Comment Re:Apt-get install clue (Score 1) 303
Why on Earth is this modded "Troll"? The first question is rhetorical, not trolling.
Why on Earth is this modded "Troll"? The first question is rhetorical, not trolling.
In recent weeks, NASA has put forth two remarkable new plans for its proposed next major initiatives. Both bear careful examination.
As the centerpiece for its future human spaceflight program, NASA proposes to build another space station, this one located not in low Earth orbit but at the L2 Lagrange point just above the far side of the Moon. This plan is indeed remarkable in as much as an L2 space station would serve no useful purpose whatsoever. We don’t need an L2 space station to go back to the Moon. We don’t need an L2 space station to go to near-Earth asteroids. We don’t need an L2 space station to go to Mars. We don’t need an L2 space station for anything.
The other initiative is a new plan for Mars sample return, which is now held to be the primary mission of the robotic Mars exploration program. This plan is remarkable for its unprecedented and utterly unnecessary complexity.
you have to be absolutely damned certain that there's no local life to screw up.
Well, no you don't actually. We may want to, or choose to, but we don't have to. It's more likely that we'd find life there and use that as an argument in favor of moving there. If Mars is shown to support any kind of life, it will radically change the way we as a culture view our place in the universe, and likely touch off some sort of mass effort to spread ourselves around, alien bacteria, lichens, ichthyoids, and the rest be damned. It'll be Manifest Destiny all over again.
Sorry, but while your rudimentary concept is reasonable, one practicality stops it: at a certain point, the ice around the tether is going to freeze up, stopping the descent of the probe, which will end up hanging in its own little bubble of hot water. Now, studying that bubble might have some value, as we would probably find residue from whatever is in the ocean (if there's fish, we might find the up-welled bones and scales, for instance). Better to figure out some wireless communication technology that will work through several kilometers of ice without getting swamped in Jupiter's radiation output.
And how far apart are those existing vehicles? What's between them? How hard is the terrain to navigate? Are the components of one system compatible with another? It's cheaper and much more viable to just send fresh units, targeted for specific purposes and specific locations.
Just to clarify, 2020 is only eight years from now.
FTA:
But the core isn’t our only heat source. A comparable contributor is the slow radioactive decay of elements that were here when the Earth formed. Without radioactivity, there wouldn’t be enough heat to drive the plate tectonics that maintains surface oceans on Earth.
I wonder... if we're pulling uranium out of the ground and refining it, are we slowly pulling out the fuel that drives our plate tectonics?
Maybe we need a new way to look at the table:
So, can you fill us in? What are the implications of such discoveries? Or is this another one of those things that happen (a happy accident) with no real consequence besides filling up a few research papers?
Right. And ultimately, the benevolent overlords that we give complete control of our society to will be the sizes of cake tins with no capability for self mobility. That will be left to the robot butlers that carry the overlords on neck chains, looking like diminutive versions of Flavor Flav. Bi-di-bi-di...bi-di-bi-di.
I find it more likely that, from the point in time that a computer achieved sentience to the time we were outmatched, we'd have time to realize we were screwed. Of course, I'm not the first one to think this.
I suppose that sooner or later we'll invent the next big thing that could kill us all. Even if in the study of how to deal with it, we accidentally invent it, at least there's a reasonable chance that, in the act of creation, we will have discovered a solution to the new problem. Like where the off switch is for the gone-mad computer.
Bad timing. The best deals on TVs are always the day before Superbowl Sunday (at least in the U.S.).
The only thing indisputable is Congress' right to ban marijuana for the purposes of interstate commerce. Everything else is a matter for the Supreme Court. Unless, of course, they deem it a matter of national defense. Tough case, that, when the drug is being produced domestically.
Furthermore, he doesn't seem to object to radio play of single songs. Consumption is consumption.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne