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SinBad

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Everything posted by SinBad

  1. Hehe, good luck convincing the entire planet to allow their reproduction to be regulated. And if you can, why wait until you are at carrying capacity? Ive never said that sustaining a set population without new resources was impossible. Sure, recycle away till the sun goes out. The stay at home population is never going to recieve more resources, the amounts required to be shipped lightyears back to sol would be prohibitive, so heavy mass reuse is a requirement. personally i dont believe you will ever be able to regulate population growth, and that will require new resources to support. And if you cant import resources, export the need for resources: send your excess population to where the resources are. All im saying is, i believe that by the time we are in a position to need to make conservation descisions, the only conservation we will be thinking of is human life.
  2. I dont disagree that sustaining 100 trillion is possible. I just dont think we will get there in time considering a 1.1% growth rate puts us there by 2116. Earth alone Couldnt support that much even if we stop farming in the dirt and all start eating yeast paste. For every one person you see now, thats 10,000 people in 100 years time. Even if we get better at everything, will we have time to build it? A big building can take a decade to construct, and thats only after a decade of planning, so from someone saying 'we need a higher housing density' to actually moving people in, is about 20 years. The nearest estimates for asteroid mining are 20 years away. Fusion 25 years. Orbital cities are way out at 50. When malthus was estimating, the earth had a few centuries to expand and the rate of technilogical advancement was very slow. Now technology is advancing quickly and we are reducing the carrying capacity of the planet at the same time we are expanding our population and rates of consumption. Malthus had the right idea, he just didnt have all the facts yet. Our biggest problem at the moment is how rapidly new technologies can be adopted. We could have an amasing breakthough this afternoon, but how many years until that starts making changes in every day life? We dont have time for decades long construction projects. If we do manage to dump ourexcess population into space we have to start looking at the carrying capacity of our solar system. Ffurther rreading :Homogeneous cosmology with aggressively expanding civilizations S. Jay Olson (Submitted on 17 Nov 2014 (v1), last revised 20 Oct 2015 (this version, v2))
  3. Trillions, agreed. 100 trillion in the next 100 years? I dont think we can move that fast. Stars are en energy source, but is it enough to support growth on this scale? We By the time we hit 100 trillion we will be staring to look like a dyson cloud (i would say sphere but that confuses people into thinking he meant a single solid structure, instead of a collection of habitats in various orbits) the amount of energy we would need to build habitats for 100 trillion in 100 years is phenomenal. I dont think we could expand our infrastructure fast enough to keep pace. And yes, more resources means you can gather more resources, but again, energy and time. In a hundred years we need to be adding 323,000 living spaces and the food, air, water and power to support them every second.
  4. Even tremendous amounts of resources crumble when faced with contiinuous growth. I diliberatly avoided mentioning the energy requirements and instead lumped it in with 'habitats' using that term to represent all of things we need to live in one simplified word.
  5. This speculation is assuming that the simulation is running on a system that exists in a universe with our physical laws. What if the simulation is a simplified version of the real universe? If we were to create a simulated universe with the sole purpose of evolving virtual life, we would probablry start with a 2 dimensional universe and a handfull of basic rules governing interactions. To the beings inside, it would seem that the universe made sense and they would have a very hard time understanding ours.
  6. Here is a glass of water. Drink all the water. Look into the glass and find me more water in there. New resources dont appear within a given volume. On a stellar scale, sure, a new comet might wander through, but those volatiles wont support our growth (by the time we need to be looking for wandering visitors) for very long, minutes. Maybe. And yes, it will be multiple weird shapes, but the effect holds. For example, we have colonised all the systems within 20 lightyears. Its not a sphere, because stars are not uniformly distributed. but lets look at the numbers and leave geometry out of it for the moment. Each of those colonised systems has to consume resources fast enough to support its own population growth, the oldest colonies have run out of free mass to turn into new habitats, so the younger colonies must over produce in order to supply the growth of the old (by accepting further immegration) as well as their own. In the first years of expansion sol will be the only old system, and it will be depleted. 4 new colonies must now supply their own growth as well as 1/4 sols growth, or 125% the rate of the original system. Thats probably manageable. But the new colonies will become depleted faster than sol. Assuming they are forward thinking enough to keep enough resources in reserve for another 4 colonies each, that then makes 20 new colonies and 5 old ones. Again gives 100 new colonies and 25 old ones. Now we are getting close to the number of stars within 20 light years. At some point, we wont have enough ships to keep the excess population moving outwards. Our population grows at the moment by 1.1% each year. If it takes 100 years to convert everything in our solar system (except planets, and maybe c type asteroids and comets, and assuming some pretty awesome powers of mining and construction) that puts our population at roughly 101, 976 billion in habitats around the system. The 101st year we need to export 1.1% of that population, or 10, 197 billion people, and every year after that as well, otherwise sol starves because we dont have the resources left to build habitats for the extra 1.1% per year. Thats the population pressure we are dealing with. Now assuming we can travel at light speed and dont suffer acceleration or deceleration times, thats a little over 4 years transit time to the next system over. The first years colonists will increase their population to 14, 930 billion while in transit, with another 3 waves of colonists just as big hot on their heels the day they arrive. Once there, the ships unload and return to sol for more, so 8 colony fleets always in motion. That works till the colony is also depleted, now we need more ships to get sols excess population, as well as the first colonies excess to the second. Thats alot of mass just in the hulls, and it has to come from somewhere as well. Very quickly we hit the point where new territory can no longer absorb one year of immegration before being depleted. Thats when we start ripping planets apart to build walls, food, water and air. Lets say that one of these 100, 000 billion population colony fleets arrives in a system with a race about where we are now. They need to consume the available mass in one year just to expand their fleet enough to hold the babies that will be born on the way to the next system. The rights of the natives wont be considered. 7 billion aliens rights to asteriods they are not even using yet vrs the lives of 100, 000 billion humans? We will leave them their home planet, but everything else is ours. That race will not have the chance to expand as we did. And there wouldnt be anything they could do to stop us. The real problem comes in when the fleet arrives at a system and cant meet the resource requirements. The expansion stalls then. The human empire dies from inside out . never having gotten 110 light years from home. To be fair, the old systems dying would buy us some time, maybe we would have a frontier of new systems with a layer of older ones that can still reach new colonies, but the core of the civilisation will be empty of everything. Tldr: we can be as moral as we like right now, but when it comes time to get down to expansion, sentiment will kill us.
  7. Blobbyness granted, to an extent. After you hit a certain size, surface variations of a few lightyears wont be noticeable. Thats assuming we ever actualy go interstellar. It holds true in the solar system as well. Simplify it into 2 dimensions into the mean orbital plane, the area of occupation increases faster than the circumfrence, where new resources are found. We wont see limiting effects right away as there is just so much more up there than down here. But if you set aside the planets as nature reserves, and maybe comets and c type asteroids just in case, that significantly reduces the available resources. At some point those will be consumed. Thats when we start looking at the reserves. The rich will petition for them to be exploited so they can get richer, the poor will too as population pressure causes crowding and shortages of the basic necessities, like food, water and air. Antarctica used to be an exploitation free zone, now we are considering oil and mining down there. Where ever we go, there will be biological contamination. We have managed to breed superbugs in a few decades just by overusing antibiotics. On centuries long timescales we have inadvertantly created extremophiles capable of surviving just about anywhere we go. Its not a question of should we spread life, but when will we accept that the only way not to is to stay home.
  8. Agreed whole heartedly, to both paragraphs. Greed will put humanity in space as we seek to feed the continued growth our economy is dependant on. Unfortunatly, you start to hit diminishing returns. As our sphere of influence increases, new resources are made available only at the edges. Those edges must supply the entire volume of occupied space. We may start out moral and benificent, but when the surface of the sphere cant supply the volume anymore, all those protected pockets of primitives within our sphere of influence will be consumed out of desperation. Its a dystopic way of looking at things, but i think its the one most likely to happen if humanity doesnt grow out of its adolecent greed by the time we start star hopping.
  9. The problem is prooving sterility. A vocal portion of our population will only be satisfied if we micoscopically inspect every grain of sand on a potential planet all the way down to the core. That opinion could also be argueably extended to asteriods and comets. Fortunatly, its very hard to make a cute and clever logo with a negative space bacteria. so like today, the folks who make the descisions can feel free to ignore them. My personal opinion though, if it tastes good, eat it. If it eats dirt and poops gold in a vacuume, farm it. Exploitation begins in the home... star system. Humanity exploits natural resources, including those that metabolise. I think planets with complex ecosystems would be prime candidates. Imagine if we found a less advanced intelligent race. No human rights violations there, capitalists can have all the slave labor they want without having to trick them into thinking they have freedom first by giving them minimum wage.
  10. Ive recently discovered the kissanime website, which also has cartoons. Tailspin was a favorite of mine when i was a kid, i had given up every watching it again because its so hard to find copies. Now that you have reminded me of it, im off to stream. Im 35 with three kids. Some of the newer stuff isnt too bad, it seems that what is considered acceptable quality of animation has changed alot. Some of the original transformers are now just painfull to watch. Missing cell colors, wobbly lines, and objects whose geometry change depending on scene. A llot of that kind of sloppiness is missing these days. Its good.
  11. Exactly the same, just yesterday i was out in the shed adjustimg the aileron trim on my bike...
  12. 1/10 I won't know what I'm missing. Invent a cure for cancer, withhold cure from patients until those who love them commit an evil deed of my choosing. Use love to make good people do evil things.
  13. @SAI Peregrinus, have you tried Gratuitous Space Battles? The naming convention of the federation race is very 'Banksian'. A few that i made for a different game: Cold Caller (trader) Open to the Public (trader) Im not Fat, its all this cargo (hauler) I wish i were a fish (miner) What Laser? (cruiser, with insane shields) Some Assembly Required (mobile shipyard ship)
  14. 1994, windows for work groups 3.11 on a 486dx66. Was playing wing commander when it all came crashing down.
  15. Before i had kids Their price was starting to come down towards 100k when the first baby arrived. Now though, i have a new dream car to go with the new priorities Mercedes viano, these are seriously nice vans. But if im ever looking at a 100k car again, it will be an Oka because roadtrips without roads are fun for the kids.
  16. 3/10, annoying and clever, but not really evil. for your consideration, My Cat: (backstory, i have a set of really comfy 'home' cloths that only get worn a few hours a day, so at the end of the day they go next to my bed ready for the 40 minutes ill wear them in the morning) 12:30am, i go to bed, dump the cloths next to my bed ready for the next day. cat waits till im almost asleep then does a huge 'im not feeling well' poop on them. i was only tipped off by the sound of a tiny little fart next to my bed (the smell seemed to stay close to the ground until i disturbed it when cleaning). otherwise i would have woken up at 05:30am and so i wouldnt wake my wife, gotten dressed in the dark... cat is still alive and well, cloths are sadly not.
  17. Maybe some kind of persistance based hyper drive to another star? Although if he thinks he can bring back jeb, why not kerbin? Probably take a lot of energy though... might have to sacrifice a celestial body or two in exchange? Dres?
  18. True, but i wouldnt be surprised if watney's TP was embossed with the nasa logo. They were everywhere, on everything. Makes you wonder how realistic that is, and how much it costs... On topic: high tech space pretties!
  19. Like... NASA? Watch The Martian and take a shot every time you see a nasa logo. You may need to open a second bottle after the first 10 minutes though. Product placement FTW!
  20. On the side of things that might go boom, have you considered ballistic curtains? As far as ignition goes, considering the design of your nozzle is specificaly arranged so as to not allow exhaust gasses to pass back into the commbustion chamber, maybe an ignition source at the exhaust wont work so well? Ive seen videos of pulse jets being lit with a bit of burning tissue paper (low residue) placed in the combustion chamber before fuel is added. You might need to trickle in a little oxygen so it doesnt smother too fast, but the flow rates of reactants you have worked out should be more than enough to eject it. Safer than lighting it by hand...
  21. I had one of roverdude's starlifters arranged as a puller truss with two outrigger engines and large fuel tanks at the front, so I could add more modules to the back without removing the drive first. it was called "the pendulum phallusy".
  22. Pitchforks and torches ready! Some one find me a sturdy tree! Oh. Ok then.
  23. Why watch apollo 13 or titanic then? You know how its going to end. To me, a faithfull film adaption gives the author the opportunity to enhance the story telling by providing the audience with visuals, audio and music. It also brings the work to a wider audience as there are still so many people who dont like to read. My main complaint is when the authors original work is compremised by some marketing guy who decides that the target audience isnt smart enough to wrap their heads around the details, or that the original work wasnt exciting enough. Thats when things get dumbed down and hyped up. Also where the majority of inaccuracies get thrown in. The hobbit movie gave us an extra female elf for eye candy and gender equality (not mutually exclusive after all?) The martian movie gave us bad science and pointless heroics (difficult eva orbital capture? Better let the commander do it instead of the eva specialist!) When the original story had good science (not great) and lots of heroics already, just not from an angsty guilt laden BDH.
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