On 6/8/2026 at 1:41 AM, TheVat said:

Or the actual money available.

I think there is no decoupling the costs of such goals from the economics of the greater economy that is trying to do them.

Economics is about how resources are managed and marshaled to do the things we want from available resources. And absence of positive economics of the intended goal seems as likely to lead to failure as resource shortfalls (I suppose it is a resource shortfall) and technological inadequacies.

15 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Thanks, see what you mean, but wouldn't the efficiency of the engine at least cut down on reaction mass required to reach a certain speed

Yes but it seems very likely to add significantly to the dry mass/dead weight that has to be carried and accelerated.

I had thought ion engines - the most efficient in terms of impulse for reaction mass ejected - would be used a lot more but the mass of hardware needed undercuts the gains.I doubt one of the favoured reaction mass types - Xenon - is going to be easily obtainable, so what gets used may be less than ideal. Such rockets must also include an energy source. Chemical rocket hardware can be low mass and disposable. I doubt nuclear will be like that.

Do the "Orion" types (the "Orion Shall Rise" type) - riding on top of nuclear detonations - rely on the gradual vaporisation of the blast plate between the ship and the blasts to provide some of the thrust? I think that plate (whatever it is named) would be consumed one way or another.

Apart from anything else long term self reliant survival within a closed system - something we can study experimentally here on Earth - has not been demonstrated. The slower the journey the longer that closed system must last.

Sending robotic miners and factories ahead to make supplies and boost them to reach the main ship sounds hypothetically possible - with imaginary technologies much more advanced than we have. Then you would have to carry such equipment - more payload - and have big velocity differences for those supply tenders to overcome, over and over. It all starts sounding harder the more I think about it.

Edited June 10Jun 10 by Ken Fabian

16 hours ago, Moontanman said:

IMHO, ignoring the possibility of "Clark Tech" the only scenario that I can think of is that aliens colonize the debri of stars like our kuiper belt or oort cloud, taking advantage of the resources available to create their civilization. They could have specialists who study planets with life, much like we have specialists who study remote tribes here on earth but for the most part I would think they would ignore us.

And we're back to the orbiting teapot, the title of the topic is "Could aliens ever visit earth?" and even you seem to be admitting it's highly, verging on the impossible, unlikely; so what's the point?

6 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Do the "Orion" types (the "Orion Shall Rise" type) - riding on top of nuclear detonations - rely on the gradual vaporisation of the blast plate between the ship and the blasts to provide some of the thrust? I think that plate (whatever it is named) would be consumed one way or another.

Indeed and the ship had to be 70,000 tons, to balance the forces IIRC.

On 6/10/2026 at 7:12 AM, dimreepr said:

And we're back to the orbiting teapot, the title of the topic is "Could aliens ever visit earth?" and even you seem to be admitting it's highly, verging on the impossible, unlikely; so what's the point?

Indeed and the ship had to be 70,000 tons, to balance the forces IIRC.

@dimreepr I honestly do not understand how you are getting this from my post.

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

@dimreepr I honestly do not understand how you are getting this from my post.

It's kinda religious, but without the grounding of a wise decision...

A third batch about unidentified videos, images, documents, things released today 12June2026 by the war department.

Remember the word unidentified. The identified are not revealed. 🤔

1 hour ago, Externet said:

A third batch about unidentified videos, images, documents, things released today 12June2026 by the war department.

Remember the word unidentified. The identified are not revealed. 🤔

A link would be good.

As wished, ---> https://www.war.gov/UFO/

4 hours ago, Externet said:

A third batch about unidentified videos, images, documents, things released today 12June2026 by the war department.

Yeah.
The Injustice Department released a batch of files also, and they contained references to multiple UCP.
( Unidentified Criminal Perpetrators )
And some of these UCPs may be DJTs.

Is there no end to the lengths he'll go to in order to distract from his criminal activities ?

43 minutes ago, MigL said:

Is there no end to the lengths he'll go to in order to distract from his criminal activities ?

Negative

I think this whole "UAP/UFO disclosure" is complete BS!

If they had anything to disclose why not show the evidence to scientists? Why display what amounts to "lights in the sky" on TV for all to see with no real explanation or context?

This is nothing but an attempt to distract from the Trump régime's crimes against the American people.

If it was a serious attempt to disclose actual evidence it should be given to the scientific community... all of it, no redactions and if what they are showing is the best they have then I for one am not impressed, UFO magazines of the 60's and 70's had better photos and much better background information. This is so obviously just another jet stream of BS coming out of our government... yes I am angry!

It's sad to see our Nation reduced to such flimflammery to prevent a pedophile from getting his just deserts.

The whole UAP disclosure seems to suffer from fuzzy blob syndrome. IOW, nothing beyond the grainy indistinct oddities we've been seeing for decades. Along with the usual parade of unsupported witness reports vaguely hinting at...something. As @Moontanman says, it's another pathetic distraction ploy.

The only decent footage seems to be found in Spielberg fables.

11 hours ago, TheVat said:

The whole UAP disclosure seems to suffer from fuzzy blob syndrome. IOW, nothing beyond the grainy indistinct oddities we've been seeing for decades. Along with the usual parade of unsupported witness reports vaguely hinting at...something. As @Moontanman says, it's another pathetic distraction ploy.

The only decent footage seems to be found in Spielberg fables.

I've seen much better stuff from back in the Blue Book days, but more importantly the reason for the release is insulting.

The fuzzy grainy and redacted contents is what qualifies the disclosure as for unidentified to keep you scratching heads in the dark. The absent files that you 'want to know' are the hidden, and not a qualified 'need to know'.

When hidden identified files become released, then you may be pleased. If ever happens. 😒

Transparency is about the unidentified and unresolved, not about the hidden for decades.

Fuzzy and grainy is probably why these are unidentified, because better information makes it more likely you can make an identification.

It might be instructive to view reports for sightings that were later identified to see why/how that happened and compare to reports that remain unidentified

Would the distance problem apply to machine civilizations?

26 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Would the distance problem apply to machine civilizations?

It depends...

3 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Would the distance problem apply to machine civilizations?

Some technical problems (life support, ship infrastructure mass, suspension on long voyage) diminish, I would think. An AI can shut off for all or part of a millennium-long trip. At any relativistic speed however you would still have interstellar dust and proton collisions to handle ( shield from) - those can damage hardware minds as well as wetware minds. The advantage a machine has is ease of copying off clones of itself to provide backups. And a machine can potentially miniaturize down to a size and profile (very small xsection presented in vector of travel) which makes some exotic propulsion systems easier and collisions less likely. And there's also the Von Neumann scenario, where one could fill a galaxy with devices and have millions self-replicated and providing, say, laser acceleration or deceleration wherever needed.

Could VN devices be all around us and we don't know they're there for some reason, like deliberately concealing them?

Machines could conceivably travel among stars at light-speed.

Here's the scenario ...
A machine intelligence transmits plans for a sufficiently advanced civilization to build a copy of itself on another system.
It then transmits its 'software' to the copy machine at the speed of light.
It then 'looks around', and when satisfied, beams its consciousness/software back to its origin.

The plans to build the copy could be hidden or in plain sight, depending on whether its purpose was nefarious, or not.

Maybe the Government already got those messages, and is busy building AI Data Centers which in, a few decades, will contain the 'consciousness' of alien invaders ....

12 minutes ago, MigL said:

Machines could conceivably travel among stars at light-speed.

Here's the scenario ...
A machine intelligence transmits plans for a sufficiently advanced civilization to build a copy of itself on another system.
It then transmits its 'software' to the copy machine at the speed of light.
It then 'looks around', and when satisfied, beams its consciousness/software back to its origin.

The plans to build the copy could be hidden or in plain sight, depending on whether its purpose was nefarious, or not.

Maybe the Government already got those messages, and is busy building AI Data Centers which in, a few decades, will contain the 'consciousness' of alien invaders ....

Is M_ _ k an alien hack ?

3 minutes ago, studiot said:

Is M_ _ k an alien hack ?

Could be; he doesn't seem human.

@TheVat "The advantage a machine has is ease of copying off clones of itself to provide backups."

A novel use of the word 'ease'. And 'clones'

Around here making a robot involves multiple specialist materials and component suppliers and a diverse range of factories, each in turn dependent on a fractally proliferating range of other service and equipment providers.

Edited June 16Jun 16 by Ken Fabian

36 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

@TheVat "The advantage a machine has is ease of copying off clones of itself to provide backups."

A novel use of the word 'ease'. And 'clones'

Around here making a robot involves multiple specialist materials and component suppliers and a diverse range of factories, each in turn dependent on a fractally proliferating range of other service and equipment providers.

Should read as "relative ease compared to biological life." Quite agree the Von Neumann concept presumes considerable tech prowess - his theory was predicated on an early (1940s?) idea of machines become intelligent and self-replicating and then rapidly proliferate themselves. I think the concept has also been linked to a Singularity scenario. Later theorists have noted the dystopian potential where the spread could be akin to a rapidly proliferating group of cancer cells. Von Neumann saw it more as a way to spread intelligence and open up scenarios like @MigL described where it could be transmitted at c, say, to automated fabrication plants in other solar systems. ( Or the VN proliferation could also seed life through a galaxy where there were abiotic planets that could be modified to support an ecosystem.)

Do I think it's probable? Maybe not - like Fermi I'm inclined to ask "where are they?" It may be the initial steps are so difficult as to make Von Neumann galaxies a rarity. Or non-existent. There is also something disturbing in the totalitarian potential there.

2 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Should read as "relative ease compared to biological life."

You think?

Yes, space presents big challenges for biological life, but it does for machines also. Both depend on a broader supporting base - an ecosystem - but living things already replicate successfully, managing to derive their essential materials from unrefined inorganic materials and sunlight.

14 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Both depend on a broader supporting base - an ecosystem

Wasn't sure what you meant there. The AI civilization only needs to bootstrap at the beginning i.e. be initiated by biological sentients who depend on their biome. After that, they only need energy and feedstock minerals for proliferating. At that point, biological life could be seen as an inferior competitor, sucking up solar radiation with their photosynthetic filth and clunky metabolic pathways. The machine overlords might view this as a nuisance, and conclude they could use the suns (and/or black holes, or other conversion methods) more efficiently.

54 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Wasn't sure what you meant there. The AI civilization only needs to bootstrap at the beginning i.e. be initiated by biological sentients who depend on their biome. After that, they only need energy and feedstock minerals for proliferating. At that point, biological life could be seen as an inferior competitor, sucking up solar radiation with their photosynthetic filth and clunky metabolic pathways. The machine overlords might view this as a nuisance, and conclude they could use the suns (and/or black holes, or other conversion methods) more efficiently.

Unless there is some new technology coming in, the footprint for a robotic creation system seems to be quite a bit more complicated and inefficient. Where it seems superior appears to be scaling. Every step of the supply chain, from extraction, refining, production of parts and assembly requires large footprints to establish. Producing an biological individual is far more efficient than producing one robot, for example.

I would also disagree with the clunkiness of metabolic pathways. It is supremely flexible, allowing survival and efficient energy and biomass conversion under extremely variable conditions. Currently robots require external systems to do that, using systems that are much less flexible overall. Of course future tech might catch up but giving what we have now biology does have an edge, with the exception of immediate scaling (if we disregard microbes).

I think of it that way: robotic systems seem to require a highly complex supply where external systems (e.g., mining operations, refineries, energy production facilities, fabrication etc.) have to work together to produce new units. In contrast, even simple biological system incorporate core elements, such as energy conversion, biomass production, in an extremely small, efficient package.