[anon8764]

www.et3.com gradually leading up to the top of everest, jettisoning the capsule (6,500 km/h (4,000 mph)) to break out of the atmosphere.

I have not done the math, physics, etc on this, but it's an interesting idea worth exploring.

But that said, do we really belong in space when we cannot care for our own? Wouldn't that be akin to giving sugar to ants? only multiplying suffering and cruelty exponentially in space? Perhaps a refactoring of our culture and our methods of using/allocating/expending resources should be our first priority.

[grogenaut]

If people had waited to leave Europe until the 1970s the culture had been "refactored" enough for the masses, I doubt the world would have advanced as far as it had and the pressure of the population growth from industrialization would have caused some real issues. Actually I think it might be refactored even worse for the masses. Letting the average person go out and build new things helped a lot.

Also, do you really think we can only fix one problem at a time? Did the birth of the transistor stop the civil rights movement?

[anon8764]

Perhaps technology has advanced too fast for the "culture". Perhaps we should design our intentions before we build the tech, and not the other way around. Look at NASA for inspiration on design and forethought.

[ZenoArrow]

I don't know why you're being downvoted, those ideas make perfect sense to me. Thoughts about how we want to structure our society should drive decisions on technology, we shouldn't have to adapt society to new technology if the society decides against using it.

[grogenaut]

The problem with this is you're designing based on your current world view and assumptions. When does this type of planning ever work and actually stand up to 20 years of history? 40? 100? In the 50's the us was DESIGNED around the car and suburbs. That worked well.

[ZenoArrow]

> "The problem with this is you're designing based on your current world view and assumptions. When does this type of planning ever work and actually stand up to 20 years of history?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...

With a few exceptions, that's been working since the 70's.

[anon8764]

My logic is based on numbers. Earth Population, Imaginary lines in the sand, War over money. These are not signs of intelligence, especially when they have only 1 planet to survive on that gets more populated every day with little regard to long-term resource management, although I am proud of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. :)

This type of planning worked for Voyager (NASA/JPL).

fyi: cars suck. Dirty, inefficient, and it follows the same logic of giving every person in a 200 person hotel an individual elevator. It makes no sense, when you can instead design cities and transportation to be like the site I linked above (www.et3.com).

It's their choice though, if they want faster horses instead of cars, so be it. If they want faster cars instead of et3, so be it.

They prop and fall on their own sword I suppose.

[grogenaut]

You mistake that I don't agree with you about how it should be. I just think we should deal with how it is and manage the chaotic system.

[reitanqild]

(anon8764 was downvoted when I wrote this.)

I disagree but still upvoted this to get it to 0. I find the tought interesting but wrong. It seems more suffering is caused by various misguided attempts at refactoring culture etc and less by technology.

National socialism and communism are two widely known attempts at refactoring culture that has created more misery than all technological advances combined so far.

[anon8764]

I prefer a Resource-based Economy (rather than the failed money-strived attempts) that has a central hub for resource-distribution to all humans based on global reserves to raise the standard of living for all instead of a select few which every monetary system has ultimately created.

This would make an interesting topic to discuss how to design this system with our current tech, but that's another thread altogether.

[noir_lord]

Pushing boundaries technologically has a tendency to pull others along with it, accessing space cheaply would have the potential to create entire new markets and access to new resources all of which would help in the long term everyone else.

[iamcurious]

Interesting, let's say it should be our first priority, how does that translate into action? Please remember that mobilizing large amounts of people towards a goal is hard problem, specially when the goal involves copious amounts of research and experiment.

[anon8764]

I personally believe people do not deserve to go to space yet.

They haven't mastered the ability to house, clothe, and feed the human family yet, despite having the technical ability to do so. As a result of this, you see the derivatives that exist today. Walk among Miami at night and you see homeless crackheads muttering to themselves while sipping on beer. The conditions that cause a person to do this would be probabilistically lower with a society that cares about one another more [designed-in] instead of fighting amongst each-other for paper slips.

If we absolutely need to go to space, we require research to determine the amount of materials needed to build this track length, and the renewability of those materials in reference to the earth. If this request for the materials meets a certain threshold, it will be dispensed, otherwise, the remaining materials can be reserved for further research to create synthetic alternatives. It helps to have a global database of known resources and their reserves, in fact, it might be a crucial requirement.

Imagine culling redis for this information, it sends a request to the global cybernetic hub, and it permits or denies the request, along with the terminal node you requested it to be sent to...

example: I request 13 Ounces of Gold (AU) at terminal #324-214-495-2341 to perform an experiment. (Since gold is currently in enough abundance for my request it is sent to my terminal as soon as technically possible, and any of the resource I do not use or can scrap back to the global hub, is done so)

[iamcurious]

So all resources are to be distributed from a central organization. Pray, who will be decide this? How will disputes will be solved when, inevitably, an armed group decides to use resources some other way?

Also, the whole point of leaving earth is leaving scarcity. There are meteorites with gold, we can and we should mine them as we see fit.

[anon8764]

By creating abundance, it lessens the need and purpose for armies to take resources from others. There are no armies I am aware of that invade and conquer for Oranges, but they do for Oil.

To complete your second statement, why do you believe we should mine them for gold when we cannot efficiently manage them here on Earth to begin with?

[anon8764]

Also keep in mind that Elon Musk is trying this, but as a bastardization of its potential. What do I mean by this? The shortest distance between two points is a straight line (currently). Look at a map. The cities that were cultivated where they are geographically located are influenced by (Water + Politics + Monetary incentives to build roads closer to smaller cities to draw business (corruption) ) So if this hyperloop does pick up, it will be a horrible expenditure of resources.

[iamcurious]

I didn't follow this. How is the hyperloop related to space? Also what exactly would it be a horrible expenditure of resources?

[anon8764]

The hyperloop could be related to space if they decide to experiment with slightly altering the trajectory to lead into space, giving it an edge energy-wise to break out of the atmosphere.

It would be a horrible expenditure of resources because when you look at a map of where humans designed and placed their cities, they are inefficient for travel and resource distribution.

Example: Manufacturing parts are created in Tennessee, shipped to Michigan, Manufactured in Michigan, and shipped to Florida to sell/distribute.

Instead, why not ship the raw materials to a equidistant manufacturing node/plant, create the material there, then distribute it. It's not done this way (most efficient) because money/corruption incentivizes backwards thinking of keeping "jobs" in sectors that are a waste of energy to complete and continue. Interesting times we live in.

Here is an example of an efficient and effective city design: http://i.imgur.com/shnIgHn.jpg