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Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sat 07 May 2016, 11:49:44
by onlooker
Please, I do not swing that way. :-D

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sat 07 May 2016, 21:49:48
by Timo
AgentR11 wrote:I've always wondered about people who insist on telling the world who is on their ignore list. I'd never disclose such a thing, but that's just me.

Agent, you're on my ignore list.

Wait! My bad. If you had been i wouldn't have see this post.

Sorry. :roll:

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sat 07 May 2016, 23:43:17
by ralfy
AgentR11 wrote:I've always wondered about people who insist on telling the world who is on their ignore list. I'd never disclose such a thing, but that's just me.


I give them several chances to defend themselves, and if they continuously fail to do so, then I recap points raised and explain why I am putting them on ignore.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sat 07 May 2016, 23:48:28
by ralfy
Also, the irony is that space colonization is an example of "resettling."

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 00:33:44
by clif
Space colonization is an unprovable theory that will most probably never come to fruition, but fantastical dreamers do need an unrealistic dream don't they? Especially when trying so ever hard to deny the reality staring them in the face.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 02:07:27
by kiwichick
@ clif ............hope you are wrong ......what with our nearest star set to swallow up our planet and all!!!!!!

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 02:27:17
by SeaGypsy
Clif, strictly speaking, it's not even a theory, given that no serious theorist has solutions to a few key problems- long term living in zero gravity or adequate artificial gravity in a travelling vehicle, radiation illnesses & the biggies- meaningful speed in light years terms & communications between colonies light years apart. The optimists always find a way to not deal with the holes in their beloved theory, maybe the same psychology as deadset doomers won't deal with holes there.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 06:35:14
by vtsnowedin
SeaGypsy wrote:Clif, strictly speaking, it's not even a theory, given that no serious theorist has solutions to a few key problems- long term living in zero gravity or adequate artificial gravity in a travelling vehicle, radiation illnesses & the biggies- meaningful speed in light years terms & communications between colonies light years apart. The optimists always find a way to not deal with the holes in their beloved theory, maybe the same psychology as deadset doomers won't deal with holes there.

I was unaware of there being lines a theory had to cross to be a real theory? Is there some gathering of theorists where prospective theories are sent to be sorted between "real theories" and those that are merely ideas that are most likely dumb?

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 06:39:33
by onlooker
Some theories are more sound than others.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 08:01:52
by Lore
Yes, in science it's called the difference between a hypothesis and a theory.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 08:44:17
by Timo
SeaGypsy wrote:Clif, strictly speaking, it's not even a theory, given that no serious theorist has solutions to a few key problems- long term living in zero gravity or adequate artificial gravity in a travelling vehicle, radiation illnesses & the biggies- meaningful speed in light years terms & communications between colonies light years apart. The optimists always find a way to not deal with the holes in their beloved theory, maybe the same psychology as deadset doomers won't deal with holes there.

Agreed. Unfortunately, the optimists will proceed to answer all of these questions through...............

..........trial and error. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Keep trying until you get a different result.

Good luck, Elon.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 10:55:01
by vtsnowedin
Ahh!! but today's theories and dumb ideas are sometimes tomorrow's realities.
In 1865 Jules Vern theorized that men could reach the moon fired from a 900 foot long cannon built in Florida shooting a capsule built out of Aluminum holding three men. All this when human flight was still limited to hot air balloons. A hundred years later we launched three men to the moon in a space craft built primarily out of aluminum atop a rocket 363 feet tall with the portion that orbited the moon weighing 100,000 lbs and twelve feet ten inches in diameter. They even landed in the Pacific where Vern had predicted they would.
We have to dream before we can do and not having all the solutions to the whole problem shouldn't keep us from contemplating the what ifs that would arise if those solutions are eventually found.
"Kirk to engine room. Scotty give me warp seven" ..
But Capin I'm givin it all she's got"
You do realize there is a Klingon warship bearing down on us and our shields are down?
warp eight coming right up Cappin!!

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 18:22:55
by Subjectivist
vtsnowedin wrote:Ahh!! but today's theories and dumb ideas are sometimes tomorrow's realities.
In 1865 Jules Vern theorized that men could reach the moon fired from a 900 foot long cannon built in Florida shooting a capsule built out of Aluminum holding three men. All this when human flight was still limited to hot air balloons. A hundred years later we launched three men to the moon in a space craft built primarily out of aluminum atop a rocket 363 feet tall with the portion that orbited the moon weighing 100,000 lbs and twelve feet ten inches in diameter. They even landed in the Pacific where Vern had predicted they would.
We have to dream before we can do and not having all the solutions to the whole problem shouldn't keep us from contemplating the what ifs that would arise if those solutions are eventually found.
"Kirk to engine room. Scotty give me warp seven" ..
But Capin I'm givin it all she's got"
You do realize there is a Klingon warship bearing down on us and our shields are down?
warp eight coming right up Cappin!!


Indeed, I was reading today about a Finnish company that is deploying flex fuel combined cycle Diesel engine modular electric plants. Basically they took their complete line of very large marine diesels designed for big cargo ships, adapted them to burn anything from crude oil to natural gas, then figured out how to run the hot exhaust through a steam generator to make the whole thing super efficient for base load power generation. They claim they can get 51 percent plus thermal efficiency out of a combined cycle electric plant, and in colder countries where district heating is common like Scandinavia they claim trigeneration, direct electricity, steam electricity and steam district heating makes use of 95 percent of the thermal energy in the fuel. They have a power plant in Italy that runs on total biofuel. A major point in their sales pitch is their engines can efficiently run a full spectrum of fuels that would destroy the competing combined cycle gas turbine power plants because the turbines are much more delicate than beefy Diesel engines. Because of the way they operate the Diesel engines start up and run at a constant RPM at their peak efficiency, and they claim a 5 minute cycle from cold to full Diesel generator power. The steam portion requires 90-120 minutes to come up to full power, but that represents just a third of the output. The MAN Diesel company out of Germany offers a simpler modular power plant so this is not some pie in the sky pitch from one oddball company.

I am not saying we will have smooth sailing, but humans are very creative critters and they are not going to just quite because times are tough. The downslope from peak is going to be a fight ever step of the way, and whether we muddle through with our civilization still recognizable on the other side is an open question.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 May 2016, 22:40:05
by clif
Ahh!! but today's theories and dumb ideas are sometimes tomorrow's realities.
In 1865 Jules Vern theorized that men could reach the moon fired from a 900 foot long cannon built in Florida shooting a capsule built out of Aluminum holding three men. All this when human flight was still limited to hot air balloons. A hundred years later we launched three men to the moon in a space craft built primarily out of aluminum atop a rocket 363 feet tall with the portion that orbited the moon weighing 100,000 lbs and twelve feet ten inches in diameter. They even landed in the Pacific where Vern had predicted they would.
We have to dream before we can do and not having all the solutions to the whole problem shouldn't keep us from contemplating the what ifs that would arise if those solutions are eventually found.
"Kirk to engine room. Scotty give me warp seven" ..
But Capin I'm givin it all she's got"
You do realize there is a Klingon warship bearing down on us and our shields are down?
warp eight coming right up Cappin!!


The average speed in 1865 was about 30 mph by train, a little faster on the ocean using wind power if the conditions were right.. The train used a form of combustion for its power source, the very same physical-chemical type of power source used by those who travelled to the moon and back. the typical distance travelled in 1865 at the speeds were about 300 miles a day, or about 36 seconds of travel for the Apollo astronauts. The total distance travelled to the moon was approx 230,100 miles. slightly less than ten trips around the earth at the equator.

Any interstellar space trip is many magnitudes different. Alpha Centauri is the closest star to earth(actually Proxima Centauri in the same "system" is slightly closer, but since it is a dwarf star [about 0.123 solar masses] it most probably couldn't support life on any possible planet orbiting it.) The distance to Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light-years away. That’s about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km) away from Earth equal to about one billion trips around the planet at the equator. So I'm going to flatly state any type of travel based on the Apollo style propulsion isn't probably going to work, cause we cannot built a large enough rocket to store enough fuel for even a one way trip.

Also at even the rather fast 30,000 miles an hour speed achieved by the Apollo capsule it would take approximately 95129.375 years to make said trip. So we are going to have to build a ship that is going to serve as the only existence any person on board as their home for almost as long as humans in any form have existed on the planet. A ship that must work perfectly for many time longer than anything we have built on earth has existed, cannot lose energy in almost any form unless we can find and perfect an energy source that can sustain the entire ship for that long. The structure of said ship must be almost perfect, because trying to carry spare parts would quickly over load storage capacity, and trying to add extra energy for repair and maintenance also would significantly add to needed energy and possible supply storage.

Otherwise we are going to need to find a way to build a ship that can achieve speeds much faster, at the same time protect said ship going at unheard of speed from ANY collision from any object at all, not to mention the unknown energy source that could be relied in for thousands of years of travel. We are talking about a ship that is moving 10 times the speed of most physical celestial objects relative to the star we orbit. For reference the planet earth is moving approximately 66000 MPH in its path revolving the sun. Even at ten times this speed it would take about 425 years.

No we are still struggling to go any place except the moon a very close object in comparison, and this while the only planet we live on become ever more inhospitable every year. Imagine the task required for build said ship in space(because any very large ship couldn't be constructed in full on planet and launched. the construction would require a significant portion of the planets raw materials and manufacturing capacity for decades at best. At the same time peak oil looms on the horizon.

No I am not any kind of optimist on going any place very far at all.


PS: remember Gene Roddenberry had to invent a unknown element and physical process for his energy needs and invent a kind of travel that we currently don't even know is possible to jump across the distances he needed the Enterprise travel. Nice fiction which still remains nothing more.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 May 2016, 14:14:35
by Timo
WOW! Good thing Mars is a lot closer!

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 May 2016, 16:35:47
by Newfie
Terraform? Hell we can't terraform EARTH.

We are making it unlivable, UNterraform.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 May 2016, 17:14:18
by Lore
Logic says the poor people of the planet Earth will not be going anywhere. Let alone someplace less hospitable then the one we are making here.

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 May 2016, 17:34:52
by Timo
pstarr wrote:Timo, we have yet to figure out how to terraform the deep oceans here on earth, even Antarctic and Empty Quarter (in Saudi Arabia) in spite of the assumed vast wealth in those places. Where/how would we start on Mars?

Thermonuclear bombs exploded over the Martian poles! That will create (supposedly) an atmosphere that can eventually be developed for human habitation. I saw an interview with Uncle Elon explain the entire process of making Mars habitable. Sadly, though, he was more interested in talking about cars, and was short on details of his plans for Mars.

And don't forget what i said earlier about progress occurring through repetitious trial and error. If not thermonuclear bombs, then progress to hydrogen bombs. If that doesn't work, then we'll send up the Donald to negotiate a deal with Marvin the Martian for a 4-star resort hotel with an awesome view! Where there's a will, there's a way!

Re: The resettling begins

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 May 2016, 17:37:03
by Timo
Lore wrote:Logic says the poor people of the planet Earth will not be going anywhere. Let alone someplace less hospitable then the one we are making here.

Never underestimate the power of humans to defy logic.