You missed one. A third thing it is good for is grid level load leveling. If there is storage capacity in the power network you can significantly reduce the effect of fluctuating demand to the companies generating the power. Coal and nuclear plants take a while to respond to changing demand. If demand spikes then the power stations have more time to react.

To an outside observer. I don't think it's the same in the inertial frame.

Before we call this real, we need to put one on some object in orbit, leave it in continuous operation, and use it to raise the orbit by a measurable amount large enough that there would not be argument regarding where it came from. The Space Station would be just fine. It has power for experiments that is probably sufficient and it has a continuing problem of needing to raise its orbit.

And believe me, if this raises the orbit of the Space Station they aren't going to want to disconnect it after the experiment. We spend a tremendous amount of money to get additional Delta-V to that thing, and it comes down if we don't.

Which is exactly what I said. Consumption (delivery) of power is a variable cost. If you consume no power because you have solar panels then no cost is incurred to the power company. Maintaining the infrastructure to deliver that power is largely a fixed cost so if an end consumer wants to tie into the grid they should rightly incur their share of the cost of maintaining that infrastructure.

Those are variable costs as they vary with units of power sold.

Simply part of the variable cost of power sold. Similar to shoplifting losses for a retail store. It's a known part of the cost of the product being sold. If they don't sell the power then no cost is incurred to buy it or produce it.

What price the power company pays for the power delivered to end customers and where it comes from is largely irrelevant to the end customer. Electrons are fungible assets. Whether they produce it themselves or they buy it on the spot market or buy it on contract isn't important as far as you and I are concerned. They are paying for some fixed amount of grid maintenance and some variable amount of power delivery regardless of who actually produces the power. The equation doesn't change just because they buy the power from a third party.

I'm a certified cost accountant in my day job and this argument falls flat if they are actually charging in a rational manner for their services. The cost of maintaining the grid is (or should be) a separate charge from the cost of the electricity you actually use. Maintenance is a (roughly) known fixed cost, usage is a variable cost. If the person maintains a connection to the grid it is a fairly straightforward proposition to charge them a flat rate for the privilege which covers their portion of the infrastructure maintenance. Infrastructure maintenance cost is not generally strongly dependent on usage for electricity so they don't have wear issues as a general rule. If they aren't separating charges like this then they are Doing It Wrong.

The only reason the utilities have to be upset is just that they aren't making as much money.

Thanks!

Brian Webb isn't listing this on his Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule yet. I think he's going to wait until someone official tells him a date.

With some optimism that might only be thousands of years rather than hundreds of Millions.

But it's only necessary for Earth to be uninhabitable for a short time to end the Human race. And that can happen due to man or nature, today. If people aren't somewhere else during that process, that's the end.

In my experience it's mostly disinterest and/or fear. They haven't needed it most of their lives, they are quite set in their ways and they aren't terribly interested in learning something new. They will loudly proclaim how they "just don't get this stuff" but usually that's an excuse for not wanting to learn because their brains work fine. If it's really easy the might give it a whirl but if learning requires real effort they usually cannot be bothered.

The guys who own my company are about 70. They are quite intelligent but will repeatedly ask me the same questions ("how do I print this", etc) despite having been given the explanation plenty of times. It has nothing to do with their brain but they just don't care about the answer so they don't bother committing it to memory. Easier to just ask someone else who has bothered to care.

Wrong. It is because of economics. There simply isn't enough business available to support a competitive set of ISPs where I live. I live in a town with about 10,000 residents on the distant outskirts of a major metro area. There is zero chance that any new ISP would be able to win enough business to make the investment worth their while.

I have a phone company and a cable company both of which could offer service to my residence but do not offer equivalent service. The phone company technically provides DSL service to near me but it is FAR slower and economically a non-starter. The only other option is to go LTE through the mobile phone providers but due to data caps that too is an economic non-starter. It's just not competitive at all and there is no reasonable prospect of it becoming so no matter what my local government does.

Even if my locality were to invite every ISP in the world to come play the simple fact is that in the semi-rural area where I live there isn't enough business to support more than one or two lines to my house. Since the government does not require the ISP to be separate from the company providing the wire to the house then there is effectively no way for any new entrants to make money. The capital costs of building out their own network are astronomical so there has to be a pretty substantial company backing it and enough business they can capture to make it worth their while.

I don't. The economics of the situation are plain and a regulated monopoly will get me better service than any feasible set of competitors where I live. The best case I could realistically hope for is a duopoly which isn't a prospect to get excited about.

Who is your ISP? Mine is Comcast and they very much deserve to be regulated rather heavily. I have a "choice" of precisely one ISP where I live and I can assure you that they abuse the privilege. I want them to provide me a pipe to my house and get out of the way. They do not need to be in the business of determining what speed packets should be delivered to my location. Particularly if they start prioritizing their own content (Comcast owns NBC for instance) over what I actually want to watch. There is NO benefit to me as the consumer for my local telecom monopoly to not be regulated. None.

Which is where they go off the rails because there is no such thing as "the correct amount of regulation". There is a range of regulations that work and beyond it they don't work. There is no one right answer. You can have a more socialist country or a more capitalist one and both can work just fine. This isn't supposition on my part - there are plenty of real world examples of both. There is a range of what works. Some amount of regulation is absolutely required for a society to function. Beyond that there is a range of quantity of regulation that works. Further on you can over-regulate things to death.

The problem libertarians frequently have is they tend to confuse less regulation with being better. Sometimes that's true but frequently it isn't. It's the same mistake a lot of conservatives make regarding taxes - thinking less always equals better when that is demonstrably not true. Sometimes the regulations we have exist for very good reasons but some let ideology get in front of what actually works. You might prefer less regulation to more and that's a fine viewpoint to have but when one gets to the point where you are screeching that all regulations are bad then you no longer are arguing the facts.

Exactly. And thinking all regulation is good is just as stupid.

Actually I was thinking nuclear power rather than magic.

I agree with the other commenter, there will be lots of people living in space if they can only get there. Mars is a good start.

Do you have a time machine?

Obviously I am missing something, then. Please fill me in on your better information sources. Email to bruce at perens dot com if you don't want to put them on Slashdot.

It's time to start planning another trip to Lompoc. The Motel 6 was sort of yukky last time. Maybe I'll try something else. There was an official visitor observation site that I found and got into last time, but that was for the Delta, and it was on Pad 4 if I remember correctly. This one is all the way on the other side of the base on Pad 7 or 8, isn't it? There are some farm roads that might be good observation sites if they are open.

I am not confident that the world will remain a hospitable place for life until we are ready by your standard.

Getting the resources and people there is very close to being within our technical capability. The task ourselves, if we perform it, will take care of the remaining gaps.

Creating a self-sustaining colony outside of the Earth's environment is going to need a lot of work, but it is not work that can ever be achieved on this earth. We have to actually put people in space to achieve this. Our best experience so far is with submarines. Academic research has so far yielded only farcial frauds like Biosphere II.