wright496

True. That works pretty well but it's still not quite as inviting as stepping into an enclosed vehicle. It would be a lot easier to encourage people to bike for local commutes if there was a simple but highly effective canopy that would make cycling in the rain almost as dry as driving.

How about making covered tunnels designated for bicycles and pedestrians?

No, you really don't get it.

 

Space exploration is - and always will be - such a fringe activity that it will have less of an impact on global population than the weather does. One heat wave or cold snap in Europe is responsible for removing more people from Earth than the space program has in 50 years (even assuming that those who went up never came down). Simply making drinking and driving totally legal would do MUCH MUCH MUCH more to curb population growth. Space exploration and population control simply shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence.

It's only a fringe activity because we keep neglecting it. One of the main points I'm trying to make is that it SHOULDN'T be such a low priority. You seem to be confusing this with some sort of inherent technical difficulty when in fact it's a matter of politics. And you still didn't answer my question as to what you would recommend. Yeah getting women educated and in the workforce is the best single thing we've got for this problem, but that's not enough either.

DH already pointed it out, but I think this bit of common mythology needs bludgeoning every time it raises it's head.

 

SPACE EXPLORATION WILL NEVER HELP REDUCE GLOBAL POPULATION. NEVER.

 

As was stated, you need to move 75 *million* people a year just to keep up. Even if Mars was a veritable Garden of Eden (which it obviously is not) you just couldn't do it. Right now the cost of lifting a pound to escape velocity is something like $4,000. Let's suppose somebody just goes crazy and finds a way to reduce that cost by a factor of 20. Cost to escape velocity is now $200 per pound. Wow, that's pretty damned good!

 

Average person weighs 150 pounds? Hey, you can get a ticket for $30,000. But don't forget, it takes 6 months to get to Mars. How much food do you need to eat? I'll assume you're recycling the water, but you still need to bring on board 6 months worth of dehydrated food. I'll be nice and call that another 150 pounds. Ooops, we're up to $60,000 a seat.... And that assumes you leave *everything* behind and that somehow you'll be living in space and entering Mar's atmosphere naked (I've included no allowance for your actual space ship!).

 

Sure, some people could and would pay it out of pocket, but the numbers for that are small indeed. It would have to be a government-funded program for the most part. Now, assuming that each country is supposed to send a proportionate number of people per year, that means the US would have to send on the order of 3 *million* people a year. At a cost of $60,000 *each*.

 

Total cost just for the US portion? $180 BILLION. Per year! On top of everything else. Just to tread water for global population. And even if the US can afford it.... What about all those parts of the world that couldn't?

 

And remember, those numbers are fantastically optimistic. The reality would be much, much worse. You'd probably need more like 5,000 pounds of lift capability per person (not 300 pounds) and let's not forget that the factor of 20 improvement is completely unrealistic.

 

 

Actually, there's nothing draconian about it. I've applauded China's efforts for years. There are only four *realistic* options for controlling population:

 

1) Birth control (either voluntary or forced).

2) Disease.

3) Famine.

4) War.

 

With options like that, even forced birth control is pretty benign.

You guys misunderstood me. I don't think space exploration alone is the solution for overpopulation. But is there a good single solution? This is one of those problems that needs to be attacked from a variety of angles. In this context it could be useful for overpopulation.

And, of course, the holy grail of bicycle modernization, imo, would be a good rain-canopy system that didn't blow you away like a sailboat in a storm-gust. But I think the bicycle was basically perfected in the 19th century.

That's easy. Just dress for the weather and wrap your stuff in plastic. There's no need for a canopy.

We were making excellent progress in nuclear propulsion, and politics was really the only thing that brought that to a halt. NERVA met or exceeded all expectations and NASA had big plans for it. What really irks me is that people are so lackadaisical in their attitudes towards things like space exploration, but billions are thrown seemingly indiscriminately at the military. Scientists and engineers from pretty much any field that you can think of are finding creative military applications for their work w/ fecundity because it's an easy path to funding(if there really is such a thing). I would like to try offering those kinds of incentives for contributing to the space program.

Space exploration is a matter of great importance and I don't know why so many people seem to have a hard time grasping this. Overpopulation is ultimately one of the greatest problems facing humanity. Everyone thinks it's their right to have kids, but honestly, without expanding away from Earth, this is clearly not an option. As draconian as it sounds the only real choice would be to keep people from reproducing. Not enough people will make that choice on their own.

And then there's the threat of an asteroid or what have you. The probability that something like this will threaten Earth is for our purposes...inevitable. It might not happen real soon, but it very likely will eventually.

I'm sorry to veer off into politics and policy when this thread is primarily about the engineering aspects, but the point I'm trying to make is that the things I'm talking about are the biggest obstacles to contend with in this endeavor and NOT the technical feasibility. I really felt the need to establish that. I think things will actually go much better now that the private sector is being allowed to pursue this.

You can use chemical power or even ambient thermal energy to power them just fine.

When I first read the title of this thread I thought Martha Stewart might have found an odd new way to decorate.

Why do people need currency to be linked to gold to use gold for their savings? Why can't they just buy gold and keep it in a safe or safety deposit box? If USD were tied to gold and the government wanted to print money, they would just use some other currency. If they were forbidden from coining currency not based on gold, they would just prescribe economic activities and exchange networks for people who were excluded from existing economic networks. What I don't get is why people are always raising this issue of a gold-standard but never fully explain what it would really change about the way the economy functions.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Books have been written on this subject. How can you say no good reasons have ever been given? The problem is that with the way things are now, the currency is too easily manipulated at the whim of the Fed. Inflation is a hidden tax on the American people. This wouldn't be a problem if the currency was or was linked to something of tangible value.

Why does it matter if the banks are in opposition to this? They're in the minority. Yes, I know they do in fact wield quite a bit of power, but if people are alerted to this issue, we can change things. Don't be intimidated by those thugs.

Female bedbugs have no genital opening. Therefore in order to reproduce the male uses his hypodermic like penis to pierce a hole into the females abdomen in which he then proceeds to ejaculate into.

Is that what is happening when we think they're biting us?

This is an oversimplified proof. You seem to present the UTM as a thing that answers questions but then you hit it with a statement. I don't doubt the theorem because the original proof was good, but this proof isn't very convincing.

Also listening to music can affect your heart rate, as your heart rate will drift towards the beat.

Well the population of the earth in the year 5620 could be 300 trillion for all we know maybe more

At some point every square inch of the land and ocean will be altered by humans. After that we have to build up and build down into the ground. Imagine the earth with a shell over it. This shell is actually a one world building. This world building could be a few miles high and many miles deep into the earths crust. It would need to be this way to support hundreds of trillions of people. Would look something like the death star from star wars

 

So in this case there would be no room for roads. You need to access areas deep within the shell so tubes are the only way. Even if its a road in a hollowed tunnel.... well thats a tube. Also by this year there will surely be no such thing as cars. Thats like humans today riding horses as our main transportation lol. By then we will probably not need to move. Each human would not even be genetically human by then but lets say they were. they would probably be linked to the internet and never leave there brain uploading station. But lets say they still do want to travel around the physical world. If they did travel they would have no choice but to use tube like transportation. It is probably inevitable if we still move from one place to another in the future. It would probably be some advanced maglev transport system of tubes thats all automated.

I would hope that by that time we will have started colonizing space.

Although we could do this, it seems like it would be easier to just focus on colonizing mars and the moon right now.

2 pages of arguing over the rules and nobody has even posted a theory yet lol.

What about a yagi antenna?

I actually don't think this particular thing would be that dangerous to synthesize. I would try to do this the microbiol way. My reasoning is that if this happens in the gut of people anyway, then the byproducts probably aren't that dangerous. Of course caution is still called for, but this is the way I would recommend. From the posted links, it also seems that using microbes is the more researched way to go about this. If you're hard core about this, then I would recommend testing this on some feeder mice from the pet store before you try it out on yourself.

it is argued by colin leslie dean that no matter how faultless godels

logic is Godels incompleteness theorem are invalid ie illegitimate

for 5 reasons:

 

 

This is all logic. If his theorem isn't valid then his logic MUST be flawed on some level.

I don't normally like to stray off topic, but since it's closely related and this thread has been stagnant anyway, what do you guys think of the Flynn Effect?

I think IQ tests are a sort of decathlon of mental abilities. We have a much better understanding of neurology than when these tests were first devised. I believe we should be precise about what we are testing for, such as working memory, attention, etc. The best support of these tests seems to come from the fact that they correlate with so many things. IQ tests take on so much at once though, that it's hard to elucidate what's really going on. Let's say hypothetically (and I'm just pulling this out of my ass to make a point) that verbal skills make a big difference in job performance. Clearly any IQ test which took into account verbal skills would correlate with good verbal skill and so IQ and job performance would be correlated as well. Well, you could say IQ and job performance are related and leave it at that. But WHY is IQ related to job performance. Is it working memory, or attention or math skills? We need to break it down more and analyze these separate cognitive parameters and their interrelationships.