|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Is that actually the case? The soviets had a long running and dedicated program to use automated landers to sample the moon that resulted in 8 separate failed missions and three successes that netted a total of 11 ounces of moon rock, compared to the US's manned missions that returned nearly a thousand pounds of rock in addition to significant amounts of in place experimentation. *tears page* It has been (0) days since the last good OOCC post. This is a really important point - there are many tasks where "send a robutt to do it" is in principle a viable answer, and may even work if you're standing right next to the robot with a remote control. However, a combination of light speed lag, lovely situational awareness, and limited AI mean that your robot is either a single mission tool that just repeats the same operation and sends a data dump from time to time, sits around doing gently caress all a lot because sending the navcam image to human decision makers and waiting for the next command takes hours, or is at high risk of getting stuck trying to drive over an unexpectedly pointy rock that didn't get recognised by the driving AI. It sure isn't going to scout the area at 50mph, pick a particularly suitable site, and then switch to spare tire set #3 (out of 50 dumped by a cheap cargo rocket at the start of the mission). Robots are fine for initial work and/or keeping a low intensity exploration effort going, but if you decide to get poo poo done and are ready to send multiple robots to the same rock, it may be worth sending a driver, too.
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2019 01:35
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 21:13 |
|
|
Clearly, I didn't do a good enough job here of making my point. I'm in agreement with all of you. My point is not that no science was done on the moon or that robots could have done what was done better. My point was with regards to the question 'why are people assuming that science was an afterthought in the Chinese probe,' the answer is 'because science often is an afterthought on these sorts of things.' Did we do some good, maybe even great science on the moon missions? Yeah, totally. Was it the reason we went to the moon? No. Not at that expense, not on those timetables. Was planetary science an afterthought on the Apollo missions, when compared to propaganda and practical engineering? Yes. Is this life growing experiment an afterthought in Chang'e's mission? Yes. I mean, that's why the experiment was ended - it wasn't worth the upkeep.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2019 01:56
|
|
|
Like it's crazy to look up the constraints space probes and rovers run under. Like how the most modern CPU on most space things is the RAD750, which is the equivalent of a gamecube CPU typically running at less than 1/3rd speed at 110mhz. While stuff like the new horizons probe runs with a clock speed of 12mhz. Or the way spirit had a 100 watt battery and could move 40 meters on an entire charge. Like all of these are marvels of engineering, they didn't make these choices because they are stupid. But when people say "have a robot do it" often seem to be wildly wildly overestimating what the cutting edge of space robots are capable of. Like insight mars lander has a 1 megapixel camera, which is 3/4ths the resolution a RAZR flip phone has, but not because someone was too dumb to think of putting a better camera but because making a camera that can operate in extreme conditions is really hard and that is the cutting edge of what was possible within the parameters given for power and memory and cpu and transmission and physical reliability. Like it's easy to say how easy it is to just make a robot, but it's not actually easy. We struggle at this stuff. It's always easier to say what robot we COULD make and how it'll beat a manned mission than to actually build those robots.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2019 02:14
|
|
|
I kinda wish we could do things like test out little robot factories of making solar panels out of the lunar regolith and stuff, to really see if it was worth doing to make absolute gobs of power to play with making lots of neat stuff up there. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20050110155.pdf
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2019 05:51
|
|
|
Did we mention Isaac Arthur yet in this thread? Because I feel like we should. His whole thing would probably be entirely up this thread's alley!
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2019 02:27
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:“I don’t need to run experiments because I probably can guess the answer” has never been good scientific policy Owlofcreamcheese posted:Anyway the practical application of knowing aliens exist and do large scale galaxy sized engineering programs is that much of modern physics and our understanding of the universe in general is based on observation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2019 05:16
|
|
|
twodot posted:What in the actual gently caress? This is you: I am not sure what contradiction you think you found. Science runs experiments in cases that is possible and makes predictions that can be confirmed or denied by observation of natural phenomenon when hand made experiments can't be done. Neither is just making up a theory, saying "it's probably that" then not checking.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2019 15:53
|
|
|
The ISS has become a giant orbital petri dish:quote:NASA scientists have found that the International Space Station (ISS), home to six astronauts, is infested with disease-inducing bacteria. Many of the organisms breeding on the craft's surfaces are known to form both bacterial and fungal biofilms that promote resistance to antibiotics. The NASA team published their findings in a new study -- the first comprehensive catalog of germs in closed space systems -- in the journal Microbiome. The biofilms ability to cause microbial-induced corrosion on Earth could also play havoc with the ISS' infrastructure by causing mechanical blockages, claim the researchers. Oh look, turns out dangerous microbes sealed in an artificial environment designed to be human habitable are effectively impossible to control over a prolonged time period, who could have guessed. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2019 14:41
|
|
|
Have I got bad news for you about microbial life free in natural environments that humans evolved to inhabit.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2019 14:48
|
|
|
Yeah. The interesting observation is which specific microbes are taking over the ISS, not that microbes are taking over the ISS.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2019 22:53
|
|
|
Sterility is going to be a practical impossibility, but we'll absolutely need to find ways of keeping microbe populations below a certain level if Mars missions and Moon bases are to be sanitary. Naturally antiseptic materials, UV lights and a lot of vacuuming would be my best bet. Probably an occasional massive deep clean like that one episode of The Next Generation.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2019 15:06
|
|
|
Bug Squash posted:Sterility is going to be a practical impossibility, but we'll absolutely need to find ways of keeping microbe populations below a certain level if Mars missions and Moon bases are to be sanitary. Naturally antiseptic materials, UV lights and a lot of vacuuming would be my best bet. Probably an occasional massive deep clean like that one episode of The Next Generation. We need to keep like, our experiments and stuff uncontaminated to be able to do good science, and clearly we need to stop human disease. Beyond that, we are probably going to spread life to lifeless worlds. And almost none of it will survive much. But we probably won't do much to play out some weird "life is filth, it should not spoil this virgin stone" stuff past the point we learn the moon is without life to a good degree of certainty.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2019 16:38
|
|
|
The New York Times and WaPo seem to really be into ufos the last few days... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html http://washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/28/ufos-exist-everyone-needs-adjust-that-fact/?tid=pm_pop
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2019 22:28
|
|
|
1glitch0 posted:The New York Times and WaPo seem to really be into ufos the last few days... Every so often newspapers pick up on the idea of radar blips and have a field day until they discover that radar systems aren't that great.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2019 23:57
|
|
|
So given that only some sort of deus ex machina is going to be able to get us out of the poo poo we’re in in re: climate change and species extinction, has there ever been any major attempt at sending SOS messages into outer space by governments or something?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 19:01
|
|
|
Flowers For Algeria posted:So given that only some sort of deus ex machina is going to be able to get us out of the poo poo we’re in in re: climate change and species extinction, has there ever been any major attempt at sending SOS messages into outer space by governments or something? How does an SOS differ from any sort of other signal? Like there are ways to make an alien realize something is a structured artificial signal but how would you generically show it was a call for help?
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 19:08
|
|
|
It’s got three short beeps, then three long beeps, then three short beeps again. Pretty easily recognizable imo. It’d be pretty bad form for aliens traveling in spaceships not to know the universal signal for distress.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 19:17
|
|
|
Flowers For Algeria posted:So given that only some sort of deus ex machina is going to be able to get us out of the poo poo we’re in in re: climate change and species extinction, has there ever been any major attempt at sending SOS messages into outer space by governments or something? So it's hosed up what we're doing to the environment and everything, but we're nowhere near the point where it's "gently caress it, we're all gonna die!" Right now we're basically starting to hit "gently caress it, we're all gonna be miserable for a long time, and lots of people are gonna die."
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 20:25
|
|
|
This planet will never, ever be rid of us. We will be scurrying around on its surface from now until the sun swallows us whole.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 22:10
|
|
|
A GIANT PARSNIP posted:This planet will never, ever be rid of us. We will be scurrying around on its surface from now until the sun swallows us whole. The question is if we'll still be building skyscrapers, or salvaging from them to help sustain our millions-global-population mideval-level hell existence.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 22:21
|
|
|
Flowers For Algeria posted:It’s got three short beeps, then three long beeps, then three short beeps again. Pretty easily recognizable imo. The aliens know that if they wait till we're all dead before responding then the law of salvage entitles them to take all our poo poo. The aliens didn't achieve interstellar travel by being chumps.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 22:29
|
|
|
Helsing posted:The aliens know that if they wait till we're all dead before responding then the law of salvage entitles them to take all our poo poo. The aliens didn't achieve interstellar travel by being chumps. 
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 22:46
|
|
|
Flowers For Algeria posted:So given that only some sort of deus ex machina is going to be able to get us out of the poo poo we’re in in re: climate change and species extinction, has there ever been any major attempt at sending SOS messages into outer space by governments or something? As mentioned by others, the concept of how you call for help to a species you've never met is a staggering one when the concept of establishing contact with them is already staggering. Also we don't know if anyone who heard our cry for help would do something we could call helping. Here's a short story about how aliens might help us; quote:36,400,000. That is the expected number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, according to Drake’s famous equation. For the last 78 years, we had been broadcasting everything about us – our radio, our television, our history, our greatest discoveries – to the rest of the galaxy. We had been shouting our existence at the top of our lungs to the rest of the universe, wondering if we were alone. 36 million civilizations, yet in almost a century of listening, we hadn’t heard a thing. We were alone. (I found the story through Project Rho, but as far as I can tell the source is here on Reddit.)
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 22:55
|
|
|
Kerning Chameleon posted:The question is if we'll still be building skyscrapers, or salvaging from them to help sustain our millions-global-population mideval-level hell existence. It's always weird how much people treat medieval europe as like, the true base state of man that we will all return to technology wise. Like once mankind falls we will get crossbows but not Chu-ko-nu, we can have compasses but not AM radios, germ theory is definitely getting forgotten somehow, we can invent metal but no movable type printing. Like people always talk like it's time travel, not any sort of reasoned out list of what would or wouldn't be likely to be lost if things go bad. (and it also is always seemingly based on like, there being brain and book erasers and everyone losing every single thing and material that is currently around)
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 22:55
|
|
|
Flowers For Algeria posted:It’s got three short beeps, then three long beeps, then three short beeps again. Pretty easily recognizable imo. That's actually an interesting question. If there was an interstellar species capable of picking up signals from Earth, would an SOS signal broadcast into space serve its intended purpose? It's a fairly simple pattern repeated endlessly. At least from a human point of view, it would seem to be out of the ordinary.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 23:03
|
|
|
LtStorm posted:As mentioned by others, the concept of how you call for help to a species you've never met is a staggering one when the concept of establishing contact with them is already staggering. I have never been more disappointed that there’s not more to the story.
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 23:18
|
|
|
Flowers For Algeria posted:So given that only some sort of deus ex machina is going to be able to get us out of the poo poo we’re in in re: climate change and species extinction, has there ever been any major attempt at sending SOS messages into outer space by governments or something? The upside is that help was sent 38 years ago when the occupants of Tau Ceti IV discovered the source and nature of some constant radio noise. The downside is that the "help" is in the form of a large tungsten slug travelling at 0.32c
|
|
#
?
May 31, 2019 23:31
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's always weird how much people treat medieval europe as like, the true base state of man that we will all return to technology wise. Like once mankind falls we will get crossbows but not Chu-ko-nu, we can have compasses but not AM radios, germ theory is definitely getting forgotten somehow, we can invent metal but no movable type printing. Like people always talk like it's time travel, not any sort of reasoned out list of what would or wouldn't be likely to be lost if things go bad. (and it also is always seemingly based on like, there being brain and book erasers and everyone losing every single thing and material that is currently around) Agreed. People will live, knowledge will survive, and plants will exist. The question is how many people will live, how much knowledge will survive, and how many plants that are edible or useful will exist. For better or worse, we're either gonna die with this planet when the sun engulfs us, or we'll successfully leave this planet and die in the heat death of our universe. If you think Humanity is gonna get a pass by easily dying off once the coastal cities flood, you are so loving wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 03:19
|
|
|
A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Agreed. People will live, knowledge will survive, and plants will exist. Sure, I'm mostly just commenting on how weird it is that people hold like, specifically the european middle ages as the one true time mankind will return to, second only the the paleolithic (which at least vaguely makes sense as some sort of fantasy brain wipe clean reset). Like what keeps people there? Even if some force could "knock back" time so people returned to that? Technology is a big mish mash of requirements. There is no reason romans didn't have record players except no one thought of it. You could build a crappy toy telegraph in 3000BC if someone told you that a lodestone you turn by hand on one end of a crappy 5 foot wire you pulled by hand moves a twist of wire at the other end. Like as long as literal wizards weren't erasing everyone's brain even the vaugest suggestions of how things work would be enough for people to invent them (or not ever forget how they worked). There is reasons a society that lost technology would have a hard time making like, a circuit board, but there was nothing special about any time period where humans would just snap back to that specific year for any reason no matter what. People would lose and progress various technologies at different rates.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 03:58
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Sure, I'm mostly just commenting on how weird it is that people hold like, specifically the european middle ages as the one true time mankind will return to, second only the the paleolithic (which at least vaguely makes sense as some sort of fantasy brain wipe clean reset). Like what keeps people there? Even if some force could "knock back" time so people returned to that? Technology is a big mish mash of requirements. There is no reason romans didn't have record players except no one thought of it. You could build a crappy toy telegraph in 3000BC if someone told you that a lodestone you turn by hand on one end of a crappy 5 foot wire you pulled by hand moves a twist of wire at the other end. Like as long as literal wizards weren't erasing everyone's brain even the vaugest suggestions of how things work would be enough for people to invent them (or not ever forget how they worked). There is reasons a society that lost technology would have a hard time making like, a circuit board, but there was nothing special about any time period where humans would just snap back to that specific year for any reason no matter what. People would lose and progress various technologies at different rates. they mean before the widespread use of the steam engine and electricity you weirdo
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 04:06
|
|
|
Unoriginal Name posted:they mean before the widespread use of the steam engine and electricity you weirdo What force bans those two things?
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 05:18
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:What force bans those two things? The expenditure of easy-to-extract fossil fuels and widespread deforestation (which had occurred in Europe right before they caught on to using coal for the new steam engine tech). We say "medieval" level to refer more broadly to "pre-Industrial Revolution" levels of technology. There are things that, even if the collective memory manages to endure, you simply cannot do in a post-apocalyptic society because you literally cannot access the basic resources and manpower (raw or machine multiplied) needed to reproduce them anymore. You might not forget how to ferment alcohol to disinfect wounds and instruments, but if you lose or use up all your penicillin stocks in a world where fast global trade doesn't really exist anymore and advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing plants are crumbling buildings, well good loving luck finding another one-in-a-million magic fungus cure for all those bacterial infections you have to deal with again. It cannot be overstated how important logistics and hyperspecialization are to the modern world, and how turbofucked your society becomes when those suddenly disappear. We stand in awe of the mystery of the Bronze Age Collapse for a reason.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 06:06
|
|
|
LtStorm posted:(I found the story through Project Rho, but as far as I can tell the source is here on Reddit.) (Talking about Americans here - some parts of the world probably have enough sense to shut up, but it won't matter.)
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 06:13
|
|
|
Kerning Chameleon posted:We say "medieval" level to refer more broadly to "pre-Industrial Revolution" levels of technology. There are things that, even if the collective memory manages to endure, you simply cannot do in a post-apocalyptic society because you literally cannot access the basic resources and manpower (raw or machine multiplied) needed to reproduce them anymore. You might not forget how to ferment alcohol to disinfect wounds and instruments, but if you lose or use up all your penicillin stocks in a world where fast global trade doesn't really exist anymore and advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing plants are crumbling buildings, well good loving luck finding another one-in-a-million magic fungus cure for all those bacterial infections you have to deal with again. Why can't you find penicillin if you already know what it is? Why can you ferment alcohol but no one can think to put it in an engine even if they already know what an engine is? And also have engines all around. What force vanishes all the raw materials that are already around and wipes everyone's brain and every book. Some inventions even there being a statue somewhere to look at is enough to make someone go 'wait, you can DO THAT????" even if everyone forgot everything. Things don't just cleanly time travel backwards. I bet they can't ferment enough to live like it's 2019, but they also can do things people in 1019 couldn't and it'd be it's own set of technologies they did and didn't have instead of just medieval times.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 12:56
|
|
|
Penicillin is real loving common. I know jack poo poo about antibiotics but I get I could isolate a strain of it if I really needed to. Post collapse technology would absolutely be it's own unique thing. Bell's can't be unrung and all that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 13:27
|
|
|
Bug Squash posted:Penicillin is real loving common. I know jack poo poo about antibiotics but I get I could isolate a strain of it if I really needed to. Yeah, exactly, a post collapse world wouldn't be like the past OR the present. Tons of things just require someone knowing they exist for someone to be able to invent it. Tons of things could not be replicated in a post collapse world. Likewise collapse doesn't make wizards come and take everything away, so resources would be a culture absurdly rich in easy access to metals sitting around everywhere in high concentrations, but likely poor in energy (but mills would still work as well as they ever did).
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 14:01
|
|
|
You can burn wood or even dry bushes to run a steam engine. You can make low efficiency solar panels in a factory powered by low efficiency solar panels. Only having electricity when it’s sunny outside is way better than never having electricity. A ton of things are possible - they just aren’t done today because there’s more efficient alternatives. Take those alternatives away and you have a ton of options left.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 14:04
|
|
|
A GIANT PARSNIP posted:You can burn wood or even dry bushes to run a steam engine. You can make low efficiency solar panels in a factory powered by low efficiency solar panels. Only having electricity when it’s sunny outside is way better than never having electricity. Yeah, no matter what happens the world has changed and people know different things. The world isn't ever going to go back to how it was. There is no mechanism to do that. A world in collapse would be something different than anything before.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 14:14
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yeah, no matter what happens the world has changed and people know different things. The world isn't ever going to go back to how it was. There is no mechanism to do that. A world in collapse would be something different than anything before. I thought "back to mideval" meant- The vast majority of humans living in abject poverty, while a handful of barons duke it out over king of the dung heap. And maybe science/tech stagnation, if not regression.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 16:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 21:13 |
|
|
There’s also enough uranium and thorium to power us for thousands of years. The economics may not work today and the public support might not be there, but drain our fossil fuel sources and give people a summer without air conditioning and that’ll change real fast.
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2019 17:12
|
|