Conference is over, and Patricia and I are driving down the coast highway. We’ll be stopping in Cambria tonight, and then back to LA tomorrow. I might keep an eye on things with my phone, but I won’t be posting much, if at all. Be good in comments.
32 thoughts on “Light Posting”
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I saw this in headlines: Syrians mark bleak Ramadan after 80 killed in Hama
I thought this would make O’Neal’s day. But then, I discovered that the murderer wasn’t a blond hair blue-eyed man pretending to be a police officer. Instead, it was the actual government using tanks to kill their own citizens. I wonder if this difference will ruin it for O’Nelly?
Some of us have been saying for months that Assad should be removed like Mubarek or, failing that, like Q’Daffy (well, except for nobody has actually removed the Colonel). I’m sure Bob will notice that nobody’s opinion has changed because of the recent events.
Anyway, now that I posted this, I suspect Gerrib to stop by and tell us how Palin’s rhetoric caused the violence in Hama. Perhaps she said something against Hamas, which Assad took to be Hama and attacked.
Insanely jealous about your stop in Cambria. Some time there would be a wonderful palliative to non-stop sauna that entire East Coast is enduring.
Darn it, the last post went through a British filter and stripped out all the definite articles!
I wonder if this will be the first time the NTSB has investigated the crash of a Wright Flyer?
Ah, now here’s a worthy topic from Powerline.
Not even hybrids get that kind of mileage. Someone needs to tell these idiots that they can’t repeal the laws of thermodynamics and they can’t declare that the average passenger car has to be a moped.
Why not, George? They’re doing that with light bulbs…
Never researched it, but I assumed there was a reason the Wright Brothers chose Kitty Hawk rather than Ohio.
Kitty Hawk has constant high winds, perfect for testing.
Here’s the homepage of the Wright B Flyer organization. It used a modern Lycoming and a more modern airfoil. I’m guessing that perhaps a sprocket chain broke. A 200 hp engine flinging a chain around could sure cut up a lot of critical structure and controls.
“Some of us have been saying for months that Assad should be removed like Mubarek or, failing that, like Q’Daffy (well, except for nobody has actually removed the Colonel).”
No, thanks 🙂
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya are enough right now.
It will be interesting to see how China handles the recent attack by terrorists trained in Pakistan.
Attention longterm Transterrestrial Readers, I’ve got some cheap window dressing you can buy, just as I advertised earlier this year:
Netanyahu signals new Palestinian state talks
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to base talks for a Palestinian state on the 1967 truce lines in what appears to be a major policy retreat, an Israeli television channel has claimed.
It is the first time that the right-wing premier has publicly defined the borders as a starting point for talks, and brings him in line with US policy that broadly calls for talks based on ceding the West Bank to the Palestinians with agreed land swaps.
From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/netanyahu-signals-new-palestinian-state-talks-2330255.html
Bob-1, you forgot to include the next paragraph.
Will Hell also be required to freeze-over?
Yes, I think that’s one of the conditions. So we have 1967 borders as a starting point, with the Palestinians required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, eat lots of pork BBQ, and convert to Hinduism. The Palestinian position is that Israel must recognize the right of return, and all Jews must convert to Islam, say “Heil Hitler” and then drown themselves in the ocean.
Meanwhile, in the world of rocketry, Elon Musk’s AIAA talk made Fox News. Something about sending a Dragon capsule to Mars.
Thanks for the link George. This is the first time I’ve directly read that Dragon is intended for direct landing on mars. That gives us one way trip capability. We could be going to mars as soon as the escape system / landing thrusters are incorporated. I think we should have an SSTO mars lander, not to get back to earth, but to improve the local logistics. But it’s no longer a show stopper.
“As soon as you’ve got a base on Mars, you’ve got a ‘forcing function’ for improving the transportation capability”
While I understand what a forcing function is, I don’t quite understand the implications of this statement. I suspect the implications are really important so I intend to contemplate them. Any ideas?
I’d like to see other companies step up to compete with SpaceX in various aspects of a mars mission. Also some competition with Bigelow. I don’t think it’s at all too early (I believe things are going to start to happen fast before 2020.) I do see other companies that could.
It’s also a game changer if NASA isn’t trying to figure out how to land probes on mars but is instead just buying a ticket on a Dragon. Again, another thing that should significantly speed up progress.
Finally we need to press for a strong and absolute ownership mentality. This can be done defacto and privately by multiple colonist expeditions.
Again, Elon shows he is not the amateur. If he can get customers for science mission to the mars surface he will have a thoroughly tested system before any humans ride to the surface.
I assumed he meant it was like having the ISS. Once it exists, organizations work to develop better methods of resupply and crew delivery, since NASA spends money to support the sunk cost of the permanent facility.
Getting from the Martian surface back into orbit is pretty easy. Back in 2004 I calculated that you could have a re-entry weight of 9,000 pounds and deliver an ascent stage that would carry an astronaut back up. You don’t even need a real capsule structure on ascent because max-Q would be the equivalent of going about 75 mph at the Earth’s surface, so a chair from a Mars buggy attached to a rocket would work fine.
Maybe I should dig up that old blog post.
Once it exists, organizations work to develop better methods of resupply and crew delivery, since NASA spends money to support the sunk cost of the permanent facility.
Agreed, but it’s more than that. I’ve written about it in answering ‘Why mars?’ in past posts.
I think mars can financially support it’s own development and this is the fastest path to the entire solar system. NASA will be an early player, but also a minority player once we establish a viable financial incentive based on ownership.
We have the potential in this next century of raising the poverty level so that the ratio of world poverty to us poverty will be like us poverty to solar system poverty. A huge rising tide in a hugely expanded economic sphere.
The wealth of the world is a single tiny little drop in the economy of a solar system of huge abundance.
Ken, I’m sure someone has pointed out to you the flaw in treating the red planet as capitalist. The whole place is nothing but commies. North Korea has a higher agricultural output. Sure, it looks like Arizona or New Mexico, but it’s more like Outer Mongolia during the Great Leap Forward.
George, please add some water to that drier than dust humor. You got me.
Zubrin has his 50m hobby farms. We will not know how well they will work or what it will take to make them work until some on site experimentation. However we do it, they will produce some food. It might require a combination of natural and artificial light. On mars nuclear energy will finally be used rationally. So rule of thumb I’m thinking an hour of labor a day should provide supplies for three colonists for each quarter hectare farm.
Humans do have this commie tendency. It’s just juvenile thinking by those that consider themselves smarter than anyone else. It’s so ingrained that any attempt to loosen the grip of such thinking is close to impossible… and that from freedom loving capitalists. It’s even worse for natural tyrants.
Absolute ownership and contract for services has to become natural. A persons word and handshake needs to become gold again with enforcement by all members of the community. They need to get it.
Eminent domain needs to be laughed out of existence. If something is a public good they need to pay the owner their price for it, do without or find another path. That would be how adults deal. Juvenile tyrants would point out that the good of the many requires evil acts against the individual. We need to grow up or the solar system will produce wars that make one planet wars quaint.
Regardless of all that, the fact is, settlement of the solar system is completely self financed. Once that light bulb goes on, the land rush is going to be huge.
I wonder what they are going to call a power plant Dragon? This is a 20 year life, self contained nuclear power plant ready to go on landing. Just add external wire.
Due to the capital costs space settlements will be modeled on the settlement of the New World, not the Old West. Those that go will be employees of the corporation and expected to work for it, earning the money it needs to turn a profit, not wasting on building personal homesteads. The first settlements will basically be company towns where the corporation owns everything, not a “Galt’s Gulch” of billionaires hiding from society.
It doesn’t have to be Thomas. Yes, initially individuals will be working for the organizations that transport them to mars. That is absolutely no impediment to land claims which instantly provides individual wealth. It’s just a question of do we believe in the individual?
What is a reasonable claim? Corporations want to claim Alaska sized territories. That’s a mistake. It’s inefficient and slows growth.
The absolute fastest growth comes from the smallest possible claims made by each and every individual that provides them with a lifetime of income. They can and will continue to perform jobs for others as well. In time the economy will diversify in all possible niches.
Greed and tyranny have been the history of mankind. It does not have to be so. We just need to agree that theft is evil. Domination is evil. Freedom is good. Freedom demands absolute individual ownership. With no allowance for theft from the biggest BIG LIE of all, the ‘greater good.’
Due to the capital costs [of] space settlements…
Blind guide. Assume multiple settlements each with its own economic structure. Let’s say cost to the surface of mars is X million dollars per person and we have no private takers. So the initial settlement are corporate and government towns with no private ownership. That does not prevent a freedom loving group from going later and will not at all inhibit their development. They will leave those company towns in the dust.
Just one group needs to believe in freedom and develop an absolute private ownership charter allowing just one small claim per individual. New colonists get a complete package for a fixed ticket price (that could include a mortgage on their property lowering their cost to nothing) that includes transportation of their family to their new home completely prepared for living and a land claim (providing instant wealth above their total cost.) They own it. They can develop it from there. Others can provide a diversity of services. Free the mind and the rest will follow.
By then the corporations will have developed their own rules and procedures, ones that favor them. Read up on the history of the Big Four in California for a taste of real “monopoly” behavior and then imagine it without a federal government to help your settlers break the monopoly.
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=232019
“The official denied reports by Israeli and other media outlets that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had backed down from an earlier rejection of US President Barack Obama’s proposal to negotiate a pullback to 1967 lines.
…
The official in Jerusalem responded that Netanyahu “has been clear that Israel will not return to the 4th of June 1967 borders,” or the lines that stood before that war.”
Maybe it is a confusion over who uses what adjectives.
Corporations will develop rules and procedures that favor them.
Of course they will. And free men will ignore them because they have absolutely no jurisdiction. The freedom charter is only binding on those that accept being bound by it. It’s not binding on any other. In the same way, nothing the corporation enact is binding on those lovers of freedom.
The corporations will overplay their hand by claiming more than is reasonable for themselves. In a fight between a handful of corporations and thousands making profits, the corporations are going to lose and lose huge.
No corporation has a profit model for space development. Free people do. Freedom wins.
I would think a corporation would start the exploration and settlement based in part on government contracts, advertising revenues, a bit of tourism, and technological offshoots of the effort. The employees they send would be under long-term contracts, but no court will uphold a contract that crosses the line into nearly perpetual indentured servitude. So at some point employees will quit or retire and want to strike out on their own. After the colony has crossed the line of self-sustainability, it would probably be much cheaper for the company to let a former employee go independent than to eat the cost of flying them home. Then the company ends up buying supplies and services produced locally.
The large corporate land ownership route will fail just as it does throughout the third world where few people legally own land, which is either regarded as tribal or government property or deeded in vast tracks to the descendants of a long-dead Spanish governor.
The corporate advantage is they can provide jobs but what are they going to sell and to whom? Jobs are going to be abundant. People on mars can freely choose to be independent or a corporate slave. Independent will pay better. Other corporations can be formed that conform to a charter of reasonable claims by individuals only. Even if corporations are denied by charter from making any claims there will be plenty of undeveloped low cost land they can buy from individuals that do own their own land through valid claims.
Nobody can sell any land until it is owned. Claims must be recognized by the community to be valid (think mining claims during a gold rush when there wasn’t any government. The minors were governing themselves. With a central registry, claim jumping can be eliminated.)
For example , one square kilometer plots are surveyed and entered into a database. Each claim is separated by a 50m perimeter road. One efficient layout has a tic.tac.toe internal road system (2 N-S, 2 E-W) that uses up 19% of your land (not all of it road, but allowing for community projects) leaving 9 equal 9 hectare squares which can be divided into from 1 to 20 plots all having at least 50m of frontage to a road. Up to 180 various size plots could then be developed for sale. If it takes an average of six months to develop a plot that’s up to 90 years of income. Landowners are going to have plenty of jobs for good workers.
Each sq. km. is self governed by the landowners in that area. They contract to maintain their own roads and settle their own disputes. They can vote with their feet only having to move less than a few kilometers to find a different political environment.
A man and wife on earth, both 30 years old want a fresh start on mars. Liquidating everything they have about $150k. The total package to mars is $40m for that couple. They finance through a bank or an organization set up for the purpose giving $100k down. The bank agrees to take one million dollars for each of the first 50 developed hectares sold. They have 50 years to do it. Lowered to 30 or 20 years for later couples once the mars population starts to grow. Note that the package they sold includes one million dollars to the bank since that couple is buying from a previous colonist that had the same deal with the bank.
Each of their children born on mars can make a one sq. km. claim without paying $20m to get there. That couple has ensured the financial future of their children.
Cost to mars will go down and land prices will go down. But the influx of colonists will keep the prices up since 2% of travel cost for a ready to live in home (that they have to buy material for to make themselves anyway) is a no brainer.
Ken,
And how are the thousands of “freemen” going to get to Mars? On rockets in built in their garage? No, they will only go on corporate owned rockets and you may be sure they will need to sign a contract acknowledging the corporation’s rules before they leave.
No, your model only works if the costs are within reach of an individual. On the American frontier all you need to head to the frontier was a pack. Or if you wish to go in style, a horse and wagon. Rockets to Mars cost a bit.
Rockets to Mars cost a bit more.
they will need to sign a contract acknowledging the corporation’s rules before they leave.
When a trucking company delivers a piano they don’t give you rules regarding what you can play. If statist control space, your nightmare might be the reality until people break free. But again, it doesn’t have to be so.
Regardless of your weird definition. SpaceX is a for profit company. They will take you to LEO for a price. Any other company could put a general purpose ship in orbit to sell you a ticket to mars orbit. They are done once they get you there. Now you’ve got a dragon to take you and your supplies to the martian surface. Again, it’s just another ticket. You can still play any tune ya like on the piano. Now you’re on the surface with a group of other like minded people. THERE ARE NO RULES. You are free. Use your paid for supplies and start making a free life.
They could go your way and become bond servants. That is possible. I don’t think it will be the dominate choice. Because it is a choice. Especially if free enterprise actually exists and people will sell you a ticket rather than be like those weird assholes that want to run everybody elses life.
The rich always get first shot. Zubrin’s Dragon with cheap sundancer class inflatable would put two people on the martian surface. That would cost Elon something like $50m to $100m. What Elon would charge for that ticket we might guess but since it’s part of his vision I imagine he’d be eager to sell such rides.
Sending more people at a time would bring down the per person cost significantly. Some people have already spent about that much just to spend a week in zero g.
We are there. This next decade is going to be exciting. I just hope people don’t accept your nightmare scenario. People stealing from the taxpayers all want to be captain of their government financed company town. It certainly doesn’t have to be even if most expeditions are. We just need one to believe in freedom for it to take over as the dominant profile. My vision is freedom.
What besides real estate finances everything? But that real estate doesn’t finance anything if it doesn’t involve lot’s of free people taking part. No export known finances it. Nothing else works either.
Real estate owned by individuals is the only thing known that will completely finance settlement. That is the foundation all other economic activity will ride on. Nothing else.