We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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One cannot live in the cradle forever This NASA PSA works on so many levels I hardly know where to begin.
It does not at any point say “only socialist space programs can get us there”. You could infer that if you saw it in certain contexts, but then again, if you saw it at a space entrepreneurs get together you would not. The underlying message is a good one and I thoroughly applaud it. We will reach for the stars. We will colonize the solar system. We will leave the cradle.
The infant is a young Paul Allen or Bob Bigelow or Burt Rutan… not a future employee of the State.
Ed: You may need to down load the mpg and play it locally.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I like the not-so-subtle message, too — we already have the tools we need to get there — we just need someone to put them all together.
I still think that a space elevator is the step to a new epoch. I think that it will be on par with the first transcontinental railroad on changing society.
Wonderful – thanks for the link!
I’m all teary eyed.
We will leave the cradle.
Could there be a more escapist meme? I think anyone who longs to leave Earth should get out more.
Aside from sub-orbital dalliances, human space flight is a dinosaur. As we enter the golden age of space exploration and cosmology, all the contributing humans are based squarely on the ground. Massive telescopes are sprouting like mushrooms, and the people running the robotic missions are earning their reputations as rocket scientists.
Meanwhile up in Red Dwarf, virtually all science has been suspended, as the inhabitants fight for their lives. We are literally one drunken Soyuz technician away from seeing the entire ISS project shut down.
Note: If you really want to see where we are headed, catch the JPL webcast conference on small landers and aerobots on March 17.
Colonising our Solar System? Feasible.
Leaving our Solar System for other systems? Unlikely.
Unless we somehow design ‘Sci-fi’ warp gates.
In Judeo-Christian terms, we were commanded to “go forth and multiply”. The “go forth” portion has not been rescinded. If this arguement works for you, use it.
Regarding leaving the System, feasible if the system is heavily colonized. If we launched seed ships with the ability to build industrial facilities, it would take on the order of 100 million years to fully explore the galaxy. If those ships carried frozen embryos, we could populate all those systems. That’s all within reach of today’s basic research.
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
i.e. the “go forth” part is not part of the Genesis directive. There was a “go forth” later on in the Gospels but the subject there was evangelization.
I think that there are several legitimate motives to go forth; the PSA linked here certainly articulates at least one of them.
Sometimes I forget to say things like “I like it”.
I definitely like the PSA.
Mozzis, I may have been in error, or we may have used different translations. Before I try that arguement again, I’ll dig out which translation.
Hate to throw cold water on dreams but, the fact is that space entrepreneurs still do not command nearly the resources to get us into space in any real way. Lay people have such a blinkered view of how hard space flight, real space flight, not just suborbital junkets, really is.
It is an enormous untaking, fraught with risks unparalleled to anything you are used to, to send men up into space. There will be deaths. There will be catastrophes. Those do not come without a substantial cost beyond just the men and materials.
Right now, there is already a hazardous cloud of space junk whizzing around our planet at 17,000 miles per hour. A few massive explosions in space and, we will have permanently sealed ourselves in.
You can’t do this kind of thing on a shoestring budget. It is something that requires a gigantic expenditure of resources that, presently, only a state can muster.
This is what I fear most from the entrepreneurial euphoria following what I’m afraid was really a minor accomplishment by the doughty but minor-league winners of the X-prize, that it will reduce support for public funding of manned space flight and that our capabilities and infrastructure garnered to date will whither on the vine, condemning us to unrealistic dreams of space conquest that will never be realized.
The real socialists are the ones who want to cut space exploration to the bone in order to rear another generation of dependents on the state. For God’s sake, don’t play into their hands by imagining that you can go it alone. You can’t.
I know too many non-technical folks will read this and imagine in their hubris and zeal that it is all wrong, that those things they don’t fully understand are easy, and that, as a current aerospace engineer building complex space systems under government contract, I’m just being self serving. But, I am not. I am just sharing with you the perspective of 25 years of, frankly damned impressive, accomplishment in furthering the dream, my dream, which is to see mankind leave this rocky prison.
My advice: focus on the moon. It’s near. We’ve been there and, we know what it takes to go back and establish colonies. Get there and, make it routine enough and, then will be the time that private ventures can flourish. We’re just not at that point yet, guys. Not by a long shot.
I think you are thinking of Genesis 9:1 after Noah left the ark
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. ”
or as I would translate it:
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the galaxy”
i.e. the “go forth” part is not part of the Genesis directive. There was a “go forth” later on in the Gospels but the subject there was evangelization.
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