Diche Bach

HIAD Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators I stumbled on this video and found the whole thing to be pretty fascinating. Did a search on here for "IRVE" and "HIAD" and found a few threads where it has been mentioned but no threads specifically devoted to discussing the technology or documentaries/news about it. What are folks thoughts on this technology? Is it as significant as it seems to be? It is a bit puzzling to me as a non-physical scientist why it makes such a big difference; would appreciate hearing any of you elaborate on it.

And automobiles!

That is interesting Scotius; it seems any generalization one wishes to make in biology, always has some exceptions. In fact, the "exceptions" often seem to be more representative than the "norms." One area of my research when I was an academic was obesity. One day I was chatting with a colleague who was an entymologist; we shared a common grounding in sociobiology so we were hitting it off. I noted that it only seemed to be mammals, and in particular humans who suffered from obesity, and he paused for a moment to think about if it was not true of the spiders he studied. If I recall, he actually did think of a special circumstance where spiders would suffer from having access to too much food, but it sounded like a bit of a stretch to call it "obesity."

It is a good question. At the moment the universe began, the probability that biological organisms would ever organize out of that initial field of hot stuff might have been so close to zero that the number of zeros to the right of the decimal point would exceed the total number of atoms in the universe. Nonetheless, it eventually happened on at least one rock orbiting around one sun that eventually "turned on" (some 7 or 8 billion years after the universe got underway). We have no idea if that initial probability was close to 1.0 or close to -infinity. So the safest bet at this point is: that the probability was "halfway" between 1.0 and -infinity (a conception that pushes the boundary of my understanding of math and statistics and very likely is not even possible to express as a consistent equation?). I don't think there are any observations we can make at this point which can improve our predictive model beyond that. Life existed for billions of years before it passed through the next big bottleneck: nuclear membrane (or intra-cellular membrane-bound organelles more generally), at which point there was a gigantic "explosion" in the evolution of diversity. From that point on in Earth's history, my gut intuition is that: the emergence of complex highly derived forms like modern animals and plants is dependent primarily on the "richness" of the planetary ecology (generally pretty forgiving or generally pretty harsh?) as well as the periodicity of extinction punctuation events--and not so much on the incredibly low probability of the emergence of life itself or the emergence of "modular life" (eukaryotes). In the case of Earth, the probability that something with extraordinarily derived and complex systems like modern vertebrates or angiosperm plants would seem to have been sufficiently above "zero" that it was just a matter of time; that is my coarse read of the paleoontological record. And then we get the last "bottleneck:" the emergence of "intelligence." Well that is the toughest one of them all, and depending on your criterion it hasn't even emerged on Earth yet! But getting back to your original question . . .: is it unlikely or even impossible for "intelligent" life to evolve from a "mean" ancestral form, i.e., an ancestral form which is completely lacking in empathy, self-reflection, compassion, restraint, self-sacrifice, humility, sustainable reward harvesting, etc.? I'd have to say, 50/50 either way. For one thing, we humans are even _slightly_ questionable in this regard. Given the emergence of "life" at all may have been very close to "impossible," in the first place and the emergence of "modular life" (eukaryotes) might have also been pretty close to impossible, it seems difficult to speculate about how likely the emergence of advanced intelligence was. Once you get eukaryotes, and if the planets ecology is "rich" enough, the emergence of complex forms that use highly-derived neural systems, and thus allow for the evolution of "intelligence" (as we think of it from our anthropocentric viewpoint) might be pretty common, though evolution of human-level intelligence might not be so common. It is generally regarded as axiomatic that highly K-selected species tend to be more solicitious toward offspring as a requite part of investing more parental investment into each offspring, and that directional selection for those behavioral sensitivities and proclivities is the foundation of "sociality" at least in the mammalian sense of the term "social." These behaviors are regarded as generally pretty common to the mammals as a whole and arguably "elaborated" to high degrees in some more than others (cetaceans, primates, canids, maybe even felids . . .). From my standpoint, I would regard all these clades to be "nice." I wouldn't worry too much about an E.T. that evolved from a form that was similar to any of the Earth mammals, even honey badgers! However, the Hymenoptera and other eusocial insects exhibit rather remarkable degrees of social coordination and complexity which are achieved in species largely incapable of learning, apparently completely lacking in individual identity or a sense of self, and apart from behavioral nepotism which bears more resemblance to "immune function" than to anything like empathy, compassion or "solidarity," virtually zero ability to engage in empathy, self-reflection, compassion, restraint, humility, sustainable reward harvesting. I'd say we are just damn lucky that arthropod designs are so damn good exactly how they are (i.e., WITHOUT 'intelligence') and apparently no adaptive niches ever opened up which selected for more advanced neural apparatus along the lines of a brain-spine elaboration. Had that sort of thing happened in a clade like the wasps or one of the other highly evolved eusocial insects (and assuming other changes that could select for increased body size) a creature something like the "Xenomorph" from the aliens fictional universe is one possible imagined result. Dinosaurs are of course enigmatic, and their image has changed over the years. Some may have even been caring mothers I suppose. But I think it is pretty obvious that many of them were about as "intelligent" as a crocodile or shark: very good at predating, almost incapable of empathy, self-reflection, compassion, restraint, humility, sustainable reward harvesting. In this case, there are no extant examples of elaborate social cooperation among reptiles so it is an even bigger leap of imagination to envision tyrranical lizard E.T.s . . . But when we consider the seemingly random sequence of events that led to the elaboration of basic mammalian forms into primates and thence into "highly social primates" (monkeys) and thence into "brainy" primates (apes) and thence into Imperial Apes (humans) . . . well, it almost seems like anything that can happen in evolution has been tried by the Blind Watchmaker at least once . . .

Right. So a modern day mobile device (an Android from say 6 years ago . . . I know more like an "antique"): sitting next to an external hard drive -> that doesn't represent a breach of that most basic rule of hardware, "never put something magnetic adjacent to a hard drive" does it? I'm not even sure that rule still applies to modern hard ware, but I seem to recall reading it recently . . .

Earth Invades!

I'm a little puzzled though about the connection between humans having some capacity to perceive magnetic fields and cellphones impacting our brains. Cell phones are not magnetic are they? Sheeze I hope not, I tend to set mine on top of an external HDD I have sitting on a desk . . .

So, is this at this point a conception for a Kerbal solar system? Or has it already been implemented in game?

Imagine an intelligent alligator society with an atom bomb and tell me you'd be just as at ease with Mutual Assured Destruction as the Yanks and Russkies were mutually Worse, would be if E.T. didn't even regard us as "intelligent" or "life!" Think of the Vogon!

I consider this explanation to be equally as likely as the alternative, perhaps moreso. I also don't find it the least bit alarming or disturbing. If there is intelligent extraterrestrial life out there, chances are about 50/50 we will not find them to be 'friendly' and may never be able to. Just as one hypothetical: consider the alien in the Aliens universe. An organism inherently at odds with any other intelligent life and incapable of "peaceful coexistence." Given so many animals on Earth are exactly like that (alligators, ants, innumerable parasites, sharks, etc.), I'd say there is little reason to assume that an intelligent E.T. will be "nice" like we apes.

No idea what the "Long Smokestack Theory" is; but if the idea is to try to empirically determine exactly how much pollutant impact any given technology imposes over the entire life course of the technology, and not simply to focus on its emissions of a small number of gases then it does sound like a theory I'm interested in. If it has been proven so many times already, could you go ahead and prove it for me again? Define "environmentally friendly." Everybody uses this term as if it is as clear as say "heat" or "electricity," but I'm willing to bet no one even knows what it means any more, even if they ever did. So if conventional cars are "far less environmentally friendly than battery-electrics, hands down, even when you produce the electricity 100% from coal, simply because of how much more efficient utility-scale power plants are" then why have they bothered to shut down most coal burning power plants?" I am skeptical of the "science" that has led to the concerns over anthropogenic climate change, and I'm skeptical that a car that is made of--I can only guess what kind of toxic materials in order to have a sufficient battery--is in fact, and not simply in argument "more environmentally friendly" than a car made from materials (and by processes) which have been under scrutiny and methodological refinement for decades, simply because the latter burns petrol or diesel inside a combustion engine and the former relies on electricity from a natural gas powered electrical grid. Being skeptical is as far as I know a good thing, though with respect to these topics it often seems to be received as heresy . . .

"shoots the rocket," as in, someone hit it with a bullet from a firearm? One would think that would be detectable in footage. As far as competition and "someone" having it in for SpaceX, that is presumably what they signed up for. Deal with it, and make the other guy squirm, or get out of the business . . . REALLY!? And what if an autocratic competitor organization . . . mmm, like say . . . the People's Republic of China happen to show up and express an alternate vision? Sorry, am I sneering at Elon again? I'll show myself out; not the sort of things SpaceX cheerleaders wanna hear I suppose . . .

I just want to say that, I appreciate your taking the "Devil's Advocate" stance. I personally don't want to engage in arm-waving or daydreaming but to learn about (a) what is actually known; (b) how well is it known; (c) given those things what realistic might/could/should happen. To me, it is all just an interesting puzzle (though granted if we figure out where the next stock market bubble is going to pop I WILL be taking advantage of that "knowledge!" ) That said, I hope you and Northstar can exchange arguments in a casual way and learn from one another just as much as any of us might learn from any one else on this site . . . Now lets take a look about what seems to be common knowledge of "iridium" . . . Iridium is one of the nine least abundant stable elements in Earth's crust, having an average mass fraction of 0.001 ppm in crustal rock; gold is 40 times more abundant, platinum is 10 times more abundant, and silver and mercury are 80 times more abundant.[5] Tellurium is about as abundant as iridium.[5] In contrast to its low abundance in crustal rock, iridium is relatively common in meteorites, with concentrations of 0.5 ppm or more.[42] What that tells me is, "considering _ALL_ the crustal rock on Earth, iridium is 0.001 ppm." That doesn't tell me much of anything about its concentrations in ore deposits though, and you'll note, since ancient times, humans have been pretty good at deciding where and where not to dig a mine. That is more-or-less the whole point of _prospecting!_ You don't just go out in your back yard and start digging and then use the gross total Earth composition of any given mineral as your basis for determining your profit margins! Not being a mining engineer, I have no idea what a "cost-effective" concentration of any given mineral is. I'm not even sure what sorts of search terms I'd deploy to try to learn actually! The key point here though, and one which you are making Derek, is that the profitability of it really depends on the cost to get the stuff back to Earth, which decomposes into a lot of other factors, with cost to orbit, cost to target, cost to retrieve/refine (whatever), cost to reenter, cost to recover ON Earth, etc. The relative abundance of the mineral in the thing in question is a critical point, and I somehow doubt that anyone has a really good idea at this point. We got meteorites, whose point of origin can apparently be deduced back to a particular asteroid in at least some cases and we got remote sensing. Until we get some Rosetta/Philae type robots out there close to the some of the buggers, I reckon all we really have are "guesstimates" . . . given how surprising some of these small objects seem to have turned out to be based on the contrast between what has been learned by close fly-bys/impacts and what was previously "inferred" via telescope . . . Anyway, as to the meteorites: Williamette Meteorite, which has a captioned photograph in that wiki page on iridium you linked to Derek, has Is that representative of a typical asteroid? Or is it anomamlously high? Or are there _some asteroids_ (and/or 'veins' of some) which are even higher in concentration than that? Assuming there were a 1 billion ton chunk of rock floating around out there, and it was made up of 5 ppm, what would it take for that to be cost-effective? Is that website that @Stargate525 linked to just silly? I have to say, I was amazed when you blithely posted that link! How the hell did you find out about that!? What do you know about it? I found it amazing that someone _supposedly_ has that detailed of a database (and with neato graphical presentation) already, but I've just been too busy to revisit it and try to learn more about the site and who runs it.

Ah we're finally gettin' some numbers goin'! Let me have a look at them too.

What are your long term thoughts on Tesla Derek? Is it going to saturate its market, and go belly up? Even restricting the consideration to the plug-in car market, Tesla doesn't seem to be that competitive compared to models like Prius, eh? Is there any 'movement' toward the expansion of suitable infrastructure beyond the handful of major urban areas so that these machines can become interstate-capable? I vaguely recall an article a year or so ago about the rate of increase in super-charger stations; memory is quite fuzzy but it seems like even in major metro areas they are still rather scarce? And last question: has anyone actually done the math to see if an average Tesla (or any plugin car) used over the course of its entire lifetime in a 'normal' pattern actually has less sum environmental impact (meaning carbon emissions at least, but ideally EVERYTHING involved in the building, use and maintenance of the vehicle) than a comparable petrol vehicle? Ultimately an "electric car" is powered by whatever fuel the local power grid gets its electricity from, and in the U.S. my understanding is that, at this point, most of that is natural gas, with small amounts of coal, nuclear, and hydrodynamic, and tiny fractions of other (solar, biofuel, aeolian etc.). I'm disappointed in humanity and science that these big calculations seemingly have yet to be done and so many have fallen for the "electric green = good / petrol black = bad" rhetoric. Depending on the cost and resource-burden to build the infrastructure to make battery-powered vehicles a viable alternative to oil, and with all possible forms of pollution considered (not simply the carbon fetish), it may well be that anything other than status quo is MORE of environmental burden.

Fascinating thread. Just found it, so have certainly not read the whole first post, much less the whole thread. But since you guys seem to be keen on striking a reasonable balance of "believable" sci fi, a few questions that arose for me in skimming over post #1. 1. The planet that is closest to the star: is it actually tenable for an object that small to have a stable orbit that close to a star? 2. Venus: intelligent life, but "no animals." That just doesn't seem believable at all.

Well, to be fair . . . the thread is about SpaceX and the mission of that organization is not simply to "build rockets and spacecraft" but to build those things as part of a much broader vision, which I understand to be "to do what is possible to promote and accelerate the evolution of humanity into a spacefaring species." The fact that this organization has such laudable--and controversial goals--inevitably will lead many of the purely technical discussions away from the engineering and technical science and back toward the social/biological sciences as well as philosophy and politics on which the SpaceX vision might be founded. However, I'm here to help: I created a thread that is more or less begging for this type of contentious discussion and I encourage any and all of you who want to get down and dirty and talk about controversial stuff like population pressure, climate change, terraforming, cost-efficiency, or how many gerbil wheels it would take to power a Mars-based tacan antennae to come join us in the Prospecting the Solar System thread. Elon and his visions/plans were one of the main things I had in mind when I started that thread, but what I'd like the thread to be is: less of either a (a) criticize else (b) laud Elon/SpaceX/Rocket design nest, and more of an open-minded discussion of the broad visionary scheme that Elon and those of the same ilk have expressed, including the extent to which their visions are meritorious or wanting.

This is the essence of my interest in this topic, and if anyone either read the original post, or goes back and tries to make sense of it this may be clear. Right now, apart from communications satelllites (where costs have apparently gone higher for infrastructure and capital investments, despite the fact the services that infrastructure provides have got cheaper) "space does not make money" for anyone, other than the small fraction of humanity who have jobs in space stuff. The only economically useful things "space" is good for seem to be: 1. satellite services (primarily data transmission, but remote sensing too I suppose); 2. science, which does have some profitability to it as a result of patents, marketing, etc. Guys like Elon supposedly have this "vision" to make an audacious impact that accelerates humanity into full-fledged "spacefaring species" status. That is a laudable goal, but I don't think putting the cart before the horse--or rather putting manned-expeditions to Mars before the mastery of robotic mining armies--makes much sense. No matter how romantic any of us are about space, our species is never going to "get out there" in any appreciable numbers based simply on "romantic notions." There have to be pragmatic reasons for the huge investments and risks to be taken, and there have to be successes that will prompt competition for a piece of that risk/reward deal. This is the reason any species expands into new niches and it is the reason we humans have colonized the entire planet. Space will be no different, no matter how appealing Elon's vision might be. I'd bet on the quiet engineering firms like Planetary Resources who are actually trying to figure out how to make money from stuff out there. They are the real heroes because once they prove it can be done, throngs will be following them and they will have done what Elon claims he wants to do.

Is this what you mean? My point is: it seems silly to spend billions of dollars to send people to Mars, unless you have the technology to: A. send robots to Mars years in advance, which B. Mine materials from Mars and then, C. Build factories on Mars ("mining base") so that when people arrive on Mars they already have D. Structures, some tools, fuel, air, soil, water, maybe even some crops growing and most importantly plenty of shielded habitation with enough energy stored up to keep it environmentally stable and to sustain life for several years (nothing worse than getting stuck on Mars by virtue of a miscalculation/accident and having a dozen explorers starve/freeze to death . . .) I can see considerable overlap between the technologies and procedures of "Mining Asteroids" and "Mission to Mars" right up through about half of point (D). Depending on if humans are ever going to go to the asteroid, then the whole bit about life support, soil, atmosphere, etc., can be left out. Yes as you point out Mars has more gravity than even the largest asteroid and also has an atmosphere, something no asteroid has. However, landing things on large bodies and landing things through atmospheres are fairly well matured areas of space science eh? Thus, the idea I had in my social scientists word-game mind was: the requisite technologies/procedures which have yet to be mastered, much less perfected overlap sufficiently between serious long-term human visitation of Mars and asteroid-mining that it makes sense to see the latter as the higher priority for any sensible investor/entrepreneur/visionary. Assuredly there are minerals on Mars, and perhaps even anomalously valuable ones which are easy to access. However, I suspect that most of what you will find in abundance on the surface is pretty common and no more "densely" packed than on Earth. Long-term mining on Mars (as well as tourism and scientific development) _would_ seem to be promising commercial ventures. But before any of that can make money, some basic infrastructure needs to be in place, meaning automated mining robots. Automated mining robots are presumably abig part of what "mining asteroids" is going to amount to, and for whatever reasons, the forces of nature and stochastics have (supposedly) seen fit to pack relatively large quantities of rare minerals into some asteroids. Thus, mining asteroids would seem to be a more promising profitable venture than any other prospective profitable venture in space (apart from just carrying up loads of stuff to the ISS, which is not going to last forever, unless the enterprise of the ISS expands) and the mining/refining/automated manufacturing technologies (not to mention the launch, navigation, and many other supporting technologies) would seem to overlap considerably with the "entry level" technologies requisite for "Mission to Mars."

Seems Planetary Resources, Inc.is still alive and kicking. The sat which was destroyed in the accident a few years back was "replaced" and is now up there doing its thing. Only 60 employees, but a seemingly impressive list of investors, including Bechtel. Also seems like a pretty reasonable "low profile/low hype" business model. Pretty cool Oh sure, I get it now that you've clarified it Launching a robot to rendezvous with an asteroid and extract stuff from it so as to build a "mining base" is completely different than launching a robot to rendezvous with Mars, land, and extract stuff from it so as to build a "mining base."

Well, they are both beyond the Earth's SOI, which is supposedly "half way to anywhere." I'm honestly having a bit of trouble understanding your point. It almost seems as if you are suggesting that, launching a rocket versus launching a rocket with a gerbil in it, versus launching a rocket with a human in it, versus launching a Mercury rocket, versus launching Gemini rocket, versus launching an Apollo rocket, versus launching any other space craft are all completely unrelated to one another and the technology/procedures discontiguous?

It is my understanding that, in order for there to be any meaningful visitation of Mars (or any extraterrestrial body including the Moon) by humans in situ resource extraction/processing/utilization (including the use of local materials to fabricate gas and soil substrates which can sustain life . . .) is requisite, no? At the time the Apollo missions were quite meaningful, but essentially repeating the same mission profile to either the Moon or any other body doesn't strike me as "meaningful" any longer. How do you see mining asteroids and sending humans to Mars as being so totally different?

Definitely all valid points. But then we have seemingly confused multi-millionaires rambling on about sending people to Mars for no apparent reason than bragging rights, and the technological obstacles there are AT LEAST a non-negative product of the obstacles involved in "asteroid mining" (setting aside hair-brained suicide missions) times some multiplicand. Concocting space schemes that face numerous financial and technical obstacles for no reason other than the romantic notion of exploring is one thing; concocting similar schemes that stand to make lots of money is another thing! In sum, if you want the bragging rights of putting people on Mars, wouldn't it be wise to master asteroid mining first? You know, figure out all the gizmos, build up a body of experts who can run the missions/build the stuff, AND make enough cash to fund the space program(s) at a rate 5 times what they currently "earn" for the next 100 years? Is "mining" just not sexy enough? Does it just not push the right buttons in the minds of posh Gen-Xer and Millenial Pajama-Person Wannabes? There was a bumper sticker on the door of one of my Geology profs "If it can't be grown, then it must be mined." Mining is badass. Mining is cool. Mining in space is extra badass and cool. Why can't the Elon's and any other over-the-top space mogul types get a buzz going about mining asteroids instead of all this stupid "Go to Mars" crap!? What do you got on Mars? Rusted dirt that is what! and way more gravity to deal with too! Ha, the funny thing about those $ estimates . . . seems the highest net profit estimate is one called Ryugu . . . $95 bn . . . cannot even make a dent in the U.S. Federal Debt!

Holy crap! The database I was imagining Marcus Perrson and Elon Musk should team up to collect and then sell off is already public!? Wow, even if that data is just totally seat of the pants, that is pretty breath-taking. Com'n Elon! Surely you'd rather get filthy rich AND lead humanity into a headlong rush to space instead of just dying on Mars for nothing but a good visa!? Somebody is going to figure out how to grab some of that loot and then you will see some serious action . . . every nation without enough scientists to make a bottle rocket and every entrepreneur with two-bits to rub together will be tripping all over themselves to get up there and grab their piece of the pie . . . shortly after that there will be some violence I'm sure, though hopefully everyone will have the good sense not to get too carried away and let the bureacrats/lawyers step in to sort out "who owns what . . ." Basically, until there "is" something to fight over, space is irrelevant. By putting that in quotes I mean two things: 1. I don't think any of it is worth "fighting over," but it is is perceived as of value then someone will; 2. There almost assuredly ARE things of value up there, but it isn't in the minds of those who have the avarice, power and ambition to grab it yet, ipso facto there is not as yet something to fight over . . .

So what are these two companies? Just curious.