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SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

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Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#701
post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to think about that from the other side, too. Just delivering the raw materials to the manufacturing facility would cost ~$3000/kg (assuming rock bottom SpaceX prices). Based on some loose googling, I think that 1kg of raw material would yield only something on the order of 100m of cable. It looks like a typical 100m fiber optic patch cable retails for about $60. So, there's clearly a lot of value to…

High frequency traders will want the best connectivity humanely possible. It’s a zero sum game. If they can beat a competitor firm’s signals by the smallest fraction of a second, even a nanosecond, they reaps in the profits. So $100m for some better fibre? Go nuts!

High frequency traders do NOT want to be limited by the speed of light in a fiber - due to its refractive index (1.5 for ZBLAN according to Wikipedia) this is only 66% of the speed of a radio signal. Over 10km this amounts to an 11 microseconds difference - already significant for HFT.

This is why they have been leveling hills to carve a (mostly, with minimal amount of repeater towers) line of sight path between NYC and Chicago, gaining 3ms (1), or set up a line of sight laser link between NYSE and NASDAQ to eke out a handful of microseconds (2), or set up multiple links across the English channel to reduce latency between London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt (3).

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/opinion/krugman-three-exp...

2. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/176551-new-laser-network...

3. https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/hft-in-the-b...

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially given that we'll need to leave the magnetosphere to access a lot of space mining. You either bring a ton of shielding+food+water+life support+crew quarters, or you advance autonomous operation. One of those is already happening and highly applicable to other fields. Imo what ever comes after homo sapiens inherits the solar system, not homo sapiens ourselves

The magnetosphere bit is intriguing... I've never heard of a proposal to use superconductors to generate a miniature magnetosphere outside of earth's. Even for earth orbit it seems that'd be helpful way to reduce radiation exposure. Superconductors should be able to be cooled to operating temperature readily enough, meaning minimal power once charged. Spaceship hulls are aluminum and non-ferromagnrtic. Odd to never h…

Starship is going to be stainless steel, not sure how that will interact with magnetic fields.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wasn't actually said by Einstein and also isn't true. There's no conclusive evidence either way, for both things. The actual alleged quote is 'Remove the bee from the earth and at the same stroke you remove at least one hundred thousand plants that will not survive.' by the way.

Edit: You added the quote in an edit, which is different from the one I thought you meant by "Einstein's famous statement about the importance of bees". In my defense, I would still consider the quote I listed to be Einstein's famous statement about bees (it's the only quote you'll find in the Google search results for "Einstein bees"). ---------------------------- I forgot to link Quote Investigator before: https://…

> 1) You won't find any scientific study or any evidence supporting it. It was just made up.

No, there's a written statement by somebody (a contemporary) who "thought" Einstein said it. He may have said it in person. He may have communicated it in an unpreserved publication. We will probably never know. But we can't disprove it. We just have a (weak) testimony from someone with better access to Einstein than we have today.

Honestly, these attempts to "fact-check" and label something as "true" or "false" based on our limited perspective today or even based on studies labeled "scientific" (while studies claiming the exact opposite frequently exist...) are obnoxious and often plain misleading. Reality is uncertain.

> The evidence against it is that the vast majority of our food doesn't require bees. Grains and staples like corn, wheat, rice, and soybean aren't pollinated by insects.

You're trying to disprove your quote, not the one originally attributed to Einstein by Ernest A. Fortin, which isn't about mankind. And how was the situation 100 years ago, without all the carefully bred industrial grain types?

Besides, who wants to try for some empiric evidence?

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asteroid mining is pointless for Earth-based industry. There's more of everything on Earth and it's orders of magnitude closer to processing and manufacturing infrastructure. The ISS in Earth orbit cost billions of dollars and was only possible because the Space Shuttle was an awesome utility vehicle that could act as an orbital work platform. Putting even trivial ore processing and refining infrastructure in a place…

> There's more of everything on Earth No there ain't. A single asteroid could have billions if not trillions of dollars' worth of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum) and would flood the respective markets of those precious metals (making them less "precious" and more commodities, which would be a massive boon for all sorts of industries). Even more common metals like iron and nickel are abundant enough to repres…

Most asteroids are worthless chunks or carbon, another significant portion are sort of dirty balls of sand and rock. The smallest portion are composed of any metals. Metallic asteroids are mostly iron and nickel and unlikely to be loaded up with precious metals. Any that would be interesting for mining would be in the asteroid belt which requires significant amounts of energy to reach in a reasonable time frame.

You also don't seem to be aware, Ceres does not currently have a space gas station on the surface. If you intend to refuel and resupply there such a thing would need to be build...for hundreds of billions of dollars because it's super difficult and none of the technology to do it currently exists. So that would need to be invented, developed, built, and put into space.

Also raw ore amounts don't mean anything without refining capacity. There's roughly zero of it currently anywhere off the surface of the Earth. Again, in-space ore refining is something that exists pretty much only as concept drawings and some PhD thesis. So that would need to be invented, developed, built, and put into space.

Even if we could reliably get people out to the asteroid belt and keep them alive, the volume of the belt is absolutely enormous. Worthwhile asteroids are vast distances apart and far away from any larger asteroids you might want to use as bases. It would require enormous expenditure of resources to get some mining equipment to a worthwhile asteroid, mine it, and get that raw ore somewhere it could be processed.

The lack of gravity and atmosphere makes space mining far far more difficult than mining on Earth. If you kick up dust on Earth it blows away in the wind or settles quickly. Kick up dust on an asteroid and it goes into orbit around it and takes potentially centuries to settle. Asteroid dust also has no weathering so it would be extremely harsh on all the equipment. That all just makes the venture more difficult and more expensive.

Then you've got some iron and nickel, something the Earth literally has tons of. Even if you manage to find the Comstock Lode asteroid you'll spend billions to mine precious metals which will cease to be precious thus lose their monetary value.

The differences between crossing the Sahara to find gold and looking for it in an asteroid are when you cross the Sahara there's air at the destination. You don't have to make the crossing in a tin can containing your own personal universe. At any point along the journey you can take a deep breath. If you tear your shirt you don't suffocate and die. If you trip and fall you don't float away unable to be recovered. If you drop something important it lands on the ground rather than float away never to be seen again. A solar flare isn't likely to kill your entire crew or destroy the only space gas station for tens of millions of miles. The Sahara is inhospitable and will kill you if unprepared. Space is downright hostile.

You can't really be taken seriously when you sort of hand wave the challenges doing anything in space. It just sounds like you're pointing to some sci-fi books as if those are the answer to everything. Space is hostile and doing anything in it is dangerous and expensive. Any resources that exist there are orders of magnitude more difficult to access let alone exploit than any on Earth.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: You added the quote in an edit, which is different from the one I thought you meant by "Einstein's famous statement about the importance of bees". In my defense, I would still consider the quote I listed to be Einstein's famous statement about bees (it's the only quote you'll find in the Google search results for "Einstein bees"). ---------------------------- I forgot to link Quote Investigator before: https://…

> 1) You won't find any scientific study or any evidence supporting it. It was just made up. No, there's a written statement by somebody (a contemporary) who "thought" Einstein said it. He may have said it in person. He may have communicated it in an unpreserved publication. We will probably never know. But we can't disprove it. We just have a (weak) testimony from someone with better access to Einstein than we have…

Yes, I wrote it before you added the quote from Ernest A. Fortin in an edit.

I think "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left." is the only famous quote about bees by Einstein. The quote you added isn't well known. I agree with you though that the quote you provided is less dubious than the more famous one.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (well, Europeans) explored the earth when it looked quite similar to space exploration today. Year-long journeys with very little chance of survival, and no idea what was waiting on the other side. We ended up making some amazing discoveries (the new worlds) that turned out to be of vast economical benefits. Who says space exploration can't be similar. (Yes, there is a lot of controversy over colonialism that I wo…

Those journeys usually had an economic motive, e.g. find a quicker route to Indonesia, and accidentally discovered new lands (to Europeans).

During much of the Earth exploration phase destinations in Asia had more food and money than Europe (also easier to survive a winter)... I don't see this ever being the case with Mars.

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#709
post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, live broadcast until docking at 10:30am EST.

To clarify, it's "EDT" not "EST": https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+dock+%22space+station... Fyi that "Daylight Saving Time" instead of "Standard Time" is in effect in case someone miscalculates it by 1 hour.

Out of curiosity, how do modern systems handle DST outside its seasons e.g. “12/31 21:15 EDT”?

Re: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit

#710
post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High frequency traders will want the best connectivity humanely possible. It’s a zero sum game. If they can beat a competitor firm’s signals by the smallest fraction of a second, even a nanosecond, they reaps in the profits. So $100m for some better fibre? Go nuts!

Eh, that's a really sad thing to optimise for, don't you think? Revealing of a broken incentive system. I'd prefer if HFT practices were banned.

Can you be more specific about what is so broken about the need for efficient and fast trade?
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