We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Burt Rutan lecture If you are interested in a much longer exposition of what you have been reading in my aerospace postings over the years, listen to Burt Rutan as he describes how the socialistic model of State space flight has done exactly what socialism always does. It delivers the equivalent of rough brown toilet paper that is subsidized, overpriced anyway, and rationed because there is not enough of it. He does not say it in those words, but it is a view with which he would clearly agree.
He also shows why the Capitalist Space Race (the race to make money!) is going to take the lead in a surprisingly short time and that it will effectively be putting an equivalent of 5 times the NASA budget into human spaceflight within a very few years.
And by the way… I do not know the names of the other investors and developers he hints at, although I am aware (under NDA) of a few who are low profile and not seen on the Discovery Channel.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Oh, come on, you’re being far too kind to Soviet toilet paper. It was only a little more kind to flesh than sandpaper, it was effectively unsectioned, and it had to be thrown in a cockroach-attracting can, since it couldn’t be flushed down a toilet without clogging it.
Whatever happened to that strange translucent institutional bog paper? The hard stuff like greaseproof paper that your fingers tended to poke through? I remember it being everywhere like schools as a kid. Does it still exist? Why was it ever considered a practical solution to the bottom wiping problem?
I’m also being too kind to NASA. Rather sad isn’t it, that the only commercial human launch vehicle is a Communist built rocket dating back to the Kruschev era which had to be sold along with granny and anything else not nailed down because when the bill for socialism came due, it was a whopper…
The big problem with any human space programme is that the truth is there isn’t really much practical use for it. The child of the space age in me wants to see man on Mars; the pragmatist in me can’t think of a single good reason to send anyone there. Neither the Moon nor Mars even have anything to offer as tourist destinations; these places are as inviting as a hotel in the middle of the Gobi Dessert, except worse, as you can’t even go outside without a space suit. One of the striking things about now having photos from the surfaces of these worlds is how dreary they are- the Moon from a distance appears to have awesome pointy crags to admire but from the ground they’re just dull heaps, and Mars is just a waste howling wilderness, its craters just boring holes in the ground.
The costs of human spaceflight are immense and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, while only a handpicked few will be able to experience it anyway- professional astronauts and a few geologists. What is the actual point, beyond LEO?
You mean this stuff Ian?
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Izal_Toilet_Paper__5602624
Not fit for original purpose, but very good for tracing small maps onto for geography lessons.
That’s the stuff, RAB 🙂
Ian B, did you listen to Burt Rutan’s talk? He seems to believe differently than you on this. Frankly, I think his opinion carries a whole lot more weight.
Mars is just a waste howling wilderness
That’s what Daniel Webster said about the American west.
Laird, I daresay Burt Rutan’s view carries a lot more weight and he certainly knows his spaceflight, but his answer on practicality was kind of insufficient IMV; home computers were useless until greater power and the internets came along, which is fair enough. But it doesn’t answer the fact that some useless things remain useless; nobody ever found a use for sandwich toasters even though they were quite popular back then. And as a remnant of that home computing age, I remember how we anticipated applications even though our humble machines were too primitive to achieve them practically- data storage, word processing, home automation (didn’t happen really), music and so on. Big computers were networked even if small ones weren’t. There were loads of ideas for the future.
There seems to me to be a complete dearth of ideas for human spaceflight beyond tourism, which I think has a dubious future once the gee-whiz wears off, which it inevitably will, and pure science, which has little commercial value. The problem with Mars is there isn’t apparently much you can do when you get there, besides feeling impressed that you’re standing on Mars, and studying Mars. People didn’t colonise the New World just to study it. There was fertile land, resources, places you could easily live and produce. The rest of the solar system has none of that. It’s incredibly hostile territory.
Poor people colonised the Americas because there was free land, water, and so on. They could farm, for cheap. What type of colonists will go to Mars, with its lack of atmosphere, infertile regolith and, worst of all, its being entirely in the ground state chemically? There’s no energy, no biosphere which has created things you can combust. The question of how to make it somewhat habitable may be tractable, what remains is the question of why.
I don’t know what practical applications will come from space travel; no one does. There are some pretty obvious possibilities (asteroid mining, weightless and “hard” vacuum manufacturing, solar power, etc.), and I don’t agree with you that the “gee-whiz” factor will ever wear off for space tourism (an awful lot of people go to out-of-the-way places merely to enjoy the scenery, and the view from orbit would be pretty spectacular). But that’s not the point. Once we have more economical ways of reaching orbit (and beyond) we will find practical applications which no one has even thought of yet. And as the cost comes down even more uses will be developed.
There are a lot of very smart people investing a lot of money in this field. Don’t discount their ability (and motivation) to make a return on it. Just get the lousy government out of the way! NASA is an agency whose time passed about 25 years ago; it should be given a mercy killing and put out of our misery.
That’s what the free market is all about, I guess. Let the people decide where they want their money to go – if it’s into expensive, unproven, long-term terraforming research, then let it be so (guess you can tell what my personal thoughts are) for those who have the money and choose to invest it in such endeavours.
I always saw the Space Race as a “my Democratic Socialistic State can beat up your Autocratic Socialistic State” schoolyard argument, anyways.
My personal 2 wacky projects to put money into? If anyone is conducting any kind of research into how you can ensure telomeres regenerate indefinitely during mitosis, and can guarantee a cell die-off should any pre-cancer signals show up, I’d fork out some money to you. And if you can also figure out how to safely and cheaply tap the so-far theoretical zero-space energy, then here’s a check too.
I’d like to combine both with nanotech and become a demigod of sorts. It would be interesting, at least.
Why settle for “demi”?
‘Demi’ because I liked her in Ghost? Not to mention some other interesting ‘shows’… 🙂
No, but seriously, “demigod of sorts” because I’m Christian, and it’s not my place to usurp (or attempt to usurp) the position.
I’m content to be able to live forever, unaging, at the peak of my physical prowess or better, fertile, and be pretty much invulnerable.
Ack, PIMF, zero-*point*. Sorry, error. And for Queen’s English users, cheque. Also, sorry.
Well, for as long as the universe exists, anyways.
I have a vague recollection (not bookmarked) of some process that adds telomeres. It is a process, not a system change. If you accidentally start a cancer, it should still stop when it runs out of telomere. A problem sure, but nothing like self regenerating telomeres.
It may have still been in a petri dish, I wish I could remember more about it. I don’t even remember enough to google it. 🙁
Ah, well, now we’re talking! BUt the feature of cancer cells is that they *don’t* stop multiplying. That’s why we call them cancer cells. cf the HeLa line – still going decades after the original Henrietta Lacks died. So, I believe you still need some additional research – probably hunterbots of some sort…