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Where did all the starships go?

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Re: Where did all the starships go?

#161

Post by riffraff »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #159
delichon wrote: post #7

The starships left with the optimism. In the 50s there was a greater demand for stories with an unconstrained vision of the future where growth and expansion amount to flourishing. Later generations that lived in the excesses of growth saw it as the source of an intensifying dystopia. They stood athwart history and demanded decelleration. Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Escaping sidewa…

> Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Interesting POV because Star Trek and Foundation both have recent, big budget streaming series while new Terminator movies were flops and Neuromancer has never seen any development(?)

Neuromancer is currently in development at Apple+ :)

FWIW, Amazon made a show based on "The Peripheral" by Gibson which is way more bleak than Neuromancer, and it was crazy good, but they canceled it after one season.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#162

Post by WalterBright »

antonvs wrote: post #149
WalterBright wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a lot of ethical issues surrounding Neuralink and how it would be used Like what? (There are always ethical issues with new medical technology.) > It might be good for certain medical stuff Yes, like giving sight to the blind! What a monster Musk is! P.S. two of my largest medical fears are becoming paralyzed or going blind. Neuralink has promise in making these treatable. I'm all for it!

> What a monster Musk is! Glad we’re on the same page. When I was using Zortech C++ in the ‘80s, I never imagined I’d be talking to the author nearly half a century later about his support for a fascist Nazi near-trillionaire. Wtf is wrong with you.

I wouldn't support Musk if he was a fascist nazi. My personal views are libertarian.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#163

Post by WalterBright »

mmooss wrote: post #150
WalterBright wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet we still have a solar system, empty of life other than Earth, we can expand to. Why try to cross an ocean when everything we could want is across the river? Two things baffle me: 1. The idea that Terran life is toxic and must not be allowed on other planets in the solar system. 2. The one person who is advancing our space faring abilities by leaps and bounds is routinely vilified and excoriated on HackerNews.

> The one person who is advancing our space faring abilities by leaps and bounds The overwhelming amount of the work is done by NASA, ESA, CNSA (China, going to the Moon), and other space agencies. Musk has built orbital rockets. > routinely vilified and excoriated on HackerNews. That's disingenuous and you know it. Why make such claims?

> Musk has built orbital rockets.

Musk has built lots of cheap orbital rockets. That changes everything.

> That's disingenuous and you know it. Why make such claims?

See the other responses in this thread.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#164

Post by WalterBright »

kentm wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing we want is on the other side Wow. > You decided the rest of the solar system is dead, not the scientific community. The odds are heavily stacked against other life existing, and get worse with every probe. Of course, nobody can prove there is no other life. And it's not very credible that Terran life will out-compete locally evolved life. And the idea that preserving some slime mold on Pluto justifies us co…

Notwithstanding the other myriad of reasons to not like Elon Musk (of which there are many)… You’re equivocating a childish insult with insisting that a person is a pedophile and hiring a private investigator to prove so and then writing scathing emails to reporters because they refuse to repeat claims uncritically. This is an appalling failing of morality on your part. I’m frankly not inclined to dive into why I, pr…

> hiring a private investigator

Only after being sued. When you sue someone, they're going to try to defend themselves.

Both of them should have just shrugged it off.

> then writing scathing emails

doesn't make someone evil. The whole incident was childish from both sides, but nobody was actually hurt.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#165

Post by PaulHoule »

antonvs wrote: post #142
davedx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast distances to other habitable planets would mean tens of thousands of years of travel even with the most efficient technology. Spoken like someone who's never read Tau Zero

Spoken like someone who’s never read the Relativistic Rocket: https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/... I really find it hard to understand how people confuse science fiction with reality. I love Tau Zero - I first read it over 40 years ago - but it’s fiction , ffs.

Also they have trouble stopping in Tau Zero so they have no choice going further than they planned. It's one of the best sci-fi novels of all time, read it!.

That Bussard Ramjet, though, is thoroughly discredited. It can't possibly work. Hydrogen hydrogen fusion is a terribly slow nuclear reaction and if you had to stop the gas to give it enough time to react, you'd end up stopping the rocket not accelerating it. In fact, the most credible use of that kind of magnetic scoop is as a brake!

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#166

Post by kentm »

WalterBright wrote: post #164
kentm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notwithstanding the other myriad of reasons to not like Elon Musk (of which there are many)… You’re equivocating a childish insult with insisting that a person is a pedophile and hiring a private investigator to prove so and then writing scathing emails to reporters because they refuse to repeat claims uncritically. This is an appalling failing of morality on your part. I’m frankly not inclined to dive into why I, pr…

> hiring a private investigator Only after being sued. When you sue someone, they're going to try to defend themselves. Both of them should have just shrugged it off. > then writing scathing emails doesn't make someone evil. The whole incident was childish from both sides, but nobody was actually hurt.

He hired the private investigator before he was sued.

You left out the part where he claimed a person was a pedophile and when asked if it was just an insult basically said “no I really think he’s a pedophile”, and started stating made up bullshit about child brides as fact. He only backtracked when he was sued. That is NOT the same as just throwing insults.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#167

Post by schmichael »

Is the number of books with “space” in the title a meaningful indicator of anything other than how many books have “space” in the title? Sure Murderbot may not be as big as Game of Thrones, but these statistics seem more about linguistic trends than genres.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#168

Post by devmor »

WalterBright wrote: post #162
antonvs wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a monster Musk is! Glad we’re on the same page. When I was using Zortech C++ in the ‘80s, I never imagined I’d be talking to the author nearly half a century later about his support for a fascist Nazi near-trillionaire. Wtf is wrong with you.

I wouldn't support Musk if he was a fascist nazi. My personal views are libertarian.

I don’t think he is a fascist nazi either. But I do think he is happy to support them as long as they make him feel special, and that’s bad enough.

The man is deeply unwell and desperate for approval and accolades. From anyone.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#169

Post by MichaelZuo »

gpm wrote: post #141
nine_k wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interstellar space contains neutral hydrogen atoms. Hitting a spaceship, they would produce electromagnetic radiation. When the collision speed goes past about 0.25c, the radiation becomes hard gamma rays which are dangerous to living things, and cannot be efficiently shielded against. At this speed, the time dilation is slightly above 3%, so you're still not going to reach even Alpha Centauri in one human lifetime,…

Alpha Centauri is only 4.2 light years away. 0.25c is definitely enough to reach it. You could even do a round trip in only your adult years.

A trip there to do… what?

There likely won’t be any planet better than the very low bar of Mars for human habitation, in fact maybe even worse due to binary perturbations.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#170

Post by tialaramex »

nine_k wrote: post #132
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to go faster than light. Once you approach anywhere near the speed of light, time slows down so much that journey time becomes irrelevant.

Interstellar space contains neutral hydrogen atoms. Hitting a spaceship, they would produce electromagnetic radiation. When the collision speed goes past about 0.25c, the radiation becomes hard gamma rays which are dangerous to living things, and cannot be efficiently shielded against. At this speed, the time dilation is slightly above 3%, so you're still not going to reach even Alpha Centauri in one human lifetime,…

Right, we are never leaving. We should get comfortable here, and take better care of the only habitable planet, rather than doing insane things and justifying that as "Don't worry, we'll make Mars habitable" and other silliness.
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