Ice tunnels would also make pretty good living structures. Water Ice is particularly effective at absorbing the worst cosmic rays that would normally be deflected by earth's field. I'm picturing structures akin to double wall vacuum insulated thermoses. The outer wall bring water ice and the inner wall being cheap, locally sourced steel.
I'm sort of wondering how hard it would be to just drill out caverns and reinforce them. There's something really attractive about cubic miles to build inside, if you want population centers.
It's more likely we would melt the ice into water then use electrolysis to separate and store the hydrogen and oxygen for later use. A heat engine (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) is relatively cheap and easy to ship to Mars and would produce all the energy you'd need to get started. I'm picturing a lander that builds a small pressure dome over the worksite. Pressure would be supplied by steam which in turn would be used to spin turbines, generating the electricity needed for electrolysis and smelting of iron. Just like a thermos, the tubes could have reinforcing rings every so often. Given the space between the inner and outer walls is a vacuum, this would be the only point where heat would conduct into the surrounding ice. Those points of contact could be easily insulated with ultra low density concrete or aerogel. The tubes would likely be round to minimize surface area and maximize structural stability. At 1/3rd G, ice is actually remarkably sturdy so re enforcement might not even be necessary. This would likely all be totally automated until a habitat is built. We'd need some major technological breakthroughs to get us there but none are outside the realm of what is scientifically possible.
I wonder if you could work some form of Pykrete from local resources. Normally it gets strength from plant fibers, but fiberglass would maybe work. For external shells, where it's going to be pretty cold, it could work well. Maybe easier to obtain materials for.
There's so much iron (albeit in the form of oxides) on Mars that it makes more sense to make everything from that. Granted there is quite a lot of siliceous rock that we could turn into glass but I think that will largely be secondary to steel production. The biggest obstacles I see are ones of metallurgy. Mars doesn't really have the raw materials to make electrodes for smelting steel. It also lacks easy access to some of the alloyable materials needed to make cryogenic steel. There is, however a high possibility that rare minerals have been concentrated at the bottom of the frozen lake we are talking about building on and can be used to kickstart construction.
I imagined that the first support structures would be made of laser-sintered or resinated regolith. Maybe even both? Filter out the metals for sintering and the regolith remnants get impregnated with resin. I figure the first permanent structures would be built by automation in advance of a manned mission, so I don't imagine smelting being available in the first iteration as it would require existing infrastructure. Besides which there would need to be a reasonably stable supply of carbon.
So if we have sifters going through the regolith and collecting manganese, zinc, magnesium, iron, nickel and aluminum, there's some options there. Most of the early support would be unsorted regolith, but eventually they'd have enough aluminum and nickel-iron to build some infrastructure.
0
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Okay, this isn't quite a spaceflight or exploration thing, though it's related to asteroids, so I'll put this in the science thread.
If for some reason you're looking at a list of asteroids and their names and are down in the 20,000s you might see number 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. If you've been following American politics at all, which you probably have since you're looking at a D&D thread right now, you've probably heard of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is young and dances and pisses off the cons and most importantly, is in Congress now. Is there a connection or is it coincidence?
Turns out, it is in fact named after her. When she was in high school, Ocasio-Cortez was a big science nerd. Her microbiology project (testing oxidative stress on model organism C. elegans) came in second place in an international science fair and her prize was getting an asteroid named after her, which is super awesome for any high schooler. Afterward, she went to college, switched to economics, then became a bartender because the job market sucks but bills have to get paid, and now she'll try to fix that in Congress.
As for the asteroid,
it's in the main asteroid belt with no threat of hitting Earth. It has a diameter of 2.3 km and takes almost four years to complete an orbit. But don't just take my word for it.
Ice tunnels would also make pretty good living structures. Water Ice is particularly effective at absorbing the worst cosmic rays that would normally be deflected by earth's field. I'm picturing structures akin to double wall vacuum insulated thermoses. The outer wall bring water ice and the inner wall being cheap, locally sourced steel.
I'm sort of wondering how hard it would be to just drill out caverns and reinforce them. There's something really attractive about cubic miles to build inside, if you want population centers.
It's more likely we would melt the ice into water then use electrolysis to separate and store the hydrogen and oxygen for later use. A heat engine (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) is relatively cheap and easy to ship to Mars and would produce all the energy you'd need to get started. I'm picturing a lander that builds a small pressure dome over the worksite. Pressure would be supplied by steam which in turn would be used to spin turbines, generating the electricity needed for electrolysis and smelting of iron. Just like a thermos, the tubes could have reinforcing rings every so often. Given the space between the inner and outer walls is a vacuum, this would be the only point where heat would conduct into the surrounding ice. Those points of contact could be easily insulated with ultra low density concrete or aerogel. The tubes would likely be round to minimize surface area and maximize structural stability. At 1/3rd G, ice is actually remarkably sturdy so re enforcement might not even be necessary. This would likely all be totally automated until a habitat is built. We'd need some major technological breakthroughs to get us there but none are outside the realm of what is scientifically possible.
I wonder if you could work some form of Pykrete from local resources. Normally it gets strength from plant fibers, but fiberglass would maybe work. For external shells, where it's going to be pretty cold, it could work well. Maybe easier to obtain materials for.
There's so much iron (albeit in the form of oxides) on Mars that it makes more sense to make everything from that. Granted there is quite a lot of siliceous rock that we could turn into glass but I think that will largely be secondary to steel production. The biggest obstacles I see are ones of metallurgy. Mars doesn't really have the raw materials to make electrodes for smelting steel. It also lacks easy access to some of the alloyable materials needed to make cryogenic steel. There is, however a high possibility that rare minerals have been concentrated at the bottom of the frozen lake we are talking about building on and can be used to kickstart construction.
I imagined that the first support structures would be made of laser-sintered or resinated regolith. Maybe even both? Filter out the metals for sintering and the regolith remnants get impregnated with resin. I figure the first permanent structures would be built by automation in advance of a manned mission, so I don't imagine smelting being available in the first iteration as it would require existing infrastructure. Besides which there would need to be a reasonably stable supply of carbon.
So if we have sifters going through the regolith and collecting manganese, zinc, magnesium, iron, nickel and aluminum, there's some options there. Most of the early support would be unsorted regolith, but eventually they'd have enough aluminum and nickel-iron to build some infrastructure.
Isn't (artificial) resin made from petroleum? Where would you get that on Mars?
Ice tunnels would also make pretty good living structures. Water Ice is particularly effective at absorbing the worst cosmic rays that would normally be deflected by earth's field. I'm picturing structures akin to double wall vacuum insulated thermoses. The outer wall bring water ice and the inner wall being cheap, locally sourced steel.
I'm sort of wondering how hard it would be to just drill out caverns and reinforce them. There's something really attractive about cubic miles to build inside, if you want population centers.
It's more likely we would melt the ice into water then use electrolysis to separate and store the hydrogen and oxygen for later use. A heat engine (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) is relatively cheap and easy to ship to Mars and would produce all the energy you'd need to get started. I'm picturing a lander that builds a small pressure dome over the worksite. Pressure would be supplied by steam which in turn would be used to spin turbines, generating the electricity needed for electrolysis and smelting of iron. Just like a thermos, the tubes could have reinforcing rings every so often. Given the space between the inner and outer walls is a vacuum, this would be the only point where heat would conduct into the surrounding ice. Those points of contact could be easily insulated with ultra low density concrete or aerogel. The tubes would likely be round to minimize surface area and maximize structural stability. At 1/3rd G, ice is actually remarkably sturdy so re enforcement might not even be necessary. This would likely all be totally automated until a habitat is built. We'd need some major technological breakthroughs to get us there but none are outside the realm of what is scientifically possible.
I wonder if you could work some form of Pykrete from local resources. Normally it gets strength from plant fibers, but fiberglass would maybe work. For external shells, where it's going to be pretty cold, it could work well. Maybe easier to obtain materials for.
There's so much iron (albeit in the form of oxides) on Mars that it makes more sense to make everything from that. Granted there is quite a lot of siliceous rock that we could turn into glass but I think that will largely be secondary to steel production. The biggest obstacles I see are ones of metallurgy. Mars doesn't really have the raw materials to make electrodes for smelting steel. It also lacks easy access to some of the alloyable materials needed to make cryogenic steel. There is, however a high possibility that rare minerals have been concentrated at the bottom of the frozen lake we are talking about building on and can be used to kickstart construction.
I imagined that the first support structures would be made of laser-sintered or resinated regolith. Maybe even both? Filter out the metals for sintering and the regolith remnants get impregnated with resin. I figure the first permanent structures would be built by automation in advance of a manned mission, so I don't imagine smelting being available in the first iteration as it would require existing infrastructure. Besides which there would need to be a reasonably stable supply of carbon.
So if we have sifters going through the regolith and collecting manganese, zinc, magnesium, iron, nickel and aluminum, there's some options there. Most of the early support would be unsorted regolith, but eventually they'd have enough aluminum and nickel-iron to build some infrastructure.
Isn't (artificial) resin made from petroleum? Where would you get that on Mars?
There are plant and synthetic resins as well. If enough carbon compounds are available, something may be possible, but it may not float to the top of the list.
Ice tunnels would also make pretty good living structures. Water Ice is particularly effective at absorbing the worst cosmic rays that would normally be deflected by earth's field. I'm picturing structures akin to double wall vacuum insulated thermoses. The outer wall bring water ice and the inner wall being cheap, locally sourced steel.
I'm sort of wondering how hard it would be to just drill out caverns and reinforce them. There's something really attractive about cubic miles to build inside, if you want population centers.
It's more likely we would melt the ice into water then use electrolysis to separate and store the hydrogen and oxygen for later use. A heat engine (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator) is relatively cheap and easy to ship to Mars and would produce all the energy you'd need to get started. I'm picturing a lander that builds a small pressure dome over the worksite. Pressure would be supplied by steam which in turn would be used to spin turbines, generating the electricity needed for electrolysis and smelting of iron. Just like a thermos, the tubes could have reinforcing rings every so often. Given the space between the inner and outer walls is a vacuum, this would be the only point where heat would conduct into the surrounding ice. Those points of contact could be easily insulated with ultra low density concrete or aerogel. The tubes would likely be round to minimize surface area and maximize structural stability. At 1/3rd G, ice is actually remarkably sturdy so re enforcement might not even be necessary. This would likely all be totally automated until a habitat is built. We'd need some major technological breakthroughs to get us there but none are outside the realm of what is scientifically possible.
I wonder if you could work some form of Pykrete from local resources. Normally it gets strength from plant fibers, but fiberglass would maybe work. For external shells, where it's going to be pretty cold, it could work well. Maybe easier to obtain materials for.
There's so much iron (albeit in the form of oxides) on Mars that it makes more sense to make everything from that. Granted there is quite a lot of siliceous rock that we could turn into glass but I think that will largely be secondary to steel production. The biggest obstacles I see are ones of metallurgy. Mars doesn't really have the raw materials to make electrodes for smelting steel. It also lacks easy access to some of the alloyable materials needed to make cryogenic steel. There is, however a high possibility that rare minerals have been concentrated at the bottom of the frozen lake we are talking about building on and can be used to kickstart construction.
I imagined that the first support structures would be made of laser-sintered or resinated regolith. Maybe even both? Filter out the metals for sintering and the regolith remnants get impregnated with resin. I figure the first permanent structures would be built by automation in advance of a manned mission, so I don't imagine smelting being available in the first iteration as it would require existing infrastructure. Besides which there would need to be a reasonably stable supply of carbon.
So if we have sifters going through the regolith and collecting manganese, zinc, magnesium, iron, nickel and aluminum, there's some options there. Most of the early support would be unsorted regolith, but eventually they'd have enough aluminum and nickel-iron to build some infrastructure.
Isn't (artificial) resin made from petroleum? Where would you get that on Mars?
It's something that would have to be sent ahead of time, along with the machines that would build the infrastructure. Laser sintering alone might be more weighty when you consider also packing the materials to meet its energy requirements and also it might runs into issues with the thinner atmosphere on Mars possibly causing overheating issues.
You would have to send some amount of materials ahead of time, there's no getting around that.
Could the people who did that crazy earth orbit with the 40% fuel reduction do something like that for Mars? At least for the supplies and materials it would be OK if it took an extra year or two to get the initial stuff there ahead of the human crew.
Would using some sort of rail gun work for just shooting raw materials at Mars?
I can't imagine a large amount of acceleration or deceleration would be problematic for those..
Drag in the Earth's atmosphere is probably the biggest problem.
Would using some sort of rail gun work for just shooting raw materials at Mars?
I can't imagine a large amount of acceleration or deceleration would be problematic for those..
Drag in the Earth's atmosphere is probably the biggest problem.
I think people would be upset about sending limited earth resources away, better to catch a metal rich asteroid and send it to impact Mars's surface.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
"A large amount of acceleration" is an understatement. Even if it doesn't instantly burn up (it has to leave faster than the Apollo capsules re-entered at) it would slam into mars at something like 6 km/s. Making new craters is fun though
Would using some sort of rail gun work for just shooting raw materials at Mars?
I can't imagine a large amount of acceleration or deceleration would be problematic for those..
Drag in the Earth's atmosphere is probably the biggest problem.
I think people would be upset about sending limited earth resources away, better to catch a metal rich asteroid and send it to impact Mars's surface.
Eh, you lose a lot to... oh wait no atmosphere to make them burn up and explode. DO IT.
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
The biggest problem with creating a launch loop is the sheer size of the thing. To get something up to orbital velocity at g loads a human could survive would require a track some 80km high and 2000km long. The only way to make such a loop would be with active support and even than the entire structure will be under more load than anything that anyone has ever built in history.
The biggest problem with creating a launch loop is the sheer size of the thing. To get something up to orbital velocity at g loads a human could survive would require a track some 80km high and 2000km long. The only way to make such a loop would be with active support and even than the entire structure will be under more load than anything that anyone has ever built in history.
Yeah, but he's not suggesting a human safe launcher. Just raw materials. Not even food stuffs or anything. If the g forces break all the various billets or w/e, who cares, its all going to get disassembled on site.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I've always wanted some incredible, high quality video of a major asteroid impact. There has to be one that would only take a small nudge to send it into Mars.
You're not going to get the accuracy you need from a single impulse to hit Mars, let alone drop things on Mars where it will be useful. So you'd need a propulsion, guidance, control and communication system capable of surviving that initial 50,000g kick so its path can be adjusted after it exits the atmosphere. Building reaction wheels and gyroscopes up to the task would be a significant challenge.
Regular rocket launch to orbit, then orbiting/lunar installed cannon.
I suspect when you look at the costs asteroid capture and in situ mining would probably be more efficient than sending any kind of raw materials from earth.
I also suspect you may be better off just constructing a space habitat/orbital when all costs are considered if you are talking about large scale habitation though.
Interesting article on the death of the fully self driving car and how the younger generation doesn't even really want cars in their cities anymore.
It's funny how the article bemoans blind optimism in the media and then takes a fairly narrow statement and runs with it to an absurd conclusion. Just because an autonomous version of Ice Road Truckers may be a long ways off does not mean autonomous cars won't be safer than people on normal road conditions within a decade or two. Also, the population of urban millenials who live close enough to a city center that not having a car is a real choice is a tiny minority.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Interesting article on the death of the fully self driving car and how the younger generation doesn't even really want cars in their cities anymore.
It's funny how the article bemoans blind optimism in the media and then takes a fairly narrow statement and runs with it to an absurd conclusion. Just because an autonomous version of Ice Road Truckers may be a long ways off does not mean autonomous cars won't be safer than people on normal road conditions within a decade or two. Also, the population of urban millenials who live close enough to a city center that not having a car is a real choice is a tiny minority.
Autonomous cars are going to replace taxis and a significant portion of the trucking industry. Ideally it will be done in such a way that it will also largely destroy the need for personal vehicles. I agree we are decades away from 0 car households but we're probably going to quickly get to 1 or .75 car households (like a golfcart or something).
It's like the author thought, "I want to talk about how awesome bikes and scooters are but nobody will read an article about that so I'll make the first couple of paragraphs vague doom-saying about driverless cars so I can use that in the title."
While reading the paragraph about how autonomous vehicles couldn't handle heavy rain and snow I was thinking, "How could a technology writer be comfortable writing that sensor technology will never be able to handle any given thing?" Then I looked up at the title, realized I was reading something under "Radical Urbanist" and gave up any expectation of realistic analysis of the technology.
When he says never he means in his lifetime, not never, which is kinda bad writing, I guess. There are a lot of people that doubt driverless cars are anywhere close to being within reach. Including the CEO of the 'best' driverless car company, appearently.
I still thought it was interesting that 50% of millennials in the poll he referenced thinks cars are a waste of money. And I already knew the 'more lanes don't reduce traffic, just increase the number of drivers' thing but I didn't think that out towards how it applies to microtransports like he spelled out in the article.
When he says never he means in his lifetime, not never, which is kinda bad writing, I guess. There are a lot of people that doubt driverless cars are anywhere close to being within reach. Including the CEO of the 'best' driverless car company, appearently.
I still thought it was interesting that 50% of millennials in the poll he referenced thinks cars are a waste of money. And I already knew the 'more lanes don't reduce traffic, just increase the number of drivers' thing but I didn't think that out towards how it applies to microtransports like he spelled out in the article.
At scale it does, but you can shove a lot more of them in any given space.
0
AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I believe we will have fully autonomous driverless cars that work in well lit conditions on well maintained roads in the near future. Driverless cars that work in total darkness will probably be a thing within our lifetimes too. Beyond that, who knows.
I believe we will have fully autonomous driverless cars that work in well lit conditions on well maintained roads in the near future. Driverless cars that work in total darkness will probably be a thing within our lifetimes too. Beyond that, who knows.
Total darkness is probably easier than bright light. The problem with snow and rain are reflections, distortion, and interference. In darkness you can just flood the area with IR light and rely on every bright spot in the expected range being a highly-reflective surface.
I just don't see what the barrier to autonomous vehicles in standard (non-extreme-weather) conditions would be. We're certainly not there yet but there's no barrier in sensor or processing technology making it impossible without some only-theorized technical jump. Like, we can't build a space elevator because we don't have the materials. We can't build a handheld x-ray laser rifle because we don't know how to store energy at that density. We can't build a sci-fi holographic display because there's no known physical method by which it would work. But self-driving cars you can trust to either drive for you or recognize that conditions would render them unsafe are strictly an evolutionary path from where we are now. It might take decades, but we've already gone from "That's sci-fi bullshit" to "You can get a self-driving car to pick you up and drop you off in several major cities" in like 15 years.
As cool as self driving cars are they are going to end up being one more wedge between those of us in the lower class and the rest of you. If one person can spend an extra hour on the way into work getting stuff done, but you can't, it is going to be hard to compete. Or school or college or whatever. Plus where do all the taxi, semi truck, and other drivers go? Eventually the price will probably come down but who knows how long that will be and how much damage will be done in the interim.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
0
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
As cool as self driving cars are they are going to end up being one more wedge between those of us in the lower class and the rest of you. If one person can spend an extra hour on the way into work getting stuff done, but you can't, it is going to be hard to compete. Or school or college or whatever. Plus where do all the taxi, semi truck, and other drivers go? Eventually the price will probably come down but who knows how long that will be and how much damage will be done in the interim.
It may surprise you to learn that the majority of truck drivers own their own rigs. Logistics companies act as middlemen to connect these independent drivers to companies that need goods transported. The people who are buying the automated taxis, by and large will be operating them as a small business. The drivers won't lose their jobs, they will just steadily easier and easier until they get to stay at home and the car does the rest of the work. The prices of these services will steadily decrease with the efficiency of hauling. By that time a single independent trucker could operate small fleets of fully autonomous hauling units, each specialized for their cargo. "Trucker" orgs have a lot of political power. It's a very well protected profession.
As cool as self driving cars are they are going to end up being one more wedge between those of us in the lower class and the rest of you. If one person can spend an extra hour on the way into work getting stuff done, but you can't, it is going to be hard to compete. Or school or college or whatever. Plus where do all the taxi, semi truck, and other drivers go? Eventually the price will probably come down but who knows how long that will be and how much damage will be done in the interim.
Also rich people often already have their own drivers so they have that extra time to work or do whatever while traveling. They already have that edge.
i think the biggest issue with driver-less cars will be people smashing in to them and then blaming the AI.
The "roll coal" morons will absolutely do this.
+13
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2019
on a fascinating methods in science front i encountered this twitter thread recently which goes through some of the dirty tricks that some scientists pull when doing meta-analyses and reviews
fascinating from a methods in science perspective but also from a general dishonesty point of view. this is not unqiue to this field at all - you see similar tricks everywhere - although usually its not such a concatenation of different dishonest tricks
(for those interested in reproducibility and so on there are a bunch of great twitter accounts on this, obvious ones being simine vizire, brian nosek, marcus munafo, james heathers but many others - lots of savaging of research, v jolly)
Some people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.
In one of the more harrowing episodes, a man waved a .22-caliber revolver at a Waymo vehicle and the emergency backup driver at the wheel. He told the police that he “despises” driverless cars, referring to the killing of a female pedestrian in March in nearby Tempe by a self-driving Uber car.
The emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked in various cases told the Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue prosecution of the assailants.
In some of their reports, police officers also said Waymo was often unwilling to provide video of the attacks. In one case, a Waymo employee told the police they would need a warrant to obtain video recorded by the company’s vehicles.
The report said Waymo was concerned about the effect the attacks were having on its emergency drivers, who are intended to remain in monitoring mode. “The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other vehicle may do,” Officer Johnson wrote.
As cool as self driving cars are they are going to end up being one more wedge between those of us in the lower class and the rest of you. If one person can spend an extra hour on the way into work getting stuff done, but you can't, it is going to be hard to compete. Or school or college or whatever. Plus where do all the taxi, semi truck, and other drivers go? Eventually the price will probably come down but who knows how long that will be and how much damage will be done in the interim.
It may surprise you to learn that the majority of truck drivers own their own rigs. Logistics companies act as middlemen to connect these independent drivers to companies that need goods transported. The people who are buying the automated taxis, by and large will be operating them as a small business. The drivers won't lose their jobs, they will just steadily easier and easier until they get to stay at home and the car does the rest of the work. The prices of these services will steadily decrease with the efficiency of hauling. By that time a single independent trucker could operate small fleets of fully autonomous hauling units, each specialized for their cargo. "Trucker" orgs have a lot of political power. It's a very well protected profession.
The taxi thing is just flat out wrong. You really think companies are going to pay a liveable wage to someone who just sits in the car and maybe touches the wheel every now and then? Who are the small business owners who can afford the kind of prices these cars will have? And once they start being offered for the moving of freight, how are the current owners of semis going to offload their laughably obsolete trucks to buy the new more expensive versions? Once they get to the point where they no longer need a safety driver what do these literally millions of men and women do that will pay them as much as they make now? These things are either going to fail miserably as the middle and lower class in the country realize they are going to ruin their lives or crush millions of people.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
As cool as self driving cars are they are going to end up being one more wedge between those of us in the lower class and the rest of you. If one person can spend an extra hour on the way into work getting stuff done, but you can't, it is going to be hard to compete. Or school or college or whatever. Plus where do all the taxi, semi truck, and other drivers go? Eventually the price will probably come down but who knows how long that will be and how much damage will be done in the interim.
It may surprise you to learn that the majority of truck drivers own their own rigs. Logistics companies act as middlemen to connect these independent drivers to companies that need goods transported. The people who are buying the automated taxis, by and large will be operating them as a small business. The drivers won't lose their jobs, they will just steadily easier and easier until they get to stay at home and the car does the rest of the work. The prices of these services will steadily decrease with the efficiency of hauling. By that time a single independent trucker could operate small fleets of fully autonomous hauling units, each specialized for their cargo. "Trucker" orgs have a lot of political power. It's a very well protected profession.
The taxi thing is just flat out wrong. You really think companies are going to pay a liveable wage to someone who just sits in the car and maybe touches the wheel every now and then? Who are the small business owners who can afford the kind of prices these cars will have? And once they start being offered for the moving of freight, how are the current owners of semis going to offload their laughably obsolete trucks to buy the new more expensive versions? Once they get to the point where they no longer need a safety driver what do these literally millions of men and women do that will pay them as much as they make now? These things are either going to fail miserably as the middle and lower class in the country realize they are going to ruin their lives or crush millions of people.
I mean, this "what will people do as automation takes over" is neither new, nor is it remotely solved.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Posts
I imagined that the first support structures would be made of laser-sintered or resinated regolith. Maybe even both? Filter out the metals for sintering and the regolith remnants get impregnated with resin. I figure the first permanent structures would be built by automation in advance of a manned mission, so I don't imagine smelting being available in the first iteration as it would require existing infrastructure. Besides which there would need to be a reasonably stable supply of carbon.
So if we have sifters going through the regolith and collecting manganese, zinc, magnesium, iron, nickel and aluminum, there's some options there. Most of the early support would be unsorted regolith, but eventually they'd have enough aluminum and nickel-iron to build some infrastructure.
If for some reason you're looking at a list of asteroids and their names and are down in the 20,000s you might see number 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. If you've been following American politics at all, which you probably have since you're looking at a D&D thread right now, you've probably heard of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is young and dances and pisses off the cons and most importantly, is in Congress now. Is there a connection or is it coincidence?
Turns out, it is in fact named after her. When she was in high school, Ocasio-Cortez was a big science nerd. Her microbiology project (testing oxidative stress on model organism C. elegans) came in second place in an international science fair and her prize was getting an asteroid named after her, which is super awesome for any high schooler. Afterward, she went to college, switched to economics, then became a bartender because the job market sucks but bills have to get paid, and now she'll try to fix that in Congress.
As for the asteroid,
it's in the main asteroid belt with no threat of hitting Earth. It has a diameter of 2.3 km and takes almost four years to complete an orbit. But don't just take my word for it.
Isn't (artificial) resin made from petroleum? Where would you get that on Mars?
There are plant and synthetic resins as well. If enough carbon compounds are available, something may be possible, but it may not float to the top of the list.
It's something that would have to be sent ahead of time, along with the machines that would build the infrastructure. Laser sintering alone might be more weighty when you consider also packing the materials to meet its energy requirements and also it might runs into issues with the thinner atmosphere on Mars possibly causing overheating issues.
You would have to send some amount of materials ahead of time, there's no getting around that.
PSN:Furlion
I can't imagine a large amount of acceleration or deceleration would be problematic for those..
Drag in the Earth's atmosphere is probably the biggest problem.
I think people would be upset about sending limited earth resources away, better to catch a metal rich asteroid and send it to impact Mars's surface.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Eh, you lose a lot to... oh wait no atmosphere to make them burn up and explode. DO IT.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
But like could we build a giant trebuchet and throw scrap metal at mars?
http://sketchtoy.com/68847000
The numbers check out
Yeah, but he's not suggesting a human safe launcher. Just raw materials. Not even food stuffs or anything. If the g forces break all the various billets or w/e, who cares, its all going to get disassembled on site.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Interesting article on the death of the fully self driving car and how the younger generation doesn't even really want cars in their cities anymore.
I suspect when you look at the costs asteroid capture and in situ mining would probably be more efficient than sending any kind of raw materials from earth.
I also suspect you may be better off just constructing a space habitat/orbital when all costs are considered if you are talking about large scale habitation though.
It's funny how the article bemoans blind optimism in the media and then takes a fairly narrow statement and runs with it to an absurd conclusion. Just because an autonomous version of Ice Road Truckers may be a long ways off does not mean autonomous cars won't be safer than people on normal road conditions within a decade or two. Also, the population of urban millenials who live close enough to a city center that not having a car is a real choice is a tiny minority.
Autonomous cars are going to replace taxis and a significant portion of the trucking industry. Ideally it will be done in such a way that it will also largely destroy the need for personal vehicles. I agree we are decades away from 0 car households but we're probably going to quickly get to 1 or .75 car households (like a golfcart or something).
It's like the author thought, "I want to talk about how awesome bikes and scooters are but nobody will read an article about that so I'll make the first couple of paragraphs vague doom-saying about driverless cars so I can use that in the title."
While reading the paragraph about how autonomous vehicles couldn't handle heavy rain and snow I was thinking, "How could a technology writer be comfortable writing that sensor technology will never be able to handle any given thing?" Then I looked up at the title, realized I was reading something under "Radical Urbanist" and gave up any expectation of realistic analysis of the technology.
I still thought it was interesting that 50% of millennials in the poll he referenced thinks cars are a waste of money. And I already knew the 'more lanes don't reduce traffic, just increase the number of drivers' thing but I didn't think that out towards how it applies to microtransports like he spelled out in the article.
At scale it does, but you can shove a lot more of them in any given space.
Total darkness is probably easier than bright light. The problem with snow and rain are reflections, distortion, and interference. In darkness you can just flood the area with IR light and rely on every bright spot in the expected range being a highly-reflective surface.
I just don't see what the barrier to autonomous vehicles in standard (non-extreme-weather) conditions would be. We're certainly not there yet but there's no barrier in sensor or processing technology making it impossible without some only-theorized technical jump. Like, we can't build a space elevator because we don't have the materials. We can't build a handheld x-ray laser rifle because we don't know how to store energy at that density. We can't build a sci-fi holographic display because there's no known physical method by which it would work. But self-driving cars you can trust to either drive for you or recognize that conditions would render them unsafe are strictly an evolutionary path from where we are now. It might take decades, but we've already gone from "That's sci-fi bullshit" to "You can get a self-driving car to pick you up and drop you off in several major cities" in like 15 years.
Maybe, but that sounds like a self-correcting problem once those idiots are found responsible because of the onboard cameras and telemetry.
No, its a news issue. The small number of big Tesla accidents, even when they are 100% the cars fault, have been way over emphasized.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
PSN:Furlion
It may surprise you to learn that the majority of truck drivers own their own rigs. Logistics companies act as middlemen to connect these independent drivers to companies that need goods transported. The people who are buying the automated taxis, by and large will be operating them as a small business. The drivers won't lose their jobs, they will just steadily easier and easier until they get to stay at home and the car does the rest of the work. The prices of these services will steadily decrease with the efficiency of hauling. By that time a single independent trucker could operate small fleets of fully autonomous hauling units, each specialized for their cargo. "Trucker" orgs have a lot of political power. It's a very well protected profession.
Also rich people often already have their own drivers so they have that extra time to work or do whatever while traveling. They already have that edge.
I'm not Younger by any stretch and the sooner cars piss off out of cities the better.
The "roll coal" morons will absolutely do this.
fascinating from a methods in science perspective but also from a general dishonesty point of view. this is not unqiue to this field at all - you see similar tricks everywhere - although usually its not such a concatenation of different dishonest tricks
(for those interested in reproducibility and so on there are a bunch of great twitter accounts on this, obvious ones being simine vizire, brian nosek, marcus munafo, james heathers but many others - lots of savaging of research, v jolly)
Don't be evil, Google.
The taxi thing is just flat out wrong. You really think companies are going to pay a liveable wage to someone who just sits in the car and maybe touches the wheel every now and then? Who are the small business owners who can afford the kind of prices these cars will have? And once they start being offered for the moving of freight, how are the current owners of semis going to offload their laughably obsolete trucks to buy the new more expensive versions? Once they get to the point where they no longer need a safety driver what do these literally millions of men and women do that will pay them as much as they make now? These things are either going to fail miserably as the middle and lower class in the country realize they are going to ruin their lives or crush millions of people.
PSN:Furlion
I mean, this "what will people do as automation takes over" is neither new, nor is it remotely solved.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain