Awesome stuff you have to share

[Nanshork]

AWESOME! WE SHALL BE PUBLIC SERVANTS TOGETHER AND CHANGE THIS COUNTRY!!!

(I SEEM TO BE STUCK IN CAPS LOCK MODE NOW, DEARY ME.)

And we all know that caps lock is cruise control for cool!

[Kuroimaken]

I've been reading all kinds of horror story before bed lately, and yet I've had naught but pleasant dreams.

[Slaughterhouserock]

The latest xkcd is pretty cool and monstrously huge(it's 165888 x 79872 pixels, or 1.3 terapixels).  For help navigating the huge comic, here's an image you can use as a guide, and here's a google maps-style version of it allowing you to zoom in and out for ease of use.

[oslecamo]

Another step towards personal robots.

[Nanshork]

NASA is working on Faster-Than-Light travel

[dman11235]

The ship doesn't move at all!  The ship stays where it is, and the universe moves around the ship!

[Kethrian]

It's all just perception, frame of reference.  You can get the same feeling when you take a walk and picture yourself as staying stationary while the earth moves beneath you.

18 years to refine the concept of warp technology to the point of being feasible, though.  That's pretty freaking awesome!

[Kuroimaken]

NASA is working on Faster-Than-Light travel

Screw FTL, give me personal teleportation.

[nijineko]

The ship doesn't move at all!  The ship stays where it is, and the universe moves around the ship!

nice star trek quote. ^^ highly appropriate. and if you got it from the article, then consider it a challenge to find the star trek reference, instead.

[veekie]

I hope its successful! FTL is freedom~

[brujon]

I hope its successful! FTL is freedom~

Think about the weapons potential of warping space time around something and you suddenly will want them NOT to succeed. Humanity's technology is evolving faster than it's society is, and this is a sure recipe for disaster. Sure, some people may say that space colonization is a route for world peace, since you can give every religious/political/economical view it's own planet, but then they'll bicker about which planet is best and there will be wars anyway. I'm all for FTL travel, but i think humanity isn't ready for it yet, as a species. We are too young and our society hasn't evolved to the point where space colonization will be a survivable scenario.

Really, just think about it. If we can find a replacement planet for earth, what reason there is NOT to blow up earth in the first place? Fortunetely, most people with that mindset are not in positions of power to be able to actually pull that off, but that can change in a heartbeat. Built a Noah's Ark 2.0, nuke the planet, find another one, colonize with your religion of choice. All it takes is ONE massive enough spacecraft travelling at close to lightspeed hitting the planet to nuke it. Always thought why that wasn't a factor in sci-fi. ANYTHING with enough kinetic energy is weaponizable: travelling by a factor of lightspeed certainly falls into that category.

I just hope scientists don't go mad at the possibilities and forget about the destructive potential of the technology.

[veekie]

It doesn't matter, because an Alcubierre drive has no momentum. The ship itself is not moving, and it has negligible impact force even if it's virtually traveling FTL. What is good there is expanding the horizons, we currently can do nothing but watch, now we can go over and touch.

If its planets, Mars and Venus are likely far more hospitable than planets around other stars, given the ability and resources to terraform.

[dman11235]

The ship doesn't move at all!  The ship stays where it is, and the universe moves around the ship!

nice star trek quote. ^^ highly appropriate. and if you got it from the article, then consider it a challenge to find the star trek reference, instead.

Try again.  It came to him in a dream, then he forgot it in another dream.

@brujon: Oh come on.  There's no need for such a pessimistic view of humanity.  Like all things, FTL travel will help as much (or more) than it hurts.  Yes, there's a potential for weaponization, but there's also massive exploration based advancements that can be had.  Which is freaking awesome.

@veekie: Mars, yes.  Venus? no way.  Too corrosive, toxic, and pressurized. We'd be better off building a cloud city in Jupiter than on Venus (yes, we'd have to build a cloud city to put people permanently on Venus).  And cloud cities aren't very useful, since they have to be completely sealed, so it's basically building a space station but with a need for a constant thrust to maintain altitude.

[veekie]

Just saying, it'd take less resources to convert Venus to a usable atmosphere than to colonize a planet in another star system. Its just large scale chemistry.

[oslecamo]

Just saying, it'd take less resources to convert Venus to a usable atmosphere than to colonize a planet in another star system. Its just large scale chemistry.

+1 to that. In particular because Venus is quite rich natural resource-wise, so it may actually turn profitable in the long run.

[veekie]

One person sees an endless atmosphere of toxic corrosive gases.


Another sees a world with glorious prospects for high energy chemistry.

[dman11235]

But I don't think colonizing it would be a good idea.  You can mine for resources without colonizing.  And when you're doing that, Jupiter has more of the resources, but less corrosion, so it would be cheaper (unless the altitude maintenance costs as much or more than the corrosion maintenance) with a greater return.  It might be easier to get the resources off of Venus though.  But for colonization, you'd need some other planet, at least for now.  Hmm actually, I thought Venus was mostly SO₂ and CO₂, not just CO₂, this might be easier than I thought.  Things we would need to do: eliminate the acids in the atmosphere, pull the sulfur out of the atmosphere, pull 70-80% of the carbon out of the atmosphere, and pull about 60% of the oxygen out of the atmosphere (this is the end of the easy stuff), get the core rotating (we need a stronger magnetic field, see below for ideas), add a freaking ton of hydrogen and a freaking ton of nitrogen to the atmosphere, use the hydrogen and oxygen we removed from the atmosphere to make water, add some rarer minerals (phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, etc.) assuming they aren't a part of the planet's surface, and begin the process of building a topsoil layer (use bacteria, then fungi, then plants).  The bacteria/fungi/plants will pull the remaining 20-10% of the carbon we need to remove from the atmosphere.  Then we can FINALLY start colonizing it.

Mars tasks (assuming mass of planet not an issue): get it's core rotating as above (launch an asteroid into it?  Or Phobos/Deimos?), begin planting life to begin pulling carbon out of atmosphere, add a ton of nitrogen to the atmosphere, add a bunch (not a ton....) of hydrogen to the atmosphere, make water (though not nearly as much), bring temperature up, begin topsoil construction as above (though note: it got a jump-start from the life planted early on).

So yes, Venus is possible, but Mars would be easier.

[brujon]

But I don't think colonizing it would be a good idea.  You can mine for resources without colonizing.  And when you're doing that, Jupiter has more of the resources, but less corrosion, so it would be cheaper (unless the altitude maintenance costs as much or more than the corrosion maintenance) with a greater return.  It might be easier to get the resources off of Venus though.  But for colonization, you'd need some other planet, at least for now.  Hmm actually, I thought Venus was mostly SO₂ and CO₂, not just CO₂, this might be easier than I thought.  Things we would need to do: eliminate the acids in the atmosphere, pull the sulfur out of the atmosphere, pull 70-80% of the carbon out of the atmosphere, and pull about 60% of the oxygen out of the atmosphere (this is the end of the easy stuff), get the core rotating (we need a stronger magnetic field, see below for ideas), add a freaking ton of hydrogen and a freaking ton of nitrogen to the atmosphere, use the hydrogen and oxygen we removed from the atmosphere to make water, add some rarer minerals (phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, etc.) assuming they aren't a part of the planet's surface, and begin the process of building a topsoil layer (use bacteria, then fungi, then plants).  The bacteria/fungi/plants will pull the remaining 20-10% of the carbon we need to remove from the atmosphere.  Then we can FINALLY start colonizing it.

Mars tasks (assuming mass of planet not an issue): get it's core rotating as above (launch an asteroid into it?  Or Phobos/Deimos?), begin planting life to begin pulling carbon out of atmosphere, add a ton of nitrogen to the atmosphere, add a bunch (not a ton....) of hydrogen to the atmosphere, make water (though not nearly as much), bring temperature up, begin topsoil construction as above (though note: it got a jump-start from the life planted early on).

So yes, Venus is possible, but Mars would be easier.

Venus also has much more water than mars, on it's atmosphere. Almost 1% of venus atmosphere is water vapor...

EDIT: Didn't read the part about Phobos/Deimos, yes i read about it too. The energy should be sufficient to set up natural processes to fix the carbon...

[oslecamo]

Venus is the closest planet to Earth.

Jupiter is much farther away, not to mention the much bigger gravity would make it a much bigger pain to take off harvested materials.

[Nanshork]

Venus is the closest planet to Earth.

Jupiter is much farther away, not to mention the much bigger gravity would make it a much bigger pain to take off harvested materials.

When Alpha Centauri is "weeks or months" away according to the article, the distance between Jupiter and Venus isn't significant.

I have no input on the gravity issue.