Yeah, there's a lot of lamenting, but face it, it's tantamount to complaining that the Beef Wellington isn't exactly medium on point where everyone around you is starving to death.
Compared to the problems you face, we're actually, I hate to say it, pretty well off.
You are aware that the replacement rate of young people is not up to what it used to be, yes? For every 5 people you fire, you can only hire 4 new ones.
ED: Just saw your second paragraph. But the things you speculate on are not exactly common on Titan, if they even exist on the surface at all (it's an icy crust
And no, there doesn't seem to be meaningful amounts of nitrates in the atmosphere at least. You can see a list here. Nitrogen compounds are cyanide and nitrile compounds.
Metabolized with what oxidizer?
It's just the opposite - methane on Titan is like nitrogen on Earth; it's things like acetylene and free hydrogen that are the potential energy sources, and to a lesser extent the more common (but less reactive) higher mass alkanes, etc.
The main problem is that LAWKI isn't even remotely compatible with existing in the cryogenic environment of Titan. There are a lot of interesting alternative chemistries, but they require basically redesigning life from scratch. We're simply not up to this task with our current technology.
Sadly it's being launched to near the equator, not the poles
Freedom is great and neglectable, until you very suddenly don't have it.
History has not ended. The world order that makes life nice and comfy for you is not a given into the future.
It's funny how we so strongly disagree further down in the comments, but I 100% agree with you here.
0,38g being largely fine for health is... I mean, if I had to bet, I'd put my money on it probably being true, but it's anything but guaranteed. There was a private project to test this, the Mars Gravity Biosatellite, but it ran out of funding; I'm not aware of any similar experiments that have been conducted. There've been a variety of attempts to simulate various gravity on Earth, such as having people lie on tilted beds or hanging them from cranes at an angle or whatnot, but they all have obvious weaknesses.
There's not just the question of adults who visit from Earth, but also children who grow up on 0,38g, and what impact that would have to their physiology.
Venus is hot, but it's not *that* hot...
NASA is getting there
It most definitely is not. Are you being deliberately obtuse?
one can do for more than a few minutes before shit implodes and burns
You clearly didn't read anything I wrote, so why should I even bother responding? (A) Literally nobody was talking about settling the surface, and (B) It's been repeatedly pointed out that basically indefinite lifespans can be achieved for surface vehicles, as backed up by peer-reviewed research from NASA. And "christoban on Slashdot disagrees with peer-reviewed research from NASA" isn't exactly a compelling argument.
B) building floating cities, which would probably take another century of engineering and investment before we could do so reliably.
We were flying balloons on Venus almost 40 years before we flew a helicopter on Mars. We directly sampled Venus's atmosphere 4 years before we sampled Mars. We successfully landed and transmitted data either 1 or 6 years (depending on your definition) from the surface of Venus vs. Mars.
Your incredulity about levels of difficulty doesn't translate to actual levels of difficulty.
In a red state, the money would just be embezzled and then some semblance of the project is realized, preferably in a way that nobody can or would ever use, so nobody notices it's unusable.
You have to drive them horizontally. Not vertically.
Of course you're breaking ground if you slam a high speed train right into it. Jeesh.
We are talking about an IT person getting fired for being "too old". The athlete is something that was compared to.
What makes you think that someone who is considered "too old" at 35 for an IT job would get some other job?
Do I really have to explain how analogies work?
It's less that, it's more that I can't just tell me to fuck off and leave. That works in an abusive relationship, but what can you do if you notice you share a body with an asshole?
It's harder to exploit older people, that's true.
They have already heard all the bullshit and empty promises and just don't fall for them anymore.
And even if you fire most 35 year olds, there is always a need for someone to train the next generation of layoffs.
But like with coaches and trainers, you need far fewer than you need players.
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra
