/sci/ - Science & Math

Ain't no hippy assholes going to prevent me from mining the stars.
They can shove their environment up their asses and go live naked amongst the trees for all I care

>>4637835

OP here. It wouldn't be so bad if they wanted to live naked amongst the trees. What's so bad is that they want to force everyone else into the pre-Industrial Age shithole with them...except Al Gore who will preach to you to sacrifice in order to save Mother Earth as he flies all over the globe in his private jet and live it up in his energy guzzling mansion.

Hippies arent even a threat to this operation. I don't know why you opened such a thread.

I think these people seriously underestimate the size of the universe.

Existing space treaties make it legally impossible to pursue private ventures in space. But /sci/ people are fucking retards who get diverted by OHHHH SHINY announcements from hucksters like Cameron.

>>4637835
Enjoy dying from cholera due to polluted water and lung cancer due to polluted air.
>>4637860
You are attacking a fucking strawman you created in your prejudiced little mind. Please go back to /pol/. Seriously.

>>4637882
>hippies help stall nuclear power in the US for forty years
>not a threat

>>4637860
Because al gore is the entire environmental movement.

>>4637906
Good catch, look at the big brains on anon.

>>4637903
>Enjoy dying from cholera due to polluted water and lung cancer due to polluted air.
>Poster didn't mention anything about polluting the air, only mining asteroids.
>Accused another poster of using strawman arguments.

Flaming hypocritical douchefag detected.

Does this guy seriously think that the proposed methods of terraforming Mars are "perverse" and that mining the Moon would bad? Are the rocks on the Moon going to be angry and feel oppressed because of the mining?

>>4637906

Because I never said Al Gore was the entire environmental movement.

>>4637919

>They can shove their environment up their asses and go live naked amongst the trees for all I care
I was replying to that, not the first part. Are you clinically retarded?

>>4637923
So why did you mention him?
He's a politician of course he's a hypocrite.

Comment from the article:
>ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! HOW WILL THE MOON LOOK AFTER WE’RE DONE STRIP MINING IT?!?
It’ll look like a barren fraking wasteland…or, in other words, IT’LL LOOK NO DIFFERENT THAN IT DOES TODAY!
I hate this idiot environmental logic applied to Space travel, colonization and heavy industry….It’s TOTALLY illogical and blatantly stupid.

*sigh*

>>4637927

You're a lying sack of hog semen. I caught you in a lie you dog-humping faggot and now you're trying to weasel your way out. It isn't working asshole.

>>4637939
>implying mining the moon will ever be feasible.
That blatant nerd logic.

What the fuck does he mean, "environment"? It's rock an vacuum. If anything he should be supporting it wholeheartedly because it would mean moving pollution offworld.

this article almost made me cry. these are fucking barren wastelands. they can only be improved. wo gives a shit abut the martian atmosphere? nothing breathes it. we could launch every single nuke ever made and then mine all the uranium and plutonium on earth and launch that shit at mars and nothing would fucking happen to a single living thing. we could annihilate the entire planet with antimatter and no one would care. what the fuck is wrong with people?

and, is anyone reminded of the Futurama episode where the space hippies blockade the dark matter tanker bender is piloting and it ends up crashing into a penguin preserve on pluto?

It's like "We can't mine the oceans, sediment plumes would disturb the wildlife"

"How exactly"

"Well you know it would make the water cloudy and sea life would avoid it"

"Why is that bad"

"It's inconvenient for the sea creatures"

"Not having rare earth metals is inconvenient for me."

"But it disrupts the ecosystem"

"Does it kill anything?"

"No, but-"

"Then we're doing it. Cheap rare earths, lithium, manganese, etc. means cheaper electric cars, solar panels, wind turbines etc. which means hugely decreased demand for oil which means fewer rigs which means lower odds of another BP style spill. You should be all for this."

"But it disturbs the-"

"Shhh"

"But the ecosyste-"

"Sssshhhhhhhhh"

>>4637967
And then these kind of people have the nerve to say that they are pro-science.

>>4637961
this. all manufacturing should be done on the moon as it is a barren fucking nothing we can only make better. a system of orbiting cargo shuttles and a space elevator to bring material into and out of orbit would cut transport costs greatly.

eventually.
when we're all dead. because even if it was feasible tomorrow some faggot would block it to push his own fagtastic agenda.

fun fact: enviromentalist main purpose is to weaken countries for someone elses good. ´stop doing this/pay us, or we will start screaming and shouting how bad you are´
its the same like how you have to be jews buttfriend or else they will openmoughtly label you as a nazi, link you to executions etc
such cases
i wish one day the real population will be free

as for the topic, i hope nothing gets in the way of this expansion, its been a while since anything actually happened that matters to the humans development

>>4637961

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTg5Ldqm8ME

lets protect barren worlds and just die on earth instead of spreading amongst the stars to create our glorious galactic empire.

Fucking hippies. They act like if humans didn't exist all the species that are around today would never go extinct and just live for fucking ever. No sooner or later another ice age would wipe out large portions of the current species and shit like super volcanoes and stuff.

>>4637991
A FANTASTIC PLAN. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG ?

Like when we first went to space, we thought we could just litter everywhere. Since, you know, it's space. Who gives a damn ?

Not so smart now huh. Have you considered the fact that there's nothing to decompose the waste (unless you develop super bacteria) and there will be no chemical reactions like in the Earth biosphere ?

>>4638007
Fun fact : China uses that excuse to say fuck you to all environmental concerns. China so weak. China need industry.

>>4638019

The thing is, >>4638007 this guy has it wrong. I'm an environmentalist. I'm not about all that shit he hates. I'm strongly pro-nuclear, pro space and sea mining etc. etc.

When you get your descriptions of a group from the people who hate that group it's not exactly gonna be unbiased.

The fringe elements *within* environmentalism that people object to (and so do I) are Malthusians, and anarcho-primitivists. They are told these two groups define all environmentalists and that the word is synonymous with what they stand for.

Most of us just want cleaner air and water, plus more efficient technology. Efficiency gains to some degree delay the need for energy generation gains, making it possible for larger numbers to enjoy a higher standard of living on the same amount of energy or less. It's a valid priority.

>Post article from a popsci magazine
>Article is written by professor of art history

>LET'S GET RILED UP PEOPLE!

>>4638030
I don't even know how to react to this.

>>4638035
>dat .gif

I can't stop laughing.

>>4638042
When I first clicked it I thought "Oh this is stupid, a doll on a counter repeating over and over"

And then....LOL

>>4638030
Litter on the Moon does not pose anywhere near the same issues as litter in Earth's orbit. One is extremely dangerous to spacecraft. The other is not.

>>4638034
yeah well most people stand for those common sense points, who wouldnt want a cleaner purer world, but if they call themselves enveiromentalists that is another thing
its just that a small part of them really are either buttfuckingly stupid or they are backed by some institution who wants to fuck countries developments

>>4638030
so? dump that shit in a crater and forget about it. it's not orbiting at supersonic speeds in close proximity to our satellites, it's in a fucking crater.

>>4638034

Hate to burst your bubble, but the Malthusians and anarcho-primitives are the ones running the major environmental organizations like Greenpeace and has the ear of the left-wing politicians. Best thing for you to do is to start your own organization and let other knows there's another side to environmentalism.

>>4638048
>yeah well most people stand for those common sense points, who wouldnt want a cleaner purer world

Well there you go then. You're an environmentalist too. Don't let the fact that commies, anarchists and malthusians have jumped on that bandwagon drive you away from it. Pretty much every cause that gains any kind of traction is latched onto by people whose actual agendas are too unpopular to go anywhere and hope to turn the popular cause into a vehicle for theirs.

Nobody's actually going to let these people get their way. It's not like they have any power or are unopposed. No way Malthusian genocidal fantasies o the anarcho-primitivist fantasy of returning to a paleolithic lifestyle will actually fly with normal people, and everyone recognizes Cap and Trade is Communism. Thik of it like creationists who seriously believe that they will see evolution defeated in their lifetimes if they just call creationism "intelligent design" and keep filing lawsuits. They never get anywhere and aren't a genuine threat.

>>4638053

>Hate to burst your bubble, but the Malthusians and anarcho-primitives are the ones running the major environmental organizations like Greenpeace and has the ear of the left-wing politicians

http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/factsopinions/

>>4638056
>Nobody's actually going to let these people get their way

I wonder how often that's been said in the last century.

>>4638058
Just because Malthus was wrong about his next 100 years doesn't mean that millions will never die ever.

>>4638067
>I wonder how often that's been said in the last century.

Millions, if not billions of times. Only a handful of times were they catastrophically wrong. In most cases, nutjob movements don't amount to anything.

>>4638073
We can't afford to be catastrophically wrong. We must resort to murder immediately, before these movements do further damage to the future of humanity.

>you will never live long enough to watch the Space Dominion grow

>>4638074

>Just because Malthus was wrong about his next 100 years doesn't mean that millions will never die ever.

That isn't specifically why he's wrong, but he's wrong nonetheless. Population growth reliably plateaus in developed countries once the standard of living, education, etc. is sufficiently high.

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Technology has reached a point where we can plausibly raise living conditions to at least that level literally everywhere, it's a matter of fostering industrialization.

>>4638077
>We can't afford to be catastrophically wrong. We must resort to murder immediately, before these movements do further damage to the future of humanity.

You sure you're not a Malthusian? You sound like one.

I have no idea who's arguing for what anymore.

>>4638030
We have been littering up space for going on 6 decades now. What bad has come out of it and why do you think it would be so difficult to clean up some of the debris when there is enough of it to be problematic?

>>4638083
That was a joke. It would be interesting if extremist opposition groups started waging a terrorist campaign against environmentalists, but for some reason that doesn't appear to be happening.

I blame the schools.

>>4638086
Google space debris.
>>4638052
So you begin to treat normal waste like some kind of plastic that won't ever decompose ? I'll wait until you give me the exact figures of how much handling them will cost and whether anything else can possibly go wrong (like, fresh water). It is probable that whatever you want to do on the Moon will be so cost prohibitive no one will want to go there.
Well, until some technological solutions emerge.

>>4638102
Google said it wasn't really a problem, nothing devastating has ever happened as a result of space debris, there are many plans to get rid of it, and you are just an ignorant cunt with nothing useful to say.

How do we destroy green peace?

>>4638158
By establishing the Brownwar group, and killing all of their members.

>>4638102
yes, it would be a terrible shame if the fresh water that is so abundant on the moon became decontaminated.
i acknowledged that technical solutions must emerge first.
BUT WHAT THE FUCK COULD GO WRONG.
THERE ARE MANY USEFUL SHIT-DUMPING CRATERS ON THE MOON.
you know how we dump our earth trash in these pits called landfills, and to take tons of precautions with toxic waste and groundwater, so it sucks to do?
nothing lives on the moon. we could test nukes there, set the entire thing on fire (impossible with the atmosphere, but nothing would change if you did somehow), basically do anything we want to it short of smashing it into the earth or shooting it off into deep space, and NOTHING WOULD CHANGE.
Or we could keep dumping that shit on earth.
whatever.

>>4638127
>wasn't really a problem
>Measurement, growth mitigation and active removal of space debris are major activities within the space industry today.
Here's a hint : do people spend time and money hiring expensive experts to solve a non-problem ?
Models show that when there is ENOUGH debris to cause a chain reaction any cleaning up work will be impossible (that is if we ignore all the casualties in low orbit) The possibility of such critical mass being reached has haunted people for decades. No sir, you are the embodiment a lot of things that are wrong with this world. You are complacency and ignorance endowed with a sense of entitlement.

People like you get any kind of power and disasters will happen because you believe "it hasn't happened yet so let's carry on". If everyone were like you space debris would reach critical mass and there would be train bombings daily before you stop and begin to say "oops". Disasters are prevented because there are people with a brain who recognize the problem and work to stop it, and thank the FSM they exist. Disasters are not prevented because some morons like you think they are not a problem.

>>4638169
*became contaminated, before you pull a Fox News on me.

>>4638171
explain to me how chunks of shit moving at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour in close proximity to satellites in orbit has anything to do with moon-landfills.
and, nice slippery slope argument.
and what distant asshole did you pull train bombings out of?

>>4638127
>there are many plans to get rid of it
No there are proposals to get rid of it and in the language of space that's very different. Plans have funding and have mad it though selection, proposals have no funding because they have not been picked up.

>>4638178
That is something being discussed in the other "thread" inside this thread. The topic of the conversation between you and me is space debris, and how complacent you are when people have been working on it for decades.

>Rather than taking significant steps to control global energy use, and reduce the problem posed by resource scarcity, these companies seem to suggest that we can continue to kick that proverbial can down the road by technologizing our way to abundant energy. We’ve seen this kind of get-rich-quick fever before, in oil rushes, natural gas rushes, and more – and it has left environments around Earth barren and polluted.

That pretty much sums up the silliness of the blog post. It's a few political memes wrapped up as one.

>Rather than taking significant steps to control global energy use, and reduce the problem posed by resource scarcity

In other words, instead of carbon credits and ending pollution and converting to wind/solar power, they're just going after more resources. The problem is, we're not going after oil on asteroids. Even if mining asteroids works and we start bringing shit back, it's not going to directly turn us off oil. So we shouldn't even solve our other scarcity problems? Humanity should sit in the corner for a few centuries to learn its lesson?

And technologizing? You mean like creating technology to get ourselves out of a problem? Kind of like...solar panels? Wind turbines? Fusion?

Then there's the typical "Solve Earth problems first" because the solution can't lie elsewhere along with a jab at industrialists.

This person is obviously too consumed with the politics of academia to think clearly.

>>4638191
you brought up space debris as an example of why dumping waste on the surface of the moon is bad. of course space debris are bad. anything traveling faster than the speed of sound that humans did not intend to set in motion is generally bad for humans and the things we build.

>>4638218
>dumping waste on the surface of the moon is bad
No. Space debris is just a classic example of whatcouldpossiblygowrong. We were discussing the implications of manufacturing on the Moon. In which waste disposal is but one small factor.

>>4638225
alright, fair enough.
what are the implications of manufacturing, then?
>waste
>pollution leading to contamination of air, soil and water
>depletion of resources (consumed by factories to make goods)
>accidents during transport of goods and raw materials
>potential social issues (factory/living conditions for workers)
anything i'm missing?
i can see the social issues and the transport causing problems

>>4638262
I think you mean air or water.

>>4638225
>space debris
why not this plan?

>>4638254
There is no air or soil on the moon to contaminate.

>>4638262
talking about manufacturing in general, so we can discuss what the advantages and disadvantages of moving it to the moon are.
there's an advantage. though i suspect you mean water.

>>4638263
edited
Space Wedge

>>4638254
Transporting is a very big problem indeed. We currently waste a lot of money just to escape Earth's gravity. Even maintaining the ISS is so costly already. If it's just transporting stuff with no live cargo I suppose some dumb rockets will suffice.

I'd be pretty gung-ho about space technology if we weren't in an economy and energy crisis right now. I see achieving nuclear fusion as a more important goal that will lead to cheaper energy, cheaper manufacturing, solve world hunger (well not really but it does help poor people) and most importantly, allow people to start focusing on science and space again.

>>4638265
there is no liquid water, as far as I know, they still have not ruled out the possibility of ice at the poles

while the dirt on the moon is sometimes called lunar soil, it is nothing soil as we know it because nothing can be grown in it and since it can't grow anything in the first place, it is a moot point to worry about it being contaminated

>>4638280
Calculate the number of dollars and manhours required to keep that wedge operational and the theoretical time it needs to clean all the current debris (based on current estimates) and we will begin to call it a proposal. Frankly I don't want to do things like extracting sand particles from a beach one by one.

>>4638294
Agreed.
That's why the Space Wedge will only be launched preceding a planned series of launches in orbits that are expected to be populated with communication and otherwise satellites.
Space Wedge will need very little maintenance as it is nothing more than a large hunk of solid metal with a reinforcing latticework of other alloys, with some fuel and thrusters strapped onto the backsides, safe from any debris.
Space Wedge.

>>4638300
Well, the skeptic in me says that it is all but useless to try and diverge pieces of debris one by one since there are too many of them, and if this Space Wedge somehow encounters technical difficulties (or something rams into its thrusters) it will become a spinning spaceball of death.

>>4638283
i would think a space elevator capable of transporting large amounts of raw material into orbit where it would be loaded onto "orbital shuttles", basically just huge tubes that circle ffrom earth to moon and back, or a supply of raw material directly from asteroids would help with transportation.

>>4638300
To explain furhter, Space Wedge will NOT be used to clean out the entirety of Low Earth Orbit space, it is ONLY intended to be used as a safeguard for satellite and space station orbits.
Space Wedge is not concerned with fixing space pollution, only in neutralizing it's problematic effects.
Space Wedge.

>>4638310
I sure hope this elevator doesn't use anti-gravity to get us above the ground.

>>4638311
if Space Wedge fucks up, just send up a bigger Space Wedge.

>>4638311
Space Wedge is equipped with a highly resistant, passively powered military tracking device, by wich Space Wedge can be accurately and safely deflected into a terminal course toward planet earth by the shortest route possible, as we at Space Wedge have no desire to bear the brunt of any lawsuits caused by the incidental destruction or damage of satellites not owned or guaranteed by Space Wedge.
Space wedge is also not liable for whatever damages are caused upon its crash landing, but will offer a substantial compensation for the silence of those damaged, as well as the permission to enjoy the ownership of a genuine space-born satellite as a souvenere and conversation piece.
Space Wedge.

>>4638314
therein lies the problem.
but mining asteroids would still work.
what does the moon have in the way of resources, other than dust and rock?

>>4638314
There is a sort-of antigravity that would help.
Charged Particle loops built into the space elevator would reinforce it by bracing the structure with the earth's own magnetic field.

My only beef with this article is that the author suggests that we should apply ethics to abiotic environments.

Huh? Since when can ethics be applied to something abiotic? If we alter Mars' environment so that it CAN support life, when it couldn't before, isn't that an unequivocal ethical plus for life?

If Mars does already have microbial life, then sure, the ethics become a factor in terraforming...but if it doesn't, there simply aren't any ethics to consider.

On that note...I want there to be microbial life on Mars because of the awareness that the discovery would imbue the human race with (our place in the cosmos)...but holy god the shit will hit the fan when people want to terraform when microbial life is already there. In any case, I think human expansion to other planets will be just about the most awesome thing ever, but hopefully we can find a pristine planet to settle on, first. Having said all that, you know it's inevitable that humans will eventually settle on a planet that already has life, it's just a matter of time.

>>4638323
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

>Don't ruin the lunar environment!!
>OMG scientists are saying we should pollute Mars!!!
>"there can be no question"

>written by an assistant professor of art history and archeology
No wonder.

>>4637829
That article is... it's just too stupid for me to put into words. I would lose my shit if someone said that kind of stuff in front of me.