Did I just read a computer analogy in an article about cars?

Is that really 'admission' rates? I mean, technically, semantically, I guess you could call it admission rates because it's literally the number of people of people entering the program because there are so few seats.

But really, in the vernacular, 'admission rates' have to do with the filtering process of who is allowed to enter based on qualifications, not if there's a seat available. Saying there's a low admission rate to me implies that their standards are too high, overfiltering applicants so that too few people are participating in the programs.

I guess I would have titled this article entirely differently, citing a lack of CAPACITY, not a low admission rate.

...ok this is probably a stupid question, but why would such a spill be the US's responsibility any more than say, a spill off Madagascar?

Yes, certainly, if it's within the small share of US waters off Alaska, but if you look at territorial claims on the arctic it's a relatively small sliver that the US even optimistically claims. A far, far larger share of arctic waters would be the responsibility of Canada, Russia, and/or Norway - let them sort it out.

Because the discussion is about colonising the galaxy. Maybe the reason we haven't seen any other civilisations is that they reach a point where they are comfortable and see no reason to expand beyond their home planet.

None of them amounted to anything. Post scarcity societies go nowhere. They don't explore or invent things. Its a dead end.

But also the path from African human populations to space flight relied on many chance events. The geography had to be just right. Migration had to be easy enough to be possible for stone age people, but hard enough to provide a break from the old ways. The US finally made it to the moon, but that was after two distinct migrations: Africa to Europe and Europe to America. Along the way there had to be enough energy to keep humans from freezing to death in the north, but enough free time to do R&D, for hundreds of years running. The second world war could have wiped us out, because we finished it off with fission bombs, but then stopped using them, but without that experience and the cold war, the Apollo program wouldn't have happened.

"but even that has a fairly short practical limit."
nope. Any signal that has ever broadcast anywhere and has had time to get here can be picked up, you just need a big enough antenna.

I did some research, and in order to pick up a TV level signal 100 light years away, we could built an antenna the size of Rhode Island in space.

That sound big, but if you could it out of small piece you can send and it can attach itself, we could do it for not much money every year. The great thing is we could just keep adding and get more and more 'fainter' signals.

egomaniac much?

We deserves life, and the stars.
we crawled out of the ocean, we got out of the trees, we defeated every predator, we built towers of glass and steel, we have spanned great water ways, we have been to the moon, and we have a machine out side out solar system

We surely DO DESERVE the stars.
The stars are no place for pansies, quitters. The stars are for whom ever can grab them.

People content to live in a squalor with no motivation or goals, no curiosity, those subhumans done't deserve the stars.

"And if you think this is too harsh, you haven't studied our history like I have."
teach you grandmother to suck eggs, quitter.

With the stars comes peace, and technology to solve the issues here.

Because they aren't possible? becasue they have populated the other half of the galaxy? becasue they don't need to grow that fast? becasue they have all been wiped out be a variety of event. Specifically wiped out faster then they can be built?

It's like getting a thimble of water from the ocean and asking "where are all the fish?"

why would it last forever? Why would it be within our solar system?

Most of our energy right now comes from old stores of energy which we have been extremely lucky to find, and which will either run out, or become too dangerous to use due to resource exhaustion.

Our behaviour can not cope without scarcity. Look at Australian aboriginal people. Placed in an environment with relatively low scarcity, their culture collapsed. In the next hundred years automation will push large parts of our populations out of work. There will still be food and shelter for them, but will those people cope psychologically?

Personally I think there is a good chance that a workable population will get off Earth before things get really bad. Maybe 20%. Ask Elon Musk. I reckon he will drive the diaspora.

answer: Space is really big.

A race could have populate half the galaxy's out there and we still wouldn't know.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

And it also mean every step in the chain need 50 available as well.

On plus plus side, you have invented a way to post to the future.:)

sorry, 1.5/.75 just reminded of 1997. I we were glad to have it!