It's really starting to feel like we "live in the future" more and more everyday. The stuff we used to dream about as kids is becoming reality. Amid all the doom and gloom that seems to pervade the news cycle, stories like this are so refreshing. Simply amazing.
It seems like in the longer term, it would be more efficient to take a shuttle to orbit, and then dock with at a space station to get on the interplanetary ship. Cruise ships and military ships use this method in places where docking is infeasible. It would be a much higher initial cost, however.
Six months on ship isn't so bad. Six months is the length of a WESTPAC, though you get to leave the ship periodically. I think the longest we went without docking was a month, and the guys in the submarines often go for even longer stretches.
If anything it would just be one of their Von Neumann probes looking to fuel up, probably from Jupiter or Uranus. Maybe it would send some pics of us back to the home world where they might say "oh, those guys look neat, add that one to the inhabited planet catalog"
> As far as nuclear bombs, we don't really seem to be using them much anymore.
On the contrary, I think 'we' (the US) use them every day as leverage and a deterrent. We just don't need to detonate them anymore. I think there is more to it than them being just a trump card. You only get to use a trump card once.
Our conventional weapons and economic influence are the leverage and deterrents. It's pretty unlikely that we would ever again nuke a non-nuclear entity. The non nuclear entities know this, so nukes don't really provide any leverage over them. It's our drones, ships, etc. that do, at least on the military side.
For the few entities with nuclear weapons, it's MAD. We would only play the card once, since it would be the final round of the game with that entity.
Any technical solutions to the global issues we face will be thwarted by sociological factors due to our immaturity as a species. Climate, for example, requires cooperation on a global level and all populous industrialised countries must participate. China, for example, may decide to not participate for any number of economic or political reasons. What then? They would be further destroying the planet. Should we force them to participate since their decision is adversely affecting other nations?
Solutions don't necessarily need everybody to be on board.
Somebody could come up with something tomorrow. Maybe a bacteria that can populate the ocean, which precipitates carbon from CO2 in the air, and drops little pellets to the bottom. Probably not a real practical solution, or even a good idea, but it shows how things could rapidly change if the right tech comes along. They wouldn't need to get everyone together - just a petri dish thrown into the ocean.
We are still thinking of solving today's problems with today's technology, which I agree is futile to get everyone on the same page.
Certainly possible. Problem is that the issues are very diverse. You have increased carbon, over-population, resource depletion, increased toxins in environment, etc, and each would require very different technological solutions. Also, I think solutions such as your bacteria idea would just make us lazy. We wouldn't fix the real issue but would just ultimately rely on technology to solve what are really social issues.
Yes, but Karl Marx's plan relies on motivating self interested humans, who have a natural desire to minimize their output energy expenditure. Machines can make us more and more stuff all through the night, and never ask for vacation. Functional communism/socialism is only realistic at a point when labor becomes trivial - e.g. walk over to the replicator and grab the cheeseburger it made you.
Agreed. Once we build a clanking replicator, or it's biological/nano counterpart, we'll be approaching a state where thought manifests reality.
As a thought experiment, if every one has a replication device like in Star Trek or Drexler's universal assembler, how will the materials and energy to run such a device be distributed? Presumably we would allocate some to everyone, which would function as a basic income.
If we continue on the current path where resources are consolidated into the hands of the few, and these few have no need for the labor of the masses...
Author here. I am hoping to get some feedback from the readership here on HN.
You basically connect 5 or 10 keys, such as Cherry MX, to an Arduino. The software on the computer creates a layer between the keyboard and the OS that lets you easily script what the key inputs do. It features a built in stenotype style dictionary for fast text expansion that works across applications. The chord combinations let you access millions of symbols, Lisp functions, or shell commands mnemonically. The finger patterns form a binary sign language that can be implemented almost anywhere through machine vision, keyboards, gloves with MEMS devices, or possibly even non-invasive neural connections. You can even learn the system without a keyboard.
It seems like in the longer term, it would be more efficient to take a shuttle to orbit, and then dock with at a space station to get on the interplanetary ship. Cruise ships and military ships use this method in places where docking is infeasible. It would be a much higher initial cost, however.
Six months on ship isn't so bad. Six months is the length of a WESTPAC, though you get to leave the ship periodically. I think the longest we went without docking was a month, and the guys in the submarines often go for even longer stretches.