Seret

They probably could, but it would be far easier to just use money. Central planning would require political power to be centralised in one authority and I can't see that happening; there are too many competing interests in the world. Even AIs will have competing interests, they're no more likely to all agree with each other simply because they have machine brains than humans are to agree with each other because we have meat brains. Money is just a convenient way of abstracting value. As long as there are different entities with different interests and differing competitive advantages then money will be a useful way of comparing value. But why would a customer buy this universal machine when they could just specify a cheaper machine that could do the range of tasks they actually wanted? If you were building a road would you buy the big dumb road building machine for a million doodads, or the shiny universal doer for 100 million? Likewise if you were designing other machines would you buy a design AI for 50 million? It stands to reason that the universal doer would always be priced higher than a specialised machine. So who would buy it? The number of people with requirements flexible enough to require them would be small, I'd imagine. I also find the whole idea of a "universal doer" a bit unlikely. It's an interesting thought experiment, but not something I can see happening in the real world. I don't see how you could build a machine that could transport cargo across the Atlantic as well as it could care for terminal cancer patients. What form would this "universal doer" take?

Same here. It's clear China are on the ascendant, but there's no need to be a jerk about saying so.

I do a little sketch to plan out what I want and how to break it into pieces for launch. I also do a bit of testing on anything important like the escape system(s) if it's a manned station.

There are square parts. You've got all manner of cubic and rectangular structural bits like the micronode, struts and the RoveMate.

That's an appallingly short-sighted, jingoistic and counter-productive piece of legislation. What's the actual status of the legislation? It seems from a quick search online that it's actually passed!? If so you Americans should be petitioning your representatives to get that kind of narrow-minded antagonistic trash repealed. A strong Chinese space programme is an opportunity, not a threat. The US has plenty of money and expertise, but lacks the things the Chinese have: focus and political backing. Cooperation would benefit both. A potential Chinese moon base should be viewed as a huge opportunity fro the US if it can gain access to it, if only because it would give NASA access to a moon base on the cheap. Looking at that model there seems to be a large optical telescope and possibly some radio astronomy going on, why would you not want to get in on a piece of that?

Yes, even if only as a research goal. Whether those machines will find much use in society is a different question. I don't think anybody will be trying to create a universal robot that can do anything. Customers are going to want a machine that's highly optimised for their particular needs. An industrial robot doesn't need to have hopes and dreams. It doesn't need to be terribly smart, although being smart enough to be aware of its surroundings and understanding them would be good for safety. Nobody is going to pay extra for a machine with abilities it doesn't need to do the job they're buying it for. However, some machines will need to understand emotions, namely those working closely with humans. Machines that could genuinely empathise with us would be extremely useful in human-facing roles. Personally I'd really like the banking AI I had to talk to to get a loan to actually understand my priorities in life, and I'd like my medical robot to understand things like pain and depression. I'd like my OS to know when I'm stressed, especially if it's the OS that's stressing me out! It's also probable that future advances in robotics and AI will also result in significant advances in cybernetics and brain-computer interfaces, since they're allied technologies. There may well be no market for the universally useful robot because it's simply cheaper and easier to augment an already versatile human with the abilities you require. Designing a robot that could work on a construction site with the versatility and mobility of a human might remain much more expensive than simply strapping an exoskeleton to a human to give them better strength, endurance or whatever abilities you require from the robot. In short I would expect for the foreseeable future that machines will remain optimised for their particular tasks, while humans will specialise in non-specialisation. There's plenty of wiggle room in the labour market for both IMO. I don't really think it's likely that anybody will develop a robot that can outperform a human across the board, simply because there's unlikely to be any demand for that.

LOX requires fuel for combustion just like anything else. However, it is potentially dangerous when brought into contact with just about anything that isn't scrupulously clean, so in a way you're both right. In an engineering environment the risk of your LOX coming into contact with dirt, lubricants and fuels is ubiquitous enough that LOX needs to be handled carefully. Strictly speaking, no it can't burn on itself. But it can burn with enough things and with such intensity that it should be kept separate from pretty much everything. I have however seen groundies pour LOX onto little frogs hoping around the tarmac, which was cruel but fascinating. So maybe kept separate from everything except frogs...

I haven't found any need for the 3.75m parts yet, but the LFB KR1x2 has replaced the orange tank/mainsail combo as the core of most of my bigger LV's. Thrust is so high on that bad boy that I find myself being able to strap orange drop tanks onto the sides without engines of their own. So the orange tanks are definitely still useful.

I think the question of rights for machine intelligences is a really important one we're going to have to face sooner or later. What rights do we grant them? Do we have the moral authority to withhold any rights we grant ourselves? Should we listen to what rights they think they should have? The nature of our relationship to our machines is currently one of master/slave, but our intention is to create machines that transcend that. What will be our relationship to them then? Perhaps parent/child where we grant them some independence but retain the right to make the important decisions for them? Will the relationship eventually evolve to the point where we can let go and grant them equal rights? How would we know that time had come, and would we be able to let go?

The fundamental assumption of the OP in this thread is that increasing automaton decreases economic productivity. That's not been the actual lesson of the last couple of hundred years. Industrial activity is only one sector of the economy, and is already highly automated compared to where we were a hundred years ago (or even 50). We seem to have found jobs for all the displaced meatbags. There will always be jobs providing services that the other meatbags think are important.

When you look at their actual plans they're quite limited in scope. A proper multi-generational colony would have to be much more ambitious. It would need a population large enough to be a viable gene pool (IIRC this on the order of 100 people), proper medical facilities, schools, large recreational spaces, an accommodation surplus, etc. That's why I'm saying I don't think they have Martian babies on they roadmap, their infrastructure wouldn't support it. They say they're founding a permanent colony, but they'd probably have no shortage of volunteers from Earth if they wanted to replace dead crew members.

They absolutely could. The declaration of human rights only says that a person must be provided with "adequate" food, etc. It doesn't guarantee that a person can't be punished by an organisation. If it did prisons would never work. One of the things it does actually guarantee is a right to reproduce, so if one of them insisted they would have to back down. The sheer impracticality of the idea however would suggest that strenuous efforts would be made to prevent it. It's quite possible they'd require male volunteers to get the snip to qualify. The actual infrastructure Mars One are talking about sending is not appropriate for raising children. The public would not support a child being cooped up like that. I sure as hell wouldn't.

There is that aspect, but there are about a million practical and ethical factors that speak against the wisdom of adding extra mouths to feed in a cramped habitat stranded millions of km away from Earth in a poisonous atmosphere and only periodically resupplied at great expense. It's not at all an appropriate environment for raising a child, and they'd expose themselves to severe criticism if they simply did it for ratings. The exact legal status of their people they sent is probably an interesting question for the lawyers, but one assumes they would be employees of Mars One so they'd be under contract to follow directions from their controllers. This does raise the interesting question of how Mars One would punish any breach of contract, but in actual practical terms the fact that the outpost would be utterly dependent on Earth for resupply does mean there's a limit to how tetchy they could get away with being. At a minimum Mars One could discipline them by limiting access to things like news and entertainment from Earth, comms with family members, and quality of food and creature comforts sent in replenishment missions. The power balance in the relationship is entirely in favour of their controllers on Earth.

The whole question is somewhat moot. It's highly unlikely Mars One would authorise its Martians to breed.

During the 20th century, yes, but not during the Industrial Revolution. Take the first country to industrialise, the UK. The railways, national grid, coal mines, etc were built and operated as private enterprises until they were nationalised in 1947. The canals were also privately built, the only reason they were never nationalised is because they were no longer useful by the time the political fashion had turned to nationalisation of infrastructure in the mid-20th century. In the 19th century heyday of the Industrial Revolution it was private entrepreneurs like Brunel, Stephenson, Watt and Boulton all the way.

This is undeniable. For example: the entire Industrial Revolution, including big infrastructure projects like the railways and electricity grid. The influence of government spending on it was peripheral at best and largely involved them adopting innovations that had already been developed.

I think you'll find that the 2170s were officially the Federation's "dress down decade" and most people just wore jeans and a t-shirt. Except for that one guy who always took it too far and wore a hoodie covered in swear words.

I think in a way the people who would most want to go would be the ones who'd end up the most unhappy. The urge to explore and have adventures is a fine thing, but humans are amazingly adaptable creatures. Once the novelty of being on Mars wore off (and it would eventually) they'd just be stuck in tiny cramped smelly living quarters with people they didn't choose, surrounded by a poisonous wasteland that they could only ever see an exasperating tiny patch of. No more adventures, no more exploring, just tedious housekeeping jobs and waiting for your inevitably premature death. Mars would be an amazing, inspiring place to visit, but it would be a terrible place to actually live. I don't think the Mars One volunteers really appreciate that.

[citation needed] The "technology" in Star Trek was invented by script writers, not people with a technical background. For example, the "transporter beam" was invented to save on on production costs, as it meant they could use less effects shots of space ships and just magic the actors from one scene to another with a cheap camera trick.

I tend to have both installed, and equip the craft with the most appropriate one. If it's an orbital tug where I might want to automate some of the tedious bits like getting intercepts then I'll use Mechjeb, but if it's an interplanetary exploration vehicle then I'd just go for the more minimalist KER. Horses for courses.

Probably better to say a few uberpascals... Paper is a fibrous composite. If we assume it's basically isotropic then what will happen first that it will expand laterally. The fibres that form it will begin to slide over each other and become aligned. Eventually you'll get to the point where the fibres are as flat as they can get, at which point you're dealing with chemical bonds instead of mechanical forces opposing further movement. At that point I'll pass the torch on to someone else... Assuming you're squeezing it in a big press any heat that gets generated won't have access to oxygen, so it won't burn. Maybe somebody else would like to take a guess at what chemical reaction you get with cellulose and heat in an anaerobic situation?

Ok, first thing you need to understand: gyros are weird. They behave in odd counterintuitive ways. If you've ever held one in your hand you'll know what I mean. They react to an applied torque with a torque in a completely different direction. Essentially all gyros are just a device in which something has some rotational movement, and which generates a measurable signal when an external torque is applied to it. There are a few different kinds: Traditional gyros Basically just a wheel that is driven by a motor. In fact any wheel works as a gyro, it's gyroscopic forces that help bicycles and motorbikes stay up (or lean into corners). If you mount one inside three sets of gimbals it can be set up so that it always points in the same direction no matter how the thing it's attached to moves. That's a gyrocompass, which are still used on things like ships. They're very accurate but big, bulky and slow to initialize. Strapdown gyros These don't need gimbals, they're used in sets of three mounted in the x,y, and z directions and move with the thing they're attached to. The main kind are ring laser gyros, this is what modern aircraft and spacecraft use. They shoot two lasers in opposite directions around a ring in such a way that they set up a standing wave when they interfere. If something makes the gyro spin it will ever so slightly change the wavelength of the lasers and that shows up as a change in the standing wave. Ring laser gyros have the advantage of not using gimbals, so don't suffer from gimbal lock, they're faster to set up, lighter and more compact. They aren't as accurate as spinny gyros though, and aren't north-seeking, so they can only tell you how you've moved, which is not quite the same as knowing exactly which way you're facing. In practice that means the system needs to get an accurate fix from something like GPS every so often to zero the errors. The other kind of strapdown gyro you're likely to see is a miniaturized vibrating gyro. These don't actually spin at all, they just vibrate a tiny rotor back and forth, but they're able to detect torque the same way as any gyro. They can be made very, very small. So small they're built in silicon chip foundries and you can package one up complete with all of its control electronics into a single chip. They're commonly used for things like roll over sensors in cars and electronic spirit levels.

About as much as the flat Earth folk.

I'd be happy with that. When you're at the early game stage of "throw a pod at the sky until it sticks" then you can have fun without reams of data and minmaxing. But once you're far enough down the tech tree to be doing complex interplanetary missions it makes sense (and IMO increases the fun) to have some relevant planning tools available.

Congrats, you just invented a common type of pump.