Ken Fabian

I am not so interested in whether bioreactors and biofuels can work on the moon or Mars as whether it can help meet our near term and critical requirements for abundant clean energy here on Earth - but any technology to be used in space will have to be developed and proven on Earth first, so that isn't a conflict of interest.

The advantage of PV is you just expose it to sunlight and it makes electricity. No moving parts, can be plug and play, is low cost and exceptionally reliable, and likewise for associated equipment. Available solar area isn't usually the limiting constraint, so energy yield per m² is not a deal breaker; by all measures the yield from PV in most places is very good right now. There are biofuel successes but they tend to rely on the natural advantages of being on Earth - crops that grow readily in existing soils with natural rainfall, open ponds for algae cultures, availability of power and other supply. The concentrator type and other closed bioreactors are not as efficient and effective as claimed; the first link noted that getting tubular bioreactors from energy negative to energy positive is an ongoing challenge. Just the energy requirement for keeping the fluids well mixed seems to be a major hurdle. Failure to be energy positive is a big problem here on Earth, but would be a bigger problem on Mars. That doesn't sound like something that will make 5 times the energy production than PV to me.

PV is demonstrably energy positive but biofuels from tubular bioreactors are not, which makes the claims of superior energy delivery look wrong. Not clear what nutrients would be required but sources will be essential. It doesn't look like any kind of plug and play kind of technology, but would need constant attention, ie farming. It is also not clear what the steps and requirements are between biomass or ethanol gain in a ferment fluid and usable fuels ie dry burnable biomass, diesel grade oil or distilled ethanol of purity suited to fuel cells but they will be there - at a cost to overall efficiency and energy output. In space you will need the Oxygen if you burn anything or use fuel cells; it may be from CO2 recycled, possibly by bioreactor, but in a closed system it will add yet more associated equipment and energy use.

I like the enthusiasm for biofuels but it is a long way from being a replacement - let alone clearly superior replacement -for PV. Not on Earth, not in space.

I think people are making it more complicated than it needs to be. I think the "solution" to surviving past the death of the sun is developing the capability to make and sustain self supporting artificial habitats, using just the raw materials from asteroids, comets and similar that will give homo sapiens (and/or later homo speciations) the means.

I suspect if we succeed in inhabiting anywhere off Earth it will be because we have are capable of most of that, but initially with the advantage of solar power. To be self sufficient without solar power - to have reliable fusion energy I suppose - looks like an important threshold to cross. A whole lot of technological capabilities are needed that we don't have and I think maintaining a healthy, wealthy Earth will determine if we get the opportunities to develop them.

If we can be self sustaining with those kinds of primordial space resources... it's more than just a big solar system. It has a Kuiper Belt. Before we even get started on the Oort. The Oort of the next door stars after that?

Not any kind of expert here but I note that bread and booze are yeast based and whilst they can be interchangeable the bread yeasts are selected for high CO2 production, so bread rises, whilst brewer's yeast is selected for alcohol production as well as some CO2 for the fizz. Even so, some bacterial fermentation appears to be involved as well. Mostly they are considered a problem - including by turning alcohol into vinegar.

Yoghurt is bacterial and whilst it produces CO2 the cultures used don't appear great for making alcohol, so maybe not so good for making booze. Some bacteria do make alcohol but I am not aware of any beverages that are primarily fermented with bacteria.

Kombucha is apparently a combination of both yeasts and bacteria. Some fermented foods make do with natural bacteria and yeasts, without adding any specific starter.

3 hours ago, MigL said:

That doesn't mean it resists compounding.
Every respirator with organic filtering cartridges has activated carbon pellets in it.
They filter the organics by bonding them to the carbon and letting only 'air' through.

Sodium BiCarbonate has similar odour trapping properties.

If it is lasting centuries to millennia in soil it has to be resisting chemical compounding that consumes carbon.

Activated carbon filters chemically combine with organic compounds by adsorption (making a film over the surface). My understanding is any reactivity is confined to the surface and becomes self limiting, which leaves the carbon beneath unchanged. Charcoal is activated by grinding it finely to make more surface area, for adsorption, which creates a protective barrier for the internal material - fine ground because it resists compounding once an adsorptive film is formed.

21 hours ago, MigL said:

Carbon compounds readily with a large number of elements.
It is, in fact, one of the most 'compoundable' elements, and is the basis for its own branch of chemistry, Organic Chemistry.

True, yet in the form of charcoal in soil it is quite stable and resistant to microbial breakdown. In boreal forest soils that can be hundreds to thousands of years. I doubt it lasts so long in tropical conditions but I only did a brief lookaround for relevant info.

From "Charcoal ecology: Its function as a hub for plant succession and soil nutrient cycling in boreal forests"

Quote

Charcoal is highly resistant to microbial decomposition and thus remains in soil for thousands of years, providing recalcitrant carbon to boreal forest soils. The abundant pores in and on charcoal surfaces have powerful adsorption abilities that can influence biogeochemical cycles and plant succession after fire. Our review details the influence of charcoal on plant and soil systems and explains the complex direct and indirect pathways of these influences that occur during succession after fires in boreal ecosystems. Among these pathways, the most important pathway through which charcoal influences plant and soil systems relates to the element composition and nutrient availability in soils and to the abundance of phenolics released from Ericaceae plants in the understory of boreal forests.

Sounds like it is more like a catalyst than a chemical "feedstock" in soil; it promotes biogeochemical processes without being used up. Porous, high surface area and adsorptive ie attracts and holds surface coatings of other materials and microorganisms. It's role appears very significant and complex, including promoting nutrient mineralisation .

Incomplete combustion leaves an abundance of charcoal and partially burned materials. Fires will reduce the amount of leaf and other organic material but increase the amount of charcoal in soils - so the premise that it is lost due to fires is actually the reverse of what happens in practice. Intense fires can eliminate most charcoal and burn with little carbon residue but that is localised. Charcoal has beneficial effects in soil, providing a framework that microorganisms take advantage of.

All individual humans are different... therefore we don't have an absolutely precise definition of a human there is no such thing as a group of humans - just one and all the rest are flawed imitations...

No, this discussion looks like a problem with words and their definitions - and the aspects shared are the unifying characteristics that make "human"; the differences between individuals (even identical twins) don't negate what is shared.

The potential for abiogenesis in the universe isn't going to go away with a redefinition of what "abiogenesis" means.

Turn it the other way around - if healthcare workers refuse vaccination and they become a vector for Covid transmission, should they be legally liable for medical/funeral/other expenses of those who get sick as a result? Should their employers face legal sanctions for failure to insist on vaccination?

Seems to me there are duties of care that override any personal "free" choice.

10 hours ago, dimreepr said:

A piston requires a push...

Push or pull, pressure or suction, either way can do that - the earliest steam engines sucked (from steam condensing in the chamber) rather than blew; depends on the design whether such a piston would push or pull. It would work either way. I note that my bicycle pump pumps air both pushing and pulling.

But what is the piston connected to? A crankshaft like a reciprocating engine? Or will it pump air, say, through a turbine? The first example above ditches the piston and uses the water column itself as the piston to pump air past a turbine - much simpler.

The second example could have wave motion pull up some kind of piston in a cylinder in place of the reeling of cable in and out - closest to the OP suggestion that way - with the same question of what then? It could pull up a piston in a cylinder but it looks like there is no advantage; a whole lot of engineering issues are sidestepped by not using pistons.

I also note that hypothetically such things could be driven by tide rise and fall - just very slowly and delivering very little power.

11 hours ago, Some dude said:

This is not my idea, but one of my friend thought of it, and it sounds like it would work.

The idea is you have some massive metal tube stretching from the sea floor. A metal pole would be inside the tube, and the pole would be strapped to a buoyant object. As the tide rises/lowers, it would move the pole like a piston.

This would be a wave generator, not a tidal generator.

Rather than a piston but working along these lines... I've encountered - systems where air is drawn in and pushed back out past a turbine as waves pass.

Also the use of the cables of a buoyant object aka a buoy, reeling in and out and driving a generator.

I suspect humans are innately - or initially - "weak-wired" sexually; the potential for attraction and arousal is broad. I note that arousal does not even require the participation of anyone else, let alone specific pheromones or specific seasons; fantasizing alone can do it. I also suspect that absence of seasonality made a strong but non-specific sex drive more important.

I think the power of the plasticity of the developing pubescent human brain is able to reinforce the triggers and responses humans experience - creating (usually lifelong) "hard-wiring". A wide variety of them. And we are a social animal where sex is both bonding and cause of rivalry and conflict; rules and customs around it have probably always been essential for the group's health.

Most preferences will arise from observation and mimicry and experiences. And varying levels of enforcement of conformity within the group can determine what those will be. Those that are missing out on early sexual experiences - perhaps denied them by tribal rules and/or polygamy from power - just guessing - may result in higher incidence of homosexuality.

9 hours ago, MigL said:

This reads as "Let's put all out money into breeding faster horses, because electric cars will never be as cheap. They, and the infrastructure needed to support them, may be forever out of reach."
The biggest rewards come from the biggest risks.

I don't think what I said does read like that - assuming you mean the "faster horses" are the other options and nuclear fusion is the "electric car", (I think). Analogies don't always work - I don't think yours does.

I never said pull the money out of fusion, I said give more money to other options that have potential. My optical rectenna example was just that, one example - like fusion I think it is looks very difficult but has potential for big rewards. I thought my point was that plenty of other kinds of clean energy are also deserving of being well funded, including existing ones that do already work - breeding better batteries and lower cost solar and tidal and geothermal and nuclear fission, because we don't know that fusion will ever be as cheap. Betting on it being a big contributor to emissions reductions in the time frames we are dealing with for climate change looks... overly optimistic. We need those other technologies - much more certainly than we need fusion.

Truisms, like analogies, don't always work either; the greatest losses can also come from taking the greatest risks - I suspect risk taking more reliably results in losses than in big rewards. But wealthy nations aren't really risking much, even with 10's of $billions thrown at fusion that fails to realise it's promise; even if these efforts don't work there is usually a lot of new knowledge built that has value. That may be a truism too, but I think a better, truer one.

However, where the R&D funding pool is limited (and it always has limits) we do pick and choose what gets support and what doesn't; I don't see that fusion development that isn't working should get special treatment forever if other R&D is being sacrificed to fund it. But even pulling back levels of funding support doesn't mean we cannot come back to it later - where ongoing R&D in other areas will continue to come up with new techniques and technologies that can be applied to the problems controlled fusion pose.

I think the entirety of R&D is as essential to success of fusion in the long term as the specific programs currently working.

Beecee, there is the possibility costs just do not come down enough, even that it will be made to work but be too expensive to be our clean energy solution. Worst might be to forever be just out of reach.

All our clean possibilities come with problems and doing R&D is about identifying and solving them. I wouldn't want to cut fusion energy funding prematurely, I'd like more overall funding that supports some things I think deserve to be better funded.

With a US$20 Billion budget could optical rectennas aka nantennas - that ought to be an innately superior clean energy solution even to fusion - be made to work? I'd be surprised if this is something, that despite the potential for something that can harvest thermal energy from the environment and waste heat and turn it to electricity, has ever gotten single digit millions.

I suspect we will increasingly be able to model the things we want to do before we do them and know a lot before we try them. I suspect what ITER is building is in part the product of that kind of process. Is that something only their kind of budget can afford or is that something that others can tap into?

1 hour ago, beecee said:

"Fusion energy is carbon-free, safe and economic".

- from the quote, not said by beecee.

Safe maybe; the fusion reaction isn't self sustaining so most things that might go wrong will result in cessation of fusion energy production, unlike fission where it keeps making heat for years after the control rods bring it below critical. Which doesn't mean fission has stopped, just been reduced. Fusion will stop.

Still some radioactive waste to deal with but potentially less waste than almost any other energy option. How much waste we will tolerate is not always rational; heavy metals contaminated coal ash for example is not usually classed as a toxic waste... mostly because the industries involved have fiercely resisted it, to avoid the costs of safe disposal, and those industries are deemed essential by lawmakers. The potential for serious disasters with fusion is probably still there - lots of energy there that might be released in unwanted ways, like explosions and fires, with possible releases of toxic materials (eg coolants?) but they seem more likely to be localised. If they are large, few in number and whole nations depend exclusively on them the economic consequences of failures may exceed the direct damage.

Carbon-free? In the same sense that renewables must initially rely on energy and materials with carbon footprints to get established and will not be zero emissions until their use fully replaces fossil fuel energy and inputs across manufacturing and transport - zero emissions potential, using fossil fuels as the starter fluid.

Economic? No. Current price of power from fusion power stations is approaching infinity - you need to be making power that can be sold to even assess if it is economic. It may be fair to socialise the development costs of technologies deemed important and not expect them to be repaid by those building them if commercial plants are built - but whether that is taxpayer money well spent is a real question; there are lots of potential clean energy technologies that could use levels of R&D funding ITER gets. Seems to me if it is this hard to do fusion at all  it is unlikely to be easy to make it low cost as well.

Not just those who think life was created have a problem with the idea Life exists in order to moderate planetary energy flows. It seems to presume a purpose. It looks more purposeless and opportunistic to me; energy differences made opportunities for chemical reactions. The just right combinations of chemical reactions. A long way from the Big Bang to a world with the just right non-biological chemicals (not quite the same as "inorganic").

It does sound like the Big Bang was when the potential for such worlds with such chemistry was set. We don't yet know if the emergence of life was inevitable; if we find other emergent examples of Life or, by indirect methods, show that the chemical pathways that would lead to life are likely to be common on worlds similar to Earth, it might be a reasonable conclusion that Life was inevitable all along.

In evolutionary biology there is no "evil" but there is a lot of thinking about cheating and how that plays out. Wikipedia has a reasonable summation, but if you are serious you will look to the linked sources.

Social organisms often have ways of "policing" cheaters.

Seems to me the success of a group of hominids depends on the combination of varied abilities, with varied personality types suiting different roles. I suspect there is no ideal personality and too much uniformity would reduce the group's capabilities.

There were solar updraft towers proposals around, warming the air in a flared "hothouse" base. Is that what Revl has in mind?

Other ways of using low grade heat to make mechanical movement or electricity include stirling engines and thermocouples.

I don't think I can address all the arguments from multiple people in one session and some probably deserve their own thread - and I won't keep at this endlessly - but fwiw -

20 hours ago, iNow said:

don’t disagree with you about the reality and scale of the challenges, only about your apparent conclusion that we lack the capacity as humans to overcome them… Sure, “How” remains TBD for now

We have a growing capacity to assess the scale of the challenges we face before we face them, to know the theoretical and practical limits we can expect to come up against, to model them. I expect we will get a top to bottom theoretical understanding of the physics of our universe and thus of limits of material properties and processes - and I don't expect it to include magical outcomes. That will allow us to better recognise what is physically possible and what is not. We can also get better at assessing benefits and cost and what is achievable and what is not. We are already good at that and Mars colonies don't stack up.

Previous rounds of natural philosophers and scientists getting it wrong doesn't preclude final iterations getting it right; science is already circling in on those final truths. I don't accept the possibilities for ever better technological capabilities are open ended. And some will be hypothetically possible and demonstrable but in practice impossible to exploit due to absence of commercial viability. Like possible Mars colonies.

20 hours ago, beecee said:

What are your feelings regarding those questions Ken?

I no doubt don't have the right attitude - I think the commercial viability is absolutely essential to shift from being a taxpayer funded loss making activity to profitable for growth and any inevitability to kick in. Requiring commercial viability is the right attitude.

1, We (US or China, not my nation) probably will send crewed missions to the moon, for national pride. There are credible plans and commitments from the US to do so and abandoning them will look weak.

2, I see no compelling reason to do so - national pride and one-upping China isn't a compelling reason.

3, I doubt there will ever be a colony on the moon - nothing there of value, no commercial base, no way to pay it's way.

4, I see no compelling reason to do so.

5, I think it is unlikely, but possible we will send crewed missions to Mars. For national pride. Or perhaps billionaire's pride.

6, I see no compelling reason to do so.

7, I strongly doubt there will ever be a colony on Mars - because there is nothing there of value, no commercial basis and no way to pay it's way. Without a sound economic basis it fails.

8, I see no compelling reason to do so.

9a, I think it is possible we will establish self supporting civilisations in space but as an emergent outcome from enduring commercial success at asteroid mining for Earth markets - more likely if doing so actually turns out requiring in-space crews and the whole enterprise is not automated and operated remotely. As a goal in and of itself, no.

9b, if 9a then just possibly habitats that thrive entirely on asteroid/cometary resources - if abundance of reliable fusion energy that is readily and reliably copied is achieved, ie energy apart from solar - then they might survive in the Kuiper and Oort. I don't think humans will ever explore other solar systems, even with probes - not unless successive generations build out new habitations ever further out and keep doing so reliably for a few hundred thousand years.

10, I don't believe generation ships will ever be viable. I don't expect exotic reactionless or FTL ships will ever be possible - and if our current Earth civilisation doesn't implode I think we will achieve a complete understanding of the fundamental physics of our universe in this century and will achieve the ability to know for sure.

Mining bulk physical commodities for the Earth market - accessing the abundance of iron and nickel and the more valuable elements mixed in with them - has a compelling basis. Success will probably depend on NOT involving astronauts working in space. Meteor defense looks like a good motivation for taxpayer funded space capability. Colonising, as goal in and of itself? No, I don't think it is compelling. If somehow it can be done easily, where it presents economic opportunity, sure, but it looks anything but easy or presenting commercial opportunity.

15 hours ago, Prometheus said:

Do you have any links/data on how much money Starship has received from government and how much has been raised privately? 

I don't think is possible to compartmentalise any company's finances like that - too opaque and too much overlap. Direct funding for Starship? Offhand I only recall "just" $80M to assist testing rocket engines that appears directly related. The $2.9M moon lander funding has apparently been suspended.

I don't have a special issue with companies bidding for government contracts - which by their nature will include profitability for the contractor - but with misrepresenting it as a private enterprise industry and private industry ambition that stands on it's own feet.

SpaceX PR seriously understates the difficulties of grand goals like Mars colonies and hypes unrealistic outcomes. I don't believe they will be capable of doing Mars landings as purely private enterprise ventures, let alone colonies. If they do get to Mars "independently" it will be because of enduring profitability in servicing government contracts - and will probably be a poor business decision. I don't believe space tourism can prop it up and make it commercially viable - something of tangible value has to flow back to Earth.

I don't believe it is the role of governments to prop such speculative ventures - but concede that others disagree. I am not stopping anyone but SpaceX is popularising Mars missions with unrealistic hype and do engage in lobbying for government support for funding them.

19 hours ago, iNow said:

The graveyard of history is littered with those who said something could not be done. 

But I expect that is not as big a graveyard as for those who thought something could be done but it turned out it couldn't.

Seriously, these kinds of arguments around having the right attitude don't answer the fundamental problems. Take it for granted that there will be visionaries and risk takers and that they will be admired for it. And some will get it right and change the course of human history and all but the spectacular failures will be forgotten. But I'd like to hear something more substantive about how the risks and problems are to be dealt with than cliches and slogans.

19 hours ago, MigL said:

100 years is a very long time frame.

It will 100 years of the world changing out of recognition. A century of coming up against hard resource limits and dealing with climate change impacts. Advances in technology and industry, yes, especially near term, but I think there are limits to those too. R&D and continuing advances depend on healthy, wealthy economies and no matter the appearance of continuing advancement as an inevitability I don't believe that it is.

12 hours ago, Prometheus said:

They won those contracts on merit, and that money would have gone somewhere else (Russia or another telecoms company) if not SpaceX.

Communications looks like the exception that has developed a commercial foundation and can generate sufficient income to pay it's own way. But the entire industry outside of communications and observation is propped up one way or another by taxpayers and even those mostly are too, so it becomes a question of the goals of those space agencies and their governments and what they ought to be supporting.

Mars is not a commercial opportunity but servicing government contracts to go to Mars can be, if governments can be induced to support it; the private money invested in developing SpaceX capabilities included capabilities that overlap with Mars ambitions, but always depended on getting rockets that can service governments to be a viable business. I think that expectation of taxpayer funding helping, if not outright paying them to go to Mars was always there.

Even more so than most government contract servicing businesses, that may have significant commercial business outside contracting, these "private" space ventures depend on taxpayers. What looks clear to me is there is zero chance of private enterprise going to the moon or Mars without it being mostly if not fully government supported. And I do not think there will be any tangible benefits to Earth or even to advancing Grand Space Dreams in these Mars ambitions.

An order of magnitude reduction in launch costs is an astonishing achievement and will benefit Near Earth (Earth oriented) space activities (which we can hope will not be weaponising near Earth space) but it is not nearly enough to make the moon or Mars viable for colonisation. Another one or two orders of magnitude might get us commercially viable asteroid mining, but still leave Mars colonies as unviable. Which colonies I believe will require a substantial Mars economy and population - with no way to pay their way during establishment and facting extinction level dangers on a constant basis.

Optimising current rocket technologies to achieve another 10 fold cost reduction looks a lot harder than the first time around and there aren't any promising exotic new technologies that look capable of bringing space shipping costs down anywhere near shipping costs within the main economy. Earth based open ended R&D - that works just as well without a specific space colonisation focus is where that will come from, if that is actually possible. Ultimately understanding the depths of the challenges and limits of materials and technology can tell us if we are wasting efforts on unreachable goals - we will know that throwing yet more effort into it in "obstacles are opportunities" style won't work.

14 hours ago, Prometheus said:

As iNow pointed out, SpaceX is privately funded.

SpaceX income and commercial viability depends heavily on government contracts and it is a long way short of beng fully funded privately; it receives a lot of government funding, which comes tied to particular projects and outcomes. I am not sure what it is but it is not "private enterprise" as it is usually understood. Even Starlink is getting funding. By operating a business which has the US government as the principle customer SpaceX can't just do as it pleases - and without the strong US government support I think current SpaceX capabilities would be much more modest and big ambitions like Mars missions look a lot less likely. Not that I think colonies will be possible even with strong government commitment.

Will the Lunar lander they are being funded to develop be the prototype for the Mars landers that don't yet exist?

I think they will keep up the science fiction inspired Mars Colony hype but with a timeline reminiscent of Zeno's Paradox, whilst hoping that sufficient popular support leads to a crewed Mars mission as a government funded venture, like with the moon.

As contractors they would be well placed to make the profits but avoid the financial risks. Doing it as a wholly private venture?  I don't think they are anywhere near being capable of even doing a crewed orbit of Mars and return, let alone landings.

I am not endorsing IDNeon's combative contributions. I remain interested in discussing and debating the real prospects for colonising Mars. I see fundamental problems and am not impressed with "Problems are opportunities" type truisms as responses to them. Those problems are not due to a lack of an optimistic attitude; they need much more substantive solutions than additional optimism. At this point "plans" to colonise Mars are little more than wishful thinking and adding more wishful thinking won't do it.

There is no viable plan for colonising Mars and the improvements SpaceX have made to rocketry are not nearly sufficient to make Mars colonies possible. I suggest Rockets capable of taking missions to Mars part are just one unresolved issue amongst a plethora. 

Are we not supposed to point out the problems with Mars ambitions? Sorry but the optimistic enthusiasm looks more like Belief and Faith that Elon the Prophet will lead the way to the Promised Land than it being a rational and reasonable ambition for a worthwhile goal that is within reach.

At every point the arguments in favor revert to variations of "Planet B", "Lifeboats for escaping a world with no future", "inevitable", "Destiny", "builds hope", "just like Columbus", "Once there people will thrive" and "new tech will make it easy". None of those address concerns raised about fundamental economics or what it takes to be self sufficient under such circumstances. I should just share the enthusiastic hope and refrain from criticising? Sorry, no.

I think the subject needs a healthy round of scepticism; people who otherwise appear reluctant to accept extraordinary claims on trust sound a lot like dogmatic Religionists on this. 

Some manufacturers like Tesla already include provisions for taking back batteries for recycling/disposal in the purchase price. It is a serious consideration but I don't think it is being neglected. I fully expect more and better recycling and safe disposal

Also I think we need some perspective - projections for battery waste for Australia indicate a rise to above 100,000 metric tons per year by 2050. Not sure what global projections are. It is also projected that by then most of that waste will be recycled. I am inclined to think that the quantities of battery waste is an underestimate, but by comparison coal burning in Australia currently produces 12.5 million metric tons per year of heavy metals contaminated and chemically reactive coal ash. Then there is CO2, which exceeds all other waste more than 5 times over. In Australia, 20 times more of that than coal ash waste, which is a lot, lot more than we expect from battery waste.

Yes, battery and other RE waste needs to be dealt with but the shift to RE will greatly reduce overall amounts of toxic waste.

People can believe and promote whatever beliefs they like but I do think there are or should be obligations for people holding positions of responsibility and trust, including journalists to investigate and report factually and news editors to make clear the difference between reporting and opinion.

We have large parts of communities disbelieving the existence or seriousness of the climate problem - profoundly important to our future - because people we rely on to know the difference between fact and fiction chose to promote conspiratorial BS. The US experienced an attempted coup, because organisations that promote themselves as the Fourth Estate, the essential guardians of Truth and Democracy promoted conspiratorial BS. These were not grass roots movements of people holding their own beliefs but conspiracy theories presented and promoted as factual by people holding positions of trust as , with fiduciary duties, who should and mostly did know better.

Journalists and news editors, like people holding high Offices, should have and abide by minimum standards - and be held accountable.