For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

some English-speaking users

...regularly decide that some word or another has too much cultural baggage and needs to be taken out of polite usage. 

[mikegarrison]

On 11/1/2021 at 11:24 PM, Gargamel said:

Coworker asked if I knew about the plans to send up Big Bird on the Challenger.

I certainly don't remember hearing anything like this. It sounds like total fantasy to me.

I remember the whole "teacher in space" thing fairly well. I was an aero-astro student in college when this mission happened.

20 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

What’s up with the use of the term “space colonization”? Did whoever first came up with the term really think it through (I suppose it may have been in the 1800s, when colonization/colonialism was an acceptable thing), or was it just the word that made sense at the time?

I prefer the term “planetary dispersal”, derived from oceanic dispersal (the term used for when organisms raft upon the ocean to reach a new landmass).

*glares at the people who came up with the term* Like, seriously, calling your habitats colonies is basically setting yourself up for sovereignty issues a couple hundred years in the future (if you call it a colony, it will create legal issues about the rights of its inhabitants, which can morph into physical issues, which can lead to conflict).

"Colony" is basically a neutral term. The reason "colonization" has such a bad name is that countries were setting up "colonies" in places where other people already lived. If you walk in to my house and claim the upstairs is now your colony, I'm not going to be very happy about it.

Edited November 8, 2021 by mikegarrison

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

"Colony" is basically a neutral term. The reason "colonization" has such a bad name is that countries were setting up "colonies" in places where other people already lived. If you walk in to my house and claim the upstairs is now your colony, I'm not going to be very happy about it.

This, it also imply towns not an research outpost like the Amundsen-Scott base who has an population of 150 in summer and 39 last winter. 
Or purely industrial bases like oil platforms. 
An mining town however would qualify as an colony. 

[ARS]

While browsing the web,I found some very amusing tank designs, it's either hillarious, absurd or ouright cursed. Here, take a look and find everything wrong with the following tank designs (or for challenge, find the practical use of such design) :

Spoiler

 

[kerbiloid]

Girls Und Panzer were learning macrame.

[SOXBLOX]

20 minutes ago, ARS said:

While browsing the web,I found some very amusing tank designs, it's either hillarious, absurd or ouright cursed. Here, take a look and find everything wrong with the following tank designs (or for challenge, find the practical use of such design) :

  Reveal hidden contents

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oZJqEkamd4Y

Edited November 8, 2021 by SOXBLOX

[Vanamonde]

Some comments characterization the behavior of various nations have been removed. Politics never ends well. Please leave it out of discussions on this forum for that reason. 

[TheSaint]

4 hours ago, ARS said:

While browsing the web,I found some very amusing tank designs, it's either hillarious, absurd or ouright cursed. Here, take a look and find everything wrong with the following tank designs (or for challenge, find the practical use of such design) :

  Hide contents

 

They vaguely remind me of Rivets.

[SunlitZelkova]

On 11/7/2021 at 5:35 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

...regularly decide that some word or another has too much cultural baggage and needs to be taken out of polite usage.

In the defence of this situation, there has been no "decent" colonization ever- and therefore the entire concept could be deemed unseemly. However, I myself was not criticizing the term over Earthly colonization's mistreatment of the indigenous population (see my reply to mike below).

20 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

"Colony" is basically a neutral term. The reason "colonization" has such a bad name is that countries were setting up "colonies" in places where other people already lived. If you walk in to my house and claim the upstairs is now your colony, I'm not going to be very happy about it.

Well, yes, but this is not my main criticism.

Britain "colonized" North America and ultimately the colonizers themselves were treated poorly enough by the motherland that they revolted. This is my criticism over the use of the word, along with hypothetical legal issues surrounding the use of the term in regards to the rights of its inhabitants. What constitutes a crime within the colony could also be subject to debate too.

Obviously, there are no indigenous inhabitants of the Moon, and therefore it doesn't really matter what you call building a self-sustaining(ish) habitat there. At the same time, as unlikely as it is, if extant life does exist on Mars or the atmosphere of Venus, it should be debated as to whether it would be ethical to establish a permanent presence there and potentially end up destroying the life.

------------------------

To be clear, my question was entirely meant to ask about the term "space colonization" in English. It is obviously a completely different case for other languages. I apologize for not being clear about that.

Also to be clear, I "am criticizing" it. As in, the dictionary definition of criticism. Not the usual "kind of criticizing" different practices that there unfortunately is on the internet.

Also (finally), it is aimed at organizations that use the term, not individuals (and obviously not members of the forum).

[FleshJeb]

11 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

they revolted

We're still pretty revolting sometimes.

13 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

hypothetical legal issues surrounding the use of the term in regards to the rights of its inhabitants

I think that's a problem with any extra-territorial holding, regardless of what you call it. There's nothing inherent to the the word "colony" that precludes a sane and equitable legal system (history notwithstanding). In modern usage, they can be considered to only connote size and permanence: Outpost; Base; Colony; Settlement...

19 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

it should be debated as to whether it would be ethical to establish a permanent presence there and potentially end up destroying the life.

The Red/Green/Blue Mars series has a pretty robust debate about this. I haven't read them in a couple of decades, so I can't be too specific. I'm in the, "study the heck out of it, then murder it" camp. At least as it applies to microbes.

[mikegarrison]

31 minutes ago, FleshJeb said:

The Red/Green/Blue Mars series has a pretty robust debate about this. I haven't read them in a couple of decades, so I can't be too specific. I'm in the, "study the heck out of it, then murder it" camp. At least as it applies to microbes.

In those books they find that Mars has no life. However, the debate is about whether to terraform it ("greens") or whether to study the areology of the planet in a state as unchanged as possible ("reds").

(The reds lose the argument, for the most part.)

Edited November 9, 2021 by mikegarrison

[FleshJeb]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

In those books they find that Mars has no life. However, the debate is about whether to terraform it ("greens") or whether to study the areology of the planet in a state as unchanged as possible ("reds").

(The reds lose the argument, for the most part.)

Ah thank you. I may have been remembering that it took them a while to conclusively prove the "no life" thing. After which point, the "reds'" position became much more unreasonable, and was essentially religious fundamentalism.

[mikegarrison]

13 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

Ah thank you. I may have been remembering that it took them a while to conclusively prove the "no life" thing. After which point, the "reds'" position became much more unreasonable, and was essentially religious fundamentalism.

Well, some of the "greens" also had their even more overt religious overtones. They felt that it was their duty to spread life as far as possible.

[kerbiloid]

The Green Powah

Spoiler

 

[K^2]

22 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

At the same time, as unlikely as it is, if extant life does exist on Mars or the atmosphere of Venus, it should be debated as to whether it would be ethical to establish a permanent presence there and potentially end up destroying the life.

I don't think it's an ethics debate. Even if you were to consider life that could evolve as an ethics question, there is basically no chance of that happening in either ecosystem. Both are only going to become more inhospitable as time goes on if left to the natural course. And treating simple life from perspective of ethics is silly. Your immune system commits genocide against simple organisms on a daily basis. So the question is purely utilitarian. Is there something to be gained from studying these organisms in their natural environment? Or can we collect samples, catalogue, and lose little to nothing from complete replacement? I think by the time we actually are in a position to terraform either environment, we'll be decidedly the latter.

[SunlitZelkova]

While I think there being no debate over whether to establish a large scale presence on Mars or Venus is a reasonable viewpoint to hold and support, I have some problems with the examples and reasoning presented-

2 hours ago, K^2 said:

And treating simple life from perspective of ethics is silly. Your immune system commits genocide against simple organisms on a daily basis.

Yes, but I have no choice over whether it does that or not. "We" do have a choice over our actions regarding hypothetical life on another planet. Also, when my immune system does that, it does not involve complete extinction of those organisms.

2 hours ago, K^2 said:

Even if you were to consider life that could evolve as an ethics question, there is basically no chance of that happening in either ecosystem. Both are only going to become more inhospitable as time goes on if left to the natural course.

I don't think the ethics question over how to treat life is necessarily about "having" to either preserve it or potentially destroy it. Its about the choice.

On Earth, there are numerous species that could probably be driven to extinction without having a major effect on the ecosystem. Recently (within the context of the entire history of life on Earth) there are examples like the thylacine, auk, and passenger pigeon. But no one nonchalantly discusses their extinction as if it were "ok"- while it was inevitable within the context of the eras in which they took place, it is still something unfortunate and regrettable. The same would be for life on Mars or Venus, no matter how "insignificant" from the operational standpoint of space colony expansion it is. [Continued in reply to the next quote]

2 hours ago, K^2 said:

So the question is purely utilitarian. Is there something to be gained from studying these organisms in their natural environment? Or can we collect samples, catalogue, and lose little to nothing from complete replacement?

I think there are certainly more aspects to the question rather than pure relations to space colonization operations and planning. As described above, humanity generally already has a moral and ethical belief that life should be saved to the greatest extent possible (I will come back to this point later, by the way).

I don't think the nature of the organisms (simple or complex) matter to the reasons I have presented, because the "value" of the life to be preserved is a matter of opinion (and thus subject to debate with justifiable reasoning), and one could argue that the philosophical/ethical/moral definition of what is "simple" and "complex" is also questionable (I don't intend to answer that question myself, but it is part of the reason why debate would be needed).

I think it is incorrect to state that nothing would be lost from destroying their natural environment. If organisms exist on Mars or Venus, something came before them, and preserving the natural environment and avoiding contaminating it would be necessary to investigate the history of life on the planet, along with the extant life itself. Now obviously, "we" don't "need" to study the history of life on the planet, but this is part of why there should/"will be" a debate should this come to pass- outside of the context of space colonization planning, there are certainly justifiable reasons to preserve the environment.

2 hours ago, K^2 said:

I think by the time we actually are in a position to terraform either environment, we'll be decidedly the latter.

I think if we are able to move the large amounts of material into orbit by that time, there will be no difference between landing on Mars and building an orbital colony around it and using machines to extract resources from the surface where feasible or needed, and therefore the "necessity" aspect of establishing a large presence on the surface may be moot.

If humanity is at the point where it can terraform the planet, the situation would be even more so to that point.

Edited November 10, 2021 by SunlitZelkova

[kerbiloid]

Just some videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxV8JseLCWxRwLVd1ykivvg/videos

[DDE]

9 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

While I think there being no debate over whether to establish a large scale presence on Mars or Venus is a reasonable viewpoint to hold and support

I think there can be, not that I appreciate the other side of it. Planetary protection taken to the extreme would set an intolerably high bar for confirming these planets don't bear life. In fact, Zubrin has complained it's already reached the point of being obstructionist.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencenews.org/article/human-history-society-dawn-of-everything-book/amp

 

[kerbiloid]

Quote

 and held banquets called potlatch

"potlatch" < "Black Friday" (N.-Am. Ind.)

[mikegarrison]

Potlatch was somewhat similar to "conspicuous consumption". Tribal leaders vied to show how much they had by giving away more than their rivals. But they had multiple purposes, like any large gathering.

Edited November 11, 2021 by mikegarrison

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Here's some fun sciency stuff to brighten your day:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/10/1054224204/how-sars-cov-2-in-american-deer-could-alter-the-course-of-the-global-pandemic

... 

. 

. 

. 

...of course I've said for a while that Covid isn't 'going away', it's just going to become the new 'seasonal flu'.  Thus, along with the seasonal flu we'd enjoy seasonal covid.  This was basically a presumption of mine based on a lot of reading, the history of the 1918 pandemic and the most likely course of events.  But now it seems some smart folks have figured out the mechanics. 

Great thing is that White Tailed Deer are to my neck of the woods like rats and pigeons are to New York City 

 

(oh - and basically take a look at any large groups of critters living near people in the world and assume that any one of those can be reservoirs.  So just as we get Bird Flu and Pig Flu from Asia occasionally - the world can look forward to Deer Covid from N. America, Capybara Covid from S. America, Pangolin Covid from China, Goat Covid from the Middle East... 

Edited November 11, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[AHHans]

I'll take a Goat Covid with a pinch of Emu Flu.

[kerbiloid]

Just don't combine this with hamsteroids.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

24 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Just don't combine this with hamsteroids.

<Deleted inappropriate reference to a formerly popular actor>