PB666

Mining wars might occur, but they would probably be in the mine itself, not on the surface. Imagine fighting over a mine asteroid, you already have a bunch of loose material because of the mining operation, maybe even some debris in low velocity orbit. Now start blowing up the surface. The critical flaw in the argument here is that there are million of asteroids, but not millions of mining companies. At present there are 0 space mining companies, and each company could have an asteroid that provides more than enough raw materials for its space ventures. And if you a mining operation on one roid, the miner simply can move operations elsewhere, and he could, being a miner just sabotage your operation by redirecting a much smaller asteroid. (for all intents and purposes invisible to you). The second major flaw is that any really successful space miner is going to need a source of volatiles, these are all located in the outer solar system and need to be strategically stabilize. There is an endless supply of these each one with more volatiles than would ever be needed, some companies are likely to cooperate with governments to draft these into a useful orbit, and it might be a good idea to merge these with the orbits of asteroids so that resources can be paired. Again warring on a frozen loosely packed dusty snow ball is not a way to conserve a resource that would have to be drafted from deep space. So once again, warring about resources does not make sense. The final aspect of space is territory. Territory in space cannot be defined, for example the comoving reference frame are orbits of a certain radii from the star, roughly non positional. Territory in space would not be defined by objects such as asteroids, those would be claims, but by man-made constructs (i.e. mining stations, space stations, habitats, etc) that presumably would be crafted. The definition of a territory would be somewhat limited to a space a human could claim in their birthday suit and live persistently there (such as Babylon 5 - sped way up in terms of rotation) and procreate. Man-made places that are only transiently habitable (even the ISS) would be considered equipment (such as property). This seems like a strange definition, but what is the difference between a car and the ISS. Both travel, both are only occupied for short parts of ones life, children are not born (typically) and procreation is neither expected or desired. A permanent habitat would be high enough in orbit not to degrade within a reasonable lifetime. Short of food, and oxygen provide for all the expected needs (gravity, privacy)[Although with engineering this provisions would eventually be obsolete] Procreation would be expected. Educational system would be expected. While we could see an eventual conflict for space housing such territories, in circumsolar orbit there is no limitation on space. So that territorial conflicts are more about the periphery, things like claims. So what about pirates. This can be a problem. You spend a couple of decades getting resources to a place where you can build a permanents space colony. What is to stop pirates from jumping your claim and steering it into pirate space. Since piracy can be defined by the acts of less stately individuals, their actions cannot be as well controlled. Piracy though is not wise either. In this scenario why should the pirates mine, they can simply steal processed materials. For this we assume that colonies are floating around the moon, earth, the sun and mars. Each specializes in building certain resources and trade with each other for stuff they do not make. So pirates would go after the trade. The would not blow up ships, but disable them and transport them to a something, maybe a hollowed out asteroid, where they could steal goods. The problem is that in space, you can't hide, so eventually there might be a long-distance attempts to destroy the pirates. Each pirate MS has limited ability to defend its self against long distance attacks.

Hypocrit. cheater!

hypen

Banned for Meme only post.

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http://www.livescience.com/55617-virtual-photons-may-boost-quantum-computing.html However this article is atrociously click-baity, (real click-baity not feigning stuff complained about by some here in the past, so bad in fact I have removed the link). Savasta said. "This is a random simultaneous process. We do not know the exact time when the two atoms will decay — however, they will do [so] simultaneously." http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.043601 One Photon Can Simultaneously Excite Two or More Atoms. Luigi Garziano, Vincenzo Macrì, Roberto Stassi, Omar Di Stefano, Franco Nori, and Salvatore Savasta Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 043601 (2016) – Published 22 July 2016

Fault report Was followed, in error, by: The last valid post was Tedwin's "-35-" -36 (-)

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Not planets tidally locked planetoids might be possible. That space elevator is a far future/never technology.

Humanity will not survive in the long run, we will either become genetically manipulated cyborgs (probably) and/or evolve into another type of homo, eventually the homo genera will cease and its daughter genera will dominate. The lifetime of the genera is proably around 35,000,000 however judging by the pace of evolution since the end of the paleolithic its likely much shorter. The hope is that a space worthy sentient survives in all this, but for that to happen the average environmental impact of each individual will need to fall, productivity and efficiency will need to increase, and some micro-gravity tolerant evolution will need to occur.

If water went into glass it could not make a spectacle of itself. what is the directive that comes after the prime directive?

I don't think the comparison is valid, here is my logic. After hubble's success, following its initial failure. In fact Hubble was to successful, the problem was that there was only one Hubble. Hubble particularly with its upgrades justified more extensive use of an already overused resource, and a resource that itself, at its very core was and will always be flawed. But if we can correct for the flaw in Hubble, why can't we correct for flaws created in ground based telescopes. But how would you know you corrected them unless you have a control. Hubble. So these ground based improvements relieved the need for more Hubble-like instruments, but placed all kinds of new, more heightened demands on the Next generations of telescope. We can see all kinds of things in the five billion year range, but the very first smallish blue stars are very difficult to see. To see these you need a bigger mirror, the mirror has to have a special coating because you are now reflecting in the far infrared region, and the temperatures of the light are low so donyou also need cold instruments. The problem is that such cooled observatories have longevity problems, what they need is recycling. Ergo you have a delayed JWST. The fact that we can delay is a herald of the successful and long-lived Hubble, but now there is no back up Hubble or shuttle, so its got to be done or US space astranomy will suffer.

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175. Posting that one should never post in this thread.

B!

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-28 (-) Now remember the last time you called for help, ultimately it helped our side.

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