Don't forget that it will be AI making these breakthroughs, not us. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
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Don't forget that it will be AI making these breakthroughs, not us. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
Sounds like Clark's Rendezvous with Rama.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
Good read.
You did mention AI. That calls Elon Musk into the discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by LuigiDon't forget that it will be AI making these breakthroughs, not us. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/elon-mu...ing-the-world/
Did you know that a group of computer people and a group of billionaires got together and founded a non profit AI research group just a few days ago? One of the two chairpersons is Elon Musk, probably because he feels he has not enough work heading SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. The bilionaires pledged a billion $ funding. The computer specialists believe they can spend only a small fraction of that but Elon Musk believes this is only the beginning and will get much bigger. He is very vocal on AI being a potential threat if handled wrong.
There is no rush anyway.
We are likely to develop ways to control climate and renewable energy and water and food and population management long before we develop interstellar travel technology.
We will squeeze many 10s or 100s of millennia out of planet earth as we develop and refine the methods to make life sustainable here.
Even if some terrible apocalypse occurred (which is becoming vanishingly unlikely from a human source as global politics stabilises more each decade), as long as a minimal population survived, it would likely only be a few centuries at most before we were back up to speed and cutting the raw edge of science again; which is a small speed bump in the grand scale of things.
Getting a population on the moon might be a good mitigation against unforeseeable terrestrial disaster but as long as there is a small human population surviving somewhere our future as a species is virtually assured for a very long time into the future without any need for extra-terrestrial terra-forming.
Point 1: you feel shows on Discovery showing the top 10 most likely ways to destroy life or most of it on earth is unlikely now that humans are here?Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
Point 2: you mention the survival of humanity. That's your only concern? If humans survived, maybe with a plant and animal source for food, that's good enough?
Human ingenuity is still in its technological infancy.Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
We will soon have ways of controlling all the environmental factors that need to be controlled in order to maintain Earth as a stable environment for human habitat for long long into the future.
Journeying to other planetary systems may not be required for 10s of millennia.
This may involve controlling the size of the human population for some time.
Homo Sapiens is the wonder of the universe as far as we know. Creatures that have evolved reflective self awareness and abstract thought and who can understand the nature and scale of the universe and who can engineer the tools needed to acquire this knowledge are the way that the universe understands itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
We are the most important thing there is as far as we know.
The survival of the human race is the only thing that matters until we discover an alien species more intelligent than us who can understand the universe better. In which case we will be relegated to second most important thing in the universe.
Did it have big dramatic music, a baritone narrator, and spend 5 minutes recapping the previous 10 minutes, every 15 minutes?Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
We may in time be able to control our environment, but ELE could occur outside of environmental problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
It's a bad universe, after every ELE, that we know of, a new player took over, so to say if a few humans survived, they would come back as top dog, is not likely.
Earth has been life stable for a long time, but thinking apes are new to the scene, whether they can survive even a small ELE is a question.
A big event, massive solar flair, burning off the atmosphere, major impact starting 1,000s of year of a global ice age, we can't survive that.
We have to get out of here, or one day the place could look like Mars or Venus, as a species, we now have a window of opportunity.
We take it or we die, because the end will come and we don't know when.
A bit melodramatic there.Quote:
Originally Posted by jamescollister
The 'window' of opportunity is very likely to be very long i.e. many 10s of millenia at least.
At the rate of innovation that the human race travels at we will be streets ahead of any disaster by the time it finally comes around.
Ice ages are a piece of cake. We can easily survive an ice age with some minor tactical manoeuvring. Same goes for polar ice cap melts. Sea level goes up 70m. Who cares. It will be a major inconvenience no doubt but Homo Sapiens will stroll that sort of mole-hill hurdle.Quote:
Originally Posted by jamescollister
We will have the technology to control climate soon anyway so no dramas either way.
It may be long, or it may not. Plenty of reasons we might lose our present level of technology and never regain it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
High on the list of losing it is religious nutters getting the upper hand. Don't look farther than the US bible belt. Though muslim extremism can do the trick as well. An epicemic eradicating 80% of the population of the world may do it as well. A super volcano outbreak, a major asteroid hit, a nuclear war. None of these will likely eradicate humanity from earth. But it may destroy our present level of technology and it is totally unclear if we can recover, given that we have exhausted most of the easily accessible sources of energy and mineral resources.
A society on Mars on the other hand cannot afford to let slip its level of technology because it would mean certain death. In some ways once established and spread out it would be more robust against disaster because there are many separate and encapsulated habitats.
The thing is these human causes (wars, epidemics, extreme terrorism) are not going to wipe out humankind. They may wipe out a lot of folk but like I said it would only be centuries at most (probably a lot sooner) before we were back up to speed.
What we need to worry about is something that could obliterate the species entirely such as asteroid strike or supervolcano. These would have to be much worse than the dinosaur strike as we are easily clever enough to survive something on that scale.
Remember we only need a small population to survive and repopulate. The hard won scientific knowledge of human history will still be available so the new population will already be standing on the shoulders of giants.
I think getting small off world populations on the moon and Mars would be a worthwhile contingency.
Not necessarily. I nthe words of a stand up, most people are dumb, around 99.9% of us. We have everything because of a tiny number of highly intelligent freaks. Don't believe me? Let me send you out into the woods with nothing but the clothes on your back. See how long it takes before you can send me an email.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
But anyway. Somebody should start a Space News Thread.
The small surviving population will not be 'out in the woods'.
The gargantuan volume of scientific and engineering knowledge acquired by humans in the last 300 years will still be available in books and electronic data (once somebody figures out how to fire up a generator) so the new population will have a massive head start on rebooting civilisation as long as a large enough (but still tiny) fraction of the population survives this Armageddon.
Half of the technology will still work once a power source is hooked up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
Firstly, I congratulate you as another guy whose glass is half-full.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
Secondly, I'm not going to argue all of the points you've made except one: if the human race is the most important thing we know of and it's survival is all that matters, why hasn't it even modestly exhibited any behavior, so far, that would lead one to disbelieve that the most important things we care about are sex, money and living the high life here on earth?
Yeah, as a matter of fact, it did. :yup:Quote:
Originally Posted by Luigi
A second-thought edit: the odds of any single species surviving are quite long. That is, over 99.9% of all species that ever existed are extinct, if you believe in that kind of thing.
Therefore, I would expend a good portion of our substantial resources on developing, creating, discovering (however you want to put it) multiple species of the genus Homo. That may sound like sci-fi but we should have thousands, 10s of thousands or even 100s of thousand years to get it done.
What is wrong with caring about sex, money and living the high life?Quote:
Originally Posted by wjblaney
Some measure of hedonism is not entirely incompatible with a tandem loftier quest for knowledge and understanding of the universe and our place in it.
We did evolve from monkeys remember.
Actually no, we didn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
We are all modern species that have followed different evolutionary paths, though humans share a common ancestor with some primates, such as the African ape, we didn't evolve from monkeys.
We split from our common ancestor about 5-8m years ago, one of these lineages went on to evolve into gorillas and chimpanzees, another lineage went on and evolved into us.
^Tedious pedantry.
3/10
Just some education for the likes of Jim, and those that watch the Discovery Channel. :)
I don't deny that: I've been and am a brilliant hedonist, if I may so myself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Looper
I'm only saying that the survival of the human species should have priority over all of those other things by a long shot and, being a natural skeptic, I say it ain't gonna happen. Now I must admit that, clearly, my own emotions, e.g., self-survival, are definitely an influence on my opinion, even if only allowing me time to 'escape' or 'concentrate' on something other than my own personal self-preservation.
A newly discovered asteroid the size of a city bus gave Earth a close shave this morning (Dec. 19), zipping well within the orbit of the moon.
The near-Earth asteroid 2015 YB, which is about 34 feet (10 meters) wide, cruised within a mere 36,800 miles (59,220 kilometers) of the planet at around 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT) today, just two days after the space rock was first spotted.
To put that near miss in perspective: The moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 239,000 miles (384,600 km), and geosynchronous satellites fly about 22,000 miles (35,400 km) from the planet's surface.
The asteroid was traveling at roughly 32,300 mph (52,000 km/h) relative to Earth at the time of closest approach, according to scientists with NASA's Near-Earth Object Program
Bus-Size Asteroid 'The Flea' Buzzes Earth
Best Android apps for astronomy enthusiasts and stargazers - Android AuthorityQuote:
Originally Posted by palexxxx
^ Thanks Willy, tried to green you but you know the saying "share the love".
no problem.
Exciting times coming up for me. As you all probably noticed I am a great fan of SpaceX. After their launch failure in June they had a stand down for finding and correcting the reason for that failure. They are now ready to launch again.
This time with an updated version of their Falcon rocket, the Falcon 9 FT, that's full thrust, with higher thrust of their engines. A number of improvements, stronger engines, subcooled propellants to get more fuel into the tanks. A slightly larger second stage with larger engine nozzle.
In total these improvements will give the Falcon 9 ~30% more launch capacity. But they are not planning to launch larger payloads. The improvement will give them the performance they need to recover the first stage on all flights.
But first they need to land a first stage successfully. On two previous attempts they came close but failed at the last moment to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. For this flight they got permission from the Airforce and from the FAA to fly back to the launch site and try for a land landing which should be somewhat easier than on a barge.
Tonights launch attempt has excellent weather conditions. However getting a rocket with so many improvements to launch for the first time is tricky so it is quite possible that they have to scrub and not launch today. If so they can try again tomorrow. After that they will probably stand down for the holiday season but they really want it done now. Wish them good luck.
SpaceX | Webcast
A link to the SpaceX webcast of the launch.
Event starts Mon, Dec 21 2015 2:29 AM Eastern Standard time. The webcast begins ~25 minutes earlier.
There is a YouTube live stream too. It is already running and shows a countdown clock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bTbVbe4e4
Worth watching, a good chance for history being made if all goes well and the stage lands successfully.
There will be another one along in a minute.Quote:
Originally Posted by Luigi
Launch is off for tonight for unclear reasons. Attempt will be tomorrow.
Weird, the countdown clock is still ticking for tonight.
Oh well. Good luck.
Launch attempt today is still on. The links I gave are still valid for today.
Speculation is that it is some kind of problem chilling enough LOX - Subcooled liquid oxygen. The previous version of the Falcon rocket used LOX at boiling temperature. Thats easy and cheap. They have now switched to subcooled LOX near freezing temperature. That is a lot more difficult to cool and after a number of tests they may run out of sufficiently cooled LOX. The cooling allows more propellant to load into the same tanks, increasing performance. When they have done it once with success, major repeat problems are not likely.
Just watched the successful launch of Falcon 9 and then return and landing of the first stage. Amazing.
They have DONE IT.
The first stage has landed back on the Cape. Meanwhile in orbit the second stage has successfully finished its burn. The satellites of the customer Orbcomm will begin deploying shortly.
A huge, a monumental success.
Live coverage from space, the first satellites are deployed.
Unfortunately the event was ruined by the assembled crowd with their chant of "usa, usa, usa,usa ...."
Another important step is coming soon. They need to show they are able to relight their second stage. That capability was not needed for this flight but will be needed for the next flight. They did it before but the second stage is quite significantly changed so they do need to reprove that ability.
Meanwhile more satellites are being deployed, just one left now.
Edit: all satellites successfully deployed.
The landed stage.
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif
Short video of the landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFN1jcFgJfw
Quote:
Originally Posted by palexxxx
They are the people who actually built that rocket, standing right on the factory floor. They have every right to shout what they want.
And look like c u n t s doing it.Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeoversQuote:
Originally Posted by palexxxx
They are the people who actually built that rocket, standing right on the factory floor. They have every right to shout what they want.
Especially as half the parts are probably made in China anyway.
:)
Actually, no. As Elon Musk puts it, metal comes in on one side, rockets leave on the other side. They build almost everything in house, right there, in the outskirts of Los Angeles.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
And the Chinese have already said, they cannot build rockets at that price.
I didn't say where they built it, I said where parts are made.Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeovers
I talked about the parts too. They do almost everything in house. The strut that failed in june was an exception, they buy those from an external supplier. They don't make every screw and bolt and resistor, that's true. But they do things like valves, avionics boards. They build everything carbon fibre composite, the engines and their components. The tanks, the tank domes the thrust structures. As I said, mostly metal in, rockets out.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
Not like ULA who buy almost everything except the tanks and do only the final assembly.
For those who did not look at it live. A youtube video from launch to landing to payload deployment. Up to landing is the first 10 minutes, after that it is about the payload.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvQ-B...ature=youtu.be
The landing from a helicopter. A short clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCBE8...be&app=desktop
This is how precise the landing was. Less than 5 meters from the landing pad center. After coming back from maybe more than 200km horizonal and an altitude of ~160km.
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2015/12/971.jpg