tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post5072515784399363490..comments2024-03-28T00:36:19.403-07:00Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Adventures Beyond the Plausible MidfutureRickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-14936422078724358882010-12-04T20:54:01.415-08:002010-12-04T20:54:01.415-08:00Thank you!
I am, in fact, for hire - my email, a...Thank you! <br /><br />I am, in fact, for hire - my email, also on the front page of the blog, is<br /><br />lyonesse[at]compuserve.com<br /><br />The [at] is to defeat spambots; just replace with the standard little email addy squiggle.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-50239709375007761502010-12-04T11:44:03.632-08:002010-12-04T11:44:03.632-08:00Wow all I can say is that you are a great writer! ...Wow all I can say is that you are a great writer! Where can I contact you if I want to hire you?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-77542986344815981842010-11-11T18:05:08.459-08:002010-11-11T18:05:08.459-08:00Past comments on this blog have targeted environme...Past comments on this blog have targeted environmental catastrophe as the impetus to space colonization: if humanity absolutely had to colonize space to ensure its survival say within the next 100 years: How would it proceed: Would governments work together in a world coalition? Would a few competing coalitions form? -Or would it be every country for themselves? What would be the best avenue for constructing an off-Earth colony in the short term that could survive in the long term: a colony on Mars, Venus, the Moon, the asteroids, one or two large space habitats, several small space habitats, all of the above? Who would be allowed to go up to salvation and who would be forced to stay behind. . . and would they stay behind willingly. Deciding what ratios of races, religious, nationalities, classes, etc. that would be spared via 'Noah's Arks' and what divisions of humanity would be left behind to face the Great Flood Part Deux and/or Snowball Earth might make for an interesting, if potentially terrifying story.VonMalcolmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18396555975528915948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-29637614387590340642010-08-14T14:03:06.409-07:002010-08-14T14:03:06.409-07:00It doesn't matter why the first settlers go th...It doesn't matter why the first settlers go there for...the later generations will live there because that's their home...<br />Simply getting away from your neighbors might be enough for some.<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-43134705889107785772010-08-04T14:34:17.530-07:002010-08-04T14:34:17.530-07:00The problem of the music industry is due to inform...The problem of the music industry is due to information on the net being unsecure...a result of the Internet expanding out of control I think.<br /><br />For the moment, I'm trying to wrap my mind around something that people would live in interstellar colonies for. Industry? Cheap robotic factories in orbit. Mining? Two robots and a guy in Jovian orbit. Any more ideas?Turbo10knoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-6748440781653692412010-08-03T18:23:02.454-07:002010-08-03T18:23:02.454-07:00Automation and unemployment was an issue in vogue ...Automation and unemployment was an issue in vogue at midcentury, but things then didn't work out that way, and the issue faded. <br /><br />It could be rearing its head again, and in a more complicated way. There could be a real question about the future viability of capitalism, with the music industry a canary in the coal mine.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-84390928802078405122010-08-03T18:18:03.332-07:002010-08-03T18:18:03.332-07:00A couple of notes on population growth. I used 30 ...A couple of notes on population growth. I used 30 years to a generation, figuring the childbearing years from roughly 20 to 40. <br /><br />Doubling each generation, 10x per century, pretty well fits the historical case of Utah, which had relatively little in-migration from 1880 to 1980, and a Mormon culture that encouraged big families. <br /><br />On the scale of society needed for an industrial civilization, this is hard to measure! One metric: Sweden, with 8 million people, builds its own fighter jets, or used to. France, with 65 million people, builds jets, subs, and ballistic missiles, but to really do a space program it had to bring in the rest of Europe.<br /><br />Of course both those countries are embedded in a larger industrial civilization. Doing it in isolation would be cheaper in some ways (cheap oil!), but more expensive in many others.<br /><br />So I'd say that with industrial processes broadly like our own, 10 million might well be the practical limit for maintaining an industrial civilization. Techs such as 3-D printers could push this number down, but by how many orders of magnitude?Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-31449073512049869582010-08-03T10:31:04.524-07:002010-08-03T10:31:04.524-07:00In my view, Realistic[TM] futures are the bleakest...In my view, Realistic[TM] futures are the bleakest and most pessimistic ones. Remember Wall-E?<br />Technology advances to the point where we don't need specialists, that is after we put farmers and manual workers out of work...cos robots do them better.<br /><br />Simply, once a robot does something cheaper and faster than a person does it, that person gets sacked. Once the robot that keeps an eye on the first robot does its thing better than a person, person gets sacked. Unemployment FTW!!<br /><br />PS: Except video-game designers, writers and actors. Owait. The best actors today are digitally rendered :/Turbo10Knoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-8734325283620668312010-08-03T01:59:04.719-07:002010-08-03T01:59:04.719-07:00It's possible that by the time 3d printers hav...It's possible that by the time 3d printers have become cheap and mature enough for colonies to rely on them for most of their manufacturing, the most advanced products may be beyond their capabilities, if they include smart materials with microscopic components that can only be made by nanofactories.<br />Additionally, skilled programmers would probably be needed if new templates had to be added to the printer's memory, or if existing templates had to be modified beyond existing basic options such as colour, shape, etc. Unless the colony is a true post-scarcity society where the programmers can afford to program as a hobby, there will need to be a certain minimum population to support them and allow them to work full-time as specialists.<br /><br />R.C.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-87527378732026325502010-08-02T20:47:57.740-07:002010-08-02T20:47:57.740-07:00Reproductive success seems more like a trope from ...Reproductive success seems more like a trope from a Heinlein novel rather than what we can expect in the 21rst century.<br /><br />Ubiquitous communications and the Internet provide easy access to information and templates, steriolithography and 3D printing provide the ability to manufacture parts and even organs, while robotics provides the muscle. <br /><br />Having lots of people is nice (increasing human interaction is probably the true cause of culture and innovation) but not a necessary precondition to having and maintaining an advanced technological civilization.<br /><br />Still having and raising children is a primary biological drive, and unless we create post humans who are lacking these drives (and I suspect any post humans who are missing these drives will not be a successful species no matter how smart and aggressive they are), we will see the solar system and eventually the galaxy fill with our descendents.Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-51650643908088834312010-08-02T19:34:20.920-07:002010-08-02T19:34:20.920-07:00Women spending more time pregnant would be hard on...Women spending more time pregnant would be hard on gender equality, but the longer life spans that can be expected in the future would tend to counteract that since the fraction of her lifespan spent pregnant or looking after very young children would still be much smaller than on pre-industrial earth.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-70339932124710251242010-08-02T15:58:42.849-07:002010-08-02T15:58:42.849-07:00Rick's essay does talk about shorter doubling ...Rick's essay does talk about shorter doubling times, setting the limit at about once a generation, which assuming a generation is around 20 years gives five population doublings per century, or 10x overall increase per century.<br />Of course, the essay also points out that even doubling every century means around half the women of childbearing age are having three or four children. Doubling every 20 years suggests that most women are having more than that, and are starting to have them at a young age. For example, the Amish of North America have roughly this doubling rate, and among them the average family size is 8-10 children, with people marrying in their late teens or early twenties. Such large families and early marriages might have implications for the status of women in the colonies: do they have the same opportunities for education and employment as men, or is their place in society more as mothers and housewives? It may turn out that traditionalist groups like the Amish are more successful as colonists, or that colonists from mainstream society will grow to be more like them.<br /><br />R.C.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-49637906502315179792010-08-02T15:40:50.086-07:002010-08-02T15:40:50.086-07:00I agree with the comment made by Jim Baerg regardi...I agree with the comment made by Jim Baerg regarding how fast Humans can breed, but a question that hasn't been raised, and quite surprisingly, is how a new colony could be augmented by robotics. <br /><br />A fledging society with an infantile industrial base would certainly make use of automata powered by alternative renewable energy sources to handle the menial labour. It's possible that these machines would even proceed the presence of Humans at the colony world, construct the habitats, mining facilities, solar and wind farms etc... <br /><br />This would reduce the pressures of the initial Human population of having to breed out a work force.<br /><br />-SeanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-70278499750194096062010-08-02T12:35:23.115-07:002010-08-02T12:35:23.115-07:00I'd agree with Jim about how fast humans can f...I'd agree with Jim about how fast humans can fill up a world. Doubling the population 3 to 5 times a century sounds about right for the first few centuries of a new colony, so even a fairly small initial population can expand to fill a world in a relitively short period of time.<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-6686021539506106382010-08-02T12:18:51.446-07:002010-08-02T12:18:51.446-07:00"given a population doubling time of a centur..."given a population doubling time of a century"<br /><br />Which would be rather long for a population in a new colony system with an enormous amount of space to expand into. That doubling time would be equivalent to between 2 & 3 children per couple. 4 to 5 per couple was fairly typical during the post WWII baby boom & would give a doubling time of 20 to 30 years.<br /><br />IIRC 10 children wasn't uncommon in a geneology I saw for colonial era Massachusets, but something observed in a post-industrial revolution society would be more relevant to an off earth colony.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-63142648009003895922010-08-02T11:08:13.286-07:002010-08-02T11:08:13.286-07:00The estimate of 10,000 was intended to be the popu...The estimate of 10,000 was intended to be the population at the time of settlement, and would of course grow after that. My point was that a larger initial population was not necessarily needed to maintain a technological civilization.<br />Rick's essay points out that given a population doubling time of a century, it would still take a colony of 100,000 (ten times the low-end estimate) roughly 700 years to grow to a population of 10 million.<br /><br />R.C.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-52216496923618821472010-08-02T08:21:10.135-07:002010-08-02T08:21:10.135-07:00"For these reasons, it seems at least plausib..."For these reasons, it seems at least plausible that a colony with a population of ten thousand could maintain basic industrial technology, while the similarly sized Tasmanian population was unable to maintain its own."<br /><br />Actually it seems implausible that an extrasolar colony would not grow to much larger populations anyway. If there is a planet that is sufficiently earthlike that settlers can breath the air & grow crops in the open, it is hard to see how there could be insufficient living space to support many millions. If the extrasolar colonists are living in O'neill type habitats then a solar systems carrying capacity would be more in the range of trillions.<br /><br />A population of thousands would exist for only a brief period soon after initial settlment.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-66526846999331459942010-08-02T05:35:50.827-07:002010-08-02T05:35:50.827-07:00@ Jim Baerg
To me, there would be a number of dif...@ Jim Baerg<br /><br />To me, there would be a number of differences between an extrasolar colony and an isolated island society like that of Tasmania that would allow the former to maintain their technology where the latter did not.<br />Firstly, the colonists are deliberately setting out to found a new settlement on another world, while evidence suggests that the Tasmanians gradually migrated via a land bridge that was flooded at the end of the Last Ice Age.<br />Secondly, the colonists, no matter how tough and self-reliant, are still products of Earth's postindustrial civilization, and would therefore understand the concepts of progress and of improving the lives of themselves and their descendants. The Tasmanians, on the other hand, were hunter-gatherers, content to live the same lifestyle for millennia.<br />Finally, assuming FTL or high-speed STL travel, the colony will not be totally isolated from the rest of human society, and can therefore trade knowledge and materials with visiting ships. While trade did exist between Indonesia and Arnhem Land in the north of Australia for centuries, Tasmania appears to have remained virtually isolated from the flooding of the land bridge until the arrival of European explorers in the 17th century.<br />For these reasons, it seems at least plausible that a colony with a population of ten thousand could maintain basic industrial technology, while the similarly sized Tasmanian population was unable to maintain its own.<br /><br />R.C.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-46154799548214463592010-08-01T18:08:54.926-07:002010-08-01T18:08:54.926-07:00"I'd think that you'd need three to f..."I'd think that you'd need three to five times that number; ten times (5000)"<br /><br />I think that's a major underestimate. That is the estimated population of the Tasmanian aborigines, & over the 10000 years of their isolation they gradually *lost* technologies, including such relatively simple ones like fishing, awls, needles. (I have this information from "Guns, Germs, & Steel" by Jared Diamond.)<br /><br />To maintain an industrial level of technology, several million would be a more plausible minimum.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-80156625747670136282010-08-01T17:44:09.523-07:002010-08-01T17:44:09.523-07:00Welcome to another new commenter, and obviously a ...Welcome to another new commenter, and obviously a fan of <i>Starman Jones,</i> a book that hugely shaped my image of interstellar travel. <br /><br />Special thanks to Winch for an entertaining surprise - going to <a href="http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3bb.html" rel="nofollow">Atomic Rockets</a> and finding an essay I completely forgot writing (just past halfway down).<br /><br />Note that my population estimates are for classical opera colonies on shirtsleeves planets - if you are dealing with spacehabs it is a different story. IMHO it is <i>very</i> demanding for a spacehab or group of habs to be fully independent economically of habitable planets. <br /><br />Habitable planets, after all, are cheap to live on - that is more or less the meaning of 'habitable.'<br /><br />For habs to make it on their own you'd probably need to assume a techlevel so high as to be 'post specialist,' as Thucydides suggests above. Which starts to get close to those classic far future civilizations where everyone is artistic because the tech runs itself. <br /><br />But contrary to the idea that they'd be helplessly ignorant of their own tech, there could easily be geek and gearhead subcultures that play with the stuff not to 'preserve knowledge,' but because it is cool.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-7053742714958938622010-08-01T13:31:14.922-07:002010-08-01T13:31:14.922-07:00Looking at the posts on hanger queens and "sp...Looking at the posts on hanger queens and "space reefs" brings a thought to mind (which is probably better suited to "The Aesthetics of Space Travel")<br /><br />Spacecraft of any sort will need protection from space debris, the erosive effects of atomic oxygen and other assorted hazards, so a common design theme of near future spacecraft will be the erection of a protective canopy in the direction of travel. This could be a close in Whipple shield or a much larger wake shield (perhaps inflated and filled with a high density foam).<br /><br />Ships designed for long duration flights will resemble sailing ships with the inflated wake shield filing the field of view. Ships designed for even longer term duration missions might also stack items around the central core, giving the ship the rough outline of a bundle of pipes or a golf tee (flared out in the direction of travel to provide maximum protection against debris and radiation).<br /><br />This might not be possible for all types of ships or facilities (a wake shield to protect the solar panels and radiators of the ISS would be enormous), but given the potential of the problem, something along these lines might become standard practice (just as there are common engineering solutions to other problems, so bridges, ships, aircraft etc. look very similar despite the country of origin).Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-24116288766927483632010-08-01T12:39:23.871-07:002010-08-01T12:39:23.871-07:00@Cityside: That's a great article. To keep an ...@Cityside: That's a great article. To keep an old spaceship flying, you have to maintain parts and equipment that several generations old in terms of technology. Then there is the effects of just being space:<br /><br /><a href="http://setas-www.larc.nasa.gov/LDEF/index.html" rel="nofollow">Long Duration Exposure Facility</a><br /><br />The report on the experiment indicates that some of the experiments' failures was due to poor workmanship rather than exposure.<br /><br /><a href="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19960002004_1996102004.pdf" rel="nofollow">Analysis of systems hardware flown on LDEF</a><br /><br />What does this mean for the effects of weathering on a ship in space? Manufacture will have the biggest effect on how long a ship will last and not on exposure to space. This means "mass produced" space craft would have problems of outgassing of volatile materials, housings sealing shut because the washers melted, etc. <br /><br />However, LEO and exposure can degrade unprotected mirrors. Turns out that unprotected mirrors can have degraded behavior. It doesn't speak well for unprotected laser mirrors.<br /><br />But, as I said in the beginning, the biggest impediment to running an old spaceship is the electronics and flight systems hardware. Try taking a Gemini capsule out of the Air and Space Museum and make it spaceworthy again. It will cost you about as much, if not more, to refurbish it as it did to build it, let alone get it back into space again. <br /><br />So that 200 year old Firefly class freighter is a yard queen and will cost you more to keep running, than buying a new or relatively new ship.kedamono@mac.comhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07093125367755930224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-7272806876363150932010-07-31T11:15:34.080-07:002010-07-31T11:15:34.080-07:00One of the reasons for large numbers of people in ...One of the reasons for large numbers of people in order to maintain technological infrastructure was specialization, so many of the layers of infrastructure were not (strictly speaking) technological infrastructure at all. Under the tech staff, skilled mechanics and craftsmen/machinists etc. are layers of support workers to feed, house, transport, cloth and entertain everyone else.<br /><br />I can envision a plausible midfuture where many layers of support have been rendered redundant. (In the current future this has been achieved by outsourcing). Devices like "3D printers" reduce the need for skilled craftsmen to build prototypes or machinists to build tools and dies, and similar technology exists for medicine and food as well. Why import chefs and cooking staff if you have a 3D food "printer" which can mix and process food items (a recent MIT Technology Review article highlighted several types of high tech food processors)? If people accept high levels of genetic modification, they might have a photosynthetic layer where we have skin and not need much in the way of agriculture at all.<br /><br />Thinking farther into the future, skills could be downloaded from master craftsmen and either "embedded" into high tech devices or transferred to the person who needs these skills (admittedly Magitech, but who knows?). Even extending the idea of Google and ubiquitous communication devises leads to similar conclusions, with the added question of what happens to a society if the primary skill is referencing existing information rather than creating new things?<br /><br />I have mentioned in earlier posts that the mid future will probably sneak up on us unannounced, as small changes like cell phones becoming cheap and universal spread through society (who would have predicted the growth of texting, "Sousvellance" [ubiquitous coverage by cellphone camera wielding citizens rather than "top down" surveillance by a central authority], flashmobs and so on) rather than some single "big idea".Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-65099879434540103032010-07-31T01:36:01.843-07:002010-07-31T01:36:01.843-07:005000 couples equals 10,000 people in total, which ...5000 couples equals 10,000 people in total, which Rick gives as the absolute minimum for a viable technological colony in the essay I mentioned above, with 100,000 suggested as a better number, to ensure that the necessary number of specialists to maintain a technological civilization could be supported. A colony with a population much lower than 10,000 would either have to resign itself to a lower level of technology or would be an outpost relying on extensive imports from Earth.<br /><br />R.C.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-10717414701716378152010-07-30T19:50:35.103-07:002010-07-30T19:50:35.103-07:00Re: The Asgard:
http://www.neatorama.com/tag/vmf-...Re: The Asgard:<br /><br />http://www.neatorama.com/tag/vmf-kommuna/Citysidehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12358965842692099456noreply@blogger.com