tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post5577856990656025499..comments2024-03-28T00:36:19.403-07:00Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: A Song of Fire and IceRickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-26369577495400386172013-01-07T11:56:07.517-08:002013-01-07T11:56:07.517-08:00Just like the English colonists didn't find wh...Just like the English colonists didn't find what they were looking for, I suspect that any sort of economic speculation based on PGMs or other "here and now" sorts of speculation will also be wildly off base.<br /><br />Consider that the English found very little gold or silver, but got rich from timber, tobacco, cod fishing, fur trading, exporting maize (corn) and other agricultural produce, and used the profits to start setting up an industrial infrastructure. The implications for Mercury (or the rest of the Solar System) are similar; the people who get rich will be the ones who identify and profitably exploit what actually exists in the New Found Land; not what they are hoping to find.Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-30279878948720603302013-01-05T21:40:12.616-08:002013-01-05T21:40:12.616-08:00People might just have a more flexible sense of wh...People might just have a more flexible sense of what it means to be "there". If your robotic avatar can experience lots of it, and then it gets integrated into <i>your</i> mind such that it feels like you were actually there . . .Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-76895450558319685172013-01-05T20:01:07.164-08:002013-01-05T20:01:07.164-08:00Oh - forgot to add - there's a new front page ...Oh - forgot to add - there's a new front page post: <a href="" rel="nofollow">Worlds of Tau Ceti? Habitable For Whom? </a>Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-73101841265890105532013-01-05T19:59:37.047-08:002013-01-05T19:59:37.047-08:00Ferrell - great to see you back here!
Funny that ...Ferrell - great to see you back here!<br /><br />Funny that I flipped the title of the series. I think 'fire and ice' is the more common sequence as a general expression (which is probably why GRRM flipped it. And I suspect that - amplified by the TV show - people including me tend to think of the whole series as 'Game of Thrones.'<br /><br />Given my general view of colonization - that if it happens it will be a byproduct of space activity, not its main goal - I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Mercury were colonized. It is one of the less interchangeable Solar System bodies.<br /><br />Radical life extension invites all sorts of speculations. Would people become hyper-cautious? Or would a sort of boredom set in after a few hundred years? Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-8725616388241335452013-01-04T17:35:31.026-08:002013-01-04T17:35:31.026-08:00Brett, thanks, glad to be back.
I'm not entir...Brett, thanks, glad to be back.<br /><br />I'm not entirely sure that a Mercury colony would be profitable; However, I do know people and I'm fairly certain that if there is a way there, a small amount of people will go there. PGMs might be the main product, or it might be the support colony for an Antimatter production facility. Whatever the 'product' of the outpost, no matter what the reasonable expectation of getting rich is, there will be some that will see the place as somewhere to make a fortune. All that being said, I do think that it is technically possible to establish an industrial outpost of some sort on Mercury, and that it could be done by the end of this century. It wouldn't be cheap or easy, but it can be done. And, no, I don't think that it would be a good idea to "wait until the technology advances enough to make the task safe and routine"...there are some people who don't realize that challanges, even dangerous ones, are what drives human inovation and that the two can't be decoupled one from the other. There are people that won't do things (like colonize other planets) for the simple reason that it isn't hard, or dangerous, or lacks even a ghost of a chance of winning riches. However those opertunities come about, I think that at the turn of the 22nd century a Mercury outpost is a real possibility; I also see (in the here and now), a rich opertunity for a host of stories set in a Mercury outpost.<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-31342692667105880142013-01-04T13:47:38.805-08:002013-01-04T13:47:38.805-08:00Sorry, that post makes me sound more pessimistic a...Sorry, that post makes me sound more pessimistic about manned spaceflight than I actually am. <br /><br />I'm actually fairly optimistic about the prospects of manned spaceflight . . . in the longer term (decades and centuries down the line). Stuff that is too expensive even for billionaires to afford now might be affordable for a richer, more advanced future society. Moreover, remotely controlled- and autonomous-robots can really help with space colonization and work, even if in the short-term they substitute for astronauts. <br /><br />Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-42910102616577585312013-01-04T00:29:45.210-08:002013-01-04T00:29:45.210-08:00@Ferrell
Well, it's been a couple of months, s...@Ferrell<br /><i>Well, it's been a couple of months, so I'll try to not lose my temper and stay on topic.</i><br /><br />Good to have you back. If it's any consolation, the thread probably won't turn into the mess we've seen in the past unless someone diverts it on to the top of re-usable bi-propellant rocketry. <br /><br /><i><br />There is a natural human tendency to go and try to make your fortune in even the most godawful of places. Going to a mining outpost on Mercury probably sounds crazy to 99% of everyone, but that last 1% is who will make it a possibility...if they can get there. That the planet has everything needed for a small colony, including the long-shot of riches, will attract a certain type of person. If people can get there, they'll go.</i><br /><br />I'm not convinced there are riches there, though. All we have are extremely high per-kilogram market prices for Platinum Group Metals, and the economy has adapted by using much less of them. We don't know whether there's actually a sustainable demand for them at a price point that would pay for mining them off-world, or whether dumping them on Earth after billions of dollars in investment would just crash the market price and leave the investors deeply in the red. <br /><br />It's not like the colonization of the Americas. The closest equivalent would be Columbus's royally funded expedition. Even then, it would have just been a curiosity if Columbus hadn't found the Carribean islands, and then been able to go back the next year with enough troops and ships to turn them into profitable colonies (at the price of the local inhabitants, who were enslaved and eventually extinguished). <br /><br />Others just followed in that path. The English expeditions were using known technology that was far cheaper than spaceflight by comparison (a hundred reasonably prosperous people could charter a trans-Atlantic voyage), and they went looking for gold and silver in the hopes of duplicating the highly lucrative Spanish expeditions. Instead, they discovered cash crops that created up to 1000% profit if you survived the first year, or they found pre-shaped areas where the inhabitants had conveniently been decimated by disease (the Pilgrims and later New England colonists). <br /><br />The closest equivalent to space resource riches is offshore oil extraction, where companies spend billions on facilities in order to extract oil and gas for profit. Even then, oil and gas have the advantage of pre-existing systems of processing and distribution, as well as known and virtually guaranteed demand. <br /><br /><br />Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-28042739769668469182012-12-28T21:35:10.072-08:002012-12-28T21:35:10.072-08:00Well, it's been a couple of months, so I'l...Well, it's been a couple of months, so I'll try to not lose my temper and stay on topic.<br /><br />There is a natural human tendency to go and try to make your fortune in even the most godawful of places. Going to a mining outpost on Mercury probably sounds crazy to 99% of everyone, but that last 1% is who will make it a possibility...if they can get there. That the planet has everything needed for a small colony, including the long-shot of riches, will attract a certain type of person. If people can get there, they'll go.<br /><br />I've never read the book featured in the post title; it sounds complicated and somewhat familier. Even so, I might check it out, some time.<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-86836467315676612992012-12-23T11:25:30.229-08:002012-12-23T11:25:30.229-08:00Statistical calculations do not mean that one pers...Statistical calculations do not mean that one person in particular will live to be 1000, or even 1,000,000 years, it simply suggests that the average age of an otherwise physically immortal person will be 1000 when they slip in the shower or get hit by an asteroid.<br /><br />There are obviously lots of things that could change this; if spaceflight is relatively common and inexpensive there will be far more opportunities for fatal accidents. Culture will also be a factor; immortals might become very cautious, but they might also become bored and become thrill seekers.<br /><br />Still, if the average age of death in an immortal society is 1000, that is still 10X longer than the maximum age today, which would have all kinds of implications (consider the simple one of a savings account compounding over 1000 years, to start).Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-40457973307612642022012-12-20T20:50:10.024-08:002012-12-20T20:50:10.024-08:00@Geoffrey S H
The notion of population just increa...@Geoffrey S H<br /><i>The notion of population just increasing until doomsday always seemed a little silly to me- people do get old eventually after all. The longevity gene thing does make up for that of course, but "tired depleted earth" does seem to have become a cliche. </i><br /><br />Moreover, you'd expect near-immortality to cause the annual birth rate to drop even lower - perhaps drastically lower after the initial burst in population from people no longer dying of old age. It could even drop low enough so that the births accumulating over time are outweighed by deaths from various accidents or crime. <br /><br />@Geoffrey S H<br /><i>Am currently reading red mars now- look forward to reading the other two!</i><br /><br />You're reading the best book of the three, then. <i>Green Mars</i> has some very interesting stuff, particularly with new Martian and from-Earth characters (I won't spoil you), but it's still a weaker book than <i>Red Mars</i>. And <i>Blue Mars</i> is a mess, with some good ideas but abysmal pacing and dire need of editing.<br /><br />It seems like what KSR <i>really</i> wants to write, when free of editorial control, is tons of scenes of people fiddling around in nature hiking, running, and mountain climbing. <br /><br />@Thucydides<br /><i>Outside of SF, statistically, an Immortal would live to about 1000 years before a fatal accident claimed them, and it has also been speculated that the human brain would reach full capacity after 1000 years (no more room for memories).</i><br /><br />I think it would realistically be a lot lower than that. If you've got forever to live, you're going to be much more cautious in what you do - and a lot of risky activities depend on how you insert yourself into them. A society with medical immortality is also likely to have a bunch of technologies for treating injuries.<br /><br />It's not like you're going to walk out of your house into a clear day 2000 years hence and get struck by lightning.Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-85502228335808336842012-12-20T19:53:16.725-08:002012-12-20T19:53:16.725-08:00Will McCarthy has also written a few novels where ...Will McCarthy has also written a few novels where immortal elites ruled the Solar System, and the travails of the younger generation seeking their place in such a society.<br /><br />Outside of SF, statistically, an Immortal would live to about 1000 years before a fatal accident claimed them, and it has also been speculated that the human brain would reach full capacity after 1000 years (no more room for memories).Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-38557833923845371172012-12-20T15:33:45.575-08:002012-12-20T15:33:45.575-08:00The notion of population just increasing until doo...The notion of population just increasing until doomsday always seemed a little silly to me- people do get old eventually after all. The longevity gene thing does make up for that of course, but "tired depleted earth" does seem to have become a cliche. <br /><br />Am currently reading red mars now- look forward to reading the other two!Geoffrey S Hnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-51720687147699792752012-12-20T12:59:41.943-08:002012-12-20T12:59:41.943-08:00@Geoffrey S H
That sounds like a good read, so I&...@Geoffrey S H<br /><br />That sounds like a good read, so I'll check it out. <br /><br />Some authors get close to that, but the tendency is still to rely on over-population as the driving force. KSR's <i>Blue Mars</i>, for example, has Earth going through a political and economic transformation that ends with everyone basically getting access to a longevity treatment wherein they can live for "a thousand years"*. This leads to sudden and massive population growth, followed by expansion beyond Mars to the outer solar system and beyond. Even then, though, the main focus is on over-population as the driver. <br /><br />* I put "thousand years" in parenthesis because nobody in the book actually knows if that's true. The oldest people known in the setting are in their 250s, and they have some health issues (such as heart arrhythmia and memory problems). Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-89711812346781003262012-12-20T12:49:00.715-08:002012-12-20T12:49:00.715-08:00"The Quiet War" by Paul Macauley has the..."The Quiet War" by Paul Macauley has the problem of entrenched long living elites in the background- it drives the jovian moons' youngsters out to the edges of the solar system in an attempt to escape their control which prompts earth to try and check their advance out of fear of them multiplying and becoming too powerful.<br />Its a pretty good book- even has some good science in it without excessive technobabble.Geoffrey S Hnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-27707484956882442582012-12-19T15:00:39.419-08:002012-12-19T15:00:39.419-08:00I promise, this will be my last post until someone...I promise, this will be my last post until someone else responds-<br /><br />I've never read any SF where immortality and entrenched political/economic elites led to space colonization, even though that actually strikes me as one of the more plausible "push" factors in a richer future society with better robots. Imagine if the boss - at work or in elected office - <i>never</i> retired, so the only way to get him out was to either put him out of business, revolt, or vote him out of office against a strong tendency towards incumbency. Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-2396087925586084312012-12-19T14:01:37.251-08:002012-12-19T14:01:37.251-08:00This is a little divergent, but since it's the...This is a little divergent, but since it's the most recent thread . . . <br /><br />I've been thinking about the "nuclear" vs "solar" power for a solar electric system. I agree with Rick that we probably ought to aim for the Solar Electric in the inner solar system (if we use it at all - we might just use chemical rockets), but would we need it in the outer solar system? <br /><br />I was wondering if you could instead do a combo solar electric/chemical rocket that would use the chemical rockets to slow down a spacecraft headed outward, and get a ship in the outer solar system headed inward, but I don't know if that works mathematically. <br /><br />Or you could just do the Isaac Kuo-esque set-up of having big powerful lasers to speed up and slow down spacecraft moving over interplanetary distances. :D That actually strikes me as the best way to get to "torch drive" speeds throughout the solar system, since you could front-load all the power requirements needed to accelerate/decelerate the ship. It's easier to have big reactors/solar panels in fixed positions near convenient power supplies than to stick them on a ship where mass is everything. <br /><br /><br />Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-44516053201856148172012-12-19T13:51:53.417-08:002012-12-19T13:51:53.417-08:00@Thucydides
By the time industry gets to Mercury, ...@Thucydides<br /><i>By the time industry gets to Mercury, we may not actually need to go there ourselves. I can envision something similar to lichen or stromatolites (either mechanical or some genetically engineered life form) which extracts minerals or metals of interest, and an ecology of other mechanical or engineered "plants" and "animals" that metabolize the various products and transforme them into something "we" want.</i><br /><br />Like Tiberium from "Command and Conquer"? <br /><br />Seriously, though, it's probably a good idea. We already have companies doing work on sifting through "junk" rock to extract low-concentration metals, so it might be possible to create micro-organisms that could do that with "junk rock" on Mercury. <br /><br />Of course, the problem is that if you have super-metal-mining-recovery technology, that stuff probably works just as well on Earth and in the places where you're actually planning to live . . . and doesn't require you to send mined metals up the gravity well of the Sun. <br /><br /><i>Magsail superconductors would be one ideal product since then the end products can be shipped across the solar system, but by the 22nd century there will be processes in use that have not even been imagined today.</i><br /><br />A high-temperature superconductor like that is one of those Wouldn't It Be Nice technologies, like fusion power. I'd love to have it, but . . . Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-62228961113077704702012-12-12T15:22:56.703-08:002012-12-12T15:22:56.703-08:00By the time industry gets to Mercury, we may not a...By the time industry gets to Mercury, we may not actually need to go there ourselves. I can envision something similar to lichen or stromatolites (either mechanical or some genetically engineered life form) which extracts minerals or metals of interest, and an ecology of other mechanical or engineered "plants" and "animals" that metabolize the various products and transforme them into something "we" want.<br /><br />Magsail superconductors would be one ideal product since then the end products can be shipped across the solar system, but by the 22nd century there will be processes in use that have not even been imagined today.Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-71911865914603852952012-12-12T04:05:23.892-08:002012-12-12T04:05:23.892-08:00Colonies on Mercury might be possible in a couple ...Colonies on Mercury might be possible in a couple of specific forms. There could be colonies at the poles that mine the ice in shadowed areas and are powered by solar cells mounted on natural or artificial 'peaks of eternal light'.<br /><br />Elsewhere, there could be colonies that mine heavier elements. These would probably have to be nomadic, working at a particular site during the long night then moving before the dawn comes.<br /><br />The relocations might either be short and often, keeping just ahead of the terminator, or long and less often, moving to an area where night has just fallen, giving several weeks to work. These colonies might be powered by solar power satellites, probably kept aloft by statites, since Mercury's rotation is too slow to allow a stationary orbit.<br /><br />BTW, it's 'A Song of Ice and Fire', not 'A Song of Fire and Ice'. Also, as Brett says, there isn't really much resemblance to the Wars of the Roses.<br /><br />The Yorks and Lancasters were rival offshoots of the Plantagenets, while the Stark/Lannister rivalry is more about their relationship with the king, who is of a different House, but was raised with the current head of House Stark, and married the daughter of the head of House Lannister.<br /><br />R.C.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-40240619965412295752012-12-10T02:58:37.302-08:002012-12-10T02:58:37.302-08:00Presumably magnetic sails work well close to Mercu...Presumably magnetic sails work well close to Mercury. If so, and if you can find all the right minerals to cook up superconductors somewhere down there, you could rig up an automated factory that only ever sends ships outwards. That eliminates most of the problems with the delta-V requirements.<br /><br />It would be fun if superconducting cable was the only significant export. The outgoing "spaceships" could be just a huge bundled loop of cable with a little power and alignment unit strapped to it. Throw them into orbit somehow and let your products deliver themselves.longbeasthttp://mrp.ath.cx/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-24830482895507858622012-12-09T12:31:07.165-08:002012-12-09T12:31:07.165-08:00I doubt you'll see anyone settle permanently o...I doubt you'll see anyone settle permanently on Mercury, at least not anything we would recognize as modern human (I won't rule out sentient robots and transhuman cyborgs, assuming they ever come into existence). <br /><br />You <i>could</i> see scientific outposts set up there, though. That would require some major advances in interplanetary travel, but it seems reasonable for that to happen if the technology and money are there for it. It's a whole world to explore. Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-69395479306861439072012-12-09T09:40:08.820-08:002012-12-09T09:40:08.820-08:00Mercury has the positive attributes of having acce...Mercury has the positive attributes of having access to huge amounts of solar energy, being a repository of dense elements like metals and enough gravity to make operations on the surface relatively easy.<br /><br />The downsides are a pretty terrifying environment, and being at the bottom of a deep gravity well.<br /><br />How a presumptive PMF or PFF civilization works these pluses and minuses will be interesting to contemplate, and from that you may guess at what sort of society emerges on Mercury (assuming there is any reason to settle there in the first place). Thucydideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828932214842106266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-85381505095897478742012-12-09T08:59:31.342-08:002012-12-09T08:59:31.342-08:00Brett:
"That was my point, though. Unless y...Brett:<br /> <br /><i>"That was my point, though. Unless you can increase the anti-matter production rate an order of magnitude beyond what even NASA thought was possible, and then build a gigantic amount of those accelerators, you're just not going to generate enough antimatter in any reasonable time-frame for use in an interstellar mission.</i>"<br /><br />We're talking about something so far beyond our current capabilities that it's safe to assume that if it can be done at all, we'll find a way to do it within a reasonable amount of time.Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-63345305775542499052012-12-08T22:20:30.042-08:002012-12-08T22:20:30.042-08:00That was my point, though. Unless you can increase...That was my point, though. Unless you can increase the anti-matter production rate an order of magnitude beyond what even NASA thought was possible, and then build a gigantic amount of those accelerators, you're just not going to generate enough antimatter in any reasonable time-frame for use in an interstellar mission. Bretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05741738070067590221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-82080881045068195832012-12-08T19:16:37.248-08:002012-12-08T19:16:37.248-08:00Brett:
"That's why the NASA report more...Brett: <br /><br /><i>"That's why the NASA report more or less dismissed antimatter as a fuel source in of itself, but argued that it could be useful as part of a fusion rocket."</i><br /><br />Not what I was talking about. I was talking about the engineering utility of antimatter as an energy storage solution. I'm not interested in specific applications<br /><br />If I was talking about applications, I'd be thinking more along the lines of interstellar travel, which means using antimatter anihilation to heat a reaction mass (or to power the <i>Enterprise</i>). <i>That</i> would require the kind of antimatter production you can only get by capturing solar energy close to the Sun.Tonynoreply@blogger.com