (thus helping the market function) and those elderly who
ARE still employed are generally HIGHLY skilled. Also remember that
not everyone whose life is saved is elderly, by any means.
Jordan179
> True, but these days most families *must* have a car because they
> don't work on a farm or within a few miles of a local job. They
> commute.
>
> I agree that QoL has changed, though, and that you have to compare
> apples to apples and oranges to oranges. But I thought it was worth
> pointing out that a car is much more necessary than it was in 1955.
I'm not sure of that -- in cities and populated suburbs, there is
usually a mass transit system as well. The major change (people living
far from their jobs) really began in the 19th century, with the
development of train networks.
The development of cars merely amplified an existing trend. And not
necessarily that much -- in the 1950's, people were more willing to
_walk_ long distances than they are today. If you're willing to walk a
mile or two a day, the chances are that you live within range of mass
transit.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan179
> But what about when access to the really important things in life are
> influenced by one's relative wealth, while that wealth itself, and the
> toys it can buy, are not themselves the really important things in
> life?
To begin with, _relative_ wealth will almost never increase overall.
And if the gap is measured in absolute terms, it will almost always
_decrease_ (fortunately, humans perceive the gap in relative terms, or
there would be constant revolutions).
> Sure, if the measure of wealth were "Do I have a color TV set", then
> we're way richer now than we were in 1968.
>
> Try comparing the rate of reproductive success among forklift
> operators between now and 1965, however. Then you will be looking at
> what creates this concern.
"Forklift operators" are not a species. A forklift operator who wants
to be more successful has the option of trying to get a better job.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jordan179
>
> They have? People bought cars in 1955 or 1960 expecting them to last
> longer than the 150-200,000 miles I can expect even an unreliable car
> to last me now? There was a thriving market in cars with more than
> 75,000 miles on them in 1955?
>
> I suspect you're confusing the modern buying pattern of a new car
> every three or four years with the underlying longevity of the
> vee-hickle.
Indeed, the _reason_ people buy cars more often now is that they are
RICHER ... the richer people are, the more often they can afford to
buy a newer model car just because it's cool to do so.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jason Bontrager
>
> (*) Offhand, wind, water, wood, organic oils, geothermal, and (direct
> thermal uses of) solar energy. Did I miss any?
You left out nuclear, but if you were referring exclusively to
power sources available to pre-industrial societies then it's
a reasonable exclusion.
Jason B.
Mike Rhino
news:374990d6.02030...@posting.google.com...
> "Bruce Sterling Woodcock" <sirb...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:<a5rde9$24q$1...@slb5.atl.mindspring.net>...
>
> > True, but these days most families *must* have a car because they
> > don't work on a farm or within a few miles of a local job. They
> > commute.
> >
> > I agree that QoL has changed, though, and that you have to compare
> > apples to apples and oranges to oranges. But I thought it was worth
> > pointing out that a car is much more necessary than it was in 1955.
>
> I'm not sure of that -- in cities and populated suburbs, there is
> usually a mass transit system as well. The major change (people living
> far from their jobs) really began in the 19th century, with the
> development of train networks.
In most cities mass transit runs to and from downtown. If you want to go
some other direction, you may be out of luck. I've never taken a bus to a
grocery store, although, when I was younger, I could carry a fair amount of
groceries on foot.
Even though my grandfather was desperately poor during much of the
depression, he had a car for most of it. At one point, his car burned up
and he had to go a while without one. He lived on farms in South Dakota.
He didn't own a farm, so he switched farms periodically.
Toby
Walter Bushell wrote:
Being a little less ambitious;
How far would Mars need to be moved to create the 4deg warming at the polar
cap which would lead to a runaway greenhouse effect?
Can each planetisimal only be used once or are there any cycler type orbits,
between Mars and Jupiter or Mars and Venus (to kill two birds with one stone),
which would allow them to be 'recycled'?
Toby
Bruce Sterling Woodcock
"Mike Rhino" <news...@alexanderpics.com> wrote in message news:hljg8.65988$vP.2...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net...
In fact I was thinking more about rural areas than urban ones. Yes,
a lot of cities have mass transit... but they are limited, and the corner
store may not even exist anymore, let alone the corner laundreymat,
etc. So getting to businesses may require your own transportation to
an extent not true in 1950.
But I was actually thinking more about rural areas, where you live on
a farm, or in a small town where the corner store is just down the block
and the shoe factory where you work is a half-mile walk. Today, the
store and the factory are both closed, the Wal-Mart is 3 miles away,
and the nearest major employer requires a commute to the next town.
Bruce
Robert Lynn
Venus has a mass 0.81 times that of Earth and an orbital speed of 35km/s
versus 29.8km/s for earth. It is 108million km from the sun vrs 150 for
earth
Go to the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, lots of deltaV (~60km/s ?) and
some very large objects of a few hundred kilometers diameter. Smacking
a couple directly into Venus would probably be a good step along the
way, as it would add a lot more hydrogen to the atmosphere, increase
it's mass greatly (it is not quite big enough to hold onto the light
volitile gases we need) as well as being a very effective way of
transferring that deltaV.
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>To amplify: we hear a lot about rising medical costs (and they _are_
>rising) but consider what you GET for those high prices ... extra
>years of life!
Oh, I don't argue with that.
But if people have less left over for other things, it is still a
noticeable thing, even if it is "worth it".
Robert Lynn
I don't think we will ever consider moving objects with a mass of
4.8e24kg trivial :)
Changing Venus's deltaV by 5km/s represents kinetic energy of 6e31J or
about 2.5e15 Megatonnes. Given Fusion is about 1% efficient at
converting mass to energy that would take about 7e16kg of fusion fuel.
There is not really any limit to how large a fusion bomb we can make,
fission primary fires fusion secondary which fires fusion tertiary is as
far as we have gotten at the moment (about 100 Megatons) but 25 trillion
of these bombs is quite an arsenal.
John Savard
wrote, in part:
>3) Population must start increasing a LOT faster than either energy or
>technology.
That reminds me... is Malthusianism "preposterous", as Dr. Zubrin said
in The Case for Mars?
While one could conclude this from the fact that we have a higher
standard of living now, and the population is higher, than in ancient
times, I don't think that is really the case.
For _long_ stretches of human history, human numbers _were_ limited by
available resources. If, all through history, resource limitations
never - except accidentally, in isolated situations - led to children
failing to grow to adulthood, and secure the resources needed to have
children themselves, then one could say that resources *always* grow
faster than population.
They don't. Resources do grow, as technology advances. Population
doesn't grow _faster_, because it is kept in check. People don't
normally have so many children that some will starve: famines usually
are the result of unexpected local events. But for resources to keep
population in check doesn't require anything so dramatic.
Of course, that in itself may be a refutation of Malthusianism, if one
defines it as the theory that population growth will ultimately end in
catastrophe. But resource limitation matters, and technology does not
advance so rapidly that the human story has been one of _never_
bumping up against the limits of available resources. Instead, we've
been pressing against those limits all along, with technology
expanding the limits much more slowly than our ability to fill those
limits the way we do when times are good, when those limits have
suddenly expanded for whatever reason.
Current advances in technology aren't making our ability to grow food
or house people increase by leaps and bounds, even if they have other
benefits.
Joann Evans
I'll accept that for now. But that means that *if* it will remain
forever impratical to use asteroid deflections to change planetary
orbits, then the question of what to do if there's a trajectory error,
and we find we've put one ao a collision course, disappears.
Though on the time scales in question, at least one *natural* major
impact is certain, so we still need to keep our eyes open....
Joann Evans
>
> Erik Max Francis <m...@alcyone.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
> >
> > It's unlikely that this can be made to work. It's certainly true that
> > the Lagrange points are unstable for similar-sized masses, so you're not
> > going to be able to come to any stable arrangement. There's a bigger
> > problem, though. While you're maneuvering these bodies into their final
> > orbits, they're in orbit. The process is very slow since you can only
> > adjust the planets' orbits very slowly with many encounters.
> >
> > So when you're just about to reposition Venus into Earth's orbit (when
> > Earth is still there), you're going to have to have a situation where
> > Earth is in its normal orbit and Venus is going to be in an orbit that's
> > just a shade away from Earth's -- but it's going to have a different
> > orbital radius, so it's going to have a different orbital period, and
> > you're going to have an encounter. Furthermore, since this is such a
> > slow, gradual process, that is going to happen many, many times. That
> > isn't going to do much good for either planets' stability.
> >
> > It's not immediately clear to me that this scenario of reasonably moving
> > planets' orbits with planetesimal encounters will work, by the way. Are
> > we sure there will be enough planetesimals available to do the job?
>
> My though is any civilization that could do this would have no need to
> do it.
Oh, we may want to preserve Earth strictly for historical/sentimental
purposes....
> OTOH we might move the earth away from the sun, just because
> industrilization generates heat, as done by the Puppeteers in Lary
> Niven's know space series.
I thought they were taking their planet out of the galaxy altogether
(and not via hyperdrive, as very few of the safety-obsessed Puppeteers
will even use a hyperdrive ship), because the galactic core was found to
be exploding? (Not unlike 'Lifeboat Earth,' [aka 'The Sins of the
Fathers'] but with *much* more time to respond.)
Joann Evans
I can't do the math, but I'm sure that getting an asteroid back into
a position where it could be used this way again would mean applying as
much energy as was originally imparted to the planet in question.
For example, when probes like Pioneer and Voyager use Jupiter in a
gravitational slingshot maneuver to reach the outer solar system and
beyond, they steal an infinitesmal fraction of Jupiter's orbital
momentum.
To give it back (or add yet more), you'd have to send an object of
similar mass on a so-called 'reverse slingshot' that would throw the
object back into the inner solar system, possibly into the Sun. (And if
you *want* to send something into the Sun, it's easier, energetically,
to do it this way, than directly from Earth. We may possibly dispose of
high-level nuclear waste this way one day, but that's another story.)
Joann Evans
You might want to speed up tht rotation of Venus this way, but
there's little need to increase its mass. How well and long a planet can
hold an atmosphere is not just a function of its gravity, but also the
molecular weight of the gases in question, and of the temprature at the
'top' of the amosphere. This is why an object as light as the Saturnian
moon Titan has an atmospheric pressure about 1.5 that of Earth. At the
tempratures out there, gas molecules (mostly methane, in this case)
aren't likely to reach escape velocity.
And those following the funding and development of the Pluto Express
probe know that that world's atmosphere, though extremely thin at best,
is on the verge of condensing out completely, as Pluto gets farther from
perihelion, and we want to see the surface before that happens, or it'll
be quite a long time before it comes in close enough to evaporate
again....
And at the other extreme, it seems that multiple-Jupiter mass
extrasolar planets seem capable of holding onto their light atmospheres,
even when closer to their stars than Mercury is. (51 Pegasi being the
first startling example.)
So, just getting Venus farther from the Sun where it can cool, will
partly alleviate any issues of its ability to hold lighter gases.
(Though actually, stripping *away* some of its existing atmosphere to
reduce surface pressures and greenhouse efficency, would be even better,
if you could do it. If you could then somehow transfer it to Mars for
the opposite reasons, so much the better.)
Nyrath the nearly wise
> My though is any civilization that could do this would have no need
> to do it.
Good point. All the calculation in this thread might
turn out to be as irrelevant as a victorian scientist
calculating that at current rates of urban growth,
most cities in the year 2000 would be yards deep
in horse manure.
Nyrath the nearly wise
> 1) Manual labor wages are falling relative to other wages for the
> simple reason that manual labor must compete against increasingly
> cheap and efficient machinery (including "robots," though alas not
> the 50's sf-nal ones, yet).
ObSFRef: CITIES IN FLIGHT by James Blish.
Advances in computer technology make any person with an
IQ below 170 to be unemployable. A global depression
results.
Jordan179
> In fact I was thinking more about rural areas than urban ones. Yes,
> a lot of cities have mass transit... but they are limited, and the corner
> store may not even exist anymore, let alone the corner laundreymat,
> etc. So getting to businesses may require your own transportation to
> an extent not true in 1950.
Most cities with mass transit make SURE that they run to the major
shopping areas.
> But I was actually thinking more about rural areas, where you live on
> a farm, or in a small town where the corner store is just down the block
> and the shoe factory where you work is a half-mile walk. Today, the
> store and the factory are both closed, the Wal-Mart is 3 miles away,
> and the nearest major employer requires a commute to the next town.
Most people don't live in rural areas any more. Haven't since the turn
of the century.
Those who do make SURE they have a functional car. If they don't,
they're SOL. And I speak from experience.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jordan179
> In most cities mass transit runs to and from downtown. If you want to go
> some other direction, you may be out of luck.
It takes longer. What you do if you don't have a crosstown bus
conveniently located is you go downtown, transfer, then go uptown.
Repeat to return.
> I've never taken a bus to a
> grocery store, although, when I was younger, I could carry a fair amount of
> groceries on foot.
>
> Even though my grandfather was desperately poor during much of the
> depression, he had a car for most of it. At one point, his car burned up
> and he had to go a while without one. He lived on farms in South Dakota.
> He didn't own a farm, so he switched farms periodically.
Then maybe we should change the law so that we can build cars as cheap
as Model T's again. Such would TODAY be illegal owing to safety
standards.
But that's governmental interference, it's not implicit in the
technology or the economics.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Jordan179
> You left out nuclear, but if you were referring exclusively to
> power sources available to pre-industrial societies then it's
> a reasonable exclusion.
I left out nuclear because I was referring to power sources that
wouldn't take a LOT of technology to use (I included thermal solar
because Archimedes invented and Renaissance scholars rediscovered the
burning glass, which is just a few steps away from the solar steam
boiler, a technology our own Industrial Age eschewed in favor of more
convenient coal burning engines). Also, the predecessor civilization
might have burned all the easily accessible uranium before collapsing.
(though note that almost ANY radioisotopes can be used to make a
nuclear thermal cell, which I didn't include. But a NTC requires at
least some understanding of atomic chemistry, to separate the
isotopes, and it's more convenient if you have nuclear reactors to
manufacture the isotopes).
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
James Nicoll
Joann Evans <gree...@juno.com> wrote:
>
> I thought they were taking their planet out of the galaxy altogether
>(and not via hyperdrive, as very few of the safety-obsessed Puppeteers
>will even use a hyperdrive ship), because the galactic core was found to
>be exploding? (Not unlike 'Lifeboat Earth,' [aka 'The Sins of the
>Fathers'] but with *much* more time to respond.)
LE and SotF are two different books, the first being the
sequel to the second.
--
"I think you mean 'Could libertarian slave-owning Confederates, led by
SHWIers, have pulled off a transatlantic invasion of Britain, in revenge
for the War of 1812, if they had nukes acquired from the Sea of Time?'"
Alison Brooks
TomKalbfus
>influenced by one's relative wealth, while that wealth itself, and the
>toys it can buy, are not themselves the really important things in
>life?
>
Well then find a way to make everyone relative wealthier than everyone else,
then everyone can be the richest man or woman in the World. This has proved an
elusive goal thus far.
Erik Max Francis
> I can't do the math, but I'm sure that getting an asteroid back
> into
> a position where it could be used this way again would mean applying
> as
> much energy as was originally imparted to the planet in question.
True, but this doesn't necessarily defeat the purpose. The discussing
so far has really assumed an infinite energy budget; what's budgeted is
the reaction mass (the asteroids) used to achieve this. The presumption
is that we could move asteroids around relatively easily, but can't move
terrestrial planets. In that circumstance you could "reuse" the
asteroids by supplying energy to get them into favorable interacting
orbits over and over again. It's not energy efficient, but you can move
the asteroids in order to move the planet; you can't move the planet
directly.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Laws are silent in time of war.
\__/ Cicero
Esperanto reference / http://www.alcyone.com/max/lang/esperanto/
An Esperanto reference for English speakers.
Erik Max Francis
> Go to the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, lots of deltaV (~60km/s ?)
> and
> some very large objects of a few hundred kilometers diameter.
> Smacking
> a couple directly into Venus would probably be a good step along the
> way, as it would add a lot more hydrogen to the atmosphere, increase
> it's mass greatly (it is not quite big enough to hold onto the light
> volitile gases we need) as well as being a very effective way of
> transferring that deltaV.
Venus has plenty of volatiles. It's just too freaking hot.
Smacking planetesimals into Venus will certainly transfer their energy
efficiently, but you're not going to increase its mass very easily by
that mechanism. Even big planetesimals are much smaller than planets.
Henry Spencer
Michael J Ash <mik...@csd.uwm.edu> wrote:
>If your job is no longer useful, I see no reason why you should still
>expect to make any kind of living from it. Sure, people often don't want
>to change, but life sucks in lots of other ways too.
Moreover, this is not something new -- North America has been this way
pretty much since its beginnings. Even in the 19th century, occupations
and businesses became obsolete over a period of decades, not centuries.
--
Many things changed on Sept. 11, but the | Henry Spencer he...@spsystems.net
importance of freedom did not. -SpaceNews| (aka he...@zoo.toronto.edu)
Henry Spencer
>The perception of wealth is entirely relative. More people doing well
>means the top of the income distribution has to have even more money
>in order to maintain their perception of wealth. Conversely the people
>at the bottom feel even further down the ladder, despite substantial
>improvements in their standard of living.
For absolute wealth, the "Millennium Issue" of The Economist, which had a
lot of noteworthy survey articles about the last thousand years, had one
particularly striking graph. It plotted (if I'm remembering correctly)
GDP per person in Western Europe, in constant dollars, on a linear rather
than log scale. The text on the page was in The Economist's usual
three-column style. The graph ran along the bottom of the page, rising
very gently until about 1800... when it basically turned vertical, running
up most of the height of the page between the second and third text
columns.
Henry Spencer
John Hare <jo...@nearspacetransport.com> wrote:
>I am not going to agree with this at all. A man can easily support a family,
>at 1955 levels of comfort. No VCR, cable, computer, extensive home wiring,
>multiple bathrooms and cars. Don't confuse rising expectations with
>decreasing income...
By the way, for those who don't know him: despite his email address and
his insightful, knowledgeable comments, John is not one of us overpaid
multi-degree engineering types. :-) He makes his living as a concrete
contractor.
Niall McAuley
> Venus has plenty of volatiles. It's just too freaking hot.
I'm disappointed that no-one has mentioned Kibo's
plan to give ABIAN a HELIUM enema to make a new
ARCHIMEDES Plutonium.
This IMPORTANT information etc. etc.
--
Niall_-_McAuley[real address ends in ie, not ei.invalid]
pervect
"Robert Lynn" <rob...@peterlynnkites.com> wrote in message
news:3C80CD5D...@peterlynnkites.com...
> Using lots of such small encounters with asteroids/comets could we move
> Venus out past the orbit of Earth without endangering Earth at some
> stage - put another way is it possible to have two objects orbiting the
> same primary with the same mean orbital radius without there being a
> danger of their interferring with each other in a destructive manner,
> leaving aside the obvious lagrange point configurations.
Do you have a reference for this?
Mark Atwood
> In article <urQf8.3529$j93.1...@typhoon.tampabay.rr.com>,
> John Hare <jo...@nearspacetransport.com> wrote:
> >I am not going to agree with this at all. A man can easily support a family,
> >at 1955 levels of comfort. No VCR, cable, computer, extensive home wiring,
> >multiple bathrooms and cars. Don't confuse rising expectations with
> >decreasing income...
>
> By the way, for those who don't know him: despite his email address and
> his insightful, knowledgeable comments, John is not one of us overpaid
> multi-degree engineering types. :-) He makes his living as a concrete
> contractor.
Crap, that's hard, respectable work.
Back before he became an "overpaid multi-degree engineering type", my
Dad made his living building forms for concrete pours.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Jordan179
> That reminds me... is Malthusianism "preposterous", as Dr. Zubrin said
> in The Case for Mars?
It's not preposterous if you assume that people can, on the average,
not control their own fertility (which was the case when Malthus was
writing) and do not have to bear much of the cost of raising their own
children (true in heavily socialist states). Of course, today people
DO control their own fertility, and whether or not we choose to make
people bear the cost of raising their own children is most definitely
under our collective control.
> While one could conclude this from the fact that we have a higher
> standard of living now, and the population is higher, than in ancient
> times, I don't think that is really the case.
One of the reasons why our wealth is rising faster than our population
is growing is that we have invented capitalism AND contraception.
> For _long_ stretches of human history, human numbers _were_ limited by
> available resources. If, all through history, resource limitations
> never - except accidentally, in isolated situations - led to children
> failing to grow to adulthood, and secure the resources needed to have
> children themselves, then one could say that resources *always* grow
> faster than population.
Except that the costs of a high child mortality rate are high, both in
economic and personal terms. ONE of the costs, in pre-industrial
societies, was that it made no sense to educate women or put them in
leadership positions, since their likely fate was to spend most of
their adult lives pregnant or nursing infants, and to die in
childbirth at a relatively young age. That amounts to wasting the
potential of the intelligence of half one's population.
> They don't. Resources do grow, as technology advances. Population
> doesn't grow _faster_, because it is kept in check. People don't
> normally have so many children that some will starve: famines usually
> are the result of unexpected local events. But for resources to keep
> population in check doesn't require anything so dramatic.
IF you are willing to accept a social order with a LOT of human
wastage.
> Of course, that in itself may be a refutation of Malthusianism, if one
> defines it as the theory that population growth will ultimately end in
> catastrophe. But resource limitation matters, and technology does not
> advance so rapidly that the human story has been one of _never_
> bumping up against the limits of available resources. Instead, we've
> been pressing against those limits all along, with technology
> expanding the limits much more slowly than our ability to fill those
> limits the way we do when times are good, when those limits have
> suddenly expanded for whatever reason.
>
> Current advances in technology aren't making our ability to grow food
> or house people increase by leaps and bounds, even if they have other
> benefits.
???
Among the "current advances in technology" are biotechnology, which
has already vastly improved crop yields, and nanotechnology, which
offers the prospect within just a century or so of being able to GROW
houses. Just in the last century, we've moved from horse to mechanical
tractors to tow farm equipment, and from building houses on-site plank
by plank to partial pre-fabrication of most components.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
pervect
> Most Americans can afford cars, most middle-class Americans can afford
> houses, and last time I looked, there were PLENTY of families. I'm not
> sure what you mean by "properly support," but the 1950's average
> standard of living would not be considered as such by modern
> standards, given all the amenities that it excluded.
With two incomes, this is true. With one income, it's a lot less clear if
this is true. I don't have any specific figures, but certainly it's a lot
more common to have two incomes nowadays than it was in the 50's. This
greatly impacts such figures as "median family income".
As far as "plenty of familes" - birth rates have gone down. This is
undoubtedly a good thing overall.
William mook
and put up an albedo increasing blanket of fine stuff in the upper
atmosphere to lower temperature. This would very quickly <100 years
to get Venus into habitable condition. Simultaneously we can raise
the orbit of Venus by letting it interact multiple times with a
massive asteroid put up into a cycling orbit between Jupiter and
Venus. This will take thousands of years to bring Venus up to Earth's
distance, but the nanotech devices to remediate temperature can handle
the temperature in the interim. Once in nearly the same orbit a set
of shepard asteroids can keep them phased so they don't collide with
one another.
Meanwhile, we can be doing the reverse for Mars. Using nanotech on
its moons and surface to increase its solar influx and average
temperature, and to change its atmosphere. And using asteroids that
are navigated into controlled orbits to continually interact with Mars
to bring it into a closer orbit around the Sun in a few thousand
years. And then use shepard asteroids to keep everyone well spaced
around their orbit.
THEN, we can modify the Jovian/Planetary asteroid trick to SLOWLY
raise these orbits to maintain temperature on these worlds - now all
seeded with life - as the sun slowly grows hotter.
FINALLY, when the Sun burns out and leaves these planets in the cold -
these planets can be brought into orbit around Jupiter and Jupiter
ignited with advanced nanotech to provide a continuing source of heat
for these worlds. Other gas giants can be tossed into the Jovian
fires as they burn down.
Paul F. Dietz
> Venus has plenty of volatiles. It's just too freaking hot.
Actually, Venus is severely depleted of hydrogen.
Paul
William mook
If you use vector rather than scalar monetary symbols this is quite easy to arrange.
John Hare
By the way, for those who don't know him: despite his email address and
his insightful, knowledgeable comments, John is not one of us overpaid
multi-degree engineering types. :-) He makes his living as a concrete
contractor.
--
My old email address possibly reflected who I am somewhat more
accurately.
--
John Hare
P.S. Spam is a killer. My address above falsified for that reason.
john...@tampabay.rr.com
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
> I'm still trying to figure out if weblogs are a good idea
> or not. I think there are problems with the format.
I've been building a pseudo-weblog system to replace my current web
site, which requires too much work to update (thus all the dead links
and stale pages). The main additional feature is that the main page
only links to top-level topic pages, each topic page can contain other
topics as well as articles/links, and it's easy to cross-link from one
topic to another.
I really dislike the idea of a single 'blog page that scrolls off...
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"No one is safe. We will print no letters to the editor. We will give no
space to opposing points of view. They are wrong. The Underground Grammarian
is at war and will give the enemy nothing but battle." -TUG, v1n1
Henry Spencer
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> By the way, for those who don't know him: despite his email address and
>> his insightful, knowledgeable comments, John is not one of us overpaid
>> multi-degree engineering types. :-) He makes his living as a concrete
>> contractor.
>
>Crap, that's hard, respectable work.
>Back before he became an "overpaid multi-degree engineering type", my
>Dad made his living building forms for concrete pours.
Lest my wording have been unclear: I had no intention of casting
aspersions on John -- who is a great guy -- or anyone else who gets his
hands dirty doing "honest" (that is, strenuous, unpleasant, and poorly
paid) work for a living.
My point is that it's easy to fall into the trap of seeing the world
entirely from a white-collar-professional point of view. Just because
John's email address sounds like he's in aerospace, and he's got his head
screwed on right about scramjets :-), don't assume that he's vulnerable to
that -- given his background, it's not so.
Henry Spencer
pervect <perv...@netscape.net> wrote:
>With two incomes, this is true. With one income, it's a lot less clear if
>this is true. I don't have any specific figures, but certainly it's a lot
One should always bear in mind that the stereotype of the 50s and the real
50s were two different worlds. There were a lot more two-income families
in the 50s than popular belief would have it. It wasn't quite as visible,
because good jobs for women were scarce, and rising expectations hadn't
ratcheted the minimum acceptable standard of living up so high, so in a
more prosperous family the wife might work only temporarily (e.g., until
the car was paid off). Roughly 1/3 of all adult women in the 50s worked.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
<sirb...@ix.netcom.com> spake:
> In fact I was thinking more about rural areas than urban ones. Yes,
> a lot of cities have mass transit... but they are limited, and the corner
> store may not even exist anymore, let alone the corner laundreymat,
> etc. So getting to businesses may require your own transportation to
> an extent not true in 1950.
Admittedly, I live in the middle of Seattle's University District, one
of the most urban areas of Seattle, but there are at least three
laundromats and three grocery stores within walking distance of my apt
(not counting quick-stop places, of which there are perhaps a half-dozen
in reach, maybe more that I haven't noticed). I don't have a car
anymore - I ride the bus to work, and I've never found anywhere to work
that a bus didn't go within a few blocks of, in an hour or less commute,
running at least every hour during the workday.
If someone chooses not to live in civilization, or wants to hide in a
remote burbclave, sure, they're gonna need a car of their own. But for
many millions of people, it's not that big a deal.
> But I was actually thinking more about rural areas, where you live on
> a farm, or in a small town where the corner store is just down the block
> and the shoe factory where you work is a half-mile walk. Today, the
> store and the factory are both closed, the Wal-Mart is 3 miles away,
> and the nearest major employer requires a commute to the next town.
I used to live in Moscow, Idaho (pop. ~27000 during the school year,
pop. 3 tumbleweeds during summer), where it's still quite possible, and
there are plenty of local stores *and* a Wal-Mart which is not out of
reach of a pedestrian (the furthest two corners of the town are maybe 3
miles apart). Little towns in Idaho and eastern Washington are still
rural, too. There *are* no major employers except farms or small
businesses.
People there make lower wages than they would in civilization, but
their cost of living is also a lot lower; they just can't afford as many
luxury goods.
Joann Evans
>
> Joann Evans wrote:
>
> > I can't do the math, but I'm sure that getting an asteroid back
> > into
> > a position where it could be used this way again would mean applying
> > as
> > much energy as was originally imparted to the planet in question.
>
> True, but this doesn't necessarily defeat the purpose. The discussing
> so far has really assumed an infinite energy budget; what's budgeted is
> the reaction mass (the asteroids) used to achieve this. The presumption
> is that we could move asteroids around relatively easily, but can't move
> terrestrial planets. In that circumstance you could "reuse" the
> asteroids by supplying energy to get them into favorable interacting
> orbits over and over again. It's not energy efficient, but you can move
> the asteroids in order to move the planet; you can't move the planet
> directly.
Oh, I agree and understand. My main point was that you *would* have
to somehow boost the asteroid back to a useful location, that it
wouldn't be an almost effortless 'cycler' kind of thing....
Joann Evans
>
> In article <3C81EAE9...@juno.com>,
> Joann Evans <gree...@juno.com> wrote:
> >
> > I thought they were taking their planet out of the galaxy altogether
> >(and not via hyperdrive, as very few of the safety-obsessed Puppeteers
> >will even use a hyperdrive ship), because the galactic core was found to
> >be exploding? (Not unlike 'Lifeboat Earth,' [aka 'The Sins of the
> >Fathers'] but with *much* more time to respond.)
>
> LE and SotF are two different books, the first being the
> sequel to the second.
I read the short stories as they appeared originally in Analog in the
1970's, and SotF was the first installment. It was my impression that
when they were published collectively, it was under the 'Lifeboat Earth'
title. Unfortunately, I don't actually own a copy...
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
"Henry Spencer" <he...@spsystems.net> wrote in message
news:GsF9o...@spsystems.net...
> In article <3c82ac0f$0$63540$e2e...@nntp.cts.com>,
> pervect <perv...@netscape.net> wrote:
> >With two incomes, this is true. With one income, it's a lot less clear
if
> >this is true. I don't have any specific figures, but certainly it's a
lot
> >more common to have two incomes nowadays than it was in the 50's...
>
> One should always bear in mind that the stereotype of the 50s and the real
> 50s were two different worlds. There were a lot more two-income families
> in the 50s than popular belief would have it. It wasn't quite as visible,
> because good jobs for women were scarce, and rising expectations hadn't
> ratcheted the minimum acceptable standard of living up so high, so in a
> more prosperous family the wife might work only temporarily (e.g., until
> the car was paid off). Roughly 1/3 of all adult women in the 50s worked.
Ayup, my "stay at home" grandmother worked in my grandfather's garage.
In any case, I think perceptions are very different. I recall my
grandfather and I arguing with my uncle who was a builder. He was
complaining how no one could afford to buy house any more and the like. He
claimed housing prices had gone up more than twice the rate of inflation in
town since the 70s. Reality was it had been lower than that and in the same
time the average size of a house approximately doubled (from I think 1100 sq
ft to 2000+ sq ft). So in reality prices/sq foot hadn't changed much.
When my grandparents married, they put their foot outside at night since
they couldn't afford a refrigerator right away. At the same point in my
life, I had far more wealth than they did... and couldn't even think about
getting married.
Different times.